Match Point

The first time Mara and I practised together again, we lost a set to two junior players who had spent the morning carrying chairs into the clubhouse.

They had spent the afternoon learning to return my serve, too. I couldn’t begrudge them that. What bothered me was the ball Mara let go between us at three-all. I moved for it, saw her start forward, and stopped. It bounced twice in the open court.

“Mine,” she said, after it was too late.

“I had it.”

“Then why did you stop?”

I had no answer I wanted to give in front of the juniors. We played the rest of the set as two capable women taking turns making room for an imaginary third. At the gate, I told them their returns had earned the win. They grinned all the way to the changing rooms.

Mara took the balls from the basket and began counting them. It was a thing she did when she was deciding whether a conversation could be postponed until the work was finished.

“I thought you were crossing,” I said.

“I thought you’d call me off.”

“You used to know.”

“We used to tell each other.”

That made me look at the empty half of the court. Against her at Northmere, I’d known what she would see and had used it to win. Beside her, I had tried to make being known do the work of speaking.

“Again?” I asked.

“The whole set?”

“The point.”

I fed a ball to the juniors’ side and ran to the net. Mara called mine before my foot had landed. I let her take it. The shot wasn’t especially good. We had both moved toward the right part of the court, and that was enough to make me laugh.

“That was almost a conversation,” she said.

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

I had been cleared to compete, with a continuing programme I followed because I wanted a long career, not because Mara was watching. Northmere had shown me I could play several matches without asking the calf to make promises it couldn’t give. It hadn’t made every part of returning easy. The habit of expecting a woman I loved to read my hesitation was one more thing I could practise.

We worked until the light went across the baseline. Ivo came by to collect a basket and told us there was a small Vale event at the end of the month. He looked at the space between us as if it were another line he’d have to mark.

“Entries close Friday,” he said. “Anika’s already told me she has a coaching weekend. Jules is playing elsewhere. If you want an entry, sort it yourselves. I won’t sign one because the room looks hopeful.”

“You make such beautiful invitations,” I said.

“I teach tennis. The rest is your trouble.”

After he left, Mara sat on the bench and unlaced one shoe. We had two days to decide. Once, I would have made a neat argument for entering, as though a sensible schedule could conceal how badly I wanted to play beside her again. She would have answered with a plan. We might even have won on those terms.

“I want to enter with you,” I said. “I also want to know I can say no to an event later without you hearing no to us.”

She put the shoe beside her. “You can.”

“That was quick.”

“I’ve had weeks to work out the answer. I’ll be disappointed sometimes. That’s allowed. I won’t turn the disappointment into an invoice.”

I sat down. A loose piece of tape on the bench caught at my sleeve. Mara reached toward it, stopped, and asked if she could pull it free. I nodded. Even now, with everything we had said, I was struck by how little it cost her to ask.

“I want to enter too,” she said. “And I want to be able to play with Jules again if the right offer comes.”

“I know.”

“I need you to say you know the part that will be difficult.”

I watched Ivo carry the basket through the squeaking service door. “I’ll hate some photographs. I’ll be proud of you anyway. I might need a day before I can manage both.”

“I can give you a day.”

“Don’t give me a day because you think I’m fragile. Give me one because you might need it too.”

“All right.”

We had been in love across a kitchen table, across two cities, and on opposite sides of a net. The condition I wanted now was smaller and harder: not to make the next tournament a test of any of it.

On Friday we signed the Vale entry together. My name was first because the form’s cursor had been in that box when I picked up the pen. Mara’s went below. I handed it to the desk, and the woman there checked both names against our memberships before putting the page in a tray. Nothing chimed. Nobody remarked on a reunion.

Mara and I went for lunch. She ordered the awful club soup and insisted it had improved. I tasted it. It hadn’t. The sheer ordinariness of being able to disagree with her about soup and still have a place to sit beside her carried me through the first two rounds a fortnight later.

After the second round, a local writer asked for a few words about our partnership. We had been filmed on court, which was part of playing an event people could attend, but he wanted an account of the weeks when Mara had played with Jules and I had played with Anika. He asked Mara whether she had been waiting for my return all along.

“No,” she said. “I entered three events with Jules because I wanted to play them. Saskia entered with Anika because she wanted to compete when she was ready. We decided about this event after both of those commitments were done.”

The answer would not give him the faithful-waiting story he had expected. He turned to me and asked whether I had been frightened Mara would not want to play with me after the injury. Mara looked at me, not to warn me away from a question I was able to hear, but to see whether I wanted to answer it.

“I was frightened about several things,” I said. “I made some poor decisions while I was frightened. I followed my return plan, and I chose this entry with Mara. That’s the part of it I’m willing to put in your piece.”

He asked what the plan had involved. I said it was mine and the clinician’s. He wrote down the sentence about our entry, then asked how we’d handled the middle in the second set. That was a question we could both answer. We spent three minutes disagreeing about one return while he tried to keep up. The piece might still make a tidier story of us than we deserved. He had the facts we were prepared to give him.

“You could have told him you stayed loyal,” I said when he went away.

“I was loyal to the person I said I’d be honest with. I didn’t need to sit on a bench for a month to do it.”

“The bench would have been a dull place for you.”

“The soup was bad enough.”

I took her hand for a moment in the corridor. She didn’t pull away, and I didn’t ask her to make a public declaration out of it. We had answered as two players who had been away, done other work, and returned with a choice each could name. In the next match the score would be simpler than the account a stranger might write. I was ready for the score.

In our semifinal, a pair from a neighbouring club discovered the old weakness in our middle. They sent a ball between us twice. On the third, I felt Mara begin to cross and I nearly held my tongue, waiting to see if she knew. The ball was coming fast enough to make waiting a choice.

“Yours,” I called.

She took it, low and late, and put it back down the line. Our opponents were ready; the return came to me. I sent it high, bought Mara time to recover, and saw her cover the space I’d left. We lost the point after three more shots. It was the best point we had played in the match.

At the changeover Mara tapped twice on the frame of my racquet. We had used the signal to stop and speak when a match began to carry us away. This time I knew what she wanted before she said it, but I waited.

“You called me,” she said.

“I did.”

“I was late.”

“I know. You took it anyway.”

She put her hand briefly over mine, then let go before the umpire called time. We won the next game, and the one after that. A final was now possible. I wanted it with the sharp, uncomplicated hunger I’d thought I had lost when I stopped at Southmere.

We lost the match in a tiebreak. I missed a volley I could have made on any other day, and Mara served a double fault at the worst moment. When our opponents shook our hands, we congratulated them without making our disappointment noble. It hurt. We went through the points once in the empty stand, and then Mara closed the notebook.

“I don’t want to fix the last point tonight,” she said.

“Neither do I.”

“Come home with me?”

“Yes.”

At her flat she put her keys in the dish and asked whether I wanted food or quiet. I said both, in that order. We made toast. Halfway through mine I started describing the missed volley, and she said, “Saskia.” Only my name. I set the toast down.

“I don’t think we lost because we’re together,” she said.

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“You were working towards something equally foolish.”

I was. I’d been reaching for a reason that would make one missed ball mean more than one missed ball. I had lost with Anika and I had won with her. Mara had lost with Jules and played beautifully. Love had changed what we risked by speaking. It hadn’t rewritten the scores.

“I’m angry,” I said. “I also want to be here. Can I be both?”

“I’d be worried if you couldn’t.”

I moved my plate aside and kissed her. She asked whether I wanted to stay the night, and I said yes. We left the racquets in the hall. Neither of us promised to enter the next tournament before the toast was finished.