Her husband, Stan Delaney, sat in his recliner in the living room, an icepack on each knee, watching a documentary about the world’s greatest bridges while he worked his way through a packet of sweet chilli crackers, dipping each one into a tub of cream cheese.
Their elderly Staffordshire terrier, Steffi (named after Steffi Graf, because as a puppy she’d been quick on her feet), sat on the kitchen floor next to Joy chewing surreptitiously on a fragment of newspaper. Over the last year Steffi had begun obsessively chewing on any paper she could find in the house, which was apparently a psychological condition in dogs, possibly brought on by stress, although no-one knew what Steffi had to be stressed about.
At least Steffi’s paper habit was more acceptable than that of her neighbour Caro’s cat, Otis, who had begun pilfering clothing from homes in the cul-de-sac, including, mortifyingly, underwear, which Caro was too embarrassed to return, except to Joy, of course.
Joy knew her giant headphones made her resemble an alien but she didn’t care. After years of begging her children for quiet she now couldn’t endure it. The silence howled through her so-called empty nest. Her nest had been empty for many years, so she should have been used to it, but last year they’d sold their business, and it felt like everything ended, juddered to a stop. In her search for noise, she’d become addicted to podcasts. Often she went to bed with her headphones still on so she could be rocked to sleep by the lullaby of a chatty, authoritative voice.
She didn’t suffer from migraines herself, but her youngest daughter did, and Joy listened to The Migraine Guy Podcast both for informative tips she might be able to pass on to Brooke, and also as a kind of penance. Over recent years she had come to feel almost sick with regret for the dismissive, impatient way she’d first responded to Brooke’s childhood headaches, as they used to call them.
‘Regret’ can be my memoir’s theme, she thought, as she tried to shove the cheese grater into the dishwasher next to the frypan. A Regretful Life, by Joy Delaney.
Last night she’d been to the first session of a ‘So You Want to Write a Memoir’ course at the local evening college. Joy didn’t want to write a memoir but Caro did, so she was keeping her company. Caro was widowed and shy and didn’t want to go on her own. Joy would help Caro make a friend (she already had her eye on someone suitable) and then she’d drop out. Their teacher had explained that you began the process of writing a memoir by choosing a theme, and then it was simply a case of finding anecdotes to support the theme. ‘Maybe your theme is “I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks but look at me now”,’ the teacher said, and all the ladies in their tailored pants and pearl earrings nodded solemnly and wrote wrong side of the tracks in their brand new notebooks.
‘Well, at least your memoir’s theme is obvious,’ Caro told Joy on the way home.
‘Is it?’ said Joy.
‘It’s tennis. Your theme is tennis.’
‘That’s not a theme,’ said Joy. ‘A theme is more like “revenge” or “success against the odds” or –’
‘You could call it Game, Set and Match: The story of a tennis family.’
‘But that’s . . . we’re not tennis stars,’ said Joy. ‘We just ran a tennis school, and a local tennis club. We’re not the Williams family.’ For some reason she found Caro’s comment annoying. Even upsetting.
Caro looked astonished. ‘What are you talking about? Tennis is your family’s passion. People are always saying, “Follow your passion!” And I think to myself, Oh, if only I had a passion. Like Joy.’
Joy had changed the subject.
Now she looked up from the dishwasher and remembered Troy, as a young boy, standing right here in this very kitchen, racquet gripped like a weapon, face rosy with rage, his beautiful brown eyes full of blame and tears he would not let himself cry, shouting, ‘I hate tennis!’
‘Ooh, sacrilege!’ Amy had said, because her role as the oldest child was to narrate every family argument and use big words the other kids didn’t understand, while Brooke, still little and adorable, had burst into inevitable tears, and Logan’s face became blank and moronic.
‘You don’t hate tennis,’ Joy had told him. It was an order. She had meant: You can’t hate tennis, Troy. She’d meant: I don’t have the time or the strength to let you hate tennis.
Joy gave her head a little shake to dislodge the memory, and tried to return her attention to the podcast.
‘. . . zigzag lines that float across your field of vision, shimmering spots or stars, people who have migraine aura symptoms say that . . .’
Troy hadn’t really hated tennis. Some of their happiest family memories were on the court. Most of their happiest memories. Some of their worst memories were on the court too, but come on now, Troy still played. If he’d really hated tennis he wouldn’t still be playing in his thirties.
Was tennis her life’s theme?
Maybe Caro was right. She and Stan might never have met if not for tennis.
More than half a century ago now. A birthday party in a small, crowded house. Heads bounced in time to ‘Popcorn’ by Hot Butter. Eighteen-year-old Joy gripped the chunky green stem of her wineglass, which was filled to the brim with warm moselle.
‘Where’s Joy? You should meet Joy. She just won some big tournament.’
Those were the words that unfastened the tight semicircle of people surrounding the boy with his back against the wall. He was a giant, freakishly tall and big-shouldered, with a mass of long curly black hair tied back in a ponytail, a cigarette in one hand, a can of beer in the other. Athletic boys could still smoke like chimneys in the seventies. He had a dimple that only made an appearance when he saw Joy.
‘We should have a hit some time,’ he said. She’d never heard a voice like it, not from a boy of her own generation. It was a voice so deep and slow, people made fun of it and tried to imitate it. They said Stan sounded like Johnny Cash. He didn’t do it on purpose. It was just the way he spoke. He didn’t speak much but everything he said sounded important.
They weren’t the only tennis players at that party, just the only champions. It was destiny, as inevitable as a fairy tale. If they hadn’t met that night they would have met eventually. Tennis was a small world.
They played their first match that weekend. She lost 6–4, 6–4, and then went right ahead and lost her virginity to him, even though her mother had warned her about the importance of withholding sex if she ever liked a boy: ‘Why buy a cow when you can get the milk for free?’ (Her daughters shrieked when they heard that phrase.)
Joy told Stan she only went to bed with him because of his serve. It was a magnificent serve. She still admired it, waiting for that split second when time stopped and Stan became a sculpture of a tennis player: back arched, ball suspended, racquet behind his head, and then . . . wham.