Saturday, May 21, 1938
Port Authority Passenger Ship Terminal
“Good luck, Miss Marble!”
The high-pitched voice came from within the hundred or so who’d congregated to send Alice off before her trip across the pond to England. In the port’s mayhem, she’d misplaced Teach somewhere, likely off touting how Alice won Nationals and now had her eyes set on Wimbledon’s silver salter. This year was the year. And at twenty-five years old, she didn’t have a moment to lose.
Aha, the well wishes came from a teenaged girl, whom Alice saw now, a dark head of hair and a smiling face appearing each time the girl rolled onto her tiptoes.
“Thank you!” Alice called to her. “Of course,” she added, seeing the girl wave a notebook. “Excuse me, Brian,” Alice said to a reporter from the New York Times, edging past him to get to the girl, whose eyes sparkled with moisture.
It astonished Alice each and every time someone reacted this way to her. She’d been the “it” tennis player for years, thanks to her famous friends. But ever since she won the US Championships, her star power had been on the rise. Quite the contrast from the fall the psychic predicted. Like a phoenix, Alice felt like she’d returned to the tennis world with gusto. She’d been invited to countless events, speaking countless times about how she overcame adversity, how she didn’t let a diagnosis of tuberculosis stop her, how tennis wasn’t only for the wealthy club players. In fact, she told her story of illness, inequality, and comeback to such a degree that Alice began to feel as if she were telling the story of someone else, a fictional character.
Sometimes thinking of herself in a fictional manner was necessary, a way to distance herself from the ache she felt when she thought about moments like her mother’s passing. Alice hadn’t been there when she died. The rest of the family had been, but not Alice. Her mother had insisted that Alice continue her schedule of tournaments. And why had she listened? The reasons were perhaps too raw, too overwhelming, and too numerous to face head-on. She did, though. Eventually.
Part of Alice didn’t want to accept that her mother was sick. Another part of her was too scared to watch her mother’s decline, knowing every protruding bone, sunken cheek, and labored breath would be etched in her brain. Selfishly, she didn’t want to disrupt how well her tennis had been going. For both her mother and herself, she wanted to make Teach’s proclamation that Alice would win it all come true. She’d never forget what her ma covertly whispered to Teach that day in her living room.
“I’m putting my daughter and my trust in your hands, Ms. Tennant. Make her the best, just as you said you would. Give her what I can’t, no matter what.”
No matter what.
Alice didn’t want her mother’s words to be spoken in vain. Or for the discussion during Teach’s visit to be an overpromise her mother regretted. Then there was the guilt that persistently plagued Alice. The debt she owed her mother and Teach for all they’d done for her. Being the best at tennis was the only way to repay them.
When Dan had called to tell her their mother was gone, Alice fell to her knees, all of those reasons and the regret she carried too heavy to stand. She wished she had disobeyed. She wished she’d been at her mother’s bedside. She’d chosen herself. That was what she’d done at the heart of it. Now more than ever, Alice needed to be crowned the best female tennis player in the world to help justify her choices.
She autographed the notebook, then handed it back to the girl just as the SS Champlain’s horn sounded.
“Ah, that’s my cue,” Alice said to the crowd. “I’ve got a date with Wimbledon.”
* * *
Alice had been on the ship a number of days, and for those days she followed Teach’s strict diet, exercise, and sleep regimen.
“Tonight only,” Alice tried during dinner, “can I stay out past curfew? I’m inside my head too much. Too nervous. I need a night to feel like I’m normal without having to watch the clock and have everything be about tennis.”
“Ten,” Teach said firmly, pronging a tender cut of steak.
“Why not eleven? Why ten?”
“Because ten is your curfew.”
“Set by no one other than you.”
“So you agree I set the rules. Unless you no longer wish for me to be your coach?”
Alice threw down her napkin. There was little use fighting with the woman, especially when the conversation was only adding to the tension she felt in her shoulders. Still, Teach couldn’t help adding more. “Everything I do and say is to help you concentrate on tennis.”
Alice knew that all too well, along with the fact Teach was giving up quite a bit of income to travel to London with her. After what happened in France, Teach insisted she go along, money be damned.
Which was fine, mostly. Having her coach to practice with, there for advice and pep talks and all things tennis, was grand. Having her coach dictate she leave the ballroom by a certain time, not so much. She didn’t think staying out an extra hour would have any effect on her concentration.
For the past few nights, Alice ran from the ship’s ballroom like Cinderella, holding on to the hand of the boy she danced with for as long as possible before she lifted the hem of her evening dress, racing the clock before it struck ten. On the promenade she’d dash past silhouettes along the ship’s rail, past men and women walking hand in hand down the halls, past couples in the midst of more in darkened deck corners. All the while, she’d let her mind wonder. What would it be like to hold, to embrace, to kiss in a similar way? That wasn’t something Alice had ever had.
Teach would say there wasn’t enough room in her life for tennis and love. She could all but hear the British lilt to her coach’s voice. But why not? Why couldn’t Alice have it all? Maybe having something else in her life—something more to her life—would take the pressure off tennis. And herself.
* * *
It’d been months since Alice had lost a match. That was both good and bad. Bad because she could think of little else than losing her streak. Good because her record boded well for her goal of winning Wimbledon.
The tournament had begun.
Yesterday she dismantled the French champion, Simone Mathieu, in the quarterfinals.
Today she had no intention of breaking her streak. It just so happened she was playing Helen Jacobs. When Alice closed her eyes, she could practically play each set in her head, knowing how Helen moved, hit, adjusted, served. She smiled to herself; this held the promise of being a lot of fun. She had the potential to win the finals of Wimbledon.
At least, it started that way, with the roar of the crowd, the confidence in Teach’s posture as she took her seat, the adrenaline coursing through Alice’s every muscle.
But for reasons beyond Alice’s understanding, she was off. Helen made fewer than twelve unforced errors. Alice was a different story, and not for lack of trying.
At one point, Alice strategically forced Helen into a weak lob. In any other match, Alice would have put it away. Boom. Point. But her timing was off. Everything was off. The overhead sailed so far behind the baseline it hit the wall.
Frustrated, she whacked her backside with her racquet. The crowd’s response was a mixed bag of cackles and gasps. Alice tried to shake it off, but the whole ordeal left her fazed, and in what felt like a blink, Helen took the set. Rattled, Alice couldn’t find her groove. She did, however, find her temper. The chair umpire was not impressed when Alice—again—botched her usually trusty smash and she reacted by kicking a ball into the stands. Before Alice dropped her head, she saw a dark-haired man catch it.
It was all over after that.
The crowd tittered.
The officials looked down their noses at her.
Alice never got her head in the game.
She lost.
She failed.
Her streak was over.
All her sacrifices for this moment felt like they’d been for nothing.
Alice herself felt like she was nothing.
And Wimbledon officially became Alice’s white whale.