When No One Was Looking (3 page)

“That’s what
I’m
here for,” said Oliver seriously.

“But that’s why I’m laughing,” said Kathy. “You’re not much bigger than I am. It would take four of us to pull him out of an armchair.”

“I’m seventeen,” said Oliver, glaring at Kathy, “and I’m on the Yale freshman crew.”

“You must be strong,” said Kathy hurriedly.

“I’m very strong.” The corners of Oliver’s mouth turned down like the mask of tragedy. He continued to look unhappy behind his glasses, which, as if they came in sizes like shirts, appeared to be a size too big for him. “It isn’t a question of weight,” he went on. “I could pull a whale out of the pool if I got the right grip on him. It’s all in the grip, or didn’t they teach you that in lifesaving?”

“I guess you’re right,” Kathy answered. She noticed that Oliver’s black hair danced wildly in the wind. He wore it long over the front and very short at the back like World War Two fighter pilots she’d seen in late movies on TV. His skin was as clear and pink as a baby’s, his chest as hairless as Kathy’s, and although she knew she could have hidden her whole fist in the depression between his ribs, she liked him. “Who’s your girl friend?” Oliver asked huffily.

“Girl friend? Oh, Julia. The one I was sitting with.”

“She’s pretty. Very pretty,” said Oliver.

“I know,” said Kathy, hoping she didn’t betray any jealousy in her voice, and she told herself Julia would never have made a mess out of meeting a boy as she had done.

“Molina!” said Oliver suddenly and poked Kathy’s foot. “Look sharp!”

Out of the brilliantly illuminated assortment of drinkers and eaters at the other end of the clubhouse came the Plymouth Bath and Tennis Club manager. Busy as a hornet, he glanced at his clipboard as if he wished he could yell at it. “One of you,” he said to Kathy and Oliver, “is supposed to be in one chair, and the other is supposed to be in the other chair.” He paused for a tiny breath. “And who, may I ask, selected you two to be lifeguards at an adult party? This is not a toddler swim hour.”

“But, Mr. Molina,” Kathy began, “I got a letter telling me to work tonight and ...

“And you?” Mr. Molina interrupted.

“The same thing, sir,” said Oliver.

“That’s my secretary’s fault, of course,” said Mr. Molina. “She doesn’t know one from another. We have six big boys much better suited. You couldn’t pull a baby out of the shallow end,” he observed to Oliver.

“But—” Kathy began.

“It’s not your fault!” Mr. Molina shouted. “Now go pick up that towel over there. Have you checked the chlorine level in the pool?”

“Yes,” said Kathy.

“One of you pick up that Coke bottle before someone trips over it and winds up in the hospital. I’m going to keep an eye on both of you. No fraternization. You sit in one chair, and he sits in the other. You have a job to do, and you’re paid twenty dollars each to do it, so do it.” And twittering to himself like a head nurse on duty, Mr. Molina went back to the clubhouse, looking right and then left and walking in the exact center of the indoor-outdoor carpeting.

In a loud whisper Kathy asked Oliver why he hadn’t said anything about it all being in the grip.

“Oh, shut up,” said Oliver, also in a loud whisper.

Nobody fell in the pool. Like two undersized sentries, Kathy and Oliver slouched in their widely separated chairs. The drains gurgled from time to time.
Why do they always look at Julia?
Kathy asked herself.
He’ll probably sit with her all summer, and I’ll be left out like someone’s extra little sister. Why do I have to be flat-chested and have dull hair? Why won’t Dr. Morrissey take my braces off? If I hit with him next week, he’ll want to play a set, and I’ll beat him, and he’ll never speak to me again. Why everything?
Kathy did not dare put on the Red Sox game.

“Are your folks here?” asked Oliver suddenly.

“No. They’re ... not members,” Kathy answered.

“How come?”

Kathy began fabricating her usual reason in her mind, that her mother was allergic to the sun, that her father didn’t like the ocean because of a wartime trauma in the Pacific. “They can’t afford it,” she said.

“They pay for just you to belong?”

“They have to. I’m on lifeguard duty every day I can and work at the courts and in the lunchroom to help. My younger sister, Jody, waits tables in the cafeteria weekends, and my brother Bobby’s just a baby, so he comes free when Jody’s off and she can watch him.”

“What do you mean, they have to?” Oliver asked.

“This is my tennis coach’s summer job, at this club. I have to work with her at least five times a week. The courts are excellent clay, and there’re good people to hit with. I have to belong because it’s the best thing for my game.”

“You mean you’re serious about tennis? Are you a ranked player and everything?”

“Yes, I guess so,” said Kathy, staring at her toes and wishing the subject would go away.

“Are you going to be a professional?”

“My mom and dad and my coach think I have a chance. First I have to qualify for the National Championships. If I’m lucky enough to get national ranking in my age group, maybe I can take it from there in a few years. I’m number twelve now in fourteen and under, but that’s just New England. One in a million makes it to pro.

“I’m still impressed,” said Oliver.

“Don’t be,” said Kathy.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Sure I like it. I couldn’t spend twenty hours a week practicing if I didn’t like it. And my mom has to drive me to tournaments and bring the kids along almost every other weekend. My dad has to pay for court fees and lessons and everything.”

“But do you really like it?”

“I want to win the U.S. Open someday,” said Kathy, and she surprised herself with the coldness of her own voice.

Oliver folded his hands between his bony knees. “But do you like it?” he asked again.

“Why do you keep asking me that?”

“Because when you said just then that you wanted to win the U.S. Open, you sounded so awful. I didn’t really mind you laughing at me before, and you sounded just like a ... person then, not just a girl. Now you sound like everybody else at this club. Like the stockbrokers who get drunk here on the beach Sunday afternoons.”

Kathy could think of no reply to that. Not even Julia addressed her so frankly as this odd boy. “I’m sorry,” she murmured after a minute had passed.

“What happens if you don’t win the U.S. Open?” Oliver persisted. “Supposing you don’t make it that far?”

“I’ll have to go to college and just have a normal life, I guess. I’ll have to think about my grades too, not just tennis, or I’ll never get in anywhere good.”

“But what would you like to be more than anything else?”

“I just told you,” said Kathy.

“But if you don’t make it.”

“Well, you’d laugh at me,” said Kathy, playing with the life preserver that hung on the side of her chair.

“No, I won’t.”

“I could never tell a boy,” said Kathy.

“What?” asked Oliver heatedly. “A urologist?”

“What’s that?” Kathy asked.

“A doctor who operates on men’s privates,” said Oliver.

“No! Of course not!” Kathy whispered angrily. “What made you think that of all things?”

“Well,” said Oliver, pushing his glasses up his nose, “if you don’t win the U.S. Open and you don’t want to be a urologist, what do you want to be?”

How did this happen?
Kathy asked herself. “Shortstop for the Red Sox,” she said weakly. “I played little league until I was about twelve and then I started tennis full time.”

“Oh! Well, that’s not so bad. I wanted to pitch once. I’m a very good pitcher. I’ve got a nice slider, but I’m too small to make the Yale team.”

Kathy wished she could just tell Oliver how much she liked him for not laughing at her, but instead she pretended to gaze at the dancers. She tapped her foot in time to “Some Enchanted Evening.” “It doesn’t matter, being small,” she said when the music was over. “I’m a shrimp, but I’m still going to beat ’em all.”

“There you go again,” said Oliver, grinning.

“Who on earth was that?” Kathy’s mother asked after Kathy had jumped into the front seat of the station wagon and wrapped a towel around herself for warmth. “Where’s your sweater? Who was that boy?”

“I lent him my sweater,” said Kathy. “He was cold.”

“You lent him your sweater!”

“It’s my tennis sweater. It looks okay on a boy.”

“Kathy, that’s a fifty dollar sweater. Who was that funny looking boy?” Mrs. Bardy ran the fingers of her left hand through her hair, a masculine gesture that Kathy had not inherited and did not like. Her mother did this when she was worried or tired. It occurred to Kathy that her mother seemed worried or tired a great deal of the time. She was always pinching the bridge of her nose under her glasses in weariness. Her mother had never cared for hairdos or clothes or pretty objects, but recently she seemed to care even less for these things. Her time was divided in three parts: work, family, and Kathy’s tennis. As for the latter Kathy wished she could relieve her mother in some way, but that of course was impossible. Once upon a time her mother had been an athlete too, with a strong, hard body that looked so healthy and young that she didn’t need plucked eyebrows or lovely dresses. Ten years behind the counter at the photo shop had made her pallid and soft, or was it just the contrast with Julia’s beautiful mother that Kathy saw? “His name is Oliver English,” said Kathy, “and he goes to Yale.”

“He looks like an orphan.”

“He is an orphan. Well, practically.”

“What do you mean, practically?” Her mother’s voice was impatient, as she liked everything to be exact.

“Well, he’s here for the summer, living with an uncle, I think. His father is somewhere up in the deserted part of Canada, and he can’t live with his mother and stepfather because his stepfather hates him, and he hates his stepfather because he gambled away most of his mother’s money at the racetrack and playing cards.”

“They sound like absolutely awful people. I don’t want you mixed up with people like that, Kathy. Gambling, of all things!”

“Oliver isn’t awful, Mother. He can’t help his stepfather. He even put tacks under his stepfather’s tires when he was eleven years old. Besides, Mother, these things happen very frequently. Often stepfathers don’t get along with their new wives’ sons. The Chinese say the son bites the toe of the stepfather.”

“What?” Mrs. Bardy turned and looked at Kathy with something close to horror on her face.

“Oliver’s major is Oriental languages, Mother. At Yale. At Yale!”

“Oliver seems to have told you a great deal about himself,” said her mother, meaning something entirely different. Kathy, through the drone of the motor and the singing of the cicadas, could almost hear her mother ask,
What did you tell him about us? Did you mention that Grandma is in a nursing home too expensive for us but not expensive enough to be good? Did you say that twenty years ago I did not even come close to making the Olympic swimming team and that I use tea bags twice? Did you tell him Daddy works as a commercial photographer going to other people’s weddings and bar mitzvahs and confirmations, or did you try to make Daddy’s job sound artistic?
But of course her mother did not ask any of these questions, which was a shame because, although Kathy felt estranged from her family at various times, she would no more have parted with any of this information than she would have described herself going to the bathroom.

“Oliver’s sweet, Mother,” said Kathy. “He’s not like regular dumb boys at all. He isn’t all pimply and aggressive. He has no mother and father to take care of him. He doesn’t even have a sweater. He has to eat crummy old hamburgers at the club every night because his uncle doesn’t get around to shopping. Can we have him to dinner Thursday night?”

“Did you invite him, Katherine? Did you?”

“No,” Kathy lied. “I’m hitting with him Thursday afternoon, though. He’s ranked twenty in Boys’ Eighteen and Under in California.” Another complete lie.

“He is?”

“Yes, and he deserves a decent dinner, I think.”

Her mother’s tone changed. “We can have him. Yes, Kathy, I think it would be very good for you to hit with a good boy for a change, and I feel sorry for him too. But I want to make one thing absolutely clear.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“You are too busy with tennis and school to have anything else on your mind right now. You may not start dating and riding around on other people’s motorcycles.”

“Yes, Mother. And, Mother?”

“What is it?”

Oliver has a twelve-year-old Chevy, not a motorcycle.”

“I think we’ve had enough of Oliver,” said her mother, and she pulled into the driveway beside their house. The hats of three plaster dwarves gleamed on their next-door neighbors’ front lawn. Kathy’s was a common-looking wooden ranch house, painted pink by its previous owners years before, but it appeared to be almost magically silver in the light of the high full moon.

“O
LIVER SAID HE’D COME
to Quincy to watch today,” Kathy announced to her parents after a few general remarks had been passed about the morning’s weather.

Her father shoved a picnic basket into the back of the car along with books for Jody and puzzles, games, and pillows for Bobby. “Who’s Oliver?” he asked.

“Some boy Kathy met at the club last night,” said her mother. “Kathy, you didn’t say anything about him coming to Quincy.”

“I forgot.”

“Did you ask him to come?”

“No. I told him I was playing today, and he said he’d just come along to see. I don’t mind.” Kathy watched her parents exchange glances. Her father took off his glasses and wiped them on the front of his shirt. He squinted up at the colorless sky and said, “Let’s go before it rains.”
They’re not going to say much,
Kathy decided,
because they don’t want an argument before I have to play.

“I know who he is.” Jody took up the subject as she settled her little brother’s head into her lap in the back seat beside Kathy. “I saw him last weekend at the club. He looks about my age.”

“He does not,” said Kathy. “Just because he isn’t covered with hair like some ape doesn’t mean he’s twelve years old.”