Chapter 21 #2
My junior year the star football player Bobby Ferguson started flirting with me while the other girls looked on enviously.
He was muscular with curly hair and accustomed to being swooned over.
I was one of the few who didn’t, perhaps explaining his attraction to me.
That and tennis. He often leaned against the fence watching me practice on the courts in front of the football fieldhouse.
Our first date he appeared on my driveway in an El Camino belonging to the father he didn’t live with.
I don’t know the truth about Bobby’s background, only that he lived in the children’s home in Swannanoa.
I remember he seemed embarrassed by the El Camino and had nothing to say about his father or mother, either one.
Bobby and I nervously headed to Asheville, talking mostly about sports.
We held hands while sitting in the dark theater watching a Dracula movie.
After that we double-dated a few times, kissing in the backseat.
We went to church youth group meetings and retreats together.
I’d watch his football games as he scored more touchdowns than anyone else.
Bobby and I went steady briefly. I didn’t realize how afraid I was of getting close to anyone until I broke up with him for no reason.
He’d given me an eight-track player and several of his favorite tapes.
Three Dog Night. The Grass Roots. One day I drove to the children’s home, leaving the eight-track player and a breakup note on his bed.
It was a terrible thing to do. I told him that in 1984 at our tenth high school reunion in Black Mountain’s Lake Tomahawk clubhouse where my old classmates gathered.
By then I was married and had published the Ruth Graham biography.
I dressed up in a pearl gray silk pinstripe suit and tie that I got for a song at Ramble Rack, the labels cut out.
Attending the reunion with my friend Linda Hile, I didn’t realize Bobby would be there.
It was the first time I’d seen him since graduation, both of us throwing back vodka and cranberry juice in plastic cups.
We took our cocktails out on the porch, refilling them often as we talked forever in the semi-dark.
Carried away by more than school spirit, we were far too friendly for two people who were married but not to each other.
I got around to the subject of my breaking up with him our junior year and apologized.
It wasn’t about him, I explained. After I did it and he didn’t speak to me anymore, I was smitten.
As Bobby and I drank our spiked cranberry juice, I admitted to spending my senior year rather heartbroken over him.
Back then my pattern was to want someone I couldn’t have, and if that person wanted me back, I lost interest. Added to the dysfunction, I might stay in love for years when the healthy thing would be to move on.
Boundaries were an issue. I didn’t always have a good sense of them.
Flirting with Bobby at our reunion was an example.
I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea. Clearly, his wife didn’t. The former Owen High majorette spotted us having too much fun on the porch. She pounded on a window before boiling outside. I decided it was time for me to leave.
In high school I had no one to practice tennis with except my brothers and other males. The coach of the men’s team, Bill Mott, was my sociology teacher when I was a junior. One day in the spring of 1973 he kept me after class to have a private conversation about something called Title IX.
He explained that President Nixon had signed a bill into law that prohibited discrimination based on sex.
Bill Mott wanted to use that as leverage for me to compete on the men’s tennis team my senior year, a bold move in that part of the world.
He asked if I was game, so to speak, and I gave him an enthusiastic yes.
I was accustomed to playing with the boys.
It was either that or stay home, and the idea of competing against them didn’t daunt me in the least. Bill Mott had been paying attention to my tennis, aware of the local championships I was winning.
He followed press coverage that referred to me as “our local tennis favorite.”
It took time and some finagling, but he convinced the high school faculty to allow me to be the first female in Owen’s history to play on the men’s varsity team. Mr. Mott (as I called him) considered having me play first racquet but calculated I’d win more matches for the team if I were number two.
My brother John, a freshman, would play number three, Mr. Mott said. I explained that would upset him. He should be number two.
“But you’re better,” Mr. Mott said.
“I don’t want to embarrass him,” I answered. “It’s bad enough that his sister is on his same team.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Just don’t tell him why,” I instructed. “I don’t want him to feel bad.”
The spring of my senior year I played third racquet while John played number two.
Even so, he wasn’t happy. I don’t recall our practicing together or even talking on match days, and I didn’t blame him.
No doubt, he was being teased. Worse than that, I got all the attention.
Suddenly the Owen Warhorse men’s tennis team was making headlines.
When a reporter asked if I was afraid to compete against boys, I replied that I was scared at first.
“I had heard how boys get upset if you beat them,” I told the Asheville Citizen-Times in May 1974. “But the majority of the boys weren’t upset when I played them,” I added, leaving out how my brother John felt about it.
I had what I call a slugger game of tennis.
Mom couldn’t afford lessons and didn’t think them important.
She never interfered with my tournaments but wasn’t interested in them either.
I don’t remember her watching a single match.
As far as I know, she never saw me play and had no idea how good I was or wasn’t.
She would have been far happier had I excelled at piano or ballet. That was worth wasting her money on.
I remember losing in the finals of a tournament and collapsing in tears inside Mom’s bedroom.
“I’ll never be Billie Jean King,” I lamented, devastated, while Mom remained unmoved.
“What matters is what you look like,” was her answer, and I didn’t think I excelled in that department either.
I’d learned the game by watching others and reading articles in tennis magazines.
But my technique was lacking and flawed.
I had an unusually powerful forehand and serve for a female in those days.
But I avoided the net because my brothers and other boys would try to pummel me with the ball.
Hovering deep in the court, I’d run around my backhand at every opportunity.
I loved the game and dreamed of turning pro while a part of me knew that couldn’t happen.
I wasn’t Billie Jean King or Chris Evert.
But I hoped that by competing against boys and practicing hard maybe I’d keep getting better.
My senior year I never lost a match. In addition to female athlete of the year, I was awarded most outstanding player on the men’s team.
Despite my efforts at sparing John’s feelings, obviously, I didn’t.
Revisiting all this decades later I’m not sure my being on the men’s team was entirely fair.
Maybe for me, but not the other players.
It never occurred to me that my male opponents might be at a disadvantage.
Clearly, I was outmatched by them physically.
But I didn’t factor in my having a psychological advantage.
I wasn’t expected to win, and they were mortified by the thought of losing to a 110-pound girl in a tennis dress and ruffled knickers.
Added to that, I was a lightning rod for publicity, the newspapers taking my picture with headlines like BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and MISS DANIELS A CHAMPION AMONG BOYS.
My winning streak ended when I played in the men’s high school state sectionals, staying in a Charlotte Holiday Inn.
My teammates resented me, and John didn’t want to be seen anywhere near me.
I ended up hanging out with Bill Mott the entire time.
I couldn’t have asked for a better coach, and unquestionably he devoted more energy to me than the other players.
I won my first two matches in the sectionals, and that was it.
But I continued competing, partnering in the summer with Yale varsity player Andy Holden for mixed doubles.
He had a strong backhand, and my forehand was my weapon.
He and I dated for a while, and he taught me how to drive his stick-shift Fiat.
My relationship with him was another six degrees of separation.
The summer after I graduated from high school, he and I taught at a tennis camp in Black Mountain.
One of the students was Dorothy Bush, the daughter of George and Barbara, relatives of Andy’s.
While I was giving Dorothy lessons, it never would have dawned on me that years later I’d be friends of her family and a regular guest at their home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
I would interview Barbara Bush in 1981 while her husband was vice president.
They were good friends of the Grahams, and I talked to her about Ruth while working on the biography.
In 1996 after my Scarpetta series had become successful, Barbara invited me to her literacy foundation gala in Houston, and I stayed in their home.
When I met former president Bush for the first time, he was lounging on the sofa in their living room. I was overwhelmed, and not sure what to say. The most logical thing was to let him know we had a connection through his daughter Dorothy, or “Doro” as her family and close friends call her.
“I taught her at tennis camp in nineteen-seventy-four,” I told George Bush.
“Well, that explains why she’s always had such a bad backhand,” he said without a beat.
“How did you know I have a bad backhand?”
“I didn’t. But she does,” he answered.
“I also used to date Andy Holden,” I offered next. “We played doubles together…”
“Who?”
Then the former president laughed. No one better at pulling somebody’s leg. I adored him instantly and always would.