When No One Was Looking (7 page)

“Hush, Frank. I just meant tennis is the most important thing. This will pass. I did rotten in math when I was her age too.”

“Well that’s a fine thing to say,” he growled, stabbing at his pork chop. “I wanted to give her hell for cheating on the final, and you wouldn’t let me. Okay, I said, okay. Now you tell her it isn’t important.”

“All I said, Frank, was, if the teacher hadn’t caught her, I wouldn’t have gone running to the principal and told on her. What is important here? She has a gift. A marvelous talent. One girl in a million can play like Kathy. A million girls can count saltcellars.”

“
I
think Kathy has a deep psychological resistance to algebra,” Jody put in.

“I have a deep psychological resistance to know-it-alls,” said Kathy, choking slightly. “Go ahead. Sink yourself into books all day, Miss Smart ... aleck. What’s that going to get you? By the time you’re in college, you’ll probably wear glasses an inch thick, and when you get to be fifty, you’ll marry some creepy professor who looks like Henry Kissinger with dandruff and bad breath and zits on his—”

“Kathy, that’s enough,” said her father.

“I don’t understand what’s so hard about algebra,” Jody went on as if nothing had been said. “Mary Beth Pendleton passed it, and Mary Beth’s a real dip.”

Kathy’s potato hit her square on the forehead. Kathy was sent to bed. Instead she ran out the front door. She sprinted across the lawn, over the low privet hedge and the neighbors’ barbecue, and then on to the next street. As she turned the corner she could see her father and Oliver looking after her from the backyard. Her father was shaking his fist in the air. She knew they wouldn’t follow her, because they knew she could run ten miles with ease, avoiding streets and, should they take the car, losing them in an instant.

She jogged without effort, but no easy, light feeling came over her. She took shortcuts, over the Parrishes’ lawn, past the Steins’ enormous vegetable garden, trying to make sense out of the evening and out of Jody, trying to erase the picture of Mrs. Diggins as a secret trapper, soft as a patch of new grass on the surface but with solid mahogany punji stakes just below. Why were people like that always so right? Why did they always spot her dreadful little flaws, save them up like money, and present her with them, cooked and flavored like a perfect chowder of inconsistency, temper losing, and vile habits? “Math is a tool,” she repeated to herself in rhythm with her pounding legs. “Math is my friend. Math is my friend. I can do it. Yes, I can.” Mrs. Diggins, at the end of the lesson, had quoted extensively from a book about positive thinking.
I’ll try it a hundred times,
Kathy thought,
and see what happens.
“I
can
do math, I
can,
I
can,
I
can
!” She repeated it aloud, and in a much less strident tone she murmured, “And, dear God, I promise never to forget to change a Tampax again if you will only let me pass algebra.” Kathy could not fit this prayer into the proper positive sounding words, so she left off and continued with “Math is my friend! Yes, I can! Yes, I can!” Inadvertently she had come to the railroad, a distance of three miles and certainly a thousand
Yes, I can’s
from her house. Neither the running nor the chanting had improved anything. No one was around to hear, as this was only a freight track overgrown with weeds. Kathy stopped. From the rawest depths of her senses she cried, “I hate you, Mrs. Diggins!”

She recalled looking in Mrs. Diggins’s medicine cabinet in search of aspirin one night. In it was a sizable collection of false tooth cleaners, deodorants, and stickers-to-the-roof-of-the-mouth. “You toothless, heartless old bat!” Kathy bellowed. “Math is my enemy! No, I can’t! No, I can’t! I hate math and I hate you!” Kathy followed this up with a string of curses so colorful it surprised her that she knew them. As she trotted into an unfamiliar residential district she felt wonderful.

The two-story houses were narrow and set so close together there was barely room for a cat to slip between. They were all shingled brown and gray, some with little pebbly maroon pinstripes on the shingles. The smell of sour cooking was general to the street. People sat in swings or on metal chairs. Jogging was not done in this neighborhood, Kathy decided, so she slowed to a walk, embarrassed by their stares.

She stopped near an old car, half off the sidewalk and half on. Four boys were fixing it or tinkering with it. They had the radio tuned to the Red Sox game. They were not the kind of boys she usually said anything to in school, but she wanted to hear the score and so she listened. The boys found this amusing, and one of them asked her, snapping his gum in a yellow-toothed grin, whether there was anything he could do for her. Afraid, Kathy edged away as if he had been a German shepherd and continued down the street.

“Hello, dearie!” said a voice, and Kathy jumped. She glanced to the house at her side. In a broken rocking chair sat an enormous man. His hair grew in odd tufts, and two sleeping cats nestled in his lap. His clothes were neat but sat on him queerly, as if someone else had dressed him. The man rocked slowly under the light of a single bulb, ignoring the swarm of moths and insects that the bulb attracted. He was one of those, Kathy saw immediately, who had never grown up and who never would grow up, because she couldn’t begin to guess his age. One of those whom neighborhood people kept an eye on but said was “harmless.” There was also a woman on the decrepit wooden steps. It was Miss Greco.

“Can I give you a hand, Miss Greco?” Kathy asked. Miss Greco was struggling up the steps backward, hauling what appeared to be a very heavy sack labeled Plastilina Powder. The man in the chair made no move to help her, although the bag split more on each step. “Can I help you?” Kathy repeated.

“No, dear,” answered Miss Greco, hefting the bag with a great flop and a massive cloud of ruddy dust onto the porch, “but why don’t you come in and visit a minute? Have a glass of lemonade with Sam and me.”

The steps and porch were covered with Plastilina dust. The front yard was filled with bits of broken crockery and hunks of plaster of paris. There were piles of empty cat food tins in and around the trash barrel. Neither the house nor the lemonade promised much, and because Kathy was in dead terror of the man in the chair, she said quickly, “Oh, I must get home before dark, Miss Greco, but thank you so much anyway.”

“Another time, then,” said Miss Greco and waved.

Kathy looped around a different street so she would not have to pass the boys and the car again. All the while she saw in her memory the strange man’s eyes. They were pathetically crossed and yet seemed to stare directly at her over a dreamy red-lipped smile. Was he a son? A brother?
How cruel I was not to accept her offer,
Kathy thought, beginning to trot again.
Probably nobody ever visits poor Miss Greco. What a saintly person she must be. But I just couldn’t do it. Oh, no.
Kathy shuddered. The cats and the idea of cat hairs in the lemonade and the thought of sipping from a glass that had also touched Sam’s red wet lips froze in her imagination, and she began to sprint. Kathy was soon far away from the tumbledown houses and sour odors.
But Miss Greco has a decent job,
she tried to reason.
She’s a
t
eacher, after all. She has a decent job. Why does she live there?
Kathy’s father’s predictions about earning a decent living ran through her head ominously. The thought of the garbage in Miss Greco’s tiny front yard sealed in Kathy a promise to triumph over both the first- and second-ranked girls at Newton and push herself not only into the first five but all the way to one. She passed into a more acceptable neighborhood and repeated the promise soberly and in horror. Then she changed direction and went on to Julia’s house, as her parents would expect her to be there.

“I wanted to talk with you about this afternoon’s match,” said Marty without a
good morning.

“Good morning, Marty,” Kathy answered sweetly. She pushed her mop slowly and carefully over the pool deck until the white enameled boards shone. Overhead the sun was already brilliant in a cloudless blue sky. “It’s a beautiful day,” Kathy added.

“When are you finished here?” Marty asked.

“I have to clean up here at the pool. Then I have to make sure the lunchroom is clean. Then I’m on lifeguard duty for kiddie-swim until ten,” said Kathy.

“You have a singles match at eleven.”

“I know. Ruth was still doing laps when I came in this morning.”

“You had trouble with her in Quincy, didn’t you?” asked Marty, squinting and picking up a cigarette butt that had missed an ashtray.

“Don’t worry about it, Marty.” And then as an afterthought Kathy said, “Gee, she sure is strong though. She must have done twenty butterfly laps this morning. I went to change, and when I came out, she was still at it. Back and forth like some big flapping Saint Bernard.”

“She does it every morning at six o’clock,” said Marty. “Don’t make fun of it. I’d like to see you out there at six with the ball machine.”

“Okay, okay,” said Kathy with a snort. “You wanted to talk about the doubles this afternoon?”

“Yes. Now I want you to watch Rosino at the net. When she goes to her right, she never—”

Mr. Molina’s shrill voice interrupted Marty. “What do you think you’re doing, young lady? You’re supposed to have finished this whole area by now.” And turning on Marty, he said, “A fine example you’re setting! How would you like it if your ball boys and ball girls spent their time chatting away like magpies, frittering away valuable hours!” His clipboard quivered under his arm.

Marty grinned. She poked Mr. Molina lightly under the alligator on his puffy left breast with her racket. “Better get a bra, Fred,” she said.

Kathy blushed as red as Mr. Molina. She scrubbed furiously, pretending not to have heard.

“I’m going to see to it that you’re fired one day,” he shrieked, pointing a finger to heaven. “Look at all that filthy green clay, tracking up my deck! You’re supposed to wipe your feet or put on clogs when you come to the pool area. I’m going to speak to the chairman about this.”

“Better take some swimming lessons, Fred,” said Marty. “I’ll push you in the deep end when you’re not looking someday!”

Mr. Molina disappeared around the corner of the clubhouse. “You forgot to click your heels, Fred,” Marty called after him. Then she resumed her description of Mrs. Rosino at the net.

“Marty.” Kathy cleared her throat. She’d had a minute to think and to put what she had to say into the right words. “Mrs. Rosino and Mrs. Rice have won the ladies’ doubles for years. They’re so proud of their trophy. Neither of them has a chance at the singles. Why don’t we play them and let them have it? It’s only a club tournament.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Marty asked.

“No,” said Kathy, and she stopped scrubbing and leaned on her mop, toying with the strings with her toe. “I just think it’s awful to get all worked up and plan strategy against two nice old ladies, that’s all. It means so much to them to win, and it doesn’t mean a thing to us.”

“Now look here, my dear,” said Marty. “I want you to listen to this and listen hard.”

“I’m listening,” said Kathy.

“Put down that stupid mop for a minute.”

“Okay, Marty.”

“Someday, my dear, you are going to be in a match against someone who wants to beat you like crazy, who can’t beat you, and you are going to feel sorry for her, and if you do, you’ll blow the match, and if you keep it up, you’ll blow your whole career sky high, and you can kiss your future good-bye, right now.”

“Okay, Marty, forget I said it.”

“Do you know that Rosie Casals has never beaten Billie Jean King in a tournament of any size,
never.
They are very close friends all the same. Do you think Billie Jean lets Rosie have one once in a while to make her feel better?”

“No, Marty.”

“Then this is excellent training for you. What are we going to do out there this afternoon?”

“Win, Marty.”

“We’re going to murder them and what else?”

“Watch Mrs. Rosino at the net, and when she goes to her right, slam it down her alley because she can’t reach that shot.”

“That’s right,” said Marty, “and cut the
Mrs.
Rosino. Until after we beat them, she’s just Rosino to you unless you have to talk to her directly.”

“All right, Marty, all right.” Kathy picked up her mop again and began to work.

“I know how I sound,” Marty went on. “I know what people call me when I’m not around, but if I were fourteen now, my dear, instead of thirty years ago, I’d have a million bucks in my future just like you. Be a nice guy all you want, but on that tennis court it’s different. That’s all I ask, and I ask it every single time you go out there. Okay?”

“Yes, Marty.”

“Including your match this morning with that big tub of lard. No more repeats of Quincy. Keep your cool, keep your temper, keep your head. Ignore it if she tries to upset you. She plays tennis like an elephant. I want a score of love and love in that match.”

“Yes, Marty.”

At five o’clock Julia found Kathy hidden in an opening in the rocks behind a large pointed boulder at the end of the jetty. There was a rock “chair” there; on it Kathy slouched, one bare foot in a tiny sun-warmed pool of sea water that the high tide had deposited earlier that afternoon. Idly Kathy moved her bare toes through the bright green seaweed that waved in the natural bowl like gelatinous spaghetti. After a few moments had passed and Kathy had deliberately not turned her head to acknowledge Julia, Julia said, “Remember those? At my grandma’s beach when we were little? There used to be so many little pools in her jetty. We put sand crabs in them and tried to keep them alive.”

Kathy didn’t answer.

“Remember when we entered the dead crab in the pet show and got an honorable mention?”

“I remember,” said Kathy, implying that she didn’t want to go on about it.

“Guess what Daddy’s bringing home tonight! You’ve got to come over. He’s bringing a dozen fresh eclairs, packed in ice, made this morning on the Champs-Elysées. He’s taking the Concorde from Paris. We’ll celebrate your doubles win.”