by Africa Fine
After the first set, we stopped for water. It was late May and South Florida was already in the grips of a typical heat wave. Although it was morning, it must have been ninety degrees. My clothes felt wet against my skin, and Jack took off his shirt.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
I tried not to watch the way his muscles rippled as he stuffed the shirt inside his duffel bag. His shoulders were broad and tight. I took another drink of water.
“Don’t they have rules here? No shoes no shirt no service, that kind of thing?”
“It’s not a convenience store. Plus no one comes here in the summer—they need my money.”
“Well, if you want to run around like some kind of male bimbo, that’s your call,” I sniffed. I was hoping to deflect attention from the fact that I couldn’t stop staring.
“Just don’t expect me to take off my shirt.”
He laughed. “Ready for more?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re taking off something else?”
“Tennis, Tina.”
I picked up my racket. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
The trouncing continued in the second set. When I came to the net in a pitiful attempt to serve and volley, he either hit the ball right at me (caused me to duck and scream like a ten-year-old girl), or he lobbed the ball to spots where even if I reached it in time and hit it back, the ball came crashing back at me too fast for me to respond. There was no time to talk or chat, and at one point all I could hear was the sound of my raspy breath and grunting.
The final score: 6-0, 6-0. I declined to play a third set, claiming my legs were about to disintegrate. This felt like the truth. Jack nearly bounced off the court, and I felt like stabbing him between his perfect shoulder blades.
After the match, we showered and Jack treated me to brunch. I hardly enjoyed my omelet with feta and Greek olives on a bed of endive. I hated to lose.
Once I arrived home, I threw down my tennis racquet and called the local public tennis club. I signed up for weekly lessons. As soon as I hung up, the phone rang. It was Jack.
“So, when are your lessons?”
My mouth hung open and I looked around the room as if he had me under surveillance. I didn’t even bother to feign innocence.
“How did you know?”
Jack laughed. “Because it’s exactly what I would have done. Just let me know when you’re ready for a rematch, loser.”
After we hung up, I called the tennis center back and asked if I could have lessons twice a week instead.
* * *
By the end of that summer, Jack and I were playing tennis five times a week. I stopped worrying about how fat I looked in my tennis shorts, and I even got a tennis skirt to wear. The more we played, the less tired I felt, and I didn’t have much time to think about all the cookies and cake I wasn’t eating.
When the school year arrived, I realized I had lost eighteen pounds, and I felt happier than I had in a long while. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the weight or because of Jack.
Chapter 7
“Jack lost his mother to Thomas”
By last December, I weighed 120 pounds, less than I’d weighed since I was thirteen years old. I realize now that getting thin isn’t the hard part; staying thin is. But I’ve grown to like my size-six body, and the clothes that go with it, so I have no intention of being Fat Tina ever again.
Last Christmas, Jack asked if he could have dinner with me and Aunt Gillian. His own family was also fractured, and I think he saw Christmas with us as an improvement over his own. As we drove to the airport to pick up my aunt, Jack told me a story about his parents, a story that explained why he would rather be with a cantankerous old woman and me than go home to St. Louis.
Jack was the kind of kid who was perfect for adult dinner parties. At five years old, he was the perfect fourth for a game of poker and he rounded out a game of spades nicely. No one in the Kingston family remembered teaching Jack how to play chess, cards, Monopoly, checkers, or Life. He just seemed to have been born with a talent for games.
It was even better when outsiders came to visit the Wilsons’ small house in St. Louis, because Jack’s little afro, red corduroy pants, dimples, and generic sneakers deceived adults into thinking they would win easily. His sister’s friends snickered every time a newcomer began a hand of bid whist overconfident and ended the game angry they had lost to a child.
Jack was never what you would call a graceful winner. As the last moments of a winning game were played, Jack giggled and whooped at the other player’s mistakes. On his worst days, he mimicked his father and pasted his final card to the loser’s forehead, grinning.
Sonya and James, Jack’s parents, warned their daughter about treating the baby of the family like a grown-up.
“Just because he’s smart doesn’t mean he’s mature,” James reminded her.
“He’s just a baby. A smart baby, but still a baby,” Sonya added.
Maggie and her friends would nod and say they understood, but Jack managed to make them forget his age every time he kept a straight face for an entire game of spades, only to surprise the table with a string of trump cards to end the game.
As ungracious a winner as he was, Jack was an even worse loser. That was the one problem with playing cards or board games with him—he would throw a fit if he lost, cry and storm up to his room or outside to sulk, effectively ending the game if he was the crucial fourth. By the time he was eight, his sister and her friends shook their heads and found other things to do when Jack went into his one of his losing fits.
The summer Jack turned nine, things began to change in his house. That year, Maggie was a seventeen-year-old senior in high school, and she spent the winter bringing her friends over to hang out. Jack loved the noisy, raucous afternoons spent listening to the girls’ gossip about boys and sex. Maggie had always treated Jack like a peer, not a nuisance, and she let him hang around when it was just the girls. Sometimes they flattered him and asked his opinion as a man, which he provided in serious tones.
Their parents would join the group after work, making tacos or bringing take-out Chinese food, and they’d all watch television before the visiting teens had to go home.
Jack noticed that his sister stayed out of the house more and wasn’t as interested in him. He missed her. During the day while his parents were at work and Maggie was out, Jack stayed with Mrs. Cambino next door, read Hardy Boys mysteries, searched for anyone who knew how to play five-card stud, and waited for his parents to come home.
That summer, however, they never wanted to play games with Jack and barely looked at each other. In July, James said he was going away on a business trip for a month, something he had never done. He kissed Jack good-bye and was gone.
So it was just Sonya and Jack one Friday night playing Go Fish and drinking milkshakes. Sonya won and tried to comfort Jack. Then the doorbell rang.
“Hi, Thomas, come on in,” Sonya said.
Jack sat with his arms folded against his chest, looking up at the tallest man he had ever seen. The man smiled down at him. Sonya twisted her hands, glanced at Jack, and invited Thomas to sit down.
“Jack, this is my friend Thomas.”
Friend? Jack knew all his parents’ friends. He watched his mother’s face. Her mouth was stretched into a false smile.
“He works at the university, and he just stopped by to chat for a while.” Sonya rushed the words out and disappeared into the kitchen to get a beer Thomas had not asked for.
Sonya worked part-time at a bank and was a perpetual part-time student at the St. Louis Community College. She’d been taking classes ever since Jack could remember without getting a degree, and she had brought home school friends before. But never a man friend.
Jack forgot all about Go Fish. He’d never seen this myopic, dark-skinned man, never heard about any friend named Thomas, not even when he sometimes spent the day at the bank with his mother. He didn’t like it one bit that Thomas came from nowhere to sit in hi
s living room on a Friday night when his father was away. As the man of the house, Jack felt that he should be doing something about it. But he was only nine.
“So, your mother tells me you like school.” He talked in that tone of voice that childless adults use when they’re uncomfortable around kids. High, slow, two octaves higher than normal.
Jack shrugged.
He pushed on. “Your mom said that you skipped a grade because your teachers think you’re smart,” Thomas said. He gave a bright smile, tugging at his short-sleeved sport shirt and brushing his khaki slacks.
“Yep.”
He answered only because his mother could probably hear them, and Sonya would not tolerate an impolite child. Children were supposed to answer adults, even when they said dumb things. Jack thought Thomas lacked imagination for saying the same thing every other adult in the world had said to him at one point or another.
“So…what else do you like to do?” Thomas tried again, glancing at the kitchen door as if willing Sonya to reappear.
Jack sighed. He also wished her mother would come back so Thomas would stop pretending to be interested in him. Plus, Thomas’s cologne made Jack’s nose tingle, and not in a good way.
“Umm, I like to play cards and, umm, watch Love Boat and, well, I guess I ride my bike a lot.” Deciding to risk a bit of rudeness, Jack added, “You know, you have the thickest glasses I’ve ever seen.”
Sonya reentered the room with two bottles of Miller and a fresh chocolate milkshake for Jack. Thomas looked relieved as he accepted his beer. Jack sipped his milkshake in silence. He frowned at his mother, who didn’t notice.
Thomas sat upright in a leather recliner. Jack sat on the matching couch across from him. Sonya perched on the arm of Thomas’s chair and chattered away about the university. Thomas was, it turned out, one of Sonya’s professors. Judging from his mother’s nervous talk, Jack could tell they saw each other often at school. He knew the bright stories were for Jack’s benefit and were supposed to be funny, but the more his mother talked and the louder Thomas laughed, the more Jack felt like crying.
Jack played with the straw in his empty glass. He asked to be excused during a pause.
“My stomach hurts,” he whispered. Sonya jumped up to feel Jack’s forehead and lymph nodes.
“Well, you don’t have a fever, honey, but maybe you should go lie down.”
Jack trudged up the stairs to his room. After a while he dozed off to the sound of giggling and glasses clinking downstairs.
* * *
During the month James was gone, Thomas came over every Friday night at seven o’clock as if it were his second job. Some nights Jack tried to wait him out, staying on the couch until his head bobbed. Sonya would tell him to go to bed if he was so sleepy. Thomas always hung around longer than Jack could keep his eyes open.
Other times Jack just avoided Thomas, losing a hand of gin rummy to his mother at 6:55 and running up to his room before Sonya could ask what was wrong. Then he listened at the top of the stairs to the hushed laughing, and later, silence. Most nights there was a long time between when the laughing stopped and when the door slammed behind Thomas.
After Thomas left, Jack would scramble to his bed and pretend to be asleep because he didn’t want Maggie to come home and catch him eavesdropping.
One night when Jack heard Maggie tiptoeing to her room, he tried to ask her about Thomas. Even though Maggie wouldn’t hang around Jack anymore, she usually told the truth about things. Jack quietly followed his sister into her bedroom. Maggie let out a muted yelp when she turned to find Jack right behind her.
“Damn, Jack, why are you sneaking around behind me?”
Maggie clicked on the small lamp next to the bed and the room filled with shadows.
“Sorry.”
Jack shuffled his feet and waited. Maggie took off her jacket, tossed it onto a chair and glanced over at Jack.
“So what do you want, Pee Wee?”
Jack grimaced. Nobody was supposed to call him Pee Wee anymore.
“Don’t call me that.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “I’m tired, so what do you want? Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”
Maggie hopped into her bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. She looked closely at Jack’s face and patted the bed for Jack to sit.
“I wanted to ask you about Thomas,” Jack stammered. He sat back against the headboard and tucked his face into Maggie’s quilt.
“Thomas?”
“Yeah, you know, Thomas, Mom’s friend.”
“What about him?” Maggie’s expression was wary.
“Well, why is he always here?”
“Always here? When does he come here?” Maggie turned Jack so they faced each other. Jack looked into his sister’s eyes and felt scared.
“Friday nights, when you’re out.” The words felt as if they were choking him.
“Since when?”
Jack was silent. Maggie looked alarmed.
“Jack, since when?”
“Since Dad went on his business trip.” Fat tears slid down her face, and he wished he had never said anything to Maggie.
Maggie hugged him and sighed.
“Don’t worry, Pee Wee, everything’s going to be okay.” She rocked their bodies back and forth. “Don’t cry.”
They rocked for a while. Then Maggie spoke again.
“Thomas is Mom’s friend. Everyone has friends over sometimes, right?”
Maggie patted Jack’s back. For once, Jack didn’t even mind being called Pee Wee.
“Now go to bed, honey, and stop worrying.”
Maggie smiled, holding Jack at arm’s length. She shooed him out of the room. Neither of them was fooled by Maggie’s performance.
First, Jack lost his mother to Thomas. When he left her for a younger student, one who didn’t have hostile children, Jack lost his mother to sadness. When she started drinking, Jack went to live with his father. After the age of nine, he never saw his mother again.
* * *
Last Christmas in Florida was better than I expected. Despite the fact that my aunt seemed to think that Jack was my boyfriend, the holiday dinner was altogether a pleasant one. For the first time, she didn’t scrutinize my plate with disapproval. For the first time, I stopped eating after one helping. It was the nicest she had been to me in a long time, and I felt sad that all those pounds of fat had been at least one of the things that had kept us from being closer.
Jack also noticed. Aunt Gillian’s eyebrows rose when he complimented me on the red cashmere sweater and slim-fitting blue jeans ensemble I’d worn for Christmas. Jack was too blunt for my aunt, who valued tact in others, if not in herself, but he was an improvement over the guys I’d dated in high school and university. Back then, I was carrying too much weight and too little self-confidence, dating guys who believed they were doing me a favor with their attentions. They were fast-talking, leather-jacket-wearing types who figured a fat girl would be easy to control. And for a long time, they were right about me—I gave them whatever they wanted and demanded little in return.
“I like that Jack,” Aunt Gillian whispered as we cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher.
I narrowed my eyes. She’d never talked to me about my dates, except to turn up her nose when she found out they weren’t from what she considered good families. I was thirty-four; it seemed a bit late for us to become confidantes.
“Me, too.”
“He’s good-looking and he’s smart, even though he says what’s on his mind.” I knew this last bit wasn’t a compliment. Only Aunt Gillian was allowed to say what was on her mind; the rest of us were supposed to go along with whatever program she dictated.
But I wasn’t surprised that she liked Jack. He had informed my aunt that her shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair flattered her face and that he hated when older women dyed their hair trying to look young. I had cringed, thinking she would object to being called an older woman. But she just preened, patting her hair and of
fering him more lasagna.
“Are you two dating?” She was prim, her cheeks reddening as if the question was somehow improper.
“No.” I hadn’t told Aunt Gillian about the aborted romance with Jack five years ago, and I had no intention of doing so now.
“I’ll bet he doesn’t even own a leather jacket.”
I laughed. She was referring to a boy I’d gone out with a few times my senior year in high school. He wore a clever little brown leather jacket anytime the temperature dropped below seventy degrees. Aunt Gillian had viewed it as a sign of his inferior character, and I did, too, although I mounted a vigorous defense of his right to wear leather when she made comments about it.
“Maybe you should date Jack.”
She huffed. “I’m just concerned for you. You don’t want to end up old and alone, do you?”
I turned to look at her, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. It was the first time I’d ever heard her allude to any dissatisfaction with her life. Aunt Gillian was the type to soldier on, no matter what happened. Her husband left her—she figured out how to support herself. My parents died—she took me in. Aunt Gillian did whatever had to be done, and she never complained about it. The thought of a vulnerable Aunt Gillian was too much for me.
“I’d better go make sure Jack hasn’t eaten all the apple pie.”
She nodded, her back still to me. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn she was crying.
That was less than six months ago. I’d ignored the signs that all was not well with my aunt, but they were there. I thought the changes in Aunt Gillian, in my life, had come out of nowhere. Turns out, I just wasn’t paying attention.
Chapter 8
“You drive like Dale Earnhardt”
Aunt Gillian refused to let us hire movers to transport her things to my house. “I don’t want strangers going through my things,” she told me.
“Aunt Gillian, they don’t go through your stuff. They just move the boxes and put the furniture where you want it.” Patience, I had decided, was the key to dealing with Aunt Gillian. I was getting to know her all over again, because we hadn’t spent this much time together since I was a teenager, and because her increasing dementia was making her even more difficult than usual.