Crooked Little Heart

by Anne Lamott

  They looked like they might curtsy.

  Rosie and Simone stood at the baseline conferring, big, crabby, un-cute, wiping sweat off their foreheads and eyes with the sleeves of their T-shirts. Rosie looked like a raccoon, Simone like a hooker.

  “We’ve got to slow things down,” said Rosie. But within moments, Mrs. London announced, “Game, Misses Hall and Atterbury. They lead two games to one.” Rosie felt panic rising inside her. It was her serve, and she was having trouble swallowing. She tried to imagine what it would really feel like to cut through the skin of Mrs. London’s neck with a chain saw.

  She slowly went into the backswing, and then her left hand, which held the ball, jerked forward so that her toss was flung three feet in front of her, and she had to chase it down.

  “Sorry,” she said, and went to serve again. The next toss was only six or seven inches from her head, but she swung at it anyway, and narrowly missed hitting herself in the temple with the racket. This produced a crippled little serve that dropped over into Sue’s service court with so little force that there was nothing left over for a bounce; it all but stuck to the court like a mud pie. Sue did a double take, and the crowd laughed.

  “Lord,” Rae prayed in a whisper. “Smite these evil shits.”

  “Quiet, please,” said Mrs. London.

  “Doesn’t Jesus mind that you hate those girls?” Lank whispered.

  “Nah,” said Rae. “I don’t think Jesus can’t stand them either.”

  It took five minutes to win the game, with a series of spinning, wafting, hunchbacked little serves and an almost equal number of double faults. Rosie’s head raced with worry.

  Two all.

  Poor Rosie, thought Elizabeth, almost unable to watch. It was so disconcerting to feel the crowd rooting against her. Please, Elizabeth prayed, with her eyes closed. Help her not defeat herself. She felt James dig his elbow into her ribs, and she opened her eyes to find Luther in the bleachers beneath them.

  He was sitting next to Veronica’s manicurist. Elizabeth looked at him, at this person of whom she had been most afraid, who even now studied her daughter with such concentration. And out of nowhere she saw that he was one of the people escorting Rosie over the threshold. She also saw pathos and yearning and after another moment she even finally saw herself in that dark and weathered face.

  Later, when she found herself staring absently at the back of his baseball cap, at his badly wrinkled blue oxford shirt, she realized that the shirt looked just like one of James’s that she had put in the laundry last week and had been lost ever since. She craned forward to read the label but could not make it out. Please help Rosie not defeat herself, she prayed, and please help her not to be stealing James’s clothes to give to Luther.

  Simone mouthed the word “Luther” at Rosie.

  Rosie looked over to the stands, located her parents, and then saw Luther sitting in the bleachers at their feet. He was wearing a blue baseball cap with a white letter F, and he was looking at her.

  Rosie was returning serve, filled with projections of disgrace and easy misses, but Luther’s arrival distracted her from the attack on herself. She ended up hitting a backhand low and hard that sizzled down the middle of the court, right between the two younger girls.

  “Great shot,” said Simone.

  “Game to Misses Ferguson and Duvall. They lead three-two in the second. Change sides, please.”

  F, thought Rosie, changing sides. What did it stand for? She did not remember seeing this hat before. Usually if he wore a hat it was an SF Giants cap. Fuck, fart, fat. She went to the net, while Simone hit some beautiful serves, and Rosie put away two volleys at the net. They pulled ahead, four-two.

  But Sue won her serve, and Rosie’s stomach cramped up with a sense of impending doom, of what it would be like to have been ahead four-two, and then lose her serve, letting the other girls catch up. Deb would serve for five-four, and then all they’d need was to hit a few shots to Rosie at the net, and they’d win the game, the set, the match. And then she realized she hadn’t even served yet—had tragically lost all those points in her head.

  She took a long deep breath. She imagined her left arm going up for the toss jerkily, like the arm of an erratic ball machine, and she closed her eyes. Shhhh shhhh shhhh, she said to herself, the way her mother used to soothe her to sleep. She looked over at Luther, like she used to look back at her mother when she was little, checking in. He was looking at her solemnly, and she turned her attention back to the court just as the thought entered her mind that F stood for frame. Of course: for frame it.

  And she did. She slowly threw the toss into the air, let it hang there in slow motion, waiting with it. Then she smashed it down and over across the net. Fifteen-love. Simone turned to give her a thumbs-up. She missed the next serve, but threw up her second toss slowly, quiet inside, framing, framing, saw it frozen in space against the true blue sky, and she forced herself to let it hang there an extra moment, like a nail that she then slammed into, acing Deb on the second serve. Simone turned around with her mouth opened wide in a silent happy scream.

  They won the set, six-two. Veronica and her manicurist bounced in their seats, clapping tiny socialite claps. The masseuse, who seemed stoned or perhaps just deeply unclear, clapped as if making tortillas.

  ROSIE smiled at Elizabeth, shy and proud, as she and Simone walked to the snack bar for Cokes. Elizabeth pantomimed cleaning up the smeared makeup under their eyes. Rosie looked away.

  “You’re in the zone,” said Simone.

  Then Simone looked up and pointed. Rosie turned to see what had startled her so, and her eyes flared wide. Peter stood with his back to them, talking to another pro. Rosie looked like she might be about to tiptoe away, all burlesque high step and grimace. Her hands started to reach up and cover her raggedy jagged hair. And then she stopped. She gave Simone a long sideways glance, and Simone patted her mouth, yawning. Rosie smiled, and they walked away from him.

  “Hey, Rosie,” he called after her. She stopped and looked expectantly over her shoulder, while Simone stared straight ahead like a pointer. “Nice going so far today,” he said, and seemed easy and genuine, like an old friend. He studied her with a strange look on his face, like he was proud of her—and something else. He ran his hand over his head. “Too bad about the hair,” he said, and winked at her. She felt a blush start in her belly, and she wanted to say, Too bad you’re a rock, but smiled instead, nice as pie.

  ELIZABETH saw the girls troop back onto the court, first Deb and Sue, so clean and wiry, and then Rosie and Simone, in their baggy wrinkled clothes, so dopey looking that you couldn’t help but wonder if they’d taken short naps during their ten-minute break. Still, momentum was on their side, having won the second set, and Elizabeth expected them to take the third handily.

  Play resumed, and everyone held serve until it was Rosie’s turn. They were behind two games to one. Elizabeth’s stomach ached for her child. One toss at a time, she said silently. Slow down. But Rosie’s first serve was out by a couple of inches, and she pushed in her second serve—what Peter called an old-lady serve—and Sue hit a low cross-court forehand that looked like a winner. But it landed an inch out.

  Rosie looked at Simone for the call. Simone shrugged; she hadn’t gotten a good look. Everyone held their breath, even the crowd, waiting to see what the cheater would do. Rosie looked up helplessly at Mrs. London. It had been close, and it had been out.

  “Your call?” asked Mrs. London. Sue and Deb stood waiting, peeved. The air buzzed around her. Out, Rosie practiced saying.

  “It was—good,” she said. Deb and Sue high-fived. And then Rosie’s game fell apart before their very eyes. All she could do was pat the ball back, keep it in play, pat, tap, lob. Elizabeth, watching Rosie’s tight frightened face, saw her in dense salty water, having a hard time moving, and each time a wave—winning a rally, getting in a soft first serve—lifted her up to the surface for a moment, she gulped for air.

  But Rosie won the
game. Two up.

  It was a miserable third set, and the air bristled with anxiety. The only person hitting well at all was Simone, so the other team kept the ball away from her as much as possible. But at three games to four, Rosie served the worst game yet, and within minutes, Sue was serving for the match.

  She served a hard first serve to Rosie’s forehand, which Rosie patted back, and an endless rally between the two girls finally ended when Rosie hit the ball into the net. Simone won the next point, slamming the return down Deb’s forehand line. Rosie clenched her fist with the brief victory, and Elizabeth watched Simone give Rosie a look of encouragement. But Rosie patted back the backhand serve, and another long baseline rally ended with Rosie hitting a ball just slightly long. Fear flashed across Rosie’s face again.

  “Thirty-fifteen,” said Mrs. London. Deb and Sue were two points away from winning the match. Veronica had her face buried in her hands. Mrs. London suddenly turned to watch a disturbance left of the bleachers, where Luther was frantically fanning his face with his baseball cap, staring at Rosie. “Excuse me,” said Mrs. London. Rosie was looking at him, puzzled. Luther tugged on the brim of his baseball cap. Rosie turned away. She stood staring down at her feet, eyes closed, lips moving. Everyone was watching her.

  She moved into position to receive serve, tense as a cat on a fence eyeing a bird.

  Sue served to Rosie’s forehand, and Rosie smashed it down the middle of the court, where Deb managed to send back a puffy little lob. Rosie moved into the net like a bored assassin and put it away with a forehand volley.

  “She’s back,” James whispered to Elizabeth. “Finally. When they’re two points away from losing.”

  Then Sue aced Simone.

  “Forty-thirty,” said Mrs. London. Match point. Rosie turned to Simone, made a fist, whispered something. Simone nodded.

  Sue served to Rosie’s backhand, and Rosie walloped it back, keeping Sue in the back court, but Sue returned it angled so sharply down the middle of the court that Simone, still at the service line, could hardly get to it. She managed only to lob it to Deb at the net—a short low lob, the easiest shot in tennis to put away. It was over. Rosie turned away from the net to avoid getting hit in the face with the ferocity of Deb’s overhead, and Deb smashed it to Rosie’s right, jumping up in triumph. But Rosie, with her back to the net, happened to be looking right at her own baseline when the ball landed and so saw, miraculously, that there was red asphalt showing between the spot where the ball had landed and the white line of the court.

  “Out,” Rosie said with amazement, as much to herself as to the others. She looked up at Mrs. London. “It was out.” She looked over her shoulder at Simone, who gaped at her, and they both smiled.

  “What?” said Sue, coming up to the net to investigate.

  “It was out,” Rosie said, grinning, and looked over at her mother: Mommy, it really was out. Elizabeth nodded: I know.

  “Out,” said Simone brusquely. “Just missed. Sorry. Next point.”

  Deb’s shoulders dropped, and then she and Sue looked at each other with derision. Luther smiled. Rosie went back to the baseline to receive serve.

  Veronica turned around and mouthed to Elizabeth, “Was it out?” and Elizabeth suddenly understood that Veronica knew; Simone had told her about Rosie’s bad calls. Elizabeth nodded, held her fingers an inch apart. Veronica made fists of triumph.

  “Deuce,” said Mrs. London, just as Luther stood and turned to leave.

  “Wait,” Elizabeth said, and leapt to her feet. “Aren’t you going to stick around and watch her win?”

  “I just did.”

  Elizabeth studied him as if he were a panorama—a mountain, dark and distant. They looked at each other then, the air between them thick with what the other knew. Then as he turned away from her, he gave her a knowing smile. Her head dipped slightly forward as she strained to read him, like a secret message, but someone hissed, “Sit down,” from behind Elizabeth, and by the time she had turned to see who it was and then back to where Luther had been standing, he was gone. She saw him off to the left of the bleachers, walking away, no longer in the hunched position of someone walking into a knifelike wind, just careful and slow.

  RALLIES began to last forever. Twice Simone stepped boldly in front of speeding bullets, angled back impossible volleys for winners, and they caught up to five-four, Sue and Deb still leading.

  But the younger girls rallied and pushed and lobbed until Simone was serving at thirty-forty, another match point for Sue and Deb. Simone hit the first serve out. Elizabeth covered her eyes, but then heard the crowd clapping again. Simone had not double-faulted; she had served an ace on the second serve. Deuce, ad in, deuce, add out—match point again. Simone, clearly winded, hit the first serve into the net.

  “Just push it over, baby,” Elizabeth whispered.

  But instead Simone slowly wound up into the backswing, slowly placed her toss several feet above her left shoulder, and slammed the ball at Deb.

  Deb blocked it back into the net.

  “This is guts ball,” James said. “This is fucking brave serving here.”

  Deuce.

  Simone served an ace. Veronica wiggled with happiness.

  Ad in. Rosie put away a backhand volley. Five games apiece.

  Twenty minutes later, with various grown-ups groaning, Rosie and Simone having blown their first match point, Deb and Sue another, no one breathing much and everyone in the crowd as tense as rats, Elizabeth with a headache and James’s eye twitching, Rae staring at her feet, and only Lank and Veronica watching, Rosie, on the second match point for her and Simone, watched a lob waft gently over Simone’s backhand at the net. She watched Simone pause a second too long before moving a couple of feet backward and rising up on the balls of her feet to try for it, and Rosie’s stomach buckled with the realization that Simone’s timing was off, that the moment had passed when Simone might still leap for it, that now the top of her racket would tick it away; and even as Rosie realized this, her body had begun to turn, and without consciously meaning to, she began to run, run for this ball that was clearly Simone’s, that Simone was about to miss, and Simone’s eyes flickered away from the lob toward the blur that was Rosie in sudden motion. Simone crouched and backed out of the way into the alley, and Rosie got into position so far over to the left that their entire court was open; they were both in Simone’s alley, within a few feet of each other. The ball bounced as Simone dropped awkwardly to the ground, her head tucked down. Rosie looked to make sure Simone was out of the way, and then pointed to the ball with her left hand, poised, swallowing, waiting, and made herself wait another full beat, until the second it began to drop from the sky where it hung, and she stepped forward, smashing it crisply down the middle of the court, so that both of their opponents looked to the other to get it, and neither did. As the crowd began to clap, Simone looked up and over her shoulder at Rosie, whose eyes were closed and whose head was thrown back in a grimace. Simone smiled and pushed herself clumsily up off the court, turning slowly to face Rosie, and they both looked skyward, sweaty and disheveled, mouths open, smears of eyeliner ringing their eyes like bruises, like bull’s-eyes. Rosie bent down to lay her head against Simone’s big belly, as if to tell the baby they had won, and then looked up again into the sky. “Great playing, partner,” she said, finally looking into Simone’s blissful face, and they walked into each other’s arms.

  eleven

  WHERE is the blue shirt you gave me last Christmas?” James asked Elizabeth the following Friday. “I want to wear it to the reading.”

  Suddenly Rosie appeared to be deeply engrossed in the comics page of the Chronicle.

  “Why don’t you wear the white Brooks Brothers shirt, darling?”

  “Because I want to wear the blue shirt. You volunteered to do my laundry last week. This is not about oppression; this is not something we need Gloria Steinem to come arbitrate. You did the laundry, I haven’t seen my shirt since. I just wonder if you might help m
e find it later. Okay?”

  When he had disappeared into his office, Elizabeth stared at Rosie until her daughter finally looked up with a face so full of fake innocence and real guilt and defiance that Elizabeth had to smile. Rosie looked down at the comics.

  “Honey? We need to get that shirt back. Okay? We’ll take him another one—we’ll buy him a brand-new dress shirt at Penney’s, but we need to get James’s back.”

  Rosie scowled into her lap, sheepish and indignant, squirming on her chair. “Penney’s?” she said. “Penney’s?”

  “Penney’s is fine,” said Elizabeth.

  “It’s not good enough for James. You wouldn’t buy him a shirt there.”

  “Rosie?” Elizabeth’s voice rose threateningly. “I want you to figure out how to get that shirt back.”

  “Well, I know where he lives. At the American. On Mission. In San Francisco.”

  “Oh, God, Rosie, you weren’t there, were you? Tell me you weren’t in his room.”

  “I don’t even know where the American is.”

  ROSIE called information and got the number of the hotel, took a long deep breath and dialed. “Hello,” she said when someone answered. “I need to leave a message for the guy named Luther who lives there? Do you know who I mean? Okay, could you tell him Rosie Ferguson called—what? What?” Her eyes narrowed, as if she were straining to hear. “For good, you mean? Are you sure?” Elizabeth bent forward, peering into her daughter’s face. “Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”