“You get what you pay for,” Todd said, flopping back in his chair as though the depth of everyone’s idiocy was exhausting.
“Definitely something we can discuss further, although if Charlie is comfortable using the tournament physios, I’m inclined to try that route first and use Dino on an as-needed basis,” Jake said with more confidence than Charlie knew he felt. “What else can you update us on?”
“Well, as you all know, I’ve developed an entirely new approach for Charlie. Thanks in large part to the good work you’ve done with her, Peter, her foundation is solid. Great ground strokes, comfortable playing the baseline. Service is very solid and her net game is among the strongest of all the girls.”
The use of the word “girls” rankled her, but again, Charlie kept quiet.
“In my opinion, Charlotte needs to be focusing all of her energy and attention on her mental game. You can be a decent player with strokes like hers, but she’ll never be a winner without better mental toughness. No more sweet little Charlie with the big smile and the apology for everyone.” His voice went up a few octaves to a grating imitation of a female. “ ‘So sorry for hitting it wide. Sorry for walking in front of you. Sorry, it’s actually my turn for the practice court.’ No mas, people. From here on in we’ll be working on a mental makeover, if you will. I want aggressive. Go-getting. Intimidation. You think the men are walking around apologizing for everything and hugging each other? Hell, no! And the girls shouldn’t be either.”
Todd took another taster from the flight, sniffed it, and threw it down his throat. The entire table watched as his tongue encircled his lips.
Mr. Silver glanced toward Charlie, but she wouldn’t meet his eye. Todd was right. She was too nice. “I hear you,” Charlie said. “I could definitely be more aggressive.”
“You think? ’Cause I sure fucking do. No more little miss nice girl with the pink ribbon and the big, toothy smile. This is serious business with serious stakes, and it’s time you acted like it.”
Charlie’s father cleared his throat. “I respect everything you’re saying, Todd, and to an extent, I do agree. But do you think it’s wise to expend so much energy on trying to change Charlie’s personality? Call me old-fashioned, but I still see some value in sportsmanship—especially in a sport like tennis.”
Todd smacked the table. “Of course! I’m not advising her to be a bitch out there, but trust me when I say it wouldn’t be the worst thing either. The girls today, they’re tough. They’ve got muscles like men, they hit the ball hard, and they’ll do whatever it takes to win. Just look at the ones on top—they’re hot and tough. Real competitors, all of them. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Charlie was relieved when the waitress returned with their dinners. She’d ordered the salmon because she’d eaten it the night before her first-round win. It was stupidly superstitious and of course no better than reading tarot cards or avoiding sidewalk cracks, but she couldn’t help herself: she would eat salmon every single night until she lost. She’d also wear her ponytail in a braid with a ribbon woven through it, drink exactly two mugs of mint tea after dinner, and turn off the lights at ten on the dot. How would sex with Marco fit in? she silently wondered. She had slept with him the night after her win, so technically speaking, she should probably do it again . . .
“And what about fitness?” Charlie’s father asked between bites of his steak.
Todd chewed, swallowed, and polished off another shot of tequila. “What about it?”
“Well, Marcy felt like that was a major way forward for Charlie. That it was easier even a few years ago to be reasonably in shape, but that the women’s game has evolved lately to become so much more about strength and fitness.”
“Why do you think I have her on the new eating plan? She’s a knockout, don’t get me wrong, but we still need to shave off a few more pounds. Long, lean, strong. We’ll get there.”
Charlie took a sip of her sparkling water and stared at her plain grilled fish and side of greens. She was permitted specific carbs on match days—steel cut oatmeal, whole wheat pasta, certain protein bars—but practice days were a drag. When had it become normal to listen to a group of people discuss her weight and her body right in front of her? The only thing weird about it was that two official matches into Todd’s regime, it didn’t seem weird anymore.
“Well, I think she looks great exactly the way she is,” Charlie’s dad said, and Charlie could feel herself blush. “I meant more from a stamina perspective.”
It had probably only been two or three years after her mother died when Charlie had found two books in the glove compartment of Mr. Silver’s car: Raising Daughters with Dignity and Respect: A Parent’s Guide and The Single Dad’s Primer on All Things Girl. Page corners were turned down and paragraphs were highlighted, and her father had even made some notes in the margins, things like, “Don’t always compliment appearance, compliment innate qualities,” and “Always tell her she’s enough just the way she is.” She’d cried for nearly thirty minutes that day, sitting alone in the driver’s seat of the beat-up Jeep Wrangler that had always embarrassed her, and wondered where he’d found those books. The thought of him shopping the local bookstore, searching for something—anything—that could help him navigate the overwhelming task of raising two kids alone, could make her throat close to this day.
“Of course she looks great!” Todd all but sang. “You gotta trust me on this. I got Adrian down from two hundred to below one ninety and what happened? He won Roland-Garros that year.”
“Yes, but weight aside—which, for the record, I personally think is perfect—but focusing again on fitness: Marcy felt strongly that more off the court and in the gym could really pay dividends from the perspective of—”
“With all due respect, Peter, I’m not Marcy.” Todd had set down his fork and turned to look at Charlie’s dad. “Of course Charlotte needs to be fit. But that won’t mean shit without the whole package. Yes, her backhand’s great, blah, blah. Again, not enough. She needs a body that can cover the court and not give out during tough, hot three-setters, and killer strokes, but then what? Attitude, that’s what. Does she want it? Does she really, really want it? Does she want it so bad she can fucking taste it? If the answer is yes, then Charlie needs to show that. It’s not enough to show up: she’s got to stomp all over her opponents. And that’s what you’ve hired me to help her do.”
Charlie threw her father a grateful look for not reminding the table that Todd was certainly not his choice.
“Wusses don’t win Slams. It’s the same in tennis as it is in life: nice guys lose. It took some time, but we roughed Adrian up a little, got him fired up and ready to win, and guess what? He started winning. That farmer fucking teddy bear. All the time. Everything he entered. Because when he walked onto that court, his opponents knew, could feel, that he wanted nothing more in life than to crush them. And there’s real value in that.”
“Definitely,” Charlie said. She wasn’t sure she agreed entirely, but there was no arguing with Todd’s record. And where, exactly, had Marcy’s insistence on fairness and good manners gotten her? A double injury and a loss in the rankings, that’s where.
“To new strategies and bright futures,” Jake said, holding up his glass. Jake may have still been learning the ropes, but he’d known his entire life how to diffuse an awkward situation, and never before had it come in so handy.
Charlie reached for her sparkling water while her father held aloft his still-full tequila snifter, and they clinked with Jake and Todd.
“To Charlotte, who’s going to take her new badass self and trample the competition. Starting with that whiny little Croat tomorrow,” Todd said with a grin.
“How about to a very happy twenty-fifth birthday? May this be your best year yet,” her father said, smiling at Charlie.
“It’s your birthday, kid? I didn’t even realize. Happy, happy,” Todd said,
taking another slug.
Charlie didn’t bother correcting him, or telling him the actual date. It wasn’t hard to see her father despised him, and yes, he was no Marcy, but Charlie knew—she just knew—that Todd Feltner was exactly what she needed. She was nearly twenty-five years old, in the best shape of her life, and had never made it to the finals of a Slam. It had to be now. And she was confident Todd was the one who could get her there.
“We can discuss the rest of the image stuff another time,” Todd said, scrolling through something on his phone. “There’s already a lot of food for thought.”
“Image stuff?” Mr. Silver asked, eyebrows raised.
“The new Charlie needs a hotter look. Sexy and glamorous—don’t worry, we’re not going for dykey here—just a lot more sophisticated than this whole little-girl-with-braids-in-tennis-dresses thing she’s got going on. Hard to take someone seriously when they perpetually look like they’re twelve. Especially with a bo—a figure like Charlie’s. It’s practically criminal not to take advantage of it.”
Even Todd must have noticed the murderous look on Mr. Silver’s face, because he rushed on. “Don’t worry for a minute: Charlie’s entire focus will be on tennis, perfecting both her physical and her mental game. I’ve got good ideas for the image stuff—the clothes, hair, publicity, that kind of bullshit—but I’ll make certain Charlie will expend only the bare minimum of energy on it. I’ll get people lined up to take care of it all. She’ll only have to think pace, accuracy, intimidation. And winning.”
It felt like the entire table was deeply relieved when the waitress came by holding a plate of chocolate cake with a lit candle in it. Her father and Jake began to sing, but Charlie, feeling embarrassed in front of Todd, waved them off.
Usually she liked to take a minute and think, really will her wish into existence, and then blow out the candle with her eyes clenched shut to ensure it would come true, but she could feel Todd’s impatience. She blew out the candle without wishing for anything at all and turned to Jake.
“We should really get going,” she said, and Jake understood immediately that she wanted dinner to be over.
“No time for coffee, I’m afraid,” Jake announced. “Mandatory player party already started and Charlie needs to put in some face time before lights-out.” Jake accepted the check, signed the receipt, and slipped the corporate card into his wallet.
“Thank you for dinner, Silvers. It was enlightening as always,” Todd said, rising before anyone else. “Charlotte, meet me in the lobby tomorrow morning at eight. I’ll send breakfast to your room at seven-thirty. Light practice for two hours and an early lunch. Get some sleep.”
Charlie nodded, making a mental note to be ready for breakfast by seven and in the lobby by seven-thirty as Todd strode out. Her father came around the table to embrace her.
“Trust me, Dad. I know what I’m doing, and Todd is the best. He really is,” she said into his chest.
“Of course I trust you. I just don’t like how tough he is on you. I know I’m only your old man and admittedly, I’m a little biased, but I happen to think you’re pretty great just the way you are.”
“He’s going to get me where I need to be,” Charlie said, fiercely, hoping more than anything it was true. “Marcy couldn’t do that.”
“Marcy got you twenty-three. I would say that’s doing it.”
“But she was a pushover! And as a result, I was a pushover. Not to even mention the fact that I lost at Wimbledon because she screwed up on the clothing details.”
“Everyone screws up, Charlie. God knows I did in every imaginable way all those years I was raising you two. You don’t fire good people for one mistake,” he said softly, reaching for her hand.
Charlie yanked it away. “I can’t possibly be the best there is with a coach who isn’t pushing me every minute of every day.”
“Well, it looks like you’ve chosen the right guy for that. I don’t claim to know much about professional tennis anymore, but common sense says that it’s great strokes, fitness, and dedication that wins tournaments. Not outfits or endorsements. Or intimidation, for that matter, which sounds to me like a different word for being an asshole.”
“Yeah, well, when five of the guys you’ve coached win Grand Slams, then I guess you can tell me what you think. But until then, I’d say Todd knows what he’s doing.”
Her father recoiled like he’d been slapped.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
It was her father’s turn to pull away his hand. “No, you’re right. It’s not my place.”
“Of course it is, Dad. I shouldn’t have said that. No one has done more for me than—”
Jake clapped a hand on each of their shoulders, looking like he’d just returned from winning the lottery. “Ready, Charlie? Let’s do a quick drive-by at the player party. Dad, I called a taxi to take you back to the hotel.”
“Wait, can we talk about this for just a minute? Dad, I really didn’t mean—”
“Come on, guys. It’s after eight. Lights-out at ten doesn’t leave us a lot of time.” Jake ushered them both toward the door, and Charlie tried not to notice that people in the restaurant were watching her.
Mr. Silver leaned in to kiss Charlie’s cheek. “Happy birthday, Charlie. I’m sorry for butting in. It’s just your old man looking out for you. But you don’t need it. You’ve always made the best decisions for yourself, and I know you will now, too.”
As their car pulled away, Charlie turned around to see her father watching them through the back window. She distinctly remembered his unabashed delight when, at four years old, she seemed to have a knack for the game. In the first couple of years, he had actually brought her to the clay courts where he’d taught since age twenty-two and pushed her. When Charlie wanted to spend afternoons with her classmates swimming at the town pool or climbing on their swing sets instead of the club, Mr. Silver would lecture her on the rare gift she was receiving by starting so early. She had her whole life for pools and playdates, he’d say, but you only ever got one chance to learn the fundamentals, to develop your swing and game at such a young age that it all became second nature, that once you had honed those skills, neither time nor competition could take them away. Over and over he said, “You have a talent. You must see where it takes you.” And although there were times when young Charlie grew weary of more hours spent on the court, she also loved hearing the admiration in her father’s voice. He never said it to Jake, and he never talked about the other kids he coached at the club with anywhere near the level of respect with which he spoke about Charlie. She loved the way he examined her form and shopped with her for equipment and spent hours devising drills and lessons to best teach the skills he thought she most needed.
In elementary school, his demands grew greater: first he required one, then two, then three hours a day of practice. Charlie rarely played with friends after school, never took ballet or joined a soccer team. She loved tennis, she truly did, but the monotony of it began to wear on her. Charlie’s mother often tried to intervene—and sometimes even went around her father’s back, inviting two or three of Charlie’s classmates over to play with her in the basement or watch movies in the family room—but Mr. Silver always found a way to get her back to the court. It went on like this for years, this strange arrangement where he continually pushed her to practice and Charlie both loved and resented him for it, and it might have continued straight into her adolescence if it hadn’t been for her mother playing the ultimate trump card: her deathbed plea to Charlie’s father that he take a step back and offer more support and less instruction. Her mother had requested it and made her father repeat it: Charlie, and Charlie alone, would decide if she wanted to play tennis. That late-October afternoon when she was eleven, with its Indian summer heat and heartbreakingly blue skies, was not only the day Charlie lost her mother: it was the day her father stopped pushing her once and for all.
r /> Charlie didn’t notice she was crying until she felt Jake’s hand on her shoulder.
“What’s wrong? Is it Dad? Don’t mind him, he isn’t himself lately.”
“I was awful to him,” she said. Charlie wiped tears away and looked at her brother. “What do you mean?”
“Charlie, he’s fine. Everything’s fine. You need to focus right now on your match tomorrow. Are you feeling good?”
“I’m feeling fine. That seems to be the operative word these days.”
“Don’t be nasty. Dad’s here to watch you win this tournament because he loves you and you’re the center of his universe and you always will be, even if you say something obnoxious over dinner one time. Can you move on?”
Charlie dabbed her eyes and tried not to smudge her mascara. “Yes.”
“Good. Now, I wasn’t going to say anything until after the Open, but I am super close to closing a deal for you. A big deal.”
“You are? How big?”
“The biggest yet.” Jake’s grin was unmistakable.
“Mercedes?”
“Bigger.”
“Ralph Lauren?”
“Bigger.”
“What’s bigger than Ralph Lauren?”
“You want to guess or you want me to tell you?”
“I thought you were talking to the Ralph Lauren people,” Charlie said. “They were all excited to sign an American, but you were trying to clear it with Nike to make sure there would be no overlap on court. Am I making this up?” Charlie tried to keep up with all the things Jake was pursuing on her behalf, she really did, but there were always so many details.
“Swarovski.”
“Swarovski? Are you serious? You’re not serious.”
“Dead serious.”
“They’ve never signed a tennis player. You told me that yourself!”