Three Dates

Ivo’s junior players were better at listening to each other than Mara and I had been on our first Tuesday. They were worse at admitting when a plan had failed. I watched them lose four points on the same return, then stopped the film before a fifth.

“Where did she stand before you served?” I asked.

The player on my left said, “Close.” The one on my right said, “In the alley.” They were both looking at the same paused frame and seeing different warnings.

“Look again,” I said. “Don’t tell me where she hit it. Tell me what you knew before your partner moved.”

They argued for three minutes, went down to court four and tried a change. Ivo watched from the doorway while I put the clip away.

“The people running Northmere’s junior week need somebody to do that for ten days,” he said. “Paid work. Travel covered. I haven’t offered your name. Would you like me to?”

“When?”

He gave me the dates. They began the Monday after next, while Mara would be at the first of the three events Jules had proposed.

“I’m still a player,” I said.

“I put you in for it because you are one. You know what a person can use between points. A coach with a desk full of diagrams often forgets.”

“You haven’t put me in yet.”

“I’m asking.”

He had learnt something from watching Mara and me. Or perhaps he had always known how to ask and I had been too angry about being injured to notice.

“Put my name forward,” I said. “Tell them I can do the ten days, not a summer.”

Ivo wrote that down in front of me. When he left, I replayed one clip to make sure I hadn’t sent the two young players away with a clever instruction that wouldn’t hold up on court. They won the next three points. The change was theirs to keep.

Mara found me at the service door after her practice with Jules. I knew the sound it made before I knew she was the one opening it. She had two racquets over one shoulder and a folded piece of paper in her hand.

“What have you got?” I asked.

“The dates Jules suggested. Would you like to see them?”

“Yes.”

She unfolded the paper. Three events, separated by travel days and a week at the Vale. She had marked the first with a question mark. The dates were close enough to my next clinician’s appointment that I could imagine being cleared while she was away. I had no evidence the clinician would clear me, only a hunger to put a finish line on the work.

“They’re all with Jules?” I asked.

“That’s what she offered. She doesn’t want to rebuild a team for each stop, and I like playing with her.”

“Are you saying yes?”

“I think so. She needs an answer by Friday. I wanted you to hear what it is before I do.”

We went outside. The Vale had closed the car park entrance for deliveries, so we crossed the long way between the courts and the fence. My leg handled the walk without thought. For the first time I resented how little that told me about a match.

“You don’t owe me a vote,” I said.

“I know. I’m not looking for one.”

“It sounds like a good chance.”

“It is. She shares the travel work and she says what she wants on court. I don’t have to guess whether she resents a call.”

“That last part is valuable,” I said, and meant it. I had watched Mara work to change that about herself in less than three weeks. It mattered that someone else had noticed.

“It would keep me away for stretches,” she said. “I can’t promise to be free on the week you’re ready.”

“You couldn’t promise that even if you declined. I might not be ready that week.”

She folded the paper again, smaller this time. “I know how this sounds.”

“It sounds like a player making a plan because she has a career. I have one too.”

I told her about Northmere. I had been waiting until the offer became certain, so I could present her with a decision instead of a possibility. After what had happened with Jules’s film question, I was beginning to see that telling someone early was not the same as asking her to decide for me.

“Ivo hasn’t sent my name yet,” I said. “If they ask, I’ll take the ten days. I want the work.”

“Good.”

“You can be disappointed.”

“I am. I’d have liked to see you at the Vale before I leave. I can be disappointed and think you should go.”

I thought of our first match, when we had tried to treat every ball as if only one person could own it. The court had felt smaller than it was. This was a different sort of space. We were giving it room instead of standing on the same line and calling the other selfish for moving.

At the fence Mara stopped. “I also need you to know that I didn’t offer Jules a season. These are the three dates on the paper. If something changes, I’ll tell you before I tell an organiser.”

“You don’t have to arrange your whole career around the possibility of me.”

“I know. That’s why I’m taking three events I want to play. I’m saying how I’ll speak to you about them.”

It was irritatingly difficult to argue with a person who had learnt the distinction I had asked her to learn.

On Friday, Northmere wrote to me. I read the terms twice and called the coordinator with three questions about the sessions. She answered each one. The fee covered the work; the travel was arranged; I would be free to do my clinician’s exercises each day. Then I asked the question I had left off my list: whether the players knew who would be analysing them.

“They know we have a visiting player,” the coordinator said. “I haven’t named you. Do you want me to?”

I had imagined arriving anonymously, a person behind a laptop while my own return to court remained mine to explain or not. The players would look me up before the first session anyway. They deserved to know whose eye was on their work. I asked her to send them my name and what I’d be doing, without a story about why I wasn’t competing that week. She agreed. The choice cost less than I’d expected and left me oddly exposed. At least the exposure was one I had selected myself.

I accepted the ten days. Ivo smiled when I told him, then asked which matches I wanted to scout before I left. I chose two with different problems. For one player, an opponent changed direction too late for her to read from the racquet. For another, the useful information was already in her partner’s call, but she seemed not to trust it. I made a page of notes and cut it in half. These weren’t athletes waiting for my wisdom. They were players who might find a sentence they could use between points.

That afternoon I worked with the juniors at the Vale again. One of them asked if Northmere meant I was becoming a coach. “It means I’m doing ten days of film work,” I said. “I still want to play.” She accepted both statements without trying to make a whole life out of either. On the way home I realised how many explanations I had been preparing for people who had asked me nothing more than what I would do on Monday.

Mara accepted Jules’s three dates the same afternoon. She told me herself, in a call that lasted seven minutes because she was waiting for a practice court and I was on a bus. Neither of us thanked the other for allowing it.

“Are you free on Sunday evening?” she asked.

“Before I go? Yes.”

“Come to mine. We can eat something that doesn’t come from a tournament desk.”

“I cooked for you once.”

“I know. That’s why I’m asking you back.”

“The pasta was good.”

“It was. The second helping was evidence.”

When I got home, I laid the Northmere details beside my exercise sheet and looked at the dates Mara had written on her paper. They didn’t align into a reassuring pattern. One of us would come back while the other was away; some evenings we would both be working and tired. That was what the next month would cost. It was also the first time I could see a month ahead with Mara in it without imagining that she had given up tennis to be there.

I wrote Sunday evening in the space between two film sessions. Then I packed my notebook for Northmere, not because I would need Mara’s answers from it, but because the work was mine.