Love All

by Spangler, Rachel;

  The thought made her smile. She’d spent the last year traveling all over the world. She’d seen everything from Paris lights to the Shanghai skyline, but none of them held the appeal of the little double room without a view she was sharing with Jay. She’d spent hours lying in her arms, staring up at the ceiling, just breathing in the scent of her or basking in the heat of her body. She fanned herself with her program. How was she ever going to go back to sleeping alone?

  The thought startled her.

  She’d worked hard not to think too far ahead. She wanted to enjoy these two weeks for what they were and not get wrapped up in silly worries, and so far it hadn’t been hard. She had enough to focus on here and now without trying to add the concerns of the future. Case in point, Jay and Des walked out of the tunnel below and onto the court.

  The crowd erupted in hearty applause, and Sadie rose with them. The atmosphere felt more like a final than a third-round draw, and she didn’t think that was just her own nerves kicking in. The clash had been heavily hyped even in the British press, as the top two Americans would now be pitted against each other. The fact that they were doubles partners shouldn’t matter, or at least that’s what all the professional commentators said, but as she watched Des start her warm-ups at fever pitch, she knew they were wrong.

  Jay stayed calmer, as usual, but as she casually returned Destiny’s blasts, Sadie suspected more than their temperaments came into play. Jay was on a tear. She hadn’t dropped a set in her first two matches, whereas Des had to dig out two hard wins in a row. In doubles, they’d breezed through their first pairing, but Jay had been the stronger half in that arena as well, and she carried herself now with all the ease of someone who felt confident in her capabilities. The easy toss of her hair when she served, or the stretch of her white Lycra skirt when she lunged would have normally sent Sadie’s libido into overdrive, but following a high lob across the court, her eyes fell on the one thing that could drop a bucket of ice water onto her hot hormones.

  Destiny set up to crush the lob, but managed only to send a screecher into the net. She scowled, and Sadie’s mothering instincts kicked in. Something wasn’t right. Her daughter didn’t feel her best. Maybe not in the physical sense, but certainly in the emotional sense, and that was worse. If her head hurt, Sadie had Advil. If she rolled an ankle, there would be icepacks, but there was nothing Sadie could do from the stands to ease her daughter’s mind. The realization struck her where it always did, right in the center of her chest.

  The umpire called for the coin toss, and Jay smiled for the cameras, then both players glanced up at Destiny’s box as they headed for their respective baselines. Sadie smiled back, trying to encompass them both even as she struggled to tell herself they could both play well. It was just one match and, no matter who won, they’d still have doubles. They could go back to playing together even stronger and more fit if they played an epic match here. That’s what she wanted, for them to leave the court proud of their accomplishments, but even in that “best of all worlds” scenario, only one of them would advance to the next round.

  “Here we go,” Hank muttered, as the blows began.

  Des’s serve careened to the corner, but Jay neutralized it with a subtle arc that allowed her to reset in the middle of the court, and from there she moved gracefully in all directions. Destiny tried to overpower Jay with her explosive swing, and occasionally she did, but Jay refused to get frazzled, and her softer touch sent a wide array of finesse shots around the court. It was as if her racket were a magic wand: All she had to do was point it in the direction she wanted the ball to land, and it would obey her command. She really was stunning to watch, and Sadie’s breath caught in her chest over and over as she managed to repeatedly drop her shots right on the white lines. The urge to surge up and cheer with the spectators surrounding her was held in check only by the grave expression on the face of her only child.

  “Game, Ms. Pierce,” the chair umpire finally called. “Ms. Pierce leads two games to one.”

  Destiny headed for the bench on the changeover, head low, shoulders tight. Sadie wanted to go rub her back the way she had at bedtime when she’d been a child. That had always helped calm her down.

  “She held her serve,” Hank said, as if trying to find a silver lining. “Jay hasn’t really taken anything from her.”

  “Which means she’s not really losing?” Tad asked.

  “Not in the conventional sense, and it’s still early,” Hank explained, but Sadie knew him well enough to hear the nervousness in his voice, just as much as she knew that if he had concerns, Destiny had likely come to the same conclusion. She was fighting to hold her head above water while Jay was doing the backstroke.

  They switched sides, and once again Destiny came out swinging as if her life depended on it, and yet the harder she hit, the more Jay danced. She moved like some unearthly combination of a linebacker and a ballerina, and once again Sadie’s heart would rise with each soaring point, only to crash against her ribcage as the ball skidded past a flailing Destiny. Back and forth they went, bash by bash, up and down, wide and right back, until it felt like Sadie’s insides were being split down the middle.

  At the next changeover, a strong hand on her shoulder gave a little squeeze, and she looked up to see Tad’s eyes searching her own. She blinked a few times, as if trying to process his presence.

  “How do you do it?” he finally asked.

  “What?”

  “How do you watch her out there every day, every match, and not feel totally helpless?”

  “That’s what being a parent is all about.” Sadie sighed. “The old adage is true. Being a mom always involves walking around with half of your heart outside your body.”

  He nodded solemnly. “Every time I went into a fight, I knew I’d been trained. I knew I had the resources I needed, and whatever happened, I had a chance to bend the outcome at least a little.”

  “You have to have faith that no matter what the outcome, she will ultimately succeed.”

  His smile was weak. “But don’t you want to mow down the rest of the world so that no one gets in her way?”

  Sadie considered the question quietly as Jay and Des took the court again. Any other time, she would have had to answer in the affirmative. Despite all her talk about life lessons, her tiger-mom instincts were strong. The thought of someone, anyone, standing between Destiny and something she wanted badly enough to work tirelessly for made Sadie want to do more than growl.

  Down below, Jay drew Des right up to the net with a drop shot, then whizzed a return hotly into the back corner. The crowd roared again, but this time Sadie didn’t feel as strong a pull to join them. The combination had been beautifully brutal and broke her daughter’s serve, giving Jay a five-three lead and the chance to serve for the first set.

  Hank groaned as Destiny netted her first return. “She’s in her head now.”

  “No,” Sadie said, through the gritted teeth of an increasingly tight smile, as Des’s second return went long. “She’s not falling apart. Jay’s just playing a wonderful game.”

  Hank didn’t argue, which she took as a sort of grudging agreement, but she could have done without Jay illustrating her point quite so well by closing out the next two points with lasers down opposite sidelines.

  Everyone breathed again, if only a for a moment. Tad took the opportunity to hop to his feet. “I had no idea it could feel this awful. The first two matches were so exciting, and the doubles were like a coronation parade. This is more like a gauntlet.”

  Sadie nodded. “Some days are like this.”

  “Doesn’t it just tie your stomach in knots? She’s so alone out there. We can’t even go talk to her.” He turned almost frantically to Hank. “Are you sure you can’t go talk to her? You’re her coach.”

  Hank shook his head. “Totally against the rules.”

  “The rules are terrible,” Tad grumbled, in perhaps his most uncharacteristic comment ever. Mr. Military never chafed against any r
ule in his life as far as Sadie knew. Did his love for his daughter really eclipse every part of his nature?

  Of course it did. The same had always been true for her. She’d simply had more practice putting these situations into perspective. Or at least that’s what she told herself as the second set began, but as the battle renewed in another barrage of backhands, a little twinge of guilt wormed its way into her brain.

  Why should Tad be more upset than she? He hadn’t lost sleep and rearranged work to fit multiple practice slots into a single day. He hadn’t sat outside in the heat and wind as junior tournaments stretched on for days. He hadn’t bandaged bloody knees, or wiped away tired, dejected tears. She had worked nearly as hard as Destiny for years and invested every bit as much emotion to get to this point. Shouldn’t she be at least as sick as Tad that Jay’s forehand slice skimmed so unfairly off the top of the net before spinning to an abrupt stop without so much as a bounce?

  “That was a lucky break for Jay,” Hank said, as the umpire used her microphone to confirm that Jay had, in fact, gone up a break.

  “It hit the net. That shouldn’t be legal. Don’t they have to take a do-over?” Tad asked.

  “Only on a serve.”

  But Jay did not need any do-overs in her next service game, as she ran a clinic in precision placement. Blow by blow, her confidence magnified her skill as she assumed full command of one game, then another.

  “She’s going to lose,” Tad whispered, as Jay took her fourth game in a row.

  Sadie didn’t respond, but slipped into her cool and controlled mom mask as Des’s serve went long and her shoulders sagged.

  Sadie wasn’t even watching Jay now. Her gaze remained on her daughter. Maybe Tad’s tensions had exacerbated her own, or maybe her mother instincts had been pushed to their natural limits, but she had to sit on her hands to keep from digging her fingernails into her own palms now.

  Perhaps it only made sense that when one loved-one struggled and another thrived, she would be drawn toward the one in need. She wasn’t rooting against Jay. She wasn’t even aware of Jay anymore, or at least she hadn’t been until she flicked a drop shot crosscourt so far that Destiny didn’t even take a dejected step toward the ball.

  Hank let out a low whistle, and Tad grumbled, “Was that really necessary?”

  A little voice inside her head whispered that Jay didn’t really have a good angle on another shot, but still, she could have just surrendered the point. She had an absurd lead. Would it have really been the end of the world to concede one point? Even if it led to dropping a game, it would hardly matter at this point.

  “She’s trying to end this as quickly as possible,” Hank said matter-of-factly.

  “Am I supposed to find that merciful?” Tad asked curtly.

  “She wants to save her knees for the next round,” Hank replied.

  “She’s saving her knees by crushing my daughter,” Sadie shot back before Tad had the chance.

  “Would you rather she toy with Des or give her false hope?” Hank asked.

  “I’d rather she just lose,” Sadie said flatly. Tears immediately sprang to her eyes as the rush of guilt surged through her once more. She didn’t mean that. She didn’t want Jay to fail, but damn it, why did she have to beat Destiny? Didn’t Jay know what that would do to her? How it would twist her heart and split her insides? Didn’t she understand that a mother had only one choice when backed into a corner?

  The final shots were quick as Hank had predicted, but they were far from painless, and when Sadie rose with the rest of the crowd, it was to applaud Destiny’s effort more than Jay’s skill. Still, as the two women met at the net, she couldn’t help but notice that Jay held her in an embrace longer than Destiny probably would have wanted. What had she said? Something gracious, no doubt, and from Destiny’s sad attempt at a smile, Jay had probably also managed to be at least mildly amusing. But as her daughter dropped, demoralized, onto the bench and hung her head, Sadie began to worry that she wouldn’t be able to muster the same level of grace that seemed to come so naturally to the victor.

  ★ ★ ★

  “Tell us about the break in the first set,” a reporter called as soon as Jay sank into the chair behind the long desk bearing the famous purple and green crossed rackets of the Wimbledon logo.

  “I’d love to claim tactical brilliance, but it was a lucky shot that happened to skim off the back-corner line,” Jay said, as she adjusted her microphone and tried not to notice the large image of the Championship trophy on the wall just over her shoulder. She wanted to enjoy this moment for what it was. She’d made it into the round of sixteen at a major tournament for the first time in years. There was a time, not all that long ago, she’d worried she’d never play again, much less play at this level. She’d worked so hard for so many years, but it wasn’t until this moment that she really felt like she might succeed in being better than she was before.

  “You seemed to have a lot of those shots today,” the reporter pushed. “Were they all lucky?”

  “Luck never hurts, but the grass court gives me a little more chance to dance. The grass is fast, which is harder to react to, especially against someone who has a superior return game like Destiny. But the slickness of the court also accelerates the kick and spin on the ball.”

  “Which plays to your strengths,” the reporter concluded.

  Jay smiled, almost as thrilled to be talking about tennis as she was about winning. She hadn’t faced a question about her past in weeks, not even now, sitting under the bright white spotlights of a major win. “It certainly saved me from what could have just as easily been a loss today.”

  “The scoreboard didn’t look like you were in danger of losing at any point,” a different reporter called.

  “Was there a question there, Terry?”

  Everyone chuckled, even Terry. “Did you really think that you might lose, even in the second set?”

  “I did,” Jay said, not disingenuously. Maybe she hadn’t felt any sort of fear in the last two games, but she hadn’t counted Destiny out until then. “You forget, I practice with the formidable Ms. Larsen on a regular basis, and I’ve played alongside her in some pretty intense matches. You all may have underestimated her out there, but I never did.”

  “Did you have any concerns about knocking the only other remaining American out of the draw, especially since she’s also your doubles partner?”

  “None,” Jay said flatly into the microphone, even as she refrained from seeking Sadie’s eyes in the dimly lit crowd. “Destiny Larsen isn’t a fragile child. She’s a professional athlete. Playing at any level less than my best would be disrespectful. It would imply she isn’t strong enough mentally or that she isn’t mature enough to handle the ups and downs of this business.”

  “So, you don’t think a loss of this magnitude will affect your doubles match tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely not,” Jay said, then quickly added, “and you all aren’t giving her enough credit if you keep talking about this as some massive letdown for her. I know what the final line score said, but if a few of my shots had gone a millimeter farther outside, it would’ve ended the other way today. I wouldn’t be surprised if, next time we play, it does go the other way.”

  “Is that what you told her at the net after the match?” a reporter asked from the back of the room.

  Jay laughed again as she remembered the moment she’d pulled Destiny’s tense frame close. She’d seen her dejection take hold, watched those proud shoulders slump, and seen the fire in her eyes dim. In that moment she’d wanted to comfort her as much as she’d wanted to celebrate. “If you must know, I told her that someday I’d be sitting in an old folks’ home watching her still playing on TV, and when I’d tell everyone that I’d beaten her once upon a time, they’d all write me off as another senile old woman.”

  Everyone in the audience laughed with her this time, everyone but Sadie.

  Jay had finally dared to seek her eyes, hoping that she’d offered up e
nough self-deprecating humor to brave what she’d find there, but Sadie wasn’t even looking at her. Instead, her eyes were trained on the doorway where Destiny waited for her turn on the stage.

  A stab of loneliness cut through her reverie, and she fought to push it aside, but the longer it went on, the harder she found the task.

  The feeling had started about halfway through the first set, right after she broke Des. Up until that point, their box had only been slightly biased toward Des, but they had politely applauded good plays on both sides. Everything felt friendly, almost like a side practice session in front of thousands of people. She had enjoyed the heightened jubilee, but as if the crowd took their cues from Destiny’s body language, as soon as her demeanor changed, so did the atmosphere. The stadium shifted to Jay’s favor, but the player’s box leaned more heavily the other direction. The better Jay played, the worse their scrutiny felt.

  She’d watched surreptitiously as first Tad, then Sadie, went rigid. She’d seen out of the corner of her eye how he leaned close to whisper in her ear, both their facial expressions and features reflecting those of their daughter’s, until their united concern became too much to watch. She tried to tell herself they weren’t rooting against her, they were cheering on their daughter.

  Their daughter.

  She’d finally had to break the habit of looking to Sadie after a good point, and in the cold, calculated moments on the court, her professional instincts had taken over and preserved her focus with a sharp mix of endorphins and muscle memory. Now, however, as the press conference wore down, so did her defenses.

  “If there are no more questions,” she said, with a smile that took a little more effort than it had moments earlier, “I think I’ve earned one of my famously long showers.”