Stay Up With Me by Tom Barbash

Author:Tom Barbash [Barbash, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780062258366
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2013-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Dear Mr. Wilcox,

The match with Javier, the Chilean junior, was more than my middle-aged heart could take. In the warm-ups Lee was relaxed, powdering his ground strokes and crushing his overheads, and he took a 5–1 lead in the first set. But after that he began to spray shots, and double-fault, like a pitcher who mysteriously and suddenly loses control. I have seen this sort of meltdown eight or nine times, but it usually occurs for boys with more volatile temperaments than Lee’s. It might have served as a lesson had Lee in fact lost the match, but Javier had his own, more theatrical and subequatorial meltdown in the third set, and Lee won through attrition more than perseverance.

When the match was over, Lee and the boy who smokes went to the movie theater at the mall. I saw them buy two pretzels, a slushy, and a chicken sandwich of suspect pedigree. They sat in the eighth row. I know this because I was in the fifteenth. It is not unusual for me to go to the movies, and I hadn’t intended to spy on them, but the movie was at a convenient time for me, and I planned to leave before the end of the film so as not to inhibit them on their afternoon escape. There are no rules against seeing a movie on a Sunday, provided you make it back by dinnertime, and provided you’ve played at least four hours and run three miles, which Lee had done. I heard Lee laugh several times during the movie, once at a very serious, and in fact poignant, moment—a last conversation in a hospital ward between a husband and wife—and I’m quite sure he and the smoker were upsetting the family who sat in front of them.

The other boys at the Academy had a basketball tournament that night to which Lee declined participation and instead played cards with one of the groundskeepers in the groundskeeper shack. Money was involved and Lee apparently ended up on the short end. I don’t think it was a disastrous defeat, perhaps $100, but I suspect that Lee has been paying the groundskeeper back with some of the Wilson equipment he has been receiving. The basketball game went on until after ten, and afterward the boys drank Gatorade together on the Academy porch. Lee was back in his room by then, reading or doing sit-ups. (I have tried to match him in his exercise routine and am up to 125 sit-ups and 100 push-ups a day, which is not bad I would say for a man of forty-four.) Thank you for the quick note you sent, which I know was written during a particularly busy time for you. And in answer to your question, yes, there are several other coaches who work directly with Lee, and he is not being singled out for special treatment. But I must say that if he was, it would be because he is not an ordinary adolescent, and not an ordinary talent.

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