Authors: Meg Howrey
Mom was a great tennis player herself. She went to the University of Michigan on a tennis scholarship, and was an All-Star. But she never turned pro. She’s always said that she knew
it wasn’t the life she wanted, but I’ve also heard her say that she knew she didn’t have what it took to be the best. I can never tell from the way she says “the best” whether she’s embarrassed at her failure to be it, or to aspire to it.
And Dad played the violin. He was almost like a child prodigy. But his family was sort of poor, and he went to medical school and became an oral surgeon, which he insists he finds very satisfying. He says he likes the concentration.
Dad still practices the violin, almost every day. Real practices, scales and repeating passages over and over. He says he never liked performing, he just liked practicing.
My parents believe in working hard and being disciplined, but in an effort-for-its-own-reward kind of way. Seeing any of us perform makes them very nervous. Whenever they visit New York, they never want to come backstage and are shy about meeting our friends. Which is funny, because they are really very presentable parents. (God, Roger’s mom!) But it’s worse for them with Keith, because with us they can sit in the dark, and with my brother, now that he’s becoming such a big deal, they have to sit in the player’s box, and you never know when the cameras might swing over to get their reactions. It’s agony for my mom especially. Despite her background in the sport, she still worries that not applauding Keith’s opponents when they play well looks “surly.”
I’ve never been in the habit of telling my parents much about my life. Maybe because so much of it concerned Gwen, and how could I say how “things were going” without saying how things were going with her?
I know I can count on them, though. Like when I asked Dad to come get Gwen he didn’t hesitate. He’s very mild and
gentle, my dad, but he’s good in a crisis. I think this is because all day long he deals with people who are completely freaked out about whatever is happening in their mouths.
I asked Dad to get Gwen rather than Mom because Mom’s way of dealing with crises is to organize irrelevant details. She wouldn’t have taken Gwen away. She would have bought Gwen a houseplant (I think she needs more oxygen!) and re-caulked the bathtub (Let’s get everything spic-and-span!).
I thought about calling my parents this morning, but instead I called my brother Keith.
I remember the day Mom and Dad brought Keith home from the hospital. I was six, and very excited. Gwen was less so. Keith was thoroughly boy, from the very beginning, and never picked up anything he didn’t want to throw, ram, or pretend to shoot.
But I have a very sweet memory of Keith from childhood. Every summer (before summer dance programs and tennis clinics took over) we went on a camping trip to the dune beaches at Lake Michigan. It was understood that this was so our parents could “relax,” although Mom treated “rough” living the same way she treated living at home. Much vigorous sweeping out of the tents every morning and a tarp over everything. Gwen didn’t like the water much, so she and Dad would always make a giant sand castle together, very elaborate and, knowing Dad, architecturally accurate. Keith and I loved the water. He would hold on to a boogie board and I would push him out in front of me. Mom would stand at the shore in one of the increasingly conservative series of yellow bikinis she purchased every year, a kerchief around her hair to keep it from frizzing in the July humidity, and shout, “Kay-ay-ate! Look out
for your broth-errr.” Sometimes he let me carry him out piggyback style and we would stand there, bobbing in the waves, Keith’s strong little legs in a hammerlock around my waist, his shrill piccolo scream provoking another automatic “Kay-ay-ate! Care-ful!” from Mom onshore, sitting up on the blanket, shading her eyes with a Danielle Steel romance to make sure we were still alive. Keith was three years old when he first let go of me and swam about ten feet, kicking and splashing like a madman but in a recognizable crawl. He popped his head up with a huge grin, dog-paddling furiously. “Mo-om! Da-ad! Keith can SWIM.”
Two years later Mom put a racquet in Keith’s hand. We all questioned the wisdom of giving Keith something that could be used as a weapon, but it worked out well in the end.
“I was just thinking about you!” Keith said when he picked up the phone.
“Where are you?” I asked. “Are you still here?” Here means Florida, where Keith touches down periodically and where he just bought a house. My little brother has a house. He has a lot of things. Between prize money and endorsements I think he’s making a couple million dollars a year. A ballet dancer at his equivalent level of success might eke out a hundred grand a year, a bit more if they do a lot of guest performances with different companies. In New York City that means you might be able to rent a small one-bedroom and still be able to buy Bumble and Bumble shampoo.
“Here for another week, then I’m off to Morocco,” said Keith.
“Oh yeah, clay courts, right?” Keith is awesome on clay. Last year he made it to the semis of the French.
“Yup.”
“Is Famke with you?”
“Francesca, asshole.”
“I know. I love Francesca!”
“You loved Famke. You hate Francesca.”
“Do I? No. Wait. I loved Heidi. Famke had those pipe-cleaner legs. They made me nervous. It looked like you could bend them in any direction.”
“Yeah, but she had an awesome rack.”
Keith and I can go on like this for hours.
“Hey, let’s Skype,” Keith said.
“Can’t. I’m at Gwen’s. I just have my old laptop.”
There was a brief pause then and a lessening of background noise. I imagined my brother muting whatever sports channel was on. Maybe stretching out on the couch.
I’ve seen Keith more on television and Skype in the past couple of years than in person. Last year our parents came for the U.S. Open and Gwen, Neil, Andrew, and I all went too. Keith lost in the quarters but Mom particularly was pleased with how he played and, more importantly, how he behaved. Keith’s on-court behavior has been a bit of an issue in the past. When he was in juniors it was less noticeable because most of those kids are super emotional and there’s a fair amount of racquet throwing and crying and so forth. But once you get to the senior level—and high up in it, like Keith—you need to pull your shit together. You’re on television, for one thing, and if you spaz out then it’s all over YouTube. There’s a fine line to walk, though. If you’re too contained and unemotional then it looks like you don’t care. But if you call the linesperson a blind cunt-face, then you’ll get fined and look like an asshole. Also, as I have explained
to Keith, “cunt-face” is just confusing imagery. Nobody actually has that face.
“Yeah,” Keith said, after a pause. “So Mom said you and Andrew were like, working through some stuff or something?”
“I think that was her way of saying we broke up.”
“Yeah, I figured. I’ve been meaning to call you. And now. You know. Gwen.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you and Andrew were going to get married.”
“Really?” I felt sort of pleased that Keith had had thoughts, or speculations, about me.
“He wasn’t who I pictured you’d end up with.”
“Huh. Who did you picture?”
I was having this conversation with Keith while still in bed. I’ve been making efforts to keep Gwen’s place spotless, so pretty much all my basic life things have ended up in the bed with me in order not to mess up other surfaces. I’m sleeping in between piles of books and notebooks and my computer and phone and various bags of stuff. If I had known Keith was going to answer his phone and we’d be having this interesting conversation I would have gotten some ice for my neck. As it was I rooted around under the covers until I found a bottle of water. Vicodin is very dehydrating.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Keith said, disappointingly. “So you’re staying at Gwen’s?”
“For now.”
“What’s the deal with her?”
I drank some water. When we were all little kids, I felt like I had kind of a special bond with my brother. That he looked up
to me particularly. But maybe he identifies more with Gwen now.
“What did Mom tell you?” I hedged.
“Gwen’s been having some bads and she’s resting up at home right now and taking it easy,” Keith said in a singsong voice. He does a very good Mom imitation, who tends to use second-grade words, or pluralize things oddly, when she wants to mitigate their possible dramatic effect. “Keith had some sads at Wimbledon.” “Gramma Crane is having issues with her intestinals.” “Your dad had a mole removed from his shoulder and they are testing it for ickies.”
“What’s really been going down?” Keith asked.
“It looked to me like a nervous breakdown,” I said. My stomach had that tense crumpled-paper feeling and even though I was lying down I saw something sharp coming around the corner to stab me in the eye.
“It’s, um. It’s been building up for a while now,” I said.
“That’s what Mom said.”
“She did?”
“She said, ‘Apparently it’s been building up for a while now but we didn’t know anything about it.’ ”
“I knew.”
“She said that too.”
“Well, it wasn’t my place to go around, you know, informing the family about Gwen.” I put my phone on speaker and placed it on my chest so I could work on my neck a little.
“You finally did though, right?” Keith’s voice bounced up from my rib cage. “You told Dad to come get her and take her back to Michigan?”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Yeah.”
I watched the phone rise and fall. See, Dr. Wang? See what a good breather I am?
“You think she’s better off in Michigan?” Keith’s voice was fading. Maybe he had me on speaker now too, in order to ice or heat or massage. He’s always got something slightly injured.
“I didn’t think she should be alone,” I said.
“Well, she wasn’t alone though, right? She was with you. Just saying. If I were depressed I don’t think going to vay-cay with Judy and William in Michigan would be my first choice.”
“So why don’t you take her with you to Morocco?” I half shouted toward my ribs. “If I did such a horrible job at taking care of her maybe you’d like to try.”
“Jesus, freak out much? I didn’t say you, okay, never mind.” Keith sighed.
I swung myself out of bed, dislodging a pile of crap, and stumped to the kitchen. Pulled a plastic bag of ice out of the freezer and retreated back to bed. Throughout this I heard the TV come back on at the other end of the line.
“Any-hoo,” I sang, using the Mom voice.
“What’s that sound?” He laughed.
“Ice bag. Neck.”
“Oh, good. I thought it was the sound of your brains cracking up.”
“How are you, by the way? How’s the knee?”
And for the next ten minutes it was great, it was normal, with us giving each other shit in all the familiar ways that we haven’t figured out how to replace yet. We said good-bye and I called Gwen’s cell. My mom picked up.
“Hi, sweetie.”
“Oh hey. Hey! I thought I’d try Gwen before I tried you. Hi! How … how are you?”
Mom, it seemed, was fine. Dad was fine. Gwen was fine, her knee was healing. Everything was fine. Fine and dandy. Well, Gwen had a little bit of a setback. She had had some delusionals. Some paranoias. We were just going to have to wait and see and take deep breaths and visualize Tibetan skies of blue. I didn’t need to worry. Gwen wasn’t really talking to anyone right now. She needed a break. Just some time to regroup. More references to Tibetan skies.
“It’s actually not that peaceful an image,” I pointed out. “Since Tibet is currently occupied by China. Monks have been setting themselves on fire under Tibetan skies.”
“I guess that’s true. Ha-ha!” Rustle, rustle, thump. Sounds of cabinets banging. Mom putting away groceries. She has this very aerobic approach to household chores.
“What kind of delusionals?” I asked. “Delusional like she’s really emotional or like she thinks she’s Queen of the Fairy Kingdom?
“Kate.”
“Seriously, Mom.”
“Well, her knee was bothering her.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She was concerned about the stitches.”
“Right.”
“And there had been some nightmares.”
After some persistent questioning I got at least a partial version of the story. It seemed that Gwen’s sessions with her psychiatrist had become increasingly upsetting for Gwen, and
a week ago she had gotten my parents up at two in the morning telling them that the shadows in her room were smothering her, and Gwen’s arms were covered with her own nail marks. She had raked them down her forearms deep enough to draw blood. Also, she thought the stitches in her knee were poisoning her and she had sort of tried to … undo them, I guess. They had gone to the Emergency Room, and Gwen had calmed down but not before she was dosed with lithium, which was a horrible drug and had done horrible things to Gwen but it was going to be
fine
, they just needed to reevaluate the situation.
“This is it!” I wanted to shout. “This is what I’ve been dealing with for almost ten years! Now you see it! This is what it’s like!”
I realized how eagerly, ghoulishly, I had been waiting for this hand-off. For someone else to see what happens with Gwen, for someone else to deal with it. But I had that crumpled-paper feeling inside my stomach again.
“Why did you tell me she was fine?” I demanded, covering the side of my face with my free hand, a buffer against flying knives. “Why am I just hearing about this now?”
Mom is no dummy. She let enough silence in so I could hear what I just said.
“You haven’t been telling us everything either, have you?” she asked, very calmly.
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean about what?”
“It sounded like you were accusing me of something.”
“Oh Kate, don’t be so sensitive,” Mom said, chirping. “I know you’ve always been very protective of your sister. That’s
all I was saying. You always think I’m implying these … I don’t know whats.”
“I just want you to keep me in the loop, okay. I don’t know why you can’t call me.”
“I was waiting until we knew a little more. We don’t really know anything about this kind of thing. We have to let Gwen do this herself is what they keep saying. I know you want to help.”