When No One Was Looking (14 page)

“Here’s to our Kathy,” rang Julia’s mother’s voice in her head. “Honey, you may have lost the last game, but—”

“Match, Mother,” Julia had corrected.

“You may have lost the last game,” Mrs. Redmond went on, raising her glass of brandy so that it caught the candlelight, “but the important thing is I can see from your happy face that you are able to take both victory and defeat in stride. I remember not long ago you being all het up about losing to some young lady who cheated—”

“My God, Mother,” Julia interrupted again. “It doesn’t matter Kathy lost in the finals. She lost to one of the best fourteen-year-olds in the whole country! The girl’s going to qualify for the U.S. Open. She was a junior Wimbledon quarter finalist. That’s not losing. That’s winning!”

“Julia,” said her mother, “I was toasting Kathy. You will please not interrupt. Kathy has learned something about life which you fail to understand. Last time she was very upset at losing to that awful cheating girl—”

“Mother,” said Julia with more than usual heat, “the girl’s dead. That was Ruth Gumm. The swimmer at the club.”

“I was not aware it was one and the same person,” said Mrs. Redmond, lowering her glass without drinking from it.

The mention of Ruth had immediately provoked Rose, who was at that moment serving a floating island. Rose’s eyes had brightened, her back stiffened like a cat’s when it has heard a mouse, and she had announced that such things were no accident.

“Oh, now, Rose,” Mr. Redmond had said, but Kathy had known they would let Rose go on. The only way to shut Rose up, Julia had told her once, was to let her speak her piece. Otherwise she was inclined to sulk and boil the entire next meal.

“Only yesterday,” Rose went on, dishing out an extra large portion of floating island to Kathy, “Cora told me about it. The Gumm child, may the Lord have mercy on her, had bad blood in the family. It’s been put out that there was foul play.”

“Oh, Rose,” Mrs. Redmond had said.

“Dear heart,” Rose continued, “the family ordered an a-u-t-o-p-s-i-e!”

“Y,” said Mr. Redmond.

“The good Lord only knows why she was struck down,” said Rose.

“No, Rose. I meant the letter
y. Autopsy
is spelled with a
y,
” said Mr. Redmond. “And I’m positive there’s a regular explanation for it. The girl probably had a cardiac arrest. Such things happen occasionally, even to youngsters. They are just following normal procedures, I’m sure, Rose. It isn’t every day a champion swimmer drowns in a pool.”

“That’s just what I mean,” said Rose.

Silly,
Kathy told herself now.
Just gossipy old Rose, who, as Mrs. Redmond put it, sees a black widow spider in every cobweb.
“Don’t be silly, Rose,” said Mrs. Redmond reassuringly in Kathy’s mind. “The girl was locked in at the time of the accident. There wasn’t a soul around. It was an unfortunate tragedy. This is lovely floating island, Rose. Did you use your mother’s recipe?”

Kathy did not mean to ask the question in such a way. She hadn’t really meant to ask it at all, but when she had stepped into Marty’s office and closed the door on the wildly blowing rain, she felt her whole face light up. “Are you proud of me?” she asked. “Marty, are you proud of me?”

“You did what I knew you could do,” said Marty. The
Boston Globe
was open before her.

“Oh, Marty. If I won the women’s final at Wimbledon next year, would you be proud of me then?”

Marty looked up from the paper. “One thing at a time, my dear,” she said. “You did brilliantly. You know that. You know perfectly well what I think. You’ll do even better now that you’ve gone this far. You have the New England Championships this weekend in Newport. You should win the whole thing. It’ll put you on the map. Now what did this Texan Jewish American princess beat you with?”

“Drop shot to my backhand a hundred times. I was way out of position. But she had it all over me, Marty. She must have aced me a hundred times too.” Kathy sighed and glared purposely up at Marty’s bulletin board. She noticed suddenly that it was bare. Even the photograph of Marty beating Maureen Connolly was gone. The trophy case was empty, and in the corner where the stacks of ball cans and unstrung rackets were usually piled, there was nothing.

“I may be taking a vacation for a couple of weeks,” said Marty, following Kathy’s eyes with her own. “We can work on the public courts. I’ve checked with Joe Potter over there, and it’s fine with him.”

“What? How can we work anywhere if you’re going on vacation, Marty? You never go on vacation,” said Kathy.

“I want you to keep up your momentum. There will be a lot of tough players against you next weekend, my dear. You won’t even have an easy first round.”

“Marty, what’s happening? Why is all your stuff gone? You’re not even in tennis whites.”

“It’s raining,” said Marty, fixing her eyes on Kathy’s. She wore a baggy old tweed skirt and a gray cable-knit pullover. Kathy realized that she had never once seen Marty out of tennis whites, and she felt a shock, as if suddenly all the oxygen had been sucked out of the air. The rain clattered on the shingles outside and dripped in splayed torrents from a tin drainpipe near the door. Marty squinted at a leak which had formed under the windowsill. “It won’t work, you know,” she said, as if this were part of an ongoing discussion. “Fred Molina’s being an ass, as usual. He’s trying to get me fired. He wants Gordon to come in here as the pro, and do you know why? Because Gordon married that little Italian snip. They all stick together like tent caterpillars. It won’t work. Fred and I never got along, but I didn’t think he’d stoop this low.”

“How can he have you fired? What grounds does he have? He can’t just up and have you fired, Marty!”

“Trumped-up grounds, my dear. The most vile pack of lies I’ve ever heard. Nastiness and scandal, and it needn’t concern you. Now. I want to hear every detail of every match you played down in Florida. What is that foolish expression on your face?”

“It’s nothing, Marty. Well, just that my dad’s people came from Italy a hundred years back or so. They changed the spelling of their name from—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You stayed with Julia Redmond’s family down there?”

“Yes. It was lovely. It was amazing. Her aunt went out and bought me three Bogner dresses. I don’t know what to do with them. I’m afraid my mom might get mad because she spent nights making my real dresses. I mean my—”

“Oh, she won’t get mad because of that,” said Marty. “She’ll get mad because she’ll think you were goldbricking off Julia’s aunt. A silly idea. I don’t believe in looking gift horses in the mouth. Give them to me, I’ll have them dry-cleaned. Then you can tell your mother the company sent them to you free.”

“But that’s a lie, Marty.”

“Your first, my dear?” Marty asked, her head cocked to the side and her eyes as bright as a terrier’s.

Kathy shook her head and looked at the floor. “Marty,” she asked, “how can Mr. Molina have you fired for just nothing? It isn’t fair.”

“Life is unfair, my dear. You should know that better than anyone.”

“Why me?”

Marty paused a moment and rolled the cuffs of her sweater up. “Because,” she said slowly, “if it hadn’t been for that unfortunate accident a couple of weeks ago, you might never have won the tournament at Newton. You wouldn’t have been invited to Florida, and you might not be on your way to the New England Championships this weekend, would you? Life was not very fair with that stupid lumberjack of a girl who kept beating you the whole week you hit with her. You had very good luck, my dear, and she had very bad luck.”

Unable to answer, Kathy imagined a shadow person had looked in at the window and for a second focused piercing eyes on her from a face obscured by fog. “Do you really want to know?” Marty went on. “I’ll tell you. That stupid puff-breasted old grandmother Molina said that I tracked up his precious pool house. That’s it. Tracked up his pool house with tennis court clay. They dislike me, my dear, because of my nasty personality. They dislike me because I won’t take any guff from the lazy fatheaded children of the local mucky-mucks who are forced to take lessons from me. Because I won’t kiss the hands of their martini-soaked card-playing Mamas who sit in their cabanas all day polishing their nails and reading the smut on the best-seller list. That’s why. Because I’m not very nice, Kathy, as you know well. If I had ten geniuses on my string at this club, I could pull them all out at a moment’s notice, and the management would think twice about losing ten family memberships, but I only have one, Kathy, and your family doesn’t even pay, so I’ll have to wait it out.”

“I’ll resign in protest, Marty.”

“How can you resign if you don’t really belong? Not only that, my dear, you have to work as a lifeguard for your bread and butter. Don’t sneer at money. As a matter of fact, if this is not cleared up by next week, after your tournament, you may take over some of my lessons. You can beat any man in the club, and you’re good enough to teach the kids. You can use some extra money. I know about your grandmother. I know your family has tried to keep the money part away from you and that your sister rubs all the salt she can in that wound.”

“Marty, I couldn’t. You need the money too.”

“Be smart. Don’t be stupid. In three years, I assure you, you’ll be able to pay me back with interest. Now tell me about Florida.”

“First tell me why they are firing you.”

Marty looked out the window again. “It’s letting up,” she said. “Go do a mile in the wet sand. It’s worth two miles in dry sand.”

Kathy trudged out to the beach. She took off her already sopping sneakers and socks. “Plymouth’s rising star—a fierce ball of fire with a shotgun serve, reminiscent of a young Rosie Casals”; that’s what the
Boston Globe
had to say about her that morning, but the words did not make her as happy as they had before. They sounded like a Jordan Marsh ad.

The waves curled, filled with pebbles and ugly brown seaweed. They flew seven feet in the air before smashing on the broad gray beach and sucking themselves back again. Many years before there had been a northeaster such as this. Kathy recalled that she and Julia had collected hundreds of seahorses that had come north in the current and had washed onto the beach. Another time there had been sand dollars and translucent gold shells which they were sure they could sell for a great deal of money. This day there was nothing washed up but stones and a few waterlogged, splintery beams, as if the furious ocean, foaming at its mouth, was trying to fling them at her as she ran down the beach, only missing by a bit. On her return she spotted Oliver’s lonely figure watching her from half a mile away.

Kathy stood in the middle of the living room. She held her arms above her head in a gesture of triumph that she had observed in the movie
Rocky.
“Guess what!” she crowed when her father came downstairs to greet her.

“Guess what? I’ve seen the papers!” he also crowed happily. Kathy’s mother beamed from the kitchen like a living lightbulb. Everything was in confusion for a few moments as Kathy was battered with questions about Florida, about her opponents, about Aunt Liz’s house. “But guess what!” she finally managed to say again. Her mother dried her hands on her apron. “What could be better, Kathy?” she asked. “What did you do? You met Billie Jean King and hit with her and beat her love and love?”

“No, Mom. I just won five bucks from Oliver.”

“Doing what?” asked her mother.

“Oliver, you tell,” said Kathy. “They won’t believe me.”

“Kathy can really positively throw to first base as accurately and as fast as Rick Burleson,” said Oliver solemnly.

“Who’s he?” asked Jody. “By the way, congrats for creaming ’em down there,” she said blandly, turning to Kathy.

“The Red Sox third baseman, that’s who,” Oliver explained. “This afternoon when the rain cleared up, the baseball field was empty. So I put Kathy on third and an apple basket on first base. Then I hit her a bunch of tough grounders. She threw to first and got the basket every time, and I timed her with a stopwatch. Last week I timed Burleson’s throws in a game and averaged out the exact times. Kathy did it. Only one second more than Burleson.”

Kathy’s mother had lost interest in these facts and announced from the kitchen that there was nothing to eat but TV dinners so they might as well go out to Burger King and celebrate Kathy’s victory.

“It’s okay, Mom. I had a big lunch at the Redmonds’. Roast beef and the works. I’d rather stay home.”

“And lobster and salmon and crepes suzette?” Jody asked.

“Kathy’s wasting her time in tennis,” said Oliver. “She’s only one among many women. In baseball she could be the first and only woman.”

“Oliver,” said Kathy’s mother, placing the TV dinners in the microwave oven and stepping back from it in case it exuded harmful rays. “Get out of the way,” she said to Bobby. “You never know. Oliver, Kathy is not going to be a baseball player, and that’s that. Sit down everybody. This only takes a minute.”

“Think of the endorsements,” said Oliver, undaunted. “Kathy’s picture on everything from fielders’ mitts to Alka-Seltzer.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I won the U.S. Open,” said Kathy.

“Don’t look down your nose yet,” said her mother. “You know how much Willie Mays makes for advertising Brut? You know how much Bancroft pays Billie Jean for that ad?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Kathy’s father. “First things first. Shall we tell her?” he asked as he opened the foil over his dinner and let out the steam.

Her mother, her father, and Oliver all wore identical smiles. Only Bobby, who was piercing indentations into his tinfoil with his fork, did not seem to be listening. Then there was Jody, who only stared glumly at her gray Salisbury steak. “Wait,” said Kathy. “Don’t tell me. Let Jody tell me.”

“Why should I tell you?” Jody asked, tossing her hair out of her face.

Because I’ll get it straight from you,
was what Kathy wanted to say, but she didn’t. “Because,” was Kathy’s answer.

Almost gratefully Jody put down her fork. Like a professor about to list the causes of the Civil War, she leaned forward and said, “If you win your next tournament, they’re going to change your coach, or at least get you some famous one part-time. You’re going down to some clinic, they call it, in Florida for an eight-week eight-hour-a-day crash session or else down to Port Washington, New York, to this other guy whose name I forget. He sounds like a kangaroo.”