Scarlett Thomas - 41-Love

ALSO BY SCARLETT THOMAS

FICTION

Our Tragic Universe

The End of Mr. Y

PopCo

Going Out

Bright Young Things

The Seed Collectors

Oligarchy

NONFICTION

Monkeys with Typewriters

On Addictions, Tennis,
and Refusing to Grow Up

Scarlett Thomas

COUNTERPOINT

Berkeley, California

For Rod, with love

Though we would never wish the poisonous red shoes and the subsequent decrease of life onto ourselves or others, there is in its fiery and destructive center a something that fuses fierceness to wisdom in the woman who has danced the cursed dance, who has lost herself and her creative life, who has driven herself to hell in a cheap (or expensive) handbasket, and yet who has somehow held on to a word, a thought, an idea until she could escape her demon through a crack in time and live to tell about it.

CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTS

Y ou can only start at the beginning if you know what the beginning is, but maybe this will do. Its a Wednesday in July 2013. Ive arrived at the Indoor Tennis Centre for a tennis lesson. I last had a tennis lesson when I was fourteen, far away in the sweltering heat of Mexico, not long before I gave up playing seriously forever. I have just turned forty-one. I am wearing blue cotton Adidas shorts and a striped cotton tank top I hope doesnt make me look fat. I wont wear cotton for very long in this storyindeed, I will have to move on to performance fabrics quite soonbut it is how I begin. I have an old tennis racquet that cost about 25 from a funny little shop in Canterbury. The coach is a large, cheerful guy who is bouncing around teaching some kid, with brightly colored hoops and targets everywhere. He is running so late I almost say somethingalmost, but not quite. I am trying not to feel intimidated. This place is huge. Serious. Professional. Everythings green and smells of rubber or acrylic. There is a bulletin board with team lists printed on it. Ladies 1. Mixed 1. Ladies 2. Imagine... But I dont let myself. Not yet.

My turn, at last. I have no idea how much is wrong with the way I hit the ball. My whole technique is modeled on the way the cool older guys used to play at the local hard courts in Chelmsford when I was a kid. Flat, low, skimming the net. Nowadays everyone plays the ball earlier, harder, with topspin. But I dont yet know any of this. I am just pleased that I can hit the ball at all, that I can keep a rally going with this coach.

I stand a long way behind the baseline, waiting for the ball to come to me. It flies through the air (spinning over and over itself, although I cannot yet read spin), then bounces: beautiful, poetic, mathematical, as if all the laws of the universe were distilled into this one simple movement. It hits the ground, arcs, peaks, and then begins to drop. Its at the very last moment that I hit it, trying to remember what I learned all those years ago about following through. Im fast around the court, and I get to every ball, but I dont yet realize that this coach, Dan, is playing easy for me, playing down to me, because at this moment for him I am some random woman who has come along to maybe improve her game enough to be allowed to play with her husband, or her slightly better friend, or to join some social tennis club.

Of course my ambitions are greater than this, my ambitions that will soon build and eventually collapse like a vast, terrifying avalanche. At this moment, though, I just want to impress him. Embarrassingly, bizarrely, I want him to declare that hes never seen anyone so talented in all his years of coaching and... I dont know. Ask me to come back? Ask me to train for one of the teams? Just to praise one of my shots would be a start.

On the next court a younger, thinner blond coach is feeding balls from a basket to a dark-haired woman who keeps laughing and missing her shots. I am better than her, I think. I am not the worst person in here. Their session ends before ours, and the blond guy grins and apologizes as he walks behind me with his basket of balls and his beaten-up old Dunlop racquet with the leather grip that I will later learn makes his fingers bleed when he plays in tournaments. The woman follows him, still laughing. Dan calls to her, something like, How did you get on? and she says, Oh, I beat him again and he just cant handle it. Its pretty clear that he has let her win. Is this what coaches do with ladies who have 25 to spare for a lesson with them? Immediately, a yearning begins in me. One day Im going to beat one of these coaches for real. I want to face one of these guys as their equal. I want them to want to hit with me.

A year or so later, when I am training for Seniors Wimbledon, hitting with Dan as a friend, as his mixed doubles partner, he will look at me and say, Did you have any idea, on that first day you came in here, that first session you had with me? Did you even think that youd be here, that youd have achieved all of this? Of course I didsort ofbut I wont say that. By then Ill be thinking that whatever I achieve isnt good enough, and Ill be wracked with doubts and terrors and problems with my forehand, with my desperate need to win.

As I leave after that first session with my cheap racquet in my cheap bag, walking up the stairs feeling happy and complete in some way I havent experienced for a long time, aching to play again as soon as possible but with various muscles beginning to go into spasm, I realize that someones running up the stairs behind me. Its the blond guy. The other coach.

You were hitting the ball nicely down there, he says.

Thanks, I say. And then: Im Scarlett, by the way.

Josh, he says. See you again soon, I hope.

He passes me, and carries on running to wherever hes going.

I t is December 21, 2013. I am forty-one years old and I am just about to play in my first tennis competition. Ive been half-joking, or maybe lets say three-quarters-joking, for the last few weeks that I am going to win this, the Indoor Tennis Centre Christmas Tournament Ladies Singles. I have read books (always the first thing I do), weight-trained, studied strategy, watched tennis matches on YouTube. Initially, maybe back in November, I told myself, and my partner Rod, that I was going to win. But I didnt completely believe it, and as the thing approached I realized I was mad to think of victory, especially as one of the entrantsthe favorite, in factwas a teenage tennis star with a coach, supportive parents, and a string of victories behind her. When I looked at the list of entrants with my coach, Dan, he simply shook his head and said, Youll have trouble beating her.

Ive been playing tennis again for almost six months and I dont understand why I am not better. I mean, Im good. I know that. Inside my head Im really, really good, but my inner picture has not yet translated to actual results. Ive played a couple of disastrous league matches by now and become a regular at Dans Monday-night Recreational Session. These would be called club nights, except the Indoor Tennis Centre isnt a club, as such: its a pay-and-play, council-run center that you cant join, exactly, but it does have teams. The Reccy sessions are clique-y and weird and I occasionally cry when I come home after them. Hayley, Dans mixed doubles partner, is clearly his favorite. She hits the ball hard, and she knows how to do topspin. Then theres a bunch of large, confident women who hit the ball extremely hard and occasionally do drive volleys. And on the next court Becky Carter has her weekly coaching session with Josh.