Jersey Tomatoes are the Best (5 page)

You can forgive a girl for looking like a supermodel if, at age nine, she was already such a good friend.

Miraculously, she appears that moment at the kitchen entrance.

“Hey, Eva,” she says in a cheery voice. She sees her mother and me, paper towels in hand, wiping. She frowns. “Smells like breakfast but looks like a food fight.”

“Right on both counts,” I reply. I tip my head toward Mark, who steps over some blobs.

“Henry needs to eat,” he repeats, opening the fridge. “And we need to walk out this door in twenty minutes.”

“Cold cereal, Dad,” Henry says briskly. “Breakfast of champions.” She grabs the Raisin Bran, a bowl and the milk, and I follow her out to the patio table. As she eats we pretend not to hear her parents’ muted angry voices from the kitchen. The
scrape of chair legs across the floor as someone climbs up to wipe the ceiling.

Henry looks across the table, her eyes strafing me from head to toe.

“Let me guess: Lawrence of Arabia?”

“Very funny,” I reply. I’m wearing a long-sleeved white cotton shirt and baggy white parachute pants. My white cap has a flap down the back to protect my neck, and my nose is coated with zinc oxide. I smell like a Coppertone factory.

“I may be dressed for an afternoon in the desert, but when you sun worshippers are all wrinkled and leathery by age forty, my face will still be as smooth as a baby’s behind,” I say.

“You look great,” she says, laughing. “Thanks for coming today.”

*   *   *

When the four of us drive up to the Lenz Tennis Center in Princeton, we see scores of other competitors dressed in their snazzy outfits. It’s only May, but the day burns hot and humid. Henry has been seriously thriving on Poland Spring water during the trip and needs a bathroom break, fast.

She’s gotten quiet during the last fifteen minutes of the drive, and she stares intently out the window, at the crowds of players. She jounces one leg rapidly, up and down, and anyone who didn’t know her might mistake it for nerves. I know it’s pure, pent-up energy.

Here’s the thing about Henry: she’s a ruthless competitor. Not Michael Jordan ruthless, mind you. He’s the type who freaks out if you beat him in tiddlywinks, while Henry only
cares about tennis. But when it comes to tennis … she’s a little scary.

It’s a part of her I don’t
get
. I mean, this winning and losing stuff? Why? Who cares how many points you earn or how many times you throw the orange ball through the metal hoop? Can’t we just enjoy the beauty of Michael Jordan flying through the air without keeping score? Why do we always have to measure, assess, tally up the count or register the applause meter? Why does somebody always have to
lose?

I tried to explain this to her once. She had attended one of my performances as Clara in
The Nutcracker
. It was this totally crazy season where I’d committed to dancing Clara with three separate groups, and the schedule was brutal. The toll on my body was terrible; every tendon ached, and I went through a whole bottle of ibuprofen. We even started calling it Vitamin I. I moved as if in a bad dream, through the shows, the lights, the music, the endless driving in bad weather as my mother raced me from one stage to another.

Henry had come to the show at our high school and the next day told me I’d done a great job.

“You know,” I said to her carefully, not sure she would understand. “That wasn’t my all-time favorite performance.”

“Yeah, you didn’t have much of a partner,” she said, laughing a little. “I mean, where did you dig up the prince? Eva, the guy was useless, he—” I cut her off.

“I’m not talking about ‘best.’ I’m talking ‘favorite.’ As in most joyful, ‘dancing in my happy place’ performance. Can you guess?” Henry frowned.

“You played the Mouse King,” I prompted. The lines of her face relaxed when she remembered a once-upon-a-time afternoon at my house. She and I staged
The Nutcracker
in the basement, with the help of my dress-up box of costumes, sheets from Rhonda’s linen closet and a fake, plastic sword. The Nutcracker was a big stuffed panda.

“I kicked the Nutcracker’s ass,” Henry said.

“You skewered him with the sword and his stuffing poured out,” I corrected her. “Rhonda was predictably pissed off, but Henry, we
were
Clara and the Mouse King. I felt more alive in the story that day than I ever have in a staged performance. Does that make sense?”

“Sure,” she said easily. “I think when we’re little kids our imaginations take us places that we just can’t go when we get older. Reality is never as much fun as make-believe. I mean, no amount of imagination could get around that Nutcracker Prince last night!” She laughed.

I didn’t push it further with her. Henry’s a competitor. A scorekeeper. It’s coded in her DNA, like her flawless facial bone structure. And even though this killer competitive thing bothers her, she couldn’t change it any more than she could rearrange her own skeletal system.

Mark drops us off at the registration building and goes to park.

Inside the tennis center the line for the women’s room snakes out the door and into the hallway. We get behind some gaggle of little girls in matching Fila dresses. They share a three-pack of Reese’s peanut butter cups, breaking them into
bits, licking melted chocolate off their fingers. They do this while reading a sheet of paper taped to the wall.

I move in close to see what’s so interesting.

It’s the day’s lineup: who’s playing whom, and where. I try to read over their shoulders, to find Henry’s name in the 16-and-Unders. One of the gagglers lets out a little scream.

“Oh my god! The bitch is here!”

It’s weird to hear a girl who might be all of ten years old say “bitch.”

“Who? What are you talking about?” the others ask.

“This really mean girl,” she replies, pressing her finger to a name on the paper. “She’s not in our division. She’s older. My sister knows who she is.”

“What’s she do that’s so mean?” one asks.

“Mind games,” the girl explains. “Like, she calls people for footfaulting even though you
know
she can’t see that far. She questions calls. She bounces the ball, like, twenty times before serving; then, on the next serve, she’ll do it real fast. Junk like that.”

“My coach says you have to ignore that sort of stuff,” says one.

“Yeah, but this girl won’t let you ignore her,” the other replies. “She
talks
to you. My sister said if you make a mistake, like hit it out? She pretends to feel all sorry, ask if you feel all right … you know, make out like you’re some loser. It makes you really angry, and next thing you know, you’re making all these mistakes.”

“God, I hate that,” sighs one.

“She’s not even that good, you know?” The gaggle has rounded the corner passing from the hallway into the restroom proper. “My sister says her strokes are okay, but she wins all these matches by making her opponents mess up.”

The restroom door closes on their conversation. I can finally get a good look at the paper. My eyes scan rapidly down the list.

I find Henry halfway down the sheet. Court three, eleven o’clock. It’s not easy to read ’cause there’s a chocolate fingerprint smudge right on Henry’s name.

Our eyes meet, and she doesn’t have to say a single word. She’s been listening to the whole thing, bladder distress and all. Her blue eyes are cloudy with some emotion I don’t recognize, and I don’t know what to say, or how to reassure her.

Except to simply be here.

Chapter Five

H
alfway through my first set of the day, it’s clear: I’m unbeatable today.

I know it when I toss the ball overhead for the serve and it looms as big as the moon, each thread of fuzzy yellow sharp, distinct. The racket head lasers through the air, and the ball explodes. I don’t have to look: I imagine the target, and Wilson, Dunlop and Penn obey. I am in the zone of tennis dreams, and my opponent has lost ten consecutive points.

The audience, which started out politely clapping, grows silent. They came to watch a game, not a massacre. “Go, Brenda!” a voice calls when we switch sides. My opponent turns to the voice and miserably shakes her head. People begin to leave, to pack up and search for a real match on a different court.

Meanwhile, I concede nothing. Not a single shot. Unsmiling, silent, I claim what belongs to me. This game is mine. And I dare anyone to say I’m just “okay.”

Even Dad looks subdued when it’s over. He, Mom and Eva
join me courtside as I’m zipping my racket into its case. I have bageled Brenda in just under one hour.

“Geez, could you at least have tossed her a
point?
” Eva says, throwing her arms around me and giving my shoulders a tight squeeze. “I mean, hit it out once or twice just to make her grandma in the stands happy?” I stare at her.

“No, actually,” I say, abruptly. “Not today.”

“I think that’s the best I’ve ever seen you play,” Dad says, picking up my bag. As we turn to walk off the court, we almost knock over some guy who stands right behind us. He’s dressed like Dad, got the golf-shirt thing going, but there’s a lanyard around his neck with a laminated ID card. He sticks his hand out.

“I’m Jerry Goss,” he says. “Chadwick Tennis Academy. We spoke on the phone a couple weeks ago.”

“Mark Lloyd,” Dad replies curtly, shaking the hand.

“Congratulations on an impressive first round,” Jerry says to me. “I think that was one for the record books. You didn’t lose a single point.”

“Thanks—” I begin, before Dad cuts me off.

“We’re going to find some shade for Henry and get a little lunch into her,” he says abruptly. “You’ll have to excuse us.” Dad shoulders past Jerry.

“Sure thing,” Jerry Goss replies, his face reddening. “Why don’t I catch up with you folks when the tournament is over?” Mom, trailing Dad, smiles apologetically.

“Yes, please look for us later,” she says. Eva and I follow quickly behind them.

“What was
that
about?” she says under her breath to me.

“He’s that recruiter from the tennis school in Boca Raton, Florida,” I explain. “Basically, a control-freak parent’s nightmare.” Eva bursts out laughing.

“Hope Jerry likes getting chewed alive by a lion,” she says.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I sigh.

He’d called our house after I won the northern final. Wanted to come over and talk about this residential tennis academy. Dad was beyond rude to him over the phone.

“Mark, why can’t we simply hear him out?” Mom argued afterward. “This could be a marvelous opportunity for Henry.”

“Marian, these are the sorts of people who ruin kids like Henry!” Dad insisted. “They make ’em pros when they should still be junior amateurs. The tennis world is littered with their disaster stories. Remember that kid with the pigtails, when we were growing up? Andrea Jaeger. Whatever happened to her? And that other prodigy. Tracy Austin. They ruined that kid’s back. And what is she today?”

“A very wealthy TV sports commentator,” I called out from the other room. They didn’t know I was listening in.

“A has-been!” Dad barked back. “A talented kid who never reached her potential because people were trying to make money off her!”

“I wouldn’t mind people making money off me,” I replied, “as long as I get to keep some.” It’s a strange thing about my dad: he’s sort of anti-money. Running down people in our town with big houses … McMansions, he calls them … or
assuming rich people got there by cheating somehow. The good news is he’s not materialistic. Suspicious, controlling, bad-tempered, ill-mannered, but not materialistic.

Jerry Goss pushes all his buttons. But I’m interested in hearing him out. I get the feeling Mom is, too.

As it turns out, my bionic powers don’t extend to winning every single point for the rest of the day. I do manage, however, to win every game. Every set. The whole enchilada. By five o’clock that afternoon I am the newly crowned 16-and-Under New Jersey State Champion.

When the last point is played out, I walk toward my opponent to shake hands. She stands at the net, still panting. She’s short and muscular and she hit the ball like a man. Rockets, one after another, most of them fired into my backhand. A bit too predictably into my backhand. She’d revealed her strategy only a couple of points into our first game: she was going to blast me off the court, slam me all the way to Pennsylvania on the sheer power of her strokes.

So I made her run. I took the pace off every shot, moon-balled them deep to her corners, followed by short drops over the net. Two games into it, she’d probably run a mile, and her balls were firing a hell of a lot slower.

I never spoke a word to her; I let my shots do all the talking. “You’re out of shape!” they screamed every time she raced for the ball but didn’t quite make it. “Power is no substitute for placement!” they laughed, as she exhausted herself with her slams.

“Henry Lloyd owns this tournament!” they crowed, finally, when it was all over. No mind games. No distracting comments. Just tennis, pure and simple. It felt great.

When I reach her, hand extended, I notice she’s got a little fan club walking across the court toward us.