allowing my children to be the not-rich kids at their prep school. On the first day of school there was a woman who was in charge of welcoming new parents, and she was wearing a tennis outfit. “I play every day,” she told me when I asked her about it, and I thought, America! She asked if I ever played, and I said no, because really I hadn’t. And she told me where she played, and I found myself wondering if things were different now— if I was different enough now. I dared to wonder what the big deal had been about tennis and all that I had allowed it to signify in the first place. I signed up for the beginners’ program at her club. In six weeks, maybe 12, they could get me up for playing in the ladies’ doubles clinics. When was the last time I was called a lady, I wondered. And I thought, New Jersey! The club had a specific kind of green trim on it—a kelly green you only ever see at a place like that. I showed up in leggings and a T-shirt. The four other women who were able to make a midday Wednesday tennis outing wore tennis skirts. I asked one of them if she’d had it for a while, and she told me no, she was a beginner too. Implicit was a kind of shocking notion to me: that you’d show up ready to play tennis, not like I was, which was ready to see if tennis would allow me. But let me tell you what happened then: We were told about stroke and about swing and about point of contact. We were told about our feet and our legs and our arms and our heads. We were told about points and counting and bounds and to remain in them. We were taught about baseline and service line. We were taught polite ways to inform the rest of the court that something had been out of bounds. And then we were told to play, all that in less than an hour, and what happened then was that I immediately was good at it. Me! I had a better swing than the people in the group, and I was able to sink into the focus the game requires in a way I hadn’t been
95 ew Jersey, 2015
Life deposited me at the doorstep of a man I fell in love with and married, and we lived in Los Angeles for 10 years. Then, once I finally couldn’t take another sunny day, we moved to New Jersey. New Jersey is vast, so vast. There are lakes and rivers just allowed to take up space here. The state stretched out in front of me. And here, in the suburbs, where everyone gets a backyard no matter what, your money goes to infrastructure, like a pool club or a trampoline park or, yes, a tennis club. I had two children by now, and we sent them to a private school. I had visited New Jersey looking for a house to rent and I toured the school, and I had hearts and stars in my eyes over what could be my children’s: music lessons and languages and enrichment for miles. It was only after registration that I allowed my self-awareness to rear, and began to wonder about the wisdom of
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