Page 99 of Play With Me
Sail bonny boat, like a bird on
the wing…over the sea to Skye.
I actually know Skye. I spent some time in Scotland after Wimbledon way back when, and know it’s an island up in the Highlands. Nora’s voice is soft and sweet, delicate and almost sad. I mean, it’s probably the song, too. But I picture her standing by the sea, her red hair on the wind with those dark gray clouds mirroring the gray surf.
Cap is holding each of our hands, and by the time Nora’s finished, his little sweaty hand has gone slack in mine. Nora turned off the air con while we were in the bathroom, so the only sound I hear now is the soft hum of air in the system and Cap’s little breaths.
But Nora’s voice echoes in my mind.
“When did you sing that to him?” I ask.
“All those times he wanted me to put him to bed when I was over at your place.”
“How did I never hear?”
A beat passes. “I always made sure to be quiet.”
The words land like stones in my heart. Had she always been keeping quiet? Had I made it that way because of my blathering presence?
“You have a beautiful voice.”
“Please. Reese is much better.” She’s talking about her best friend back home, my brother Eli’s partner. She’s a famous singer currently blowing up the charts.
“Your voice is yours, Nora. I like it best.”
Nora’s quiet, and I switch the hand holding Cap so I’m able to reach over and touch Nora too. I brush her hair from her cheek. When she turns to me, her expression is kind of faraway. “My dad’s mom used to sing that song to me,” she says. “Her grandmother came over from Scotland as a scullery maid. Grandma said her Nana used to hum that song to her when she put her to sleep. She’d hold her Nana’s hand, calloused from the years of hard work, while Nana sang a song from the home she left behind.”
I thought I knew Nora inside and out. We talked almost every day back home. I know her dad is buried in the cemetery in Greenville, not far from Quince Valley, and that she visits him every couple of months. I know she has a brother who’s a pilot who she loves but doesn’t see much of as he’s based in Cincinnati and does mostly long-haul flights. Her mom left them when she was too young to remember much of her, and she and her brother were raised in North Carolina but moved to Vermont when she was a teenager. I know she likes green beans and zucchini but can’t stand any other squash, unless it’s pumpkin pie. But even then, she prefers sweet potato. She’s timid and scared of change and speaking out loud and sometimes the dark, and she’d rather read books than watch TV but loves recording videos and watches endless movies with me—the latter because I love them. Her favorite musical piece is Chopin’s “Raindrop” prelude. And I know she loves Cap and loves me, at least in some way.
But it’s not enough. I don’t know the story of her family. I don’t know her favorite book when she was a kid or what she wanted to be when she grew up or whether she misses her mom like I do. I didn’t know she had a great-great-grandma from Scotland. As I cup her cheek, my son between us, I feel a kind of desperate sadness, like the time for learning all that is past. Because it is—we’re parting ways in a matter of days.
“What are you thinking about?” Nora asks.
I don’t hesitate. “You,” I whisper.
I swear I feel her cheek warm under my hand. I pull her toward me then and brush my lips against hers, inhaling her floral scent and feeling the soft splay of her hair against my fingers.
When I pull away, Nora presses her lips together as if unsure what to say. A tear rolls down her cheek, glistening in the low light. She quickly swipes it away with her palm.
My heart starts to crack. “Why are you crying?”
“Because we can’t stay here forever.”
Then it fully does.
But I take Nora’s hand, holding it tight on her lap. “You know when I was really young, when I first started competing, I used to have to go away for weeks at a time. I missed my family. One time I was having a shit day on the court, and my coach was sick. We had this stand-in, and he caught me crying after losing a match. I think I only let myself do it because my regular coach wasn’t there.”
My regular coach would have screamed at me for crying. This one treated me like a human being. “You know what he taught me about feelings?”
“What?” Nora whispers.
“He said feelings are your brain trying to get you to change something that sometimes can’t be changed. That the only way to keep them from affecting my game, was to remember there was no past, no present. Nothing except the game I was in.”
“Are you saying I should be playing tennis?”
I smile because I know she’s joking to try to deflect. “No, Nor. I’m saying let’s just have these moments right now, without worrying about where we came from or what’s going to happen next. Right now, we’re here in our little fam—our little unit. And I can’t think of any place I’d rather be.”
Nora’s hand feels almost stiff in mine. Maybe I shouldn’t have used a tennis metaphor. But then she looks over at me. “You’re right, Jude. We have tonight, and maybe tomorrow. I’ll just keep my eye on the ball.”
