When No One Was Looking Read Online Free PDF Page B

and her two parents all at once. Bobby woke and turned over, thumb in mouth in Jody’s lap. Jody patted him and caressed his hair. They had a language together, those two. This thought occurred to Kathy. Also she was speechless at Jody’s use of the word hate. The word had never been used by Kathy, her parents, or anyone connected with tennis that she could recall since the day when she had first picked up a racket and begun.
    Kathy recognized Ruth Gumm at once, although Ruth showed no sign of recognizing Kathy back. She was Marty’s lumberjack, the lap swimmer. Ruth returned Kathy’s warm-up shots disinterestedly. The day was of no certain temperature as the sky was of no particular color, and the flat light caused Ruth’s round face to look especially blotchy. It fell without shadow on her earth-brown hair, which was cut in an odd Dutch boy style with bangs to hide the complexion of her forehead. Kathy asked Ruth if she was a new Plymouth Club member.
    “Yeah,” came the answer after a tiny pause.
    “Where do you go to school?” asked Kathy.
    “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know?”
    “We just moved here.”
    No form, Kathy calculated. Marty’s right. She is slow. I’ll chase her back and forth a lot. Ruth Gumm did have a completely untaught style. She hesitated before returning the ball, as if she were not quite sure what to do with it, but she managed at the last second always to hit it back.
    “You play a lot where you come from?” Kathy asked.
    “Some.”
    “Where are you from?”
    “Out West.”
    “Well, you’re a terrific swimmer,” said Kathy cheerfully. “I saw you last night. I wish I had such endurance.”
    “I do laps.”
    Too much swimming is bad for tennis muscles. Kathy repeated this wisdom to herself but not to Ruth. “Are you ready?” she asked at last, stripping off her warm-up jacket.
    “Yeah,” Ruth answered, so vaguely that she suggested she would either never be ready or was always ready.
    “You toss, I’ll call. Rough,” said Kathy.
    Ruth flopped her racket indelicately on its side. “Smooth,” she declared.
    “I’m sorry, but that’s rough,” said Kathy.
    Ruth peered at her racket as if she were trying to read something too difficult to be deciphered. “Smooth,” she said again.
    “Look at the strings!” said Kathy. “Anybody can see it’s rough,” as indeed anybody could have seen.
    “It says smooth,” Ruth insisted and pointed to the tiny word smooth printed on the throat of the racket
    “I don’t care what it says. You had it strung wrong. It came up rough, and I serve.” Kathy heard her own voice rise at the injustice and pettiness of this.
    Ruth stood in the middle of her side of the court. She looked steadily but without apparent anger at Kathy. She did not give over the tennis balls. “It says smooth,” she repeated.
    “Oh, for Godsake, let’s play,” Kathy shouted, stamping to her position at the base line. “Go ahead and serve if you want to be like that. I don’t have all day.” Careful, she warned herself. She took in three deep breaths, as she had been taught.
    “Swearing is against USTA rules,” said Ruth evenly.
    “What?” yelled Kathy.
    “Swearing is against USTA rules and against the code,” said Ruth. She bounced one of the balls, and it dribbled away up to the net.
    “Swearing!” Kathy’s tone rose dangerously now. “What are you talking about? I’ll tell you what’s against the rules—delaying the start of a match and cheating on the call of a toss, that’s what’s against the rules! Go ahead. Serve! Play!”
    “ ‘For Godsake’ is swearing where I come from,” said Ruth as if she were remarking on the height of the Rocky Mountains.
    This time Kathy’s voice could be heard several courts away. “Will you shut up and serve?” she shouted. “If you don’t serve in ten seconds, I’m going to get a referee. I don’t give a damn whether they eat ... shingles where you come from, you stupid