Two Taps

Mara’s four cones made a crooked yellow line across the middle of the court.

“That one is in my way,” I said.

“It’s where you stood on Tuesday.”

“I was in my own way on Tuesday. We established that.”

She moved the cone a shoe’s width, then waited for me to object. The coach was feeding balls from the other end, watching the two of us arrange plastic as if the exercise had become more interesting than the tennis.

We took turns crossing the centre line. When Mara called early, I could leave the ball to her without twisting to make certain she was there. When I called, she stayed back. On the eighth feed I said nothing. Mara’s racquet passed behind mine and the ball struck the seam of our bags against the fence.

“I thought you saw me,” I said.

“I did. I couldn’t see your decision.”

“I hadn’t made it.”

“That was the problem.”

There were partners who would have counted the mistake aloud. Mara bent to retrieve the ball and set it on the coach’s pile with the others. That was worse, in a way. I could not make her into the person I had expected and then win a familiar quarrel.

The coach called a break. I carried the cones to the bench. They weighed almost nothing, and I resented them for being the reason I was breathing hard.

“Why don’t you just tell me when you’re taking it?” I asked.

Mara sat on the low wall to adjust the laces of her left shoe. “Because I don’t always know when you want it. And you see the ball earlier than I do from the net.”

“That’s the first time anyone has called me useful while moving me out of the way.”

“I didn’t move you.”

“You drew a map of where I stood badly.”

“I can take the cones away.”

She said it without a challenge. I picked up one of them and turned it inside out with my thumbs. If I made this about plastic I would miss the thing she had offered: a way to tell her what I needed while she was still willing to listen.

“Keep them,” I said. “But if I call mine, don’t come through me.”

“All right.”

“And if you cross, tell me before you move.”

“All right.”

“You’re making this difficult to negotiate.”

She looked up from her shoe. “I’m agreeing with you, Saskia.”

It was the first time she had said my name without a coach between us. It did nothing to my ability to grip the cone.

We played a practice tiebreak against Anika and Devika and lost it. Then we played another. At five-all, Devika hit a hard return low at my feet. I lifted it, thinking only about keeping it in play. Mara called left so early that I had time to see the opening before she went through it. The next ball came to me, high and slow. I put it between our opponents.

At the far end of the court Devika raised a hand to ask whether the ball had touched the line. Anika looked at us, waiting for an answer neither of us could give from where we stood. Mara walked to the mark, crouched, and called it in. She had been the person who finished the point; calling it out would have handed us an easier score. I watched her erase the mark with the side of her shoe only after Anika nodded. It was a small act of honesty and so ordinary to Mara that she did not look up to see whether I approved.

We lost the point after the replay. Devika’s return clipped the tape and landed almost at my foot. I went for it late. Mara could have called that one hers and spared me the miss. She waited for me to turn towards her, then asked whether I had seen the net cord. I had. I had seen too many things at once.

“I can take the next short one,” she said.

“You can tell me before you do.”

“That’s why I’m telling you now.”

Our score had worsened, but the shape of the court had changed. I could hear her before she reached my side of it. For the first time that week, the sound did not make me want to defend the line between us.

Mara tapped her frame twice with her fingers.

“Grit?” I asked as we walked to the other service court.

“No.”

“Was that for me?”

“You let me go.”

“You warned me.”

“Then we both did our jobs.”

Anika served before I could answer. I returned long. Mara did not take the signal back.

We won the next tiebreak by two points. At lunch, the coach brought the exhibition sheet over without a speech. Mara placed it between our trays with the pen uncapped. She had ordered soup and was waiting for it to cool; I had a sandwich and enough objections to fill the time.

“There’s no reason for us to enter if you’re only doing it because I’m here,” I said.

“I play exhibitions,” she said.

“Not usually with someone you’ve known for two days.”

“I practise with someone I’ve known for two days. Saturday is another practice with a few more people watching.”

“There will be a result.”

“There always is. Even when the coach pretends he hasn’t written it down.”

I wanted her to say she needed me. That would have made signing easy and the rest of the week unbearable. Instead she ate a spoonful of soup and let the empty box stay empty.

“If I say yes,” I said, “we need a way to stop each other when the calls get late.”

“Two taps,” she said.

“Like the one after Devika’s return?”

“I did it because I couldn’t talk over the next serve. If either of us hears it, we slow down before the next point and say what happened. No gestures no one else understands. We just make time.”

“You planned a rule without telling me.”

“I was asking.”

Her face was wholly serious. Mine wasn’t. I wrote my name in the lower box, then passed her the pen. She signed the upper one. The coach returned ten minutes later and looked from the names to our soup as if he had expected the sheet to be decorated with amendments.

I had almost told Mum not to come. The night before, she wrote to ask whether she should bring the blue scarf or the one that made her look less like a club supporter. I called instead of answering. She said she had been at enough of my singles matches to know when I wanted an empty stand, and I said that this was different.

“Different because of the new partner?” she asked.

“Different because I don’t know what you should watch. Sometimes I won’t even touch the ball.”

“Then I’ll watch what happens when you don’t.”

I couldn’t explain why that answer made me sit down. For years I had shown Mum a sport in which every winner and error was mine to carry home. If she watched a woman stand beside me and make a good decision, she might see something about me I had spent a long time refusing to see myself. I told her the match time and said she should wear whichever scarf was warm. She said she’d wear the blue one because I could find it from the court.

On Saturday my mother came to watch. She had never learned to sit still through a match. She moved from one end of the balcony to the other whenever the sun shifted, and every time I looked up she was examining a new view as if I had changed courts. I could pick her out by the blue scarf she wore indoors regardless of season.

“You didn’t say she was coming,” Mara said while we warmed up.

“I didn’t know.”

“Do you want to say hello before we start?”

“After. She’ll have a suggestion if I give her time.”

“Will it be right?”

“Probably. That’s the trouble.”

Mara hit a ball down the middle for me to return. I put it away too hard. The sound filled the roof.

“She’s watched you for years,” Mara said.

“She’s watched me lose for years.”

“She’s watched you play for years.”

I turned away to find another ball. I didn’t need Mara interpreting my family for me. But I noticed she had not called my mother unreasonable or told me to ignore her. She had taken the sentence I had said and made me hear the part I had hidden inside it.

The first pair we faced worked well together, a quiet woman at the net and a younger player whose serve made the air in front of my face move. We lost the opening game on my return. In the second, Mara held serve with a call on every point. In the third, I stopped listening because I wanted to show the balcony that I could manage without them.

At thirty-all I lunged across the centre line after a ball Mara had called for. We both got a racquet on it. It travelled sideways and struck the net post.

I heard my mother make the small noise she made when a saucepan slipped from the counter at home. Not a criticism. A body preparing to catch something it couldn’t reach.

Mara put two fingers against her frame and tapped. Once. Twice.

The other team walked to their positions. The umpire waited for us to do the same.

“I took yours,” I said.

“You did.”

“I saw the gap on the other side.”

“So did I. Next one, if you have the gap, call yours before I leave.”

“I can do that.”

“Good.”

No lesson. No soft voice meant for a player on the verge of breaking. The point was gone and she believed I would be there for the next one.

I was. At deuce I called mine early and she stayed. I sent the return at the quiet player, who could do little but lift it. Mara moved to the open side and finished the point. Our opponents saved the game anyway. We won the next three.

At the changeover I could feel a faint pull in my left calf. The court had a slick patch near the service line where somebody had wiped away a spill; I had planted awkwardly to avoid it. I stretched once, standing beside the bench, and the sensation eased. When Mara asked whether I wanted water, I said yes. She handed me the bottle and nothing more was made of it.

We lost the match in a final tiebreak. The last ball had been mine to take. I called it, and Mara stayed where she said she would. I reached it and sent it too deep. There was no late call I could rehearse until it became a better point. I wanted to blame the loss on our unfamiliarity because that would leave the partnership with a future if only we worked harder. Instead I had missed a return. The honesty of it made me unexpectedly reluctant to look at her.

Mara shook the other pair’s hands before she came back to the bench. She put my water bottle beside my bag. “I liked the point before that one,” she said.

“We lost that point as well.”

“I still liked how we played it.”

I had never asked her whether she liked playing with me. She had given me part of an answer in a language we both understood, and I was too angry with the score to take it cleanly. I nodded.

My mother applauded until the rest of the balcony had stopped. I took so long packing my bag that Mara finished hers, came back from speaking to the coach and was still waiting at the gate.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” I said.

“I know.”

“Did he tell you what we did wrong?”

“Three things. None of them on the last point.”

I zipped the bag. “What did you tell him?”

“That our calls got better when we were tired.”

“Is that praise?”

“It’s evidence.”

My mother had started down the steps. She stopped when she saw us by the gate, waiting to see whether she should come over. Mara saw me see her.

“I’ll get the balls,” Mara said, though every ball was already back in its basket. She walked towards the far court and let me meet my mother without an audience.

Mum hugged me with the care she used when she wasn’t sure whether I’d let her. “You looked happy,” she said.

“We lost.”

“I saw that part.”

She offered no suggestion. Over her shoulder I could see Mara picking up a single ball that had rolled under the bench. She carried it to the basket as slowly as if returning it were work that required all her attention.

“I was,” I told Mum. “For some of it.”

Mara came back only after Mum had gone to fetch her coat. She tapped the frame of her racquet twice, very lightly, while she waited for me to lift my bag. This time there was no point to discuss. I tapped mine twice in answer.