The Brookside Courts

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.

The summer we were eighteen, Mike and I entered the Ojai doubles tournament, which is the oldest tournament in California and was, in our opinion, waiting for us. Mike borrowed his uncle’s orange Volkswagen van. That was the first mistake.

Somewhere past Santa Paula the van made a noise like a dishwasher full of forks and stopped dead on the side of the road. We were two hours from the tournament, broken down in an orange grove, with one can of balls and no plan.

Mike opened the engine like he knew what he was looking at. He did not. A farmer came by in a pickup, looked at us, looked at the van, and laughed for a full minute. Then he fixed it with a coat hanger and refused to take any money. He did take two oranges. They were his oranges.

We got to Ojai forty minutes late and they let us play anyway because nobody else had shown up for the junior bracket. We lost in the first round to two brothers from Santa Barbara, 6–1, 6–0. It was the best day of the summer.

We drove home with the windows down, eating oranges, and Mike said, “Same time next year?” We said that every year after, about everything. We’re still saying it.

Every Sunday at eight, the four of us play doubles at Brookside. Linda and me against Tom and Carol. We have done this, give or take a few hip surgeries, for forty-six years.

The rules have changed. We used to run for everything. Now we have a rule called “the bounce,” which is that if it bounces twice and nobody saw it, it only bounced once. Carol invented it. Tom fought it for ten years and now he uses it more than anyone.

Linda still keeps score. She has never once been wrong, and Tom has never once agreed with her. They have argued about the score every Sunday since 1979. I think it’s the longest-running conversation in Pasadena.

Afterwards we sit on the green bench with a thermos of coffee and the same box of donuts from the same shop. We talk about the kids, then the grandkids, and lately about who we’ve lost. Then somebody says, “Same time next week?” and we say yes.

People ask what the secret is to a friendship that lasts fifty years. I don’t know. Show up on Sunday. Let the other guy win the argument about the score once in a while. Don’t throw your racket at anybody unless you plan to marry them.