Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

Jane played her usual game, steady, unheroic, getting almost everything back quite sharply, keeping the ball in play until Stewart could get his racket on it and kill it. They were a good team. Jane let Stewart poach on her territory for spectacular kills, and twice Stewart patted her approvingly on the behind after she had made difficult saves, and there were appreciative chuckles from the spectators at the small domestic vulgarity.

Stewart made the last point of the set on a slamming deep backhand that passed Eleanor at the net. Eleanor shook her head and said, “Collins, you’re an impossible man,” and Croker said stolidly, “Splendid. Splendid,” and Stewart said, grinning, “Something I’ve been saving for this point, old man.”

They walked off and sat down on a bench in the shade between sets, and Croker and Jane had to wipe their faces with towels and Croker’s alarming purple died a little from his cheeks.

“That overhead!” Eleanor said to Stewart. “It’s absolutely frightening. When I see you winding up, I’m just tempted to throw away my poor little racket and run for my life.”

Jane lifted her head and glanced swiftly at Stewart to see how he was taking it. He was taking it badly, smiling a little too widely at Eleanor, being boyish and charming. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Something I picked up on Omaha Beach.”

That, too, Jane thought bitterly. Foxhole time, too. She ducked her head into her towel to keep from saying something wifely. This is the last time, she thought, feeling the towel sticky against her sweaty forehead, the last time I am coming to any of these week-end things, always loaded with unattached or semi-attached, man-hungry, half-naked, honey-mouthed girls. She composed her face, so that when she looked up from the towel she would look like a nice, serene woman who merely was interested in the next set of tennis.

Eleanor, who had wide green eyes, was staring soberly and unambiguously over the head of her racket at Stewart, and Stewart, fascinated, as always, and a little embarrassed, was staring back. Oh, God, Jane thought, the long stare, too.

“Well,” she said briskly, “I’m ready for one more set.”

“What do you say,” Stewart asked, “we divide up differently this time? Might make it more even. Croker and you, Jane, and the young lady and me.”

“Oh,” said Eleanor, “I’d be a terrible drag to you, Stewart. And besides, I’m sure your wife loves playing on your side.”

“Not at all,” Jane said stiffly. The young lady! How obvious could a man be?

“No,” said Croker surprisingly. “Let’s stay the way we are.” Jane wanted to kiss the round purple face, a bleak, thankful kiss. “I think we’ll do better this time. I’ve been sort of figuring out what to do with you, Collins.”

Stewart looked at him briefly and unpleasantly, then smiled charmingly. “Anything you say, old man. I just thought …”

“I’m sure we’ll do better,” Croker said firmly. He stood up. “Come on, Eleanor.”

Eleanor stood up, lithe and graceful in her short dress, which whipped around her brown legs in the summer wind. Never again, Jane thought, will I wear shorts. Dresses like that, even if they cost fifty dollars apiece, and soft false bosoms to put in them, too, and no bandanna, even if I’m blinded on each shot.

Stewart watched Eleanor follow Croker onto the court, and Jane could have brained him for the buried, measuring glint in his eye.

“Let’s go,” Stewart said, and under his breath, as they walked to their positions on .the base line. He added, “Let’s really show the old idiot this time, Jane.”

“Yes, dear,” Jane said, and pulled her bandanna straight and tight around her hair.

The first three games were ludicrously one-sided. Stewart stormed the net, made sizzling, malicious shots to Croker’s feet, and purposely made him run, so that he panted pitifully and grew more purple than ever, and from time to time muttered to Jane, “Ridiculous old windbag,” and “I thought he had me figured out,” and “Don’t let up, Janie, don’t let up.”

Jane played as usual, steady, undeviating, as predictably and sensibly as she always played. She was serving in the fourth game and was at 40-15 when Stewart dropped a shot just over the net, grinning as Croker galloped heavily in and barely got his racket on it. Croker’s return wobbled over Stewart’s head and landed three inches beyond the base line.

“Nice shot,” she heard Stewart say. “Just in.”

She looked at him in surprise. He was nodding his head emphatically at Croker.

Eleanor was at the net on the other side, looking at Stewart. “It looked out to me,” she said.

“Not at all,” Stewart said. “Beautiful shot. Serve them up, Janie.”

Oh, Lord, Jane thought, now he’s being sporting.

Jane made an error on the next point and Croker made a placement for advantage and Stewart hit into the net for the last point, and it was Croker’s and Eleanor’s game. Stewart came back to receive the service, not humming any more, his face irritable and dark.

Croker suddenly began to play very well, making sharp, sliding, slicing shots that again and again forced Stewart and Jane into errors. As they played, even as she swung at the ball, Jane kept remembering the shot that Stewart had called in, that had become the turning point of the set. He had not been able to resist the gallant gesture, especially when Eleanor had been standing so close, watching it all. It was just like Stewart. Jane shook her head determinedly, trying to concentrate on the game. This was no time to start dissecting her husband. They had had a lovely week end till now and Stewart had been wonderful, gay and funny and loving, and criticism could at least be reserved for weekdays, when everything else was dreary, too. But it was just like Stewart. It was awful how everything he did was all of a piece. His whole life was crowded with gestures. Hitting his boss that time in the boss’s own office with three secretaries watching, because the boss had bawled him out. Giving up his R.O.T.C. commission and going into the Army as a private, in 1942. Giving five thousand dollars, just about the last of their savings, to Harry Mather, for Mather’s business, just because they had gone to school together, when everyone knew Mather had become a hopeless drunk and none of his other friends would chip in. To an outsider, all these might seem the acts of a generous and rather noble character, but to a wife, caught in the consequences …

“Damn these pants,” Stewart was muttering after hitting a ball into the net. “I keep tripping over them all the time.”

“You ought to wear shorts, like everyone else,” Jane said.

“I will. Buy me some this week,” Stewart said, taking time out and rolling his cuffs up slowly and obviously. Jane had bought him three pairs of shorts a month before, but he always pretended he couldn’t find them, and wore the long trousers. His legs are surprisingly skinny, Jane thought, hating herself for thinking it, and they’re hairy, and his vanity won’t let him.… She started to go for a ball, then stopped when she saw Stewart going for it.

He hit it out to the backstop. “Janie, darling,” he said, “at least stay out of my way.”

“Sorry,” she said. Stewie, darling, she thought, Stewie, be careful. Don’t lay it on. You’re not really like this. I know you’re not. Even for a moment, don’t make it look as though you are.

Stewart ended the next rally by hitting the ball into the net. He stared unhappily at the ground. “The least they might do,” he said in a low voice to Jane, “is roll the court if they invite people to play on it.”

Please, Stewie, Jane begged within herself, don’t do it. The alibis. The time he forgot to sign the lease for the apartment and they were put out and he blamed it on the lawyer, and the time he lost the job in Chicago and it was because he had gone to the wrong college, and the time … By a rigorous act of will, Jane froze her eyes on the ball, kept her mind blank as she hit it back methodically again and again.