Tell Me if the Lovers Are Losers

by Cynthia Voigt

  Holding their own was difficult. The juniors were well drilled and accustomed to playing matches. They made mistakes, but did not become disconcerted by them. The freshmen were tense. They talked among themselves, quietly, usually to reassure.

  The first game went slowly, serve frequently changing, teams frequently rotating. Both teams accumulated points steadily. Hildy’s face held a constant vigilance. She was clearly enjoying herself, even though her game was still flawed by those slight miscalculations. The freshman team felt itself performing at a peak of concentration and skill. This was the high reach of their abilities. They won the first game, fifteen to thirteen.

  Ann felt drained, but satisfied. Ruth trotted on the court to let Bess take her place by the benches.

  “It’s a good match,” Ruth said.

  “It’s a tough one,” Niki answered.

  The second game started badly. Sarah lost service and the juniors kept it for a three point lead. After that, Ann fought off distraction and fatigue to keep up her level of play.

  Like tennis players who have allowed their serves to be broken early in the set, they could maintain their progress, but not make up the lost points.

  The score reached nine-six, juniors leading. Niki won serve back with a spike. The juniors won serve with a quick-time pair of passes. The serve careered back and forth, from team to team, never settling long enough to enable either team to gain points.

  Ann strained to keep up, to play well, to predict accurately, to cover where she was needed. Beside her, sometimes in front of her, sometimes in back of her, Hildy, too, strained for the lost precision of her play. Out of the corner of her eye, Ann saw Hildy’s chin grow determined and yet more determined. She heard grunts of disappointment as a shot went too wide or a block angled imprecisely.

  Ann had the serve. She looked at the floor for a few seconds to gather herself together and make no careless error. She looked at the spot where she wanted the serve to go and judged she had room for some lack of placement. The serve arced perfectly. The receiving junior passed it forward. The setter at net sent it high up. The spiker rose with it and brought it down hard. Hildy moved too late into the block.

  For a second Hildy stood where she had landed. She raised a hand, fist clenched, and hit herself on the thigh. She raised the other hand and removed her glasses and hurled them into the stands. They spiraled through the air, winking in the light.

  Ann’s eye did not follow them. She watched Hildy stretch, up, onto her toes, her hands large and strong, her legs spread apart. Then Hildy bent her knees and prepared for the next point.

  The serve pelted toward Ann, low to the net, hard. Ann could do no more than block it with her forearms, a shot made as much from defensive reflex as from any choice. The ball flew off toward the center of the net, angled toward the floor Hildy slid underneath it and not only saved it but passed it well to Sarah, who returned it to the juniors.

  The juniors set up a spike. Hildy blocked it, beautifully, without hesitation sending it back to the one uncovered place in the opponents’ court.

  The freshmen smiled, relaxed, and continued play. They were each as careful as before, only each seemed to have more skill in her hands, more craft in her placement. They were vigilant, but vigilant to win not defend. They had, it seemed, all luck with them—or so the juniors said. “Everything started to fall your way,” they said, the juniors, after the second game. “You couldn’t make mistakes. I’ve never seen such luck—no, really—it’s enough to make you believe in fate or predestination or divine guidance or grace. But it was a good game.”

  “Yes,” Hildy answered happily. “It was good to play such a game.”

  “You’re good,” this team also said. “But our number one team—they’ve been undefeated for two seasons. That’s a match that’ll be worth watching.”

  “This match also was worth watching,” Hildy said.

  “Yeah it was, wasn’t it?” they agreed. “When’s the next?”

  “In a week.”

  “Next Wednesday? Well, we’ll be here. But where is it all going to lead?”

  “To the top,” Niki answered. “To the very top of things.”

  They all laughed and shook hands.

  “We’re not usually this good,” the juniors confided. “It was fun to play you. How do you do it?”

  The freshmen knew how, or at least why, but did not care to discuss it. Instead, with a kind of solemnity, they accepted the congratulations of the opposition, fans, friends, Miss Dennis.

  Even when they were alone together, they did not talk of it. Each player felt a pride and pleasure beyond words, an interior glow she could recognize in her teammates, that did not need explanation. Bess returned Hildy’s glasses. “I would not just throw them away,” Hildy answered Ann’s look. “They were expensive.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Niki said. “You will still wear them, won’t you? Only not for volleyball.”

  “I think that is how it should be,” Hildy agreed.

  “But how do you do it?” Niki asked. “I mean, you’re nearly blind, so how can you play? How do you see what’s going on?”

  “It is easier to see the play when I cannot discern faces. It is all soft, smooth, simple. I see what will happen and what has happened. The ball floats to me, like a little cloud. It is still, without glasses. There is no winning, no losing, just the play itself.”

  “Well, you break all the rules,” Niki said. “You’re the exception.”

  “I would not do such a thing,” Hildy denied. “The rules must include me, I think. If we knew them.”

  “Whatever,” Niki said impatiently. “This is too big and furry a discussion for me. As long as you can compromise with the glasses I’m happy. It’s lovely to see you play. I mean that, Hildy, I really do.”

  The team had asked Hildy, as a special favor, to schedule few matches during the next couple of weeks. Freshmen English classes traditionally had a long paper, due at the end of that time. This paper was the single most important section of the first semester’s work. Except for Ann, they all needed more time to work on it. “And less time at practice,” they said. “Not to mention the nervous strain. Especially the nervous strain.”

  So they did not play the second junior match until the middle of the next week. They still held frequent practices. Hildy said they could use them. During that time, Ann was often alone at odd corners of the day that she was accustomed to fill with companionship. Hildy was out of the room until she returned at ten to bathe and go to bed. Niki worked in fits and starts, starts and stops, concentrating intensely over her typewriter for a time before she slammed her hands down in exasperation and pushed the chair back and fled, downstairs or outside.

  One night, when Ann was waiting for Hildy to return from the tub, Ann picked up the glasses Hildy left folded on her bureau.

  They were heavy on the nose, those glasses. It would take a while to become accustomed to the weight balancing there. Ann closed her eyes, then opened them on the room.

  Yellow lights swam, liquidly. The spaces in the room seemed indefinite, motile. But the furniture, beds, desks, bureaus, bookcases, stood firm. Not clear, but stable, and possessed of a brown trustworthiness.

  Ann moved her head slowly, for to switch attention quickly dizzied her and made her feel physically disoriented. Her bed, with the slash of yellow that was her stuffed snake, pulled the proportions of the room off-balance. Niki’s, covered by a bright, striped Indian spread, had the same effect. Hildy’s, having only blanket and sheets, seemed repose made concrete: the beige blanket and creamy linen had no separating edges, but flowed, one into the other, inviting a deep and restful slumber.

  The poster above Ann’s desk was bleak, one-dimensional, flat, empty. So too seemed the photographs on Niki’s bureau and on her own. Meaningless blurs.

  Ann moved tentatively across a floor gone askew toward the window. She had looked out on the night; it had a lucid November darkness. Through Hildy’s glasses
the night blurred to mystery of an ancient sort. What Ann knew to be there were spiky, grasping fingers of bare trees, and the distinct triangles of pines; these disappeared into equality of clouded darkness. The darkness of these lenses suggested infinity and might lead to a sea of darkness. If you could sail into it, you would be driven by winds of emotion, winds so strong that you would need all your strength to follow them and survive. To arrive, where? At dawning, at the source of light?

  Ann took off the glasses and the night receded into itself, in the proper chiaroscuro, with the known details. She rubbed her eyes and temples.

  Hildy came in and Ann handed her the glasses. “What do you see without them? Is what I see when I put them on what you see when you don’t wear them?”

  “I don’t know,” Hildy said.

  “I looked out the window,” Ann said.

  “What did you see?”

  “I’m not sure. I can’t put words to it.”

  “I don’t mind if you want to try them on,” Hildy said.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The glasses continued to intrigue Ann. She put them on whenever she could and tried to assimilate the information they gave her. Niki, having watched this, tried them on once. “I can’t see a thing,” she said. “What’s the fascination?”

  “I don’t know. Didn’t you ever pretend to be blind? Wonder what it was like?”

  “When I was a kid. I figure, it’s hard enough to see the world as it is. Who needs to go around trying to see it as it isn’t?”

  “What if it is as it isn’t?”

  “That’s a damnfool thing.”

  “No I mean it. How do we know?”

  “All this kind of argument is sophistic,” Niki said. “We have only the evidence of our senses. The rest is—taradiddle.”

  “Is what?”

  “Taradiddle. It’s one of the words my mother used to use.”

  “Your mother might be OK.”

  “Yeah. I think she probably is. On her own terms. Sometimes I think I’ll get to know her when I’m living on my own and all. I mean, she is my old lady, the thing itself. That’s a fact.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Inevitably, the second junior match had to be played. That it was an iron cold day, with air that iced the lungs and made your nose start running when you got inside, did not excite Ann with its promise of deep winter as it would have on any other day that week. She was to sit out the first game of the match, a position that ordinarily filled her with relief. This time, she found herself thinking that to watch was worse than to play.

  Ann watched intently, even before play began, holding Hildy’s glasses in moist hands. She knew them all, her solemn mind told her, seeing them as if for the last time. Hildy, Eloise, Sarah. Niki, Ruth, Bess.

  The stands filled. Ann could not sit still. She turned to see the faces behind her. She greeted friends. Her feet jiggled against the floor. She passed the glasses back, from hand to hand. Then she breathed on them and polished them on her cotton shirt.

  At last the game began.

  Ann was so nervous that she could not see what happened. She leaned forward and her mind whirled, projecting the number of points from the last played to the end of the game, debating who would win. If the juniors won, then Ann would have to play in the deciding game. If the freshmen won, then the next game would not be as crucial, but the one after that would be deciding.

  “What’s the score?” a latecomer leaned down to ask her Ann did not know.

  Fidgeting, she put on Hildy’s glasses. The world blurred, receded. Even sounds seemed muted.

  Through the glasses, the freshmen were difficult to distinguish, except that Ann knew in memory who each was. Who they were in the glasses, though, she did not know at first. Watching the play, she knew somehow that the freshmen were winning. She leaned back without taking her eyes off the play, queried, and discovered that that was the case.

  She could see how things would go, one or two plays ahead of each particular shot. She saw the juniors move together for defense, the freshmen move forward for offense. Then the patterns would alter slightly, and the freshmen were in danger. It was as if she could see through to the essence of the game.

  Only Hildy was unaltered in this new vision. As always, she was light, leaping up to join the cloud of brightness that floated above the court (from the high windows, Ann remembered), arising to rejoin her own element. The four others—Niki excluded—moved with Hildy, around Hildy, as planets around the sun. Independent, dependent.

  And Niki, like some lost soul among the angels, cut across the light—but made a part of it, as shadows define brightness.

  If I wore these before a mirror, Ann wondered, what would I see? What am I?

  Somebody sat down beside her on the floor; this she registered without interest. “They are playing well.” A familiar voice spoke softly into her ear. “They will take the game soon, I think. But these juniors don’t look defeated yet.” Ann did not respond. “Miss Gardner?”

  Ingrained courtesy toward adults and teachers pulled Ann out of her own thoughts. She turned her head quickly, to apologize for not responding more immediately.

  But she could not speak the words. Through the glasses, so close, you could see, she could see, into the eyes of Miss Dennis. Ann there saw—falling into it: the depth of the other, down a gray tunnel drawing inward. She had not thought there was so much to any other, or to herself. Such inward spiraling shades or layers of gray, unfolding. The eyes grew startled and sent up lighter flecks of color, as if to close doors or build defenses to repel the invasion. Ann’s vision moved too swiftly to be checked.

  “Miss Gardner? Is something wrong?” the Munchkin’s voice recalled her. What would she discover if she followed the cool gray corridor far enough?

  Ann took off the glasses and reentered the recognizable world.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “I thought not,” Miss Dennis said. “Is it quite safe for you to wear those?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “You’ll be going in soon, to play. You’ll need to readjust your vision.”

  Ann agreed.

  “It is most exciting, isn’t it?”

  Ann agreed.

  “Fourteen-twelve,” Miss Dennis informed her briefly. “In favor of the freshmen.” She sat up, back onto the bench behind, smiling. Ann grinned sheepishly and watched the next point. Hildy served. Sarah won the point.

  Ann went onto the court as Hildy came off. Niki was muttering and bouncing on the balls of her feet. Her face was ominous. “They’re tough,” she said to Ann. “They’re good. I don’t know why Hildy had to go out.”

  Ann, still bemused by her recent transition, did not answer She did not even feel distracted by Niki’s emotion. She shrugged and looked about her at the team.

  “Are you awake?”

  “No.” Why take the trouble to lie?

  “Wake up then. You’ll blow it for us. Every one of us has to be playing at peak. Even with Hildy here. So you better—or I’ll stick pins up your nose.”

  Ann giggled. “Pins up your nose,” she repeated with pleasure. Her head cleared and she poised her body for the game.

  It was a match between equally determined opponents. Both teams were alert to defend and attack. Points were won, not given away. The juniors won the second game, seventeen to fifteen. Hildy came in and Sarah went out. They switched sides again.

  It was Hildy’s presence, as much as her skills, that made the telling difference. The freshmen assembled around her and became unbeatable. The juniors did not give up; they fought every point energetically. But Hildy’s team stood firm, placed winning shots, received and returned difficult passes, played with one another as if they were all parts of one body, even Niki, if you allowed that the left hand might not know what the right is up to. They were the better team. At the last shot, the gym rang with cheers. The spectators cheered the freshmen and the juniors, they cheered the game
itself. The two teams remained on the court, applauding one another. Then the crowd dispersed, and the players drifted reluctantly off the court.

  “Yeah,” Niki said. “That’s it. That was OK. I’m going to shower here.”

  Ann and Hildy returned happily to the dorm, to bathe. Ann walked, undressed, sat in the hot tub, toweled, and padded down the hall in a haze of self-satisfaction.

  Hildy had finished her bath. She stood naked, except for glasses, by Niki’s desk. Her flesh glowed pink and white. My God, women are beautiful, Ann thought.

  Then Hildy spoke. “No,” she said. Her voice was harsh, angry.

  “Hildy? What’s the matter?”

  “This. This.” She picked up Niki’s paper.

  “I don’t get it.” Ann looked at the stapled pages. “Compassion in King Lear,” she read. “Oh. She wouldn’t do that,” Ann said. “Niki doesn’t do things like that.”

  Hildy had tears in her eyes, magnified by the glasses.

  “It’s OK, Hildy. You know Niki, it’s OK.”

  Hildy did not answer.

  “Look, she’d have hidden it away if she’d felt guilty. Isn’t that right? But she didn’t hide it, she left it right out on her desk.”

  “I would not have seen it, not to read, without the glasses.”

  And I am trained not to see what is not on my own desk, or has not been given to me to read, Ann thought.

  “What then? Should we read it?”

  “No,” Hildy said.

  “You’ll ask her?”

  “I do not have to,” Hildy said.

  “Well, I do. You can’t condemn her without knowing for sure.”

  Hildy nodded, replaced the paper, and turned to dress. Fear sat on Ann’s stomach.

  Niki dashed into the room and chucked off her shorts. She opened a drawer to take out her denim skirt. Her hair was damp. She snapped happy fingers as she changed. Then she heard the silence of the room.

  “What’s with you two?”

  Ann swallowed. Hildy’s back was to them. “May I read your paper?” Ann asked.

  Niki froze. Her eyes turned agate and defied them. “Judge and jury—is that what it is? And Annie for a fair trial.”