Actuarial Details

On the tennis courts, Edward was the new guy—the greenhorn, the rookie—though not necessarily because of his age. At 64, he figured he was on the young end, but maybe not the youngest. They were playing doubles on two courts—eight guys altogether. He was the eighth. The others had apparently been playing every morning since they (he and his wife, Ellen, God rest her soul) moved to the Cape. She first saw them playing early one morning as she passed the courts on her daily run along the beach, and when she got home she encouraged him to ask whether they could use another player. He objected to the time of day and then, as he poured her cereal for her, insisted, “You’re the only doubles partner a man could ever want.” He’d been aiming for cheesy-cute, but Ellen wasn’t amused. She’d poked at the cereal with her spoon (she’d already been to breakfast with the ladies) and said, “I just think you should make an effort. We didn’t move here to sit inside and watch TV. Who are you going to talk to if I die first?”

It was a long-running joke between them—who would die first—that to her, over a span of forty years, had become increasingly less funny. He claimed, had been claiming since she was still in her teens and had reiterated again and again when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at 42, that he would go first—you couldn’t deny the actuarial realities. Be it heart attack, Alzheimer’s, or natural causes: men always went first. Besides, he was nearly four years her senior. The odds were more than stacked against him. The evidence was in. He was sorry to have to leave her stranded in her last years, but it was for the best, since she was the social one and would undoubtedly cope much better than he ever could. Heck, there was no reason she couldn’t live for another twenty, thirty years—lead a whole different life with a shiny new husband. If she died first, he said, it wouldn’t be by much. That would be it for him. They might as well schedule his funeral for the next week.

He was joking when he said this, but they both knew he meant it, too, and toward the end her sense of humor became less accommodating. “If I see you a week after my death,” she’d tell him, “I’ll wring your neck.”

As it turned out, the joke had been on him. She had died first. It was an aneurysm that did it. And it was at the funeral that the guys had approached him—Bob and Frank and he didn’t catch the others’ names. They were friends of his wife’s, they said, saw her every morning while they played tennis. Anyway, Bob said, they recently lost a man on their roster, and Ellen mentioned he might be interested in playing?

At first he said he’d think about it, which was just his way of getting out of the conversation without having to say no—he’d never liked confrontation—but the more he thought about it, the more appealing the possibility seemed. For one thing, he hadn’t had to do the asking—which was always the hardest part. He didn’t have to wake up and drag himself to the courts and clear his throat until someone noticed him through the fence. His whole life it had been this action, this first bit of interaction, that had seemed impossible, excruciating, ultimately un-worth it. Along with just about everything else, Ellen had managed to hang on to his old yearbooks (he’d re-discovered them not two days before the funeral while excavating boxes from the attic), and they were all pretty much blank, not because he had no friends when he was younger—he wasn’t popular in school, but he wasn’t unpopular, either—but because he couldn’t bring himself to walk up to someone and ask, “Will you sign this?” At the time it had seemed too needy, too desperate—as though it would expose his very real constant loneliness in an altogether undignified way. At this juncture in his life he now knew, of course, that such thinking was irrational, overblown—but he also knew that that didn’t change anything, that people don’t change much, and that given the chance to do it all over again, he’d likely still walk away with no signatures.

Luckily, he had brothers—two of them, one a year older, the other three years younger. It was the younger one, Tom, who had introduced him to Ellen. Or not really introduced him, but brought the two of them together. Tom had been a student at another nearby college at the time and had hosted a Halloween party, costumes required. After much kind-and-then-harsh convincing, Edward had finally agreed to get off his lazy ass and do something with the land of the living. He’d showed up as Neddy Merril from John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer”: had walked in sporting trunks, a towel, some sandals, and two shrunken nipples courtesy of the late-October chill. He was not only shivering but sopping wet—the wetness intentional and part of the joke. A senior in college, he’d recently read “The Swimmer” in his first and only English class, and while compared to some of the English majors the story meant little to him—he liked it, but he’d never been around so many students so into hearing themselves talk—he arrived at the party thinking he would be a hit, that people couldn’t help but laugh and admire his commitment to the costume. Instead, all he got were stares and polite chuckles, and he spent what felt like an hour sitting on his brother’s couch, drinking and dripping and excusing his isolation as the result of the three-year age gap and the fact that no one got his costume. The first excuse, he realized, wasn’t true—their polite disinterest in him was similar to the polite disinterest everyone had been showing him as far back as he could remember—but the second excuse, though perhaps beside the point, was apparently accurate. He was a swimmer, people got that, but which swimmer was neither guessed at nor questioned.

Except, that is, by Ellen. Ellen, who arrived late and with a face already reddened from drink. Ellen, who was all smiles and elbows and hand movements. Ellen, who was dressed up as Amelia Earheart and who spotted him right away and said, “Don’t tell me. Burt Lancaster from that movie, right?” Which was close enough: Lancaster had played Neddy Merrill in the movie based on Cheever’s short story, and Edward would take any recognition he could get. He watched her smile at him one more time before she walked into the kitchen area to refrigerate her beer, then he sat there eating from a bowl of his brother’s candy, timing how long it would take for Tom’s next just-checking-up-on-you-you-want-another-beer? visit.

It wasn’t until almost everyone had cleared out that she spoke to him again. She was humming to herself, he couldn’t tell what, while she bopped around the apartment, sticking her fingers into empty beer bottles and carrying them like that—three to four beers per hand—to the kitchen and presumably the waste basket. By the time she made it to the mini table in front of the couch, he’d been watching her clean up for ten minutes—had been watching her most of the night, for that matter—and he got up and helped her pick up the bottles. She thanked him and he admitted they were mostly his beers, anyway, and then they sat down on the couch and she took off her flight cap and shook out more hair than he’d bargained for and they sat there like that—him facing forward with his feet on the ground, her sitting lengthwise, her feet behind him—talking their way into sobriety. They’d talked for hours, about everything: favorite movies (his: A Streetcar Named Desire—it wasn’t really; he just thought it sounded good. Hers: the Peanuts TV specials), favorite breakfast food (pancakes vs. French toast), favorite kinds of eggs (none—neither of them liked eggs); favorite band to see in concert (“You’ve never been to a concert? Is that even possible? Well,” she said, “we’re going to have to do something about that, aren’t we?”). She told him about her high school athletic career (she was from the east coast where girls could play sports), and he told her about his decision not to go to grad school (he’d been considering it, but didn’t have any subject in mind and would only be doing it to avoid the draft). They discussed their feelings about the war: unlike most of their friends, they confessed, their opposition to Vietnam was not driven by ideology so much as by personal fear. They talked all night, until four in the morning, and then she called him a few days later (she’d gotten his number from his brother), and then they went out for a few months, and then he was drafted so they got married.

When he got back from the war, he didn’t need to worry about making friends. For one thing, friendships seemed to come for him more organically while in the war. The social boundaries were more easily manipulated or didn’t exist at all—sometimes literally. He never told Ellen much about those days—he had this idea that he’d open up when his death was imminent, when thoughts of mortality summoned his memory and his courage—but one thing he did tell her was how on the first day of training camp he walked into a bathroom and realized there weren’t any stalls around the toilets. You had to learn pretty quickly to go to the bathroom with somebody chatting your ear off, he told her—either that or hold it for a few months. Once he returned, though, he learned just as quickly that talking to the guy in the next stall was no longer acceptable behavior, that certain things—bodily sounds and bad memories—were better off kept to himself.

Besides his few remaining war buddies, then, most of his friends were Ellen’s friends first. Which was fine by him. She taught Health at the middle school, and then, after the pregnancy issues (she said ‘my’; he insisted on ‘our’), she went into sales consulting. At the age of 45, she decided she needed to do something with a greater and actual human touch and went back to school to become a chiropractor. Edward did the flash cards with her and grimaced through her practice massages. Then, after eight years of that—the grueling memorization at school, the stress of keeping the business afloat—she gave it up just like that and the two of them moved together to the Cape. Back home, she said, even though by then all her family had left the area. The move had been entirely her call. It was true that the timing had been just right for him—he’d just reached retirement age; the company provided the cake—but he never asked her to give up anything. In fact, he didn’t understand how she could give up all those years of hard work, just wipe her hands of them and move on, apparently regret-free.

At any rate, in all those years, through her various lines of work and her cancer recovery, she surrounded herself with friends, which meant she surrounded Ed with friends, too: former students or clients or their husbands with whom he could go to ball games or simply make eye contact as they shook their heads and smiled in agreement about their more talkative spouses. And now, as he thought about it more and more, he realized that this was what she had done for him one last time: provided him with the social network he’d lost when they moved from the Midwest. She’d done the groundwork herself; all he had to do was say yes.

He set the alarm clock for the same ungodly hour she used to get up (all he had to do was click ‘On’ and it was good to go), and when it went off he sat up and yawned water into the corners of his eyes and tried to make a fist. He got out of bed and showered, not to clean himself—he was going to be sweating soon enough—but to wake himself up and to get rid of his bed hair. He poured himself a bowl of cereal but was too nervous to eat it and settled for a gulp and a few more sips of past-expiration-date orange juice from a foggy glass. He only had one tennis racket but it had a case with a strap and he put the strap on his shoulder and walked out the door.

It was the end of summer and with the sun just rising it wasn’t cold but it was cool. He knew he should have worn something warmer over the top, something with long sleeves, but these were his only clothes—white collared shirt, white shorts, white socks, white shoes—in which he thought he looked the part. He was worried he might be a little late so he started half jogging until a car drove by and he slowed back into a walk. 

The sidewalk became an asphalt path and then a dirt one and then there were wooden planks serving as stairs and then he was stepping along the beach, studying footprints and thinking of sneakers, finally looking up and spotting the courts off to his right.

By the time he got there he discovered he’d been right: he was late. Two courts, seven players hitting the ball back and forth and not talking. He opened the fence door and stayed there until Bob—the one who had done the talking at the funeral, the one who was on his own on the other side of the court—called his name and said he could use the help.

Edward took out his racket and speed walked behind the near court (he didn’t want to interrupt their point) and made it to Bob, whose hand was hot and sweaty and kept its grip after the handshake. Bob asked him if he wanted to warm up a bit and he thought yes but he said no and then when Bob said, “You sure? Why don’t you take a couple?” he nodded his head and stepped back to the baseline and shanked two backhands in a row so that the guy across the net (was it Randy? Roy?) had to holler, “Heads up!” and then hurry behind the other court to retrieve the balls. When he got back, Edward raised his hand and said, “I’m good. Let’s get this show on the road” and the four of them approached the net and introduced themselves (Reynold, his name was Reynold) and shook hands and Bob asked if he wanted to serve first but Ed said, “Go ahead, man” then beat himself up for it as he stood waiting for the serve: Since when did he say ‘man’? Did he actually think he could pull off a word like ‘man’? What the hell was his problem? What was he trying to prove?

At first, it didn’t go well. He was nervous and he hadn’t played in years and he missed easy shots that Bob did his best to laugh off. The thing was, he was better than this. He knew he was. He hadn’t started playing tennis until his thirties, but once he did, he’d gotten into it. He and Ellen played mixed doubles with other couples, and after a while, one of the husbands, Richard, who had been playing a lot longer than he had, called him up to play singles. It was just pick-up tennis, nothing official—no league or anything—but they both took it seriously. It was a good match-up—Richard had the bigger shots but was more erratic; Ed was faster but didn’t hit many balls by Richard—and they played twice a week right up until Ed and Ellen moved to the Cape.

This is what Ed was reminding himself between every point and after every missed shot. He was just rusty, he told himself. One good shot and he could loosen up and let the muscle memory take over.

Which turned out to be true. He was at the net—they all were—and the ball came his way. He didn’t have time to think, just react. The ball was at his chest and he turned his wrist to the net and the ball bounced off the racket and hit the net and dribbled over and rolled on the other side of the court before Tom and Jack could get to it. It was a luck shot—it’s not like he was trying to hit the net—but it was also a skill shot. All reflexes. And as he looked at the irritated faces across the net he felt his body untense and his veins go abuzz. Suddenly the ball seemed to be coming toward him a lot slower. He seemed to have more time and more options.

He hit angled volleys and forehands through the middle of the court. He hit more first serves in and put more gas on his second serve. He hustled and ran and lunged and jumped. His sneakers squealed. He grunted and fist pumped. He slapped Bob’s hand after making a shot, and he didn’t notice or care that Bob’s hand had been offered limply.

Just like that, he was on a roll.

It was as though the others were just standing there, unable to move, unable to track down either his drop shots or his lobs—unable to exert themselves like he was.

He felt young and agile and what he didn’t yet realize was that he was wrong. He’d misjudged the situation. It wasn’t that they were unable to chase after any more of his shots, it was that they were unwilling to do so. There were rules against this kind of play—unwritten ones, maybe, but rules that everyone but him seemed to grasp easily enough. They didn’t come out here to break a limb lurching for balls. This wasn’t Wimbledon. It was exercise. It was old farts getting together and hitting the ball around before going to Hardees.

Competitive was one thing. Edward’s antics were something else altogether.

Which he’ll find out soon enough.

They’ll finish up and put their rackets in their cars and he’ll overhear them talking about coffee and ask them if he can tag along. Reynold will say, “Only if you promise not to grunt in the restaurant” and he, Edward, will be so surprised—not by the comment so much as by the way no one tells Reynold to lighten up—that he’ll just stand there, sweating from his eyebrows, immobilized between the courts and the curb. He’ll watch the cars drive away, one at a time, and remember another time when he felt this shocked and unwanted and wishful-thinking pissed: He’d been sitting on their porch with her, twisting her hair. It was something he’d been doing almost as long as he’d known her—taking a few strands of her hair and twisting them until, when he let go, they stayed twisted. Suddenly she turned to him and said, “Would you cut it out! I hate it when you do that!” and all at once and for the next few hours his whole life had felt illegitimate. Self-doubt was existence-size. Certitude was impossible. It was a small thing, this twisting, but it was also a thing he’d taken for granted as good and right and markedly, singularly self-defining. Without ever thinking about it—no, that’s not true; he had thought about it—the hair-twisting was something that connected their lives and their decades together. It was one of his ways of self-consciously constructing a them, a marriage, a life with little things to look back on and mark the time. And then, with one comment, Ellen had obliterated this construction. Twenty years of doing something he thought was comfortingly predictable, something she’d laughed at when they were first married and later had grown (he thought) pleasantly accustomed to, was revealed as two decades of quiet annoyance and suffering. It was scary, how easily one’s sense of the way things were could prove false—and he had spent those few hours feeling profoundly sorry for himself and pathetically alone. Then she’d told him she was sorry. 

She’d brought up appointments he hadn’t known occurred and used words like chemo and radiation and metastasize. She told him she hadn’t mentioned the appointment because she didn’t want to worry him—she knew how he got—and she reiterated, again and again as if it wasn’t completely understandable, how very, very sorry she was for lashing out like that: that sometimes she said things just to say them, sometimes she said things because they were completely wrong, that there was a freedom in being able to say the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time and know it wouldn’t matter, that he’d be there for her anyway. She’d asked him that day whether he knew what she meant, and he’d nodded his head, not because he did but because she was absolutely right: he would always be there for her. Whatever she said, whatever happened, he’d be right there, if for no other reason than he could. This was not a matter of romance or sacrifice, or, if it was, it was a romance of convenience, a sacrifice that came easily, that right up until then had always seemed vaguely like a cop-out, his ability to attach to her related guiltily to his inability to attach to most others. That his attachment was necessary gave purpose to what had moments ago seemed incidental, even defective. In spite of the terrible news, right at that moment the world, his life, their life together had made sense again.

But all of this was still to be recollected. It hadn’t occurred to Edward because the guys hadn’t yet shunned him from coffee; they hadn’t left him standing by himself on the curb. He didn’t yet feel surprised, or hurt, or alone. He felt nimble. He felt sweaty. He felt like he knew what he was doing, and what was happening, and what would happen next. He would slice the ball low and move toward the net. The low shot would force Jack to pop the ball up, and there he would be, momentum carrying him forward, little steps moving him just in time to where he needed to be.

Patrick Hueller is the author, most recently, of Kirsten Howard’s Biggest Fan, a YA basketball novel National Book Award-finalist Charles Baxter described as “beautifully written, with a concert-hall perfect pitch for adolescent speech and idiom and ways of feeling.” He’s against instant replay in sports, but for it in life.