Lily King - Father of the Rain

“Fuck no. Daley, you don’t get it. God, for all your education you really don’t have much smarts.” He said smaats , Boston accent, just the way Dad would.

“Oh, shit, it’s nearly ten. He’s calling me. Please think about it, Garve.”

“I won’t. Where are you going?”

“Just out with Dad.”

“Hmmm. Ten A.M. on a Saturday morning in July. Could it possibly be to the Ashing Tennis and Sail Club?”

“I lost a bet.”

“I want a photo.”

“I have to go.”

“You’ll have to wear one of those little pleated skirts.”

“I have some white running shorts.”

“How quickly we forget. You’re over eighteen and you have to wear a skirt.”

“That was in 1972.”

“But it’s 1952 in Ashing. And it always will be.”

He is right. I have to have sneakers, a skirt, and a shirt with a collar. My father takes me to the pro shop and a woman my father calls H puts me in a dressing room with saloon doors and keeps sticking her bony sunfried arm in and out until I’ve chosen a skirt with navy stripes and its matching polo shirt. Then she fits me into some very cushiony tennis sneakers.

“Hey, hey,” my father says when I come out. He hands me a brand new racquet. Before I can protest, H has put my hair in a high ponytail. They both beam at me. In the mirror across the room, I look eleven again.

My father makes a point of saying hello to everyone we pass on the way to court five, of introducing me with much more enthusiasm than normal. “Look at my Daley, all grown up,” he says to several people.

Look at Daley, fucking out of her mind.

I want a father who doesn’t get drunk. He wants a daughter to take to the club. It’s a deal with the devil for both of us.

He hits a few soft ones to me at first, perfectly placed so that all I have to do is swing. The first few go way out, and the next few into the net, but my father shows me how to follow through on the stroke, finishing with my weight moving forward, and my next shots are decent ones.

“Holy smokes,” my father says, reaching the ball easily. “I’ve got to stay on my toes today.”

It feels great to move with my body, think with my body. I haven’t exercised in months. I copy his movements. My focus is pure. I feel my father’s desire for me to play well but it doesn’t disable me like it used to. For the first time I can fully appreciate what a beautiful player he is. No matter where I place the ball he is there in a few steps, having anticipated its direction as soon as it leaves my racquet. His strokes are fluid, graceful, deceptively strong. There is nothing that looks like effort in his game. He sweats more eating a steak.

I can’t explain why I’m suddenly okay at tennis. Maybe I was never as awful as I thought. All I know is that it is pleasurable. I like the feel of the clay beneath my new leather sneakers and the pale mark the ball leaves when it lands in front of me and the moment when the ball has crested from the bounce and has just started to drop and I strike it with my racquet in just the right place. The racquet has a huge head and is surprisingly reliable. I even like the skirt and all its pleats that swing as I run. I’m an imposter, an inter-loper, in a deeply familiar environment. I’m here but soon I will be far away. This is my own dirty secret. Everyone I know would be disgusted with me. I smile at that thought.

“You could be a damn good player, Daley. You know that?” My father says when we take a break at the water dispenser between the two courts.

We sip from paper cones, and I feel the cold water hit my stomach.

Then he says, “I can feel the difference.”

“What do you mean?”

“Without the cocktails.”

It’s the first benefit he’s mentioned.

We play two sets. He beats me 6–3, 6–4. I know he has the ability to beat me 6–0 left-handed if he wanted. I kept thinking I could tire him out by hitting them to one side and then the other, but he returned them all — it never even looked like he was running.

Afterward we sit on the bench beside the court.

“I thought you had me that first set, when it was deuce and you fired that winner down the line.”

I have no idea what he’s talking about. I can’t remember individual points once a game is over. The whole thing fuses quickly together.

“By the end of the summer you’ll be beating me,” he says.

“Dad.”

He smiles and shakes his head. “For a minute there I thought you were sixteen years old.”

For a minute there, I almost wish I were.

That afternoon, while my father is napping, I call Julie and confess where I’ve been.

“I know this sounds weird but I think there is something kind of powerful about wearing a tennis skirt,” I say.

“Oh, God, Daley,” Julie says. “Get out of there.”

“You sound like Jonathan.”

“You’re not going to tell him where you were.”

“Not over the phone. When I get out there and he’s calmed down. I really think the skirt helped me play better, though. It’s a uniform, and all uniforms are about power.”

“Or denigration.”

“I did refuse to eat at the clubhouse.”

“At least you have a shred of sanity left.”

“Tell me what you see out your window.” She just got to Albuquerque.

“Dirt.”

“Dirt?”

“Dry, yellowish dirt. I keep walking around my neighborhood thinking, What is going to become of me?”

“What are you going to do until school starts?”

“Work on my syllabus. Read. Eat. And other things I haven’t done for seven years. I talked to my father today. He told me to set aside that long weekend in October. He says he’s sending me a plane ticket, but it’s a mystery as usual.”

I can see now that my old irritation about Julie and her father was the pain of envy. They are very close, capable of talking on the phone for two hours at a time, desultory conversations that can go from toothpaste brands to Simone Weil. She can call him at night and he will never be drunk. He’s a doctor, a radiologist, and he has a doctor’s smug confidence. I’ve always been half infatuated, half repulsed by him. The first time he met me, he told Julie I was a diamond in the rough. We laughed at the image, but secretly I puzzled over it for a long time, wondering exactly what on the outside was so rough, and where exactly the diamond was.

“I hope it’s to California. You can be our first houseguests.”

“If you promise to wear your new uniform.”

“Of course. I’m sure I’ll be playing in a ladies’ league by then.”

That night, my father pulls out a piece of paper from one blazer pocket and his reading glasses from the other. “I heard this tonight at the meeting. Thank you is all you need to say to get God’s attention . I thought that was pretty good.” He looks embarrassed, then laughs when he sees that my eyes have filled.

I lie in bed Sunday morning after the alarm goes off. I can hear the opener slicing through the dogs’ cans, the spoon whacking against the bowls, the dogs’ frenzy as my father carries the bowls to their place against the wall, the silence as they eat and my father returns to his coffee and paper, and then the smack of the screen door when they are done and need to go out. My father yells something at one of them. I’m relieved by the sound, the regular impatient tone. There will be no drama this time. I keep urging myself up, then rolling into another even comfier position. I was hot during the night and my blanket is at my feet, but now I pull it back over me. It looks cloudy and cold outside. I feel like sleeping all morning. I haven’t packed my clothes yet. They are in a heap on the floor.

I put on jeans I haven’t worn since Michigan. They remind me of winter there, of the big black boots I used to wear with them, of Jonathan and the orgasm he once gave me with just his thumb on the outside of these jeans. My stomach does a slow backflip. I need to get to him. I put the tennis outfit at the back of a drawer in the bureau. I pack the sneakers. I shove the books I got from Neal’s store into the sides of the bag and zip. Halfway down the stairs I realize I’ve left my toothbrush by the sink, but I keep moving. There will be plenty of toothbrushes on the road to California. I love a road trip. I can get at least as far as Indiana by midnight.