When No One Was Looking (4 page)

Jody smiled. “Kathy has a boyfriend!” she sang.

“Stop it, Jody,” said their mother.

“Kathy’s in love. Look at her blush!” Jody went on with plummy innocence in her voice.

“I’ll bash you with my racket in another minute,” said Kathy.

“Cut it out,” said her father. “Who’s your first round, Kathy?”

“I don’t remember. Someone I’ve never heard of. Ruth something.”

Kathy’s mother moved a cardboard file onto her lap. She shuffled through it and removed a copy of the draw. “Ruth Gumm,” she said. “What a name. Now, Kathy, if this Oliver person in any way affects your game ...

“Mother, please,” Kathy said, looking sideways at her sister. Jody had rested a newspaper on Bobby’s sleeping head. The newspaper was always present in case Bobby became carsick. As she did with all printed matter that came into her hands, Jody read it. She read at dinnertime, in cars, in the dark, and at courtside during Kathy’s matches. What she read, she remembered, whether it was
Time Magazine,
Dickens, or the complete set of instructions for the Waring blender, and she had amassed in her head an encyclopedic amount of information of all kinds. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” murmured Jody.

“Cut it out,” said her father.

“I was just reading from the paper, Dad,” said Jody, hiding a smile.

“Kathy, pay attention,” her mother directed. “Now you shouldn’t have any trouble in your second round. Pam Carly is sure to win her first round too, but remember, she has no second serve at all. Come way in on it. Her last match ... let me see. Her last match she double faulted twenty-two times. Keep the ball deep on her backhand side. She can’t do anything with it.”

“Is that the girl with the pigtails?” Kathy’s father asked.

“Yes,” said Kathy.

Jody hummed “If I Loved You” barely audibly.

“No problem with her,” said Kathy’s father. “Tomorrow you’ll probably play Betty Schultz in the third round. Talk about her instead. Forget Carly, you’ll beat her love and love. Schultz can trip you up. She beat Alicia deLong last January. Gordon’s doing well with her. Let’s go over Schultz and Alicia. You’ll probably play Alicia in the semis.”

Kathy answered her parents’ questions mechanically, hardly hearing them. She argued with none of their advice and agreed to start deep breathing if she felt angry for any reason. She was aware of the constant passage of other cars around them. A horse van pulled into the slow lane in front. She wondered if the horse inside felt both bored and skittish at the same time, as she did. When she was sure Jody had stopped teasing, she fixed her eyes on Bobby’s small pink face. Bobby suffered a never-ending string of colds and minor infections, which often meant bringing penicillin to tournaments in a thermos or packed in ice. He also had what her mother called “problems adjusting,” although she never named what it was that he couldn’t adjust to. His hobby was emptying tissue boxes or Band-Aid boxes or even his father’s cigarette packs and stowing their contents, piece by piece, in hiding places all over the house. Kathy was forever coming upon bits of rolled-up tape or single M&M’s behind a book or under a sofa pillow. Only Jody took pleasure in the ritual of finding Bobby’s treasures. She exclaimed with glee when she discovered one, and Bobby still ran to her and hugged her and said it was her special present long after this game had stopped amusing Kathy and her parents.

“Keep in mind, if you make the semifinals next weekend, that Alicia is much stronger on Har-tru than clay,” advised Kathy’s mother.

“She won’t be in the big tournament next month at the Newton Country Club,” said Kathy’s father. “That’s your big qualifier, clay courts, honey, and you’ll have a chance at Penny Snider and even Jennifer Robbins. It wouldn’t hurt a bit to knock off numbers one and two.”

“Let’s do one thing at a time,” said Kathy’s mother. “Now Daddy will watch Alicia’s first round. I’ll be at Pam’s. When you’re finished, meet us at the car for lunch, and we’ll go over whatever notes we’ve taken. Then Daddy and I will both watch Shultz in the afternoon.”

Kathy felt her focus shifting back to her father. “Dad,” she said, “I can’t guarantee beating Penny and Jennifer Robbins in July. Please don’t make it sound so easy. Those girls are all more experienced than—”

“Honey,” her father interrupted, “you don’t have the perspective your mother and I do. In five years you won’t even remember those girls’ names. They’ll fall by the wayside. Maybe you won’t beat them this time or even next time, but you will sometime. It’s a matter of putting things behind you one by one.”

“There are thirty-one girls behind you now that were ahead of you last year at this time,” Kathy’s mother put in. “Daddy’s right, see?”

“It may stop sometime,” said Jody suddenly.

“Jody, that’s enough,” snapped her father.

“But what happens to Kathy if it does stop?” Jody persisted.

“Talent doesn’t stop,” explained her mother. “Do you think you’ll ever stop reading books?”

“You don’t have to hate anybody to read a book,” said Jody dramatically. “You don’t have to beat somebody else to the last page. You don’t—”

“Jody!” shouted Kathy and her two parents all at once. Bobby woke and turned over, thumb in mouth in Jody’s lap. Jody patted him and caressed his hair. They had a language together, those two. This thought occurred to Kathy. Also she was speechless at Jody’s use of the word
hate.
The word had never been used by Kathy, her parents, or anyone connected with tennis that she could recall since the day when she had first picked up a racket and begun.

Kathy recognized Ruth Gumm at once, although Ruth showed no sign of recognizing Kathy back. She was Marty’s lumberjack, the lap swimmer. Ruth returned Kathy’s warm-up shots disinterestedly. The day was of no certain temperature as the sky was of no particular color, and the flat light caused Ruth’s round face to look especially blotchy. It fell without shadow on her earth-brown hair, which was cut in an odd Dutch boy style with bangs to hide the complexion of her forehead. Kathy asked Ruth if she was a new Plymouth Club member.

“Yeah,” came the answer after a tiny pause.

“Where do you go to school?” asked Kathy.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“We just moved here.”

No form,
Kathy calculated.
Marty’s right. She is slow. I’ll chase her back and forth a lot.
Ruth Gumm did have a completely untaught style. She hesitated before returning the ball, as if she were not quite sure what to do with it, but she managed at the last second always to hit it back.

“You play a lot where you come from?” Kathy asked.

“Some.”

“Where are you from?”

“Out West.”

“Well, you’re a terrific swimmer,” said Kathy cheerfully. “I saw you last night. I wish I had such endurance.”

“I do laps.”

Too much swimming is bad for tennis muscles.
Kathy repeated this wisdom to herself but not to Ruth. “Are you ready?” she asked at last, stripping off her warm-up jacket.

“Yeah,” Ruth answered, so vaguely that she suggested she would either never be ready or was always ready.

“You toss, I’ll call. Rough,” said Kathy.

Ruth flopped her racket indelicately on its side. “Smooth,” she declared.

“I’m sorry, but that’s rough,” said Kathy.

Ruth peered at her racket as if she were trying to read something too difficult to be deciphered. “Smooth,” she said again.

“Look at the strings!” said Kathy. “Anybody can see it’s rough,” as indeed anybody could have seen.

“It says smooth,” Ruth insisted and pointed to the tiny word
smooth
printed on the throat of the racket

“I don’t care what it
says.
You had it strung wrong. It came up rough, and I serve.” Kathy heard her own voice rise at the injustice and pettiness of this.

Ruth stood in the middle of her side of the court. She looked steadily but without apparent anger at Kathy. She did not give over the tennis balls. “It says smooth,” she repeated.

“Oh, for Godsake, let’s play,” Kathy shouted, stamping to her position at the base line. “Go ahead and serve if you want to be like that. I don’t have all day.”
Careful,
she warned herself. She took in three deep breaths, as she had been taught.

“Swearing is against USTA rules,” said Ruth evenly.

“What?” yelled Kathy.

“Swearing is against USTA rules and against the code,” said Ruth. She bounced one of the balls, and it dribbled away up to the net.

“Swearing!” Kathy’s tone rose dangerously now. “What are you talking about? I’ll tell you what’s against the rules—delaying the start of a match and cheating on the call of a toss, that’s what’s against the rules! Go ahead. Serve! Play!”

“ ‘For Godsake’ is swearing where I come from,” said Ruth as if she were remarking on the height of the Rocky Mountains.

This time Kathy’s voice could be heard several courts away. “Will you shut up and serve?” she shouted. “If you don’t serve in ten seconds, I’m going to get a referee. I don’t give a damn whether they eat ... shingles where you come from, you stupid hick!”

“What’s going on here?” a tired-looking woman asked, coming up to the back of the court. She seemed to take everything in in the space of a second.

“This girl,” Kathy told the referee, “has cheated on the call ...

“Kathy Bardy,” said the woman, “you are the one raising your voice. Calm down. You know about your temper, and you’ve been warned before.” She took one uncomprehending look at Ruth, who still stood balls in hand. “Just play, Kathy,” she said, and went away.

Ruth popped all three balls lightly over the net to Kathy. “You serve,” she said. “I choose to receive.”

“You
what
?” Kathy asked.

“I won the toss, and I choose to receive.”

“You did not win the toss, and nobody chooses to receive,” Kathy said.

“Me. I do.” On the other side of the net Ruth Gumm stood ready. Neither crouching nor moving, she waited as if she expected to be thrown a softball.

Kathy paused before she served. She stared at the toe of her left sneaker and breathed again, trying to rid herself of what felt like a red-hot whole egg in her throat. She was shaking a little.
I’ll murder her,
said one part of her.
Just play your regular game, and you’ll finish her off in twenty minutes,
said another part. Her serve, harder and more vicious than usual, kept spinning out, and the more she fought to control it, the less controllable it became. Kathy lost her serve. She lost the second game and third. She lost the first set, taking only one game from Ruth. Time seemed both to gather itself into a single minute and to stretch itself endlessly as in a dream.

Kathy truly wanted to splinter her racket over Ruth’s head, even if it meant she would be barred from tennis forever. She wanted to kill Ruth, to yank her ridiculous Dutch boy bangs, to physically attack her in some way so as to elicit a squeal of agony, some concession from her slow-moving soft body. Instead she fell twice, trying to reach Ruth’s easy return of service. An obscenely ugly sore appeared on her right knee. This made things worse for Kathy, not because of the pain but because she prided herself on her graceful game, and now she felt as humiliated as a first-grader who has had an accident in front of the whole class.
Play your game! Wake up!
she ordered herself desperately, but she found herself constantly out of position, her legs moving like gelatin under water. Waiting for Ruth’s awkward, accurate serve, she cried silently. She did not wipe her eyes to clear her vision except during breaks, when she plunged her whole face into a towel
. I’m in bed, asleep. This is a nightmare,
she thought, and she found she could not swallow.

During a break toward the end of the second set, when she was losing two-five, Kathy saw Oliver in the grandstand. He waved with a small gesture. She looked at him wide-eyed for a moment, as if he could bring her back to her senses, but did not return his wave. Instead she fastened her eyes on Ruth Gumm. Ruth sat with both legs apart, sipping at a can of soda. She showed no pleasure but seemed to be gazing at a distant object, six courts away.

At that moment a man’s voice asked, “Which one of you is Ruth Gumm?”

Kathy turned, startled. A club official in a blue blazer was standing behind her, taking papers from a manila envelope and looking from Kathy to Ruth.

“She ... she is,” said Kathy, pointing as if Ruth were a rare kind of spider.

“Miss Gumm?”

“Huh?” Ruth answered, focusing her tiny eyes on him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake in our bookkeeping.” He passed a paper to Ruth. “We posted you this morning, but apparently you didn’t pay us your entry fee. It was a mix-up, but without your eleven dollar entry fee you can’t play in the tournament.” He glanced at the score of the match. “I’ll waive the rules if you can pay now,” he added in a sad and hopeful voice.

Ruth said nothing. She stood and went over to her bag, which hung on the side of the empty umpire’s chair. Out of it she pulled a white leather wallet and fumbled through it, dropping a dozen photographs and many coins on the court. “I don’t have it,” she said.

“Is your mother here?” the man asked kindly. “Someone?”

“Someone’s picking me up later,” said Ruth.

“Well, I’m very sorry,” the man said. He reached for the paper and folded it in a knifelike crease. “If we break our rules, we’d have to do it for everybody, I’m afraid. Our accounting would be a hopeless mess. I’m very sorry,” he said again. “Next time be sure and enclose a check or a money order with your entry blank. Okay?” He turned to Kathy. “You are Kathy Bardy?”

Kathy nodded, unable to find her voice.

“Good,” said the official with a weak smile. He tried to joke: “At least we’ve got that straight! You get a bye, Kathy, and you play at three. Let me see.” He consulted more papers. “Pam Carly just won. Three o’clock. Court twelve.” He checked this fact off on his draw sheet, crisply put his paper back in the envelope, and marched away, his attention caught up by the match on the neighboring court.

In Kathy’s wallet was a twenty dollar bill, paid to her the night before. She heard some part of her mind trying to force her to stop the official, to pay Ruth’s fee. She called herself a coward, yellow, without decency or a sense of sport. She knew she had cooled off now and that a kind gesture would give her a huge advantage. Ruth would not win one single game more. This she was sure of as she was sure of her own name, but after Ruth had squatted down to pick up her pictures and pennies, Kathy had still not moved, and in the end she did not interfere with this peculiar stroke of luck.