by Alan Chin
Uncle Harvey said, “You know what they say, better lucky than good.”
“Looks like Connor needs a lotta practice before his next match,” Uncle Martin scoffed. The whole gathering laughed and nodded their heads.
In the post-match interview, Connor finally confronted the other side of fame. The reporters hammered him with questions that sounded like sneers. Why hadn’t he moved better; why had he played so defensively; what was going through his head as Salvedra’s assault pummeled him like a pit bull mauling a rag doll; what would he change in order to play better in his next match; why is it that Americans can’t perform on clay?
For the first time, the press had swung against him, and he didn’t know how to respond. He stumbled through half-hearted excuses. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was sorry for pushing his father away from the interviews. I’d have bet a million bucks that at that moment he would have welcomed Roy’s presence to take the heat off his shoulders.
They broadcast Jared’s match next, and I was eager to watch it, but everyone else had lost interest. The uncles set up card tables while the aunties packed away the leftovers and cleaned the dishes. Grandfather Lin jabbed a toothpick into his mouth, then leaned close to me to ask, “Why did Connor play so poorly?”
I told him that I wasn’t sure, but I thought that he was confused. When I coached him, I made sure he never stepped on court without a meticulous game plan. That gives a player confidence and also gives them something to concentrate on when things aren’t going well.
“Roy is a fool to think he can coach the boy,” he mumbled. He pulled the toothpick from his mouth and pointed to a crab carcass on the serving platter. “Roy is like the crab. He can only move sideways, walking crooked.” He leaned closer to me. “Connor needs you.”
“He needs a professional coach.”
“I don’t care if Connor becomes a champion,” the old man murmured. “But he must make enough money to attend medical school and become the first doctor in our family. That is his dream, and mine.”
Connor hadn’t mentioned medical school since the first day I met him. After his championship win at Indian Wells, he went from an unproven player to a champion, from pauper to prince in one week. He seemed to enjoy the limelight, being fawned over by fans, signing autographs, and he had given me little indication that he still considered giving up tennis for medical school. No, I thought, Connor has abandoned his dream of becoming a doctor.
“School doesn’t interest Connor anymore,” I explained. “He wants a tennis career.”
The old man suddenly seemed irritated. “Some dreams are so precious you hide them deep in your heart to keep them safe, and you forget they are buried in there. You know his head, but I know his heart.”
The adults spilled mah-jongg tiles onto the card tables and began to mix them. The kids set up a Monopoly game on the coffee table. Grandmother Lin served a plate of orange wedges and a mango-swirl cheesecake. Grandfather Lin ate an orange slice and smiled at its sweetness. He cleared his throat twice and patted my hand. He asked me to join his table for mah-jongg, but I said that I would rather watch Jared’s match.
I could not concentrate with all the chatter and cackling. The ladies especially were having a grand time. Only Shar and I watched the match.
To our surprise, Jared strutted onto court with two diagonal red lines painted on each cheek and a red bandana wrapped around his head. He vaguely resembled a Comanche warrior. At the net, waiting for the coin toss, he bounced on the balls of his feet like a prizefighter ready to brawl, as if he couldn’t contain all the energy burning inside him. After winning the toss, he sprinted to the baseline and continued to bounce, visibly informing his opponent that this match would be a street fight that could get bloody.
It was no surprise when he launched an all-out assault on fellow American Greg Trout. He simply took the ball early and annihilated it with every swing of his racket, smashing winner after winner. Every time he hit the ball, I could almost hear it scream. The ball rocketed back at Trout even before he could finish his follow-through.
I’d never seen Jared play so fearlessly. He struck dead center into his zone like an arrow to a bulls-eye. I prayed it would last the whole match. His awesome display of precision and power left me stunned. I couldn’t even feel that envy I’d felt watching Connor.
Jared exhibited tremendous presence. A pure athletic aura surrounded him, and his body language displayed the utmost arrogance. Even when the chair overruled a line-call against him, he didn’t flinch. He simply aimed further inside the lines and poured on the gas. Trout couldn’t marshal any kind of rhythm. As the match progressed, Trout’s confidence crumbled.
Jared won the match in fifty-five minutes, leaving me in a cold sweat. I glanced at the kitchen clock. He wouldn’t call for another hour, but the anticipation gave me goose bumps.
A sharp whoop drew my attention to the Monopoly game. Christopher sported a cocky smile as he held out his upturned hand to Curtis, who had just landed on Park Place. Curtis counted out hundred-dollar bills while the others howled with delight, saying, “About time!”
Thirty minutes later, the phone rang. The mah-jongg and Monopoly games were still in full swing, and the aunties had carried out a second round of desserts. I wheeled to the phone, breathless, but Connor’s voice came through the receiver.
I asked him to wait while I called Shar to the phone, but he said no, he had called to talk to me, and he didn’t want his family knowing. I detected a note of fear in his voice. He said he had played poorly because he felt lost without me. Could I please help him with his next opponent, Tommy Bolton?
I’d never seen Bolton play, so I didn’t know his game. I asked if Roy had scouted Bolton, and Connor explained that Roy didn’t bother scouting. Roy felt that if Connor played his A-game, he would beat anybody, so it didn’t matter how the opponent played.
I paused for a second, silent, my anger rising. I asked him what his game plan had been against Salvedra. He said, “To hit everything to Salvedra’s weaker wing, his backhand.”
“That’s all?” My voice rose for the first time. Everybody at the card tables stared.
“Listen,” I snapped. I wanted to scream that Roy was the problem, that he needed to find a professional coach, but he knew that already, and I hated to undermine Roy behind his back. “You got scared under pressure. When you feel great and everybody’s on your side, you’re unbeatable, but a little pressure slithers into the picture, and you panic.” I paused to let that sink in. “Connor, to compete at that level, you must love the pressure. More pressure means more glory. You have to crave the big matches, the way you did at Indian Wells. That’s what makes a champion.”
I spent an hour giving him a general game plan that would be effective against most clay-court players. We went over everything twice. I stared at the kitchen clock the whole time, knowing that Jared was trying to get through and wanting desperately to talk to him.
Grandfather Lin watched me from his place at the mah-jongg table. I kept my voice low, but I know he heard enough to realize what was happening. At last I told Connor that he would need to scout his opponents himself. He knew what to look for. We had gone over it a hundred times.
By the time I finished, the Lin family had packed up and were about to leave. I handed the phone to Shar so that I could say good-bye to the Lin family. She took it into the bedroom for privacy.
Grandfather Lin shuffled over to shake my hand. Then, as if he had just remembered, he unclasped a silver necklace from his neck. It held a jade pendant the size if a silver dollar. He wadded the pendant and chain in his right fist so that when he shook my hand, he placed the pendant in my palm and wrapped my fingers around it.
“I can’t take this,” I protested.
“This is the last of my cave treasure,” he said, using a coaxing tone of voice. “It brings joss, luck. Give it to Connor when you see him.”
I began to tell him I wouldn’t see Connor again, but he stopped me
short. “Nala, nala”—take it, take it—he commanded, then patted me on the head like I was a good dog.
I stared down at the pendant. It smoldered with beautiful verdant hues.
“The color is very dark because this is old jade,” he said matter-of-factly. “Old jade is strongest with joss. The more Connor wears it, the darker it grows, the more formidable his luck.”
The old man trundled to my front door and waved just as I clasped the necklaces around my own neck. The door shut, and the room fell silent except for the barely perceptible purring of Mr. Toa. I turned to see him perched on the windowsill, staring at me with his eyes narrowed and ears flattened.
After Shar left, I switched off the lights and gazed out at the shimmering city below, waiting for Jared to call. When he did, we talked about his fierce style of play, about Connor’s phone call, about how I was coping. I lied, saying that I was fine. I felt horrible about the lie, but I wanted him focused on his tennis, not worrying about me.
Before he hung up, he shared the good news. He had received responses to his emails from organizers of the Munich tournament, the Italia Masters, the Madrid Open, and the French Open tournaments. Each one granted him a wild card entry. He was set for the whole clay-court season.
I could not contain my excitement. I longed to hug him, but I could only sit there, drenched in the city light filtering through the windows. I gazed at those lights long into the night. Every hour or so, a word of thanks passed my lips.
I sat there until the sky paled beyond the Oakland hills.
FOR the next five days, Carrie arrived at about the time Shar finished our evening therapy session. The three of us would prepare dinner and eat while enjoying the tennis. Most often we watched other matches while waiting for them to broadcast either Connor’s or Jared’s match. Some days they showed one or both, some days neither.
Each evening, after the ladies’ departure, I waited by the phone. Connor always called before Jared. We chatted about his next match, which combinations of shots to practice, how to treat those nagging aches and pains. We never talked for long, just enough to share our voices. I followed up with emails, where I went into lengthy detail on each topic. I seldom talked about me, on the phone or in the emails, except to say how proud they made me.
Jared continued to wear his war paint and play his new all-out-assault style. He told me the other players had begun to call him Tonto, the slur being that the famous Indian was said by some to be the Lone Ranger’s closeted lover. They said it with tones of respect, he assured me, because they were awed by his ferocious level of play.
Connor, on the other hand, struggled constantly. At first I thought his issues stemmed from being without Shar, which was clearly part of the problem. He needed her to calm and relax him. But I soon realized that he struggled from hiding our daily coaching sessions from his father.
I began to regret that I’d come between them, but Connor felt it was the only way to keep winning and, given the situation, I had to agree. I also got the impression that the pressure was weighing more heavily on him and the bouts of throwing up before his matches had returned with a vengeance, although we never discussed that.
They won their singles matches until they faced each other in the quarterfinals. Jared overpowered Connor in that match with a barrage of heavy baseline bullets, winning easily in straight sets. In doubles, they were awesome. Nobody could break their serves, which meant they were unbeatable.
Jared won his singles semi-final on Saturday. The match lasted only seventy-two minutes. An hour later, he and Connor destroyed their opponents in their doubles semi. That meant Jared had to play two finals the next day. I worried that he didn’t have enough energy left in the tank to carry him through both matches, but he reassured me over the phone that he felt fit.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. My mind chattered at warp speed. I tried to use meditation to calm my thoughts, but I couldn’t even slow them down, let alone stop them. I felt that this final might be his only chance to win a professional singles title in the majors. Even though I am a Buddhist and don’t believe in a god, I found myself pleading with something out there in the universe to please give Jared that win.
If he could maintain a high level of consistency while playing this all-out-assault style of tennis, the trophy belonged to him. But I knew that Jared had been riding the crest of a momentum wave, and like all waves, sooner or later it would come crashing down. Few players can maintain that kind of peak performance for long. That is why the top players compensate by playing smarter, more consistent, high percentage shots. They rarely go for big bombs.
Final Sunday turned cool and blustery. Carrie arrived only minutes after Shar had finished our therapy session. We crowded into my kitchen. Shar steamed rice while Carrie and I prepared a spicy bean-curd dish, Mo Po Tofu, which my mother had taught me to cook. She always said that hot things restored the spirit, so I loaded it up with peppers in case Jared lost. I loved how the scent of scallions and chili sauce saturated the apartment.
After dinner, we sipped a French Bordeaux while waiting for Jared’s final against Nicolas Adelmann. The phone rang. I fished the receiver from its cradle, and Jared barked in my ear like a rabid dog. At first I didn’t recognize his voice. It seethed with hostility. He finally calmed enough to explain that Karl Diefenbach had paid him a visit. Diefenbach had pulled Jared’s wildcard entry for the Rome, Madrid, and French Open tournaments.
“Nonsense,” I snapped before I had time to think, adding, “Diefenbach gave us his word.” But I already knew it was true. I took the news like a lightening bolt, jaw rigid, heart pounding, lungs struggling to draw air. Carrie and Shar stared at me, both their faces molded into blank expressions.
Diefenbach allowed Jared to play next week’s Munich tournament because the draws were already published, but Jared would have to qualify in Rome, Madrid, and Paris. The qualifying events for these tournaments, however, were already booked solid. For Jared to play, at least one quallie would have to pull out, which was unlikely.
Diefenbach didn’t give a reason, of course, but I knew that Jared had played far too well to risk giving him free entry into the more prestigious Masters Series and Grand Slam tournaments. Strings were pulled to keep the fag from winning a major title. The strategy was obvious: brush him into the background and allow him to play only the small, unimportant tournaments while devising a way to drive him out altogether.
Diefenbach had waited to tell Jared the heartbreaking news, waited until minutes before Jared was to play the singles final, knowing it would pitch Jared’s concentration out the window and cause him to lose. Smart, I thought, very smart.
I tried to refocus him on the final, assuring him that if he won this tournament and Munich, his ranking would climb to the point where they had to let him play the other tournaments.
He went silent, grappling with the mathematical possibilities. I crouched in my chair, feeling the lie turning in my stomach like a hot blade. I had already done the math, and I knew he needed a minimum of three championship wins to get his ranking high enough for an automatic entry into the top events.
Ensnared by my chair, thousands of miles away, I felt so pitifully small and useless. While waiting for him to respond, I took a cold, hard stare at myself, seeing me for exactly what I had become: a disabled liar who was incapable of helping.
Outside, the wind picked up, thumping on the windowpanes with its soft, ineffectual fists. I became conscious of Carrie’s and Shar’s stares. They had obviously figured out from my half of the conversation what had taken place. Carrie turned away, unable to look me in the eye. Shar bit her lower lip and shook her head.
After Jared hung up, I switched on the television. They showed highlights of previous matches. I positioned my chair at my computer and began to type an email to Jared. I wrote that he needed to stay focused, we were not beaten yet.
It was a gigantic lie. I backspaced and changed the subject, saying that I was getting by, listing all the
things that I had relearned: dragging myself into and out of the tub, cooking on a stove that is at eye level, using the Internet to order groceries, taking out the garbage without spilling it over myself, sleeping alone.
As I typed, I thought how my former accomplishments were now only painful reminders of what I had lost. All that knowledge locked in my head—how to split-step as the opponent hits the ball, how deep to bend the knees during the serve, how to jump back to smash an overhead—made useless by a bullet.
So be it. My life was now confined within these walls. I had relearned many things, but I hadn’t learned how to help my man from half a world away. I grappled with the puzzle but drew a blank. My ineptitude astounded me.
The match started, and Jared began to lose, badly. His timing was off, and he sprayed balls everywhere but in the court. A fresh anger washed through me. My man needed someone to encourage him and fight his off-court battles. That had always been me. But, I reminded myself, that life was over.
If all I could do, however, was stay home with only this one-eyed link to Jared, I would surely implode. I knew how to play pro tennis but lacked legs. People with worse disabilities than mine played tennis. I’d watched them at city-sponsored events for the disabled. I marveled at their courage, but I instinctively knew, having played at the sport’s pinnacle, that I would never play wheelchair tennis.
As I watched Jared lose the first set in record time, I wondered if I could coach without being able to play. Could I share my knowledge without being able to demonstrate? I dismissed the thought, but a moment later I reconsidered. Would learning to coach from a chair be more difficult than learning how to cook dinner or sleep alone? I pushed off, gliding past Carrie to the remote control. I switched off the damned television.