Double Fault

by Lionel Shriver

  “It was snowing in Nashville; I figured it out.” He trailed behind her to the car. “Willy, you’re goose-stepping.”

  “I’ve been given a clean bill of health.”

  “Recently?”

  As Eric scrutinized her askance, Willy assessed her husband in return. Among the other washed-out Amtrak passengers his tan looked out of place. He was more nodular than she remembered, the Adam’s apple, nose, and forehead lumpy and tuberous. In the snapshot she referred to he was smiling; this uneasy man’s features were wrung like a wet towel.

  Conversation en route to Westbrook was choppy; they were too used to speaking on the phone. Newly visible, Willy felt exposed. She let him into her dorm room and checked her watch, though the last hour had dragged so that she knew the time almost to the minute. “I’ve got to go work out,” she said hurriedly by the door. “I guess later we can go out to dinner.” The “I guess” leeched eagerness from the proposition.

  “Do you have to exercise now?”

  “I always do. In fact, I’m running late.”

  “There’s exercise and exercise…” His scraggled eyebrows raised. Groucho Marx.

  Willy wasn’t being difficult; she really didn’t get it. “Come again?”

  “Not before the first time.”

  She wasn’t laughing.

  “I was hoping we could, ah … stay in your room awhile. Get reacquainted.” He seemed embarrassed. Married almost two years, they should have been comfortably frank.

  “I’d feel guilty if I skipped my routine, and we’ve plenty of time, right?” She urged a smile, and joked wryly, “That is, unless there’s some tournament you have to save it up for.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Willy,” he responded in earnest. “I’ve decided my abstinence thing was retarded.”

  “Aw, I was just kidding.” Willy was still standing in the door.

  “I’ll get some winks, then. I’m pretty tired.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You look tired.”

  “Willy?” he called as she collected her jump rope from its hiding place under her underwear. “You are glad to see me, aren’t you?”

  “Of course,” she said formally, and fled down the hall.

  Willy lucked out and found an indoor court free; students were cramming for exams. Though Har-Tru was kind to leather, the rope’s central section had frayed from use. Ta-dum, ta-dum...

  The phases of each monotonous rope-skipping session replicated the rhythms of a prison term. The beginning went surprisingly fast, as perhaps would the first months in San Quentin. The early middle was the worst—the routine already grown tyrannical, an appalling preponderance of servitude to go. The vast middle-middle was almost restful, with no tempting parole in view; the walls of any cell must evolve to the walls of the world. The killer was glimpsing release. Some days in her last one thousand Willy thought she might scream; it is said that a convict may experience his final weeks of captivity as longer than the rest of his sentence.

  Bobbing in the middle-middle, Willy caught a flicker by the EXIT light. Eric, no doubt. Realigning a quarter turn, she kept her back to the door with the pretense of having seen no one. He didn’t emerge, but lurked in shadow. To demonstrate that she was no slacker off the road, Willy spun into a sequence of scissors, heel clicks, and double jumps.

  “Very impressive.”

  The voice was low and level. As she shuddered at its gravelly timbre, the rope smacked her ankles and lay still.

  “And how many of those do you do a day?” The figure strode measuredly into the light.

  “Oh,” she said offhandedly, wiping a drip from her temple, “a few thousand. You know—”

  “No, I don’t know. So tell me. How many thousand?” The voice was even, coaxing, but it was also a voice that someone might use before he was going to hit you.

  Willy folded the rope loosely, as if she were calling it quits. “It varies—”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re a slave to numbers. Rankings. Miles per hour on the treadmill. So I think you do the same number every day.”

  She knew she should fudge, but Willy was proud of her stamina and couldn’t bring herself. “Twelve,” she squeaked.

  “I take it you mean not twelve hundred but twelve thousand?”

  Willy nodded; she was cringing.

  “Now, for whom is this performance?”

  Max was extending his hand for the rope. Had Eric done the same, Willy would have withheld it, indignant. But she relinquished the Everlast to Max. Maybe she could get another one in town somewhere.

  Willy gestured to the empty court. “No one’s here.”

  “Let’s not be so literal. A performance doesn’t need its audience to be physically present. Is this theater for me?”

  “Maybe, in a way…”

  He shook his head sadly. “I don’t think so. I think it’s for Oberdick.”

  “He just got here!”

  “Nope. He never left.” Max lay the Everlast on his palm like a whip. “What is it you want? To beat him?”

  Willy and her husband were 350 ranking places apart. The notion of exceeding Eric any time soon was preposterous. “I’d be content to be as good as he is. To keep up.”

  “You don’t even want to fucking beat him?”

  She stepped back. “I guess I’d like to impress him. To make him proud of me. So I might want to beat him… a little bit…” She added mournfully, “Since with Eric, beating him and impressing him are the same thing.”

  Max lashed her rope on the court. “Why do you think I took you on in the first place?” The crack of the rope echoed off the arched ceiling. His modulated tone had broken, and Max was shouting. “What drove your motor when we met? Did you pound line drives for two hours so I’d take you out for a soda?”

  “No, I—” Willy shrank back. “I liked practicing line drives.”

  “And I’d buy you a soda anyway.” Max advanced on her, snapping the rope tight between his fists like a garrote. “My approval was a perk, not what made you tick. I took you under my wing because you didn’t give two hoots what anyone else thought of your game. No matter how much I required of you, you required more of yourself. You used to please yourself. And now you’re just one more little girl out to please Daddy. They’re a dime a dozen. He’s fucking ruined you. It makes me want to fucking cry.”

  Willy turned her back, running her fingers across the net. “I may use Eric as a yardstick. But I also want to get in shape for the coming season. In tip-top shape. Is that so terrible?”

  Max had come up behind her; he wound the rope around her waist, tugging the loop tight as he brought his hands together at her stomach. “Your knee is swollen,” he whispered in her hair. “I can see it, even with the brace. Skipping, you favor your left leg. Is that why you kept it secret? You knew I’d see.” He kissed her bowed neck. The Everlast’s wooden handles bobbled on her shins. “It was so awful,” he groaned, “when you fell. Your leg twisted at that sickening angle. And I couldn’t even run up to you. I had to stay back and let…” He sighed, and the moist straggles at her temple fluttered. “Later, watching you hobble… Don’t make us go back to that. Please be careful.”

  Max leaned down, nuzzled his cheek against her ear, and kissed under the lobe. The skin must have been salty. Since she didn’t stop him, he was obliged to stop himself.

  Showering, Willy turned the pressure up high to pelt Max’s smell from her skin, willing the agitating memory of his advances down the drain. Instead she considered his allegation that the source of her inspiration had become displaced. But wasn’t it human enough, when you loved someone, to want to make them happy even more than yourself? Was it so dreadful to have grown less selfish?

  For a tennis player the shift was lethal. Tennis players were selfish and good ones stayed selfish. Lovers were a cheat, a way out; if she jumped rope to impress Eric, she might escape the more exacting demands of her own expectations. It was too easy to delight lovers; they were inclined to be delighted
. Eric would make excuses for her, about her knee, about being out of practice, about being a girl. One’s self was not so easily fobbed off.

  Toweling down, Willy noted that her knee was indeed puffy. Bent, her whole body ached, as it did all day lately. Yet Willy still kicked herself: in meeting Eric’s train she had skipped serving practice, and had to cut her run to four miles.

  Max’s formulation was skewed. True, her private slave driver had towered to six-three, sprouted broad forearms and sharp shoulders, and developed a 120 mph serve beside which her own would forever look feeble. But when she envisioned its face, her taskmaster had Willy’s eyes.

  For the next week she saw Eric only evenings, attending to line sprints, weights, and ground stroke drills during the day. Though Max had commandeered her jump rope, Willy borrowed and knotted one of Eric’s, careful to confirm that Max was occupied before tiptoeing to the rec room, shoving a desk against the door, and playing the radio to cover the clicking sound on the floor. Though she tried to keep Eric and Max apart, when they ate in the cafeteria the two men’s mutual presence was unavoidable. Granted, she was too familiar with Max; she made compulsive private jokes while her husband shoveled his meal in silence. Maybe she even flirted a little, which was naughty, or worse than naughty. But Willy could no more conceal her intimacy with her coach from Eric than she could hide her remoteness with her husband from Max. Max was so much easier to talk to.

  Every night she and Eric made love. He was hungry, and vowed he’d been celibate on the tour. Willy patently believed him. An absolutist, Eric married = Eric faithful. Though even rote fidelity beat betrayal, she’d have preferred an admission that he’d wrestled the odd demon on her account.

  Willy still found her husband attractive; after so much tennis, his body was tight, neat, and deliciously stringy. But she was so tired, she felt so heavy, that feeling below the waist took effort. She had to remind herself to become aroused. And no matter how deeply he pressed on the narrow single bed, his presence felt indefinite, delayed, sealed up; it was like fucking by mail. His whisper in her ear sibilated, its tones thinning as if filtered through a telephone line, and the call of her name echoed plaintively as if shouted down a canyon from a mile away. Drifting to sleep, she wondered what they might do to get closer, then remembered that most couples converged by having sex and they had done that.

  A gingerliness to his touch was new, and when they bent to sleep like a 22 he would ask whether her knee was comfortable; his fingers were feathery. She almost asked him, Bealittle rough with me, but they’d been apart so long that she didn’t want him to think that in the interim she’d got into anything kinky.

  After five days he proposed, why not hit a few with her own husband?

  “I supposed you wouldn’t want to rally with me anymore,” she shrugged. “You’ve cracked the top 200. I’ve slid to the fives. You’re out of my league.”

  Eric insisted, but in practice he rallied as he stroked her in bed. He was too lenient and helpful. Far from trying to defeat her, he let her good shots go, nodding from his baseline with a whistle. The copious compliments actually hurt her feelings. That she could no longer excite his rivalry was the ultimate insult.

  “Can you even remember the days,” she remarked dryly when they were done, “that I used to give you advice?”

  “You still do, and it’s very valuable—”

  “Bullshit, I can’t tell you a thing. Even more astonishing historical trivia?” Willy mentioned lightly. “You were once jealous of me.”

  “When was that?”

  “Get out of here. When you lost the Jox in the first round or something, and then came up to watch me win the New Freedom? You were pretty pissed off at that party.”

  “I was not,” Eric maintained. “I kept in the background to give you the limelight, which you richly deserved.”

  “You thought I was a fat-headed jerk!”

  “I did not!”

  “You refuse to admit you were jealous?”

  “Willy, that was two years ago; why are you getting worked up? What does it matter?”

  “It matters,” she growled. “Good God, why not apply for sainthood already.”

  “I’m sorry, but I was very happy for you and I wasn’t jealous.”

  Willy stewed the rest of the day. Eric tended to rewrite the past so that his shit didn’t stink. In fact, the memory of his stiffness at that party, not to mention his ducking to the john during match point, had grown strangely precious.

  After two weeks, instead of switching off the light and collecting her in his arms, Eric lay back with his hands behind his head. “I’m feeling like a fifth wheel, Wilhelm. Tomorrow I’m taking the train to New York.”

  “What’s at home that you don’t have here?” she asked on an elbow. “Courts, weights, videos, games—”

  “Yeah, all those games we play.”

  “—You don’t even have to cook your own food.”

  “I want to buy some Hanukkah presents for my family. I want to see my father, and thank him for his help. Even tennis—after so much and more coming, I need a break.”

  It was decent of him not to mention that by-the-by his wife was also cold, aloof, and hostile. He turned out the light and rolled over. Tentatively, Willy slipped a hand over his hip.

  “Why don’t we just go to sleep tonight, huh?” he mumbled. “You’re always so wiped out. Get some rest.”

  He patted her hand, and indeed on release from what she never used to regard as a marital duty Willy’s mind had gone black and her body limp before she’d time to withdraw the hand from his pubic hair.

  Eric was packed before breakfast, and after slurping a cup of coffee stood on the mess porch by his bags. Willy was aware of keeping an extra foot from him, as if avoiding a magnetic field.

  “I don’t suppose,” he said flatly, “you’d even consider coming with me.”

  Willy loitered by the rail, wishing he’d phrased the statement as a question; maybe that would have made it easier to say yes. But she had taken a certain tack, and now appeared stuck with it. “No,” she said gloomily. “I guess I’ve got to stay… I could drive you to the station.”

  “There’s a bus taking students to Old Saybrook in ten minutes. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on an hour’s practice. You’d never forgive yourself. Much less me.”

  Hugging Eric good-bye, she clawed her fingers into his coat, like one more desolate Sweetspot boarder deserted on these steps and left to the mercy of strangers. Only after the bus had plowed down the drive too far to flag it down did she remember it was December 14, and she hadn’t wished him happy anniversary.

  Willy’s eagerness to outdo herself dropped a notch the day Eric left. Though she’d prevailed upon him to leave a rope behind—he’d no idea that the exercise was verboten—the inherent absurdity of repeatedly hopping over a swinging leather thong brought her more than once to a stupefied standstill. Mortified that she could indeed be losing her drive, she levied an extra, punitive three thousand.

  At dinner, with students cleared off for the holidays, the mess was bereft. Ordinarily fighting to be heard above the roar and clink, Willy missed their vibrant clamor. Sitting next to Eric, she’d been a fountain of banter; now she couldn’t think of word-one to say to her coach.

  “You and Undershorts,” Max hazarded, “don’t seem chummy.”

  “Relations are a little strained.”

  “Maybe it’s for the best he left, then. Discord is distracting.”

  “The trouble was,” she said sharply, “it wasn’t distracting enough.”

  That night Willy dreamed that she was late for a tournament. She told Eric at her side, I’m never going to make it if I don’t run. Eric advised, You’ll never make it, so relax. Willy began to hoof it anyway; the stadium was miles away. But the more she poured on steam, the more nominal her advancement became. She was virtually running in place. Willy grazed her fingers across her monumental thighs, which were hard, striated, and stationary. The musc
les were so heavily developed that they’d turned to stone. At last she gave up. Easing to a walk, she could proceed more rapidly than at a sprint. Eric reached for her hand, and the dreary overcast sky burst with sunlight. She would still not make it to the tournament, but suddenly a mere tennis match wasn’t of the slightest importance. Willy laughed, kissed Eric’s hand, and proposed that they order the broiled chicken.

  At Christmas, Willy’s regime was given a kick in the pants from a call to her family. Gert had passed her final round of tests to become a fully fledged CPA; according to Gert, Daddy was “thrilled.” One by one they each got on the line and expressed lavish concern about Willy’s knee. Their accord in urging her to reconsider her choice of profession now that her father’s prediction of calamity had come to pass betrayed a powwow over pumpkin pie behind her back. Well, screw them. For a few refreshingly irate minutes after the call, Willy felt seventeen.

  There was now a goal to shoot for. On the basis of her ranking previous to injury, Max had secured Willy a wild card for an indoor event in Providence at the end of January. Yet when Max conceded that Willy was nearly tournament-ready after New Year’s, his eyes narrowed, and he didn’t commend her improvement with any enthusiasm.

  By mid-January, Willy had got lax about checking on Max’s whereabouts when she jumped rope. He was a burly man, and when the thong beat tellingly out of synch with the radio, the desk blocking the rec room door proved a feckless impediment. This time he didn’t ask for the rope, but tore its handles from her hands, jerked open a window, and tossed the Everlast onto the snow-covered porch roof. In the draft, Willy clasped her arms and shivered. She chilled easily of late, though she’d always been hardy in the cold.

  “Come with me.” Hooking her collar like the scruff of a cat, Max hauled her downstairs, across the icy flagstones, and into the unattended health clinic in the next outbuilding. “Stand on that scale.”

  Willy did as she was told, and jumped. Maybe the needle was stuck.

  “Ninety-eight! What is this shit? You should be one-ten! Tell me,” Max snatched her T-shirt again, “are you throwing up? I told you at the outset, no eating disorders, Will. They bore me.”