A Few Good Shots Left

What else?? A tennis story.

A Few Good Shots Left

©Mary Ann Ronconi

One of the three players on the court is a woman. She picks up a ball and turns to the two men to ask, “Think we ought to call 911?”

“What for?”

“Haven’t you noticed that old woman standing by the gate. She’s been there just staring for a while. What if she’s one of those people with Alzheimer’s who’s wandered off? Somebody might be looking for her. You hear about that all the time.”

“If anybody’s looking for her, Jen, they’ll find her. She’s just standing there, not going anywhere. Worry about Gina. She should be here by now.”

“Don’t sound so grouchy, Nate. Traffic is terrible this evening. That’s why I was a little late,” answers the trim woman in her twenties.

“For chrissakes, she could walk here. She only works a few blocks away.”

“Well, let’s not waste time. She’ll show or she won’t,” says the third player, a tall man with a mop of curly brown hair.

“Whatever you say, Baldy.” grumps Nate.

“Jen, you want to be by yourself over there?” Baldy asks.

“I’m OK for a few more minutes.”

Just then Nate drops a ball on his racquet and with the crack of a rifle shot sends it across the net.

“Hey! Take it easy,” Jen shouts as she ducks to avoid being hit. She turns to see where it lands. With satisfaction she yells, “Out!” To herself—but loud enough for the woman at the gate to hear--she mutters, “Asshole. Just have to be a muscle man, don’t you?”

When the team was a group of friends, Nate took a lot of good-natured ribbing for his gym sculpted biceps. But relations had been going south the last few practices.

After a few minutes at the net they move back to the baseline to warm up their ground strokes.

“Could you give me a few overheads, Baldy?” Jen asks moving in toward the net.

“Sure thing. Nate, you wanna move over with Jen for some overheads?”

“Listen, Baldy, I’m not sticking around if it’s going to be Canadian doubles.”

“C’mon, Nate. This is a practice not a match. Hold your horses.”

Baldy puts up lobs for Nate and Jen to smash. Jen makes an effort to keep her shots away from Baldy. Nate smacks his helter-skelter.

“Hey, Nate, think you could make me the spot you’re trying to avoid?”

“I’ll come over there and hit to you two. How about that?”

As they switch sides they hear someone call from the baseline, “Could you use another player? Just until your fourth shows up?”

It isn’t the voice of an old person, so Jen is surprised to see that it is the old woman who has been standing outside the fence. The three, now gathered at a net post, consider this offer.

“I say no. Who knows if she can even get to a ball? What if she is senile?”

“Keep your voice down, Nate,” Jen says giving him a dirty look. “What do you think, Baldy?”

“I don’t think she’d offer if she couldn’t put up a game. And just because she’s old and here this time of day doesn’t mean something’s wrong with her,” Baldy responds.

They all know the tradition at Cannon Park: The morning belongs to old folks who walk with purpose around the perimeter on the asphalt path while a smaller number fill the eight tennis courts. After five, young professionals like them crowd the ball fields and the tennis courts or sweat away pounds or frustrations on the asphalt path and the volleyball courts.

“Besides Gina might show up,” Baldy adds. Asserting his team captain role, he calls out to the old woman, “Sure. It might not be for long. We’re expecting another team member.”

“Oh I understand. Thanks. Now I have to ask to borrow a racquet.” she says with no sign of embarrassment. “I didn’t think I’d get the opportunity to play when I walked over here. Good thing I always wear tennis shoes.”

Turning her back to the woman, Jen whispers to the two men, “See she walked over here. That could mean she wandered off.”

“Put the straight jacket away, Jen. We’re stuck with her now, so lend her your other racquet,” Nate answers with an angry glance in Baldy’s direction.

As Jen goes to her bag for the racquet, the woman comments with unmistakable nostalgia, “I learned to play on these courts. They were clay then.” She catches the one called Nate roll his eyes as she walks toward the net. “My names is Gloria,” she says reaching out to shake hands with each one. Baldy introduces himself as Archibald Mahr, Esq., a.k.a. Baldy and captain of team Let’s in the C’ville Mixed Tennis League.

“That’s a positive name, The L-e-t-s.” Gloria responds smiling. “That means you have another chance coming.”

How Baldy wishes that were the case. “You’re right there, but we spell it L-e-t apostrophe s, so we are urging ourselves to do something.” He doesn’t elaborate on the excruciating process that went into choosing between “The Let’s” and “The Lets” and then how the choice had led not only to the animosity between Jen and Nate but to Nate’s now crappy on-court attitude with everyone.

“Oh, there’s my phone ringing. Just a mo’, everybody.” Jen rummages in her bag, finds the phone and answers. “Hey, Gina. Where are you?...No. Oh, bummer. Hope you get paid for overtime…OK. Bye.” She drops the phone back into the bag, pulls out a headband and turns to the others. “She’s not coming,” she says as she pulls her long, dark hair behind the band. “Her boss gave her a last minute, gotta-be-done-yesterday job, but she said she could practice Monday.”

“I’m finding a last minute job, too, if that old gal can’t hit,” mutters Nate to Baldy who ignores the comment.

“Well, Gloria,” Baldy says smiling, “Looks like you showed up just in time.” She reminds him of his grandmother, same white hair cut short, erect posture and cheerful attitude, but he can’t imagine Gran’ out here hustling a tennis game. She is one of the Cannon Park morning walkers doing the circle at a leisurely pace with her chatty bridge friends.

“Thanks for letting me hit with you. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be on these courts again.”

Baldy is hoping her happiness doesn’t turn into a double fault at match point for him. Keeping the team together has been touch and go since the turmoil that ensued after Nate brought his girlfriend Lois onto the team. A one-time cheerleader, Lois went totally rah, rah with the name, texting furiously after her first team practice, “Let’s play! Let’s win! Let’s party!!” That had started a regular pre- and post-match texting flurry that had turned prophetic a couple of months ago: “Let’s show ‘em who’s best tonight.” (Jen) “Let’s play for keeps tonight!” (Lois). “Let’s make it happen tonight.” (Nate)

It sure did happen that night at the team’s favorite post-match watering hole. Baldy had won at men’s singles. Gina had won the women’s singles match. Lois and Jen did well in women’s doubles. Nate and Phil barely won their match. For mixed doubles Baldy did the team’s customary racquet spin to decide who played with whom. Baldy winced when it paired Lois with Jen’s boyfriend Phil and Jen with Nate. He had the feeling something was brewing between Lois and Phil.

Playing on the adjacent court, Lois ruined Jen and Nate’s concentration and any chance in their match. She went from high fives with Phil after every winning point to big hugs and finally, upon winning the match, to a big kiss. Afterwards at the bar there was already tension in the air when Lois made some snide comments about her match with Jen then about “really crappy shot choices” she saw Nate make in his match with Phil. Just when the waitress put their second beers on the table, she said to Jen and Nate, “God, how could you two lose to that pair?!” She picked up her glass, chugged the whole thing down then announced, “This team sucks! Let’s get out of here, Phil.” Phil fumbled obediently in his pocket for a couple of tens. As soon as he tossed them on the table, Lois grabbed him and the two walked out. The rest of the team sat stunned.

The morning-after texts blew up the team: “Hey Phil, Let’s quit the Let’s. Let’s join the Loves. Let’s say Bye, Bye. Lois” “Let’s do it, Lois” Those IEDs led to a damaging exchange between Jen and Nate that left shrapnel wounds in the rest of the team: “Let’s bring a SLUT on the team and Lose.” “Let’s blame somebody else when you play lousy tennis.” “Let’s call a spade a spade, Nate. Your serve SUCKED.” “Let’s watch Jen hit overheads into the net.”

Seeing his team going down the drain and feeling like the principal, the one time he had been called into the high school office, Baldy plied his divorce lawyer skills on Jen and Nate: “Let’s sit around a table at the club and work this out.” It was a rancorous meeting, but he negotiated a wobbly truce that he hopes will hold until the league play-offs.

This evening is a slip up. He sees he should have avoided having Nate and Jen at the same practice. Being team captain is becoming too much like work, he thinks. Like a nasty divorce that drags on for years. That, at least, brings in the bucks. This is only earning him grief.

They begin warming up with the men and women on opposite sides. The first few balls off Nate’s racquet shoot past Gloria. Behind her Jen shouts “out!” each time.

“That’s a really strong shot of yours, Nate. It’ll cause real trouble when you get it all warmed up,” Gloria tells him.

“What’s she know about how I play?” Nate growls, not sure how to take the comment. Nevertheless he takes a little pace off and his balls stay in. There are no more angry “out” calls from Jen.

“OK, up or down, you guys?” Jen shouts. Baldy can tell Nate’s rotten attitude is putting Jen in a foul mood.

“How do we want to do this?” Baldy asks not sure how to pair up.

“How about we play three four-game rounds changing partners each round?” Gloria offers. “That way we play with everybody else and are freer to try out shots since it’s not a match.”

“Fine with me,” Baldy says immediately, happy to shed his mediator roll. “Girls against boys to start?”

“Sure,” growls Nate. “Whatever.”

After the women lose love-40 to Baldy’s serve, Gloria tells Jen not to worry she’s getting the feel of the men’s game. They lose the second game at ad-out with Jen serving. Gloria goes over to Jen and gives her a pat on the shoulder. “See. We did much better that game. You kept your toss out in front of you and kept your eye on the ball. Good play.”

Gloria’s encouragement helps Jen finally start to relax and play her A-game. Gloria is fearless at the net and seizes several opportunities to poach effectively in the third game with Nate serving. The women win it. Jen suppresses a smirk over Nate’s loss and is surprised he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t whack his racquet against the fence. That has become his usual reaction to losing since the big break-up.

Taking their positions for the fourth game, Gloria warns Jen that her serve isn’t what it once was, but she’s upbeat about it. “I haven’t the strength I used to, so I depend on a slice. It gets the job done.” It does and the women take the fourth game. Jen and Baldy expect Nate to be stormy about the 2-2 outcome, but he isn’t. He even volunteers to play with Gloria next. “Ha, anything to avoid playing with me,” Jen mutters to Baldy. “Probably hopes we won’t be able to play a third round.”

As Jen and Baldy partner up, Baldy says quietly that the old gal may now rue getting into their practice. “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Jen answers motioning toward Nate and Gloria. “Check it out over there. They’re talking. Groucho is not looking grouchy at all.”

“This is going to be good, Nate,” Gloria is saying. “Your topspin forehand is a real bullet, you get great angles with your backhand and you are very good at covering the court. I know you’ll get to any lobs they put over my head. Let’s communicate.”

“Sure thing,” he answers seriously. “Just yell ‘yours’ and switch. But they’ll have a hard time getting the ball past you at the net. You are good up there.” His foul mood has lifted. He feels the way he does when he’s getting good pictures, when the brain chatter clears and his eyes relax. He’s a photographer for the city paper. “You ought to show up more often, Gloria.”

Nate and Gloria take the second round 3-1, losing the one game on Jen’s serve. Baldy is relieved that this leaves both his problem players feeling like winners, but he’s apprehensive about how they will play next as partners.

When Nate offers Jen the choice of deuce or ad side and asks if she wants to serve first, Jen is so caught off-guard by this unexpected show of good sportsmanship that she says, “You should take the deuce side and serve. I think I played the deuce side when we lost that match.” She wants to bite her tongue. They both know exactly which match “that match” was. When he doesn’t say anything she thinks praise Gloria! She has sure made a major reduction in his jerk quotient.

Everyone is smiles and cordiality as they shake hands at the end of the third round. It has come out even. They are talking about a few amazing points and complimenting each other when a woman rushes up to the fence and exclaims, “Gloria dear. I’ve been looking all over for you. You can’t just wander off like that! I was worried sick.”

“You needn’t have been, Beverly. I knew where I was.” Turning back to her new friends, Gloria returns the borrowed racquet to Jen and thanks them all warmly. “That was a real work-out. I can’t tell you how much playing here again after all these years means to me. You all were great to play with an old lady.”

“Old lady, nothing,” Nate protested. “You have a super game.”

“Well, maybe I do have a few good shots left,” she laughs and hurries off with Beverly.

Baldy, Nate and Jen look at each other waiting for someone to say something. “Well, if that Beverly wasn’t a caretaker what was she?” Jen asks.

“OK, if Gloria has Alzheimer’s, it must be early stage. She’s a damn good tennis player,” Baldy answers.

“And she sure has a way of working with people. She could do my job any day.” This from Jen, an HR manager, who is bowled over by the way Gloria manipulated both her and Nate, leaving them in a much better place with each other.

“God, I felt so much looser with her,” Nate adds sounding awestruck. “Amazing! It wasn’t just that she was old and I had to try to be nice. She said stuff and I found myself doing it. Didn’t get all bent out of shape.”

“She told me she was just in town for the weekend. Hell, if she lived here I’d get her on the team pronto!”

“No objections from me, Baldy,” smiles Nate.

Jen agrees with enthusiasm, then adds, “But I hope she knows where she lives.”

“Aw, knock it off, Jen,” Nate answers.

Baldy, hastening to bring back the moment of good will, asks, “So what are you guys doing this weekend?”

“I’m walking to cure something. It’s my friend Halle’s cause,” answers Jen.

“Taking pictures. What else? I’m covering the CU graduation. Gotta be there start to finish. Arghhh!”

“Sounds as bad as mine. I have to prepare for two big ugly divorces going to court next week.” Baldy doesn’t add that Gloria has made that a lot easier by taking the worry about Nate and Jen divorcing the team off his mind.

They all know they will be thinking about the strange turns their Friday practice took.

Jen, after walking 15K to cure what else but Alzheimer’s, is in her tidy apartment dozing stretched out with her feet up on the arm of the couch when the ding of a text wakes her. Across town, Baldy is in his office looking at a report from a private investigator when that text dings on his cell. “Meet me at BU. Be there at 7. No shit!! Nate”

Mystified but each happy to have an excuse to get out, they pull up next to each other in the Bottoms Up parking lot just before seven. They find Nate in their usual corner, the remains of a burger and fries in front of him. An oversized menu bends over something in the middle of the table.

“God, I was hungry. Hadn’t eaten all day and couldn’t tell you this on an empty stomach. Get yourselves a drink while I finish here.”

Beers in hand they sit down.

“OK. What is going on?” Baldy asks. “They surprise you with an honorary doctorate at the graduation?”

“C’mon, Nate. Tell us! I was doing something really important when I got your text,” Jen says smiling.

“You ever hear of physio-psychology?”

“Huh?!” they both say shaking their heads.

“Well that’s what she is, a physio-psychologist. She has worked with some of the world’s major business and political leaders. Gotten them through career-ending self-doubt. Has cured Nobel Prize winners of depression. May even end up with it herself—the prize not depression.”

“Who the hell are you talking about?”

“Our little friend at Cannon Park, Baldy. That’s who.”

“You mean Gloria?”

“Yeah, Jen, that nice little old lady you diagnosed with Alzheimer’s who seems to have liberated us from our demons. We play a little tennis with her and Bingo! here we are, you and I being civil with each other.”

“Well how do you know all this for crying out loud?”

“She was the commencement speaker today at CU.” He grins watching their jaws drop. “Look. Here’s the program. Gloria Stenley. Got her BS in psychology from CU in 1958 and god knows how many other MAs and PhDs from every famous university in the country. A pioneer in the field of physio-psychology. She’s gotten some very high-powered people, including some world-class athletes, through crises and emotional issues with talk and physical activity.” Out of breath, Nate stops to take a swig of his beer.

Baldy whistles through his teeth. “You’re kidding!”

“Just get the Gazette-Record tomorrow morning. Photos of her by yours truly will be all over it. Like she said, she learned to play tennis as a kid in Cannon Park. And that charted the course of her life. She even talked about us in her speech. Was so happy this young threesome at her old park welcomed her into their game there yesterday. Unbelievable. I got a really cool shot of her smiling right at my camera when she said that.”

“Did you actually talk to her?”

“Sure. I had to follow her around after the speech as she hobnobbed with all the VIPs. I’d been warned that she’s camera-shy, but she made sure I got good shots with her and them. And with Beverly, who happens to be her research assistant, not her care-giver.”

He explains that Gloria knew to expect him. When they were playing together, he’d told her he was a photographer for the paper and would be covering the commencement. “She kept her cat in the bag, though. Didn’t say anything. But look.” He lifts the menu from the middle of the table uncovering a stack of books. “See. She had these all ready for me, for us.” He hands them each a book and takes one for himself.

“How do you like that?”

“That’s amazing!”

“Who’d have ever guessed?”

“Yep, we were playing with someone who has turned around half the tennis stars of the past three decades when their game was going in the toilet.”

They each hold a book as if it were the holy grail. On the back cover is a smiling Gloria. On the front is Physio-Psychology, an Active Path Back to Physical and Emotional Health. Inside on the first page of each copy she has written their name and “Many thanks! Playing with you yesterday on my old courts gave me a real boost. I do have a few good shots left. Good luck to The Let’s. Let’s keep enjoying the game! All the best, Gloria May 13, 2017”

“God. What a jerk I am,” moans Jen. “Just because an old person shows up at the park alone in the evening I start us thinking something is wrong with her.”

They hash this over for a few minutes and then sit back and appreciate their encounter with Gloria. “Wow! The whole thing is amazing,” muses Baldy. “But hey, I have to get back to my divorces. See you guys on Monday at practice. We’ll have a lot to talk about with the others.”

“Jen, you want to stick around? I’ll buy you a burger to go with another one for me.”

“That’s mighty nice of you, Nate. Sure.”

“Bon appétit,” Baldy says to them picking up his book. As he goes out the door
the warm and thankful note he will write to Gloria as soon as he’s back at his desk is going through his head. ꭥ

Hearing how readers react to a story is really interesting and often surprising. Let me know your thoughts. MAR