Chapter 10
NOW
After collecting myself, I decide I can’t take the Bronco. I can’t do more Babe.
More avoidance!
I put the keys back and take one of the bikes from the side of the house where they have always been stored, leaning together under a small rusted awning that was always there, perhaps put there for that purpose or maybe for something else, now defunct. I never asked. And now there’s no one to ask.
On the way into town, I go past a red truck, its rear tire jacked up, two men changing a flat. Both of them wave hello, and I wave back with a lift of two fingers from the handlebar.
The center of town is alive with weekend islanders.
Outside Lawson’s Grocer there’s a woman in an old yellow T-shirt that says MERCY ISLAND FUN RUN 2001 on the back.
People who live here love this island. I guarantee that woman, like Babe did, has a number of Mercy Island mugs in her kitchen.
She’s got a young teenager with her who’s talking animatedly with another kid.
Both of them gawky in braces and too-big feet they haven’t grown into yet.
Must have been what we looked like, gallivanting around the island when we were teenagers.
I go slowly past the restaurants and look in.
There’s a soccer game on at Fry & Tackle, a catch of the day and sports bar that sells bait in a small stall up front.
There’s something about this that has always felt like a little too much fish life cycle for one place.
A player on-screen scores a goal and the place erupts—guys cheering or crowing about the goal.
The guy who scored tears off his red jersey and throws it into the stands.
The camera cuts to a woman happy-crying as she holds up the sweaty shirt.
I can’t help but think of the old days with Austin and me.
When I was the heart-eyed girl in the stands.
I go by Sunhouse, a crooked old pub that used to be an actual house long before everything else cropped up.
On the packed porch I see an old guy I swear I remember from a decade ago, tossing back a handful of Sunhouse’s famous bar mix, laughing with a buddy, both of them with half-drunk beers in front of them.
A leashless dog with gray around his eyes and muzzle is sleeping at their feet.
I realize that it’s Clio, a mutt who once followed us home before losing interest and returning to her owner.
The front desk girl at the Sandcastle Hotel helps me out of my room reservation, even getting me out of last night’s charge. Babe apparently bandaged her knee once when she crashed her bike as a kid.
I thank her and then go, telling myself I’m just getting some more exercise in, but then find myself where I always knew I’d wind up.
Slowing down outside Mercy Athletic Club.
It’s well past downtown, inland, on the marsh.
It has a slightly different feel from the rest of the island.
Quieter, in a way, because it’s less occupied.
Louder because the marsh wrens titter and the grasshoppers drone.
The trees are tall and the lawn is shady.
It feels remote, though it’s not that far from everything else.
If anyone were to ask, it might be hard to believe I merely happened by.
But I’ve come all this way, and I feel like I’m about to pass out from heatstroke, so now I have no choice but to go in.
I prop my bike up against a tree near the entrance and go inside.
The cool indoors feels like jumping in an ice-cold pool. I have to stop and lean on the wall beside the door, fanning myself. I’ve been out of the air-conditioning of the hotel for twenty minutes, and my flesh is already saturated with the humid heat.
“Lordy,” I mutter, as I fan my face with a brochure from a table by the entrance.
It only strikes me a few seconds later that I have just said lordy.
Two women go by me in tennis whites, and one of them blinks at me. “Honey, your skin is as pink as a strawberry, you better get yourself some water.”
I can feel my pulse in my eyes, but just nod and say, “I will, ma’am.”
“That’s right. Have a good day now.”
I fling myself off the wall and go to the empty bar—yes, bar, it’s that kind of athletic club—where a bartender is polishing a glass and watching highlights from the soccer game I saw on at Fry & Tackle.
“Excuse me, hi. Could I grab some water from you?”
“Of course,” he says. He fills a glass, and I recognize it instantly as a Libbey Vina Goblet. One of those inane things you know if you’ve ever had to spend hours of your life on . The most banal party trick on the face of the earth.
“Thanks.”
I take it and catch my breath, stepping away from the bar to drink it.
I put my hand on my hip and idly glance at the framed pictures on the walls.
There are old pictures back to the 1930s leading all the way up to today.
As it always did, my eyes catch on one of a young man with a cheesy smile and wrinkled nose, with a tennis racket slung over his shoulder.
The plaque beneath it says AUSTIN “KILLJOY” JAMES, STATE CHAMPION followed by the year.
He was sixteen years old, when he was about to become one of the world’s—and my—favorite people.
I finish the water and then place it back on the old wooden bar, leaving a couple dollars under the coaster.
“Thank you!” I call out.
“Sure thing, darlin’, have a good day now.”
I step back out into the hall. Okay, I’m cooled down now. I’ll go.
Hop on the bike and head back to Birdsong.
Yep, all I need to do is turn left and walk out the doors.
I turn right.
The halls of the building have a smell I remember so well. Freshly popped cans of tennis balls, old wood, a hint of that beachy mildew, decades of perspiration and soap, and astringent cleaning products which, somehow, smells nice.
I pass the indoor pool where a water aerobics class is doing vague but enthusiastic choreography to a Paul Simon song.
Eventually, I’m at doors that lead to the outdoor courts. I stand in front of the back door for only a few seconds, my hand on the frame before pushing it open and sneaking out.
A small crowd has gathered in the stands and I remember the way the aluminum would scald the backs of the thighs in summer and the way rain sounds as it falls on them.
I stand under one of the signature red-and-white-striped umbrellas, fringe trim blowing in the slight breeze that’s starting to pick up.
Austin’s back is to me, but even if it wasn’t, I know he’s so focused there’s no way he’ll notice me. When he plays, nothing matters more to him than that ball.
He’s dripping sweat, legs of chiseled marble, coiled to move. He squats and scoots up his shorts, preparing for his opponent to serve. When he does, Austin swings his racket and hits the ball back so fast I don’t see it, only hear the echoing CRACK.
Beside me, two young women sitting in striped canvas chairs clutch each other.
I get it, girls. I get it.
You almost can’t believe a human body can move so exquisitely. He’s so powerful. So precise. At such odds with his gentle touch off the court, his slow, relaxed way of being.
If it weren’t for the brace on his knee, you would almost believe he was still in his prime.
I only ever stood on the opposite side of the net from him one time.
The ball came at me at such a velocity I genuinely saw my life flash before my eyes.
I left the court laughing, almost crying, saying, nope, nope, nope, this is not how I die.
He had pulled me into him, assured me he’d never hit me with the ball, and I believed him with his precise aim, but it was not worth the fear.
Turned out, I preferred sitting in the bleachers with Sammie, whiling away warm, violet evenings and watching him instead.
I admit that I have not moved on from Austin the way most people move on from their exes. Things remind me of him all the time. I don’t indulge the urge, but if I did, he’d come up in conversation almost daily. I’d say it’s not because I’m hung up on him, but can I say that honestly?
I’ve talked it all through in therapy, every minute detail, connected him to every other part of my life, disconnected him from every other part of my life, and still, he never quite sinks into the past like he should.
I can’t know for sure, but I’d bet that I’d remember almost every moment I ever spent with him, if challenged.
No inside joke lost, no touch forgotten.
All right there, on the shore of my mind washing up every low tide no matter how many times I send them out to sea.
The match goes on for fifteen minutes before the ump calls out, “Game and first set.”
The two men walk to the center net. Austin is calm, if drenched with sweat, but the other man’s chest is heaving. Even so, a smile breaks across his face as he shakes his head and then Austin’s hand.
Austin is about to turn around, so I quickly turn and duck inside to avoid being seen. The last thing he needs to know is that I hunted him down.
I get out of there as fast as I can without running, and I don’t stop moving until I’m back on my bike.