CHAPTER TEN
ADELE
Adele shook off her irritation with a cold shower, then she made herself a simple dinner—salmon rillettes on toast and a glass of wine. She did not need to worry about Milly Kincaid. Clearly she had no idea who Adele was, she was sure of that now. If she’d shown any glimmer of recognition, Adele would have noticed. No, she was just admiring, and envious, perhaps. And she was being more than a little ridiculous to think she could practice with Adele. Absurd.
She opened her latest edition ofAmerican Lawn Tennismagazine. While she no longer played matches, staying up to date with the game of tennis gave her a satisfying yet invisible thread to her former life. On page 8, there was a photograph of Althea Gibson—her light-brown skin almost passing for white in the washed-out black-and-white photograph—holding up her tennis racket and smiling. Adele had been keeping an eye on this rising tennis player for a few years now. There’d been little written about her in the national papers, but in select magazines there had been opinion pieces by tennis stars such as Alice Marble and Sarah Palfrey advocating against the color barrier that excluded Althea from the all-white tennis championships, and it was slowly working. Not only was Gibson an excellent player, but she was now the first Negro person, man or woman, ever to play in American Lawn Tennis championships, andAdele felt a kinship toward her. She herself had broken down boundaries and biases, but in Adele’s case, that had meant attitudes toward women, not race.
The article referenced an international news story noting, “The twenty-eight-year-old Negro has been competing as a special emissary of the State Department in its program for sending representative American athletes abroad.” Adele pushed her plate aside, intent on reading more. Althea would stay overseas to train for and compete in the Wimbledon tournament in London that summer, and her pre-Wimbledon itinerary included tournaments in Egypt, France, and Italy.
Adele sipped her wine, feeling a pang of longing for the life she had destroyed for herself, as well as an overwhelming feeling of pride for Althea. She could vividly picture how it must feel to charge ahead like that despite the odds. She closed her eyes and rested her hands on the magazine, wondering if they ever crossed paths, whether Adele might have some sage advice for her. This woman was twenty-eight and seemed to be on the precipice of something big. Adele had been four years younger when everything came to a crashing halt.
When she opened her eyes she was looking directly at the framed photograph on the wall of her father, standing tall, wearing a suit and a straw fedora, with fourteen-year-old Adele standing next to him, tennis racket in hand, both of them squinting into the sun. She remembered the day as if it were yesterday, and her father’s absence suddenly took hold in her chest. He’d been gone for two decades now, but still she missed him telling her what to do—whether it was what tournaments to enter, how to play each particular opponent, what to take when she felt her energy flag during a match, or what to think when her fear crept in. When he was coaching her, managing her life, she hadn’t had to think, she only had to play. Though painful at times, there had been a comfort in that.
She allowed her mind to return to those early days, when she was still proving herself, when she was surprising her father—and the French tennis world—with her string of wins, beginning at the Nice Lawn TennisClub. She’d quickly moved up to the Italian Bordighera Club, then the Carlton Club in Cannes, where she skipped through to the finals and outlasted an English woman who was twice her age, as almost all of her opponents were. But that woman, Carol Lewis, had been a formidable Wimbledon veteran, and the match had not been easy.
Approaching the final set, Adele had become exhausted and begun to feel intimidated by her opponent’s seemingly endless energy, precision, and endurance. Adele had expected her to tire after a while, after she ran Carol Lewis from one side of the court to the other, to the net and to the baseline, but she did not. Instead, Adele had felt herself weaken in a frightening way. Losing suddenly seemed inevitable, and losing, her father had taught her, was absolutely unacceptable.
In the break before the next set, Adele hurried to her father and asked if he would allow her to leave the court, knowing a default was better than an outright loss. “Papa,” she whispered, pleading, telling him she was too tired to go on, “je suis fatigué. Je ne peux pas continuer à jouer. S’il te plaît, Papa. Please.”
“Absolument pas!” he spat, enraged that she would ask such a thing. “How dare you give up, all those hours I have trained you. I did not do that for you to give up.…Tu es faible.”
Standing miserably by the court that day, she felt every spectator’s eyes boring through her, her opponent’s too, while he berated and threatened her, loud enough for all to hear.
And he had not finished. “Look at me. Do you want to be a failure? If you give up and let us down now, you will be on your own. Do you want to disgrace our family name?”
“No, Papa,” she whispered, noticing a young reporter with parted black hair and glasses who’d attended many of her early matches, lingering close to the bleachers, notebook in hand.
Carol Lewis was crossing to her side. She began bouncing lightly on her toes, back and forth, twirling her racket expectantly.
“I cannot hear you!” Papa yelled.
“No, Papa,” she said louder now, her voice cracking. With the back of her hand, she brushed a tear from her cheek.
“Get back on the court and win.”
Trembling, she gripped her racket, steeling herself to obey. Suddenly, he pulled her back to him, and his face softened. “She is more tired than you, she is older, almost two decades your senior.…” He lowered his voice: “Be an animal.”
Her startled eyes searched his.
“Rip her head off her shoulders with your fastballs. You can win,” her father reminded her. He squeezed her by the arms. “Here, for energy,” he said, handing her two brandy-soaked sugar cubes, which she immediately popped into her mouth. “Now finish the match.”
In that final set she played with burning intensity, determined not only to win over her father, but to give that young reporter something to write about other than the humiliating scene he had witnessed. After each point she locked eyes with her father as he mouthed words and made exaggerated hand signals, indicating which tactics to use. She demonstrated her signature moves, leaping for the ball, legs almost in a full split as she flew across the court, reaching and sending the ball back to her opponent. In the end she’d persevered; she’d played with newfound resolve, speed, and power, and she won the final set 6–3. Eager to forget that she’d almost resigned herself to failure just forty-five minutes earlier, she strode over to her father’s proud embrace. “That’s my girl,” he said, kissing her forehead.
“We won, Papa,” she cried ecstatically, jumping up and down, adrenaline coursing through her veins. “We won! Did you see that last point? I smashed it at the end, I smashed it!”
“The point went on for too long. You should have ended it much sooner.”
“Oh, Papa,” she said, smiling. “You’re right, of course you’re right, but in the end I won, we won! Let’s celebrate. Where’s Mama? Let’s go out to eat, let’s have cassoulet; I’m starving.” Her thoughts were stillrunning a hundred miles an hour, her heart racing; she couldn’t slow down, she was too excited, too happy with the way she had turned things around.
“Calme-toi,” he said sternly, jolting Adele out of her delirium. “You won, but just barely. It was far too close. Eat in your room. Tomorrow, we get up early and train. SixAMon the courts. Tonight, you sleep.”
“Papa,” she whispered. “One night, please?” She had wanted to hold on to the electrifying thrill that was quickly slipping away. But he had already turned his back on her and was leaving the bleachers.
Adele stood and picked up her old racket and tennis ball from where they were resting against the wall in the kitchen, and she began to bounce the ball gently on its strings. She wondered if it was her talent, her father’s strict discipline, or her constant need for that winning thrill that had led to the titles that followed—winning in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles, and the flurry of French newspaper articles that called her a rising star, a “Bébé Peugeot.” How good it had felt to see her picture in all the papers that had gushed about her skill, her precision, her perfect and unreturnable serves, her “astounding mid-air flutterings,” her strength and superb coordination. How exhilarated she had felt when she saw her father showing the papers to his friends. How young she had been then. It had been almost thirty years since those early tournaments, and yet, no matter how cruel and cold he had been toward her, she still longed for the security of his guidance.
She thought about Milly watching her in the back alley, her look of admiration and awe, and she began to wonder if she could ever find the patience within herself to coach another player, to teach them what she had learned. Or would she be too much like her father—consumed with disappointment and regrets? She’d inherited her father’s impatience, his severity and cruelty, hadn’t she? Or was it something she’d learned and could unlearn, like the game of tennis itself? The only way to know was if she tried, but she didn’t know if she’d have the courageto step back onto the court and risk being known for who she was and the terrible thing she’d done.
Just holding the racket in her hands, with its worn grip and fraying strings, brought her a sense of ease and comfort, and that was enough—at least for now.
