by Holly LeCraw
The sun was in his eyes and he couldn’t see the exact expression on Anthony’s face. He imagined he looked generically pained. “Thank you, sir.”
Anthony let go, stepped back. “And your father, of course. Your father too.” He nodded again. “Shall we hit a little?” Anthony closed the gate behind them.
Jed’s game plan was not to think too much. He was only going to feel his body and try to remember what he had learned years ago, right here. He began to walk to the sunny side but Anthony was already halfway there and so he let him go, without comment. He watched as Anthony pulled a ball from his pocket, tossed it, heard the pock as the ball came smoothly over the net, and here was his racquet swinging back on the lever of his arm and he hit it back. He was going to think with his muscles. His racquet connected again, and again. See, he did not have to think. He should have come here before now.
The sun was bright and warm and the day was quiet and Anthony’s white figure shone against the trees behind him as hundreds of other players’ had. As Jed’s father’s had, surely on this very court. Pock.
Anthony was being either solicitous or condescending and was hitting to Jed like a machine, the balls landing in the same foot-square patch of court every time, until Jed hit him a particularly wobbly return. Anthony lunged for it, hitting deep into Jed’s backhand. Jed ran for it and swept his arm back, one-handed. That was what old Bayard Hall had always demanded: two-handed was verboten! It was for sissies! Jed remembered him at the sidelines, lean and white-haired, and behind him Jed’s father, half a grin on his face as Mr. Hall barked out his commentary, waving around his perpetual cup of refreshment. Sometimes that cup made its first appearance at ten in the morning, but no one had ever heard Mr. Hall slur his words—and the ball shot neatly over the net, clearing it by two inches, and landed just beyond Anthony’s reach. “Sorry,” he called.
Anthony didn’t answer, just pulled another ball out of his pocket.
Yes, Jed’s father had thought Mr. Hall was a hoot. Here was the ball, pock. Actually hoot would have been his mother’s word but his father would have agreed—he had been amused by people, he had loved them, the crazier the better—he tried to remember if he had ever seen his father play Anthony. He had had the impression that his father had not liked Anthony, but what had he actually said? Asshole Anthony? No, that was completely adolescent. Anthony had had a general reputation for chasing kids off the court when he wanted to play, of being, perhaps, too much a stickler for rules, even at Nobscusset, where things were done just so—pock—no, he did not remember his father ever playing Anthony. Although it probably had happened once or twice. But everyone had liked Cecil McClatchey: Jed’s friends, their fathers. It had probably always been that way.
For a moment a blond, laughing child danced through Jed’s mind and then he realized it was his father, known only from old, old pictures. Hey, come out and play! and then the ball was coming and he saw it would fall once again in the center of his forehand, and he clenched his shoulders with a sudden savage force and hit with topspin that sent the ball past Anthony’s surprised reach. It kissed the corner and bounced out untouched.
“Maybe we’d better begin,” Anthony called.
Anthony won the toss, and proceeded to quickly rack up three games. This wouldn’t have happened a few years ago, certainly not seven years ago, the summer Jed’s father was having an affair with Anthony’s wife, and Jed had been clueless and directionless and effortlessly in shape. He served and double-faulted, damnit. Concentrate and he aced the next one. “Nice,” Anthony said. Don’t be fucking patronizing. If he paid attention, if he played his own game, he would be all right. More than all right. He was getting looser. He could feel it. He was fighting back. He kept fighting and surprising both of them and then it was 3-all. Yes, surprising, here came the ball, it was going to land no less than two feet from the alley, just like all of Anthony’s other shots, piece of cake, don’t think.
Anthony was catching up, he was ramping up his game. Good. They came to deuce again and again but finally with another shot to the left corner Jed won the seventh game.
He walked back to the fence and his water bottle. He felt a moment of exhilaration before a voice that did not seem to be his wondered, Does it matter? Of course it did. He took a long drink. Of course it did. Otherwise there was no point.
Anthony had known. Marcella had told Jed that. He had known that Jed’s father was fucking his wife and so now he was facing Jed knowing that his father had been an adulterer.
Jed turned, went back to wait for Anthony’s serve.
It came again to the middle of his forehand. Anthony did not seem to be looking for Jed’s particular vulnerabilities; he’d rather Anthony be cunning, wily. Dishonest, even. Had his father wanted to beat Anthony, humiliate him? Stop it don’t think. Or had he thought he’d already done that, and so let him win? Ridiculous. All of it. Focus. It did not matter who he was or where he was or who he was playing. He used to want to win and he wanted to win now, and he thought, felt, only his arms and legs and grip old Mr. Hall don’t think just play! and it was his old body and he took the first set, 6–4.
They met briefly at the net. “That’s some good shooting,” Anthony said, and smiled. Of course the man could smile. He was just a man. “You’re not in such bad shape.”
Anthony was standing too close. Maybe just a half inch. Something felt wrong. Or maybe it was Jed, he didn’t want to be close to anyone, he had forgotten how to carry on a conversation. And then, it was not even a thought, her name was just there: Marcella. “Thank you,” he said. He walked to the other side and was again looking into the sun.
For a moment he was blinded and everything blurred into a gold and green and clay-colored mass, and maybe because he couldn’t see Anthony’s face or the court at all, because the white light of the sun dazzled him, he could not wipe his mind clear and she came to him again, lovely and foreign in this place where he needed to win. Marcella and she flowed into him. The ball came at him and he bashed it across the net. He had not realized he was working so hard to keep her out of his mind and now he concentrated in a different way Marcella Marcella he had been touching her and now that he had let her in he wanted to roar with the power of it. His father had been a big man, not a consistent player but he could summon up some power.
Power.
He saw his father serving and his mother up at the net, in one of those skirts that were so weirdly little-girlish, her legs muscular, a little veiny. They’d been in sync in a purely physical way. Even that last summer. His parents would have stood near each other, his father would have watched his mother crouched and ready, he would have known where she was going to go before she moved. If his mind had not been full of Marcella. Marcella—but she was receding now, she had given him only a temporary, illusory power, he could not keep her.
He kept hitting but he felt ragged. His eyes were adjusted now but it seemed like late light, August light, even though it was only July, high summer. It felt like everything was about to end. All depended upon the ball descending and hitting the center of his racquet but the stretch of his arm and the wrenching of his sinews weren’t enough this time.
“Should we take a break?” Anthony called.
“No. Thanks.”
He crouched, waiting, and the ball rose out of Anthony’s hand, and Jed wished he could crouch and sway there forever, the bright lime dot of the ball hanging, unmoving. But then of course it began to fall and it disappeared for a moment into the blur of Anthony Atkinson’s racquet and Jed thought how, really, every move was inevitable. How he knew that the ball was going to land deep into his forehand and if he ran he could catch it. And he wondered if his father had ever felt this powerlessness grip his spine. If he’d felt the bright air heavy and pressing. As he lunged, too late, Jed felt himself land on the side of his foot and stumble. He let himself fall.
Out of the corner of his eye Jed saw Anthony race around the net as though there were a true emergency—but t
hen he was walking toward him slowly, casually. “Are you all right?”
He’d landed the wrong way on his ankle. He tried to remember if he had felt a pop. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. He held the ankle: it didn’t hurt to touch it. He’d only tripped, there was a scrape along his shin. “It was just stupid,” he said, and took Anthony’s proffered hand. But as he stood and put weight on it he made a face, though he felt no pain.
“You don’t look all right to me,” Anthony said.
By now the few people on the other courts had stopped to watch. Jed tested the ankle and flinched again and realized, I want to get out of here. Enough. Larry Stowell lumbered over, and Jed thought for a moment that Larry was about to heave him over his shoulder and carry him. “You all right, buddy?” Larry barked.
“Fine. Really.” Jed limped over to the bench next to the fence. There was still time to recover and have it look legit. He rotated his foot. There was no pain. He sat down on the bench anyway.
“Not swelling,” Larry said, and poked the ankle with a thick finger. Jed remembered to wince. Nancy Hale had joined them, and she said, “Larry, be careful. Hello there, Jed.”
Anthony stepped just slightly in front of Larry, blocking him. “That’s good,” he said. “Probably not even a sprain.”
“Can you move it?” Larry said.
Jed was getting annoyed, as though Larry were his own brain, the part he was arguing with right now. Give me one good reason not to lie. Give me one good reason not to get the hell out of here. He looked up at the people standing around him and felt like a child surrounded by accusing adults he had once trusted who had now betrayed him, although he knew that wasn’t fair.
And then he finally heard it. He heard the thought that had been drumming in his head ever since he’d gotten to the Cape, and that had begun to build to a crescendo as soon as he had biked down Nobscusset’s shady dirt driveway only an hour before. The problem was not unfamiliar flowers or benches or plaques but a larger, an infinite, violation: What is wrong I am here this is familiar but Mom and Dad where are they not coming back why not—oh. The idiotic incomprehension, the foul stream running in a deep crevasse (deeper even than his thoughts of Marcella), the entire line of question and response, was so swift and compressed that it was not separate sentences but all of a piece, like a heartbeat. It had been there for days, weeks. Years. But he hadn’t been able to hear it until now. Now that he was in this place of clay and sweat and shifting leaf-filtered light from his childhood. Now that he knew more. Now that he knew that his father had not been an astonishing person of superhuman evil—that idea had been an anti-fantasy, a diversionary tactic. Instead, he now knew that his father had not done it. That he had been merely a weak, ordinary man. That he was, instead, merely dead.
He stood and limped around in a small circle.
“I don’t know, Jed,” Anthony said. Nancy sent Larry off for a cold pack and Anthony looked at Jed, eyebrow arched in amusement at her officiousness. Jed pretended not to see. He looked down at his foot thoughtfully. “You had me running, there,” Anthony said.
Jed looked up. “Seems like you were going pretty easy on me,” he answered, and saw something flick across Anthony’s face—not an expression, rather the absence of one, a quick, willed blankness.
“I’ll give you a ride,” Anthony said, turning away toward the parking lot.
“Oh, no, that’s okay.”
Anthony turned back to look at him. “You can’t ride that bike,” he said, with the merest hint of a question in his voice.
Jed suddenly didn’t care if Anthony knew he was faking. That would matter no more than anything else. “No,” he said, shrugging. “I guess not.”
At the house, Toni squealed when she saw him limping and insisted on bringing a tower of pillows for his foot. She fussed in the kitchen getting more ice and putting it in a bag and then a towel and crushing it with a rolling pin. Jed lay back on the sofa, his exhaustion suddenly real. He felt the match had lasted for hours and hours. He wished he had limped, convincingly or not, straight to his room. He watched Anthony watch his daughter. Sweet Jesus. “Hey, Toni, I’m okay,” he said. “Really.” He tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “I mean, thanks.”
Anthony said abruptly, “I’ll be going now.”
“We’ll play again soon,” Jed said. His vanished father, on the court, tall and smiling. “And I’ll beat you for real.”
Anthony smiled, his eyes opaque. “We’ll see about that.”
TONI ASKED HER FATHER THAT NIGHT, “Is Jed a good tennis player?”
“He’s fine.”
“I thought you said he beat you.”
“He won the first set.”
“But you’re good, Dad—”
“He seemed pretty determined.”
“Were you letting him win?”
“Why would I do that?”
She tilted her head at him. “To be nice?”
His heart twisted with a love that was almost like pain. She was distracting him from his resolve—which had to do with her, after all: always it was Toni he thought of first. He had a horror of spoiling her. Of literally ruining her. “Do you really think he would want that?” he said brusquely.
Her look grew thoughtful, and he realized that he had just pushed her into exactly the wrong direction. That she was right now burrowing her way into what she thought she knew of Jed McClatchey’s mind and heart—a place where, he knew with sudden certainty, she spent far too much time already. “Antonia,” he said. He closed his book on his finger, to keep his place.
“Uh-oh.”
“Listen to me. Jed McClatchey is far too old for you. Don’t get any ideas.”
She drew back in exaggerated offense. But she was blushing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This is not a joke.” Anthony paused. “Has he—”
“Nothing’s happening. All right?”
He put the book down, lost his place altogether, and leaned toward her, his hands on his knees. “Toni. Please. He’s been through far too much.”
“What kind of a reason—”
“He has lost a great deal, and he’s not over it. He may never be.” Anthony opened his mouth, closed it. Took a breath. “Besides being far too old.”
“I’m in college, Daddy!”
Anthony made himself pick up the book. “I’m finished now, Antonia. You’re smart. Think about it. It’s not something you want.”
His heart was pounding now. He had to say just enough. Hope that he could find the right formula, that it would innoculate his girl. With growing horror, he had been hearing the way Toni spoke of Jed, and he had asked Jed to play today so he could meet it head-on, see what he was dealing with. Anthony knew he was not the most astute reader of faces, but even he could see that Jed McClatchey was brittle. He did have those Southern manners, that overlay of geniality that went a long way toward masking anything unpleasant—God, to think that Toni was being charmed by the same act that had drawn Marcella in, years before, with Cecil! But the son was not the same, not anymore. Anthony could not allow this truth to cause him grief; it was simply a fact. Behind Jed’s reflexive affability he sensed a pit of anger that might be bottomless. He had seen it in his eyes on the court. Seen it in the smashing serves.
Or maybe he was seeing nothing. Maybe he was seeing himself.
He had been crazy to let Toni work there.
Of course he had wanted Jed to win, of course he had wanted to beat him. Whenever Jed was winning he felt relief, whenever he was losing Anthony had felt his old furious triumphant disdain. Or maybe it was the other way around. It had been a risky thing, going face-to-face for so long, and too often seeing Cecil across the net instead of Jed. Anthony was not sure of himself, of what he would say or do. There was very little he was sure of anymore.
IV
When Anthony had met Marcella, she had been alone. Literally alone, standing at the sidelines of a party, although she should have been surr
ounded. The cut of her clothes, the elegance of her posture, the way her hair was pulled back from her face in a topknot like a child’s—all were just slightly foreign, unfamiliar, not of the squalid American dormitory basement. Better.
When he walked over to her she didn’t notice him in the beery darkness until he was close, closer than he normally got to someone he didn’t know; when she looked up, startled, her eyes were surprisingly light under her sweeping dark brows. “Hello, I’m Anthony,” he said, but the music was pounding, and she shook her head: she couldn’t hear. He leaned in. Her scent was foreign too. It was an adult’s, a woman’s. “Do you want to go outside?” he said, so close to her ear that if he had pursed his lips they would have touched it.
She followed him out a nearby door to an empty patio. It was April, unseasonably warm for a New England spring. “Oh, my God,” she said, and sank down on the brick wall as if she were exhausted. He heard her musical accent—which he couldn’t yet place—and her words as if they really were a prayer. She turned her big eyes to him. “Thank you for bringing me outside,” she said.
Bringing. The word had chimed. He had brought her. She had been waiting.
Anthony Forbes Atkinson was not in the habit of thinking any girl was out of his league, and he didn’t think it now. But he had habits and patterns and a well-established level of comfort with a certain type of girl, and normally he would not have made overtures to Marcella di Pavarese. As it turned out, though, Marcella had been brought to the party by a friend of a friend, someone Anthony had known, in fact, since childhood. He found this detail affirming, and asked where she was from. “Firenze,” she said. “I am from Florence. Italy.”
He watched her lips as she spoke and knew, with an empathy that was strange to him, that English felt odd to her. “Are you visiting for the semester?” There was only another month of school. Maybe he shouldn’t be talking to her at all.