Since Eva and I had joined the TC, I’d slowly learned the rules of places like this—what games to join, when to engage in conversation, when to say nothing. Never to ask what someone did for a living. I’d made plenty of tennis friends, but I hadn’t met anyone with whom I felt simpatico. I wanted Bill to be that guy. He and I were different kinds of doctors, but certainly he’d have some appreciation for my doctorate, in contrast to most of the rich knuckleheads I met here, who probably thought of Indiana Jones when I said I taught cultural anthropology at the university in town. I’d not been getting many invitations to matches lately. I couldn’t understand why. My game had continued to improve. I’d begun to wonder if they’d realized finally that I didn’t fully fit in, that when they talked about the vacations they were going on, to Marrakesh or Fiji, I usually pretended to be adjusting the strings of my racquet. But maybe Bill and I could play.
“We’ve read all of these wonderful letters of support you have,” Suzanne said, holding up their file. “You’re so new to the area, and yet you’ve obviously made a lot of friends and set your roots quickly. Why don’t you tell us about yourselves, your family. And your interest in tennis.”
I’d read the file, which had letters from the Blacks and several other members attesting to how wonderful the Browns were. As I was reading the letters, I could sense something different about them, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. Now I knew that they were a master class in colorblindness. The Browns were “friendly” and “laid-back.” The phrase “they’ll fit right in” had been used in three different letters.
“Where shall we start?” Valerie asked.
“Wherever you like,” Suzanne said.
“Bill and I met in medical school in San Francisco, and we went to Boston to do our residencies. Bill in cardiology, me in trauma surgery. We both grew up in Los Angeles. Just a few miles apart, but we never knew each other.”
I wanted to know which part of LA they’d grown up in, but I didn’t ask. Inglewood always up to no good? Perhaps Baldwin Hills.
“After winters and residencies that lasted far too long, we realized we missed the sun, the oak trees, and the huge, congested freeways,” Valerie continued. “And so when the opportunity opened up at the hospital, we jumped at it. We’re less than two hours away from our families in LA, and the community here has been very welcoming to us. Our sons are also showing some interest in tennis, and Mark can’t say enough about how much he loves this place, so it seemed like the right fit for us.”
As she spoke, Valerie made careful eye contact with everyone in the room. She knew exactly how to make a roomful of strangers feel comfortable as they gawked at her, trying to piece together her beauty, all her fancy degrees, the fact that every day when she went to work, she kept death at bay.
“How old are your sons?” I asked.
“Eight and five,” Valerie said.
Perfect, I thought. They’ll be fast friends with my own.
“Boys are fun, but they can be complicated,” I said.
“Yes,” Valerie said. “Yes, they can.”
I sensed from the inflection of the second “yes” that raising boys for them was going to be a particular kind of complication, similar to but ultimately different from the one Eva and I would experience. As our boys grew older, I’d talk to them about the dangers of driving while brown and how they would not always get the second chances some of their classmates would get. But Bill and Valerie would have to have this conversation on a much higher, far more sobering level.
“I’m glad your kids are interested in the game,” Suzanne said. “What about you two? We have a strong, competitive interclub team you could play on.”
“Bill and I had our first date on a tennis court. And I’ve hit the ball around with him since, but it’ll be a while until I’m game-ready.”
Eva and I had also had a tennis first date. I didn’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but I could imagine a regular doubles match in our future.
The women’s interclub matches were on Wednesday mornings, and most of the other women we’d interviewed were eager to play, especially because the TC team had won the interclub championship for the past two years running.
“I’m sure Wednesdays are busy at the hospital,” Leslie interjected, distinguishing Valerie from all of the women we had interviewed who didn’t work.
Leslie and Eva had grown up coming to the TC. Their parents were friends, and they’d run cross-country together in high school. Leslie had been a hippie in college, had a girlfriend her junior year, and had worked in New York and Boston for several years before returning home to get married and have a family. She and her husband Tim had sponsored us, and since we’d joined, we’d spent countless weekends together, barbecuing and drinking and talking while the kids swam and ran around. I liked her; we shared a similar ironic sensibility. Throughout the interviews, however, she’d rebuffed my attempts to dish about the inherent problems with the process—namely, that the prospective members were all so interchangeable—but Leslie liked the place a little too much to go there. Lately, I’d sensed that Eva had been pulling away from her too. I don’t think they’d had a disagreement, but Eva worked and Leslie didn’t, and that may have been the difference.
“Yes, Wednesdays are tough,” Valerie said. “But Bill is the tennis player in the family anyway.” She placed her hand on her husband’s knee, handing the ball over.
“I played some in college,” Bill said, a little too matter-of-factly. I sensed Bill was downplaying his level.
Stan jumped in. “Where?”
In every interview, the only time Stan spoke up was when there was a mention of a college. He’d ask about it, and without missing a beat, talk about Williams, how he’d played fullback there, read philosophy, went on to Harvard Law School, and settled into a life of contracts. Stan was lean and the veteran of two shoulder surgeries, brought on by several decades of playing tennis four times a week.
Before this whole interviewing process had started, I’d had no opinion of Stan. I’d seen him around, always getting off the court with an ice pack balanced on his shoulder. But at the start, Suzanne had asked everyone on the committee about their vision for these interviews. Everyone, including me, had said this and that about considering the past to forge the future. And then there was Stan: “I’ve thought about it and I’ve realized I don’t have a vision. I just want high-level tennis players. Bad tennis offends me. This is a tennis club.”
A few days earlier, I’d seen him sitting in the hot tub reading a tattered copy of Don Quixote. When I asked him about it, he’d said that he was rereading all the books that he had loved as a young man to see if they still hooked him in the same way. “I’m trying to remember who I was back then.” He had just finished with the Russians, and after Cervantes he was going to hit the Americans. I loved the idea that The Great Gatsby might help Stan see the conspicuous consumption all around us. It made me realize that, despite all the Williams business, there was much to like about him, and I appreciated that he was up-front about the fact that, in asking people about their alma maters, he was sizing them up. At least I always knew where I stood with him.