Free Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott Page A

lesson. She could smell his sweat and soap-clean skin so strongly that she had to wrap her arms around her shoulders and look away.
    “You don’t have to pay me for today.”
    “Of course I’m going to pay you. It was my fault. Besides, I’m not done. I’ve still got a little left in me. But do I really have to change my serve? It successfully throws every body off. No way even Agassi could touch it.”
    Rosie did not know how to say delicately that he risked serious bodily harm if he continued to serve using only the strength in his arm, without getting his whole body behind it. “I’ve just known some . . . older people who’ve gotten shoulder injuries from serving wrong. Tennis elbow—bursitis.”
    “Older people?”
    “I didn’t mean that.” She flushed.
    “I’m barely thirty!” He held up his racket, as if he might smack her, and she ducked, feeling flirty and forgiven.
    “Why take lessons if you don’t want to do it properly?”
    He did not hurt himself playing after that, although she could not figure out a way to correct the way he moved on the court, lacking any shred of elegance or athleticism, herky-jerky rat-dashes that made him run too close to the ball, and compensate with wild side steps and spin. Two lessons a week, which was forty dollars for her. He always brought two icy cans of Coke, and gave one to her. He couldn’t practice between lessons, though, because he had three kids, the two she had seen on the beach, and a baby, named Morgan. His wife must be the luckiest person on earth. He reminded Rosie of James, but handsome; all the kids at school loved him, and she felt privileged to spend time with him.
    She got to have fifteen minutes in the grass with him after the second lesson, drinking water and watching the very good players on another court.
    She’d thought of stuff she could casually bring up with him that he’d like to discuss. Like today, she’d begun the lesson at the net, where she had said, “So the universe is three spatial dimensions, right, moving through time, the fourth dimension, at the speed of light, right?”
    She had practiced it with her mother, dropping it into the breakfast conversation.
    Elizabeth had said, “Jeez—no wonder I’m so tired all the time.” Then James said, “In practical terms, this is why, after we dry our laundry, we fold it before all the creative motion and heat slow to a seeming halt—and inertia sets in and manifests as wrinkles.”
    But Mr.Tobias had nodded respectfully at the net, and went on to explain an early experiment that proved this. It was great when someone took you seriously.
    She continued, “The reason I mentioned it was, don’t you see how incredible it is that on top of it all, you are semi-successfully hitting a moving ball while running around the court? That everything is in motion, including the ball, our arms, our legs, the court, the earth, and yet every so often we hit a perfect backhand?”
    He looked utterly charmed for a moment. “Well, you do,” he said.
    “Oh, you’re doing just great. You’ve come so far, so fast, Mr. Tobias.”
    “Robert,” he said. “And that is very sweet of you to say.” She could feel her cheeks redden again, and she jerked her thumb back to his baseline, as in, “Go.”
    “Ready position,” she barked a minute later, and hit him a hard low forehand that she knew would give him a chance at a hard low return.
    Later he asked her what her mother did for a living. “She doesn’t really do anything,” Rosie said. “She stays at home, and takes care of James and me, picks up the house, pays the bills. James vacuums, she makes dinner most of the time. Also, if one of us needs a bag lunch, like if James takes off to do research or tape something in the city. She does the shopping, makes appointments. The garden is her big thing. Nothing in terms of real work. She’s like a subsistence farmer.”

    I ’m going out tonight,” Rosie announced at dinner.
    “I want you