Finally, Charlie got up and put her hand on the girl’s back.
‘I am sorry,’ Veronica said in careful English, the crying causing her accent to become even stronger.
‘It’s fine,’ Charlie soothed, not exactly sure why the girl was crying. ‘Before the first time I played Wimbledon, I was puking in the locker room for at least—’
‘You don’t understand,’ Veronica interrupted. ‘If I don’t play well, my family does not keep their home. My brothers will not eat.’
The crowd on the television politely cheered above them. The men’s match currently unfolding on Centre Court had just entered a third-set tiebreaker, which, depending on the outcome of the next few points, meant the women had either seconds or hours before their match began.
Charlie heard more enthusiastic applause from the television but wouldn’t allow herself to glance up.
‘My parents, they give everything to me,’ Veronica continued. ‘All the work, the little money they earn, it all goes to me. I am their hope for everything.’
Charlie didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t surprised that Veronica supported her entire family. It was a common story among girls in certain areas of the world. Sometimes a girl became an entire family’s – or even an entire community’s – hope for the future. Every last dollar and bit of energy had been poured into her training and coaching, and now she was expected to pay it all back with interest. So few ever made it to the big leagues – it was nearly impossible to get to that level, whether from privilege or poverty, it almost never mattered – but the ones who did make it to the top, and who had great financial and emotional debts to repay, well, they had it the hardest of all.
A purple-suited female official walked into the locker room and startled at Veronica’s obviously tearstained face. ‘Is there a problem?’ she asked in that clipped British tone they seemed to teach them at Wimbledon school.
‘No, no, there is no problem,’ Veronica said, leaping to her feet. She did a few high knee jumps and bent over to place her flattened palms on the floor. ‘Is it our turn?’
‘Yes,’ the woman said, still sounding suspicious. She glanced at Charlie. ‘Ms Silver? Are you sorted and ready for your match?’
‘I am,’ Charlie said, her adrenaline beginning to surge.
Both girls grabbed their enormous racket bags and followed the official out of the locker room and into the hallway, where they were immediately flanked on both sides by the purple-suited security people who would escort them to Centre Court. Tennis fans clad in crisp button-downs and well-tailored suits and fresh floral sundresses smiled at them and cleared a path. A few called out ‘Good luck!’ or ‘Go Charlie!’ or ‘Wishing you both a great match,’ but that was it. Charlie almost laughed: compared with the US Open, where fans preferred screaming to talking and dancing to cheering – where barely a match went by during which a group of drunk fans didn’t flash some cleverly worded home-crafted placard – this place was downright sleepy. If the US Open was a two-week trip to Ibiza, Wimbledon was a meditative hike through a scenic national park.
The girls walked out onto the court. Charlie immediately turned to her bag ritual: Gatorade and Evian bottles lined up just so, backup rackets unwrapped and ready, towel slung over the back of her chair. As she pulled out an extra bobby pin to secure her miniature crown a bit more tightly, the laminated picture of her mother fell facedown on the grass court. Charlie had looked at that picture no fewer than a thousand times – it had been with her from the very first professional match she’d ever played. Now she could feel her mother’s presence in a way she hadn’t since the days right after her mother’s death, when Charlie would bolt awake in her bed, convinced her mother had been lying next to her. It was exactly like that, right there on the tennis court, for the first time in so many years: her mother there, watching her, knowing her. With her. Charlie stood rooted to the spot next to her chair, unwilling to move an inch, and allowed the entire rest of the world to fade into the background, remembering only the smell of her mother’s moisturizer and the feel of her cotton nightgown and the way her hair would tickle Charlie’s face when she bent over to kiss her good night.
Charlie looked to the cloudless sky and smiled. She had this.
The warm-up felt lightning fast. Almost before she realized it, Charlie was up three games to love in the first set. She caught a glimpse of Veronica’s face on the changeover: teeth gritted, shoulders proudly pressed back, looking fierce and determined. But some part of her looked scared, too, and Charlie couldn’t help but feel a wave of guilt wash over her. What did it mean if Charlie lost that day? Who would really care except her? Todd, the man she paid exorbitant amounts of money to push her, but who truly cared nothing about her as a person? Nike? Swarovski? The other giant corporations she had courted so determinedly to win their endorsements? Jake? Her father? Charlie thought of all she had missed during her childhood, all the movies and camps and boyfriends and – the biggest sacrifice of all – college. What did any of that really mean when it had been entirely her choice? Her own pressure and expectations? Not only had neither of her parents pressured her to play, but at times they had actively encouraged her not to. How many times had her mother begged Charlie to compete only if she truly loved it? How often had her father literally pleaded with her to stay in college, to study, to pursue a different passion – one that could last a lifetime, something that she wouldn’t age out of by her thirties, a career that wouldn’t rob her of the opportunity to have a family or take a vacation or be defined by something other than a ranking or a win?
Charlie felt deeply for Veronica, for all the pressure the young girl had to bear: she hated that Veronica might play tennis despite loathing the sport, the travel, and the pressure, resenting the physical toll it took on her body and the way it stole her childhood. Charlie felt guilty that she could choose her own path – to play, to walk away, or anything in between – and do it with the confidence that her family and friends would support her. She felt all of this more acutely that day as she beat Veronica in a quick, efficient two sets. She hadn’t done anything wrong – in fact, by everyone’s assessment, from the television announcer to the cheering fans, she had done everything right – but nothing about that win felt good. Thoughts of Veronica and her mother and Marcy swirled through her mind as she went through the motions of humbly accepting the crowd’s appreciation. And as overwhelmed with vying emotions as she was in that moment, Charlie had a stunning realization: for the first time in her entire career she had made it to the finals of a Grand Slam tournament, and about that fact in particular, she felt very little at all.