Tired Out
Iwas tying Jilly’s shoes, getting ready to take off for tennis.
“Did you know my mom went away one time?” she said. “They took her to this special place where she could rest. That’s why I never learned to tie my shoelaces.”
The part about the shoelaces didn’t make much sense. The part I’d focused on was the other. Regina, going away somewhere.
“I didn’t get to see her for a long time,” Jilly said. “She couldn’t come to my birthday party. She went away in summer. It was cold when we went to pick her up.”
“I bet you missed her,” I said.
“When she came back, I wanted to show her my new dolls, but she went up to her room.”
“She was probably tired,” I said.
“That’s what my dad said too,” Jilly told me. “But I didn’t get it. All that time she was gone, they said she was resting. So why did she need to rest some more?”
Then I was at the club, as usual, waiting for the kids’ tennis lessons to finish and watching the staff put up decorations for the big party the next night.
After the first few days of sitting on the bench when they received their instruction, I’d developed the habit of wandering over to the far side of the courts to watch the lessons of older kids at the club.
Maybe I had the idea that if I watched closely enough, I might figure out how to be more like them. Maybe I could fit in better.
Though probably not.
I made a game of it: listening to the pointers of the tennis pro, Jonathan, on the correct follow-through for a backhand stroke, or a forehand, or an overhead shot, and trying to anticipate what he’d say next.
One time, up in my little attic bedroom, in front of the mirror, I tried to replicate the motion.
Now there I was on the bench outside the court where Olivia was having her private lesson. As much as I was loving my current Stephen King novel, I found myself studying what was happening on the court instead of the pages of my book.
Olivia was very pretty—with the kind of looks I saw in the pages of my well-thumbed July issue of Seventeen.
She had a confidence I couldn’t imagine possessing—the air of a girl who took it for granted that she’d be invited to parties and taken to the mall with a charge card in her pocketbook to purchase whatever she might spot in the J.Crew catalog and feel like adding to her wardrobe.
She was wearing a new outfit that day. By this point I was familiar with her vast wardrobe of tennis skirts.
This one was purple with tiny yellow stars, and a matching yellow top—yellow with purple stars.
She wore her hair in a ponytail and tossed it frequently.
Her body had filled out in a way mine still failed to do, but I knew from overhearing her conversation with some other girls at the club—about a sleepover party she’d had—that she’d recently turned fifteen.
Even on good days—and despite her mother’s obvious dedication to her daughter’s future on the court—Olivia was not what you could have described as an enthusiastic tennis student, but that morning she seemed more reluctant than usual to go through her paces.
She told Jonathan she had a blister on her heel. Not to mention she had a headache.
“Why don’t we just work on your serve,” Jonathan suggested. “You won’t have to run around so much.”
She took her position at the line with about as much enthusiasm as Hayward showed when putting his cereal bowl in the dishwasher, on some rare occasion when Prudence suggested this.
Jonathan tossed her a ball. She took it in her hand, studied it briefly, wrinkling her nose.
Olivia never seemed to care one way or another about what took place during her lesson or whether she progressed particularly well.
She was stalling for time, was all. The fact that the meter was running on her lesson—something I would have thought about, raised as I was by parents who noted the expenditure of every dollar—never seemed to occur to her.
If Olivia was thirsty, she’d amble off the court to get herself a Coke at the snack bar and amble back.
She took her time. If Olivia needed to go to the bathroom, she might rebraid her hair while she was in there.
Or stop to chat with someone on her way back.
Now came her ball toss, way high and outside. As little as I knew at this point about tennis, or serving, I could tell she shouldn’t try for this one. I watched the ball rise up over her head, her arm reaching behind her back first as she’d been taught, then swinging. No contact.
Off to one side by a few feet, with a cartful of balls, Jonathan tossed her another. She did no better with this one. Or the next.
On the fifth try, she managed to connect with the ball, though it went into the net. No luck with the next four or five. She tossed her ponytail. Made a face.
“I hate tennis,” she said. “I just do this because my mom makes me.”
“Everybody has a bad day now and then,” Jonathan observed, his voice calm and even, encouraging.
“I need a break,” she told him. “I’m hot.”
He pointed out that she had half an hour left in her lesson.
“No offense, but this is boring,” Olivia said.
Jonathan gave it one more try, but she was already zipping up her bag and heading off the court in the direction of the clubhouse.
Then there was Jilly, handing me her tennis racquet to zip into the case for her.
“Ice cream time,” she said. It wasn’t a question.