by Voss, Louise
‘No chance,’ I say. ‘You must be drunk. In fact, I am, a bit, and I’ve got a headache. Can we please go back to the hotel now?’
Chapter 15
Susie
I was sitting near the top of the stairs, a half-full basket of dirty laundry on my knees, still pondering the logistics of going on a skiing holiday with Rachel in Italy. Did I need to take ski gear with me, or hire it there? Would I need a visa? How many lessons should I have? Thoughts whirled round my head like washing in a tumble drier, making me dizzy. It suddenly seemed far too great an undertaking. I couldn’t handle it. Perhaps I’d just stay where I was, instead. Perhaps I wasn’t ready to be that proactive yet…
A rattle of the screen door made me jump up, hoping against hope that it might be Billy. I ran down the stairs, spilling laundry all the way, to find a man standing in the kitchen – but it was only Flamingo Dan. Disappointment rose up from my belly to meet my sinking heart, and I retraced my steps, collecting up my dirty tights and work clothes. One advantage of being on my own was at least three times less laundry to do, I mused, not even bothering to greet Dan straight away. Not that he’d noticed. He’d gone straight to the fridge and helped himself to some juice.
‘No cranberry, man,’ I heard him complain.
Of all Billy’s oddball, acid-casualty friends, Dan was the worst. For no apparent reason, he was obsessed with flamingos. He had a selection of representations of them all over the inside of his tiny house and dotting his front yard: plastic ones, ornamental ones, tiny ones on swizzle sticks, huge inflatable ones. Oh, and he was afraid of mushrooms – the edible kind, not the magic variety, naturally – and allegedly puked whenever he touched velvet. Go figure, as Billy used to say.
As I picked up a bra strewn over the banisters, I suddenly decided that I was definitely going to organize this skiing holiday after all, if random visits from Dan were all I had to look forward to for the foreseeable future. Sod it, I’m off, I thought. I want out of here.
Dan even looked like a flamingo: long, skinny legs, beaky nose, and a predilection for pink. Billy and I used to joke about him: ‘Where’s Dan?’ one of us would say, and the reply would be, ‘Hmm, I don’t know. Wait, isn’t that him over there, standing on one leg in the pond?’
‘Hi, Dan,’ I said, carrying the basket into the kitchen and dumping it at the top of the basement steps, where the washer and drier were housed. I then instantly moved to the far side of the kitchen island, so he didn’t try and embrace me as per usual. ‘What’s up?’
‘Hi, Susie,’ he droned, his pupils so dilated that his eyes looked black. ‘You know, nothin’ new. Just lookin’ for Billy.’
I put my hands on my hips. I could have done without this.
‘Dan, Billy moved out a month ago. He left me. You must know that. I saw you out with him and’ – I couldn’t bring myself to say Eva’s name – ‘his whore last week.’
It was true. I’d seen the three of them through the window of the Freestate Brewery, laughing and chatting at a table, a half-full pitcher of beer and a plate of nachos in front of them. I’d gone home and got straight into bed, cold with misery, although there was a small part of me which cheered at the thought that I no longer had to endure drinks with Flamingo Dan. I couldn’t believe that Eva would enjoy his company either. Rumour had it that she was pretty smart. She was halfway through her first semester as a graduate student doing a PhD, something geological, my friend Audrey said. I hoped that it meant she was so academic that she’d soon get terminally bored with Billy and Dan’s riveting conversations about spark plugs or which of the Grateful Dead’s albums was the best.
‘Oh. Yeah. Right. Sorry, I guess I forgot.’
‘How could you forget?’ I wasn’t sure why I asked that, since it was fairly self-explanatory.
‘You know. I just forgot that Billy told you already, that’s all.’
I digested the implications of this in silence for a moment.
‘So, let me get this straight …you’d known for some time about him and – that woman – and you just didn’t know that I knew?’
Dan looked confused. ‘I guess so.’
‘Oh, that’s just great, Dan, really great. So who else knew that my fiancé was sleeping around behind my back?’
Dan’s eyes opened up wide with panic. Even his eyelids were avian-looking, bald and a bit scaly.
‘I guess I don’t know, Susie. Sorry. Er, I’d better be off then. What time will Billy be back?’
I gritted my teeth. ‘Dan,’ I said, trying my hardest not to whack him around the head with the bread board, ‘HE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANY MORE. Now, if you don’t mind, I have things to do. I have a vacation to organize.’
‘Cool!’ said Dan, his panic forgotten. ‘Are you guys going anywhere nice?’
Stronger tactics were required. I suddenly remembered Dan’s mushroom phobia.
‘Hey, Dan,’ I said, in an affectedly cheerful voice, opening the fridge door and removing the pack of four huge meaty flat ones I’d bought on my trip to Dillons that day. ‘Want to stay for supper? I’m making stuffed mush—’
He was out of the door and gone before I’d even finished the sentence. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I did neither. I didn’t fancy the mushrooms much myself, either, so I put them back in the fridge and made myself two pieces of toast, spread with the chocolate body paint that Billy and I had only got halfway through, laboriously warming it and applying it in sticky sensual lines and patterns on each others’ bodies. The cats wove circles of warm sympathy around my shins as I ate.
‘Seems a pity to waste it,’ I said, through a mouthful of crumbs.
Later that evening, I rang my friend Audrey to tell her of my plans.
‘Skiing?’ she said with disgust and fear, as if I’d told her I was going to dance naked on a minefield. I heard her take a deep drag of her Camel Light, and then she laughed throatily. ‘Europe? Why in hell do you wanna do a thing like that?’
‘Because it’s fun. Because my daughter lives in Europe. Because I’m tired of entertaining Flamingo Dan. Because it’s good exercise, and a challenge, and I want to see some nice mountains. We don’t see many mountains here, do we?’
‘Mount Oread’s good enough for me, honey, and I don’t see why it ain’t for you. Hell, if it snows I’ll take you tobogganing down it on a tea tray, that do you?
Why would you want to spend a thousand bucks for some fancy ski resort where they don’t talk English and you gotta fly for days to get there?’
‘It’s not days. It’s only about ten hours or so, and I want to get away …’
I wondered why I was having to defend myself to her. Then I realized that what I was actually doing was telling her about the holiday in the hope that she would mention it to at least three other people (which she undoubtedly would) and that it would get back to Billy within days.
I wasn’t going to call him and tell him myself, so I’d have to rely on the Lawrence grapevine. There was Raylene, who was still working as a mail carrier in town, twenty-five years later; and Audrey was on her round, so that was a dead cert. Raylene knew Billy, of course, and anyway, once Raylene knew, it may as well be on the front page of the Lawrence Journal-World. Everyone would know.
Audrey was somewhat more positive about the life coaching idea, though, and agreed to feed the cats while I was gone, for however long it ended up being.
‘Don’t tell anyone I might be away for more than a couple of weeks, will you?’
I didn’t want Billy to know that much. He’d probably be pleased that I was going out of town for a few months, and he wouldn’t need to worry about bumping into me in the Bottleneck or the Freestate Brewery. And Eva would be ecstatic.
For a moment I almost ditched the idea. There was something to be said for hanging around being a fly in the ointment – Lawrence was a small town, and I usually managed to glower at her at least three times a week, once I’d seen them together enough times for me to be able to recognize
her. It had become quite a hobby. I was getting it down to a fine art: lurking around stop signs when I spotted her car and looming up to the driver’s window to stare menacingly at her.
She was small like me, but much frailer-looking. I could take her out, any day. Could come back from the skiing holiday tanned and fit, and Billy would realize what he was missing.
No. Stop it, Susie, I told myself after I hung up from Audrey. This wasn’t a very constructive behaviour pattern for a potential life coach, was it now? Staying in a place specifically for the purpose of intimidating your fiancé’s new girlfriend probably wasn’t a particularly positive life goal. Skiing would be much better.
Sod ’em. She’d soon get fed up with Billy picking his toenails at the dinner table, and I’d be sailing down a vast white piste while a gorgeous instructor gazed admiringly at my rear view.
I went to write my resignation letter to the boss of the real estate agency, and to pay the balance on the skiing holiday before I could change my mind again.
Chapter 16
Rachel
Incredibly, I am doing really well in this tournament.
Kerry got knocked out in the second round by a beefy American girl, but, four days after our arrival in Zurich, I have played my socks off, and found myself in the quarter finals. I am relieved I didn’t give in to the temptation to stay in bed and not even get on the plane, because the two-odd hours’ duration of each of my matches has been the only time I haven’t been pining for Mark. I’ve found I can turn off the insistent wail of misery inside my head, and focus.
Dad and José are really happy with my performance too, although I still can’t talk to Dad. I take all my pre-and post-match advice from José, and roll my eyes like a stroppy teenager whenever he says: ‘Ivan told me to tell you …’
Via José, Dad has plenty to say about all my matches – insider knowledge of my opponents’ games, tips on shots, etc. – but, oddly, when it comes to the day of the quarter-final, he doesn’t say a word. Even though I’m refusing to be within a ten foot radius of him, I can immediately tell that something about this match is spooking him. Perhaps he believes I’ll be way out of my depth, and this thought makes me even more determined to win. Unfortunately, I woke up this morning feeling really ropy: exhausted and queasy. I put it down to a slight hangover, and nerves.
My opponent is a twenty-five year old Hungarian girl called Natasha Horvath. She is my height, and beautiful in an intense kind of way, with straight blonde hair knotted up as if she’d fantasized about twisting my arm behind my back when she did it. She seems vaguely familiar, although I’m sure I’d have remembered if I’d played her before. Every time I look at her, I get a cold uncomfortable feeling in my back, and my shoulderblades tighten up.
She is really unsettling me. She’s been glaring at me from the start, not just with the common-or-garden steely aggression that we all employ to try and psych out an opponent; but with a raw, naked hatred which is coming at me in waves from the far side of the court.
It’s throwing me off my stride, making the sweat dripping down my face just a little more cloying, and for a while all my volleys go straight into the net.
The warm-up is brutal, like she is trying to score points off me already. When I feed her some smashes, I swear she is trying to put them all straight through me. I’m jumping out of the way, under fire. This does not seem normal. I glance over at Kerry, sitting at the front of the stands, and she makes a face at me, then grimaces in Natasha’s direction. José, who is next to her, gives me the thumbs up, but when I look over at Dad, he is gazing at Natasha with a strange but unmistakably lustful expression on his face. As soon as he catches me looking, he jumps and shakes himself slightly, acting insouciant – but the damage is done, and it just makes me even more angry. Bloody Dad, he’s like a dog on heat. It’s embarrassing. Could he not stop thinking about pulling, even for a second? As if a gorgeous woman like Natasha Horvath would look twice at my dad, with his lived-in face and thinning hair …He might have been a catch twenty years ago, but no one thinks that now, except Anthea and a few menopausal and bored housewives at the tennis club.
All in all, I am in an extremely bad mood by the time the warm-up has finished. But this is good. I want to be angry. I want to be in control, and vicious, and as intimidating as Natasha is being to me. I make myself stop glowering at Dad, and glare right back at Natasha, the ferocity of my gaze trying to disguise the fear that she somehow manages to instil in me. She’s like an automaton. The crowd must be able to see, or sense, the tension, because the atmosphere is unusually sober, with people sitting as taut and still as the few remaining empty flip-up chairs of the stands. Huge television cameras gaze at us with blank lenses, waiting.
Natasha wins the toss, and chooses to serve. Her first serve lands just wide of my service box. I look up at the umpire, waiting to hear her call, but Natasha assumes – or decides – she’s aced me, and has already moved across to the left side of the centre T, ready to serve the second point.
‘Wide!’ I protest, pointing at a non-existent mark on the hard court and wishing we were playing on clay so I’d have my proof. The umpire shakes her head. I blink with disbelief – the very first point! I put my hands on my hips. ‘That was wide.’ My voice sounds small and squeaky with outrage in the echoey stadium.
‘Funfzehn–zero,’ says the umpire impassively. She is a stocky middle-aged woman who looks like she’ll never be able to get out of the umpire’s chair without the aid of a crane.
A faint smirk brushes across Natasha’s lips. I hate her. I hate the umpire. Three more aces follow – genuine ones – and I’ve lost the first game without scoring a single point. Natasha’s serve is a nightmare: hard, unpredictable, left-handed. I have the strangest feeling that this is more than just competitive; it feels personal. What can I possibly have done to Natasha to make her hate me this much?
I manage to salvage a couple of my service games, but the first set is a write-off: six–two. When I glance across at Kerry, she has her feet on the back of the seat in front, and her head buried in her knees. I feel sick again, and swallow hard. Imagine the humiliation of puking on court! I’d emigrate if that ever happened.
Nervously, I glance over to the exit, calculating how fast I could get there in the event of an imminent vomit.
At the set break, Natasha sits on her chair at the side of the court with a towel over her head. Her fists are clenched, and the towel is moving as she appears to be shaking her head under there; giving herself a pep talk, I presume.
An image of Mark springs into my head, the way he’d encourage me in my matches. I miss him, sitting up there mouthing, ‘go on’, at me, nodding his support, telling me he loved me with his eyes. He used to say that the urge he got to jump up and down and scream for joy when I hit a good shot was awful; as was the way he felt like punching the umpire when there was a bad call. I know what he means. You have to sit and watch impassively, especially when there are TV cameras present, and it’s so hard.
Dad was dreadful like that when I was younger. Impassive was not a word in his vocabulary. He actually did leap up and roar, regularly; and more than once he was asked to calm down or leave. Sometimes he shouted at me, sometimes at the umpire. For years, I lived in terror that he’d become one of those tennis dads who got such a bad reputation on the circuit that most of the press their daughters received talked of nothing else. Analyses of their match play was more about how the dad had behaved than how the offspring had played. Especially since Dad had been quite good in his heyday. The tennis press – and sometimes the nationals, if I was doing particularly well – never failed to point out that I was more successful than he’d ever been. And unsurprisingly it never failed to go down like a lead balloon in our household.
Second set. I’ve been shaken, but I tell myself that this is a fresh start. I’ll look at the annihilation of the first set as the warm-up. Now I mean business. The umpire calls time, and we walk back to our respective ends of the co
urt. When Natasha turns to face me, waiting for my serve, she looks like a bulldog chewing a wasp. Her expression contorts and darkens her pretty face, but this time I refuse to be intimidated. I serve hard and fast to her forehand because her backhand is stronger, and she slightly mis-hits the return. It is almost the first weakness she’s shown, and I’m on to it immediately. She chip-charges – runs up to the net after the shot – but a fraction of a second too late, and I lob her with ease.
Fifteen-love. This is better. Kerry gives me a discreet thumbs-up. I allow myself a brief, fleeting image of Mark; I pretend he is sitting next to her, waiting till I win to rush down to the changing room to give me a big cuddle outside the door…
My next serve is even better. Fast, but with a spin which sends the ball ricocheting away from Natasha’s racket, and she barely scrapes it back into my court. I am there waiting for it, and slam it past her into the far corner. Why could I not have done that in the first set? Sometimes tennis bemuses me. You know perfectly well what you ought to do, you’ve practiced it a million times, so why are there times when you just can’t do it? It’s at moments like these when I wish I had a nice, easy, non-challenging job, like a manicurist or a house painter.
But for the rest of that set, I couldn’t be happier to be a tennis player. I am all over her, triumph and attitude in every one of my shots. I serve harder, run faster, return better than I ever have before. I feel as if wings have sprouted from the sides of my Nikes, and I’m barely even out of breath. Natasha hates it, but she can’t do anything about it. Perhaps she became complacent at winning the first set so easily, but something almost imperceptible floats skywards out of her game: its departing soul. She fights hard, of course, and we have some brilliant rallies, but the points are mine. I feel as if I own them before the words are out of the umpire’s mouth.
