Trophy Son Page 6

  “It’ll be a long road. Lots of work,” he said. “I think you can do it.”

  When I saw Gabe at two o’clock that afternoon I told him I was all-in for a year. We shook hands. I stepped on the court with him and played great.

  CHAPTER

  12

  I was winning again. Cruising. Having made the decision to commit helped me focus. I was seeing the ball so well, hitting it so cleanly, putting it anywhere I wanted. I could design a point in my head then make it happen exactly that way, like a playwright. On the court my will became reality and I could see my opponents knew it. They could feel they were just a piece on my game board. I didn’t lose even a set the entire summer. Only Ben Archer pushed me to a tie break once which I won, then I won the second set 6–0.

  Life off the court was robotic, single-threaded. I was worshipping at Dad’s altar. I kept that from bothering me by remembering that I had made a deal with myself and I was getting the results I had bargained for in the deal so everything seemed fine. My time with Liz was now in a sealed vault buried fifty feet underground like an ancient city now forgotten beneath a present-day tennis center.

  Dad’s whole being was dominated by the one-to-one correlation between his happiness and my winning so he was very happy.

  Gabe also was feeling great. In a matter of only weeks he had unlocked my potential and got me winning again.

  Mom was happy because there was peace in the house. We had lots of hugs. Hugs and knowing looks like people living carefully under a mad king. Not Anne-Frank-living-in-the-attic type stuff. Just people who don’t believe in fascism.

  I started reading more, at least two hours every night. I discovered Milan Kundera and Philip Roth. Roth had written a lot of books and for a period of three months I considered him my best friend. I wanted to meet him. I related to him and I wanted to meet him more than I wanted to meet my tennis hero, John McEnroe. McEnroe was an adult, independent with plenty of money, and he still surrounded himself with tennis. I couldn’t relate to that at all.

  I told this to Dr. Ford. I said it exactly that way. “I think Philip Roth is my best friend.”

  “Who is Philip Roth?”

  “The writer.”

  “Oh, of course. The Ghost Writer; My Life as a Man.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “When did you meet Philip Roth?”

  “I haven’t.”

  Dr. Ford never showed confusion. He just took longer to say something, a trait I thought was pretty good and wanted to test. “I see. But you love his writing?”

  “Very much.”

  “And you relate to him in some way?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “More than people?”

  “What people?” I said.

  “The people in your life.”

  “I repeat,” I said.

  Dr. Ford smiled. “Well, that’s not entirely fair, Anton.”

  If I knew then what I know now I’d have told him to shut the fuck up right there. But instead I said, “There are props in my life, not people. Except Panos but he’s at college now with a girlfriend and I’m playing all the time. I hardly see him anymore.”

  “Aren’t things with your mother improved? With your father?”

  “Everyone has self-awareness of the plan we’re on and the plan is like a balm for a cold sore. So, yes, the plan is working as much as a balm can work for a cold sore.” I learned more from my novelist friends than from Dr. Ford.

  “So, that’s very good.”

  “It’s one dimensional. I’m one dimensional.”

  Ford watched me.

  “If I win a match, a tournament, I don’t have anyone to share it with. Not really. Gabe and I will high-five and talk about tactical points. Same with Dad. Mom will say congratulations and Panos is away. The best I can do is go up to my room and talk about it with the dust jacket of a Philip Roth novel.”

  Ford smiled and looked at me. The piece of shit didn’t know where to go with this. I suppose it was possible he wanted to talk with me about developing a fuller self and some friendships but knew that’s not what Dad wanted. Or maybe he really believed his approach. In any event, it clicked for me that he wasn’t helping me, he was helping me play more tennis. He was just as invested in my winning as Gabe and Dad.

  He never once engaged me, challenged me in a way that would lead to discovery. All he ever tried to do was calm me down.

  I began to resent Dr. Ford. He was another connection to nothing and our meetings became just an obligation for me. Maybe it was doomed with Ford from the start. I had always been suspicious of his being just an emissary from Dad so I was cautious, and you get out of these things only what you put in. I held on to my consciousness of the deal I had willingly struck and on to my books.

  CHAPTER

  13

  My second serve hit an inch inside the corner of the service box. It was loaded with spin and it kicked wide so by the time it was as deep as the baseline it was twelve feet off the court. My opponent in the semis had turned his shoulders to scramble wide but never got close and bowed his head.

  Then he straightened up and walked toward the deuce court. I saw him remove despair from his face and replace it with something else. “Long,” he said.

  I froze. I stared at him but he wouldn’t look at me. He kept walking to the deuce court to get ready to return serve again.

  “Bullshit,” I said under my breath. I saw the ball clearly in and I knew he did too because I saw just as clearly the moment he made up his mind to cheat. There were no linespeople in the semis of a juniors tournament. It was the honor system.

  It was a clay court tournament at a country club in Westchester, New York. The courts were right alongside the Long Island Sound. Boats of many shapes and sizes clung to moorings and dutifully pointed into the wind, geese climbed from the marshy beaches up to the outskirts of the club lawns and honked like damaged trumpets until a man chased them away by opening and closing an umbrella. Club members on their way out for a sail would pause by the courts to watch then fly off like the hundreds of seagulls around us.

  He stood behind the baseline twirling his racket until enough time passed that he had to look at me. “Deuce,” he said.

  “Let me see the mark,” I said.

  “It was two inches out, at least,” he said.

  “Let’s see it.”

  I walked around the net and he walked back over to the service box of the ad court. The court was swept before the match and this was only the third game so there were very few ball marks. None was two inches outside the corner.

  I saw he was looking hard as he approached. I’m long and work to shorten my steps for my tennis footwork, but he naturally moved in quick, short steps like a small dog. Good for tennis movement. “Where’s the mark?” I said.

  “There wouldn’t be one,” he said. “It hit the sideline tape but it hit two inches long.”

  If a ball hits the tape, the ball is wide enough that usually there is still a small edge mark in the clay around the tape. A ball off the tape also takes a different bounce. Neither of these happened. There was a ball mark right inside the corner of the service box. I circled it using the frame of my racket. “That’s my mark.”

  “Sorry, it’s not. It hit the tape back here.” He was owning the lie and feeling more confident about it. He knew he’d already gotten away with it.

  I stared at him and he shrugged his shoulders. I wanted to grab the hair on the back of his head and scrape his face across the court. He was trying to take something important from me.

  He shrugged again to say this wasn’t his problem and walked away to return serve. I walked back to the baseline on my side of the court and I murdered the ball, as hard as I’d ever hit a serve, four times in a row, all four out. Game to the cheater. The first service game I’d lost the entire tournament.

  I sat at the changeover. I took a towel in my hands and started to lean my face into it, then stopped because I didn’t want to show
how rattled I was. I sat frozen with the towel across my lap and my hands over it, eyes straight ahead while I tried different conversations with myself to get calm again. It went something like this:

  “He fucking cheated me.”

  “Get it together. It’s one game.”

  “He fucking cheated and he’ll cheat again.”

  “You’re twice the player. Play conservative. Beat him.”

  “You’re telling me I need to change my game because he’s shrinking the court in half. This is bullshit.”

  “These are the moments that test us. You’re too good to play this guy straight up. This makes it interesting. Get focused and kick his ass.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “That’s right. Fuck him. Do it on the court.”

  Tennis players do a lot of inner monologuing and sometimes it creeps out like Tourette’s. In our little bubble, we have to be player, coach, confidant, trainer. When all the voices started, it was a reminder of how alone I was.

  I lost the next three games before I could talk myself into focus. I evened the set at six games each and got into a tiebreaker. He served first into the deuce court and I ripped a forehand up the line that he never had a chance at reaching. I was up a mini-break.

  I missed my first serve into the ad court but pegged an aggressive second serve that he couldn’t get a racket on. I was up 2-0 in the breaker except I heard, “Out.” It was the same ad court as his last cheat.

  I had been in a rage earlier in the set and I was right back there, faster this time having travelled there before. “That serve was in you piece of shit.”

  “It was out.” He smiled. “Two inches.”

  I refused to look to Dad for help but I needed help. I was losing it. I needed to check my language. Another curse could get an official over here to disqualify me. I was lucky not to lose points for the one I already let fly.

  I dropped my racket in defiance and my fists were balled up. I never fought but right then it seemed like it would be so easy and feel so good. I imagined smashing my fist in his face over and over. I stood staring and kept imagining it.

  He walked to the deuce court, twirling his racket and having fun. He took his time, enjoying the manipulation. I was powerless again. Nowhere for my fury to release. I walked back to the baseline and I told myself not to over-hit.

  I took my time settling in for the serve. I bounced the ball in front of me, took deep breaths, envisioned laying in a nice, easy serve. Nothing mattered, though. I double-faulted away the point and collapsed in the tiebreak, 7–1.

  The second set I lost in a blur. He cheated one more time but didn’t need to. I was mentally done and wanted off the court. My match win streak ended and I would have played Ben Archer in the final. Ben won the tournament. I didn’t stick around to see if the other guy cheated any.

  It was the first I thought of Ben as possibly more than just a less talented me. I had more talent and was certain of that, but he had an entirely different approach, a more steady approach. I wasn’t the faster of two hares. He was a tortoise and might win a long race.

  I had walked off the court from the match and Dad stood there waiting for me. It was the first and last time he wasn’t angry with me after a loss. His eyes were savage while he watched the other player and coach. There was just enough civilization present around us to hold Dad back, otherwise I think he would have killed that boy.

  * * *

  Two days later I slouched deep in the chair in Dr. Ford’s office. I didn’t see him on any kind of regular basis because I’d been pretending that it was working and that I was feeling much healthier. Even so, we tried not to let more than a month go by between visits.

  I was still upset from the match I had lost and so my guard was down. I didn’t check my honesty and openness but let everything come forward. I took him through the match, almost point by point. I relayed the conversations that happened when the other player cheated and how I had struggled to conquer my anger and fear of losing. I told him how winning never feels as good as losing feels bad and when he asked why, I told him that my wins were for someone else but my losses were all on me.

  He told me I had passion and valued winning and that’s the mark of a champion.

  I thought about that for a while in silence. No champion has ever won every time out. Everyone has felt the sting of knowing that he could have won one more. That’s competition, I understand that. But unhappy? Lasting and deep down where it counts? I thought that might be something else.

  I said, “The thing I want to change is that when I lose a match, I don’t only lose confidence in myself as a player, I lose confidence in myself as a person.”

  He nodded to me and said, “Your losses have to build your character. You have to learn from them, take that and build on it.”

  Stock answer. I could have gotten that from embroidery on a pillow. “Doctor, what I’m saying is that my self as a player is my whole self. When I lose, there’s no other part of me to fall back on. There’s no other self to retreat to. I’m trapped. It’s claustrophobic.” I pictured the spirit of me caught in the small confines of my skull, pushing like a child on the walls of a burning house, gasping for air.

  Dr. Ford looked frustrated. What kind of prick shrink would get frustrated with a patient who said what I just finished saying? “Winning is why you work hard. Let’s give you some tools to get you back to work.”

  Dr. Ford would never change the framework. He would never move the value from winning at tennis to happiness in life. He seemed to feel that if he never acknowledged my unhappiness but pointed elsewhere that the unhappiness would be gone. A matter of a simple Jedi Mind Trick, as long as I won tournaments.

  I decided that I’d attend meetings with Dr. Ford but would never work at them. Dr. Ford was a bad investment of my time. Worse, I knew he wasn’t on my side.

  It would be better to work at this alone. There was thinking that I didn’t share with Dr. Ford. Observing, really. In my match with that jerk, I didn’t cheat in response. I was happy about that. I didn’t know why I didn’t cheat. It wasn’t a decision that I made. It never occurred to me as an option. Years later I would look back on it and think, how obvious, how stupid not to fight fire with fire, you fuck with me and I fuck with you. But my behavior then was innocent and that’s reassuring to me, because of course later the cheating would come, fighting fire with fire. But that wasn’t about line calls.

  CHAPTER

  14

  It was time to start acting like the player everyone expected that I would be in twelve months. Dad said I needed to start acting like a pro, feeling like a pro, then I’d start playing like a pro. Gabe agreed. He thought putting on all the trappings of a star now would prepare me for becoming a star. And Dad could afford it.

  Gabe used to string all my rackets but we hired a racket stringer. It was absurd. I needed maybe twelve rackets strung each week which Gabe or I could easily do, but for big tournaments our stringer would travel with us and be a part of my entourage, mostly for the sake of having an entourage at all.

  His name was Adam Hennes and he loved surfing more than tennis. He’d been a decent college player, then a teaching pro at a private tennis club but was fired, as I found out later, because he loved the female membership even more than surfing. He was taking some time off and he knew Gabe somehow and agreed to make some extra money stringing for me.

  The first day he came by our house in jeans and a concert T-shirt which is about what he always wore unless we travelled. He had long blond hair and looked like the front man of a grunge band.

  I liked him a lot and came to realize that Gabe knew I would. Adam was easy company. He was amused by life and any version of it, so he had no agenda other than to take what came. He was stoned most of the time. I wasn’t so naïve as not to recognize that, and of course Gabe knew also. This was never discussed and the rule Gabe gave Adam was that he was never permitted to light a joint around me. Gabe would tolerate Adam with a buzz as long a
s the smoking was out of sight.

  Adam knew enough about competitive tennis to relate to me. I didn’t view him as having failed out of tennis. I viewed him as a survivor, even a success story. He was happy.

  The other hire to our entourage was our trainer, Bobby Hicks. He was about fifty. Too old for the amount of tan and muscle he had, and certainly too old for the ponytail, but he was a well-known and expensive trainer. He’d worked mostly with major league baseball players and Dad paid him as much as a Yankee would.

  Now I had infrastructure, a team around me. Gabe, Bobby, Adam and Dad. They were supposed to help me get ready for the tennis court but I thought they might also be able to help me in other ways. At least there were more people to talk to.

  We’d travel to small towns to play Challenger events. Sunrise, Plantation, Calabasas, Rochester, Tulsa, Wichita, Godfrey, Decatur, Champaign, Birmingham, Pensacola. There’d be young up-and-comers like me or slightly older up-and-comers, and some much older guys on the way down trying to hang on to the game. Some of the older guys had held a top-100 world ranking in years past, before age, injury and burnout. Even those guys didn’t have the money for a team around them.

  We pulled into the Marriott in Reston, Virginia, in the black Suburban that Dad rented. It was a large circular drive with a carport over the lobby entrance and hardscaping all around the front with landscaped flowering trees that couldn’t be indigenous. The five of us climbed out and unloaded luggage and bags of tennis equipment while players, guests and hotel employees watched the car waiting for a celebrity to get out next. When they realized the car was empty, they scanned the five of us to see who they should recognize. With my infrastructure all checking in to see that I was okay, onlookers realized that this was my team. Making me someone to watch in the parking lot made me someone to watch on the court. I had to get used to it sooner or later. So went the thinking.

  “Big Gabe, what’s the schedule?” said Adam.

  “Anton, we have a practice court in thirty minutes. We’ll do a ninety-minute light workout, then you have a sixty-minute warm down and stretching with Bobby.”