Derek is in his forties, a former college player with a massive serve. He started at Tennis Win only a couple of months ago, but he’s already a far more dedicated head coach than the string of coaches the club has hired in the last year, since it’s been under new management. If he didn’t keep a running commentary throughout the day, he wouldn’t be half bad. I miss the husband-wife duo who taught us when Ro and I were kids, but they retired and moved to Florida two years ago.
I manage not to get hit again for the rest of the morning lessons. After cleaning up the courts, Derek and I head back to the club building. My knee is throbbing at this point, so I grab an ice pack from the freezer in the kitchen and fall into a chair in the mercifully air-conditioned lounge room.
As soon as I sit, I am hit with all the reasons I tend to avoid the lounge room like the plague. A grinning fifteen-year-old Rowan stares at me from one of the portraits in Tennis Win’s Hall of Fame. He sports an identical smile in three other pictures that are interspersed among the photographs of past “Winchester stars.” There’s even one of both of us at a tournament we won when we were about ten and playing mixed doubles together, beaming at the camera as if it’s the best day of our lives.
A lump forms in my throat, and I pack up my stuff and quickly leave the lounge, dumping the ice pack in the freezer on the way out. I’m in the parking lot of the tennis club, back out in the scorching sun, when my phone vibrates with a text.
Come to the lake with me and Brett this afternoon!It’s from Willow Hastings, whose dad owns the tennis club. She usually hangs around Tennis Win on Saturday mornings, watching lessons, and I feel relieved that I missed her today. I’m not in the mood for her cheeriness and relentless optimism. Frankly, it’s a miracle that we’re friends—for me, anyway. Because of everything that happened last year, I was basically friendless my senior year, until Willow came to Winchester. Thanks to the brutal luck of having to move just before the last semester of her senior year, Willow and I were the only two untethered planets in the Winchester High galaxy, and we soon found our way into each other’s orbits. I doubt we would be friends if she’d grown up here like everyone else.
I text and walk at the same time.
Can’t. I have to work.I add a sad face emoji, as if this pains me greatly.
With the grandpa you babysit??she writes back.
I smile, but don’t dignify her text with a response.
I climb into the car my parents bought me at the start of the year.
All Saints Assisted Living is only a couple of miles away from the tennis club, and I arrive fifteen minutes before my shift starts at one. I make my way inside anyway, swiping my badge over the door and going up the elevator and down the hallway to Ernie’s room.
When I knock, he calls for me to come in. I open the door and step into the kitchen of his small apartment, the lights on even though it’s the middle of the afternoon.
“Hey, Ernie. Are you decent?”
“Enough,” he retorts, his usual answer, and I smile.
I find him in the living room, sitting in front of the TV, watching a curling match with no volume.
“How are you doing?” I plop down on the couch next to his beloved rocking chair.
“Better than the alternative,” he says.
“Which is what?” I ask, knowing I’m walking right into the trap of a carefully orchestrated joke. I know he spends all of the days before I come thinking of jokes he can try out on me, so I always play along.
“Six feet under, like my brother Gareth Richard Solomon IV, the unlucky son of a bitch.”
“Ernie!” I say in mock horror. “Don’t make me call your mother.”
“Why not? I haven’t been to a good seance in some years.”
I laugh. “I can’t, when you’re like this,” I say, even though he is always like this and that’s what keeps me coming back. That, and the fact that I get paid for it, which honestly feels like a con, since most times he is easily the best part of my week. I was nervous to apply when I first saw the ad Ernie’s family posted online late last year, looking for someone to keep him company a few times a week. I didn’t have a lot of experience with older people. We live far from Dad’s parents, and I’ve never even met Mom’s. Thankfully, it has turned out to be the perfect job for me. I literally get to sit and exchange barbs with the funniest old man I’ve ever met, and I make money from it.
“Want to go for a walk?” I ask while I tidy up his small table.
Ernie scoffs. “I didn’t do all that exercise when I was young just to get old and do even more. When do I reap the benefits of what I sowed?”
“The fresh air will be good for you,” I insist.
He shakes his head.
“Put on some music,” he says, “and then I want to ask you something.”
I’ve been here enough times that I can hook up my phone to the wireless speaker Ernie’s kids bought him last Christmas, and within seconds Ella Fitzgerald’s voice comes spilling out into the room.
I let myself listen to the old jazz classics only when I’m with Ernie. First, because he’s old enough to appreciate them. Second, because with him as my audience, I can usually manage to keep my tears back.
Today the ache in my chest is dull but bearable.
