When No One Was Looking (21 page)

“Julia!” she began, but Julia cut her off.

“Look, Kathy,” she said. “You have to look at this thing a whole new way. You have to imagine something here. Then nothing that anyone thinks will be important anymore. Please try and imagine one thing.”

Kathy bit her knee hard. “What?” she asked.

“If you had done it, kiddo, you’d know it, wouldn’t you?”

I guess so.

“Even if nobody else in the world knew, you’d know it. Even if Mr. Molina had never come up with his sponge full of red clay, or if Ruth’s parents had never made a fuss, you’d still know it, wouldn’t you, and you’d have to live with it for the rest of your life.”

“I ... I guess I would.”

“It would sit there inside you, like some incurable ulcer, like a big bleeding, weeping boil in the middle of your stomach for the rest of your days, but you don’t have to live with it, Kathy, because you didn’t do it!”

Kathy felt her spine sag after a stunned second or two. “You know,” she said, “everyone else has said what sounds right, the right thing to say, but you’re the only one who’s said what
is
right. I never thought of that. I wish ...

After a long silence Julia asked, “What?”

“I don’t know. I wish I could say how much I thank you.”

“Yankee!” said Julia from the darkness across the room. There was a great sadness in her voice that Kathy could not place.

R
AIN HAD BEEN PREDICTED
for southern New England, but the day broke clear and bright as crystal over Newport, Rhode Island.

Kathy’s mother read aloud from her notes on the yellow lined pad. “A nice girl,” she said, “so forth and so on. She was Rhode Island champion in twelve and under. Very consistent serve but not too powerful. No nerves. Remember that. Now—”

“Look!” Kathy interrupted, standing dead still in the long dark archway that led to the courts. Framed perfectly by the blackened bricks was the brilliant grass in the morning sun. Kathy drew a sudden sharp breath and felt her eyes widen. So
like my first look at the field in Fenway Park,
she thought.

“What?” asked her mother.

“It’s so
green,
Mother.”

“She’s fast,” Kathy’s mother continued, “laterally, but she’s apparently slow coming up to the net. Hesitates. Kathy, are you going to stand there and let everyone bump into you? Come on. Let’s find Susie Chan, and you two can hit together before your matches. Before you do, just let me finish here. There’s Daddy and Jody. Do they see us? Okay. Now just let me finish.”

Crowds of players streamed by, but Kathy’s eyes were fixed on the courts ahead of her. They were a near jungle green. “Come on, Mom. I’ll beat Mary Strolle. You don’t have to go through all that.”

“Will you look at me while I’m talking to you?” her mother asked. “This isn’t Mary Strolle. This is your first round, Kathy. Bourke ... no, Bourne. It took me hours to assemble these notes. You could at least listen. Now remember—” Kathy’s mother flipped a page over. “Okay. Not one single service fault in her last three tournaments. Look for that serve to go in, and she’ll move it around too. Kathy, are you listening? What are you looking at?”

“The grass, Mom,” Kathy answered. She set her rackets and bag down at the side of an unused court. Then she took off her sneakers and began to pad around on it in her bare feet.

“Will you please get that foolish grin off your face, Kathy, and put your shoes on? What is everybody going to think? You’ve seen grass before.”

“Not like this,” said Kathy, and she reluctantly withdrew from the court.

“There’s Susie. Now I’m going to find Daddy.”

“Okay, Mom,” Kathy said, her eyes following the languid and perfectly schooled play of a girl on the neighboring court. It was a clay practice court. Probably the girl didn’t mind because she was used to grass. Probably she was a member here and had been all her life, Kathy thought, taking note of her expensive clothes, her perfect complexion, and the way the girl tossed her head to clear her face of a shiny blond page boy. Certain members of the Plymouth Bath and Tennis Club had belonged all their lives, had been children there and now brought their own children to the same courts and the same pool and the same beach. This girl, Kathy calculated, was of that type. She would one day bring four children as perfectly blond, clean, and well tailored as herself to this club, and she would sit and sip a tall drink with a piece of mint in it from the flower-filled café that stood at the entrance to the clubhouse.

Kathy and Susie Chan found a grass court in fair condition. Before they began to practice, they both walked back and forth over it several times, giggling.

“Who’s your first round?” Kathy asked.

Susie groaned. “Jenny Robbins,” she answered.

“Oh, poor you. Bad luck.”

“My only hope,” said Susie, returning a forehand to Kathy, “is that she’s as bad as I am on this stuff. It’s like playing on a sponge!”

“Better get used to it, Susie,” Kathy said, grinning. “Wimbledon’s all grass!”

“That’s for you, Kathy,” said Susie Chan cheerfully. “I’ll never see England except from a tourist bus.”

“Come on,” said Kathy.

“You know what people are saying about you, Kathy, since that tournament down in Florida?”

“Come on,” Kathy repeated.

“No, I mean it,” Susie declared seriously. She stopped their rally and came up to the net. “I’d almost rather draw Jenny Robbins than you, Kathy. Jenny’s a terrific player, but she’s not going to improve. You’re on your way, Kathy. Everybody knows it. By the end of the week you should be the New England fourteen and under champion.” Susie stepped back and chopped a ball over the net. She smiled confidently. “You know what the
Globe
said about you, Kathy. ‘How’s the fierce young ball of fire who looks like a junior Rosie Casals?’ ”

“Oh, garbage,” said Kathy.

“It’s not garbage,” Susie answered, reaching for an overhead that eluded her completely. “Now will you look at that? I kicked up a divot. Do you think they’ll make me pay for it?”

Kathy waited for Susie Chan to replace the small mound of grass and earth. She leaned over and ran her knuckles over the tender green blades, not daring to lie down and put her cheek against them, although she would have loved to.
This is where you belong,
she told herself, hoping to stop the fluttering in her stomach.
You’ve earned it and you deserve it and there will be more grass courts someday. Just like there were for Marty. This is where you belong. Do you?
said another voice in her head. She wondered if Susie Chan, so happy and free of cares, had heard much about Ruth. People talked. Did Susie know? Were there people out there who were saying, “Oh, they just covered the whole thing up. They just kept everything quiet.”
Stop it, Kathy.
The good sensible voice was back again.
It’s over. Nobody did anything to anybody. Nobody thinks anything about you except that you’re a great player.
This voice was worth listening to because it was Jody’s. Even Jody was convinced and had told her so last night when she’d come home from Julia’s house. As she and Susie resumed their rally Kathy hoped Susie would remember how she’d tried to be helpful with the dreadful poison ivy medicine rather than think she was the kind of person who would ... she couldn’t use the word.

“How do you like the grass?” Jody’s real live voice piped up from behind the court. The change in Jody since the evening before could not have been more stunning had she claimed to have found a true religion.

“Spongy,” said Kathy, “but ... nice!” She smiled at Jody between shots. When Jody made up her mind about something, there was no turning her around. The year before, Kathy guessed, Jody had made up her mind to hate tennis, to hate the endless weekends of tournaments, to hate the tennis talk at the supper table. Kathy had figured this would be a fact of life as long as she lived with her family. Quite unaccountably Jody alone had waited up for her the night before. Jody never waited up or seemed glad to see her, at least not since they had been children. “I’m sorry, Kathy,” Jody had announced strongly and with no reluctance the moment Kathy walked in the front door. Kathy had simply stared at her, curled on the sofa in the lamplight.

“What? Sorry for what?” she’d asked.

“I’m sorry I passed on that stupid gossip of Peachy’s about the pool man,” Jody said. “It was wrong of me to do that. Peachy was probably just trying to bribe more ice cream out of me. Another thing, Kathy.”

“What?” Kathy had asked, astonished.

“I really do want you to win the New England championship.”

“Really, really, really?” asked Kathy, joking because she did not yet believe Jody.

“Really,” Jody went on solemnly. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Kathy, to consider giving up tennis because of what happened to Ruth. I thought you were too hard and too desperate.”

There had been no appropriate answer in Kathy’s mind to this statement. She had just taken off her jacket, folded it, and sat on the floor, staring wordlessly up at her sister.

“I always thought,” Jody added, “that you would do anything to win a tennis match. I was wrong.”

“You mean ... Kathy stumbled over her thoughts. “You mean somewhere along the line you thought maybe I’d done it? Put the chlorine in the pool?”

“Never,” Jody answered stoutly. “But I didn’t know you had it in you to give up tennis if somebody else did it on your behalf. That’s real honor, Kathy, real honor.” Jody stressed the word as if she were lecturing on the difference between diamonds and zircons. “It made me think too. Maybe we all got something out of that terrible accident after all. You showed your true colors as an unshallow person, and now I’ve decided not to be jealous anymore. Ever again.”

Every cloud has a silver lining,
Kathy had thought when Jody had announced her intention.
Maybe,
added that faraway other voice in the back of her mind.

As it always happened, things looked brighter in the bright sun. Jody sat cross-legged at the edge of the court, dutifully reading a book about playing tennis on various surfaces. From time to time she read aloud bits of wisdom about untrue bounces, running without slipping, and dry yellow patches.

Miss Bourne, or was it Bourke? Kathy was not sure of her first or last name. Nonetheless she had a very good passing shot.
All I have to do to beat her,
Kathy instructed herself,
is play my best and concentrate.
The match was beginning to take too long. Kathy knew that. Her concentration was not at its best. Kathy had taken one look at her opponent, and instead of thinking about the girl’s strokes, she thought about her shining, straight hair, which Kathy envied, and her tall, well filled out figure, which Kathy also envied, and just the air about her, which suggested a very large room with a pink-canopied bed matching a pink fluffy rug. Win or lose, this girl would go home happy tonight because, Kathy figured, a John Travolta-like boyfriend would be waiting for her in a sparkling convertible sports car and her mother wouldn’t mind.

“Idiot!” Kathy yelled at herself. Silently she bullied herself.
This girl shouldn’t take you to three sets. You should have finished her off by now, six-four, six-two. You had her down two service breaks, and now she’s even again. Idiot. One more lousy error and you’re going to lose your serve.

The girl had what Marty would call a nice old-fashioned lady’s game. She could run like a deer back and forth on the base line, always ready for whatever Kathy gave her. Kathy served hard. For one agonizing moment the ball tipped on the tape of the net and then fell back on her own side. Double fault. Now Miss Bourne, or Miss Bourke, was ahead a break.
Where is your mind, my dear?
Kathy asked herself, but not aloud. Something had triggered an irritation in the back of her thinking. It was as annoying and persistent as the neighbors’ television set late at night when she was trying to fall asleep. She couldn’t see it, and she couldn’t really hear the words, but it hummed there all the same.

“Stupid, dumb idiot. Give up the game, you turkey!” she yelled when a smash went out. “What did you do
that
for? You had the whole court to hit. You could have dinked it over the net. She was way out of position. Instead you have to try and hit the line. Idiot!” Kathy threw her racket against the net.

“Kathy Bardy,” came the umpire’s warning.

“I’m sorry,” said Kathy immediately.

She sat for her allotted minute during the changeover and tried to breathe and to concentrate.
Mental garage sale!
she told herself.
Everything goes! Everything goes out of your mind except this match. This next game. If you lose the next game, you’re out of the tournament in the first round. Now get out there and serve four aces. Have I lost heart after all?
she wondered, panicking suddenly.
Is this what it’s like to play without heart? Win a few and lose a few?

Kathy caught Jody’s eye. Jody was watching intently, not reading, from a folding chair behind the court.
And she’s pulling for me,
Kathy thought.
Look at her face. Oh, how they’re all pulling for me.
Her mother’s face and her father’s were puzzled and strained. Even little Bobby was quiet. He rubbed his bare feet back and forth over the grass, hanging suspended between Jody’s knees.

Kathy stood ready to serve. She waited for a stray ball from the neighboring court to be retrieved. She bent to bounce her own ball twice before she served. Then she remembered. The white tennis ball against the green grass.

“Thirty seconds,” said the umpire’s dry voice. “Serve please, Kathy.”

“What?” Kathy heard herself ask.

“Kathy Bardy,” said the umpire, “this is your last warning. Delaying play of the game results in a penalty of one game. Miss Bourne will win the match if I penalize you.”

“I’m sorry,” said Kathy. “I didn’t realize ... I didn’t mean to.” She began to laugh. She served an ace, and then another, and from that moment Miss Bourne did not win another point.

After the match Kathy apologized to the umpire and Miss Bourne. “I think I’m allergic to the grass,” was all she could manage to say.