Jersey Tomatoes are the Best (2 page)

I hate that. I hate the way fans side with my opponents, as if they’re helpless victims and I’m some creep for beating them. I mean, am I supposed to feel guilty for being the better player? This is a game, people. We play to win
.

Emily stares in disbelief as the yellow ball rolls gently toward her. She lets out a deep, long breath.

“Tough luck,” I call out, shaking my head in sympathy. “And your serve was so awesome.”

She looks stricken. It is probably the worst thing I could have said to her. Not only to point out how great the serve was, how the point should have been hers and she blew it. But to sympathize with her? You never want other players’ sympathy. You want their fear, their respect. If they offer kind words, you know they think you are the most pathetic little bug ever to swing a racket.

I can’t help it. I hate myself for it, actually, but I glance at my father. He’s heard my comment, and barely, almost imperceptibly, he winks. Then he looks down, busying himself with his notebook. He and I both know it’s pretty much over now.

Next serve: Emily double-faults. Then puts up a puff ball which I put away. At love–40, championship point, she tries to lob me, but it falls short. I finish with an overhead slam into her forehand corner. She watches it go by.

To the velvety sound of outdoor applause, we trot to the net, hands extended for the courtesy shake.

“You play very well,” she says. “You deserve the title.”

“Thank you,” I reply, pumping her hand, and wondering how it can be so sweaty and so cold at the same time. “You have a great serve. I had to work hard to return it.” I smile. The game is over. We can be friendly.

Emily shrugs.

“Not hard enough,” she comments. “Listen, I want to tell
you something.” I gaze at her, puzzled. People from the bleachers are spilling onto the court and walking toward us.

“That wasn’t a coach talking to me. That was my dad. He was asking me how I felt. See, I’m diabetic. Exercise really affects my blood-sugar levels, and if I’m not careful I could go into a seizure. My dad wanted to know if I needed to test my blood.” Emily stares steadily into my eyes.

“I don’t know who that loudmouth in the bleachers was, but I want you to know that I would never cheat,” she says. “I know we’re not allowed coaching.”

I swallow hard. She obviously hadn’t heard me talking to the loudmouth.

“So, are you okay? I mean, the rules allow us to stop to pee. I’m sure you could have stopped to test your blood, or something.”

“I’m fine.” Emily smiles, thinly. “No insulin shock. Just tired. You beat me fair and square.”

At that moment, Blue Polo Man appears. He wraps one arm tightly around Emily’s shoulders and gives her an affectionate squeeze.

“I’m very proud of you,” he says firmly. “You played great.” He looks across the net at me. “Congratulations,” he says politely.

“Thank you,” I reply. Then Emily’s dad shifts his gaze over my shoulder, and a frown appears on his forehead. I don’t need eyes in the back of my head to know who he sees.

My father, aka Loudmouth.

“Way to go, Henry!” he booms. He raises one hand, palm
facing me, to slap five. “Way to go,
champ
!” I slap him a quick five, then move immediately toward my tennis bag near the exit. Hoping against hope that he will simply follow me.

No such luck. He turns to Emily and her father.

“Kid,” he says, “I’m sorry that you lost. But this should be a lesson to you. It never pays to cheat.”

“Dad!” I say sharply. “Let’s just go. Okay?”

Emily’s father removes his arm from her shoulder and takes one step toward my dad. His face twitches with controlled rage.

“I don’t know who you are, or what rock you crawled out from under, but I would advise you in the future to not speak to my daughter, or to me. Is that understood?” he seethes. “Otherwise, I’ll see that you’re barred from the circuit. You won’t be allowed within a ten-mile radius of a junior tournament for the next fifty years.”

My father laughs.

“No worries, bro. Especially since I don’t think we’ll be seeing much more of her at match finals anyway,
comprendo?
” He gives another short laugh, turns his back on them and walks, with me following, off the court.

In the parking lot about an hour later, as we load my bag and trophy into the back of the Navigator, Dad still crows about the win.

“You did good today, Hen. Granted, she isn’t as talented as you. But that serve could have messed you up. She’s got a nice serve. But you stayed tough, hung in there. That’s your ace in the hole, kid: mental toughness. Gets ’em every time.”

“You know, Dad, she’s diabetic. Her father was just asking—” His short bark of laughter cuts me off.

“Yeah, and I believe the moon is made of Swiss cheese,” he sneers. “Don’t be fooled, Hen. She’s saying that so you won’t report her. Ah, what the hell. You won. We’ll let it go.”

He pulls out of the parking lot, and I see tournament officials folding up tables, striking the registration tent, dumping ice from coolers. The state championships are in two weeks, in Princeton. It’s the first time I’ve made it to the state finals, and Dad is pretty excited. You can always tell he’s pumped when he goes on about mental toughness. Which, in Dadspeak, is code for “trash talk.”

I sigh. Mental cruelty, more like.

Chapter Two

T
he woman in the black warm-up suit tells us I have thirty minutes to get ready. Perfect.

Well, perfect for me. Rhonda’s freaked. Freaked, flipped, hyped to the max. Just another day in the life of my over-the-top New-Jersey-housewife mother, although this afternoon she’s got more than the usual amount of adrenaline flowing. It’s the day of my solo audition for the New York School of Dance, and she’s just finished attempting to drag-race her SUV through traffic on the George Washington Bridge.

Usually it takes us fifty-five minutes to cross the Hudson River between New Jersey and the city. Today Mom made the trip in forty-two minutes flat.

“Arrive alive, Rhonda,” I told her after she cut off a tractor trailer that laid on the horn like the entire brass section of the Philharmonic.

“And I’ve gotten you safely to the city how many times?” she replied sweetly. We both grinned, but I gripped the armrests
for the whole trip. I hate weaving in and out of traffic. It’s not a fear factor, although driving with Mom is legitimate grounds for terror. It’s the lines.

Linear. I like things linear. Straight, uninterrupted lines, cars moving predictably forward. No breaking the pattern. It’s one reason why I love ballet. The straight, clean lines. The patterns.

Mom parks like she drives, and when she spied a vacant metered space a few hundred feet from the entrance to the ballet school, she slammed on the brakes. Empty metered spaces just don’t happen in New York. She nosed into it, didn’t even try to back up and parallel-park, for fear that someone else would steal it from behind her. We ended up at a forty-five-degree angle from the curb.

“Whoops,” I said brightly. “Try again.”

“This is fine,” she said, turning off the ignition. “C’mon, grab your stuff.” I didn’t budge.

“Eva,” she said, “we don’t have time for this.”

“We have three minutes for you to park the car straight,” I replied. I stared out the windshield. I breathed deeply, from my diaphragm, and focused on stillness.

There is no way you can enter that building and concentrate on your audition dance with the car left outside in this position. Rhonda knows this
.

She swore as she fired up the engine again. The car lurched as she rapidly backed out, as she hit the brakes, then raced forward, lurched again when she stopped, then glided smoothly
backward, cutting the wheels sharply so we slipped in eight inches from the curb and parallel to it. Perfect.

“I tell you, Rhonda, Danica Patrick has
nothing
on you,” I said, reaching behind my seat for the bag containing my ballet clothes. She didn’t laugh, just sighed impatiently and got out of the car. Okay, so maybe it’s too much to expect that Mom would know the most famous female IndyCar racer. But Henry would’ve laughed. Henry, whose bedroom walls are plastered with pictures of her favorite female sports icons: Danica, Mia, Venus, Misty.

The New York School of Dance is housed in a former elementary school, and there’s something stern and unsmiling about its brick face. Its lobby is empty, except for a big ficus plant, and as we ride the elevator to the fourth floor I hear the tinkle of a piano as music seeps through the walls. Before I can identify the melody, the box grinds to a stop and the doors slide open.

A young woman in a black warm-up suit waits, holding a clipboard.

“Eva Smith?” she says pleasantly. “Right on time. Please follow me.” She walks quickly down the corridor.

This is such a contrast from the afternoon when we arrived for the group audition. There was a line out the front door as dancers waited to squeeze into the elevator. Inside, it was this frenzied cattle call as they checked off our names from a big list and handed out paper numbers, which we affixed to our leotards with safety pins.

In groups of thirty, nameless and numbered, we positioned ourselves along the
barres
in the big practice room, where an instructor worked us through a class. You could hear hips and knees crack as we started with
pliés
from first position, then deep breaths from around the room as we advanced to
grand battement:
the knees straight, the body quiet, the working leg raised from the hip, and those pretty satin
pointe
shoes elevated above our heads. Then stretch, remove the
barres
, and in smaller groups move to center for
adagio
(slow, sustained movement),
pirouettes
(spins) and
allegro
(brisk, lively steps).

We were all dressed in identical black leotards and tights. We all wore our hair in smooth buns. We all wore the same expressions, radiating ease and joyfulness as our ligaments screamed or our sore-toe-with-the-nail-about-to-fall-off threatened to derail the tryout completely. Or our concentration flagged as our eyes inevitably moved around the room to the other girls, the other members of the Clone Ballerina Army, vying against each other for the handful of spots at the school. Somehow, miraculously, you were expected to move so elegantly, with such precision and such clear capacity for strength and grace, that one of the three wandering, observing instructors might actually notice and jot down your number.

Somehow, my number had made it into someone’s book. So I get to audition again—this time, alone.

The piano grows louder as we proceed along the hall. It is accompanied by a woman’s commanding voice: “And
plié
! And
relevé
!
Plié! Relevé!
And jump and jump and jump and
jump! Little jumps, little jumps, toes all the way off the ground!”

Halfway down the corridor, the walls become glass on one side, and we can see into an enormous studio. The ceiling rises at least two stories high, and is bordered by windows that reveal the tops of distant skyscrapers. A full-length mirror panels one entire wall of the studio, and the wooden floors, beaten smooth by years of soft satin shoes, are dusted with traces of rosin powder. At least twenty dancers, a few men but mostly women, are positioned at the
barres
set up throughout the room.

“Now
tendu
front, side, back! And
tendu
front, side, back!”

I stand stock-still, mesmerized. These are the company dancers. I have never peeked into a company dance class, never seen so many who have crossed over to “the promised land” in a professional company all in the same room, rehearsing the same basic moves. Not only that: rehearsing them in perfect time, with textbook precision. They are in the early stage of class: many of them are layered with leg warmers, sweatpants, a sweatshirt tied around the waist, as they try to coax tired, hard muscles to become as flexible as rubber bands. Despite their motley assortment of clothing, they share a seemingly effortless execution of each move.

Oh my god, are you kidding? Are you kidding me? These people are awesome. They are so much better than you. You and your big fat butt have no chance
.

“Please, this way,” the woman urges. I pull myself reluctantly away from the studio windows, and she smiles at me.

“We do many, many
tendus
here,” she says. “We think it is probably the most important exercise a ballet dancer can do.”

I smile back at her, trying hard not to look surprised.
Tendu?
A simple toe drag from first position, the most important exercise? I wonder if this is a test. To see how I’ll react. I glance at my mother, but she’s looking at her watch.

The woman pushes open a door at the end of the hall, and we enter a smaller version of the earlier studio. Mirrors, a
barre
, an upright piano. But the floors here gleam, immaculate.

“Now, there is a dressing room next door on your right. Madame will be here in thirty minutes, so you have that much time to change and warm up.” She places the clipboard on top of the piano, smiles once more and leaves us alone.