Apples Never Fall

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 sometime,” 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.

Stan said he only went to bed with her because of her decisive volley, and then he said, that deep, slow voice in her ear, No, that’s not true, your volley needs work, you crowd the net, I went to bed with you because as soon as I saw those legs I knew I wanted them wrapped around my back, and Joy swooned, she thought that was so wicked and poetic, although she did not appreciate the criticism of her volley.

“… this causes the release of neurotransmitters…”

She looked at the grater. It was covered in carrot, which the dishwasher wouldn’t wash off. She rinsed it in the sink. “Why am I doing your job for you?” she said to the dishwasher, and thought of herself in pre-dishwasher days, standing at this sink, rubber gloves in hot dishwater, a skyscraper of dirty plates by her side.

Her past kept bumping up against her present lately. Yesterday she’d woken from a nap in a panic, thinking she’d forgotten to pick up one of the children from school. It took her a good minute to remember that all of her children were adults now: adults with wrinkles and mortgages, degrees and travel plans.

It made her wonder if she had dementia. Her friend Linda, who worked at a nursing home, said a wave of restlessness swept through the place at school pickup time each day as the elderly ladies became agitated, convinced they should be rushing to collect long-since-grown children. Hearing that had made Joy teary, and now the exact same thing had kind of happened to her.

“It’s possible my superior intellect is masking my dementia symptoms,” Joy had told Stan.

“Can’t say I’ve noticed,” said Stan.

“My dementia symptoms? Or my superior intellect?”

“Well, you’ve always been demented,” he’d said, and then wandered off, probably to climb a ladder, because his sons had informed him that seventy was too old to climb ladders, so he liked to find excuses to climb them as often as possible.

Last night she’d listened to a very informative podcast called This Dementia Life.

The cheese grater refused to join the frying pan in the dishwasher. She studied the two items. It felt like a puzzle she should be able to solve.

“… trigger a change in the size of the blood vessels…” said the Migraine Guy.

What? She was going to have to rewind this podcast and start again.

She’d heard that retirement caused a rapid decline in brain function. Maybe that’s what was going on here. Her frontal lobe was atrophying.

They had thought they were ready to retire. Selling the tennis school had seemed like the obvious next step in their lives. They couldn’t keep coaching forever and none of their children were interested in taking on the business. In fact, they were insultingly disinterested. For years Stan had nursed a wild hope that Logan might buy into Delaneys: that old-fashioned idea of the eldest son becoming his proud successor. “Logan was a great coach,” he’d mutter. “He got it. He really got it.”

Poor Logan had looked completely aghast when Stan had diffidently suggested he might like to buy the business. “He’s not very driven, is he?” Stan had remarked to Joy, and Joy had snapped at him because she couldn’t bear to hear criticism of her children, especially when that criticism was valid.

So they sold up. To good people for a good price. She hadn’t anticipated this sense of loss. She hadn’t realized how much they were defined by Delaneys Tennis Academy. Who were they now? Just another pair of boomers.

Thank God for their own tennis. Their most recent trophy sat, heavy and proud, on the sideboard, ready to show off when everyone was together on Father’s Day. Stan’s knees were paying for it now, but it had been a good, solid win over two technically excellent players: she and Stan had held the net, attacked the middle, and never lost their cool. They still had it.

In addition to tournaments, they still played in the Monday-night social comp that Joy had established years ago, although that had recently got depressing because people kept dying. Six months ago, Dennis Christos had died on the court while he and his wife, Debbie, played against Joy and Stan, which had been terribly traumatic. Joy believed poor Dennis’s heart couldn’t take the excitement of thinking he was going to break Stan’s serve. She secretly blamed Stan for making Dennis think it was a possibility. He’d deliberately let the game get to 40–love for his own pleasure. It was taking a lot of willpower for her not to say, “You killed Dennis Christos, Stan.”

The truth was, she and Stan weren’t suited to retirement. Their six-week dream holiday to Europe had been a disaster. Even Wimbledon. Especially Wimbledon. When the plane landed back in Sydney they’d both been giddy with relief, and they’d admitted that to no one, not to their friends or their children, not even to each other.