All this ran through me that night. Swirls of dread. I hardly slept.
The next afternoon everyone from the team gathered to watch my match, including guys from the varsity who wanted to see who their new teammate would be. Kids stood at the chain-link fence, making bets. Jimmy and Bennie and Roscoe, my three friends, were there, too. They wanted to see if I’d have the guts to actually try to beat Robert. Mr. Dainty, who struck me as a stern, sullen man, was also there, leaning against his Mercedes. Near to him, Coyle straddled his makeshift motorcycle. He had turned sixteen recently and the first thing he’d done was get his motorcycle license. I knew that if I lost, Coyle would think I’d done it on purpose.
I walked out to the court. Robert was waiting.
“You ready to get your ass beat?” he said.
“I’m ready to play,” I said in a shaky voice.
“May the best man win,” he said. “Which is obviously me.”
“Obviously,” I said.
Robert flipped his racket to see who got to serve first. He only spun it a few times and he didn’t let go until I called it. I thought he cheated on the toss but I didn’t make him do it over. He won the toss. He chose to serve. We started up.
Robert had a long, slow windup and then that fast, chippy serve. It kicked up high to the backhand and he usually followed it into the net. He won the first game in four points. I double-faulted twice to start my service and he broke me. Then he won his serve again in four more points. He was up 3–0 in about six minutes. I won my serve the second time, but then Robert won his serve easily again. He was playing effortlessly, confidently. Meanwhile, there was a jittery, churning, trembly, damp nervousness circling inside me. It wasn’t exactly that I was trying to lose, just that I had been conditioned to give in to people like Robert for so long that it was hard to stop doing it. I knew Robert would go crazy if he didn’t win, and it was just easier to let everything flow in its usual direction.
I went down in the first set 5–1. There must have been about forty kids out there watching, and every one of them thought I was losing either because I was letting Robert win or because I was so intimidated by Robert that I couldn’t play. I hit serves off the edge of my racket. I shanked my backhands. I hit about eight passing shots into the net. I overheard the kids at the fence muttering “Toady Hall” and “tank commander.” Meanwhile, Robert glided back and forth on the other side of the court, tossing the balls to me in a mincing manner that I’d started to hate. I could see how the whole thing would play out. Robert would win and then brag about his victory, lord it over me in the lunchroom, but he’d be gracious in his own way and I’d still hang out with the “cool kids” after that. Everyone would assume I lost on purpose, and this loss would be irritating for a while, but I’d get used to that.
A few times I caught a glimpse of Coyle in his jeans and white T-shirt and black hoodie, straddling his motorcycle, watching sullenly. I knew what he thought. And maybe he was right. Maybe I was losing on purpose. Regardless, I hated being humiliated in front of him, and as the set went on I felt some counterforce begin to bubble up inside me. It was something I’d felt before but could never have articulated. It was the nervy, hateful dread of waiting in my room for the beatings to start. It was the resigned resentment of our lowered position. It was the desperate feeling that I had no choice except to succeed. It was the engine of the poor, what we had instead of professional training and instruction. It wasn’t a desire to win so much as a disgust with the humiliation of being forced day after day into a lowered position, and a hatred of the invisible lines of class that could easily be denied at any moment, but were inevitably used to rig the system. And slowly, the part that wanted to dominate rose up from the hidden chambers inside. I wanted not just to win, but to crush, to annihilate, to stomp Robert’s face and smash his teeth in.
I broke Robert and then held my serve and it was 5–3. But then Robert held serve and took the first set 6–3. I was down a set, but by that point the fire was rising inside, turning faster and faster. It’s what Coyle and everyone in the family knew about me. I was slow to action, but, once ignited, I was fiercer than anyone.
I won the first game in the second set in four points. I won the second game in five points. I won the third game again in four points. I was up 3–0. I was smacking the balls back and forth with an effortless confidence.
As Robert walked past me he said, “You could let up a little,” and nudged me, half as a joke, but not really. He was trying to rattle me.
Robert started coming to the net in the fourth game. I passed him three times in a row. He stopped coming in to the net. I drove the ball deep to his backhand.
I won the second set 6–1.
Between the second and third set Robert talked to his father, who’d stood off by himself the whole time, arms crossed, talking low.
Jimmy walked along the fence and I went over and stood near him.
“You know he’s cheating, right?” Jimmy said. “He’s cheated on like every close call. The only points he won that set were the ones he cheated on. You need to either cheat back or get a line judge.”
Players called their own lines unless either of the players called for a judge. I didn’t want to imply I thought Robert was cheating. That was just beyond everything. I couldn’t do it.
“I’ll win the games by so much it won’t matter,” I said.
Jimmy rolled his eyes. He thought I was an idiot. He walked away. A minute later Coach Schneider came out and gave me another can of balls.
“You know you can call a line judge,” Schneider said.
“I will if I need one,” I said.
Schneider looked off in the distance for a moment, then turned back to watch from his hut. I walked back on the court. We started up on the third and final set.
Robert started coming in to the net again. He broke me and went up 4–1. I broke and brought it back to 4–4. We were tied at 5’s, and then at 6’s.
We went into a tiebreaker.
By this point we were both exhausted, and to Robert’s credit, he had not given in. He got better when the match got close. He was a real competitor. He was scrambling and chipping and then hitting those high, looping forehands and coming to the net. I was basically hitting as hard as I could with my heavy topspin.
The tiebreaker started up. We were tied at two. At three. And then at four. Twice in the tiebreaker I thought I hit the line and Robert called both balls out. The second time I was sure the ball was in. There was no pretense of us being friends by that point.
“Out,” he blared.
I heard someone in the crowd laughing.
I went up 5–6 in the tiebreaker. That was match point for me. Robert was serving to the add court. He hit it wide, and started for the net. I smacked the return down the line. It landed in the corner. The net pole was in my way, but I was sure the ball was going in. If it had been out I would have seen it land because I had a view of the court beyond the line, but because of the net pole I didn’t actually see the ball hit the court.
“Out!” Robert called.
“Bull. Shit,” a guy named Leo Dusek yelled from outside the fence. “Hook! Totally in.”
Everyone started yelling the same thing—that the ball was a few feet inside the line. That it wasn’t even close to being out. That I’d won the match.
Schneider was already coming out of the hut. He met Dusek at the chain-link fence.
“That ball was totally in,” Dusek said. “Brennan just won the match.”
I walked over. Robert lingered nearby, waiting.
“Whatta you think, Brennan?” Schneider asked me.
“I thought it was going to be way inside the line. Like two feet inside. But the pole was in the way. I didn’t see it land.”
“He didn’t see it land!” Robert shouted.
“Every single perso
n here saw that ball land two feet inside the line,” Dusek said. “Like not even close. It was a total cheat. That’s match point.”
Schneider ignored the crowd and just looked at me. He seemed genuinely curious to see what I’d do. He knew I’d played on Robert’s court all year. He knew Robert demanded obedience from his friends in general and me in particular.
And through all this Robert’s father stood nearby, silent, but radiating displeasure.
“Do you stand by your call?” Schneider asked Robert.
“Of course I stand by it. The ball was out.”
A few kids snickered.
“Do you contest the call?” Schneider asked me.
“If it went out I would have seen it. I had a view of the court beyond the line. The pole and the strip from the net were in my way. But it must have been in.”
“Do you contest the call?”
Robert gave me a quick, murderous glance. By the rules of that round-robin, if multiple people saw the shot and the opposing player contested the call, the point could be replayed. Those were the rules for the team. But contesting the call could come only from one of the players actually in the match.
“Be honest, Willie,” Robert said. “Does it mean that much to you? Like, are you really going to cheat me? Is that what you want?”
“Oh, whatever,” Dusek said. “Come on, Willie. The ball was two feet inside the line. You won the match. We all saw it. Contest the call.”
“You already admitted you didn’t see it land,” Robert said.
Everyone was looking at me, waiting to see what I’d do. I could see Coyle, still on his bike, watching from a distance.
“I contest the call,” I said.
“Oh, God, total hook,” Robert exploded. “He didn’t even see it land and he contests the call. Way to be a cheater, Willie. Hope you’re proud.” Then, turning to Schneider, “How can you let him do it? He admitted he didn’t see the ball land. I’m warning you now, if I lose, this match will be under protest.”
Schneider seemed willing to accept that risk. He walked back to the court.
“Five–six. Resume play. I’ll call the lines for the rest of the match.”
We started up again, with Schneider standing on the sidelines. Robert bounced the ball for about twenty seconds, then smacked a serve into the backhand corner. It was a good serve. He started in to the net. I hit the ball cross-court, low and with topspin. He jabbed sideways with his racket but just missed. The ball was a foot inside the line.
“Out,” Robert called, forgetting that Schneider was calling the lines.
“Ball was in,” Schneider said to Robert. Then to both of us. “Seven–five. Match to Brennan. Good playing, guys.”
I heard Coyle rev his engine loudly, then peel away from the court, holding a fist up in parting. I walked up to shake Robert’s hand. His face was squinched and he was writhing and moving from foot to foot, as if he were being burnt.
“You are such a cheater, Willie. You know I should have won that match. And after everything I did for you. So fucking ungrateful. God. Such a fucking cheater. Don’t think we’re going to be hanging together anymore.”
I held my hand out.
“Good match, Robert.”
He just looked at my hand. He didn’t shake it. After a moment I turned. I started to walk away. But then I figured if I was going to end my friendship with Robert because of a tennis match, I might as well do it in style.
I turned, holding my fingers up in a V.
“Victory is mine,” I said, and walked off the court.
A few of my teammates came up and congratulated me. Some said that Robert was cheating the whole match and he had a lot of gall to say I was cheating. I didn’t really care. I’d won. And even more than that, I’d resolved something inside myself. There’d been an uncertainty all year, all my life, really—a question about my orientation to the town of Seneca. Coyle’s stance had always been clear. Mine had not.
When I got home, I told Dad I’d won in a tiebreaker in the third set.
“Yes!” Dad said, holding his fist up. “How’d Robert take it?”
“Not well,” I said.
“He’ll get over it,” Dad said.
“I’m not sure about that,” I said.
“Congratulations,” Mom said, and came over and hugged me.
I think she understood more than any of them what that match meant to me.
I started for the stairs. Coyle waited in the hallway.
“He was cheating the whole time,” Coyle said. “What’d he say afterwards?”
“He said I was cheater.”
“Typical Robert. He cheats and then accuses the other person of cheating when he loses. He’ll be sulking about it for the next year.”
“I don’t care,” I said.
“That’s right. It doesn’t matter. You won. You beat him. Good job.”
Coyle gave me a high five. It felt like the first time in my life that Coyle was actually proud of something I’d done. And I was proud of myself, though there was the expected fallout from that match. For the rest of the school year Robert avoided me, and when we did see each other he shook his head mournfully, as if I’d done something shameful. I didn’t get invited to parties anymore and I wasn’t welcome at his lunch table. I didn’t care. What I had hidden so deeply when I started at school that year, hidden out of resentment of Coyle, and a desire to fit in, had come out during that tennis match. I hated losing as much as Coyle did. I hated being subordinate as much as Coyle did.
For the whole time that I was friends with Robert, the desire to dominate and the desire to get along had battled inside me, and in the end the desire to dominate had won out. I liked being one of the people who fit in with the popular crowd, but by the end of my freshman year I understood that was never going to happen for me. I was too stubborn, too competitive, we were too poor, and I had that Brennan predatory streak: I would rather sabotage my life than give in once I was involved in a struggle.
As it turned out, I was not a suckup. I was not a climber. I was not a user. I was a defiant, blue-collar striver, just like Coyle.
4
The Open Sea
And this is the unwritten history of man, his unseen, negative accomplishment, his power to do without gratification for himself provided there is something great, something into which his being, and all beings can go. He does not need meaning as long as such intensity has scope. Because then it is self-evident; it is meaning.
—Saul Bellow
Mid-spring of 1981—Coyle, Fergus, Maddy, and I were all in the living room watching The Brady Bunch on TV, jeering at it, as the program showed the Bradys in some clean house, discussing problems in a more or less civilized manner, none of them swearing or getting enraged or beating on one another. We were shouting at the TV: “Stop complaining! Stop wasting time! Do your work!” when we heard the doorbell ring. No one got up. It rang again. I slid off the couch and wandered to the front door. I thought it would be one of our neighbors complaining about the noise, but it wasn’t a neighbor. It was a man in a suit with a clipboard standing on our concrete porch.
“Are your parents here?” he asked.
“Mom!” I yelled into the house.
Mom came out from the kitchen, drying her hands. She saw the man and her expression changed.
“Get inside,” she said. “Go on, Willie. Why make me say it twice?”
Mom went out to the porch and shut the door. I went inside and wandered to the window to listen. The others joined me.
“What is it?” Maddy asked.
“Taxes,” Coyle said. “We owe money.”
“How do you know?” Fergus asked.
“Look at his car. It has a government tag. And I heard Dad talking about it. We’re probably going to have to move.”
; “I don’t want to leave school,” Maddy said.
“What do you care?” Fergus said. “You don’t have any friends anyway.”
“Quiet,” Coyle said.
We all sat on the couch, heads to the screen window, trying to listen in. Apparently, Dad hadn’t paid taxes for years. Despite his many jobs, Dad still spent more than he made. Mom saved bits of string and rubber bands and tinfoil. She cut our hair herself. She patched our clothing, which we got secondhand. And with all this economizing we’d start to dig ourselves out of the economic hole we were in, but then Dad would go off and buy a car or come home with a VCR or plan a vacation we couldn’t afford. I was vaguely aware of his unrealistic financial methods before I was in high school, but it was on that day that I really understood how precarious our position was. Dad owed years of taxes. And as I listened at the window I understood that the IRS guy had imagined we were rich tax evaders in swanky Seneca, but when the agent saw the house with the lilting gutter, saw the beat-up car with the rusting wheel wells, saw the four of us watching, saw the desperate look in Mom’s eyes, he understood the truth. We were living in a kind of suburban poverty.
Later that night Coyle, Fergus, Maddy, and I sat together in our bedroom. We could hear Mom and Dad arguing in the kitchen below.
“Dad owes them money from taxes from before,” Coyle said matter-of-factly. “But he didn’t pay for a few years.”
“Why not?” Maddy asked.
“He got into debt. And you know Dad. He just does what he wants. He doesn’t think about it.”
The Brother Years Page 11