I remember the day my parents told me I would take tennis lessons. I was six or seven. They had been smoothing the way with a hot fudge sundae at the corner table in the back of the Old Fudge Shoppe or whatever it was called. Sun streamed through the windows into our booth, a mocking sun, for all was black. I cried. They looked to each other, some private exchange of information.

Tennis took time from reading and doing nothing on the couch. One day on the way to tennis I thought, I really don’t want to go to tennis, I really really really don’t want to go to tennis, I wish please God that I didn’t have to go to tennis—without believing, of course, in God—when suddenly, we had a flat tire and I couldn’t go! This was miraculous. I imagined that many things in life would take care of themselves with this kind of dispatch, and without me having to whine about them and fight with my mother.

I wasn’t a bad tennis player, in some ways. I hit the balls hard and in the court, often enough. I could win points. But I didn’t really care to. This meant either I lost or, if I were playing other people with similarly lackluster wills, that we played forever, into the twilight and then the dark, because no one could ever win two games in a row. That happened once, on an away game, in high school. The whole bus waited for us. I eventually lost.

My family belonged to a pool and tennis club at the end of our road with courts seemingly carved from stone croppings—they were set in the hills, with high walls around them, isolated. There we came on the weekend to play family doubles and fight and cry. So that my father could throw his racquet down in anger on the court.

After high school I took a hiatus from tennis. For a while I did no almost no athletic activity. I read and had boyfriends, instead. Once I ran through the bird sanctuary. That hurt. Then, in D.C. for a year, David and I played racquetball against each other. Do you know what David wanted to do? Crush me. Do you know what I wanted to do? Have close, fun games where it didn’t matter who won or lost. I lost, sometimes very badly, and was a poor sport about it.

The hiatus continued. I ran. I went to the gym, which was boring and made me fat. I swam. Swimming was interesting, in the sense that it was incredibly boring but after a long time you lost all sense of time and entered an altered state. And the pool had all kinds of rigmarole associated with it that I liked, including books of tickets and cabanas that you entered on one side in street clothes and exited on the other in a bathing suit. On the weekends they took out the lane dividers and as you began your lap it looked as if you and the people swimming beside you were alone in the pool. As you reached the halfway mark, however, an army of people swimming the other way emerged from the murk, and then you knew that there would be a great battle, and that only some of you would survive.

After Henry was born, I signed up for a season’s worth of hour-long lessons with Philippe. Philippe didn’t teach me how to love again, as this was not necessary, but he did teach me other things, like to reste cool and to remember, Eet’s posseebl, as I scrambled up the court after a ball. And he praised me and petted me. After that I played in the courts at Central Park, where the helicopters droned overhead and my sister threw tosses as long and meandering as Russian novels, before trying to serve off of them. Now we live in the suburbs, in a hotbed of tennis activity. This year maybe a hundred women tried out for the town teams, way too many for the teams to handle. Many, after several days of play, were cut. The first day I tried out the sky was very blue, the fields were very green, and children from the middle school ran over them in waves. At one point a white cloud moved over the sun and everything became dim. It was kind of beautiful, I thought, that all of these women, safe from want, no longer young, outwardly satisfied, were willing to risk embarrassment and rejection to play what is, after all, a game. Tennis is a silly game, played on a court, apart from the real, yet, in its own way, as real as anything else I’m likely to do.

I have a persistent head cold and just under my right breast I have enormous pain when I cough or move. I was hoping that I’d broken my rib because I thought that if I had broken my rib I must have done it three weeks ago, when I slipped on the kitchen floor and fell hard against the decorative knob on the stool back, and if that were the case, that I had broken my rib three weeks ago, then it would have to be admitted as a general principle that I was very brave and strong and never complained, because it was only in the last week that I started noticing that I was in an extraordinary amount of pain, and telling other people about it. If I had broken my rib three weeks ago, as I thought, really, I might have, then I might also take some of the sting out of the recollection of my very convincing loss to Tris at singles this past week. Even though at the time, technically, my rib hadn’t hurt.

David acted out the phone call where I called Tris to ask her to sub for me this week and delicately let slip that I had in fact had a broken rib when we played. Don’t, I said. It hurts when I laugh.

And just generally speaking and as I was saying, everyone would have to admit that I was extremely brave and strong and never complained.

But no broken rib, at least according to the doctor on duty Saturday, who told me he was valedictorian of his high school class. I should have said, Me, too! He has no way of checking. I should lie more, I should make more things up. As an exercise. I had marched through the halls of the medical group braless and shirtless, barely covered by a little gown designed so that only ceaseless vigilance kept both—but why would you want to keep both?—of my breasts inside it, to the X-ray department, where they put a sticker on me and had me raise one arm and lay it over my head, then hold my breath. I suppose it’s silly to care if one’s breast comes out of one’s gown while one's being X-rayed, but one does. I did. Anyway, the doctor said it was possible that the X-ray would show something if they blew it up but what was the point, when in any case he could give me some very nice drug samples he just happened to have around? Some nice little antibiotics and maybe a top-notch topical pain killer? Hmmm? Now didn’t that sound nice? And so the weekend went on and I didn’t have a broken rib and I’m not brave and strong and I do complain, I actually complain a lot.

I haven't had an interesting thought in my head for two days. I'm filled with thoughts, of course, as I am, for better or worse, a consciousness that cannot be turned off, but they are all stupid. It's icy in the driveway. Don't hit it to her forehand. There's nothing good on television. I wish my head cold would go away. Our kitchen is nice. I like sugar.

I can go on, if you'd like. No, really I can.

For relief from myself I picked up Quentin Bell's biography of his aunt, Virginia Woolf. He wrote, about a Woolf forebear:

He was known as the greatest liar in India; he drank himself to death; he was packed off home in a cask of spirits, which cask, exploding, ejected his unbottled corpse before his widow’s eyes, drove her out of her wits, set the ship on fire and left it stranded [darlings, wait for it] in the Hooghly.

About another relative:

He was, I believe, the author of One More Passionate Kiss; this embrace was reserved, however, not for his beautiful wife but for the second footman.

However real life may seem, says Bell, it is a story, and not only a story, but a joke.

The lamp in the living room needed fixing, I thought, so I took it to the light store. As it turned out, the lamp worked—it was the light bulbs that were broken—but then it also turned out that the lamp could be rewired and fitted with a harp for a new shade while I waited. I sat down in a chair by the couple who own the store and talked about lamp shades and children and holidays and I pretended that they were my grandparents, whom I miss very much. Everything at this light store is wonderful: First of all that it is a light store, and the ceiling is thick with lights, the walls are covered in lights, floor lamps crowd the floor, and table lamps sit on any available surface; secondly, that the philosophy of the people who own the light store is total shamelessness regarding what can be a lamp, they will turn absolutely anything into a lamp, including an old tennis racquet with a ball stuck to it and a light bulb stuck on it next to the ball; thirdly that there is candy everywhere, in little dishes and desk drawers; fourthly that they fix your lamps quickly and inexpensively, while you wait; and finally that even things that are not really broken can be taken there and fixed.

I took Henry to tennis. I told him that even if he fell asleep in the car on the way to tennis, like he did last week, he would still have to get up and go in to tennis. I said, Do you understand me, Henry? His eyes were half-closed. We were listening to a Steve Carell interview and a review of two percussion albums. He said he understood. He asked me not to turn the station. He wanted to hear the review of the percussion albums.

We got to tennis ten minutes early. Henry told me to walk with him to the back room and to stand quietly and not talk. I sat down, but he wouldn’t sit down with me. He stood behind me. I had two books with me, so I could read while he played tennis. They were ridiculous choices. One was a study of Japanese people and culture published in 1946. The other was a collection of three short novels by Karel Čapek that I had already read before, but had forgotten I had read. In any case, I wouldn’t have been able to read, because I was worrying about Henry. He stood behind me, silent and nervous. I tried to talk to him, but he would only nod back at me. He had told David that the other boys were mean to him, and that’s why he didn’t want to go to tennis. I was there to stop this from happening. But he didn’t think I could.

Four mothers sat around a table, talking loudly. Each had arranged herself with the aim of expressing nothing personal through her appearance, except wealth. I thought, If children come from these parents, how can I blame Henry for not liking them? My incandescent son. Ten minutes passed. It was time for tennis, and Henry hurried through the door, onto the court. I moved to a chair by the window with my book on Japanese people and culture in 1946, so I could watch him. He stood very tall and silent on the court. He did what the coach asked him to do. I held my breath. He hit the ball. He high-fived the other boys. I had to call David. Henry’s having fun, I whispered.

This is a story about a sink that was too small and a car that whined in the cold, the boy who didn’t want to grow and the boy who learned to read. The boy who didn’t want to grow would only wear old clothes, nothing new, and the boy who learned to read loved to read the word drool, and could spell, when it was spelled out loud near him, the words dump and asshole. They had wonderful times in the house with the bats and the mice and the rats and the spiders, killing things and listening to them scratch in the walls at night, except that the boys slept soundly, on their backs, their arms thrown out, and never heard the mice at night. Only their father, the man who could hear the beating of enormous moth wings, heard the mice in the walls at night. Their mother, who did not hear the mice in the walls at night, did hear their father at night. Their father had holes in his shoes and their mother had one silver hair and an unreliable lower back and had somehow lost her serve, and even though she couldn’t hear the mice in the walls at night she could hear the people on the other side of the tennis court telling each other what they should do with her second serve, since there was so little on it.

But this isn’t just her story, this is their story, the story of the sink and the car and the two boys, one who didn’t want to grow old, but needed new shoes, and one who learned to read, the story of the animals outside the house, which collected nuts, and inside the house, which made noises in the walls. It is the story of the train ride home, and orange cones on the road. It is the story of everything, even of the stories we haven't told.

While I was playing tennis today I thought, This is a great story, how strange and annoying this woman is, her dumb jokes (She has Someheimer's, instead of Alzheimer's), the way she immodestly lifts up her white skirt to show me where she keeps the balls, how she constantly name drops (Ivan Lendl?) and brags (I used to win this division every year), and how she knows all the rules and won’t let me leave the court even one minute early, even though she has won one game out of the 18 we have played. But then I came home and for some reason it wasn’t a great story. Why is it that hating other people is rarely a good story? I wonder, because hating people is actually a very interesting activity, while you’re doing it.

I walked into the kitchen, said something to Henry, looked at the headlines in the newspaper, and felt a sense of dread steal over me. It’s still here. I thought, by going through everything I looked at and thought about, by doing some detective work, that I would be able to identify the cause and defang the dread, but I haven’t. It remains, and it remains mysterious. I went over the paper, to see if it was something there, but I can’t imagine that the dollar’s descent to parity with the Canadian dollar or even the Mets’ spectacular flameout, unsettling though they are, is responsible for this. It could be the war, of course, but it's not.

We can go a little deeper, we can get personal, it could be my visit with my parents last night, which wasn’t ideal, or my mistaking when Henry’s tennis classes started and causing him to miss the first two sessions, or the fact that I tried to tidy up the house last night and realized that I live in a pigsty shit-hole, or the embarrassment I felt at the end of my tennis lesson, when I almost vomited on the court, or the more private shame of slipping on the bathmat, failing, over several long seconds, to regain my balance, and falling into the tub.

While I try to get to the bottom of this mystery, or better yet, while I don’t, I’ll mention that I’m reading the new Junot Díaz book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. So far my favorite thing about the book is that fact that, with big chunks of it in Spanish and other parts referencing sci-fi stuff I know nothing about, I can barely understand some of what I’m reading. Incomprehensibility, I think, is totally underrated as a literary technique. Not only is it realistic, a tool for representing the life we currently (slang, cell phones, channel-surfing) and kind of eternally (born into history, unable to maintain focus or consciousness) lead, it shows you, again, what writing can do: Writing brings you the pieces, the parts, and you work to make it whole, to solve the mystery. Or you don't.

Tennis tryouts. Were you there? I didn’t see you. And I don’t think you’re making it. Sorry, it’s just that the teams are really full this year, and you’re not that good. Also we’re all friends already. It's hard to see how you'd fit in. Please try again next year!

Last week I wasn’t myself. David’s parents took the kids for two nights, which left me three days where I wasn’t a mother, or was only barely a mother. I went into the city. My skirt had been ripped into pieces by the train so I had bought a new skirt at Grand Central, and this was the skirt I wore for the next three days. It was tight, and hard to walk in, and I wore it with high heels. I didn’t feel like I looked like a hooker but there was whistling.

I went to the Benglis/Bourgeois show I’d wanted to see. Bourgeois is a genius, she sculpts in some kind of language that is entirely invented and completely transparent, to express feelings that you have, but that you didn’t know you had. These feelings were mixed up for me with the fact that there were people working in the gallery who wouldn't acknowledge that I was there. I said, Hello, and they looked away. I searched up and down Ninth and Tenth Avenues for the book store I liked but couldn’t find it anywhere. I hailed a taxi.

I met David for dinner and he brought me roses, which I also experienced as not normal, not for me. The food was spicy and my nose ran. We walked back up to our hotel and my legs rubbed together and chafed and in fact I was in some pain. At the hotel, everything was dim, faded, ugly, cheap and old, and the anonymity that I normally love in hotels joined in the general assault on my self. In the morning David left before I got up and I didn’t want to leave the flowers in the room. I knocked on the door to the staff hall and offered them to the people there, who had been laughing and happy. When a woman came forward to take them I said, Happy Valentine’s Day, early? Or late? And she laughed and hugged me.

Crap, I felt weird. I couldn’t write in the blog, I couldn’t shape myself into anything, and I still wonder if I am shapeable, if I am a thing, or if I'm something less defined than that.

But the children are back, which helps. And I know what I am going to write next, which also helps. Tennis team tryouts are next week. Our kitchen has windows and doors. Everything will start to appear orderly again, and I will know my place.

Darlings, you are looking at the winner of the Ridgeway Golf Course Play for Pink tennis round robin. Or not looking at, but thinking about. Or not thinking about, but ignoring. No, if you’re reading this you’re not ignoring me, you’re interested in me, you want to know more about my tennis triumphs and even, should I say it? my tennis failures. You were there for me for my defeat to Joyce in the semifinals and you’re here for me now.

How did I do it? I played ad side and poached a lot. I put a lot of pace on the ball. I came up to net on deep shots. It goes without saying that I stayed focused, and didn’t let the bad points get me down. That’s key, not getting down. Not letting the stupid shit decisions you sometimes make on the court get into your head and affect how you think about yourself. You are the point you are about to win, not the point you lost.

I tried not to serve on a bad toss.

For lunch I had poached salmon with a subpar green sauce, shrimp salad, hearts of palm and artichoke slivers in balsamic vinaigrette, and several Arnold Palmers. I didn’t waste time with the low-cost buffet items. I finished up with a few cookies and a piece of pineapple. The served dessert was banal, and I ignored it.

The goodie bag included socks, pink tennis balls, and a bottle of perfume. I don’t know yet what my prize was, because I left the luncheon early. Amy C. is going to drop it by later.

So congratulate me!

Last night sometime in the wee hours I was woken by my husband saying, What the fuck is that? He heard something in the bathroom. He turned his light on. He picked up the yardstick that the previous owners left in my closet and that the children like to whack things with, and advanced, cautiously. He still heard it. What could it be? Could it be the beating of the wings of an enormous moth? It was. When I woke up in the morning the first thing I said to him was You’re part of the conspiracy, by which I meant the conspiracy to wake me at least once during every fucking night, but which probably sounded crazy. Well, I was crazy. When it was time to go and John started whining for a Starburst, because we have a bag of Starbursts on top of the fridge that started as a rewards system for using the potty and which has mutated into a fountain of bribes, I said, You are getting to the door by the count of three or the Starbursts are going in the garbage, and held them over the garbage like someone in a Neil LaBute play.

The thing about Crazy Mommy is that Crazy Mommy wins.

I don’t like Crazy Mommy. Yesterday I played tennis with some women I don’t know very well but who know each other fairly well and felt stupid and smiley and wasn’t playing very well because I wanted everyone to like me, but of course not playing well doesn’t make people like you, does it? It is at these times that the advice of my husband, who, despite (because of?) his tendency to listen for the beating of giant moth wings, is intelligent and perceptive, comes to me, and I think, I don’t give a shit if these people like me. I’m here to play tennis. And then I played well and in fact won. Later in the day I was reading Ian McEwan’s first book, the first story of which is a first-person account of a boy’s rape of his little sister, and I thought, It’s just like tennis. You have to not give a shit about what anyone thinks about you in order to play well.

I’m getting mixed up in a tough tennis crowd. I was playing with nice people before, but now I’m playing with the kind of women who will cut you as soon as look at you. I’ll cross some line—show up late a couple times, forget to bring balls, double fault—and I’ll just disappear. But that’s okay. I’m going in with my eyes wide open.

I’m trying to explain the mood to you, the mood is entropic, the mood is about disorder, dispersal, and I’m not going to wake up from it until the Fall. I’m failing to resist the impulse to find the way the house is breaking down reflective of my own internal life, because the house is being taken apart and then the parts of it that are not being taken apart are falling apart (there is a hole in our shower and the afternoon heat releases some dank foul smell from somewhere in our house and it blows up and out of the hole and into our bedroom, plus a leak elsewhere, plus John’s bed, which had been my bed, cracked and fell into pieces last night while I was lying on it with him reading him a book, plus the very computer I am typing this on is riddled with viruses and can’t be shut down because it might not start up), and all I want to do is hide out in the play room, which is also the TV room, and which is almost the only room that has been untouched by construction and disrepair, and watch shitty TV, even though Cynthia Ozick would never do this because she lives to read literature. Richard Serra also wouldn’t do this. But you know who would do this with me? Werner Herzog. Then he’d cut off one of his fingers or get shot with an air rifle. We’d have a big fight and I’d ask him to leave.

Maybe Herzog and I should play tennis together sometime.

How to disagree with people in the suburbs?

Stop smiling.
Call the buildings department and anonymously report them for an infraction.
Express disagreement, then immediately backpedal.
Be just as friendly as ever but don’t mean it (not that you ever mean it, it’s always an act, life is an act, don’t be so naive).
Write in your blog.
Throw bottled water directly in their faces.
Challenge them to a duel.
Gossip about them behind their backs (do I even have to write this down?).
Tag their houses with graffiti.
Leave rotten eggs in their mailboxes.
TP their houses.
Slash their tires.
Lose at tennis.
Get a nicer car than theirs.
Give more money to the Mittens program than they did (long story).
Duck out of sight in the supermarket.
Roll your eyes.
Tell your husband on them.
Eat dessert.

Have I left something out? I don’t want to leave anything out.

I’m trying to get over losing in the semi-finals three weeks ago. I thought I had. I thought I didn’t care. But now I realize that I do care, and that it’s bothering me. Yes, Joyce, my opponent, was a very good player. She was undefeated for the season. Whenever anyone heard (and everyone seems to have heard) that I lost to Joyce, they all said, “Oh, she’s a very good player.” Someone said that to me at the supermarket.

There were other external conditions that contributed to my defeat, like that fact that she was left-handed and was able to neutralize my inside-out forehand that fades to the ad side. And it was incredibly humid and I put suntan lotion on someone else's back and thereafter couldn’t keep my racquet in my grip. I didn’t play very horribly. I had my serve. Still, I’m pissed I didn’t step it up and win. For the first four games I was in a fog. And for the last four games, also. The courts were in the middle of fields of dandelions and their fuzz blew across us with a kind of Feminine Product effect and I drifted off as well. Now I’m pissed about it. I’m so pissed I think about doing things like taking lessons and training. Running, and eating right. Ha ha ha ha ha.

2-6, 2-6. It’s depressing.

Anyway, did I report back on the team party? It was very nice. I received pink socks as a parting gift from my captains. Thank you. I wrote notes on pictures of the captains that were then framed. My notes were banal, unfortunately. Or fortunately. Because if they’re not banal, they’re inappropriate. The person who was going to bring sangria was told not to, because they made peach punch instead. I had a glass of it. I was careful to eat snackies, so I wouldn’t get drunk and start free-associating or overeating.

Or anything. Lately I've been wondering how I would know that I was no longer free. Because, with an eye to the neighbors, I control my own behavior so effectively.

Maybe I'm overstating things.

I know you’re all excited, wondering, What is going to happen at the tennis luncheon today? Will Carey’s salade niçoise be the success that it should be? How much sangria will everyone drink? I want to know the answers to these questions, myself. And I will, soon.

Meanwhile, I thought I would tell you the menu for the luncheon as if it were one word:

CruditewithhummusBacon-wrappedfigsVegetablespringrolls-SpicytunarollsSpanikopitaandtiropitesSpinachpistachio-andstrawberrysaladSaladeNicoiseFruitsaladPoachedsalmon-MarinatedsteakChickenandvegetableshiskabobsGrilled-shrimpwithpineapplesalsaRoastedcornsouffleBuffalomozza-rellaandtomatoeswithfreshbasilCouscousLemonLulucakeCoff-eeblondebrowniesChocolatemousseAssortedrugelachorminitarts

I wonder if there is a tune I can set this to. I always want to set everything to “If I Were a Rich Man.” Although this morning a mother at Johnny’s school told me she was working at “Safety Town” this week and I immediately thought, “Let me take you to [beat beat] Safety Town!” It’s a place where children learn not to kill themselves with electricity or drown or be run over or abducted. It’s run by the Junior League.

Where was I? Borges. I’m reading a collection of short stories by Borges called Doctor Brodie’s Report. If Borges stories were jokes they would all have the same punch line: Then he was killed by a knife. That’s life as an Argentine gaucho for you. So what’s the punch line around here supposed to be? Then she protected herself and her children from accidents for the rest of their lives and they were killed in old age by disease.

My tennis team, which calls itself The Pinks, is having a party next week, to which you are not invited. Everyone has to offer to bring something, or their contribution will be assigned to them. So far people have offered to bring:

Fruit Salad
Roasted Corn Soufflé
Spinach, Pistachio and Strawberry Salad
Salade Niçoise
Sangria

I am the salade Niçoise. I will let you know as more dishes are added. I think the series of events that made up the season, beginning with try-outs, including matches and emails, and concluding with us assembling this food, bringing it to our captain's house, eating it, and taking the leftovers home, is a work of art of some sort. I am not making little of this or joking about this. And I am not this kind of an artist.

I’ve been trying to imagine how a writer could make her work performative in the same way that a visual artist can and often does. I mean, why is no one interested in writers performing? And why aren’t writers interested in being somewhere and writing at some particular point and seeing what comes from that? For four nights I undertook a performative exercise in which I went upstairs to my office at 10 p.m. and wrote one hundred words in ten minutes, but after four nights this made me really tired, and it conflicted with the surprisingly long list of things I also often need to do at 10 p.m. (eat dinner out, sleep, have sex, stretch and strengthen muscles so I can play tennis without injuring my back). This was supposed to be the point of the whole thing, of course, that I would write then instead of doing those things, but those things won out. I am a shitty artist. Still, I wonder why better, crazier people than I am haven’t managed to do anything interesting with the idea of writing as performing. I’m not talking about one-off contests and stunts, I’m talking about some kind of rigorous attempt to make writing as much about the writer, about the physical self of the writer, even, as painting, drawing, film, and performance art have been.

I kind of like the story I started. It was about a couple with an infant son, in Brussels. Each night at 10 p.m., because the baby wouldn’t sleep, they walked to get ice cream. In Brussels in the summer, if it isn’t raining, it’s still light at 10 p.m., and not only light, but bright. People are out walking and eating dinner and skate-boarding, illuminated. The couple liked to choose different ways to walk to ice cream, and back. One way was the way that went by the cat that would follow them.

Then something happened, but then I stopped writing.

The point of all of this is that of course the blog is performative.

Today I heard my favorite of all advertisements on the radio as I drove away from a friendly tennis match. Sedation Dentistry promises that you won’t remember a thing about your visit to the dentist, but I think they don’t go far enough. I think they should sell a package which is bought for you by a loved one and involves you being sedated in the morning before you wake up, brought to the dentists’ office, messed with, and brought back home, where you come to without even knowing (for sure) that you’ve been to the dentists’ office. The big drawback, as I see it, is that you will then brag to everyone that your teeth are perfect without ever seeing a dentist until the loved one that bought you the Special Sedation package goes crazy and tells you the truth, ruining the whole thing. Alternately, you could worry all the time about not going to the dentist even though you have been going. Still, they should offer the package. I think there's a market for it, and even if there isn't a market for it, I want it on the market.