hawk so she can count his drinks. See, she gets so wrapped up in it, her cute little brain working away, counting, it burns up energy.
'She's just a cute little bundle of energy, counting drinks, running out to the club every day, taking Bo to matches, very devoted.' He paused to take his drink from the dresser and finish it, defiantly. 'Okay. How many did I have tonight?'
She had never thought of herself as cute little Mickey Dawson. She had come to accept people telling her she was cute--tired of acting surprised and discounting her looks. She preferred to think of herself as natural looking-- with her Revlon Light 'n' Lively hair worn fairly short, barely teased and parted on the side--and with an inner something-- she hoped--an awareness, that showed in her eyes, if anyone bothered to look. (The club lovers looked and saw their own reflections.) One thing for sure, she never felt cute or worked at it with cute moves.
'How many did I have. Come on.'
'How many drinks?'
'Jesus Christ, I believe that's what we're talking about.' Frank held his shirt open, waiting for the answer.
What was that supposed to do to her?
'I don't know,' Mickey said. 'I was there a half hour before you came out of the men's grill.'
Frank unzipped his fly and she thought he was going to expose himself. 'Okay, I had two in there, maybe three. How many more, after I came out?' He took his pants off, his back supported against the dresser. Still, he lurched as he threw the pants across a chair. 'You counted them, didn't you?'
She was thinking: Take pictures of him sometime with the movie camera. Or have his tape recorder turned on and play it back in the morning. First, a tape of his nice-guy speech accepting the trophy, straight-faced, but with the hint of a boyish grin. ('I owe it all to clean living, a devoted wife and my opponent's double bogey on the fifteenth.') Then play the bedroom tape, the other Frank Dawson. He did not seem complicated; he played obvious roles. He was considered bright, but was actually very unaware. It would never occur to him that his wife was more intelligent than he was. Frank was the man, he was successful in business, he owned a $260,000 home, he played golf with a three handicap. (And she was the wife.) Maybe that's all there was to him.
She said, 'I guess you'll drink as much as you want.'
'Come on, how many did I have?'
'But I'm not going to drive home with you any more when you're drunk.' There, she said it.
'Wait a minute. Now you're saying I'm drunk?'
Frank watched her close her eyes, face shining clean, hands folded over the neatly turned-back sheet. He walked over with the trophy, raised it and slammed it down hard on the empty flat side of the king-size bed. Mickey's eyes opened abruptly and she came up on her elbows as the trophy struck her legs, bounced awkwardly, and went end-over-end off the side of the bed.
Frank waited. After a moment he said, 'I didn't mean to do that, but goddamn-it I'm asking you a question. You accuse me of being drunk, how many did I have?' Subdued, but hanging on.
Mickey was sitting up, touching her shins. They hurt with a throb, but she didn't want to push the sheet down to look.
'Aren't you?'
'Aren't I what?'
'Frank, why don't you go to bed?'
She lay back again, this time turning to her side, away from him. Reaching up to turn off the lamp, she saw the golfer on the floor, no longer on top of the Empire State Building.
Frank said, well, he counted them. She was always saying he should count his drinks, right? Well, tonight he'd counted them. He'd had eighteen since finishing golf at 6:30. Okay, now what was he supposed to do? You count drinks and then what? What was supposed to happen? Mickey didn't answer. You keep a record, is that it? What was it supposed to tell you?
At twenty past four Mickey heard her husband get up to go to the bathroom. She heard a bumping, scraping noise and raised her head to see Frank--a pale figure in the dark--pushing his dresser away from the wall, struggling with it, grunting, then wedging himself in behind it. There was silence before another sound came to her, soft and steady, as the Deep Run Country Club First Flight champ urinated down the wall and onto the oak floor.
After that, for awhile, she lay awake and asked herself questions.
What had they really been talking about? Not drinks. Why did she let him--Why did she play games with him? ... Why was she afraid to tell him what she felt? Why didn't she cut through all the words and get to the point? ... Why did she do things--sit around the club, smile, laugh at things that weren't funny--she didn't want to do? Playing kissy-ass, that's what it amounted to. Why was she so goddamn nice all the time? Nicey-nice. God.
Chapter 2
TEN TO NINE, Sunday morning. Mickey, in a plain white scooped-neck tennis dress, stood at the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee and the Sunday Detroit Free Press--the linoleum floor cool and a little sticky beneath her bare feet. She had showered and was hungry, but would hold off the bacon and eggs until Bo came down.
She flipped through the sections of the thick Sunday edition--from the front-page headline, Witnesses Finger Teen Gang Leaders ... past Sports, BoSox Rout Tigers 10-2 ... to the Women's Section, and stopped. God, there it was. With pictures.
TENNIS MOMS
Children's Games Become Their Career The story, covering the entire first page of the section, was illustrated with five action shots of moms and their kids: the kids swinging tennis rackets; the moms staring, chewing lips, one smiling.
Mickey saw herself, slightly out of focus, beyond Bo's clenched jaw, racket chopping down hard. The caption read: 'Bo Dawson smashes a volley while his proud mother, Margaret 'Mickey' Dawson, watches from the sidelines. Bo's home court is Deep Run Country Club.'
Her gaze scanned the columns of type, stopping to read about a mom who had canceled a trip to Europe in order to take her son to the Ann Arbor Open.
A Grosse Pointe mother had persuaded her husband to buy controlling interest in an indoor tennis club, then moved in as manager to promote her daughter's career full time.
Nothing about Bo's mom yet.
A Franklin Village mother, whose husband was in cardiac care at Sinai, told a friend, 'I've lived my whole life for this (Southeastern Michigan Junior Championship). My husband isn't conscious; there's nothing I can do for him. But I can be with my daughter and help her.'
In the third column, mothers were sweating out their children's matches, nail-biting, chain-smoking. There it was ...
'Watching her son Bo in a match at Orchard Lake, Mickey Dawson claimed she wasn't the least bit nervous. Except there were 10 menthol cigarette butts at Mickey's feet by the end of the first set.'
... Thrown in with the rest of the clutched-up tennis moms. She had told the relaxed young woman writer she wasn't nervous, not at all, and was sure she'd smoked no more than four or five cigarettes. The other butts could have been there before. If she had smoked ten--it was possible--it had nothing to do with Bo. Frank had been there too, growling, calling shots, officiating for the people in the stands.
There were quotes from moms agonizing: 'Oh Kevin, oh Kevin, oh Kevin, please--that's it, baby. That's my baby.'
Another one: 'If only I had been there. Missy needed me and I let her down.'
A mom complaining, her voice breaking: 'They've got the seeding all backward. I can't believe it.'
Rationalizing: 'You start to figure if you combine your intelligence with your son's ability you can go all the way.'
A minimizing mom said: 'Not me, I have a husband I adore. I love to party, travel ...' Her husband: 'Any time you ask her to do anything, she has to check her calendar to make sure Scott doesn't have a tournament.'
'Bo's father, Frank Dawson, shaking his head, but with a merry grin on his handsome face:
