Summers in Port Townsend, WA, an arts organization called Centrum hosts a ten-day writers conference.  It is a sensational time, with nationally known poets and writers teaching participants who are serious about writing. Highlights include craft lectures and readings in a small auditorium across from tennis courts at the State Park entrance.  Almost twenty-five years ago, when I attended the conference and as a result decided to enroll in graduate school in creative writing, I played tennis there with my instructor, the future US Poet Laureate Robert Hass.  In the years since, whenever I attend lectures and readings in the auditorium, as I did last week during the conference, I feel a special connection to those courts.  So when I tried my hand at writing a short fiction piece, something that is very rare for me (I wrote one other piece of short fiction, which eventually gained recognition in a contest sponsored by a Seattle weekly paper called The Stranger), I decided to locate my story at those courts.  The rest is my invention based on acknowledgement I often make at Centrum about years passing.

I thought I’d share my fiction attempt with you this week and encourage you to choose a place that holds some magic for you and spin a short tale featuring a character you identify with in an emotional way, even though his or her interests and life circumstances may seem quite different than yours.  Imagine someone very unlike the people who usually frequent the place of magic for you and make up a reason for that unlikely person to be there.  The tale may come very easily.

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What We Make of Ourselves

It was summer and the doors to the Little Theater on the Fort Worden grounds were open. Bertha could hear piano playing from where she sat on a bench across the street at the tennis courts. Her tennis partner, Jerry Kastanowitz from Fairlawn, New Jersey, would be showing up soon for a practice session. This was the second day of the tennis Elderhostel she had talked her husband Ernie into attending with her. Ernie was 60 and qualified by age to sign up. Bertha, seven years his junior, could only come as the spouse of a senior. Ernie had no interest in tennis. A factory worker in Sterling Heights, MI, he’d made it clear the first day that no one should expect him on the courts. Instead, he visited the docks just outside of town talking to fisherman about crabbing, shrimping, and the Northwest salmon seasons. Their conversations started in the morning, over biscuits and gravy and orange juice. Ernie rejoined the fisherman after dinner to hang out well into the night at the Town Tavern for beer and a few games of pool.

Bertha was glad she didn’t have to see much of Ernie. His round belly overhung his belt like a giant cup cake risen over the edge of its paper liner. This made her gag now that she was intent on losing weight.

Ten minutes after their appointed practice time and Jerry was no where to be seen. Bertha felt conspicuous sitting out there on a bench by an empty court, and she didn’t feel like practicing her serve, which would make her even more conspicuous. Instead, she walked toward the piano music and stood in the theater doorway, her body blocking the sunlight. She could feel it now on her back as she looked at the tall, lanky young man playing himself into a trance. He was exactly the age, Bertha thought, of her Saturday morning tennis instructor. His arms and legs were probably as tan as Steve’s and his fingers were probably like Steve’s, too, she thought. He must certainly be touching the ivory keys with the same sexy softness she felt whenever Steve’s fingers covered her hand to demonstrate the grip she should use.

Bertha did not get her grip right for weeks. She wanted Steve to caress her hand again and again as he showed her the proper way to hold her racket. That first day, she went home and cleaned all the Cheese Whiz and all the crackers with tropical oil in the ingredients out of her pantry. She called Jenny Craig to lose 30 pounds, and she went out to Walgreen’s to find a proper skin care system for aging skin, a bottle of blue toner, a pump container of cleansing cream to use in the shower and some moisturizer with sun screen.

The Saturday Steve came with information about the summer Elderhostel tennis camp, Bertha seized the opportunity to impress him by saying she thought she’d attend for a summer vacation away from the Detroit area. She knew that as a college student at a Michigan State branch campus, Steve would be returning home for the summer and not be teaching at the community center again until fall. Bertha figured that she could make him think of her all summer long by telling him she was signing up for the Elderhostel and would be a good player by the time he returned to Sterling Heights and resumed his part-time tennis instructor job.

 “Did he ever say where he was from?” Bertha wondered as she listened to the piano music. He hadn’t, she didn’t think, but suddenly it felt as if this town was Steve’s home. He’d known about this Elderhostel, hadn’t he? He must have known because he grew up here. Yes, that was it. So he was probably somewhere in town playing on other tennis courts while the Elderhostel used these courts. He’d be back, Bertha thought, when they were gone. How could she keep Ernie here longer so she and Steve could meet?

The piano music was sweeping her away. In her mind, she could hear cellos and violins and flutes accompanying the pianist. The music sounded like the score to a pianist’s solo in the film she’d rented last week, The Only One. In the movie, lovers are headed for a dangerous part of Africa to deliver health care. The man sits down to a baby grand to play for his new love before their departure, and the piano is more than a piano. There are cellos and violins, basses and violas and flutes in the movie’s score. Sadly, though, the woman he loves will die of a brain tumor.

Bertha touched her hair and imagined the silk scarf she might have wrapped like a turban around it to make herself look elegant until she hit the courts. She imagined the piano player was Steve and lifting his head for a moment, he would see her there, backlit by the sun at the doorway. He’d leave the piano, though the music would still be playing, and he’d approach Bertha slowly, his expression one of knowing that he’d lured her here to his hometown. He’d know somehow, too, that Ernie was off with the fisherman. Maybe Steve’s father was a fisherman. Maybe Steve’s father had told him at dinner about this assembly line visitor from Michigan who loved to hear about crabbing. That would have been what made Steve realize Bertha was here now in his hometown. She’d told him once about Ernie who had dreamt of being a commercial fisherman when he was young. Steve had probably even told Jerry not to show up for the practice. Steve had probably even sent thoughts Bertha’s way for weeks, thoughts that made her rent movies like The Only One.

She knew Steve would want to put his hands inside her tennis whites, caress the soft flesh of a woman who lost weight cooking low fat dinners with poached Lake Superior white fish and red peppers. The piano was telling her that. He wanted a middle-aged woman now, alive, available, here. Bertha had known it from the start, from the way Steve never lost patience when her grip didn’t improve week after week. Steve had wanted her as much as she had wanted him from the very first.

Bertha closed her eyes and felt her spirit leave her body and float above Port Townsend, and she couldn’t call it back. She saw Ernie buying a glass of white wine for a woman in tight jeans and a halter top. She saw him stuffing peanuts from cups on the bar into his mouth, the last two buttons above his belt popped open and showing his stomach like the belly of a hooked fish flopping on a dock. She saw Jerry walking on the trail behind the grounds, his arm around the shoulders of a graying slender shorthaired woman with a white cardigan sweater over a red tank top.

Bertha saw the lanky young man get up from the piano and walk out the theater door into the bright sunshine to a car parked under a tree. When he got in and punched the radio buttons, Bertha heard the theme from The Only One drift from the car’s windows as the young man backed out from under the tree. He shifted into first gear, and drove away.

Bertha wanted to fly her cloud over the roads to town. She wanted to beat Steve to the market, be standing at the bin of red peppers choosing the best one, when from behind he would put his arms around her. In the air-conditioning, goose bumps would form on her legs and she would be glad for the warmth of Steve’s legs behind hers. They would sway together there between the wrinkle-skinned yams and the smooth faces of the grapes. Muzak would be playing the theme from “The Only One.”

This is what she was thinking when Jerry Kastanowitz taped her on the shoulder and she spun around noticing the gap of air between each of his skinny legs and his tennis shorts. She would play well today. She had promised Steve she’d be a good player by fall.