When No One Was Looking

by Rosemary Wells

  “Huh?” Ruth answered, focusing her tiny eyes on him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake in our bookkeeping.” He passed a paper to Ruth. “We posted you this morning, but apparently you didn’t pay us your entry fee. It was a mix-up, but without your eleven dollar entry fee you can’t play in the tournament.” He glanced at the score of the match. “I’ll waive the rules if you can pay now,” he added in a sad and hopeful voice.

  Ruth said nothing. She stood and went over to her bag, which hung on the side of the empty umpire’s chair. Out of it she pulled a white leather wallet and fumbled through it, dropping a dozen photographs and many coins on the court. “I don’t have it,” she said.

  “Is your mother here?” the man asked kindly. “Someone?”

  “Someone’s picking me up later,” said Ruth.

  “Well, I’m very sorry,” the man said. He reached for the paper and folded it in a knifelike crease. “If we break our rules, we’d have to do it for everybody, I’m afraid. Our accounting would be a hopeless mess. I’m very sorry,” he said again. “Next time be sure and enclose a check or a money order with your entry blank. Okay?” He turned to Kathy. “You are Kathy Bardy?”

  Kathy nodded, unable to find her voice.

  “Good,” said the official with a weak smile. He tried to joke: “At least we’ve got that straight! You get a bye, Kathy, and you play at three. Let me see.” He consulted more papers. “Pam Carly just won. Three o’clock. Court twelve.” He checked this fact off on his draw sheet, crisply put his paper back in the envelope, and marched away, his attention caught up by the match on the neighboring court.

  In Kathy’s wallet was a twenty dollar bill, paid to her the night before. She heard some part of her mind trying to force her to stop the official, to pay Ruth’s fee. She called herself a coward, yellow, without decency or a sense of sport. She knew she had cooled off now and that a kind gesture would give her a huge advantage. Ruth would not win one single game more. This she was sure of as she was sure of her own name, but after Ruth had squatted down to pick up her pictures and pennies, Kathy had still not moved, and in the end she did not interfere with this peculiar stroke of luck.

  Oliver sat down on the bench beside Kathy. She hoped he wouldn’t do anything sudden, like put his arm around her. That was all she would need should her mother come by.

  “Why did they throw her out?” he asked.

  “Technicality. Something about her entry blank,” said Kathy. “I’m getting a headache. I’m going to get some aspirin.”

  “You would have lost,” said Oliver.

  “Well, I didn’t,” Kathy said, and an extraordinary vision came to her of finding nothing but a lump of coal in her Christmas stocking. At this time her parents arrived and had to be introduced to Oliver.

  Oliver shook both their hands gravely, pushing his longish forelock out of his eyes. Whether it was his outsized glasses or his serious manners, Kathy didn’t know, but Oliver produced a smile of such sympathy on her mother’s face that she half-expected her mother to sing. “And Kathy tells me you’re a tennis player too? You played out in California? That’s wonderful,” said her mother.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Oliver as if he were addressing a queen.

  “But then you must join the New England Lawn Tennis Association. You can play in our tournaments. It would be so nice!”

  “I’ll put you in touch with Bob Katz. He’s the head of junior boys in this district,” added Kathy’s father, clapping Oliver on the shoulder with his rolled-up program as if he were a relative.

  These offers and plans were expanded for several minutes until Oliver deflated them with the solid excuse that he had to work most weekends and weekdays. Then a lively exchange of pleasantries began about the insane cost of a college education. Kathy began to relax, thinking her match with Ruth would go unmentioned, when Jody, Bobby in tow, tumbled out of the grandstand and described in detail what had happened.

  “Oh, Jody, can’t you ever shut your big fat mouth?” Kathy whispered, but this didn’t stop Jody. Her mother ended it all by telling Jody severely that Kathy was perfectly right not to pay the other girl’s fee, as it would be a clear violation of club rules. She told Kathy equally severely that she’d better pull herself together for her second round, and she told Oliver very kindly that she’d rather he didn’t watch that afternoon because Kathy had obviously been distracted by him to such an extent that she couldn’t play properly. Kathy’s mother was careful to make this appear to be Kathy’s fault, not his. Her father winced throughout all this, but because he agreed, he only advised Kathy to “put it behind you.”

  On the way to the locker room Kathy found herself alone at last, with a blinding headache. She made a sharp detour between two empty courts and found her sister, hidden under the grandstand, reading Dear Abby’s column to Bobby.

  “What are you trying to do to me?” Kathy asked.

  “I thought you did a rotten thing. That’s all,” said Jody, not looking up from her paper. “You had the money.”

  “You’re jealous of my tennis, that’s what.”

  Jody snickered. “The last place you’d ever find me is out on some tennis court hitting a silly ball back and forth,” she said. “I’m not at all jealous. I just don’t think it’s fair for you to get away with acting like a crumb.” Bobby began to whimper. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and pleaded, “Read, Jody. Go on.”

  “You never watch any of my matches. You never pay attention to what’s going on. How come you have to pay so much attention to this match? Tell me that,” Kathy asked menacingly. “Just tell me that!” She grabbed the newspaper, tearing it, and threw it down.

  “Please leave me alone,” said Jody. “Let me take Bobby to the toilet and give him stuff to eat and read to him and sit here all day while you go out and play your game, and if you win, I’ll do the same thing next weekend. We’re all a big happy family pulling for you, Kathy.”

  “Oh, you suffer, don’t you?”

  Jody considered this as if it had been an honest question. “No,” she said evenly. “But you do. I saw your face out there when you were losing. I’ve always seen you win before. This time you looked like you were holding out under a Russian torture session. And then you didn’t make a move when the girl said she had no money. Wrong is wrong, Kathy.”

  “Mom says I was right, Miss Billy Graham.”

  “I know,” Jody answered uncertainly. “I remember she liked it when the Herald American ran that interview and said you were lethally competitive. Maybe she brought us up differently, but I don’t think so.” She began folding the paper again, and when she had it right, she ran her fingers through Bobby’s hair and continued with Dear Abby.

  The sounds of tin lockers banging and not closing, girls laughing and yelling, swearing and calling to one another, one girl sobbing and then whining somewhere at the far end of the dressing room all went unnoticed by Kathy. She stood in a metal shower stall and let the hot water run over her for more than half an hour. Someone used terrible words and shouted that the combination on her padlock did not work. The padlock was slammed again and again into a hollow metal door. With identical rage and in time to the noise outside Kathy beat her head into the corroded tin wall behind her.

  A little after six that evening Kathy alarmed her parents by insisting that if they did not drop her off at Julia’s house her head would split into a million pieces. They finally agreed, although Kathy’s mother did not like her dropping in on people, particularly the Redmonds, who had such good manners themselves.

  “Kathy, honey, what happened to you?” asked Mrs. Redmond upon answering the door. “What happened to your leg? Have you had anything to eat? Is anything wrong? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, thank you, Mrs. Redmond,” said Kathy. “It’s nothing,” she added, indicating the bandage on her knee. “Just a strawberry. The courts were hard today.”

  “Well, come right in. You look li
ke a kitten that swallowed a bumblebee. Did you lose your match today?” Here Mrs. Redmond signaled to Kathy’s parents, who were waiting in the car to make sure that all was well. This she did with a hearty wave and a big grin, her silk dress swaying elegantly around her in the fine evening light. Then she closed the door and repeated her question.

  “No,” Kathy answered. “I won. I got a bye in my first round and won my second love and love.”

  “That’s six to nothing, six to nothing?” asked Mrs. Redmond. She dropped her g’s slightly.

  “Yes. I played well. I just came over to see if Julia wants to go over some algebra.”

  “Well, I don’t imagine my Julia ever wants to go over a thing like algebra, but I know she’ll want to see you, so just go on in the kitchen and tell Rose you’re staying for dinner, and I’ll get that lazy daughter of mine out of the bathtub.” She paused. “But I know when something is wrong with my Kathy, and something is wrong,” she announced with good-humored conviction, and she glided to the stairway and up, her chestnut hair and her skirt flowing behind her as if in a breeze.

  As Julia’s father was absent on a business trip, they ate in the kitchen instead of the formal dining room. Kathy never told anyone, especially Julia, and she didn’t know whether it showed, but she loved this house, particularly the kitchen, with its glass-fronted oak cabinets and varnished brick floor and the huge pantry beyond, more than any place in the world. So much that she wanted at times to cry out to it and ask it to stay and be hers. Happily the Redmonds didn’t consider her a visitor, and so she had spent much time in their house and at their table.

  “Now, Julia,” said Mrs. Redmond, dabbing at her mouth with a linen napkin embroidered with forget-me-nots, “your friend Kathy is upset about something, and I think we should encourage her to tell all.”

  “Jeez Louise, Mom,” Julia said, seizing on a huge piece of steak, “maybe Kathy doesn’t want to talk about it. You’re not a shrink, Mom.”

  “That’s all right,” said Kathy. “I almost lost my first match to a real klutz today.” She went on to describe how angry she’d gotten, but she did not go into the nature of Ruth’s disqualification.

  “But, honey, everybody loses sometime. See, you won after that. You shouldn’t get so upset and fulminating over a little tennis game.”

  “Did your folks give you a hard time?” Julia asked.

  “Yes. All the way back in the car. Mother blamed it on a boy, Oliver English, who was watching me. She didn’t believe me that I’d forgotten all about him during the game.”

  Mrs. Redmond said she agreed with Kathy’s mother that it was much too early to think about boys. “Your mother was an Olympic gold medal winner,” she said, “and I’m sure she knows what she is talking about.” But then Mrs. Redmond always agreed with everyone’s mother, because this was one of her cardinal rules, and then she would turn around whatever the mother in question had said to suit her own point. Kathy reflected uneasily that sometime years ago she must have invented her mother’s Olympic gold medal, or was it just Mrs. Redmond’s inclination to speak glowingly of those people connected to her in some way? “This is delicious steak, Rose,” said Mrs. Redmond.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” said Rose, who was listening to every word spoken.

  “Mother,” Julia said, “it’s not just a little tennis game. If Kathy gets to the finals in this tournament and does well in the next one, she can have a shot at the number one and two players in New England. Then she’s got a good chance of being ranked five or better in the next ranking period in order to get to the Nationals next year. She’s even got a chance in a million of being asked this summer.”

  “Fiddle faddle,” said Mrs. Redmond. “Kathy, that lovely filet mignon is getting cold on your plate. I want to see you eat every single morsel of it.”

  Kathy said she would try. After several more forays Mrs. Redmond pried out of Kathy that she was still furious about Ruth Gumm.

  “Ruth Gumm! What a name! Now if what you say is the truth about her messing around and cheating with the rules or the code, then don’t give it a minute’s thought. As you can see, Providence interfered in the person of that club official. Just don’t get so riled next time.”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Redmond,” said Rose.

  “Yes, Rose?”

  “It’s not my place, of course, to say,” Rose began, her ruddy cheeks shining in the soft overhead light. Rose’s whole face took on the expression of a Celtic Gabriel. “But there’s people named Gumm just moved next to where Cora works,” she said. “Big sloe-eyed girl just Kathy’s age. I would hate to say what Cora told me about them in front of Kathy and Julia.”

  “I’m sure Katherine and Julia are grown-up enough to hear what Cora had to say, Rose,” said Mrs. Redmond cheerfully.

  Rose polished the dish in her hand as if it were a piece of silver. “Cora says, and you know she never tells tales, that while the father is making rounds at the hospital, he’s a doctor, the mother has been seen in male company, if you know what I mean, in the daytime,” Rose added.

  “Thank you, Rose,” said Mrs. Redmond. “I’m sure that information will cause Kathy here to pity the poor girl instead of despising her.”

  It was difficult for Julia to sit upright in a chair. She much preferred to put her head on the seat of her father’s old leather lounger, her light-blond hair streaming down to the floor. Her bare legs and feet she pointed to the ceiling. This she did the second her mother left the living room to “retire” into the last of her three daily baths. “You’ll never guess what Mother’s going to do,” said Julia. Kathy could not possibly guess. She sat herself properly on the deep gray velvet sofa and sank her bare toes into the flowers of the Aubusson carpet.

  “You know that awful head Greco’s making of me?”

  “Yes?”

  “Mother’s paying for her to cast another one. She’s going to put it on the mantelpiece. I told her how ugly it was, but she doesn’t believe me. What’ll I do if I ever have a boy over and he sees it? My God, I’ll be embarrassed.”

  When Kathy had no answer to this problem, Julia said that the only solution she could see would be to steal the head off the mantelpiece in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep and glue it with Krazy Glue to the basin of her mother’s bidet. Julia waited for Kathy to laugh. Her mother’s bidet was always good for five or ten minutes of jokes. Kathy seemed to be in a dream. Julia slid gradually down onto the floor and, still upside down, scrutinized Kathy with care. “The Nationals are in Florida this year, aren’t they?” she asked.

  “Julia, come on. I don’t have any chance this year. Next year maybe.”

  “But it would be fun, even next year, if we could go down and stay at Aunt Liz’s house down there. You’ve never met Aunt Liz’s two boys, have you? They’re nineteen and seventeen, and they’re both absolutely gorgeous. As a matter of fact, I’m madly in love with both of them.”

  The Redmonds’ Siamese cat padded into the room. He walked soundlessly across Julia’s stomach and leaped to the windowsill. The room darkened. Kathy gazed at the chair in the corner. It was called the bishop’s chair because its back was high and pointed like a miter. When she and Julia were little, they’d pretended it was a throne and taken turns playing Queen in its red velvet depths. Mrs. Redmond never minded when they took massive pieces of sterling out of the silver closet to play Queen. She always said the silver was in need of polishing anyway. Over Rose’s protests and threats of quitting Julia had been allowed to keep live and messy frogs and snakes in her room. Kathy’s mother often said that Julia was thoroughly spoiled, but because whining and demanding had never been part of Julia’s nature, this was hard to prove. “Kathy?” Julia asked.

  “Sorry, I was just thinking.”

  “Do you have another migraine?”

  “Yes. I’ve had it since this morning. After I lost to that big tub of lard, it just came on.”

  “Listen. I have just the thing. I just got a book out of the lib
rary. Sit down over here.”

  “Oh, Julia. Not another miracle theory,” said Kathy, for Julia truly believed that the right combination of vitamins, hypnotism, and herbal liniments was the key to eternal life.

  Julia brought out a thin book entitled Cures of the Ancients. Then she unscrewed two wooden drawer pulls from a highboy. “Here,” she said, turning to a dog-eared page in the book and propping it up where the diagrams could be seen. “Now hold these two knobs—it says marbles but anything round will do—hold them against the base of your palms like this. Now pull your hair back from your face. My God! Kathy ... what did you do to your head? You’ve got a lump the size of a golfball there!” Julia stared. “It’s black and blue ... it’s green!” she said.

  “I just banged it by mistake in the shower today.” Even as a little girl Kathy had seldom fallen or injured herself in any way, but Julia knew enough not to say that she disbelieved her. She got up off the carpet and closed the door on Rose in the kitchen and her mother upstairs, because Kathy had begun to cry openly and to repeat the same swear word over and over like an Indian mantra. To Julia the queer thing about Kathy’s family was not that they bought discount shoes or saved coupons or were so tiresomely ambitious about everything. These facts Julia accepted because she knew herself to be more privileged than most people. The queer thing was that they were so very Yankee, so obviously opposed to affection of any kind, as if a kiss good night to someone over three and a half contained the seeds of a terrible destruction. For that reason Julia guessed rightly why Kathy had come, and she put away the book and the drawer knobs. Sitting on the sofa, she held Kathy’s head in her lap like an injured puppy, as she had done from time to time before.

  “Marty called,” said Kathy’s mother when Kathy let herself in at the kitchen door. Her mother sat at the Formica table, doing the bills. The unsteadiness of the fluorescent light, the plaid plastic backs of the dinette chairs, and the flesh-colored rims of her mother’s glasses all united to create an impression of extreme weariness. Kathy opened the refrigerator and took out a quart of milk.