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In the end, it hadn’t been Patrick who had let him know that it was all true.
Patrick hadn’t been the one to give the game away.
It was Tashi.
It was the look on her face after the fact—after the serve, after Art missed the shot, after Patrick had let him in on their secret.
Their secret, his and hers; Patrick and Tashi’s.
She’d looked worried, but not because Art had almost fucked it all up. No, he knew her better than that. Hers was a face that Art had studied in lieu of anything else mattering half as much. And so, he knew that this was different.
It hadn’t been her usual steely gaze, the one he knew oh-so well. In the moment—Patrick rocketing down an all but perfect serve, form suspiciously normal (which had only made it all the more abnormal), while Art stood stock still and stunned, if only for a smarting second—Tashi had looked like she didn’t know what was happening. And that was not a look that graced her beautiful, unreadable face often, if ever.
Thinking now, Art wonders if he’d seen concern written there, across her unmasked face, sunglass-less and squinting. It had almost been like Tashi might have been afraid, if only for a second, that Art could actually, finally, possibly know something that she didn’t.
And, he did.
Art did know.
He knew what it all meant, screaming silently at him from the opposite end of the court. And, he knew what the look on Tashi’s face had meant alongside the smirk that had soon faded from Patrick’s own. And that was a simple thing to say now, with hindsight, but to each of their credit, in the moment—on the sweat-slicked court, under the beating sun and with racket still in hand—Art hadn’t known exactly what it meant for the moment. But, he did know even then what it meant for after, and he knew what it made clear in the before, too.
They both should have known better, he thinks. Or maybe that's just a wish he has.
If they’d cared enough, or considered him enough, maybe they would have known better than to underestimate him. But then, Art knew better than most how blinding the mess of them all together could be.
And yeah, maybe there was something pathetic about his knowing it all, all along, that made Art glad that they’d never guessed it—glad that the secret of theirs from years ago was a secret of his, too. Because he’d been a part of it, of them, even if they hadn’t known or wanted him there. But now, despite it all and beyond everything, here they all still were—exactly where they’d always been, stuck, together.
Except now, Art understood that there was only one way out.
It was the same swift exit that had always been there, waiting, waiting, all the while for any one of them to just fucking use it—to scream through the lonely void of it; to run, and keep running, until all the ties that bound them broke away.
It was a revolving door, this exit. And for years now, they’d all been running laps together back and forth over the threshold, maybe Art most of all—Art, the one who’d never strayed far enough from the way out to loose sight of it, but never out of consideration for himself. He’d kept a quiet watch all these years just to make sure that no one else had been tempted, and all he achieved by doing so in the meantime, was to end up yearning for the way out most of all.
Art was the one who hadn’t wanted either of them to forget him, to leave him, to not want him—until, that is, he’d found his way into the darkness of only wanting for everyone to leave him, and leave him alone. But, now? Here, and now? Art was sure that he was ready—ready to run, to leave, to forget his way back to the way out.
Now, he wanted to run right through that fucking door and leave it swinging open, an easy way out for each and any of them. He wanted to get out of that god forsaken room—the same, unending hotel room from years ago; the one with the beds pushed together, the broken AC, the one littered with landmines that none of then then could yet see.
And so, he'd played.
Art fucking played.
For the first time in years, maybe the only time he could really remember since that fateful moment all those years ago—no, not that one; the one from after, with the yelling and the cowardly goodbye—Art played fucking tennis.
Tennis is a relationship. Someone told him that once, a long time ago. And, she was right.
Because, of course she was right.
For better or worse, Art and Patrick were in a relationship—on the court today and in that faraway room and in all the time spread out between those moments; between Flushing and the treatment room, Atlanta and the sauna. And maybe it meant different things in different ways to each of them—maybe they imagined the weight and the pain of it all in different shapes and forms, in the inevitable way that memory is everything and nothing, both at once. But even still, the point remained the same:
They understood each other, completely. More than Tashi did either of them, or they ever have or did or could, her.
Or maybe, Art thought, she did know.
Tashi better than anyone knew that more than anything else, it was the two of them—Art and Patrick. But maybe so and even still, none of that mattered to Art, anymore.
Not who knew what about who, or who was right or wrong, or what any of it, any time, had meant after all.
All that mattered now, was the door.
And so Art had hit the fucking ball, and he ran until his legs ached and his lungs burned and who whole thing was fire.
Until he was fire.
And then, Art jumped.
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The room was empty.
Hers, Tashi’s, when she finally returned to the suite that had started out as theirs together, and so too was Art’s, newly his alone.
His bags were stacked neatly in the corner by the door and the blinds were all drawn but for one. There was nothing here—no Tashi. No post-match debrief, no lingering perfume, no plans for tomorrow. There was only Art and the plushie Lily had made him take to keep him company until the morning, when she would see him again.
He had seen only her, after it all. Because she was all that mattered, anymore—his little girl. She mattered more than him, and more than him and her or him and him. She mattered, and everything from now was to be built around that plain and simple fact. Because simple was exactly what Art wanted now, after all this time.
He wanted to be himself. And all he could be sure about when it came matters of identity, for now, was that he was someone’s Dad. And so, that’s where he would start. But before he could, he had to end it—this godforsaken day—and so he sat in front of the one pulled curtain with a whiskey in one hand and an empty space beside him, and he watched today dissolve into tomorrow.
And that was the last thing he did in the dying light, but the first thing he done after the end of it all, was to shower.
Art hadn’t waited to catch his breath, after being caught. He’d looked at Patrick and then to the umpire, shook the hands he was supposed to shake, smiled at the ball kids, and had managed to keep his face and the inferno blazing inside of himself as far away from the façade of Art Donaldson as he possibly could. And he didn’t waiver, not once. He didn’t look, didn’t want to—only wanted to—but never dared.
And then, he’d left.
He’d run the water in the locker room shower so hot that his whole self had turned pink, burnished and scrubbed beyond just clean, so that nothing of the him that had walked in here this morning walked back out again. He had wanted to wash away more than just that, though—he wanted no hints of perfume left from creme or shampoo that wasn’t his, no sweat from any body that wasn’t his own. No nothing, just him—Art, and the cheap soap that had been in the locker room shower when he’d stumbled into it.
Just him and the scalding water, a new kind of silence, and the unknown that was waiting for him on the other side of the locked locker room door.
The second thing Art had done, was to call his father. And that he’d done alone, too.
He’d waited until he’d made it out, made it through the silent car ride back to the hotel and was finally in a room all his own. And then, for the first time in a long time, Art had made a choice by himself, for himself, and put it all into motion. He wasn’t thinking of anyone but Lily and his own self, and in that order. And that’s what he’d said down the phone—Lily first, me second, everything else is for someone else.
And so, he had a lawyer, now.
The sun hadn’t even set yet on the day and all that was in it, but even still, out there somewhere there was a plan being worked out. And maybe Art didn’t know the shape of it yet and maybe it wouldn’t be on the horizon line by tomorrow or even the next day, but it would be soon.
The future was soon.
Last night, Art had wanted to retire. He’d been so sure in the moment, when he’d said the words finally aloud that had been rolling around in his whirring head for oh-so long. And so he’d taken the blow that had come with the uneasy truth of it. He took it, he took it all. Although what he hadn’t known then, of course, was that the way Tashi had looked at him across the wasteland of duvet and sheet was just the beginning.
Art served, and Tashi gave as good as she got. And neither of them could see him, yet—not then, not really. But he was there, Patrick. He was always there—their third player, waiting just out of sight but never quite out of mind.
And as Art sat now, alone in his empty hotel room, the oddest thing amongst a tempest of strangeness that had made up his day, was the the sudden unsureness about all of that—about last night. He wasn’t sure that he still wanted the same things that he had been so sure about mere hours ago. Or, at least, he wasn’t sure he wanted them in the same way as he had done when he’d dared to speak those wants finally aloud.
The truth of it, was that Art had spent so much of his life just being placid that he’d forgotten who he could be, and how. And in the end, of course it had been Patrick who had reminded him—him, in that fucking sauna, his face cracked open in the darkening shadow of the harsh words dripping from Art’s wrathful mouth. And then there had been him today, lining up that all-but perfect serve.
The way that Patrick could make him feel, make him respond and want to be—it was like bodily solar flares. Just licking flames, erupting out from Art in unpredictable bursts, sometimes in the form of words shaped like a knife, and other times in the form of recklessness—that, which Art usually kept safely under the lock and key of himself.
Patrick used to call him Ice for a reason, though. He couldn’t really remember it now; the origin of the thing. Not whether it was because he meant it, or rather because Patrick thought of himself as fire, and so naturally, Art was left to be everything that he wasn’t, or couldn't be. But like he had so many things over the years between that hotel room and this one—that match and this one, Tashi then, and Tashi now—Art had lost that part of himself to time.
Was it Ice then, and Fire now? Or was Art still ice, only now so frigid and bleak that he burned inverse?
Whatever or whoever he was now, he supposed it hardly mattered anymore—not without them. Because without them, Art could be whatever he wanted to be—whatever player, whatever man. Whatever.
And so here and now, in this room empty but for Lily’s toy giraffe, and him, Art knew two things for certain:
He knew that the was Lily’s Dad; he knew he didn’t have a him but for her, and that was just fine with him.
But he also knew, that he needed a new coach.
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In the end, they don’t split the foundation. That’s for Lily, later—or so it would appear, at least. But everything else between them gets broken.
The house they hardly ever lived in was sold and each of them found new places to hardly live in, now apart, with the only sensical part of either place being Lily’s room. Tashi’s had a court, and Art’s had a gym.
Hers was meant to reinforce what she was meant to be, while his was all about separating himself from the version of the life he’d thought he’d wanted, without ever really understanding what that had meant for the rest of him.
Hers was full of all the things that made her look like she cared, because she did—about tennis. And Art’s had two fridges, so he wouldn’t have to look at all the things he only had to keep eating and drinking and sustaining himself with, just for now.
Hers was filled with people, and Art’s was filled with peace and quiet. Hers was what she wanted it to be, and what she wanted it to look like and stand for. And Art’s was just his to have with Lily. Not that Tashi’s wasn’t that, of course—it was.
Lily was the thing she loved most; her second great love and the only thing in the whole wide world that could ever overtake her first. Art was less sure about the order of things these days, or how he held them in his heart. But even if the two of them, Art and Tashi, knew nothing except-for, loving Lily most of all was the one thing they could and would always agree on.
Lily, for her part, was only fazed about the whole big, earth-shattering thing until she wasn’t. There was a big bang followed by the inevitable ripple of aftershocks that come when you take apart a home. But then the calm had set in, settling over the new shape of their lives together and apart, and everything, somehow, was soon fine.
The only moment with teeth during the collapse of it all and what came after, had been the harsh and sudden reality of a broken home. Neither Tashi nor Art wanted to be separated from Lily, but not being separated from one another was no longer an option. And so, like most everything else, they’d figured it out. And the reality remained, harsh or not, that despite everything, they still mostly lived a life that existed along parallel lines.
What was different in the aftermath, of course, was that Art travelled with a new team now, while Tashi had managed to keep together mostly the same one they’d previously shared. And that had been his choice and she had questioned him, but even in the face of it, he still couldn’t trust himself to know if the look in her eye had been concern, derision, or something else entirely.
These days, day to week to month and in all the time that had stretched between the then and now, past to present, they bounced together, apart, from tournament to tournament, city to city. Usually, they found themselves in the same place at the same time, in the same building at the same time, in the same hotel at the same time, and most of the time, that made things easy. It made matters of the heart hard sometimes, but the beating heart that still lived between them was the life they’d made together—Lily. And so in the midst of the rest of it all, they had figured out how to be parents together, apart from one another.
Mutually agreed upon child-minders were a part of the custody arrangement. Tashi’s mom had stayed firmly in her place, but to join her, they'd added a woman who was happy to travel with Art into the mix, and a tutor, too. And these days, Art took the all time in the world to figure out the things he’d never had the chance to do properly, before. He’d read treasured bedtime stories so many times over now that he had them all committed to memory, and he knew all the names of the toys he’d never had the time to be formally introduced to until recently, which he’d learned over tea, tiaras and all.
Occasionally, these days, he and Lily had ice cream just because, or made a mess in the kitchen making whatever she wanted—simple, buttery, laden-things that he ate now like it was for the first time, and not just a long time.
Lily called after him from all recesses of the house, or the hotel, or the park or the playground, and when she did, voice strong and sudden just like her mother’s, he no longer flinched.
He wanted that life; this life—being a dad first, being himself only—but as well, he wanted to finish the one thing leftover that he’d started together with Tashi. Only now, he wanted to do it on his own terms.
And so, that’s what he did.
Art trained hard but he didn’t train only, anymore. Sometimes, he started late. Sometimes, he finished early. Sometimes he blew it off altogether just for an ice cream date with his daughter, or a trip to the bookstore, or a tea party. But all the while he stayed good, and he learned how to do it all without her.
All of that and the rest made winning the Open that much sweeter when it did happen, finally, a year late.
Lily was there, and that was the most important thing, but so too was Tashi. And he had other faces to look for, now— faces that made him feel different and mattered in new ways. But still, he did look to her when he won. Because despite it all and himself and her, too, this was theirs.
It was his, but she’d gotten him here. But now, it was all over.
And so Art locked the door behind him when he left it for the last time, left the trailing memories of him and her and them all together behind him. And then, he retired.
He retired, and he met the new challenge that he’d been avoiding for so long—the who of him, and the new why, the what and the how.
He was Art, alone. He was Dad. He was retired. He was somebody, and nobody.
But he did win, a lot.
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