Once she had grasped the basic movement, he taught her to step into an open stance as the ball approached, angling the racket face so it hit the ball slightly in front of her body, not behind. She had skinny arms and a pale, almost sickly complexion at that age, having been encouraged not to play outside too much as a child; but soon she was hitting the ball with a power that no one expected, and her cheeks flushed with color, her skin glistening in the afternoon sun. They stayed for two and a half hours that day and only left because the men had returned from their lunch and their naps.
For the next several weeks, Adele’s father took her to the club early to watch the matches, and she listened intently as he analyzed the players’ strengths and weaknesses, commenting on their ground strokes, styles, and strategies. Eagerly, gradually, she began to make sense of his remarks. Some of the men at the club were experienced players, traveling for tournaments; others were on vacation from England and even America. Adele and her father studied them all.
She relished her father’s sudden interest in spending time with her. He insisted that she accompany him each morning to the club—she was the only child allowed in because of some arrangement he must have made—and then as soon as the sun got unbearably hot and everyone deserted the courts for lunch and shade, he’d take her out and work on drills.
They were not a particularly wealthy family, but when her father sold his horse-drawn-carriage business a few years prior, they were able to afford a small and rustic holiday home in Nice. They lived a comfortable, if frugal, lifestyle, her father often bargaining or negotiating for a deal. But the one thing her father was willing to spend money on wasthe Nice Lawn Tennis Club membership. On earlier visits to the South of France, her father had seen firsthand the popularity of tennis and how its star players enjoyed a privileged place in Riviera society. He had been mesmerized and wanted that life for himself, but he didn’t have the athleticism or the youth to excel in such an active pursuit. He was starting to realize, however, that his daughter might.
“Today, work on your forehand,” he said. “Tout de suite.”
“Again, Papa?” Adele groaned, they’d done nothing but forehand strokes for hours the day prior, and she was eager to learn something new.
He didn’t respond and simply began hitting the ball to her. After an hour of practicing the same exact stroke over and over again, he took his handkerchief and set it on the far corner of the court.
“Alors,” he said. “Aim for the target.” For the next hour he focused only on control and placement.
When her time was up, her feet throbbed and her shoulder ached from the repetitive movement. She could taste the dusty red clay in her mouth and feel it in her eyes. Her socks and shoes were orange and her skin felt gritty. But despite all that, she was walking on air because for seventeen of the last twenty shots, she’d hit the handkerchief, and then her father had folded it in half, and then in quarters, and only after she hit the square five times in a row did he finally let her take a break.
She wasn’t accustomed to this kind of hard work—sweaty, lung-burning work, running down each ball, but now she leapt and swung as if she were a ballerina performing at the Palais Garnier. Until then, she’d always been taught that her role as a young girl was to be reserved and ladylike, seen and not heard. Her mother had enrolled her in classical Greek dance classes and piano lessons, activities to be pursued with control and restraint. When she was younger she’d been told to sit quietly and read while her parents attended to their business. Now, suddenly, everything she had been taught was being unraveled and retaught.
At night she overheard her mother and father discuss their daughter’s new interest.
“It’s not graceful to leap the way she does,” her mother said, aftershe’d spent a few hours courtside watching the father-daughter display. “I see her bare ankles. It’s not ladylike.”
“She needs to be able to run, to leap,” her father said, fighting back. “Have you seen the way the men go for every ball?”
“She’s not a man. And that noise that she makes when she serves—it’s uncivilized,” she said.
“All right, I’ll tell her to control that,” he said. “But Anya, God has given our daughter a talent. I can help her polish it, and if she listens to me and does exactly what I say, I think I can make her a champion. Then,mon amour, we could have the life we always dreamed of.”
Adele had never heard her father speak about her in such a way, and hearing his words set a fire inside of her, making her desperate to succeed. In the coming weeks, months, years, his belief in her made her work harder, made her strive for more, made her desperate not to make a mistake—leaping, dancing, hitting, following through, shuffling. Prepare, hit, prepare, hit. While her father became obsessed with studying the greats and teaching their techniques to Adele, she became obsessed with being able to follow his instructions and impress him. She wanted to succeed and to be able to give him the life he wanted. If that meant becoming a champion in tennis, then that was exactly what she would do.
