Games People Play

Susie

It was a very unsettling feeling, knowing that your life was going to change so completely, whether you wanted it to or not. You realized your old life wasn’t perfect, but it worked, in its own way. You thought you knew where you were going, you thought you’d learned from your past mistakes – you weren’t
asking
for perfection or bliss or enormous wealth, just enough happiness and security to carry you over the hot ashes of the discontentment that were inevitably left once the initial flame died down. You’d learned that the first thrill of sex eventually palled; that friendship was what was important, and trust, and enough money not to have to lie awake and worry about paying bills. You accepted this as a truism vital for the survival of your relationship and your own mental health.

That was where I was, anyway, settled in the sugar-pink clapboard house that Billy and I bought together in Lawrence, Kansas. It was a good place to be, literally and emotionally. The house was much humbler than the six-bedroom mansion Ivan and I had owned at the height of his career success, but it didn’t bother me at all. Billy and I fitted this house. I always thought that Ivan, Rachel and I used to rattle around in the mansion. I remember Rachel cycling her tiny turquoise tricycle along the shiny parquet hallways. You couldn’t ride around on anything in
this
house – the rooms all open out of one another, like multiplying cells, and there’s too much comfortable clutter on the floors.

So I was happy back in Kansas, under the vast skies, entertained from our verandah by the extreme weather and the innumerable stars at night. I felt smug almost, like I’d finally, at the age of nearly forty-five, got it cracked. After the peripatetic existence of my marriage to Ivan, trailing around in the shadow of his success and his ego, I had this deep urge to root myself in the earth, like the marijuana plants Billy grew in the back yard and whose leaves he smoked too often.

I missed my daughter and, oddly, I missed my ex-mother-in-law almost as much: Gordana had been such a solid presence; the consolation prize for being married to her emotionally stunted son.

Nonetheless, I thought I was rooted in Kansas. I’d escaped from Ivan, and met a good, solid man who treated me with respect and whose only real fault was staying up too late and falling asleep in front of the TV with a burned-out joint in his hand. I didn’t like it particularly, but I couldn’t complain. No one was perfect, and his pot habit was as much a part of him as his dimples. In fact, the first words he ever said to me were: ‘I’m so stoned I could hunt ducks with a hand-rake.’ It made absolutely no sense, and yet perfect sense at the same time; and it made me laugh. Billy always made me laugh, which meant I forgave him a lot. Including his strange selection of stoner friends who turned up at the house, night or day, spouting rubbish and wanting to be fed.

Then out of nowhere, everything changed. Maybe it was my own fault for being complacent. Sometimes I thought that I was just destined to be different (not special, just different). But it turned out that the man I’d been with for nine years, and who I thought I’d be with forever, didn’t love me any more. Even though we’d been engaged for most of that time. I was kind of surprised that he even had the energy to get off the couch and find himself another woman, but he had; leaving the faint outline of ash around him on the sofa cushions.

It was a fatal mistake to assume that just because you didn’t get particularly turned on by the sight of a tubbyish middle-aged man in a too-tight faded Grateful Dead T-shirt, nobody else would either. I guess I took him for granted – ironically, in the same way that I used to grumble that Ivan took me for granted.

On the day after Billy left me, I stood for a long time in the front room and stared at a photograph of us with our arms around each other, taken on the gravelly shore of Clinton Lake. We’d gone there during the hottest week of last summer for a swim with some friends who had a trailer there, but it was so hot that even the murky waters of the lake didn’t provide any respite, not unless you dived (
dove
, as they say over here) off the jetty right down to the cloudy grey lake bed and lay there half buried in the silt, like a plaice or some other bottom-feeding fish. Only the deepest two feet of water was cool and quiet. I wished I could be back there.

We looked happy in that photograph. I studied it, realizing two things about us: that I had finally lost the slightly harried expression I’d worn throughout my marriage to Ivan; and that Billy was far more attractive than I’d given him credit for. I looked at him through another woman’s eyes – Eva’s, the woman who’d stolen him from me – and saw the delighted smile, the warm sleepy brown eyes, the dimples. Billy was a lovely, cuddly man, and I hadn’t appreciated it. In fact – and how much Ivan would hate to hear this – he had actually ended up being far more attractive than Ivan: Ivan, the erstwhile sports pin-up, who’d had women falling over him when he was the star tennis player, eighth best in the UK, hundredth best in the world, voted Most Gorgeous Man in some British tabloid survey of 1984, ‘Ivan the Terribl(y) Sexy’, that sort of thing. Who’d have thought that a shortish, pudgyish midwesterner, who not only possessed but actually wore a pair of denim bib and braces, would outshine Ivan in the sex appeal department? I mean, I knew these things were subjective and perhaps I was exaggerating Billy’s charms because I’d lost him, but Billy had mellowed into his looks, whereas Ivan had just gone to seed.

I saw him in December a couple of years ago, for the first time since the divorce. I’d gone back to England to spend Christmas with Rachel, to watch her play in some tournament or other, and to catch up with Gordana. I would have preferred not to cross paths with Ivan at all, but it was fairly unavoidable under the circumstances. So it was gratifying to see that Ivan’s once washboard stomach had developed a little paunch; it was smaller than Billy’s, but somehow more noticeable because he was so self-conscious about it. And where Billy’s chubby face had matured into warmth, Ivan’s face looked as if someone had taken a pencil sharpener to his nose and chin and an eraser to the crown of his head. His broad shoulders had begun to droop and his skin had developed a grey tinge. I remember thinking it was funny that he seemed to have taken on the stressed look that I used to have. Probably because his awful girlfriend nagged him so much. That was karma for you.

I decided to phone Rachel, having remembered that it was her birthday next week. If I called her now, I might catch her before she went training, and I could ask her what she wanted. She was so hard to buy for: she just wasn’t into clothes or make-up or music or books. She only liked sports: pool, darts, table football; and tennis, of course. She was a tomboy. I’d thought she’d grow out of it, but she didn’t seem to have.

I missed my daughter. I knew she didn’t miss me, but she was still the only good thing that had come out of my marriage.

I wished that Billy and I could have had children. We did try, but not that hard, if I was honest. At first we thought we’d wait until we got married. Then, as time went on and I realized that I still felt too superstitious about taking the plunge for a second time, and Billy was too indolent to chivvy me into it, we thought we might just have a baby anyway. But when it didn’t happen, neither of us could face the tests: the legs-in-stirrups indignity of it, the nail biting risk of disappointment. I couldn’t shift an unpleasant image of Billy’s testicles like dried out seed pods, full of ganja seeds. That was the trouble with Kansas men, they were nearly all potheads.

I dialled Rachel’s number, hoping that neither Ivan nor the awful Anthea would answer, and thankfully neither did. Rachel and I had a little chat, but she sounded tense and miserable, not at all like a girl rocketing towards the peak of her career. I tried to worm it out of her, wondering if maybe it was boyfriend trouble, but she said she and Mark were still together.

‘So what’s up, honey?’

‘It’s just
Dad
,’ she spat out, as if he were a cherry stone she was in danger of swallowing. The vitriol sounded odd from her; she was usually so placid. ‘Would you believe, he’s actually trying to ban me from seeing Mark? I mean, does he think I’m still a kid?’

I tutted sympathetically. ‘Well, you know your father’s always been…single-minded. Is he telling you that a boyfriend is too much of a distraction?’

‘Yeah. He’s got it into his head that my game’s slipped since I started going out with Mark. Which isn’t true. I’m just tired, that’s all.’

‘I bet you are. You need a vacation. Why don’t you bring Mark over here for a holiday soon?’ I said, moving four feet across the polished floorboards of the front room to deflect a serious buzzing sound that had infiltrated my cordless phone. ‘Show him the sights. You know – Dodge City; The Eisenhower Museum in Abilene; the World’s Largest Ball of String in Cawker City. Hey, if you came next August, you’d be here for Annual Twine-Winding time – winding on Friday, picnic and parade on Saturday. Don’t say there’s nothing to do out here.’

‘That would be great, Mum, if either of us ever got time for a holiday,’ she said, not even laughing at my snide remarks regarding the dubious attractions of the Sunflower State. I’d have been offended if
she
had made jokes about my adopted home, but I was allowed to. But she obviously hadn’t been listening. She had inherited her father’s irritating habit of not acknowledging parts of a conversation.

I hoped that this Mark was worth all the aggravation. I supposed he must be – I’d never even known Rachel to have a boyfriend before, at least not a serious one.

‘Hang in there, Rach. Ivan will just have to get used to the idea. You have to have a life outside of tennis.’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said, and I felt happier. I hated to admit it, but it was nice to be united with my daughter against my ex. I’d never tried to poison her against him, but I wouldn’t put it past him to do that to me at any opportunity.

‘We should go on holiday together some time,’ I suggested, knowing that in all probability it would never happen.

‘Sure, Mum. Anyway, I’ve got to go. I’ve got squad practice in a minute, and José hates it when we’re late.’

I debated whether to tell her that Billy had left me, but decided against it. Not when she sounded so down already.

‘OK, Rach. Take care. I’ll call you again next week. Bye.’

It was only after we’d hung up that I realized I’d forgotten to ask her what she wanted for her birthday.

Gordana

I watch her face, when she doesn’t know I’m watching.

She is mad about that arrogant boy of hers, I see it in every one of her expressions. Her eyes dart around searching for him, sliding towards the main gate of the tennis club, looking to see if it’s his car which has just come in, and then comes that moment of disappointment, a teeny pull down of the skin around her mouth when she realizes it’s not. She’s outside on court now, dancing to the ball the way she does, but even though she doesn’t break her swing, she still watches the gate.

I love my granddaughter. I don’t want her to be hurt by men, but of course she will be. We all are. I told Ivan, though, that it is ridiculous to forbid her to see this Mark. Ivan usually listens to his mother, but for some reason this time he wouldn’t budge.

‘She’s not a child any more,’ I told him. ‘You can’t ban her, it’ll only make them want each other more. Let him break her heart – which he will, in no time at all – then you won’t be the villain, and Rachel will have got him out of her system.’

Poor little Rachel, I think to myself. Ivan wanted her
purged
of Mark, he wanted to give her some kind of laxative to make all her feelings shoot out and be gone.

Rachel has been on court for ten minutes, having a warm-up hit with her coach José. Hitting and looking for Mark; hitting and looking. I do understand why she looks. He is very a handsome boy, with black hair and many muscles. Almost too many for a pro player; sometimes I think surely they must slow him down.