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The crowds around her Papa, she came to realise some time ago, are not normal. Not all Papas have crowds like this around them. They want him to write on their hats, on their oversized tennis balls, on their t-shirts, some even on their skin. Her mother tuts when she writes on her skin and she has to wash it off before she goes to bed.
“Come on,” says her sister, already impatient to leave. The stadium is still echoing with sound, footsteps, the high chatter of crowds. Down below she can make out her Papa still signing things and smiling into selfies. Her brother has dropped something under the seat in front of him and is scrabbling to reach it while her Mama slips her phone into her bag and stands up. “What did you lose, Lenny?” she asks. She leans down and reaches to get it for him, a toy frog, blue, tiny grains of dirt stuck to it now. She wipes them off with a tissue. Myla hates that toy, its sticky, gelatinous texture, the way its eyes bug out if Lenny holds it too tight. He brings it everywhere. “Better get in my pocket,” he tells it, stuffing it into his shorts.
They leave through the behind-places. Everyone here has credentials on a lanyard around their necks. Leo runs ahead. “I want to see Papa,” he shouts, bursting through the doors into the locker room, where he’s not supposed to go. The guard outside just smiles with that look on his face that they get everywhere. Myla is beginning to realise it’s a look reserved for the Federer children. Well, maybe some of the other kids get it, too, but she’s never seen Stefan Djokovic try to go somewhere he isn’t supposed to go so it’s hard to judge with him. He’s kind of weird, Stefan. Much quieter than Leo or even Lenny, mostly. Quiet in an odd sort of way, like his brain is thinking about something else even when you’re talking to him. The way Lenny is when he’s frowning at a book, not all the time.
She can hear her father’s voice inside. He’s probably still sweaty but Leo never cares about that. Charlene refuses to hug her Papa if he’s sweaty. Myla judges it as it comes. Sometimes she doesn’t want to, sometimes she doesn’t care. He comes out of the locker room, then, and he’s really very sweaty, so Myla just kisses his face. He tastes salty and his cheek is a little rough already, even though it was smooth this morning when she gave him a good luck kiss before he left the hotel. Her Mama hugs her Papa and kisses him on the mouth. She never cares about the sweat or the roughness of his face. She smiles in a way she only smiles at him, and only in places like this, where she’s not in the middle of a crowd and her face isn’t on the big screen. Her Papa smiles back the same way, like they have some kind of secret together. Myla knows when grown-ups love each other, they have special secrets. That’s something she’s observed.
“Are you going to hang around for a while?” her Mama asks him, while Charlene and Lenny clap and whoop, and he says that he thinks he might. “Okay, we’ll go back, then.”
“Alright,” her Papa says. “Hey,” he adds then, turning to her and rubbing her cheek with a hooked forefinger. “You okay, Myla? You’re quiet.”
She shrugs. “I’m okay,” she says, and she smiles to reassure him. “Just thinking.”
Papa taps her forehead. “Always thinking,” he says, and maybe there’s something secret in his smile to her, too.
They say goodbye to Seve and Tony and follow their Mama and Nina to the car. Nina is good at calming Leo down just with her voice and the way she says things, which is a kind of magic to Myla, because she can’t manage it. It seems like when she tells Leo to calm down, he just gets more wound up and shouts louder. Instead of just telling him to be quiet, Nina thinks of a question to ask him in a calm voice and he has to consider the answer, so by the time he’s answering her, he’s sitting in the car with his seatbelt on. It’s hard to believe Leo hasn’t noticed this trick by now, but Myla says nothing because she doesn’t want to ruin it. Lenny takes his frog out of his pocket and tries to stick it to the window with its globular toes, but its body is too heavy so it keeps falling off. “Stop, Lenny,” she says, a little sickened at the sound of it. Lenny’s not like Leo. He stops when Myla asks him.
The windows are tinted, but not enough to subdue the colours of Miami. Glittering, glimmering, Myla watches the sea, then looks out the other side of the car when they pass a mural she particularly likes: a woman, her eyes closed, exhaling smoke like it’s the most peaceful thing in the world. There’s something about Miami that suggests things that Myla doesn’t know yet, things only grown-ups know. As if there are shadow puppets behind the gleaming windows enacting an abstract and inscrutable story, one Myla cannot yet understand.
The hotel is full of potted palms and white spaces, more paintings here that look like murals, but none as interesting as the woman with the smoke. The cousins are here, milling around the lobby, waiting for them, making plans for dinner for the kids and then the grown-ups later. Papa will want to celebrate. “You guys have to pack, okay?” Mama says, as they take the elevator up to the top of the hotel. They’re used to the routine by now. Pack, dinner with the cousins while the grown-ups have fizzy wine, then Nina stays with them while Papa and Mama go out with Seve and Tony and everyone. If it’s a big tournament, they stay out very late. So late it gets early again, and Papa is tired and has a headache when they wake him up, but he doesn’t mind. He smiles anyway.
“When’s Papa coming back?” Charlene asks, when their cases are full and all they have left to pack are the last things tomorrow morning.
“I’ll call him,” Mama says, but just then he comes in the door, still smiling, full of that joy that glows from him after he wins a trophy or he comes back from being away for a few days.
“Papa!” the boys shout, leaping towards him as soon as he’s put his bags down. They all get hugs, then, and he smells clean, now, after showering and talking to the reporters and everything. Myla is a little hazy on exactly what Papa has to do after he wins a trophy because she’s usually back in the hotel by then, packing her case. Papa still has the trophy with him and Leo is lifting it up over his head.
“Be careful, buddy,” Papa says, taking it from him. “It’s heavy.” Papa always holds his trophies carefully and looks at them with soft eyes. He always looks at the things he loves with soft eyes.
Myla returns to the bedroom she shares with Charlene a little distracted, looking for the book she’d left out beside her bed so she can read it before she goes to sleep. Maybe she’ll read a little now, here where it’s quiet. Papa will probably go away for a few days after this. He’ll come back home to Switzerland on Thursday or Friday with soft eyes and he’ll be smiling, full of a happiness that bubbles out of him like when you pour coke into a glass too fast and it foams right over the top.
“But why do you want pineapple on it?” Charlene demands of her in that way she has that makes it seem like what Myla wants is the greatest imposition in the world.
“Because it’s sunny,” Myla replies.
“What?” Charlene says, looking confused.
It’s obvious to Myla, but she patiently explains anyway. “It’s sunny here, like in Hawaii, so we should have Hawaiian pizza.”
Papa interrupts before Charlene can reply. “We’ll order a few pizzas, and some of them can have pineapple, okay?” he says, picking up the phone. Charlene likes margherita, which Myla thinks is boring, but the boys like it too so she’s usually outnumbered. At least this time she has a few cousins on her side.
Someone puts Moana on the TV and Myla half watches it, half listens to the grown-ups, eating pizza and drinking coke. They’re talking about clay because Papa is playing clay this season. Myla isn’t so fond of clay, the way her shoes get covered in red dust and her socks never quite get clean again. Even if she doesn’t go on the courts, there’s clay everywhere. They walk it into the club and it gets in the footwells of cars. When she washes her hair, there’s red in the water, like she’s bleeding. “I’m looking forward to being there for that part of the tour, you know?” Papa says, and there’s that look in his eyes again. That soft look. Maybe Papa really loves clay.
“Get away!” Charlene says, when Lenny tries to hop his frog on her arm. She doesn’t like it either.
“It’s not even a real frog!” Leo shouts, and various cousins weigh in on whether or not the frog is gross. Myla finishes her third slice of pizza, feeling like that might be enough. Maybe they’ll order ice-cream later.
She sighs and gets up, her head a little fizzy. She goes back to her bedroom again, just needing a minute away from her loud brothers and the TV and the constant conversation. Maybe she’s too hot. She tries to flick up the latch on the sliding door out to the balcony but she can’t, no matter how hard she pushes. “Here,” comes her Papa’s voice. He’s followed her into her room and flicks the latch up with ease. “It’s difficult to open so that it’s safe for the boys, you know?” he says to her, as he slides the door open. “Because they’re younger than you.” He steps out onto the balcony and looks back at her, waiting for her to follow. There’s a couch there, cream-coloured and soft, and they can sit on it and look out across the city towards the sea. In the distance, in the dark low down near the water, Myla can see a single star.
Papa pulls her against him. “You feeling okay today, little girl?” he says, squeezing her a little.
She snuggles in underneath his arm. He’s so solid, her Papa. He’s so strong. She makes a noncommittal noise in reply. “Are you going away for a few days, now, Papa?” she asks him.
It’s a moment before he answers. Myla can feel the way his breath goes funny. “Yeah,” he answers, quietly. He strokes his fingers through her hair, pushing it back a little from her face. “Is that okay with you?”
Myla shrugs. “Why do you have to go?”
Again her Papa is quiet, and Myla looks up at him. “Does it bother you?” he asks. She doesn’t want to say yes but she can’t truthfully say no. She doesn’t know what to say. He squeezes her a little again. “It’s just a few days, right?” he says. She nods. “And you have fun with Oma and Opa, and with Mama.”
It’s true Oma and Opa always come to stay when Papa is away for a few days, but it’s not always fun. “They’re always kind of mad at you,” Myla says. They don’t say anything, but it’s something she’s observed in the expressions on their faces and the way they sigh and shake their heads when his absence comes up in conversation.
Her Papa seems tired. Maybe after so much tennis. Myla kneels up and kisses him on the cheek. It’s even rougher now than it was earlier, but he doesn’t taste like salt anymore. Papa smiles, kissing her on the forehead. “Don’t worry about Oma and Opa being mad at me,” he says, quietly. “I can take care of myself.” She nods. “And Myla, I’ll never be mad at you like that, okay?”
She doesn’t really understand the look in his eyes, then, or the way his voice goes a little strange, but she understands the way he’s touching her face with his hand, the way he’s hugging her. Her Papa loves her, she knows that much always. She nods again, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Mama isn’t mad at you,” she tells him.
“I know,” he says. “Your Mama is an amazing woman.”
“You have soft eyes for her,” Myla says.
“I have what?”
“Soft eyes.” She tries to mimic the way she sees Papa looking at Mama, making her eyes big and gentle and full of affection.
“Ohh,” he says. He laughs a little and she’s glad to see him happy again. “Yeah, I have soft eyes for her.”
“You have soft eyes when you come back from a few days away, too.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah, you always come home looking like that.” She does another impression, mostly to make him laugh again. He does, but more softly this time.
“You see a lot, don’t you?” he says to her. He taps her forehead again. “Always thinking.” Myla fills with pride at the way he says it, as if he’s very impressed. She snuggles against him once more, looking out over the city. The sky is getting dark and the city has started to sparkle, the buildings lit up red or yellow or green, chrome and steel glinting in the light of traffic far below. Overhead more stars have come out and it feels for a moment like the universe is stitched with sequins, like the ones on the navy unicorn shirt she had when she was little. She’s grown out of it now.
“Do you have to go?” she asks him. Sounds are faintly audible from inside, mostly Leo sounding excited about something and Nina using her magic voice to calm him down. The grown-ups are probably nearly finished their fizzy wine.
“Not yet,” says her Papa, gazing with her out across the glittering city. He kisses the top of her head and leans his cheek against her. “Not yet.”