Lost in Suburbia by Tracy Beckerman

Author:Tracy Beckerman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2013-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Why You Should Pay Attention When the Sign Says, “Closed by the Board of Health”

Soon after we moved across town, I got a call from my former neighbor.

“Hi, Tracy! Would you be available to join our doubles group today?” Sharon Van DeBeek asked me over the phone. “One of the girls in our group is sick and we can’t play without four.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it horrified. I realized with a start that I had just been invited to play tennis. This particular invitation was only slightly less appealing to me than being asked to go bathing suit shopping. For one thing, having seen some of the tennis ladies at Sharon’s barbecue, I was fairly certain we would not have a lot in common. For another thing, and more important, I sucked at tennis. Actually, I wasn’t sure if I still sucked at tennis since I hadn’t played for twenty years. But I had definitely sucked at tennis when I was a teenager and I thought it was safe to assume that not playing the game for two decades had done nothing to improve my skills.

Still, I was longing to meet some other moms and I thought that if I could somehow bluff my way through the game, it might be an opportunity to make some new friends. Of course my inner voice of reason shouted at me that this was probably going to be a monumentally bad decision, but I ignored her and said yes. The whole world played tennis. All you had to do was hit a little ball with a big racket. I hit tiny little flies with newspapers all the time. How hard could this be?

After dropping my son off at school, I arrived at the tennis club early so I could rent a racket and get my daughter settled in babysitting. Then I went to the bathroom to take a final look at my outfit. Since I wasn’t a tennis player, I didn’t have any tennis clothes and had to make do with gym shorts, an old T-shirt, and my beat-up old sneakers. Unfortunately, my outfit did nothing to build up my confidence that this was going to be a good experience. All the other women looked like they were headed to Wimbledon. I looked like I was going to the Jersey Shore.

I arrived back at the meeting area just as Sharon and the rest of her group came in. Sharon was in the front so I couldn’t see the two other women, but as they got closer, I suddenly realized I knew one of the women. It was Peanut-free Cheryl. When she saw me, her face dropped, and then she knit her eyebrows and pursed her lips.

“Hi, Tracy,” said Sharon exuberantly. “This is Rena Lowenstein and this is Cheryl Hofstadter.” She gestured to the two women on her right.

I smiled back a little less enthusiastically.

“Hi, Rena,” I said to the lanky brunette I didn’t know, and then turned to Peanut-free Cheryl.

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