When No One Was Looking Read Free

game of joy and a sport worthy of angels, and that the flashing about of six-figure incomes was ruinous to its spirit. However, she possessed a memory like a tax collector for every penny the pros turned over, and she repeated these statistics from time to time in between commands to “Keep the head down ” and “Move, dammit, move!”
    “Where is your mind, my dear?” Marty asked. “My dear” was her nickname for Kathy.
    Kathy reddened. She had hit three backhands in a row directly at Marty instead of down the line. “I’m sorry, Marty.”
    “I want you to play like a man, not like a lady who paints teacups on the side. Is that clear?”
    “Yes, Marty.”
    “You’ll never be any good unless you learn to play like a man. How do you think Althea Gibson got where she got?”
    Kathy searched her memory for the name Althea Gibson. Out of what attic did Marty drag these names? “She played like a man,” said Kathy, who knew how to answer a question.
    “She served like a man, she rushed the net like a man, and she was over six feet tall. You, my dear, are a shrimp and so have twice as far to go.” Marty’s logic was as wicked as her ability to return shots from mid-court. For an hour Kathy hit the same backhand shot down the same line.
    “Why are you smiling?”
    “I’m not smiling,” said Kathy, smiling.
    “Are you smiling because you think you’re going to have such an easy time with Alicia deLong over the weekend? Alicia is number five.”
    “No,” Kathy answered, this time not smiling.
    “Are you smiling because you think you’ve done so well? That’s for me to tell you, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, Marty.”
    “Well then, why are you smiling? Put on your sweater. Answer me.”
    Kathy was too frightened to remember what had brought a smile to her face, “Just something ... she began, “at school.”
    “Where is your mind, my dear?” Marty asked again, bending over for a ball. “After next week there’ll be no school to distract you. Now what are you crying for?”
    Kathy sat down on the spectator’s bench in the shade of a green-and-white-striped awning. She tried to concentrate on a girl serving endlessly on court six.
    “Why are you crying?”
    “I’m not ... anymore.”
    “Do you have your period?”
    “No. That never bothers me anyway.”
    “Don’t be a fool, of course it bothers you. I keep track of you. I know. Stop looking embarrassed. You know you never remember when you’re going to get it.”
    Kathy sat silent, not because this was the thing that Marty could least stand but because nothing safe to say occurred to her. This was like an algebra test at its worst, like Chinese or Greek. “I may have to take tutoring this summer,” she managed to squeak out at last. Perhaps Marty would turn her wrath in another direction.
    “In what? Tutoring for what?”
    “Algebra. I can’t possibly pass the final.”
    “Algebra! Why? Fail! Who cares? You think the USTA cares about algebra?”
    “My folks do, especially my father,” said Kathy.
    “I have told your parents a hundred times that you shouldn’t be pushed in all directions at once. The kind of pressure you’re under now doesn’t allow for algebra,” said Marty bitterly.
    “My teachers say the opposite, you know. If I don’t improve my schoolwork next year, I’m sure they’ll never let me go at one thirty to practice every day in Swampscott.”
    Marty chewed on her lower lip and then, amazingly, she whispered “Kathy” quite gently and covered Kathy’s hand with her own. “Don’t cry,” she began in what Kathy knew was a voice that did not come easily to her. “Just think, one day all this schoolwork will be over. You’ll just have your game to think about, and you’re going to be right on the top. In the Wightman Cup, at Wimbledon. No one is going to touch you, not even the little rich girls with twenty years of tennis clubs behind them. You’re going to show them all. But remember, your family isn’t rich.