Match Point

Tom and I grew up on the public courts at Brookside Park. Wooden rackets, tube socks, a can of balls we made last all summer. We played every day from fourth grade until college, and in all that time I never once beat him in singles. Not once. He will want you to know that.

The summer we were fourteen, a girl named Linda joined the team. She had a two-handed backhand like Chris Evert and she laughed at my jokes, which nobody did. I spent the whole summer trying to work up the nerve to talk to her. Tom said I had two choices: win the tournament and ask her, or lose the tournament and ask her anyway.

The city finals came down to match point. Me serving, Linda in the bleachers with a lemonade, Tom yelling “Just ask her!” from the fence. I tossed the ball, swung as hard as I have ever swung at anything in my life — and the racket flew right out of my hand, sailed over the fence, and went straight at Linda.

It hit her lemonade. Not her — the lemonade. The whole cup went up in the air and came down on her head. The bleachers went dead silent. I walked over to the fence to apologize, and she was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe.

“You owe me a lemonade,” she said. So I bought her one. Then I bought her one every Saturday for the rest of the summer. I lost the match, by the way. Tom reminds me.

Linda and I have been married forty-six years. Tom was our best man, and his whole toast was about the lemonade. We still play doubles every Sunday morning, the three of us and Tom’s wife Carol. He and I are seventy now, and he still won’t let me forget that serve.