Love Love

by Sung J. Woo

  Thankfully, when Uncle Myung arrived with his parents from the airport, he did not want a massage. He was as short as his own little sister, but what he lacked in size, he made up in energy. For a tiny guy, he was unexpectedly strong. He gave Kevin a bear hug and lifted him off the ground a couple of inches, and he even elicited a genuine giggle from Judy when he gave her the same airy treatment.

  “Gift!” he said, pronouncing it ghee-poo-too. He pinned a small fuzzy figure on each of their chests. It was a friendly, smiley tiger, making a peace sign with its right hand and wearing a black derby on its orange head.

  “Hodori,” he said. “Name, Hodori.”

  “Ho is tiger in Korean,” his mom said. “Dori means boys. The mascot for the games.”

  For the rest of the evening, the three adults chatted while the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony dragged on in the background with dances and fireworks. His dad opened up a bottle of Chivas Regal he’d been saving, and soon the men’s voices got a little louder. Judy went to bed, but Kevin stayed up, pretending to watch the television. He’d planned to surreptitiously observe Uncle Myung, but something odd happened: He ended up watching his mother. For as long as Kevin could remember, she had been the caretaker of their household, probably because she was the one who spoke fluent English while his dad struggled. His father still made his share of decisions, especially when it came to money, but Kevin always considered his mother their benevolent leader. But in front of Uncle Myung, whom she referred to as ohpa, the Korean term for an older brother, his mother did something he’d never seen her do: fan her hands delicately in front of her mouth when she laughed. And she laughed a lot. Even though Kevin couldn’t understand what they were saying since they were speaking Korean, he knew her girlish giggles were a gesture of respect more than humor. Just the way she sat in her seat, ready to spring into action for any little thing her brother wished—who was this woman?

  A few days later, Uncle Myung was gone, and so was this other version of his mother, but Kevin never forgot that night. There had been this whole other person inside his mother, someone he did not even know existed.

  As Kevin waited underneath the curved wooden sign that read CHEZ: PANISSE in Berkeley, he thought of his mother and Uncle Myung. Would he, too, change into a different Kevin when he came face-to-face with his new sister? Half sister, he supposed, since they shared a father, but not a mother. He was going to ask Norman for a photograph of her, but Kevin stopped himself. Knowing what she looked like meant he’d have the upper hand, and he didn’t want that. Or, more accurately, he did want it—control, as always—but this time he fought it, and it felt good to let things be, for them to be equals.

  Would she be like Judy, arriving half an hour late? He hoped not, because according to Claudia, this was one of the best restaurants in the Bay Area, if not the entire country. In the morning, Kevin had tried to be vague about his plans, but Claudia wouldn’t have any of it.

  “What, were you afraid I was gonna force you to take me along?”

  “Well,” he’d said, “yes.”

  “You had every right to worry, but looks like it’s your lucky day, because I’m not allowed in there anymore.”

  Claudia insisted it wasn’t her fault. She’d ordered the lamb special, but they’d just run out, so Claudia stood up and asked the dining room if anybody would like to give up their dish for a thousand dollars.

  “I can see you doing that,” Kevin said. “Easily.”

  “It made the woman who volunteered very, very happy.”

  “And you were happy, eating what you wanted to eat.”

  Unfortunately, it was the last meal she’d have there, as word got back to Alice Waters, the proprietor of the restaurant, who personally called Claudia to say that what she did at Chez Panisse would never happen again.

  “So there might be a poster of me at the hostess’s podium, for all I know,” she said. “Do not serve this woman, she’s armed and dangerous with a checkbook.”

  As Kevin waited for Denise’s arrival, he watched a mother and a daughter at an ATM across the street. The mother lifted up her girl so she could swipe the card and punch in the PIN. Claudia, too, had been as young as that girl once, and the more Kevin thought about it, the more he believed her current philosophy of doing what she wanted, no matter the consequence, was a deeply childish behavior. Like the way the adult Michael Jackson had tried to re-create his lost childhood, maybe purchasing that last rack of lamb was Claudia’s Neverland.

  Kevin checked his watch, and now it was noon on the nose. So officially, Denise was late, or was she right on time? Because here was an Asian woman walking toward him right now, heels clicking on the sidewalk, long hair billowing like a dark curtain. Except, like all the Asian women who had passed him so far, she was too young to be his sister. He knew there were a lot of Asians in California, but it seemed as if every other person he saw today was one. Maybe it was the university, which probably had a fair number of Asians in its population, and thinking of all those book-smart black-haired folks strutting to class with their backpacks in tow, talking of math proofs and chemical formulas and the hidden meaning behind some unreadable Shakespearean play, sent a wave of unease over him. As an Asian, he’d been an anomaly, terrible at math and not much better at any other academic endeavor.

  He was saved by his body and his mastery of it. The thing that most people didn’t know was how much intelligence it took to perfect an athletic maneuver. Adjustments both inside and outside the body had to be made on the fly, and that ran beyond the realm of the physical. Sometimes the TV commentators compared tennis to chess, except Kevin thought that was a disservice to the players, because chess geeks weren’t outside, battling for four hours under 120-degree heat, drenched in sweat and out of breath.

  In a way, he was not unlike his father, who’d always been good with his hands, building a deck all by himself, repairing the engine of his riding mower . . . except Kevin was forgetting, yet again. He didn’t have any of his railroad engineer father’s genes, just the sad DNA of his porno dad and mom. If he had picked up anything, it was purely nurture, not nature, and the lie that was his childhood gnawed at him. Would he always feel as if he was robbed?

  “Kevin?”

  She was an Asian Barbie doll. There was no other way to describe this woman, this perfect creature of made-up beauty. Her face didn’t have a single blemish on it, a Photoshopped sheen to her skin, and her bright red lips were like two pieces of molded rubber. If she stayed in the sun for a little while longer, he was afraid her face would start melting like the villain’s at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

  “You must be Denise,” he said, and they did the awkward dance of a handshake segueing into a hug. She smelled like a fresh bouquet of flowers. Norman had told him she was three years younger than him, and it was obvious she took care of herself. She was wearing a yellow sundress, and her bare arms were tan and toned, the sort of body that belonged to a health-conscious California girl.

  They went in and sat upstairs, just beyond the bustle of the kitchen, a pair of vest-clad waiters jockeying to grab their dishes from the counter. On the shelf next to Kevin sat an overflowing pot of white and yellow chrysanthemums. He tucked a tendril of leaves around another to stop it from grazing his forehead.

  “It’s all about nature and sustainability here,” Denise said. “They’ve always gotten their meats and vegetables from local farmers. Nobody really did that before Chez Panisse.”

  “You’ve been here before.”

  Denise nodded. “For a place this good, it’s actually decently priced. I’ve eaten at this very table at least a dozen times.”

  There was a directness to her that he liked, a no-nonsense tone in the way she spoke. When the waiter arrived, she ordered not only the appetizer and the dinner, but the dessert as well. Kevin hadn’t even looked at that part of the menu, so he followed suit and ordered her choice, the pear tart.

  “I hear Daddy made you a home movie,” she said.
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  “That he did.”

  “He told me about it, and he was afraid of your reaction. That’s probably why he set us up here, so I can report back to him.”

  Their drinks arrived, his beer and her cosmo. When she lifted the pink liquid and yellow twists of lemon for a toast, it was like an ad out of a magazine, her red lipstick and canary-yellow dress complementing the colors of her mixed drink. He downed half his beer and placed the glass back on the little square napkin.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “I mean yeah, I was shocked when I saw it, but I think his heart was in the right place.”

  “It’s just his brain that goes on the fritz once in a while.”

  Kevin smiled and nodded and didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he went back to the glass and drained the rest of the beer.

  “Thirsty, are we?” she asked, raising one curious brow like Mr. Spock.

  He’d always found first dates to be nerve-wracking, and that’s what this encounter reminded him of. The only time he didn’t feel this way was in a tennis match, playing a brand-new opponent, and that was because it didn’t involve talking, just doing, his body taking over what his mind didn’t want to face. But that wasn’t true. His first date with Alice was in a restaurant not unlike this one, a fancy joint where the servers scampered to the table to refold your napkin when you left for the bathroom, and yet he hadn’t felt any of his usual jitters.

  It was pathetic how much she still occupied his thoughts. It was even more pathetic how he recognized this and yet still couldn’t make himself stop.

  The waiter returned with their appetizers, sardine toasts for him, a cucumber-avocado-melon salad for her. Kevin almost acceded when the waiter asked him if he’d wanted a refill on his beer, but he didn’t want to give Denise the impression that he needed alcohol as a social lubricant.

  “Your salad’s good?” he asked.

  “Always. Yours?”

  It was simple and delicious, baguettes buttery and crunchy, the sardines ground up and spread on top like a dip. The flavor of the little salty fish was so present within the paste that with each bite he felt as if he were eating their very essence.

  “Dad tells me you played tennis professionally.”

  “If by playing you mean losing, then yes, that’s correct.”

  She sipped her drink and smiled like he did, the left corner of her mouth rising and abutting the crease of her cheek. For all these years, he’d assumed his and Judy’s naturally curly hair were bestowed by their mother, but now he knew it was mere coincidence. Here, it was different, because this woman sitting across the table was of his blood, and this shared smirk of theirs was an instant bond.

  Their main course arrived, a pork shoulder basting in a bed of corn for Kevin, a chicken leg with little yellow beans and fried artichokes for Denise. His pork looked as good as it tasted, roasted in a garlic sauce that drew out the fatty richness of the pig.

  “I played Andre Agassi once,” Kevin said. “If you know who he is.”

  “Even people who don’t care about tennis know Agassi,” Denise said, chopping her artichoke hearts into bite-size pieces. “Anybody who marries Brooke Shields is gonna be famous no matter what he does for a living.”

  “And now he’s married to Steffi Graf, former number one female player in the world.”

  “I’ve seen a commercial with a pretty blond woman, so I guess that’s who you’re talking about. So how was it, playing a legend? And more importantly, did you beat him?”

  “Somewhat,” Kevin said, and he began to tell his story.

  It was in August, the summer of 1997, in Binghamton, New York, the Gouldin & Thompson Tennis Challenger. It was the sort of tournament that somebody like Agassi wouldn’t have played since he turned pro, since the champion was awarded only seventy-two hundred dollars. But earlier in the year, Agassi had fallen out of the top one hundred, far from the elite player he’d once been.

  “It sounds very exciting to me,” Denise said, “playing as a professional athlete.”

  “I think sounds is the operative word. Piling into buses that cart you from the Best Western to the city park, being pretty much forced to attend golf outings and donor parties in the evenings—I mean yes, I’m not scrubbing toilets for a living, but there’s not much glamour in playing Challenger tournaments.”

  “And having to win,” she added.

  “That’s why you’re there in the first place. In ’99, Agassi would reclaim his number one ranking, so when we played, he was already finding his form,” Kevin said. “But for a couple of games, it looked like maybe I’d have a chance.”

  Agassi was known as the best serve returner in the game, but on that Thursday morning in the second round of the tournament, Kevin had him for a little while. He was up a break, leading five games to four, and was about to serve out the set, leading 40–15, when the Buddha of tennis struck back Kevin’s kick serve with what felt like twice the speed.

  “The only way he could’ve taken such a monstrous swing was if he knew where I was going to go, which serve I was going to hit.”

  “Did he know?”

  “Not in the beginning, but he must’ve figured it out. It’s not surprising—the best players can read a ‘tell’ that a player has. For example, Boris Becker, who was a phenomenal player and played Agassi many times, had a habit of poking out his tongue right before he served, and the opposite direction of where his tip pointed was where the ball would land.”

  “Agassi saw that from that far away?”

  “Seventy-eight feet, to be exact. I guess in addition to being blessed with ridiculous reflexes, he also had perfect vision.”

  “So what’s your ‘tell’?”

  Kevin sheared the browned meat of the pork from the bone. “You’ll have to ask Andre.”

  Never again would Kevin play anyone as accomplished. That year was the highest he’d ever rank on the ATP, 293. He was in his latter twenties then, well aware that his dream of playing in the US Open would remain just that, a dream. He’d seen enough world-class talent to know that he could never compete for anything beyond the first round of a Grand Slam tournament, but he would never make it to the big stage, advancing only to the second round of qualifiers that year. Of course he would’ve been trounced by whomever he played next, and with his luck it probably would’ve been Pete Sampras or Agassi himself, but to play a match in the gladiatorial expanse of Arthur Ashe Stadium—he’d wanted that. He’d practiced as hard as he could, even working with a sports psychiatrist to be more free and less controlling, and yet it still wasn’t good enough. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so accepting of his mediocrity, or maybe he should’ve tapped into anger like John McEnroe. When things weren’t going their way, many of his opponents slammed their racquets hard enough onto the concrete to warp the frame, garnering warnings from the chair umpire, but as a pro, Kevin never threw a fit. He never saw a reason for getting mad at the ball or the equipment or the linespeople, because even when he was losing, he wasn’t exactly unhappy to be on court.

  Because at the core of it, he loved to play the game more than he wanted to win it. Which meant he lacked the killer instinct that all champions have, that drive that gave them the impetus to win at all costs. Even against Agassi in Binghamton on that sun-beating August afternoon, there wasn’t a moment he wished he were somewhere else. After losing the first set 7–5, there was no mercy from the other side. Kevin did everything he could, mixing it up with serve-and-volley points, risking drop shots from the baseline, slicing his backhand low until the fine fuzz of the tennis ball kissed the tape as it floated over the net, but he was no longer playing a human being. That was what separated the best from the not-so-best, the unfathomable, robotic consistency. No matter how well a rally was going, Kevin knew it was just a matter of time until his ball either dumped into the net or sailed long. The first set had taken more than an hour. The second, the one he’d lose 6–0, winning 4 points total, took twenty minutes.

  At 5–0, with A
gassi about to serve out the set and the match, Kevin forced himself to take in his surroundings, to remember this day because in a few minutes, it would be over. The seats to his right were gray folding chairs five rows deep, and you couldn’t slide a bookmark between the packed spectators, a number of them standing in the aisles. Beyond the chain-link fence of the park, people were leaning out of the second-floor windows of their houses with binoculars, trying to catch a glimpse of the match. Everyone wanted to witness the resurgent legend beat him, though maybe not this badly. At least Kevin had given the crowd a good first set; this second one was just a display of the innate unfairness of life. A decade later, Agassi would tell the world in his autobiography how much he’d hated the game that gave him everything, how much emotional and physical toll it had taken, and yet for almost two years, there was no one on the planet who was better than he was. To be the very best at what you despise—was it possible for life to be any crueler? It was like something out of Greek mythology.

  Kevin bounced from foot to foot as he waited for the last serve, Agassi up 40–15, match point. Agassi would probably aim for Kevin’s body, a shot which had already handcuffed him so many times that his racquet felt like a shield. When Kevin was grooving, his racquet was an appendage, fitting into his hand with the rightness of a key sliding into its lock. Those feelings were a distant memory now, and as Agassi tossed the ball into the air, Kevin made his decision: He would slide to his left, sidestep the ball’s intended destination and swing his forehand as hard as he could for the crosscourt corner. Agassi’s serve was a blur of yellow, but luck was on Kevin’s side, as his plan worked to perfection, a clean winner.

  The crowd cheered, hoping he could somehow work another miracle and push the game to deuce, but no, the next serve was too good, down the T, and unless Kevin could turn into Plastic Man and extend his reach by another two inches, there was no way he was even nicking that ball with the frame of his racquet.

  “I shook his hand at the net,” Kevin told Denise now, the memory of that day faded but not forgotten. Agassi smiled over a frown, patting him on the shoulder before they walked over to the umpire to shake his hand.