Double Fault (21 page)

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Authors: Lionel Shriver

Tags: #Success, #Tennis, #New York (N.Y.), #Sports & Recreation, #General, #Family & Relationships, #Marriage, #Fiction, #Tennis players

BOOK: Double Fault
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  Her game did, after shuddering and sweating as if shaking off a flu, return to its muscular surety. But when she brought off a barreling down-the-line pass, Willy would turn to the side as if to say, "Did you see that?" and no one was there.
  With Max, she was often at a loss for conversation. Sometimes they'd resort to current events; while Willy was sincere enough in her disappointment that Hillary Clinton's leadership of health care reform was turning out a disaster, newspaper chatter between old friends felt desperate. Ten days into her stay, after a gaping silence over calamari, Max finally ventured, "How are you two getting on?"
  "We've refrained from clawing each other's eyes out."
  "I didn't realize it was quite that bad."
  "Between me and
Marcella?"
  "Between you and Underwood."
  "Oh, God no. Eric's doing terribly well." Willy's voice lilted. "In the quarters of the Mennon in Detroit? He was down a set, 1–5 in the second. But you know Eric, the Comeback Kid—"
  "As a matter of fact, I don't know
Eric
."
  "Whose fault is that?"
  "Nobody's. I'm not remotely interested in the man."
  "I'm very proud of him," she recited, in the monotone of the multiplication table.
  "I repeat: how are you getting on? Are you still having trouble?"
  "I didn't say we were having trouble."
  "Not in so many words."
  Near the end of her stay Max threw his racket in disgust. "Not one more word!"
  "What are you talking about?"
  "
Everything
I tell you, it's '
Eric
doesn't do it that way,' or 'That's one of
Eric
's favorite shots,' or '
Eric
hates it when I…' Stop thinking about Underfuck!"
  "I'm not!"
  "Listen to yourself, woman! Because I only want to hear about how
you
hit the ball, what are
your
favorite shots, which bad habits drive
you
up a wall."
  Newly mindful, Willy was shocked to discover how frequently she stopped herself from describing
Eric
's underspin. At dinner, she refrained from mentioning how
Eric
would have vacuumed up her pasta. And at the end of the evening she excused herself, naming no names, with "I have to make a call." Deleting Eric from her discourse required great vigilance and self-control. Before she was married, Willy had lived in a world with a population of 1.5; Max was the .5, and in keeping him pruned to a partial, cipherous extension of her own ambition, she had nipped their romance in the bud. So maybe the novelty of a whole other human being in her universe had not worn off. In any case, having waved from the platform or not, her husband had accompanied Willy to Sweetspot after all.

She'd so looked forward to seeing him. Her head overrun with visions of grateful, torrid reunion on the train, Willy reread the same page of her novel about twenty times before casting it aside and gazing longingly out the window even through the extensive black tunnel into Penn. But when she walked in the door, Eric barely looked up. The
ATP Rulebook
splayed at his elbow, he was feeding forms into his Bubble Jet. He didn't so much as say hello.

  "Some tournament promoter," he mumbled instead, aligning the page, "Bob Evanston? Saw the two of us play on our anniversary. Seems he was impressed."
  "He wouldn't have been impressed with
me
."
  "He wasn't." When Eric glanced up, he looked tired, and irritated with mandatory diplomacy. "I mean, he may well have been, but didn't mention it. The point is, there's a small ATP tournament in February at Madison Square Garden. They've got Hans Sörle seeded first. But there have been last-minute cancellations, injuries. Evanston offered me a wild-card slot."
  "Sörle—he's ranked, like, twelve, isn't he?"
  "Ten. He's in the Top fucking Ten."
  Willy dropped her luggage. "What's the draw?"
  "Thirty-two. In New York; expenses negligible."
  "Since when do you worry about expenses?"
  "I do work within a budget, Willy."
  "But how did
you
get into a draw of thirty-two?"
  Eric took a deep breath. "It's sort of a decorative tournament—like Mahwah, only with a few points on the line. So the audience get their money's worth, it's best of five sets. Sörle's agent is trying to attract endorsements; Sörle's slipping. And Evanston liked the drama of a low-ranked challenger. Said I'd only have to win one match to pay off as entertainment. This is the break I've been waiting for, Willy. The satellite crawl is for suckers."
  "Suckers like me."
  "That you've gotten as far as you have playing grade-B tournaments is obviously to your credit." Having to compliment her seemed to try him. "But satellites are tooth-and-nail. It's far more efficient to beat a highly ranked player. Jesus, it pays points like a one-armed bandit coughs quarters, Willy. The trouble is getting at the bastards. Now I've got a Top Ten within arm's reach."
  "What, you expect to
beat
Hans Sörle?"
  "Why not?"
  Willy shrugged, and dragged her valise to the bedroom. "I guess you'll find out."
  Eric had hitherto an attractive breeziness about his upcoming tournaments, which may have helped him overtake opponents who tossed the night before. For six weeks, his cool vanished. He had trouble sleeping, and Willy would wake to find him with his feet hooked under the bed frame, tucking into tight, panicked sit-ups. Previously a human garbage disposal, he became picky and superstitious about his diet. He never suggested practice with his lowly wife; for the period before Madison Square Garden, Eric selected hitting partners with the same finicky care with which he inspected T-bones in D'Agostino's for the slightest marbling.
  When Willy departed for LaGuardia to enter her 1994 inaugural tournament, an indoor Har-Tru affair in Chicago, she was relieved to flee the self-importance that thickened the air in their apartment and stuck in her throat. Eric was
getting his hopes up
, for which Willy felt a genetic disapproval. But Willy had taken her share of knocks, and maybe it was time Eric took the odd blow on the chin himself. It would keep him human.
  By the time she returned from Chicago, Eric had played his own indoor warm-up in Paterson, New Jersey. That she was now ranked
265 seemed a little less of an achievement when Eric announced that as of Paterson he had broken into the 400's. That was the
plan
, of course, but Willy was a little tired of everything slotting so cooperatively into her husband's designs. Where were those famous slings and arrows that typified everyone else's life? Besides, he provoked the same optical illusion as heading up to Westbrook, when her train was traveling alongside another Amtrak going the same direction. If the adjacent train started to go faster, it induced the impression that her train was going backward.
  The field at the Garden was motley, though Eric was the darkest horse in the running. There were several other players, however, in the top 75, all of whom would net Eric generous bonus computer points if he serendipitously outdid them. When he drew one of these for his first round—ranked 54—Willy commiserated that it was an awfully bad break to face such stiff competition at the start, which could stop him from playing Sörle. Her husband shook
off her consoling hands. "Don't be ridiculous," he said. "This is
great
luck. Pounding 54 will net points at the start."
  "But you've never played anyone in the top 100. You don't know how good they are."
  "Willy, they're just tennis players. You can seem so savvy sometimes, but you still buy into this bullshit mystique. Some greaseball climber gets into the upper rankings and you go timorous with Messianic wonder. You think playing 54 is supposed be an honor. Well, screw that. They're just like us. Where do you think we're headed? He should be honored to play
me
."
  Willy stepped back; whenever Eric blustered like this she was torn between wonderment and recoil. "A little humility could go a long way, Eric. Pride goeth—"
  "A little humility is poison. What do you think this game is all about? You're the one who claims I concentrate too much on technique, always pointing out how what makes tennis fascinating is character. You say the distinction between players isn't in their forehands but their heads. Okay—you're right. So the last thing I'm going to do is to quiver into the Garden simpering 'Thank you, Mr. Fifty-four, for stooping to hit me a ball.'"
  Whether Eric's arrogance was magnificent or odious was nugatory. All that mattered was it worked. He got his bonus points, with games to spare. That 498 had upset 54 sent a ripple of curiosity through the crowd. Clearly Willy's husband had made another of his breathtaking leaps. For the Eric Oberdorf who played in the Garden was not the same promising but still ragged-edged athlete with whom she was so recently neck-and-neck. No, this Eric she couldn't have touched with a barge pole.
  In the round-of-sixteen, he made mincemeat of 87 in straight sets. The quarters went to four sets, the semis to five. Meanwhile, Willy barely saw her husband. Between rounds he was practicing, after victories swept off on the arm of this Bob Evanston creep for celebratory dinners. She might have come along, but her headaches were genuine. Only when Eric slipped in at 1 A.M. did Willy get her hands on her husband, and then exclusively on his more public parts.
  The night after the semis, Eric disrobed and slid under the
coverlet, where Willy lay still awake. She turned and smoothed his rib cage, tickling the scrub on his chest. As she grazed her fingertips over his left nipple, Eric grasped her hand, pinning it firmly to his clavicle. She wriggled free, and ran her palm to his stomach, whose muscles hardened at her touch.
  "Willy," he whispered. "I've got to get to sleep."
  "Eventually," she said slyly, easing down to cup his scrotum, rolling the glands like marbles in a bag. "But what better way to doze off? You always say you sleep more soundly after, right?"
  "Honey," Eric censured. "I have to play Sörle tomorrow."
  "The finals are tomorrow
night
. You can sleep in, late as you like." As her fingers padded up the shaft, it expanded as if inflated with a bicycle pump.
  Eric grabbed her wrist and wrenched it from his groin. "Stop it! That's enough!"
  Willy immediately retracted, recoiling into a ball like a sea anemone when poked at. "You haven't so much as kissed me since this tournament started," she mumbled, knees clutched to her breasts. "And we haven't made love for weeks, not since before I left for Sweetspot. What's wrong? Did I do something? Are you still angry at me for leaving in January? Did you meet someone while I was gone?"
  Eric lay on his back, and his controlled sigh suggested that among other things he was not in the mood to tick down her list of insecurities one by one. "I realize I've been distracted. But I don't think we should have sex before the finals."
  Willy lifted her head. "You buy into that bullshit?" she asked in amazement. "That you can't allow your precious elixir of manhood to drain your strength?"
  Eric raised on his elbows. "I know it's probably an old wives' tale—"
  "Better believe it! Doctors say sex is good for you, that it
gives
you energy!"
  "But on the off chance there's something to it…" Eric appealed. "Sometimes those old wives knew a thing or two, and if it makes any difference at all—"
  "The
old wife
was always trying to get out of fucking any way she knew how." Willy heaved out of bed, stripping the top blanket, and caped her shoulders. "But in case it makes
any difference at all,
you can sleep by yourself. I wouldn't want to accidentally turn in bed and disturb His Majesty's rest."
  She flounced from the bedroom, dragging the blanket. Eric stepped on it from behind and said, "Stop being a baby and come back to bed."
  "
Me
a baby! You hear some asinine superstition when you're seven years old and you still believe it."
  "I know it's probably nuts, but if you could only indulge me my little—"
  "I've been indulging plenty. If it's any comfort, I wouldn't let you lay a hand on me now with a knife to my throat. Good
night
." She yanked the blanket out from under his feet and sent him sprawling in the hall.
  "Willy, goddamn it, you could have hurt me!"
  "Oh, tragedy, falling on your million-dollar butt." Willy trundled to the sofa.
  Eric picked himself up and stood uncertainly in the moonlight hazing from the bedroom window. His prick had shriveled in the cold to an unalluring knot of blue gristle. Willy bunched on the couch. Teetering in the hall, Eric was clearly torn between cajoling her to bed and talking it out and no doubt fucking after all to reconcile, versus leaving her to her huff and at least getting a decent night's sleep for his first Top Ten match. His indecision lasted only a few seconds. It wasn't much of a contest.

As if success in a lucrative sport were not already cushy enough, pros in the upper echelons could often rely in a crunch on "winning by reputation." It wasn't unheard of for a no-name like Eric to blast through the first few rounds, only to come up short against one of the hallowed Top Ten, who might well be in poor form and ripe for picking. Yet the halo surrounding the anointed could blind a challenger to opportunity. To participate in a sports hierarchy was commonly to endorse it; no one wished to climb a ladder whose rungs were diaphanous. In sweating blood to obtain them, players needed to regard computer points as laden, and

thereby to perceive the Chosen as blessed. Underlings often threw matches in acquiescence not just to the elite but to the status quo, in preference to spinning the sport's painstaking arithmetic into disarray. Most tennis players, in submitting to the ladder, believed in the ladder, and would sacrifice their own glory for the greater glory of an orderly universe.

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