Trophy Son(8)

Dad stopped two steps into the court. He wasn’t supposed to come on with me. “Focus, Anton. This is another test.”

“Okay.”

“Play great.”

“I will.”

I walked to the chair at the side of the court by the net and sat down. Alone. For the next couple hours I’d be in a bubble. That’s where real tennis happens. All alone in a bubble.

That’s the thing about tennis. There’s no teammate to talk over strategy. There’s no opponent near enough for a verbal exchange. I’m not even allowed to talk to a coach. It’s isolation. In baseball a hitter’s alone at the plate, a pitcher’s alone on the mound. In basketball a player is alone on the free-throw line. But those are only moments. A moment later, the baseball players are back in the dugout slapping asses and spitting tobacco. The basketball player starts running the floor again with nine other guys. Even a boxer gets to rub foreheads and talk trash. My isolation is complete. Only swimming’s isolation can compare to that of tennis.





CHAPTER

5

Liz Betterton had asked me to a school dance. I would have been a sophomore at the time if I had stayed in school. I remembered her vividly from my eighth-grade year. She was one of the girls who developed early. Athletic curves and a full chest, long blonde hair sort of feathered the way Farrah Fawcett wore hers in the 1970s. She looked like someone’s sexy older sister but was our age.

I had gone straight from the courts of a tournament match to a celebration dinner with Dad at the Wayne Hotel, a fancy boutique hotel near our home. White tablecloths, waiters dressed in white jackets and ties, which is rare for suburban Main Line. It was a small dining room with soft electrical lighting and candles and it was understood that for diners already seated it was not rude to pause conversation and observe new arrivals because that was worthy reconnaissance. Liz was there with her family.

She seemed to piece together who I was, the odd tennis prodigy who dropped out of school. She waved and I waved back, then we both got shy, though her shyness may have been only for effect.

Two days later she invited me to the dance and I went tuxedo shopping with Mom who was almost as excited as I was.

For every boy in my grade throughout middle school, Liz Betterton was an unattainable, celebrity crush. We’d all have hung posters of her in our lockers and on bedroom walls if posters of her existed. As it was we clicked, open-mouthed, at photos on her Facebook page.

Now I was dating her, kissing her, going places with her, talking on the phone for an hour at a time. Dad didn’t like this. I knew because he pulled me aside and said exactly, “I don’t like this, Anton. You’re distracted.”

This was the one area where Mom dug in and protected me. She would say, “Let them be, Dear,” and she’d put her hands on her hips and look right at him. It was a look that said I’ve never fought you but on this I will and I’ll find the strength to win. Dad liked his perfect record. He didn’t want to set a precedent of losing a battle to Mom so he never engaged. He notionally allowed the relationship but set little skirmishes to interfere with me and Liz. He’d schedule practice sessions for late on a Saturday or enter me in a tournament to overlap a concert or event Liz and I had planned to attend.

His interference united Liz and me as rebels against the Empire. He took our romance and made it more adventurous, dangerous, Shakespearean.

It was still my first year with a driver’s license. Panos let me borrow his car to pick up Liz and take her out. I pulled up in front of her house and the front door opened and she jogged out wearing a miniskirt and cowboy boots. She had a tiny purse on a spaghetti strap that crossed her chest, parting her breasts. The miniskirt flapped with her strides like a matador’s red capote.

It was part of our routine never to go to the front door of either’s house. It wasn’t a social call. We were the rebels escaping parental clutches. There may as well have been a ladder down from a second-floor bedroom window.

She ducked, coming through the passenger door headfirst to kiss me and said, “Hi, Lover.”

That was the best. Calling me Lover. I felt like a grown man. This gorgeous woman sat next to me and I put the car in drive.

“Panos did some shopping for us,” I said.

“That sounds lovely.”

Lovely, she said. I was living out a movie plot. I had no other social life to dilute this, so everything felt like a movie plot. “There’s a picnic basket in the trunk he put together.” It was an eighty-degree day in late June, warm breezes and birds chirping still felt new.

“Some wine, I hope.”

“Of course.”

“Good. All I want to do right now is stretch out against your long body and sip wine. Your dad won’t come looking for you, will he?”

“No, no way.”

“What if he did, and found you with me and a bottle of wine?”

She liked to imagine these confrontations, talk them through. I liked it too. It heightened the risk and in the role play we could insert ourselves as the heroic defenders of youth and romance and make ourselves more attractive to each other.

We drove to the Willows which is a beautiful park in Wayne that used to be a private estate. It’s full of rolling grassy hills, old trees, ponds and also many geese so the trick is to find an area with no goose crap.

I found a spot for our blanket then devastated the wine cork, finally having to push the half-shredded thing back down into the bottle so we could drink, and I was feeling amateurish and undeserving of the name Lover.