Nobody Else’s Story
The Fourth of July celebration at the club had turned out to be almost as boring as one of Jilly’s American Girl tea parties—basically just a bunch of people standing around with drinks in their hands, dipping shrimp in cocktail sauce and admiring each other’s outfits. Regina had on one of her floaty dresses. Forrest wore a white linen suit with a navy blue T-shirt underneath, like Don Johnson onMiami Vice.
I told nobody about my tennis lesson with Jonathan that afternoon. It wasn’t much of a story, but for once the story was mine, not somebody else’s or made up. I got to be the star of it.
“You’re a natural, Frances,” Jonathan had told me.
For the first time in my life, it occurred to me that I might actually be good at something.
For fourteen years I’d seen myself as a loser. I had caught a glimpse of a world—just a glimpse—in which I might actually be able to win.
The next day, at the club, when Jilly and Hayward went off for their lessons, I made my way to the court where Jonathan had hit with me.
“Do you have time for me?” I asked him.
He handed me a racquet.
That night I took my journal out from its place in the bottom drawer of my dresser, under my T-shirts.Jonathan says I’ve got an instinctive understanding of how to connect with a ball,I wrote.
No fantasies. Just the truth.
This was how I fell in love with the game of tennis. Three mornings a week now—sometimes four—I’d meet up with Jonathan during the Emerson children’s lessons. For fifty-five minutes, right up to the time we had to pick up the balls, he put me through the paces of ball drills and serving practice. Nights in my bed I went back over what he’d taught me and wrote it down. I’d used up Olivia’s credit now. But Jonathan hadn’t brought this up.
Sometimes I actually dreamed I was playing. Finally, I had something interesting to share in my nightly writing that had actually happened. And it had nothing to do with Forrest Emerson or my parents or Regina or the children. This was all mine.
I needed to find a better place to hide my journal. Writing as I did now, nobody must ever see what I’d set down on these pages. I studied my little room, searching for a hiding place.
Not many options. Only one, actually. I lifted the edge of my mattress off the bed frame and set the journal on top of the slats. Before replacing the mattress, I added another element of security—a row of BBs from Hayward’s BB gun that he was always leaving around. I laid these out in a row alongside my journal. Twelve of them. If anyone ever disturbed my hiding spot, I’d know.
31
XXO
Back when Forrest’s friend Evan first encouraged him to sign up for the Labor Day triathlon, Forrest had explained to us—with a look of regret—that his participation required serious training of a kind likely to be painful to an old man like himself. But until Brenda Barnett appeared on the scene, I hadn’t noticed any big level of commitment on Forrest’s part to train for the event.
Now all that had changed. The brief, wonderful stretch of weeks in which I’d had breakfast with Forrest every day seemed to be over. As early as I came down to breakfast now, he was always gone already. His training for the triathlon required him to spend most of the morning on his bike, he told us. Afternoons he alternated between running and swimming. As early as I got up—six o’clock, most mornings—he’d be off on his bike already. He might come home sometime in the late morning, but when he did, it was mostly to take a shower and fix himself a protein shake before heading out again for his swim or his run.
He always left a bagel or an English muffin at my place at the counter; I just didn’t have the taste for them anymore. More achingly than I could have imagined, I missed those times we’d had together in the early days of the summer. I ate my toast or cereal alone now. The one small consolation: Every morning without fail I’d find a littlebouquet of pansies next to the bowl laid out for me. Occasionally there was a piece of notebook paper set out next to the flowers. No words on it. Just a smiley face or heart, drawn (somewhat unevenly) in pencil. Forrest was such a bad speller, I knew, he probably decided to forgo words altogether and stick toXXO.
I brought the pansies up to my room, lifted the mattress, moved the row of BBs, and took out my precious journal. I placed the pansies in the pages of my journal with another book on top to flatten the petals.
None of this was simple. But at that moment, the gift of those flowers meant the world. That little bouquet had been a message. Forrest Emerson still cared about me.
32
Only Friend in the World
It was raining, so we weren’t going to the club. The children had gone over to the Olivers’ house to work on a presentation they were putting on at the club the next week, a skit commemorating Bastille Day, featuring one of the older kids—Olivia, in a fancy dress and wig—playing the role of Marie Antoinette. At the Lake Catherine Country Club, they were always celebrating something or other.
So I was off duty. I was lying on the couch, starting in on a new book.
My attempts at keeping my calorie intake low over the summer had failed miserably, due to a combination of my daily visit to the Caboose with the kids, the presence of an irresistible assortment of great snacks in the pantry at Wonderland, and Prudence’s fried chicken. In spite of this, I’d trimmed down noticeably, thanks to bike riding, and the fact that I was playing tennis almost daily now.
Studying my body as I did, up in my attic room at night—my legs, my chest—I no longer experienced the level of self-hatred that had plagued me in recent years. I often thought about Regina’s words to me that someday I’d look beautiful. This was still hard to believe.
My lack of breasts was a continued disappointment. Sometimes, sitting across from him at the table, I’d see Hayward studying my chest, but with a bemused expression, like a sailor onboard ship, looking outto the horizon in search of an approaching vessel and finding nothing but fog. Even more unnerving was the smile he gave me on these occasions. More precisely, a smirk.
I wore my training bra when I could, but not when I had tennis lessons, and I was having tennis lessons almost daily now. The first time Jonathan had worked with me on my serve, I’d worried that one of the balled-up pieces of toilet paper I’d stuffed inside my bra would fall out. After that I’d abandoned my efforts to fill out my appearance. I decided that developing a serve mattered more.
