When No One Was Looking

by Rosemary Wells

  Kathy sat silent, not because this was the thing that Marty could least stand but because nothing safe to say occurred to her. This was like an algebra test at its worst, like Chinese or Greek. “I may have to take tutoring this summer,” she managed to squeak out at last. Perhaps Marty would turn her wrath in another direction.

  “In what? Tutoring for what?”

  “Algebra. I can’t possibly pass the final.”

  “Algebra! Why? Fail! Who cares? You think the USTA cares about algebra?”

  “My folks do, especially my father,” said Kathy.

  “I have told your parents a hundred times that you shouldn’t be pushed in all directions at once. The kind of pressure you’re under now doesn’t allow for algebra,” said Marty bitterly.

  “My teachers say the opposite, you know. If I don’t improve my schoolwork next year, I’m sure they’ll never let me go at one thirty to practice every day in Swampscott.”

  Marty chewed on her lower lip and then, amazingly, she whispered “Kathy” quite gently and covered Kathy’s hand with her own. “Don’t cry,” she began in what Kathy knew was a voice that did not come easily to her. “Just think, one day all this schoolwork will be over. You’ll just have your game to think about, and you’re going to be right on the top. In the Wightman Cup, at Wimbledon. No one is going to touch you, not even the little rich girls with twenty years of tennis clubs behind them. You’re going to show them all. But remember, your family isn’t rich. You don’t have the advantages some girls have. You’ll never be much of a student. This is the one way you’re going to break out of all the dullness in life. You’re going to go to England and France someday, Kathy. You’ll go to Rome and win the Italian championship. Think of that! And everyone who says a New Englander can’t do it, a girl who takes up tennis late can’t do it, a girl with a woman coach can’t do it—well, they’re all going to be eating crow someday. That algebra teacher of yours is going to sit back in her Jordan Marsh rocker and read about you in the papers someday, and maybe you’ll give her an autograph. I’ve been there, Kathy. I held up that silver plate in front of the Queen of England, and I know.”

  Kathy knew two things. One was that Marty wouldn’t be likely to put her hand on her own mother’s if her mother had been run over by a car. The other was that Marty was being uncanny, as she was when it suited her. The phrase show them all had hit Kathy surgically, in the center of her belly. Yes, she wanted to show them all, although she didn’t know who “they” were. “Who’s that on court six?” Kathy asked at last.

  “Nobody,” said Marty, withdrawing her hand.

  “Just because she’s new doesn’t make her nobody. She has a strong serve.”

  Marty sighed. “She’s big, she’s slow, and she has weasely eyes. She’s one of Gordon’s brand-new lesser lights.”

  Gordon was the other coach in this part of New England. Once upon a time he too had been one of Marty’s pets, but he hadn’t the temperament to go very far. Gordon was handsome and popular and had many promising juniors in his stable. Marty had not spoken to him in years. “Foot fault,” said Marty, glaring at the girl. “She has big feet.”

  “She has a strong serve,” repeated Kathy.

  “She’s as big as a lumberjack.”

  Kathy picked up her rackets and her bag. “She’s got a strong serve, Marty.”

  “And as clumsy,” Marty continued, as if Kathy had said nothing.

  Kathy knew it was hopeless to try and get in the last word, so she left Marty, promising to call after the next day’s matches. Once she looked back. Marty was concentrating on the girl, sitting alone on the newly painted white bench. Kathy had few moments of true revelation, but she did wonder as she crossed the neatly raked parking lot to join Julia for a swim whether Marty, gnarled and scarred, had such a thing as a mother.

  As she mentioned all odd thoughts to Julia, Kathy mentioned this one when she’d come up from the water and settled herself in a deck chair.

  “That’s a funny thing to say. Everyone has a mother.”

  “I know. But Marty’s old. Past forty or fifty maybe. I thought her mother might have died in that fire when she was a baby.”

  “Are you trying to excuse her awfulness?” Julia asked.

  “No, not that. I just felt sorry for her suddenly.”

  Julia rolled her eyes heavenward. She imitated her own mother’s drawl precisely. “No one on God’s green earth I feel sorry for less than that mean, hungry woman.” And then, switching to her regular voice, Julia said that not even a childhood spell in a concentration camp would excuse Marty’s excesses in her eyes.

  “Excesses,” repeated Kathy.

  “You take more you-know-what from that coach than I can believe. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I’d cry like a baby or spit in her eye. I don’t know which.”

  Kathy stretched and threw her towel over an empty chair. “You have to get to know her,” she said.

  “There’s something about her that I hate,” Julia said slowly. “I don’t even really hate my Aunt Liz, who threw a vase at Mom on her last visit, but I hate that Marty.”

  “Why?” Kathy asked.

  Over the top of her magazine Julia looked Kathy in the eye, and without wavering as Kathy would have done she declared, “Because she’s mean to you, and I don’t like people being mean to you.”

  For the second time that day Kathy asked in embarrassment, “I wonder who that is?”

  “I don’t know,” said Julia, “but she’s a powerful swimmer. Probably races. Look at her strokes.”

  The same large body that had been serving so steadily in court six now swam up and down the length of the pool with identical determination. She was still at it long after Julia had left and the evening shadows had fallen on the pool, the deck, and the surrounding empty chairs. At last she hoisted herself out and announced to no one, “Two hundred.”

  By this time Kathy had finished a hamburger and a soda (free to employees of the club) and had started to net a few limp ginko leaves off the surface of the water. She collected what stray wet towels lay around and cleaned out the pool house. The club manager would check her work later with the energy of a room inspector at West Point. She lined up the containers of chlorine, although they were already arranged perfectly. Then she collected the things for the lost-and-found box and took them to the office. The previous summer Kathy had been the lone club employee without a single red stroke beside her name on the manager’s error sheet, or blacklist, as it was called by the lifeguards. She enjoyed this little contest, and the work required no thought at all. At seven, when the first people arrived for the dance, the pool house was immaculate, the water leafless and shimmering, and the deck as shiny as a liner’s on a maiden voyage. Kathy buttoned her sweater against the wind and climbed high up into her lifeguard’s chair. There she sat in the darkness, listening to the ocean wash and spill against the rocky jetty outside the three-story enclosure of lockers and public rooms that left the pool open to the sky, staring into the wonderful depths of the lighted water. She was quite happy. In one hour she would begin passing the rest of the evening listening to the Red Sox on a tiny transistor radio she kept hidden in her towel.

  “I’m Oliver English,” said a voice from the deck. The voice cracked slightly in the middle of the sentence. “I’m afraid I got you into trouble with your coach.”

  “Trouble?” Kathy asked. A boy with very heavy glasses and large white teeth was smiling up at her. But of course she remembered right away. He had indirectly gotten her into trouble with Marty. It had been Oliver whom she’d seen grinning at her at the end of her lesson, and she of course had smiled back. Marty had probably figured him to be a potentially more serious distraction than algebra.

  “She’s pretty tough on you. She’s a real drill sergeant,” Oliver added.

  Kathy laughed. “I know,” she said, “but she’s nicer to me than she is to anyone else. I’m quite used to her.”

  “I’m the other lifeguard tonight,” Ol
iver announced. “You’re the best girl tennis player I’ve ever seen. Will you hit with me next week? I’ve played a lot out in California.”

  “Sure,” said Kathy, and she began to laugh.

  “Why are you laughing? You think you can beat me?” Oliver looked seriously annoyed behind his horn-rims.

  Kathy pointed to the dance, now fully under way in the conservatory, a room reserved for senior members. People had gathered around the bar and talked in little groups, although no one danced yet. A woman in an evening dress, tall as an oak, stood holding a drink in both cupped hands. She was listening to a man in Madras pants. Her smile never wavered from a full horsy grin, and she wore a diamond choker that could be seen twenty yards away. The flashing teeth and sparkling diamonds complemented each other perfectly. “Look at her!” Kathy said. “Look at him! Don’t they seem big to you? That guy must weigh three hundred pounds. What would we do if he fell in the pool?”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” said Oliver seriously.

  “But that’s why I’m laughing,” said Kathy. “You’re not much bigger than I am. It would take four of us to pull him out of an armchair.”

  “I’m seventeen,” said Oliver, glaring at Kathy, “and I’m on the Yale freshman crew.”

  “You must be strong,” said Kathy hurriedly.

  “I’m very strong.” The corners of Oliver’s mouth turned down like the mask of tragedy. He continued to look unhappy behind his glasses, which, as if they came in sizes like shirts, appeared to be a size too big for him. “It isn’t a question of weight,” he went on. “I could pull a whale out of the pool if I got the right grip on him. It’s all in the grip, or didn’t they teach you that in lifesaving?”

  “I guess you’re right,” Kathy answered. She noticed that Oliver’s black hair danced wildly in the wind. He wore it long over the front and very short at the back like World War Two fighter pilots she’d seen in late movies on TV. His skin was as clear and pink as a baby’s, his chest as hairless as Kathy’s, and although she knew she could have hidden her whole fist in the depression between his ribs, she liked him. “Who’s your girl friend?” Oliver asked huffily.

  “Girl friend? Oh, Julia. The one I was sitting with.”

  “She’s pretty. Very pretty,” said Oliver.

  “I know,” said Kathy, hoping she didn’t betray any jealousy in her voice, and she told herself Julia would never have made a mess out of meeting a boy as she had done.

  “Molina!” said Oliver suddenly and poked Kathy’s foot. “Look sharp!”

  Out of the brilliantly illuminated assortment of drinkers and eaters at the other end of the clubhouse came the Plymouth Bath and Tennis Club manager. Busy as a hornet, he glanced at his clipboard as if he wished he could yell at it. “One of you,” he said to Kathy and Oliver, “is supposed to be in one chair, and the other is supposed to be in the other chair.” He paused for a tiny breath. “And who, may I ask, selected you two to be lifeguards at an adult party? This is not a toddler swim hour.”

  “But, Mr. Molina,” Kathy began, “I got a letter telling me to work tonight and ...

  “And you?” Mr. Molina interrupted.

  “The same thing, sir,” said Oliver.

  “That’s my secretary’s fault, of course,” said Mr. Molina. “She doesn’t know one from another. We have six big boys much better suited. You couldn’t pull a baby out of the shallow end,” he observed to Oliver.

  “But—” Kathy began.

  “It’s not your fault!” Mr. Molina shouted. “Now go pick up that towel over there. Have you checked the chlorine level in the pool?”

  “Yes,” said Kathy.

  “One of you pick up that Coke bottle before someone trips over it and winds up in the hospital. I’m going to keep an eye on both of you. No fraternization. You sit in one chair, and he sits in the other. You have a job to do, and you’re paid twenty dollars each to do it, so do it.” And twittering to himself like a head nurse on duty, Mr. Molina went back to the clubhouse, looking right and then left and walking in the exact center of the indoor-outdoor carpeting.

  In a loud whisper Kathy asked Oliver why he hadn’t said anything about it all being in the grip.

  “Oh, shut up,” said Oliver, also in a loud whisper.

  Nobody fell in the pool. Like two undersized sentries, Kathy and Oliver slouched in their widely separated chairs. The drains gurgled from time to time. Why do they always look at Julia? Kathy asked herself. He’ll probably sit with her all summer, and I’ll be left out like someone’s extra little sister. Why do I have to be flat-chested and have dull hair? Why won’t Dr. Morrissey take my braces off? If I hit with him next week, he’ll want to play a set, and I’ll beat him, and he’ll never speak to me again. Why everything? Kathy did not dare put on the Red Sox game.

  “Are your folks here?” asked Oliver suddenly.

  “No. They’re ... not members,” Kathy answered.

  “How come?”

  Kathy began fabricating her usual reason in her mind, that her mother was allergic to the sun, that her father didn’t like the ocean because of a wartime trauma in the Pacific. “They can’t afford it,” she said.

  “They pay for just you to belong?”

  “They have to. I’m on lifeguard duty every day I can and work at the courts and in the lunchroom to help. My younger sister, Jody, waits tables in the cafeteria weekends, and my brother Bobby’s just a baby, so he comes free when Jody’s off and she can watch him.”

  “What do you mean, they have to?” Oliver asked.

  “This is my tennis coach’s summer job, at this club. I have to work with her at least five times a week. The courts are excellent clay, and there’re good people to hit with. I have to belong because it’s the best thing for my game.”

  “You mean you’re serious about tennis? Are you a ranked player and everything?”

  “Yes, I guess so,” said Kathy, staring at her toes and wishing the subject would go away.

  “Are you going to be a professional?”

  “My mom and dad and my coach think I have a chance. First I have to qualify for the National Championships. If I’m lucky enough to get national ranking in my age group, maybe I can take it from there in a few years. I’m number twelve now in fourteen and under, but that’s just New England. One in a million makes it to pro.

  “I’m still impressed,” said Oliver.

  “Don’t be,” said Kathy.

  “Do you like it?” he asked.

  “Sure I like it. I couldn’t spend twenty hours a week practicing if I didn’t like it. And my mom has to drive me to tournaments and bring the kids along almost every other weekend. My dad has to pay for court fees and lessons and everything.”

  “But do you really like it?”

  “I want to win the U.S. Open someday,” said Kathy, and she surprised herself with the coldness of her own voice.

  Oliver folded his hands between his bony knees. “But do you like it?” he asked again.

  “Why do you keep asking me that?”

  “Because when you said just then that you wanted to win the U.S. Open, you sounded so awful. I didn’t really mind you laughing at me before, and you sounded just like a ... person then, not just a girl. Now you sound like everybody else at this club. Like the stockbrokers who get drunk here on the beach Sunday afternoons.”

  Kathy could think of no reply to that. Not even Julia addressed her so frankly as this odd boy. “I’m sorry,” she murmured after a minute had passed.

  “What happens if you don’t win the U.S. Open?” Oliver persisted. “Supposing you don’t make it that far?”

  “I’ll have to go to college and just have a normal life, I guess. I’ll have to think about my grades too, not just tennis, or I’ll never get in anywhere good.”

  “But what would you like to be more than anything else?”

  “I just told you,” said Kathy.

  “But if you don’t make it.”

  “Well, you’d laugh at me,�
� said Kathy, playing with the life preserver that hung on the side of her chair.

  “No, I won’t.”

  “I could never tell a boy,” said Kathy.

  “What?” asked Oliver heatedly. “A urologist?”

  “What’s that?” Kathy asked.

  “A doctor who operates on men’s privates,” said Oliver.

  “No! Of course not!” Kathy whispered angrily. “What made you think that of all things?”

  “Well,” said Oliver, pushing his glasses up his nose, “if you don’t win the U.S. Open and you don’t want to be a urologist, what do you want to be?”

  How did this happen? Kathy asked herself. “Shortstop for the Red Sox,” she said weakly. “I played little league until I was about twelve and then I started tennis full time.”

  “Oh! Well, that’s not so bad. I wanted to pitch once. I’m a very good pitcher. I’ve got a nice slider, but I’m too small to make the Yale team.”

  Kathy wished she could just tell Oliver how much she liked him for not laughing at her, but instead she pretended to gaze at the dancers. She tapped her foot in time to “Some Enchanted Evening.” “It doesn’t matter, being small,” she said when the music was over. “I’m a shrimp, but I’m still going to beat ’em all.”

  “There you go again,” said Oliver, grinning.

  “Who on earth was that?” Kathy’s mother asked after Kathy had jumped into the front seat of the station wagon and wrapped a towel around herself for warmth. “Where’s your sweater? Who was that boy?”

  “I lent him my sweater,” said Kathy. “He was cold.”

  “You lent him your sweater!”

  “It’s my tennis sweater. It looks okay on a boy.”

  “Kathy, that’s a fifty dollar sweater. Who was that funny looking boy?” Mrs. Bardy ran the fingers of her left hand through her hair, a masculine gesture that Kathy had not inherited and did not like. Her mother did this when she was worried or tired. It occurred to Kathy that her mother seemed worried or tired a great deal of the time. She was always pinching the bridge of her nose under her glasses in weariness. Her mother had never cared for hairdos or clothes or pretty objects, but recently she seemed to care even less for these things. Her time was divided in three parts: work, family, and Kathy’s tennis. As for the latter Kathy wished she could relieve her mother in some way, but that of course was impossible. Once upon a time her mother had been an athlete too, with a strong, hard body that looked so healthy and young that she didn’t need plucked eyebrows or lovely dresses. Ten years behind the counter at the photo shop had made her pallid and soft, or was it just the contrast with Julia’s beautiful mother that Kathy saw? “His name is Oliver English,” said Kathy, “and he goes to Yale.”