Trophy Son Page 13

  He said, “Jim wouldn’t bother doing that with a lesser player. All those theatrics.”

  “How do you mean?” I said.

  “He’s already thinking about the next match he’ll have with you.”

  “By going for a jog?” I said.

  “By getting in your head. He knows you have more talent, more firepower. The both of you playing great, straight up, you’ll kill him. And you’re younger. The only way he beats you is if he rattles you, breaks you down mentally. Like he did today.”

  I grunted.

  “He was just getting started on it for next time. You’ll probably see him again in the next month or two.”

  “He’s a dick,” I said.

  “You’re angry?”

  “I’m pissed.” I was extremely pissed.

  “I’m happy to hear that,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, there are no true jerks in the world. There are only some unhappy people who behave like jerks,” and he walked away.

  That was a helpful moment for me. I had confused, misdirected rage and Mark helped me tap into it. I needed more rage. Good rage.

  I had dealt with other losses. Plenty, and I had always managed to stomach them, move on. I told myself that part of tennis was that every couple weeks you took a loss. That’s the way it is even for the top players.

  But I’d never had a loss thrown in my face like this before. Humiliation during and after the fact, and it burned. Jim had set fire to a desperation I hadn’t felt in a few years. I was always a competitor, always a champion, but that part of me had been crowded out. I had been distracted by all the things I had never had a chance to experience while under my father.

  Now the part of me that needed to win was screaming out. Listen to me. Don’t embarrass us again. Don’t let a weaker player defeat and humiliate us, lord it over us like an enslaved enemy.

  I still sat but my muscles were flexed and tight through my chest, arms and legs. I wanted to meet Gabe and Bobby, increase my practice and strength training, increase my testosterone and HGH intake. Obliterate Jim Crane on the court then go obliterate him off the court too.

  CHAPTER

  29

  Jim Crane had beaten me in the early rounds so I had almost a week before my next trip. I used the extra time to go to my New York apartment that I had just rented, and scheduled a session with Dr. Minkoff.

  I’d gotten very comfortable with Dr. Minkoff and I respected him. He was willing to share his thoughts with me. He wasn’t so cautious a therapist that he only listened and gave prompts to keep me talking. The more he knew me, the more he revealed what his instincts were telling him about me.

  I told him about the loss to Jim Crane and he said, “What you’re learning is that you can’t have it both ways.”

  I was in a deep leather chair and the leather was worn and soft so it felt like velvet.

  Dr. Minkoff said, “You’re talented, Anton. You’re up against guys like Crane who are training around the clock and are so obsessed with winning that they’re playing match mind games two months in advance. What you’re thinking about is how you can have less training and more dates with girls. You’re not that talented. Not so talented that you can keep this up and still beat guys like Crane.”

  “I guess not.”

  “So I suspect you’re partly angry with Crane and partly angry with yourself. You can’t be halfway into professional tennis and expect to win many matches. And the worst part of being halfway in is that you’re dragged around by the half that is in. Physically dragged around the world for eleven months on the tour. It’s not like you get half your life back. It’s only the emotional half that’s not in. Your actual life is still travelling with the tour, only you’re going to lose to guys like Crane.”

  I could tell Minkoff loved me in a paternal way. He was angry for me, scared for me, wanted better for me. Of course everything he said made sense. I said, “I always thought my tennis career was meant to be, that I had this gift so my fate was to use the gift. Maybe that’s been a mistake. Maybe it’s all been a foolish errand.”

  He nodded. “You can stop playing. You can stop today.” A reminder he’d offered before.

  “Maybe Ana’s a foolish errand too.” Love or obsession, I still felt as strongly about Ana. All the other girls had been a way to get through to the time when Ana and I could be together. The girls were a sleeping pill to get to the next day.

  “We’ve talked about fate. You’re in control of all of this. Tomorrow morning you could be a retired player sitting in a plane on the way to see Ana.”

  “Sure.”

  “How would you feel tomorrow morning if that’s what you were doing?”

  I pictured it. Just an overnight bag, no rackets or tennis gear. Reading a book on the way to hold Ana. “Pretty happy.” I also pictured a punter in a football jersey. “Also depends on how much she wants to see me. Anyway, I have unfinished business.”

  “Unfinished tennis business?”

  “I couldn’t go out like that.”

  “You were beaten and taunted by a lesser player.”

  “I’m pissed about that, of course that’s part of it. But I’ve also never done anything close to what I’m capable of doing. I’ve never won a major. Whether I have loved or hated tennis, I’ve worked for that, sacrificed for that, taken steroids for that.” I shook my head. “Maybe I need to increase my steroid program.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Why not? You’re the one advising against being halfway in.”

  “Are you on a minimal program now?”

  “I’m on only an oral program now. Testosterone and human growth pills. No needles, but I’ve talked to Bobby about it. We talked about it again after the Crane match.”

  “Are many players on the tour taking performance-enhancing drugs?”

  “Doc, everyone. Everyone who’s any good.”

  “Just players at the top?”

  “It used to be just the top. Now it’s the middle too, and anyone at the bottom who can afford it. They’d all like to get to the top one day too.”

  “I’m surprised. I knew baseball, some other sports. I didn’t realize it was so prevalent in tennis.”

  “It’s in every sport, doc,” I said. “Golf too. Every sport has gone through a period of denial, the way tennis and golf are now. Decades ago you would hear people say all the time, how can steroids help a man hit a baseball—you either hit it or you don’t. Everyone’s come to understand that steroids can help a man hit a baseball very much. Tennis is still at the beginning of the denial phase. Guys on the tour are the future Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa of tennis. I’m one of those guys.”

  Listening to myself talk this way, I could hear that I had quietly become a veteran. Being the one to open another’s eyes in this way was a rite of passage.

  Dr. Minkoff shook his head. This news made the man who loved me like a son very sad. “Anton,” he said after a moment. “What do you want to do?”

  I said, “I want to increase my training program, in every way, focus on tennis, use all my firepower. Then I want to go out and obliterate people. I don’t want to win, I want to put a beat-down on anyone I play.”

  Minkoff nodded. “Okay.”

  “I’ll look up again at life a few years from now. First I’ll finish this business.”

  We sat in silence together for a few full minutes. Finally he said, “Do you know of the economic theory of specialization?”

  “Maybe I read about it.”

  “It was developed by David Ricardo. Comparative advantage. Imagine you’re a tropical island and you can grow bananas like nobody’s business. Bananas naturally grow well, but you’d have to work your ass off and use acres of land to turn out one potato. Of course you wouldn’t bother with potatoes. You’d grow millions of bananas and trade some with Ireland when you want potatoes.”

  “Right.”

  “That’s fine as a macroeconomic theory, fine for a country. Not for a man. A
man has to be a whole self. A man can’t trade for character or life experience and he can’t get those from a book either.”

  I shifted in the leather chair.

  Dr. Minkoff said, “You are specialized, Anton. The danger for an elite athlete like you is that you can get to be thirty years old and all you’ve ever done is grow bananas.” He held his stare with me. He really wasn’t cautious with me at all. “You were instructed to grow bananas from the time you were six years old.”

  We were silent again, then I said, “You want me to quit tennis?”

  “No. I want you to be prepared for when you do.”

  I knew what that meant more than I did even a few years ago. “I’m working on that. I’m trying. Whether or not it’s a mistake that I ever started in on tennis, I’m in it now. It’s not really who I am. Not everything I am, anyway. It’s all a masquerade but I’m so far in that it can’t end now. I don’t want it to, and one thing I’ve realized is that the only way to succeed in tennis long-term is to stay unconscious.”

  He said, “What do you mean by stay unconscious?”

  He knew what I meant and he knew that the words were so tragic that if I said them out loud they might give me pause so I used his words instead. “Grow bananas.”

  CHAPTER

  30

  It was late August. Ana was in New York City for meetings because she had written a play and was trying to get it produced on Broadway. Late August in the tennis schedule meant the US Open and New York City so we found ourselves in the same city at the same time and we went out to dinner.

  I picked the Waverly Inn. We both would naturally prefer a place that is less of a scene but I wanted the night to be special so I picked a place where celebrities and paparazzi go, just in case the flashiness would give me support in making things special. I hired a car service for the night which was an investment of a few hundred dollars. Also, I could pick up Ana at her hotel so we could ride together rather than meet at the bar of the restaurant like people on a blind date.

  Our driver pulled onto Bank Street and stopped in front of number 16 which had a speakeasy-style entrance and would be easy to pass by except for the two tabloid photographers on the sidewalk a respectful ten yards from the restaurant door. We had an 8:30pm reservation so there was only the gray light of dusk in summer.

  I told the driver to stay put and I came around to get the door for Ana.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said as she took my hand and stepped up from the car.

  “Ana,” one of the photographers called.

  I took her arm in mine and escorted her like we’d been introduced at a state dinner. I initiated the arm clasp though she was willing.

  “Ana, look over here please.” She looked to the right at the photographers who had cameras ready against their faces. Flashes popped. Ana smiled and waved.

  “Thank you!” they said. A few more flashes. They were actually nice.

  A moment later I heard one say to the other, “Is that Anton Stratis?” Then, “Anton! Anton, would you look this way?”

  Nice. I smiled and waved, held Ana closer. Maybe they’d post the photos somewhere so her boyfriend would see them. Not a kind thought, but I couldn’t help having it.

  The entrance led to a small crowded bar with a low ceiling and little light. The hostess greeted us right away by name and took us around the side of the bar through a short corridor of booth-style seating to an open room of dining tables. A table was set for us in the corner. It gave us a bit of audio-privacy but was where the other tables could see us, which is how the restaurant liked it and how most celebrities liked it too.

  I hustled around Ana and the hostess to the chair with its back to the corner and pulled it out for Ana. I was being my best gentleman self. I was in competition with some actor I’d never met.

  “How’d your meetings go?” I said.

  “Exciting.” Once in a while you can see a person in real life who doesn’t look real. Their body isn’t bound by the same properties of light, doesn’t seem bound by anything earthly. Anyone who walked in that room would see she wasn’t like anyone else. She glowed the way a half dozen or so people in each generation do. Grace Kelly. Marilyn Monroe. “I met with a producer who can pull this off. Broadway is a whole other world of unions and insider stuff that I’ve never dealt with so I need someone strong.”

  “He’s in?”

  “It’s early, but he wants to be. We sort of mapped out a plan. Do a short run off Broadway, then a six-month run on Broadway.”

  “And you’ll star in it?”

  “Writer, director, actor.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Writer and director are the ones I care about. Actor is the one everyone else cares about, so I get to write and direct only if I act too. That sells the tickets.”

  “You sound like you don’t want to act,” I said.

  “The acting part is good. No one should complain about being in the movies or on stage, so I’m grateful but acting is about ten percent of what I want to do and right now the acting is going well enough that I can use it as a platform to break into these other areas. In thirty years, I won’t be so in demand. There aren’t many Meryl Streeps out there staying busy over the decades.”

  Our worlds were different but our problems were the same. Our culture made alluring careers of child games, then abruptly cut off the oxygen to those careers when we were barely more than kids.

  She said, “I don’t think I could be Meryl and I don’t want to be. I want to be more like Amanda Peet.”

  “You’re a much bigger star than Amanda Peet.”

  “She’s a successful playwright. I love writing. In fifty years, I can still do what I love.”

  My face betrayed something. Envy, maybe. The pain of a direct hit. I said, “That’s the dream.” I was twenty-four. I could be out of tennis in a few years, ten at the extreme most. Fifty years more of life, in or out of tennis, was incomprehensible.

  “How’s tennis going?”

  How deep to go into my response? She was safe, and wise too, but I wanted her to love me, not heal me. “I am reborn a tennis player.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I should just have Minkoff send you my file.”

  “You’re seeing him still?”

  “I am, he’s great. Thank you.”

  She smiled.

  I said, “It means I haven’t been very focused on tennis the last few years but I’m going to commit myself now. I’d like to feel that I’ve done one thing great, and I do only one thing. So that’s why I’m reborn. I haven’t figured out what my version of writing and directing is.”

  We ordered salads, entrees and a bottle of wine. The waiter was attentive but didn’t try to put on any kind of performance for us. These kinds of restaurants are very careful with celebrity clients.

  When the waiter left, Ana said, “Have you thought about what you might do after tennis?”

  “Every time I set my mind to that I draw such a blank that I terrify myself. It always ends with an image of me as a listless, pathetic loser at age thirty-five.”

  It occurred to me that this was not the way to woo her, but she laughed and said, “That would never be you. You’re too smart. Thoughtful.”

  I tasted the wine, then asked the waiter to pour.

  Ana said, “Coaching?”

  “No, I don’t think so. There are great players who retired, fed up with tennis and never imagined coaching and are back in the game coaching now, but I’d do that only as a last resort. If everything else were a dead end.”

  She said, “Are you happy?”

  Good question. I hadn’t put it to an up or down vote in a while, a simple summation. Probably because it’s not so simple, nor is it the same day to day. “No.” I paused, then said, “I’m not unhappy either, really. And I think I can be happy. If I get a few things right.”

  “An optimist.”

  “I’m out from underneath my dad. I’m myself now, so that’
s a good start.” The salads came. Food and drink are good props to reset eye contact and posture naturally. I could have confessed my steroid use, how it was a sacrifice I hated but made with certainty. I think I held back from fear. Maybe she would see it as too dark and unforgivable. Instead I said, “Are you happy?”

  She took her time finishing a bite of salad then said, “I am. Now.”

  “You were not when?”

  “When my uncle was molesting me. When my mother knew and did nothing about it.”

  Wow. It was an abrupt and frank confession. She could let a guy know information like that is on the way. A small preamble. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m better. It took a lot of time, effort, but I’m better.” She sipped her wine. “Some people survive terrible experiences then say that even though it was terrible, they’re glad they went through it, wouldn’t trade it, because it made them who they are and they’ve gotten to like themselves. I can understand that but in my case I would trade it away in a second. I would trade away some of the goodness of who I am if I could trade away all the times he abused me. All the times my mother pretended.”

  We all have problems. Many people would say I was emotionally abused as a child, but there was a difference between bad and severe and I knew it. “Where is your uncle now?”

  “Out of my life.”

  “Your mother?”

  “It’s cordial but empty. We talk on the phone about two times a year.”

  We were quiet for a long time. When the entrees came we talked about lighter things. Good movies to see. Hotels and museums in different cities that we liked. The kind of things we’d only ever done with other people but that I’d like to do with her. Had imagined doing with her many times.

  Our conversation had easy transitions between heavy and light, dark and light, so I said, “We both have had trouble getting close to people, trusting people. I know I have anyway, and maybe you have. In our lives these walls have gone up and I think of them as external and internal walls. The external walls are social isolation. The internal walls are emotional isolation. You have some internal walls. The problem with professional tennis is that it causes both. It’s ironic because most people think of tennis as one of the social sports. You play with some friends, tell jokes, afterward you drink beer and lemonade. That’s tennis for most people but professional tennis is an external wall, so high you can’t see over it.” I was still on my first glass of wine and had barely touched it but sipped it then. I thought about telling Ana about Liz but decided not to. Still humiliating after all those years. “You got over the external wall to me. The internal wall too.” If that didn’t say I love you, I didn’t know what would.