When No One Was Looking

by Rosemary Wells

  Kathy, keep your mouth closed when you smile, your braces reflect. Kathy, you walk like a boy, said her hygiene teacher’s voice in her head, and silently Kathy stepped backward and walked away down the driveway, the crumbling stucco wall at her side under her fingertips. She reached the outer gates and stood by them in the shadow of a thick, squat palm until Jeffrey/Roger should come back for her.

  Aunt Liz herself came for Kathy. Because Kathy could think of nothing else to say, she asked Aunt Liz to tell her the bullet story, which Aunt Liz was delighted to do, stretching the details out until the moment she pulled into the driveway and turned off the ignition, the air-conditioner, and the stereo, which had played some unenduring Broadway show tunes the whole of the trip.

  Dinner was served by a butler, whose name Kathy did not catch, on the terrace beside the pool. The presence of Jeffrey and Roger, whom she could not yet tell apart, the butler, and Aunt Liz came between Kathy and Julia, and Julia seemed more a part of them than Kathy wished. Aunt Liz sat low in her leather-padded wrought-iron chair. Kathy’s eyes took in the whole of her, although she tried not to stare, and not to gobble all those unidentifiable things on her plate that lay under various sauces.

  There was, to begin with, Aunt Liz’s turquoise-blue silk blouse and the deeply suntanned face, nearly as dark as a new penny. The gold choker had been replaced by pearls. In her conversation Aunt Liz made easy reference to past events and people, all unknown to Kathy but all apparently extremely important or amusing. This served to make Kathy feel desperately ignorant, and she looked across to Julia for support, but Julia’s eyes did not catch hers. Aunt Liz’s right hand bore two diamond rings, and it held and set down a wine glass without allowing the glass to make a circle on the tablecloth as Kathy’s glass had done six times so far. Each of Aunt Liz’s fingernails was a perfect oval containing a perfect white moon, and her hair moved in the slight breeze as if it had been orchestrated just so.

  Kathy wondered how such a woman could ever have thrown a vase at Julia’s mother, since she was positive Aunt Liz was not the type ever to be angry, dirty, or even to go to the bathroom very often, if at all. A brief argument occurred about whether Kathy’s telephone call home should be made collect, which Kathy lost. As she excused herself to make the call Aunt Liz remarked that she was sorry to have forgotten to have steak that night but that she hoped it would not affect Kathy’s match the next day. It was Aunt Liz’s view that athletes ate only large amounts of steak and raw eggs.

  The telephone rang ten times before Kathy remembered that her family was probably somewhere between Dedham and Plymouth, possibly still at the new nursing home with her grandmother. Evidently it had been a long day’s work. She could see Bobby’s head resting in Jody’s lap in a waiting room somewhere. The lounge at the Springfield home had been pleasant enough with comfortable overstuffed chairs and fresh flowers in crystal vases. Would this second home be all that much worse? Would it be dirty and dreary with plastic armless furniture like the bus-station waiting room in Boston? She remembered the salmon-colored plastic lounges there. They had stuck to the backs of her thighs one hot night.

  “Marty!” said Kathy aloud before she dialed Marty’s number, as if to assure herself that she was going to call Marty. Her fingernail caught slightly in a beige silk sofa cushion, causing a run in the material. Kathy turned the pillow over and placed it at the far end of the sofa. As she dialed the number she had written on the side of her sneaker in case she lost it she stared straight into the face of an Inca dancer that had been assembled out of copper and brass pieces and stuck to the wall opposite her. He was very large and expressionless with only a suggestion of a face, as the metal bits, like small wings and shelves, were meant to be an abstract design. Kathy told Marty about the ten-year-old whose picture had been on the cover of Tennis World.

  “You know who she is, don’t you?” Marty asked.

  “No.”

  “Kathy, with one of the most famous last names in California tennis?”

  “Oh, gee, I didn’t know there was another sister,” said Kathy.

  “Well, there is, and she’s it, and you can take her,” said Marty, “even if she has been coached for nine and a half years and has played against her older sisters and brother, not to mention her old man, who’s the biggest coach in southern California. Keep in mind, she’s only ten. She won’t have much of a serve yet, so don’t hang back too much. She’ll have a fast return herself, since her brother and sisters will have served to her as hard as they can. I know these young superstar types. She’ll have learned to cover the whole court, so this is what you do. Are you listening?”

  “Yes, Marty.”

  “Don’t give her what she’s used to. Don’t play a base line game. She’ll wait for you to make an error in a long rally. Spin your serves, even your first serves. Dink her and lob her and get her off balance. Act like you’re having a ball doing it, smile, and you’ll drive her crazy and have her where you want her, mad as a hornet. Remember one thing.”

  “Yes, Marty.”

  “She won’t have much court sense yet, she’s too inexperienced. You have to play really mean to get court sense, and her sisters won’t have played that mean. Watch for signals. Since her father is her coach, he won’t do anything, but her mother may signal from the stands. She can’t stop herself. You’ll recognize her because she looks like Judy Garland after a bad night. If you see the little angel looking up at her mother or see a hand raised or anything, call the referee. Only if you’re sure. She’ll lose her concentration after that. Remember, little Miss Muffet’s old man has put about forty grand into each of his kids, and this one’s a spoiled brat. You play fair but mean and make her feel ten years old. It’ll mess up her game, and she’s got it coming. Who’s your second round?”

  “Either the seventh seed or a girl named Foster from New Jersey.”

  “It’ll be the seed. Where’s she from?”

  “Port Washington.”

  “Well, don’t let her ranking bother you. Just be a little hungrier and a little better than Miss Port Washington. She’s probably loaded. Most of those kids are. You know Angie McKenzie, the sixteen-year-old whiz, at Wimbledon this year? She’s a Port Washington special too. Her last tournament she was playing one of the older pros. Someone in her thirties. Anyway, McKenzie started off the match with a rally of a hundred and thirty shots from the base line before one of them netted a ball. She completely exhausted the other player. Nearly gave her a heat stroke. I want you to know what some of the girls do. There’s no way you can lose to this girl if you use your head and play your own game. Don’t get mad and don’t get scared. Remember that dummy who almost beat you at Quincy ...

  “Marty, please. The girl drowned ...

  “That hardly makes her a saint, my dear, or a good player. Just keep certain things in the forefront of your decent little Christian mind. Tennis is full of smarties like Angie McKenzie who’ll do anything to win. You have a reputation preceding you for blowing your stack, and I want that reputation killed right now in this tournament. If you get a bad call, stare straight ahead. If you double fault three times, follow it up with three aces. I want you to go into every match as cool as ice inside. You do that, and Miss Port Washington is going to think a snake bit her after the first set. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Marty.”

  “Tell me what you understand.”

  “I’ve got to control my temper.”

  “If you do, you’ll be a leg up on every opponent. Believe me they’ll all have a couple of notes about your famous thin skin. They’ll try to get to you. Make it a waste of time. Did you do your two miles?”

  “Yup, and it’s about a hundred and ninety degrees here.”

  “Don’t eat much breakfast. Go into both matches knowing you’re going to egg both girls. Just remember they’ve both had every advantage that you haven’t. Their parents are rolling. They have private courts at home. Private lessons at the age of four. Girls like that are tr
ained like racehorses. Born with a silver spoon, Kathy, full of caviar. Grandma puts a grand in the savings bank every birthday, and they leave a gut-strung racket out in the rain and Daddy buys them another one. Are you there?”

  “Yes, Marty. I’m listening.”

  “Good. Call me tomorrow night same time. I know people down there. They’ll be watching you.”

  Kathy said good-bye and rubbed her ear as if Marty’s words were still lodged in it. Trying her own number again, she gazed at Aunt Liz’s living room as the distant telephone rang unanswered. She definitely could not recall ever having been in a room as clean as this in all her fourteen years of being in various rooms. She hung up the telephone and, checking to make sure she was unobserved, stepped cautiously around, going first to the copper and brass Indian, or so he seemed to be. She looked closely at the gleaming pieces of metal and decided that if such a thing were to be in her own living room, she would have placed tiny objects on each of the shelflike precipices. Perhaps pebbles or coins. The pure white carpet was as soft as down and as deep as the second knuckle on her finger. This was not a room in which a somersault had ever been turned, a dog had ever lifted a leg, or a piece of pizza had landed cheese side down—And you’d better get out of it before anything happens, Kathy advised herself. She opened the sliding glass door and between two whispering palms stepped out into the night.

  Once she had seen a photograph of a night sky as luminescent as this one. In a National Geographic some years back she had pored over a picture of the Taj Mahal at midnight. Behind the minarets lay a deep indigo heaven as cloudless and star ridden as this. How must it be, Kathy wondered, to come down to this place straight out of a Massachusetts February? How must it feel to stand in this warmth with your feet still cold from the Logan Airport parking lot? Julia’s family flew down to Florida frequently in the wintertime, as Mrs. Redmond complained that the New England dampness got into her bone marrow. Julia came too, missing school, and as it didn’t affect her grades, the teachers didn’t mind. Julia, Kathy reminded herself, was also born with a silver spoon and as a child had left any amount of things out in the rain, and these things had been replaced without too much fuss. There had been a bicycle which rusted after two weeks behind the lilac bush. Then there was a doll. Kathy had never seen the doll, but Julia’s mother was fond of telling the doll story. At four years of age Julia had been given a French porcelain doll by this very Aunt Liz. It had real hair and a silk brocade ball gown. Julia had forgotten it one day and left it on the grass, where it was ruined by a northeaster; it was found in the woods a week later, crushed by a fallen tree. Julia was to be punished for this, “and we really tried,” Mrs. Redmond had said with a resigned chuckle, “but she refused to sleep for a week without it, and when she went on a hunger strike, we had to get her another.” Julia claimed not to remember the event, but Kathy guessed it was true since Mrs. Redmond told the story often without changing the details.

  Kathy took one more glance through the glass into the living room where she’d felt so ill at ease. In this house, in the Taj Mahal itself, she decided, Julia would probably scorn the furniture just as she did at home. In the Blue Room of the White House she would sit with her back on the floor and her legs propped up against some priceless antique chair. Her presence anywhere would be as inviolable as the greenness of leaves or the drumming of raindrops.

  Long after Kathy had gone to bed, she opened her eyes on a yet sleepless night. She listened to the pounding surf outside and to Julia’s regular breathing on the other side of the room, wishing the two rhythms would coincide exactly. Think only about tennis, she repeated to herself, trying to re-create the sound of Marty’s voice, or her mother’s. Don’t start another argument with Jodi. Don’t think about Grandma. Stop picturing Oliver when you caught him in the shower. Stop picturing Ruth not drowning. She changed position for what seemed to be the thousandth time that night. The sheets were soft and slithery under her. If I win it all, and never stop, Kathy reckoned, I’ll have everything someday. One pro tournament championship with a big check, and I can pay back every cent my lessons and sneakers and everything else has cost. One pro tournament, and I’ll never sleep on those awful muslin sheets that Mother cuts in half when they get holes and sews up again with that uncomfortable seam. At last the sound of the ocean breaking on the beach caught up with her thinking, and she slept. It seemed after a minute that her eyes had opened again, this time on the inside of her head.

  What she saw was one of the three dwarves that stood in the front yard of their neighbors’ house. He had been there as long as Kathy could remember, although she did not know the reason why the people next door had chosen such things to be in their front yard. Upon him the snow had fallen and the November leaves. Summer sun had bleached his red hat pink. Against him Kathy had occasionally tossed a stone, and so his body was chipped. The dream had occurred to her several times recently. In it Kathy found herself to be in deep terror of this dwarf, although he did not move; she ran from him because under his quaint gnome’s hat were Dutch boy bangs.

  “Mommy, Mommy!” she heard herself cry out but in a deeper voice than her own and in a pitch so desperate it might have come from a woman who had been suddenly shot.

  “Kathy, what’s wrong? What’s the matter?” Julia was shaking her out of the dream.

  “What?”

  The bedside lamp was switched on. “Kathy, you’re dreaming. Wake up! It’s okay. I’m here. You’re down here in Florida with me and Aunt Liz. You’re okay!”

  Kathy blinked in the light. She felt Julia’s hands firmly holding her shoulders, and she felt herself gag. She pushed Julia aside and made her way to the bathroom.

  When she returned, an astonished Julia was still sitting on the bed. “Is it the heat?” Julia asked. “I don’t understand why they have August tournaments in Florida of all places. They must be crazy. I’d die of the heat.”

  “Southern kids play outdoors all summer,” said Kathy, shaking her head. “They can’t just place the Nationals in Maine every year, you know.” The sight of Julia in her familiar pink forget-me-not nightgown was comforting, and Kathy managed a weak smile. “Sorry,” she said, “it’s like this before every tournament.” She tried but could not remember the dream.

  “You never told me that! You mean you get sick before every match?”

  “Usually in the morning. I never wanted to tell you,” Kathy added.

  “But that’s awful, Kathy. I never imagined it was so hard for you. It looks so easy when you play.”

  Kathy shrugged. “A lot of the girls have it worse than me,” she said. “You know super number-one Jennifer Robbins? The one with the hundred-mile-an-hour serve and the big boobs?”

  “You’ve mentioned her.”

  “She told me, one day when we were waiting out a thunderstorm, she not only gets sick before every big match, but her whole insides turn to water. She goes out and murders all her opponents anyway, so it doesn’t matter. She eats nothing but rice and boiled steak the day before, but it doesn’t help. She just tries to find a ladies’ room away from everybody else.”

  Julia winced visibly at this description. “I’d quit tennis if that happened to me,” she said.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” said Kathy, smiling a little more. “Even you’d lose your sense of modesty after a while. No one cares, really. We’ve all heard a hundred girls get sick or cry or sit moaning in a chair all doubled up with cramps. In a few months you wouldn’t even notice.”

  “Are you still angry at me?” Julia asked suddenly.

  Immediately Kathy switched out the light and got back into bed. “No,” she said. After a moment had passed in which she listened once more to the insects and the ocean, she added, “You know how I am.”

  “How?”

  “Well, I’m not too Yankee, as you always say, for some things. I get terribly mad when I play badly, and I swear and cry. I guess I’m not too Yankee to come to you whenever I’m upset, but ... I’m too Yankee, I gues
s, to be able to put things into words the way you do. To say I’m sorry ... or much of anything.”

  “I know,” said Julia kindly. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s funny. I hate admitting things like this, but this evening over at the Hazard Bay Racket Club I wouldn’t go in and meet anyone. I was scared of them, and I waited out by the entrance for half an hour rather than face all those in-group looking kids. The whole time I waited, I felt like the world’s biggest chicken. I wish you’d been there, Julia.”

  “Kathy?”

  “What?”

  “Someday soon you’re going to be a better player than anyone at that silly club tonight, and you’re going to start believing in yourself.”

  Kathy won both her matches the following day. The famous ten-year-old she dispensed with in twelve games, and the seventh seed from Port Washington in sixteen games. She felt a twinge of pity for the ten-year-old, who looked to be only eight. She was a thin girl with flaxen pony tails, almost colorless blue eyes, and a French tennis outfit that would cost at least a hundred dollars in most pro shops. In the locker room after the match she sat in a hard wooden chair and sobbed as if she had been suddenly orphaned. Kathy knew the girl was probably afraid to face her mother, because she’d seen the mother’s face just before the match point was served. Kathy did not identify the woman’s features, having no idea what Judy Garland looked like after a bad night, but she could single out that rigid, dark expression, the set of the jaw, and the eyes, as offended as a chained dog’s. Kathy hoped the girl had at least a teddy bear and that it wouldn’t be taken away.

  The other girl, Kathy’s second-round opponent, simply disappeared after the match. She had thrown her racket to the ground and not retrieved it. These incidents Kathy reported to both her mother and Marty that night on the telephone to their satisfaction.

  What she did not tell her mother was that Aunt Liz had observed that Kathy had every right to look just as snazzy as the rest of the girls and had taken her down to the local tennis boutique and advised her to choose three or four new outfits. Kathy did not mind this slight to her mother’s tailoring or her family’s income quite as much as she hankered after a real Bogner tennis dress. Although they cost over seventy dollars apiece, Aunt Liz paid for all three as casually as she would have paid for three Cokes.