When No One Was Looking

by Rosemary Wells

  Perhaps the dresses brought her the unimagined luck, for Kathy won and won until she reached the finals, where she lost to a girl whose picture had appeared in Sports Illustrated. By that time she had been interviewed by a local Florida paper and by a Boston Globe reporter and had received a congratulatory telegram from Kenneth B. Hammer of the Plymouth public schools. This she threw away, as it made her uneasy.

  6

  UP THE OCEAN DRIVE toward the Plymouth Club Kathy pedaled in the rain. She tried to avoid the muddy splashes of oncoming cars and trucks, but she could not, and in a short while she was drenched to the skin, just as Julia’s mother had said she would be. She didn’t mind. It was a great relief to be away from the stifling Florida air, and there was a jumpiness inside of her that could only be lessened by jogging or pedaling. Since the club was too far from Julia’s house to be jogged to, she had borrowed a bicycle, and ignoring Mrs. Redmond’s insistence on driving her, she was on her way. It occurred to her that her success in Florida had at least for the moment shot her past the age when someone else’s mother could absolutely forbid her to do something.

  In Kathy’s pocket was a clipping Mrs. Redmond had saved from that morning’s Globe. The clipping had been flapping in Mrs. Redmond’s outstretched hand when she met Kathy and Julia at Logan Airport that morning. “Kathy,” she had explained breathlessly and protectively, “your mom and dad are tied up. Your mom’s with your grandma and your dad has to do a photography thing for the VFW, so you come right home with us, but, oh, Kathy, look at this! Read what they said about you in the morning paper! Julia, I want you to read what the Boston Globe has to say about your best friend.”

  Kathy pulled to the side of the road to let a moving van pass. She patted the article with her free hand. It was still dry, folded in a tiny square and stuck in her bra. Would Marty have seen it yet? Of course. Would she be truly pleased? Yes, but would she say so? Probably not. She’ll ask me what the girl beat me with in the finals, Kathy decided. And I’ll have to go over that rotten drop shot all week.

  In the finals Kathy had faced a girl of just the sort Marty and her mother loved to hate. She was ranked fourth nationally. She had lustrous long dark hair, heavy eye makeup that did not run, and a solid gold necklace that shone against her deeply tan skin. The girl had been written up in Sports Illustrated. At home, which was in Houston, she had a private clay court and two coaches, one who appeared every morning at six thirty. The girl had not beaten Kathy easily. Kathy didn’t care a bit that she’d lost to her. She was so delighted to have come as far as the finals she had smiled broadly after the match point, something she guessed she oughtn’t to have done, and, the girl from Houston had congratulated her with grace and affection, as if Kathy had won.

  Would her mother and father have seen the papers yet? Kathy hoped so. It might make her mother’s vigil at her birdlike grandmother’s bedside a little more bearable. For Jody, of course, it would do nothing. Jody started an argument in Kathy’s mind beginning with You were spending two weeks playing in the sunshine while all the rest of us were in a foul-smelling nursing home ... When Kathy had last seen her, her grandmother had been temporarily attached to a beige machine. The machine hummed and then stopped and then hummed again. Kathy had been told its purpose but had deliberately forgotten what it was for.

  “Dear God,” Kathy muttered, “please make Mom and Dad happy and untired tonight and please make Marty happy and please, please make Jody shut up for once.” The wind and rain blew furiously against her, and Kathy knew that these things were not God’s business. Rose, the Redmonds’ Rose, seemed to know God’s business well.

  At her welcoming-home/victory-party lunch Mr. Redmond had made a joke about the Boston papers. The headline on her precious clipping read “Hub Girl Wins Big!” Anyone, Mr. Redmond had said, who had ever spent a night in Boston or within a hundred miles of it would rate as a “Hub person” as far as the Boston papers, were concerned. There had been lighted candles on the dining room table and a fire in the dining room fireplace, as the day was cool. Kathy had spent several Christmas dinners with Julia’s family, and this lunch was very like a Christmas dinner. The heavy silver service, engraved illegibly with Mr. Redmond’s grandmother’s initials, created a sense of eternal security as it clanked on the gold-edged plates. So did Mr. Redmond’s unsqueaking wing-tipped shoes and his clean strong hands. Kathy’s father’s hands were equally strong but stained with nicotine and photographic acids. The house and Julia’s whole existence were a place of eternal springtime where the dogwood was always just in bloom and only the promise of summer lay ahead. This springtime was magical for Kathy to share but, like a ring behind a jeweler’s thick glass window, it was not at all really hers. Julia, with no adversity or trial to test her, will inherit a diamond mine at the end of the story, Kathy decided, recalling a children’s book. And me? Ah. Now I remember what’s bothering me.

  “Here’s to our Kathy,” rang Julia’s mother’s voice in her head. “Honey, you may have lost the last game, but—”

  “Match, Mother,” Julia had corrected.

  “You may have lost the last game,” Mrs. Redmond went on, raising her glass of brandy so that it caught the candlelight, “but the important thing is I can see from your happy face that you are able to take both victory and defeat in stride. I remember not long ago you being all het up about losing to some young lady who cheated—”

  “My God, Mother,” Julia interrupted again. “It doesn’t matter Kathy lost in the finals. She lost to one of the best fourteen-year-olds in the whole country! The girl’s going to qualify for the U.S. Open. She was a junior Wimbledon quarter finalist. That’s not losing. That’s winning!”

  “Julia,” said her mother, “I was toasting Kathy. You will please not interrupt. Kathy has learned something about life which you fail to understand. Last time she was very upset at losing to that awful cheating girl—”

  “Mother,” said Julia with more than usual heat, “the girl’s dead. That was Ruth Gumm. The swimmer at the club.”

  “I was not aware it was one and the same person,” said Mrs. Redmond, lowering her glass without drinking from it.

  The mention of Ruth had immediately provoked Rose, who was at that moment serving a floating island. Rose’s eyes had brightened, her back stiffened like a cat’s when it has heard a mouse, and she had announced that such things were no accident.

  “Oh, now, Rose,” Mr. Redmond had said, but Kathy had known they would let Rose go on. The only way to shut Rose up, Julia had told her once, was to let her speak her piece. Otherwise she was inclined to sulk and boil the entire next meal.

  “Only yesterday,” Rose went on, dishing out an extra large portion of floating island to Kathy, “Cora told me about it. The Gumm child, may the Lord have mercy on her, had bad blood in the family. It’s been put out that there was foul play.”

  “Oh, Rose,” Mrs. Redmond had said.

  “Dear heart,” Rose continued, “the family ordered an a-u-t-o-p-s-i-e!”

  “Y,” said Mr. Redmond.

  “The good Lord only knows why she was struck down,” said Rose.

  “No, Rose. I meant the letter y. Autopsy is spelled with a y,” said Mr. Redmond. “And I’m positive there’s a regular explanation for it. The girl probably had a cardiac arrest. Such things happen occasionally, even to youngsters. They are just following normal procedures, I’m sure, Rose. It isn’t every day a champion swimmer drowns in a pool.”

  “That’s just what I mean,” said Rose.

  Silly, Kathy told herself now. Just gossipy old Rose, who, as Mrs. Redmond put it, sees a black widow spider in every cobweb. “Don’t be silly, Rose,” said Mrs. Redmond reassuringly in Kathy’s mind. “The girl was locked in at the time of the accident. There wasn’t a soul around. It was an unfortunate tragedy. This is lovely floating island, Rose. Did you use your mother’s recipe?”

  Kathy did not mean to ask the question in such a way. She hadn’t really meant to ask it at all, but when s
he had stepped into Marty’s office and closed the door on the wildly blowing rain, she felt her whole face light up. “Are you proud of me?” she asked. “Marty, are you proud of me?”

  “You did what I knew you could do,” said Marty. The Boston Globe was open before her.

  “Oh, Marty. If I won the women’s final at Wimbledon next year, would you be proud of me then?”

  Marty looked up from the paper. “One thing at a time, my dear,” she said. “You did brilliantly. You know that. You know perfectly well what I think. You’ll do even better now that you’ve gone this far. You have the New England Championships this weekend in Newport. You should win the whole thing. It’ll put you on the map. Now what did this Texan Jewish American princess beat you with?”

  “Drop shot to my backhand a hundred times. I was way out of position. But she had it all over me, Marty. She must have aced me a hundred times too.” Kathy sighed and glared purposely up at Marty’s bulletin board. She noticed suddenly that it was bare. Even the photograph of Marty beating Maureen Connolly was gone. The trophy case was empty, and in the corner where the stacks of ball cans and unstrung rackets were usually piled, there was nothing.

  “I may be taking a vacation for a couple of weeks,” said Marty, following Kathy’s eyes with her own. “We can work on the public courts. I’ve checked with Joe Potter over there, and it’s fine with him.”

  “What? How can we work anywhere if you’re going on vacation, Marty? You never go on vacation,” said Kathy.

  “I want you to keep up your momentum. There will be a lot of tough players against you next weekend, my dear. You won’t even have an easy first round.”

  “Marty, what’s happening? Why is all your stuff gone? You’re not even in tennis whites.”

  “It’s raining,” said Marty, fixing her eyes on Kathy’s. She wore a baggy old tweed skirt and a gray cable-knit pullover. Kathy realized that she had never once seen Marty out of tennis whites, and she felt a shock, as if suddenly all the oxygen had been sucked out of the air. The rain clattered on the shingles outside and dripped in splayed torrents from a tin drainpipe near the door. Marty squinted at a leak which had formed under the windowsill. “It won’t work, you know,” she said, as if this were part of an ongoing discussion. “Fred Molina’s being an ass, as usual. He’s trying to get me fired. He wants Gordon to come in here as the pro, and do you know why? Because Gordon married that little Italian snip. They all stick together like tent caterpillars. It won’t work. Fred and I never got along, but I didn’t think he’d stoop this low.”

  “How can he have you fired? What grounds does he have? He can’t just up and have you fired, Marty!”

  “Trumped-up grounds, my dear. The most vile pack of lies I’ve ever heard. Nastiness and scandal, and it needn’t concern you. Now. I want to hear every detail of every match you played down in Florida. What is that foolish expression on your face?”

  “It’s nothing, Marty. Well, just that my dad’s people came from Italy a hundred years back or so. They changed the spelling of their name from—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You stayed with Julia Redmond’s family down there?”

  “Yes. It was lovely. It was amazing. Her aunt went out and bought me three Bogner dresses. I don’t know what to do with them. I’m afraid my mom might get mad because she spent nights making my real dresses. I mean my—”

  “Oh, she won’t get mad because of that,” said Marty. “She’ll get mad because she’ll think you were goldbricking off Julia’s aunt. A silly idea. I don’t believe in looking gift horses in the mouth. Give them to me, I’ll have them dry-cleaned. Then you can tell your mother the company sent them to you free.”

  “But that’s a lie, Marty.”

  “Your first, my dear?” Marty asked, her head cocked to the side and her eyes as bright as a terrier’s.

  Kathy shook her head and looked at the floor. “Marty,” she asked, “how can Mr. Molina have you fired for just nothing? It isn’t fair.”

  “Life is unfair, my dear. You should know that better than anyone.”

  “Why me?”

  Marty paused a moment and rolled the cuffs of her sweater up. “Because,” she said slowly, “if it hadn’t been for that unfortunate accident a couple of weeks ago, you might never have won the tournament at Newton. You wouldn’t have been invited to Florida, and you might not be on your way to the New England Championships this weekend, would you? Life was not very fair with that stupid lumberjack of a girl who kept beating you the whole week you hit with her. You had very good luck, my dear, and she had very bad luck.”

  Unable to answer, Kathy imagined a shadow person had looked in at the window and for a second focused piercing eyes on her from a face obscured by fog. “Do you really want to know?” Marty went on. “I’ll tell you. That stupid puff-breasted old grandmother Molina said that I tracked up his precious pool house. That’s it. Tracked up his pool house with tennis court clay. They dislike me, my dear, because of my nasty personality. They dislike me because I won’t take any guff from the lazy fatheaded children of the local mucky-mucks who are forced to take lessons from me. Because I won’t kiss the hands of their martini-soaked card-playing Mamas who sit in their cabanas all day polishing their nails and reading the smut on the best-seller list. That’s why. Because I’m not very nice, Kathy, as you know well. If I had ten geniuses on my string at this club, I could pull them all out at a moment’s notice, and the management would think twice about losing ten family memberships, but I only have one, Kathy, and your family doesn’t even pay, so I’ll have to wait it out.”

  “I’ll resign in protest, Marty.”

  “How can you resign if you don’t really belong? Not only that, my dear, you have to work as a lifeguard for your bread and butter. Don’t sneer at money. As a matter of fact, if this is not cleared up by next week, after your tournament, you may take over some of my lessons. You can beat any man in the club, and you’re good enough to teach the kids. You can use some extra money. I know about your grandmother. I know your family has tried to keep the money part away from you and that your sister rubs all the salt she can in that wound.”

  “Marty, I couldn’t. You need the money too.”

  “Be smart. Don’t be stupid. In three years, I assure you, you’ll be able to pay me back with interest. Now tell me about Florida.”

  “First tell me why they are firing you.”

  Marty looked out the window again. “It’s letting up,” she said. “Go do a mile in the wet sand. It’s worth two miles in dry sand.”

  Kathy trudged out to the beach. She took off her already sopping sneakers and socks. “Plymouth’s rising star—a fierce ball of fire with a shotgun serve, reminiscent of a young Rosie Casals”; that’s what the Boston Globe had to say about her that morning, but the words did not make her as happy as they had before. They sounded like a Jordan Marsh ad.

  The waves curled, filled with pebbles and ugly brown seaweed. They flew seven feet in the air before smashing on the broad gray beach and sucking themselves back again. Many years before there had been a northeaster such as this. Kathy recalled that she and Julia had collected hundreds of seahorses that had come north in the current and had washed onto the beach. Another time there had been sand dollars and translucent gold shells which they were sure they could sell for a great deal of money. This day there was nothing washed up but stones and a few waterlogged, splintery beams, as if the furious ocean, foaming at its mouth, was trying to fling them at her as she ran down the beach, only missing by a bit. On her return she spotted Oliver’s lonely figure watching her from half a mile away.

  Kathy stood in the middle of the living room. She held her arms above her head in a gesture of triumph that she had observed in the movie Rocky. “Guess what!” she crowed when her father came downstairs to greet her.

  “Guess what? I’ve seen the papers!” he also crowed happily. Kathy’s mother beamed from the kitchen like a living lightbulb. Everything was in confusion for a few
moments as Kathy was battered with questions about Florida, about her opponents, about Aunt Liz’s house. “But guess what!” she finally managed to say again. Her mother dried her hands on her apron. “What could be better, Kathy?” she asked. “What did you do? You met Billie Jean King and hit with her and beat her love and love?”

  “No, Mom. I just won five bucks from Oliver.”

  “Doing what?” asked her mother.

  “Oliver, you tell,” said Kathy. “They won’t believe me.”

  “Kathy can really positively throw to first base as accurately and as fast as Rick Burleson,” said Oliver solemnly.

  “Who’s he?” asked Jody. “By the way, congrats for creaming ’em down there,” she said blandly, turning to Kathy.

  “The Red Sox third baseman, that’s who,” Oliver explained. “This afternoon when the rain cleared up, the baseball field was empty. So I put Kathy on third and an apple basket on first base. Then I hit her a bunch of tough grounders. She threw to first and got the basket every time, and I timed her with a stopwatch. Last week I timed Burleson’s throws in a game and averaged out the exact times. Kathy did it. Only one second more than Burleson.”

  Kathy’s mother had lost interest in these facts and announced from the kitchen that there was nothing to eat but TV dinners so they might as well go out to Burger King and celebrate Kathy’s victory.

  “It’s okay, Mom. I had a big lunch at the Redmonds’. Roast beef and the works. I’d rather stay home.”

  “And lobster and salmon and crepes suzette?” Jody asked.