Long May She Reign

by Ellen Emerson White

  “So,” Susan said. “What’s going on?”

  Should she pretend she had been doing nothing more than coincidentally walking by, and had just stopped to say a friendly hello?

  “Meg?” Susan asked.

  Jesus, was she that damn transparent? It wasn’t like she had some sort of agenda. As such. Not exactly like that, anyway. Meg took a deep breath. “Could I borrow your tennis racket?”

  “Sure,” Susan said, and pulled it out from underneath the bed. “You know, if you wanted, you could keep it upstairs. I almost never use it.”

  Meg shook her head. “No, I’ll bring it back in about an hour. I was just, you know, going to—go hit for a while.” All right, she’d said it aloud. Now she was committed to doing it.

  Susan’s eyebrows went up, but she just handed her the racket. “Okay. Who you playing with?”

  Well, she hadn’t thought it out quite that far, so Meg shrugged.

  “Do you have any tennis balls?” Susan asked.

  Hadn’t thought that part out, either. Meg shook her head.

  “Okay.” Susan dug around until she found a can of balls, too. “I can’t play with you, though.”

  It was foolish to be disappointed—maybe even a little crushed—by that, but she was. “Well, no,” Meg said. “I mean, you just got back from running, so—”

  “I gave you my racket,” Susan said.

  Oh. Right. Yes, trying to hit without one would present some challenges. Meg frowned.

  “Let’s go find Tammy,” Susan said. “She was on her team in high school.”

  Really? “Is she good?” Meg asked.

  Susan shrugged. “She’ll be a damn sight better than I am.”

  Tammy was in her room, studying for a biology quiz, eating Cap’n Crunch out of the box, and looking bored, so she seemed happy enough about the idea of going to play tennis for a while, although she looked at Meg’s brace and cane dubiously. Then, on their way downstairs, they ran into Juliana and Mark and Andy, all of whom wanted to come along to watch, Meg deciding not to point out that she might end up taking one swing, yelping in pain, and then having to be helped back to the dorm—or maybe straight to the nearest emergency room.

  However, her agents all looked nervous enough to indicate that that probability had occurred to them.

  “Maybe I should carry the racket,” Juliana said. “If anyone’s out there, and they see you with it, they’ll want to take a bunch of pictures.”

  Sadly, that was likely to be true.

  “But if they think she’s going to go watch other people play, they might want to take pictures of her looking wistful,” Tammy said.

  Andy frowned. “Maybe we should stagger our exits. Juliana and Tammy could be going off to play, and the rest of us can leave after that, like we’re going to the Snack Bar or something.”

  They were all becoming amazingly, and appallingly, media-savvy.

  This was also already turning into much too big a deal, so Meg stayed out of the debate, but in rapid course, the rest of them decided that they would all walk together, but Susan would carry the racket, because Juliana’s flip-flops did not look sufficiently jock-like.

  And there was a photographer hanging around on Park Street—possibly two, although the second person might just have been a tourist—so, maybe it was just as well that she didn’t appear to be doing anything unusual. The guy looked bored, snapping a few cursory shots, but mainly, looked bored.

  Just walking—limping—across the campus to the tennis courts was enough to wear her out, but she was damned if she was going to admit it.

  “You sure you still want to play?” Susan asked.

  Sometimes, it would be nice if she were less god-damned attentive. “Yup,” Meg said.

  Most of the courts were full, but there was an open one in the middle. Which meant that everyone else playing would have an excellent view of this disaster-in-the-making, but, okay. Too late now. They were already here.

  “Um, do you just want to rally?” Tammy asked.

  No, she wanted to leap into an intense, competitive, no-holds-barred match. Meg nodded. “That would be good, thank you.”

  “Okay,” Tammy said, looked at Susan for reassurance, and then trotted over to the far side of the court.

  Meg swallowed and bent over to tighten the straps on her brace. This was a mistake. A very big mistake.

  On the other hand, the worst that could happen was that she would walk out there, fall down, and shred her knee again. Or she might land on her splint, and rebreak some of the bones in her hand. Both possibilities would suck, but wouldn’t be the end of the world. The end of her summer, and most of next semester, maybe, but not the world.

  All of the other people playing had noticed that she was there, but most of them were too cool to stare, and continued with whatever they were doing on their own courts, although they gave her stray glances.

  Tammy was waiting patiently, bouncing a ball on top of her racket. The way she moved indicated that she was probably an average player, but not an excellent one.

  “Go take a couple of swings,” Susan said.

  Meg nodded, using her right arm to pin the racket against her side so that she could move the strings into better alignment with her good hand. Her stomach was starting to hurt, and she swallowed again.

  “Ah, I bet you’re a crappy player, anyway,” Juliana said. “Tammy can probably beat the pants off you.”

  Which was just the right mean joke to make. Meg grinned, and made her way over to the baseline. She tested her weight on her bad leg, able to feel at once that there was a better than even chance that it would give out, and that her already limited recovery was going to rest upon a combination of sheer luck, not falling—or even tripping, and the brace holding firm.

  “Do you want me to hit it right to you?” Tammy asked.

  No, she should hit it as far away as possible, and make her run to get it. But, Meg just nodded.

  Tammy hesitated, bounced the ball a couple more times, and then hit a slow, looping shot towards her. The ball was coming to her backhand, and Meg panicked, because she couldn’t think of a way to hit it without using her left leg. And she’d always had a two-handed backhand, except when she was on the run and couldn’t get to a ball in time, so she had no idea how to—she swung late, and mis-hit the ball badly enough to send it flying into the next court.

  Fuck.

  She thought she might burst into tears right there, especially when the guy playing next to her retrieved the ball and brought it directly to her, instead of casually hitting it in her direction.

  “I’m sorry,” Meg said. “I—haven’t played for a while.”

  The guy shrugged. He looked vaguely familiar—maybe she’d seen him hanging out in Goodrich, or something. “No problem,” he said, and then nodded in the direction of the grassy slope, where Susan, Juliana, Mark, and Andy were sitting. “Hey, Susan, how’s it going?”

  “Hi, Burt,” Susan said.

  She should no longer be surprised that Susan seemed to know everyone on the entire campus.

  “Should I hit you another?” Tammy asked.

  Meg stuck the ball into the pocket of her sweatpants, and nodded.

  The second shot also came to her backhand, and she didn’t want to risk missing it again, so she let it go by.

  “Sorry,” Tammy said, looking flustered. “I forgot you’re left-handed, and—I’m not very good at aiming.”

  Meg shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I just—it’s fine.”

  This time, the ball came to her forehand, but it was couple of inches out of reach, and she was afraid to move towards it, so she had to watch it go past her and bang up against the fence. Again.

  Okay. The experiment was a complete and total failure.

  She could feel tears in her eyes, but managed to blink them back as she limped over to pick up the two balls and leave the court, her good leg almost as weak and shaky as her bad one was.

  “Hit it to her,” Susan s
aid quietly, from her spot on the grass.

  What did it look like she was trying to do? Meg shook her head.

  “Just hit a ball back to her,” Susan said. “Like she double-faulted, and needs one so she can serve again.”

  People were pretending not to watch, but she could hear—from the increasing lack of nearby ball- and sneaker-sounds—that most of them had stopped playing, so she was attracting some attention.

  Way too much attention.

  What a stupid, demoralizing, and depressing idea this had been.

  “Okay. Just hit them back to her, so she can pack them into the can,” Susan said.

  What, like Tammy couldn’t walk over, and do that on their way off the court?

  “Or, you could hit the ball at Susan’s head,” Juliana said. “Since she’s completely pissing you off right now.”

  That one sounded like a pretty good idea. She balanced a ball on her racket, flipped it up in the air, and then swung, hitting a clean forehand over the net.

  Tammy looked surprised, but hit it back. Meg had to let it bounce twice to be able to reach it without hurting herself, but was able to return the ball fairly smoothly.

  They put together a few abortive rallies, during which Meg had to keep watching balls go by, and Tammy got increasingly frustrated because she couldn’t control her shots better.

  “I can’t do this, Meg,” she said. “It’s too much pressure.”

  Right. Meg nodded, and turned to leave the court.

  A girl from the court on their other side—who had been hitting methodical, steady ground-strokes and serves the entire time they had been there—walked over to intercept her.

  “Want to hit for a few minutes?” she asked. She was quite tall, and wearing a Prince visor, with light brown hair tied back in a neat, perky ponytail.

  With a complete stranger? Hell, no. Besides, she was tired. God-damn worn out, in fact. “Thank you, but,” Meg shook her head, “I really don’t have much range.”

  “I’ll groove them,” the girl said. “Just stay deep, so I can work the baseline.”

  Well, hell. That sounded like a player. Meg glanced at Tammy, who nodded. “Um, okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

  The girl nodded, and then frowned. “That’s your racket?”

  “No, all my sports stuff is in storage.” Meg gestured towards the grass, where Tammy was already on her way over to join the others. “I borrowed this from my JA.”

  The girl looked past her, and then waved. “Hi, Susan.”

  “Hi, Nancy,” Susan said, and waved back.

  Nancy. Hmmm. Possibly the same Nancy who was ranked number one on the tennis team, and had been picked to the All-NESCAC first team this season. Not that she’d been able to bring herself to follow the fortunes of the women’s team, but sometimes, she maybe glanced at the sports articles in The Record, or checked out the tennis pages on the Williams Web site.

  Obsessively, even.

  “That’s an incredibly crummy racket,” Nancy said.

  Susan shrugged. “I like it just fine. You two are arrogant, persnickety jocks, that’s all.”

  Nancy grinned, went over to her bulky tennis bag, and pulled out two other rackets. She hefted each of them, picked one, and then brought it back over. “Here. Try this.”

  Meg swung, tentatively, and then nodded. Now, that was more like it. The grip was a shade too big for her hand, but not enough to be a problem. Babolat strings, with VS natural gut on the mains, and Pro Hurricane Tour on the crosses. Which had been one of her favorite hybrid combos, too, when she was practicing. She braced the racket under her right arm, and felt the strings lightly with her good hand to check the tension.

  “Sixty-four?” she asked. Possibly 62.

  Nancy nodded, looking at her with more respect. “Yeah. Is that what you played with?”

  No, it would have been too hard on her elbow. Besides, she had never minded sacrificing a little bit of control to improve her power. “I usually went with sixty,” she said.

  Nancy nodded, then motioned towards the court. “So, you want to give it a try?”

  Yes.

  51

  WHILE NANCY TOOK her position on the other side of the net, Meg limped to the baseline, trying to concentrate and feel what her leg was, and wasn’t, going to tolerate.

  It was pretty clear that it still wasn’t going to let her do much of anything, but if she was careful, and made sure to have her right leg do most of the work, she could put more weight on it than she had been so far. Not much more, but some.

  Nancy hit her a perfectly-placed forehand, and she returned it to the exact same location on the opposite side of the court—and they both grinned, continuing with fluid, easy swings, and Meg immediately remembered how soothing a metronomic rally could be.

  “Holy shit,” she heard Andy saying behind her. “Look at that.”

  There were a couple of out-of-range balls she didn’t attempt to go after, and she was so rusty that she netted a few shots, but for the most part, they just hit back and forth, Meg feeling as though she could breathe freely for the first time in almost a year.

  The people nearby had stopped pretending not to stare, and in this particular situation, Meg didn’t mind having an audience at all. In fact, the bigger, the better, as far as she was concerned. Her agents were watching, too, and they all looked pretty happy. In fact, she almost wouldn’t have recognized them with such big smiles on their faces.

  “Can you hit a backhand?” Nancy asked, as she was retrieving a couple of balls up by the net.

  “I’m not sure,” Meg said. “I don’t know where to put my leg.”

  Nancy frowned, and tried it out for herself, as though her knee had been injured. “You could pivot, I guess, but God, don’t stride on the bad one. Just drag the toe a little, maybe.”

  Meg nodded, and waited until she hit her a backhand, with a room-service hop, and then cautiously pivoted to return it. A one-handed backhand really did feel foreign, and the ball sailed enough so that Nancy had to turn to see where it landed.

  “How far out?” Meg asked.

  Nancy shook her head. “You caught the corner.”

  Oh. Really? Cool.

  They hit for another few minutes, mostly forehands, with some backhands sprinkled in, and she knew she was starting to get very tired—especially when her accuracy began to drop, but she never wanted to stop, even though her good leg was trembling uncontrollably and she came so close to falling once that she had to drop the racket and throw her good hand out to catch herself against the fence.

  “Call it quits,” Susan said in a low voice, when she limped back to pick up a ball.

  Not a chance. Meg shook her head.

  “You’re stumbling, Meg,” Susan said, and then paused. “Pack your little bags, and come back and fight another day. Okay?”

  Well, she could scarcely question the wisdom of those words.

  “She’s right,” Juliana said. “Stop while it’s still a victory.”

  The sad part was that they were making sense. Much as she hated to do it, Meg nodded and made her way up to the net.

  “This is completely excellent,” she said, “but my stamina really sucks.”

  Nancy nodded. “I figured. The last few, you started losing the topspin.”

  Yeah. It was disappointing, but not as disappointing as having her good leg collapse underneath her would be. “Thanks for hitting with me, though,” Meg said. “It was—I can’t tell you how great it was.”

  “Anytime,” Nancy said.

  Even if she didn’t mean that, it was kind of her to offer, and Meg nodded. “Thanks.” She handed the racket back, resisting the urge to fondle it, first. “Thanks for letting me borrow this, too.”

  “Well, that other piece of crap,” Nancy said, and shuddered.

  Yeah.

  “Uh, look,” Nancy said, as Meg was about to limp away. “It’s not really my place to say, but—you were the real thing, weren’t you?”

  She co
uld be modest—or she could be forthright. “Yeah,” Meg said. “I think I was.”

  Nancy nodded. “I do, too. I mean, I always figured it was hype. Like, let’s write up that the First Daughter’s a great player to make the President feel good.”

  The President, who would never have told her that she couldn’t play as often as she wanted, but in hindsight, would much rather have seen her expend her energy on academics, or good works, not on a game. Meg shrugged, not sure how to answer.

  “You could learn to work around having a bad hand,” Nancy said, “but not a knee that won’t hold you up. Is it going to get better?”

  This time, she could either go with honesty, or optimism. Meg shook her head. “No, not really. I don’t think I could ever get back to even mediocre club-level.” The finality of that was fairly mind-numbing—but, there it was.

  And it must be hard to be a strong, uninjured athlete, standing across the net from a prematurely disabled one.

  “I guess we would have spent this whole year fighting for the number one ranking,” Nancy said, breaking the silence.

  Or maybe Nancy would have had to accept the number two rank, graciously, after being soundly vanquished. But, Meg nodded.

  Nancy looked at her, not without a touch of competitive fire lurking somewhere in her eyes. “You think you would have beaten me, don’t you?”

  Yep. Meg shrugged.

  Nancy gave her a cocky grin. “Keep telling yourself that, freshman.”

  In all truth, she probably would.

  Walking back to the dorm was almost more than she could handle, and she had to stop twice to rest, first on a bench, and then on the Chapin steps. She’d bought a bottle of sports drink from the machine by the courts, so at least she could pretend that she was only pausing to quench her thirst, not to prevent herself from toppling over. Tammy had already gone on ahead, and after a while, picking up on the fact that she needed some quiet time to recover, Juliana, Mark, and Andy headed off, too.

  Susan sat next to her on the steps, twirling the racket idly.

  “Um, Nancy seems nice.” Meg said.

  Susan nodded.

  “You know her pretty well?” Meg asked.