The Singles Game Read online

  A hard squeeze on her upper arm from Marcy brought her back to the moment. She accepted her racket bag and slung it over her shoulder as though it weighed nothing, even though jammed inside were six rackets, a roll of grip tape, two bottles of Evian, one bottle of Gatorade, two outfit changes identical to the one she was wearing, extra socks, wristbands, shoulder and knee tape, Band-Aids, an iPod, over-the-ear headphones, two visors, eyedrops, a banana, a packet of Emergen-C, and the lone, laminated photo of her mother that lived in the small, zipped side pocket and that attended every practice and tournament with Charlie.

  Marcy and Alice’s coach left to take their seats in the players’ box. Although the two women walked onto the court at the same time, the audience cheered extra loudly for Alice, the hometown favorite. But it didn’t much matter who they were cheering for: Charlie’s pulse began to race in the exact same way it did before every match, big or small. Only this time she felt a tingling wave of sensation through her chest, a fluttering of anxiety and excitement so strong she thought she might be sick. Centre Court at Wimbledon. She allowed herself a quick look up to the stands, a moment to take it all in. All around her were crowds of well-dressed people standing and politely clapping. Pimm’s. Strawberries and cream. Fascinators. She’d played Wimbledon before, five glorious times, but this was Centre Court.

  The words reverberated in her mind over and over again as she tried to will herself to concentrate. Normally, the routine Charlie performed when she reached her courtside chair was focusing: racket bag placed just so, water bottles neatly arranged, wristband put on, visor adjusted. She did all those things in the exact same order as always, but today she couldn’t pull herself together. Today, everything registered when it should have disappeared into the background: the on-court anchorwoman repeating her opponent’s name into the camera; the match announcer introducing the chair umpire; and most of all, the way her socks slipped into her sneakers, something that never happened when she was wearing her own shoes. She had enough experience to know that none of this was a particularly good omen—not being able to control your thoughts before play began usually didn’t end well—but she simply could not block out all the stimuli.

  Warm-up was a blur. Mindlessly Charlie whacked the ball to Alice’s forehand and backhand and then fed her volleys and overheads. They each retreated to opposite sides to try a few serves. Alice was looking loose and comfortable, her lean legs moving fluidly around the court, her narrow, boyish torso twisting effortlessly to reach the ball. Charlie felt tight just watching her. Although the new shoes technically fit, they were making her arches ache and her right heel was already beginning to chafe. Again and again she willed herself back to the present, to the natural rush she felt every time she stroked the ball just so and it spun and bounced exactly where she’d intended. And then, suddenly, they were playing. She had lost the coin toss and her opponent bounced the ball on the opposite baseline. They’d done a coin toss, right? Yes, she thought so. Why couldn’t Charlie recall any of the details? Whoosh! The ball whizzed past her left shoulder like a bullet. She hadn’t even managed to make contact with it. Ace. First point of the match to Alice. The crowd cheered as madly as British etiquette permitted.

  It took four minutes and thirty seconds for Alice to win the first game. Charlie had only one point to show for it, and that was because Alice double-faulted. Focus! she screamed to herself. This whole match will be over before you know it if you don’t get your damn act together! You want to flame out on Centre Court at Wimbledon without even trying? Only a loser would do that! Loser! Loser! Loser!

  The mental screaming and cursing worked. Charlie went on to hold her own serve and break Alice’s. She was up 2–1 and could feel herself starting to settle. The queasy adrenaline that had troubled her before the match was morphing into that blissful state of flow where Charlie could no longer feel the irritation of her socks slipping or see the familiar faces in the Royal Box or hear the golf claps and quiet cheers of the infinitely well-mannered British audience. Nothing existed but her racket and the ball, and nothing mattered but how those two made contact, point after point, game after game, crisply, powerfully, and with intention.

  Charlie won the first set, 6–3. She was tempted to congratulate herself, but she knew enough to recognize that the match was far from over. In the three minutes during the changeover, she calmly drank some water in small, measured sips. Even that took mental discipline—her whole body was screaming for huge, cold gulps—but she controlled herself. When she had rehydrated and taken three bites of a banana, she rooted through her racket bag and pulled out her backup pair of socks. They were identical to the ones she was wearing, and while there was no reason to believe they would perform any differently, Charlie decided to try. When she removed her old socks, her feet were a horror show: meaty, swollen, red. Both pinky toes were bloodied and the skin on her heels hung in loose, blistered rolls. The outsides of her ankles were covered in purple bruises from hitting the stiff tops and tongue of the leather. The whole of her feet ached as though they’d been run over by a bus.

  The new socks felt like sandpaper, and it took every ounce of willpower to push her mutilated feet back into the shoes. Pain shot from her toes and heels, her ankles and arches, from the ball-of-the-foot bone that hadn’t even hurt until that very moment. Charlie had to will herself to cinch the laces tight and knot them, and the moment she did so, the chair umpire called time. Instead of running high-kneed back to the baseline to keep lose and responsive, she found herself walking with a slight limp. I should’ve taken some Advil when I had the chance, she thought, as she accepted two balls from a teenage ball boy. Hell, I should have had the right shoes in the first place.

  And bam! That was all it took to open the floodgates of anger and, worse, distraction. Why on earth couldn’t anyone have predicted that her shoes would be deemed inadmissible? Where were her sponsors at Nike? It’s not like they’d never outfitted Wimbledon players before. Charlie tossed first one and then a second ball into the air to serve. Double fault. Whose responsibility was it anyway? She switched sides, offered a weaker-than-usual serve, and stood dumbly still as Alice blazed a forehand winner right past her. Tennis players are superstitious. We wear the same underwear at every match. We eat the same foods, day in and day out. We carry good-luck charms and talismans and offer prayers and chant mantras and every other crazy thing to help convince whoever’s listening that if only please, just this once, we could win this lone point/game/set/match/tournament, it would really be so great and soooo appreciated. Charlie’s first serve was powerful and well placed, but again she was flat-footed and unprepared for Alice’s return. She got to the ball but wasn’t able to steady her stance enough to clear the net. Love–40. Was she seriously expected to wear someone else’s shoes during her first match on Centre Court, the biggest, most intimidating stage on which she’d ever played? I mean, really—shoes? She and her team spent hours selecting and fitting new sneakers when it was time for a change, but hey, here, just wear this random pair. They’ll be fine. What do you think this is, Wimbledon or something? Whack! The anger coursed through her body and went straight to the ball, which she hit at least two feet past the baseline, and just like that, she had lost the first game of the second set.

  Charlie glanced toward her box and saw Marcy, her father, and Jake. When Mr. Silver caught her looking, he broke into a reflexive smile, but Charlie could see his concern from where she was standing on the baseline. The next several games were over in a flash, with Charlie only managing to hold on to one. Suddenly Alice was up 5–2 and something inside Charlie’s head snapped to focus: Oh my god. This is it. She was about to lose her second set on Centre Court to a player ranked thirty spots lower. To play a third set right now would be hell. It was simply not an option. The infinitely polite British crowd was downright raucous by their standards, with light clapping and even the occasional cheer. This was not acceptable. Forget the blisters, forget the brick-like sho
es, forget the raging anger at all the people on her team who should have prevented this from happening. None of that mattered now. Hit hard, hit smart, hit consistently, she thought, squeezing her racket tightly and releasing, something Charlie often did to relax herself. Squeeze, release. Squeeze, release. Forget the bullshit and win the next point.

  Charlie won the next game and then the game after that. Once again she settled down, forced her mind to think of nothing but stroking the ball and winning the point. When she tied up the second set at 5–5, she knew she could win the match. She breathed deeply, evenly, summoning huge reserves of mental strength to tune out the pain that was now radiating from her feet up her legs. Cramping. She could deal with that, had a thousand times before. Focus. Hit. Recover. Hit. Recover. In an instant it was 6–5 in the second set and Charlie had to secure only one more game to win it. It was so close now she could feel it.

  Alice’s first serve was high on spin but low on speed and Charlie jumped all over it. Winner! Her next one was much harder and flatter, and Charlie smashed that one straight down the line. They rallied back and forth a few shots on the next point before Alice dropped one just over the net. Charlie read it early and set her body in motion, running as fast as her legs would take her toward the net, her racket outstretched already and her entire upper half bent forward. She could get there, she knew she could. She was almost there, literally within inches of connecting the very top part of her racket head to the ball, only needing to give it a little tap to get it back over the net, when her right foot—feeling like it had a five-pound bag of flour attached to it—slid out from under her like a ski. Had she been wearing her own light, properly fitted sneakers, she may have been able to control the slide, but the heavy, blocky shoe flew across the grass court as though it were a sheet of ice, and it pulled Charlie with it. She flailed gracelessly, tossing her racket so she could use both hands to break her fall, and then . . . pop. She heard it before she felt it. Didn’t everyone? It was so damn loud the entire stadium must have heard that awful popping sound, but on the off chance they missed it, Charlie’s scream caught their attention.

  She hit the ground hard, like a kid falling from a top bunk. Every millimeter of her body hurt so much it was nearly impossible to ascertain where the awful popping sound had originated. Across the net Alice stood watching Charlie, a sympathetic expression carefully arranged on her face. Pushing her palms into the impeccably manicured grass, Charlie tried to hoist herself to sit but her wrist folded in like paper. The chair umpire held her hand over the microphone and leaned forward to ask Charlie if she needed a medical time-out.

  “No, I’m fine,” Charlie said, her voice barely a whisper. “Just need a minute to get myself together.” She knew she had to pull herself up and get back into position. She could take a medical time-out, but it was practically cheating: unless a player was actually bleeding all over the court, it was generally thought that they should suck it up. Suck it up, she thought, giving herself another little hoist. This time she felt the pain that shot up her left palm, straight through her wrist and into her shoulder. Two more points to even it out. Suck it up. Stand up and win your match!

  The spectators began to clap for her, tentatively at first and then more enthusiastically. She wasn’t the favorite, but those Brits knew their sportsmanship. Charlie raised her right hand in a gesture of thanks and reached forward across the grass to get her racket. The exertion made her head spin, and more pain—this time from her foot or ankle or shin, it was impossible to tell—shot up her leg. Those f’ing shoes! she yelled to herself, the panic beginning to set in. Was she seriously injured? Would she have to withdraw? Dear god, what was that awful sound and how hard is it going to be to rehab? The US Open is only eight weeks away . . .

  The umpire’s voice interrupted her thoughts, and the sound of her own name snapped her back to reality. “I am granting a three-minute medical time-out for Ms. Silver. Please set the timer for . . . now.”

  “I didn’t request a medical time-out!” Charlie said peevishly, although her voice clearly wasn’t carrying. “I’m fine.”

  In an effort to ward off the head trainer, who was fast approaching her, Charlie swung her legs beneath her body and summoned every last ounce of energy to push herself to stand. She made it upright and was able to glance around her, to take in Alice’s barely detectable smile and the umpire’s careful observation of the televised match clock, ready to pounce the moment the time-out was over. In the front row of the Royal Box, Charlie could see David Beckham checking his cell phone, her injury of no interest whatsoever to him, and then to the right, in Charlie’s own box, the panic-stricken look of concern on Marcy’s face, who was leaning so far into the court from her seat that it looked like she might fall. Her father and Jake wore matching grave expressions. All around her people chatted with good cheer, took sips from their Pimm’s, and waited for the match to resume. The trainer was standing next to Charlie now, and had just reached his cool, strong hand to her throbbing wrist when, without any warning at all, the whole world went black.

  2

  the love department

  TOPANGA CANYON

  JULY 2015

  The very first thought that crossed Charlie’s mind when she awoke from surgery on her Achilles’ injury was: I’m done. Finished. Like it or not, it’s time to retire, because there is no returning from this injury. It felt like someone had run over her right foot with a car, built it back up using a paring knife, and laced it together with rusty wire and some rubber cement. The pain was indescribable; the nausea, overwhelming. She had thrown up twice in the recovery room and once in her hospital bed.

  “It’s just the anesthesia,” a portly nurse clucked, checking Charlie’s gauges and screens. “You’ll feel much better soon.”

  “Can you hook up one of those morphine drips? To keep her quiet?” Jake asked from his chair underneath the window.

  The nurse didn’t answer. Instead, she told Charlie she’d return with a tray for dinner and left.

  “She loves me,” Jake said.

  “Clearly.” Charlie felt a wave of nausea wash over her and she grabbed the kidney-shaped puke bin.

  “Should I, like, hold your hair?”

  Charlie coughed. “I’m fine. It passed.”

  She must have fallen asleep, because when she woke up, the sky through her tiny room window had darkened and Jake was chewing an In-N-Out burger.

  “Oh, hey. I ran out for some decent food. I have an extra burger here if you can stomach it?” Jake dunked two fries in a little tub of the special sauce and popped them in his mouth.

  Charlie was surprised when she felt a pang of hunger. She nodded, and Jake unpacked a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke on the tray next to her bed. He placed a straw in the soda, yanked open a few ketchup packets, and pushed the swinging tray in front of her.

  “This right here is pretty much the only benefit to rupturing your Achilles’ and having to drop out in the first round of Wimbledon on Centre Court in front of the entire world, just as you’re about to win the match,” Charlie said, stuffing the burger into her mouth one-handed, since her left arm was in a cast from thumb to elbow. The first bite was almost orgasmic. Ever since the Bloody Mary she’d gulped on the flight home from London to California in preparation for her surgery at UCLA, Charlie’s only consolation had been the food.

  “It might be worth it?” Jake asked through a full mouth.

  “I listened to a TED Talk the other day about the founders of In-N-Out. Do you know it’s family owned, and they plan never to sell or franchise it?”

  “Fascinating.”

  “No, it really was. I bet you haven’t noticed that they discreetly print Bible citations on their cups and burger wrappers?”

  “I most definitely did not.”

  “Well, I thought it was interesting.” Charlie had no idea what it meant, but she noticed the bottom of her Coke cup said
JOHN 3:16.

  Jake rolled his eyes. “Dad told me to tell you he’ll be back as soon as he’s finished. There was a special event at the club tonight, some fund-raiser, so they had him teaching clinics back-to-back. I had to promise a thousand times I wouldn’t leave your side for a second.”

  Charlie groaned. “I am so getting babysat around the clock, aren’t I?”

  “You are. He’s convinced you’re going to wake up thinking your career is over and throw yourself off the nearest bridge. Or I guess you would have to walk in front of a train. There aren’t really bridges around here . . .”

  “What’s it to him? Don’t you think he’d be happy if I stopped playing? How many trillion times has he said that tennis is no way to live your whole life?”

  “Many trillion times. But he knows you want it, Charlie. He’s a good enough dad that he can hate the whole idea of something and still support his kids because we want to do something. Like you turning pro, and me sleeping with men. I think it’s fair to say neither thrilled him, but he got on board. He’s good like that.”

  They ate the remainder of their burgers in comfortable silence while Charlie tried to imagine what her father was doing at that moment. He’d been teaching at the Birchwood Golf and Racket Club for more than twenty years. They’d moved to Topanga Canyon from Northern California when Charlie was three because the club promised her father more responsibility and better pay than his job coaching boys’ tennis at an elite boarding school. A few years later he was promoted to head pro, and now he ran both the tennis and golf programs, despite knowing little about golf. He spent most of his time checking inventory and hiring pros and smoothing over small tiffs with members, and Charlie knew he missed the actual teaching. He still taught the occasional lesson, most often the old-timers and small children, but at sixty-one he couldn’t keep up with the teenagers or young professionals who moved fast and hit hard. No one acknowledged it, but the lesson requests had shifted to the younger teachers and Mr. Silver most often found himself in the pro shop or the club’s main office or even the stringing machine. If tonight were like the other charity events the club hosted, her dad would be feeding balls at the children’s clinics that served as day care while the parents donned their best black tie and nibbled canapés in the dining room that overlooked the ninth hole. He never complained, but it made Charlie inexplicably despondent thinking of him leading a game of offense-defense with a group of eight-year-olds while his peers drank and danced together inside.