Later I drove to the department store and bought Margo a red bathrobe and matching slippers. I was struck with a momentary sense of regret that I had not thought of this earlier, so I might have had the bathrobe monogrammed. I added matching towels and left, having spent more than I should have. On the way home, I stopped at a sporting goods store in South Miami and looked at tennis rackets. I didn’t care about the aluminum or the lighter weight, but it seemed to me that an oversize head was a wonderful idea. A salesman told me it improved play by enlarging the so-called sweet spot. I left with only a can of tennis balls and that evening, after leaving the new bathrobe and slippers on Margo’s bed, I popped open the can, letting loose a cloud of thick canned air that smelled of spray paint and rubber, and I took my old wooden racket outside to hit against the garage door. It was a clear, quiet evening. Fireflies darted around the gardenias in the side yard, and the air smelled of key limes and barbecue. The next-door neighbors waved as they went out, and then the street was empty. I aimed for the flat parts of the garage door and tried to avoid the beveled paneling, which skewed the ball in the wrong direction and sent me running after it. After a while I managed to hit many more than I missed. I was sweating and felt a blister starting to form on my palm. I kept it up until the ball was difficult to discern in the blue evening, and when I stepped up onto the porch I was surprised to find myself winded and my legs aching a little, as they did after Dennis and I swam laps around the stilt house.
I was early for the first practice. I asked in the pro shop and was directed to a court on the far end of the property. Jack stood at the baseline, serving one ball after another over the net. Each hit the opposite fence with a heavy thud. I stood watching his form—the light toss, the full range of his swing, the powerful follow-through. His legs were long and thick. If I’d been trying to receive those serves, I thought, they would have knocked the racket right out of my hand.
I stood on the sideline, under a gazebo between the courts, until he noticed me. “Frances, right?” he said. He motioned to my racket in my hand. “That’s a relic.”
I smiled and nodded, a little flattered that he had remembered my name. A man and two women—twins—came through the gate onto the court. Jack marked down their names on a clipboard and asked the man—Rodrigo—to collect the balls on the court using a red wire hopper. Rodrigo jogged off and one of the twins put out her hand for me to shake. Her name was Twyla. Another woman came through the gate and approached the gazebo—she had short gray hair and prominent cheekbones, and she was familiar to me but I couldn’t place her—and within ten minutes there were two dozen players assembled around Jack in the gazebo. I shook a few hands but there were too many people. I wondered if the group would thin out as the weeks passed.
Jack explained how the team would work: he would pair us up to get a sense of our game, then at the next practice he’d assign us a practice partner. Each practice would start with half an hour of hitting, then continue with drills for an hour and a half. “I encourage you to stay afterward to play matches,” he said, “and it’s mandatory—this is not negotiable—to play at least one full match per week.” He looked down at his clipboard, then up at me. “Frances,” he said. “Beginner, right?”
“Definitely,” I said.
“You two”—he pointed at Twyla—“take court three. Show me what you’ve got.”
We walked together across one court and onto another. “I’m not much for taking orders,” said Twyla.
“He’s just being coachy,” I said.
“Take it easy on me,” she said. We separated at the net and when I turned around, Twyla said, “Ready?” and I nodded. She bounced the ball once, then hit it far over my head. I raised a ball to signal that I would start the next one. I dropped it and hit it and was pleased to see it sail elegantly away from me, and bounce a few yards in front of her. She swung at it and missed. It went like this for another fifteen minutes—she served out and either missed mine or hit them into the net. It was humid and bright; my sunglasses kept sliding down my nose, and after only a few minutes my racket started to feel heavy. I began to run for Twyla’s balls even when they were going out. I caught them in midair and swung hard to get them all the way back to her baseline—this at least kept the ball in play for a moment more. Soon Jack blew his whistle from our sideline, and Twyla looked over at him mid-swing, and missed the ball. “You,” he said to her, “court four. Swap with Jane.”
She trudged off and Jack walked over to me. “You need more of a challenge,” he said. “Jane might be out of your league, but she’ll bring out your best.”
“I’m not sure about all this,” I said.
Jack smiled. There was a tiny chip in his front tooth, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved that morning. The hair on his arms was thick and dark. “You have a lot of power but not a lot of control,” he said. “Let’s see your serve.”
I stepped to the baseline and pointed my feet the way I remembered I should, then tossed the ball and slammed it into the net.
“Don’t chase your toss,” he said, then came up behind me and positioned my arm. I tossed several times without swinging, and then when I served the ball went long. He said, “We’re just taking stock here, don’t worry.”
Jane—this was the woman I knew from somewhere—jogged over in white shorts and a pink polo. She tapped the net with her racket and moved into position. “Ready?” she said, and before I could respond, she jackhammered a serve over the net. It flew past me.
“Good luck,” said Jack as he moved off the court.
I did my best to return Jane’s shots but they were streamlined and swift. After hitting against her for fifteen minutes, I was demoralized, but then we ran drills as a group and I managed well enough. By the end of the practice I was sweating through my shirt. Still, there was something calming about the tennis center itself, about simply passing a couple of hours on the groomed clay courts, leaving marks in the clay with each lunge and turn. Over the mesh-lined fences rose the tops of wide banyan trees along the golf course, like gentle monsters keeping watch. I simply wasn’t used to spending time outside other than at Stiltsville. I had missed it.
When I got home, Dennis and Margo were on the front steps, drinking orange juice out of the carton. They looked windblown and relaxed. “How was it?” said Margo.
“Like riding a bike,” I said as I went up the steps past them.
Margo’s things took up the trunk and half the backseat, and she wanted to drive, so I spent the trip wedged in back beside a portable television and a box of framed photos. Margo turned the air conditioner on high, but it was a tiny trickle in the heat. The turnpike offered a bleached, changeless journey unbroken into parts. Almost every billboard we passed advertised a men’s club called Café Risqué. I’d heard somewhere of girls stripping to put themselves through college and wondered how many university students worked there. “Margo,” I said. I tapped her shoulder until she turned to face me. “If you need money, just ask us. We’ll give it to you. Don’t strip for it.”