by Alan Chin
My mouth went dry. The match was over. Breaking Connor’s serve gave Jared a huge mental boost, and he held serve to win. That’s tennis: the momentum in a match can swing one way or the other on just one or two critical points, or in this case, on a tomahawked racket.
They shook hands. The spectators cheered. I was elated for them both. Jared had stepped up his game when he needed to, and Connor had slugged it out punch for punch right down to the bell. Connor had experienced a tangible breakthrough, and that had me glowing.
Connor staggered to the bench, his head down and his shoulders slumped. His face took on a greenish hue, and I thought he might vomit. I knew what he was feeling, having been there myself so many times. Serving a game point at five-all in the third set had thrilled him, but the fall had been too sudden and too steep, like a spaceship plummeting through the atmosphere.
He sat on the bench with his head between his knees. Sweat poured off his face, dampening the court between his feet.
We all stood back to let him work it out internally. I saw the green hue fade and the knot in his throat give way to the realization that he had pushed his game to a bold new level.
He laughed. With his head still between his knees, he laughed. He swung around, nailed me with his gaze, and laughed again. His eyes sparkled. I laughed with him—we all did—peals of laughter. There were two glistening pearls of tears caught in his eyelashes. He stood up, and Spencer rushed to hug him.
Jared wrapped me in his arms, and for the first time, it dawned on me that I was enmeshed in an awesome responsibility that affected each one of us.
I gave them a ten-minute rest before we paired up for doubles: Connor with Jared and Spencer with me. We played a point, then stopped to dissect what had happened and discuss how to play it better. We played and analyzed, again and again.
With Jared’s support, Connor catapulted his game to an even higher level. Their chemistry as a team ignited, and they crushed us, so much so that after the practice, I called the Sacramento tournament organizers and entered Connor in the doubles with Jared as his partner. When I broke the news, Jared shrugged his shoulders as if it meant nothing, but he grew quiet.
During the weeks leading up to the tournament, the four of us met every afternoon to hone Connor’s reactions and improve his shot selection.
To my delight, not a single drop of whiskey passed Jared’s lips during that fortnight. He even joined the boys for their morning workouts with Shar. As his body responded to the physical exertion, his determination and confidence grew steadily.
Working together revived all our old cohesive feelings. Each night, he devoured my body like a starved animal, then held me close until dawn. Those two weeks gave me a taste of what had been missing for four long years. I hadn’t realized how I’d missed it until then.
What would happen after the tournament? Would our relationship sink back to that painful separateness? Would he revert to making love to the bottle instead of me?
One thing I knew for sure: it would crush me to lose him a second time.
SACRAMENTO is a two-hour drive from San Francisco—three hours in Slug, who topped out at fifty miles per hour. The whole Lin family came to cheer: grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, about thirty in all.
The cool autumn breeze gave me chills, but sweat oozed down Connor’s face. He was the second match up on center court. We stood behind the bleachers waiting. Although I thought Connor’s fragile legs would be his biggest hindrance, I soon found that his nerves were the real problem. Fear of losing ravaged him, giving him the shakes.
“Breathe,” I told him. “Clear your mind. Once you’re on court, those butterflies will shrink.”
“I’m going to be sick.”
A cheer went up as the first match ended.
“Hear that?” I asked. “It’s the sound of happiness. Now’s the time for you to show us how good you’ve become. You’re going to make us all happy.”
“What if he’s better?”
“Are you kidding? I pity that poor bastard. I do. He’ll be outclassed by an eighteen-year-old, and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it. Trust me, this time next year, he’ll be bragging to his buddies that you kicked his ass before you were famous.”
Connor’s lips spread into an apprehensive grin. He looked down thoughtfully. “You’ve helped me so much. I just don’t want to disappoint you. No matter what happens, you should know that I’m grateful.” He leaned against me and gave me a tender hug.
An old man, who I assumed was Grandfather Lin, shuffled up and tapped him on the shoulder. Connor released me and faced the man, who unwrapped a red velvet cloth to reveal a tablet of green jade carved in the shape of the sitting Buddha: his chang, his personal good luck charm. He pressed the tablet into Connor’s hand and whispered, “For luck.” Connor hugged him before grabbing his tennis bag and heading for center court.
Before he got ten feet from us, Shar rushed into his arms and kissed him, a rather sensual good-luck kiss. She whispered something in his ear, and they both smiled. He kissed her again and ran his fingers through her hair. His name blared over the loudspeaker, and he rushed off, leaving her staring after him.
As I predicted, the five-minute warm-up emptied his mind and relaxed his body. His fear visibly turned into eagerness. The match lasted just sixty-two minutes. He demolished his opponent 6-2, 6-1. In the afternoon, he and Jared won their doubles match just as easily.
After that first tournament win, Connor rode a wave of momentum into his following matches. He still became sick before each match, but once the warm-up started, he got right down to business. With each victory, the wave grew in size and force. I kept my fingers crossed that the wave didn’t collapse too soon and drown him in self-doubt and disappointment. But he rode the crest with the nimble dexterity of a champion surfer.
Jared was equally impressive. I saw glimpses of his old form. It was thrilling to watch him compete, dominating his opponents with his will, his confidence, and his court presence.
The tournament spread over four days. Connor marched through the draws and into the final in both singles and doubles. He clinched the singles title by trouncing John Silva, ranked #116 in the ATP world rankings.
The doubles final, on the other hand, turned into the kind of hard-fought match everyone hopes to see in a championship match. They played against the number one ranked doubles team in Northern California. There were no breaks of serve in the first set. The chair umpire overruled two critical line calls in the tiebreaker that would have given the first set to Connor and Jared.
Anger inflamed Jared’s eyes. It felt like the same tactics the ATP had used to drive him from the sport years ago. Three more overrules in the third set were so blatantly bad that the crowd booed. Those three points tipped the scales toward the opponents, and my boys lost.
Connor and Jared shook hands with the opponents, but they refused to shake the chair umpire’s hand. Instead, Jared pointed an accusing finger in his face and called him a cheating bigot. A few spectators booed Jared, but just as many cheered.
As they dragged themselves off the court, Roy, Spencer, Shar, and I were there with hugs and smiles. The joy that they had performed so well in their first tournament overshadowed the disappointment of being robbed of the title.
As we flooded them with congratulations, I noticed that Spencer hugged Jared a few seconds too long and somewhat too intimately for my taste. It wasn’t the first time. Spencer followed him around with those puppy-dog eyes and rubbed against him whenever possible. I didn’t blame Spencer. I simply wanted Jared to stop leading him on.
Before Connor’s family mobbed him, he invited us to the celebration party at his grandparents’ house. He enticed us with a promise that we would slip away after dinner and go clubbing. I ignored the clubbing part because they were too young to get into the dance clubs.
Jared remained silent on the long ride home. I blathered about how marvelously he played, that he won the m
atch and the trophy didn’t matter. Déjà vu, I thought, the same empty script from years before with the same effect. I stopped and listened to Slug’s whining engine.
As we drove over the Bay Bridge, storm clouds rushed across the Pacific. When I suggested we take umbrellas to the party, he mumbled that he wanted to stay home and soak in a hot bath. I offered to scrub his back, but he insisted that I drop him off and go to the party alone.
“Don’t stay out late,” he said. “I’ll need you later.”
Chapter 9
I WAS home long enough to shower, change clothes, and watch Jared sink into a steaming tub.
I drove Slug twenty minutes across town to the grandparents’ house, a two-story, reddish-pink house on the edge of the Sunset District. I heard the party noise from three houses away, reminiscent of a gaggle of geese.
The front door opened, and an odor of Chinese cooking drew me in. The house reeked of that wonderful, homey aroma. The air felt heavy with ginger and grease and sweet incense. In the living room, eleven graying or near-graying adults clustered in pods of twos and threes. They were outnumbered by mangy-looking teenagers and clean-cut grade-school-aged kids who sprawled over every sagging piece of furniture.
Above the mantle hung two black and white pictures that had speckled brown with age, one of an old man and one of an old woman. I recognized Connor’s eyes in the woman’s face.
A red shrine perched on a table in the corner with a jade Buddha statue. Beside it was a bowl of sand spiked with a single incense stick, a thread of white smoke drifting toward the ceiling. A sheet cake with green frosting and white lines that resembled a tennis court sat on the coffee table. It had yellow script saying, “Congratulations, Connor, Tennis Champion.” A store-bought cake, I thought. Good job he won the singles.
Connor ushered Shar across the living room. They held hands and made an alluring couple, but I couldn’t help wondering if Shar was mixing her personal and professional life or just being friendly.
Connor introduced me to the group nearest the door: Uncle Harvey, a fiftyish, pudgy stockbroker, and his perky, blonde, Caucasian wife Delores. Harvey pointed out his three boys from the crowd, Christopher, Curtis, and Carl. Delores leaned closer to explain that Christopher had graduated at the top of his economics class at Davis, Curtis started Harvard Business School in the fall, and Carl was the lazy one, which I took to mean he had no college plans.
I met Kitty, Connor’s mother, whose pretty face and easy smile let me know who Connor took after. There was Uncle this and Auntie that. It got jumbled pretty quickly. I smiled as I shook hands with each one of them, having no idea which were Connor’s relatives and which were family friends because to the Chinese, even friends are considered family.
Uncle Harman stood out in this throng of normalcy. Late twenties, six-foot-two, lean, exotic facial features, he seemed too elegant to be straight. He stared into my eyes, and I felt warmth surge through my head. I shook his delicate hand and gave him a knowing smile, which he returned. When he introduced himself, I thought he said Herman, pronounced with a Chinese accent, but no, he corrected me, Harman, two As, no E. He looked like an older version of Connor, so he was no doubt a blood uncle.
A gray-haired man squinted at me through thick glasses, and I recognized him from earlier in the day. He was Connor’s grandfather.
Connor took the old man’s hand as delicately as if it were made of Ming porcelain, leading him to me. The old man tottered a few steps toward me and introduced himself as Lincoln Lin. I found the name amusing because it reminded me of Lincoln Logs, a childhood favorite of mine.
Bent with the weight of eighty-plus years, Mr. Lin wore the same style Mao jacket and pants that he must have worn in China. He welcomed me into his home and seized my arm with surprising strength, pulling me toward the kitchen.
As we made our way across the room, he pointed to several children playing a card game around the coffee table and told me their names, which he mixed up, and they poked fun at him. He laughed with them, and his cheeks glowed. His family was clearly his greatest pride, perhaps his only pride.
“We are grateful for your help,” he said. “You know, I am helping him too. Yes, I’m teaching him to meditate, to forget himself. All greatness in art, music, architecture, sports, even love, comes from what lies beneath words and thoughts. This is Zen, which comes from China. Everybody thinks it came from Japan, but no, from China first. We practice together.”
“I’m sure it helps,” I said.
“Why didn’t your friend come, the one Connor played with? I felt sorry for him. They cheated him. Even my old eyes saw that. Why did they do that?”
“The judge was prejudiced.”
He nodded as comprehension spread across his face. “I have been a Chinese man in this country for sixty-eight years. I know about prejudice. People think they’re better than me. We all breathe the same air, eat the same food, leave the same stink in the toilet. But people think they’re better than me. We all come from and go back to the same source, but they don’t know. They think their big cars and fancy clothes make them special.”
Seven adults were packed into the sweaty kitchen, all jabbering in Cantonese while cooking various dishes. I had no idea where they planned to put all the food. The dining room table was already crammed with bowls and platters, and yet the cooking was still in full swing.
The women wore slacks, loose-fitting blouses, and sturdy walking shoes. In the center of the kitchen table sat a bowl half-full of a gingery-scented mixture of chopped shrimp and leeks. Four women sat around the table dabbing mounds of the mixture onto thin wonton wrappers, folding and sealing them into dumplings the shape of clamshells and laying them in rows on a flat aluminum pan.
I felt the urge to pull up a chair and help wrap, but the kitchen was so crowded I could only stand at the doorway.
Mr. Lin said something in Cantonese to an elderly lady at the head of the table. Her short, stout figure reminded me of pictures I’d seen of Chinese farm peasants. She smiled and said a lengthy sentence in the same dialect. I shook my head and apologized that I didn’t speak Cantonese. She nodded and said something in Mandarin. I apologized again.
“Aii-ya,” she exclaimed, using a scolding tone, then rattled off a sharp phrase in Cantonese.
Mr. Lin cocked his head to one side and asked, “You don’t speak Chinese?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Lin.”
“I’m so sorry for you,” he said, patting me on the back as if my deficiency made me pitifully uncivilized. “Your family must be disappointed you have not learned our language.”
“I often disappointed my mother. When she was mad at me, she would scold that I wasn’t really her child, and she cursed the woman who left me on her doorstep.”
“Very funny; very Chinese! When my wife gets mad at her boys, she says she found them in a garbage dumpster. Ha, ha.”
Mr. Lin introduced me to everyone, but it became a jumble again. I nodded to each one. Roy Lin was not among them. Surprised, I turned to search the living room again, but he was not there either.
Spencer sauntered over, and he also scanned the room. I frowned. “He didn’t come,” I said. “He needed some alone time.”
“But we’re going dancing later.” Spencer’s face twisted into an expression that was not quite disappointment and not anger but had attributes of both.
“I know you’re disappointed; so am I. But there’s no need to take it personally.”
“But it won’t be the same. Who will I dance with now?”
“Spencer, has it occurred to you that Jared and I have enough relationship problems without you following him like a puppy and flirting with him whenever you think I’m not watching? Please don’t deny it, I’ve seen you. I’m asking you, as a friend, to find your own boyfriend and stop making my life more challenging.”
He dropped his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bottega. It’s just that I’m so lonely and he’s so….” His voice trailed off to nothing. He glan
ced across the room at Connor, who had his arm around Shar’s waist. “He’s fucking her, ya know. He scarcely knows I’m alive anymore.”
“No, Spencer, I didn’t know.” Anger flashed through my chest like a breath of fire. Bitch, I thought, mixing personal with professional at a time when Connor needs to focus on tennis. It all became clear: this impish, impassioned spirit that was Spencer felt abandoned and desperate to find a replacement. I saw the hurt mar his face, and I draped my arm across his shoulder, giving him a meaningful squeeze.
“Honest, Mr. Bottega, I didn’t think Jared even noticed me.”
“Of course he does. We both do. You’re a beautiful person, how could we not notice?”
He went soft-voiced. “I dream about him, about him loving me like he loves you. But I’ll stop. I promise.”
“Thanks.” I gave him another squeeze. “Say, if you’re going out, you should ask Uncle Harman to go. He could be fun.”
“We’re going to the Engage. It’s a gay Asian dance club.” I raised an eyebrow, so he added, “Shar got us some fake IDs.”
“Well, if it’s a gay Asian club, he’s probably a regular there.”
Spencer’s eyes grew huge, and he scrutinized Harman, who sat across the room. “You think?”
“Go talk to him and see for yourself.”
“Thanks, Mr. Bottega.” He almost sprinted to the couch and squeezed next to Harman.
Auntie Rose brushed past me balancing a huge bowl of fried wontons. She told me to eat before it was all gone, and I laughed. They laid the food out buffet style, and I grabbed a bowl and helped myself to the wonton soup. I sat in the only available chair in the living room and luxuriated in the delicate flavor as it carried me back to my mother’s kitchen.
A child’s loud voice announced that Uncle Roy was at the front door, and, sure enough, Roy swept into the living room like a wind-rush, carrying an aluminum tray and leading another man like a dog on a leash. Roy took the tray to the dining table and somehow found room for it in the middle of all the pots and platters. He peeled off the cover, and the tangy aroma of roasted crab permeated the room.
