Slammed, стр. 35

“Well, if you’ve got some time off to rest, that could work out very nicely.” Alice had that glint in her eye, the one that said I was about to be sorry she’d ever come over. I envied how put together she looked—her eyelids perfectly toned to the pale blue jumpsuit she was wearing, her strappy sandals with heels that would have had me stumbling all over the place.

I stifled the groan. What favour would I be on the hook for?

“I’ll still be training, still doing physio. And if it’s not that bad, I’ll be back on the road before you know it.”

“Still getting your excuses in early. No, there’s this new charity I’ve been working with. And you know—come on, Elin—you know that celebrity endorsements get the money coming in.”

“Last I checked, Alice, you’re a pretty famous artist in your own right.”

“Oh please. When’s the last time they put two weeks of sculpture on television around the world? Sure, I’m respected. I make money, which is more than a lot of artists can say right now, but I’m not face-on-the-side-of-a-bus famous. Not Adidas-named-sneakers-after-me famous.”

I waved her off. I had a ton of charities I supported, some through the GTA and others because friends were ambassadors. Lately I’d been thinking about starting a foundation of some kind, like Fatima and David’s. It could tackle a real problem out there in the world. Kids going hungry, or homelessness, or landmines maybe. There was no shortage of places looking for money and awareness-raising.

“Flattering me won’t get me on board.”

“Well, what about the fact that maybe it’s time you did something for your community, hmm?” Alice had officially withdrawn her tray of crab puffs. We were down to the serious part now.

“Community?” I tried for a joke. “Tennis players? We make enough, thanks. Okay, we could do more for the semi-pros.”

“Elin, that’s not what I mean.”

“Swedish-Americans? Alice, that’s like double privilege. We might be immigrants but we’re white and have money. Even Republicans like us.”

I thought Alice might hit me over the head with the platter. I couldn’t blame her. Deliberately obtuse was never a good look on anyone, and especially not me. I knew exactly what she was gunning for, and she wasn’t about to miss.

“The project, as I suspect you already know, is aimed at helping LGBTQ youth. Do you want chapter and verse on the extra hardships, the extra risks they face? Bullying, homelessness… Think what it would mean to get someone like you as a patron. And not just the famous thing. You’re a good person, Elin. You work hard. God help me for having to say it, but you’re a role model.”

I squirmed at the unexpected sincerity. “That’s not what I’m… It’s a branding sort of thing.” It sounded hollow even to me. “Listen, I don’t actually decide this stuff. You know Parisa controls my diary, the appearances, all of it. And every single place I show up has to be approved. There are sponsors, there are the GTA rules about regulated charities—”

“Oh please, they have you showing up for Wall Street banks and warmongers. You play exhibition matches in countries where people are still being stoned for being gay. And what’s the only reason you can do that, Elin?”

Our mother must have sensed the rising tension. We’d kept our voices down, but she’d always had a radar for it. She peeled away from her conversation and was bearing down on us fast, in case we made a scene.

“Alice, back off. You know it’s not that simple.”

“No, it’s exactly that simple. Some of us don’t have a choice about when we come out.” I winced. Alice being outed as trans hadn’t been her choice; it had been dug up by tabloids looking for dirt on me. None of my ex-girlfriends would go on the record, but kids we’d been at school with had been too eager to talk about Alice. “So when you have all this power, and fame, and protection and money, to deliberately let people speculate which male player you’re dating…that’s a choice.”

“Alice, please.”

“No.” She shot me right down, standing to leave. “I don’t get to tell you when and how to come out, I know that. But in the meantime, you could at least do something for all the kids you won’t be a role model to. All the people whose lives might be a little bit easier if they had another rich, successful, popular person to point to and say ‘It’s not so bad if she can do all that and still be gay.’”

I stood to continue the argument, but my mother had reached us by then.

“Whatever has you both in a mood, drop it. There’s a journalist from the New York Times waiting to start the profile that Parisa arranged, and if one word of family trouble makes it in there—”

“Like your divorce, you mean?” I felt bad the moment I said it. My mother flinched ever so slightly, which was the equivalent of a more emotional person being slapped right across the face. “Mamma, I’m sorry.”

“Use that if you have to, but you’re both going to get smiles on your faces now. Or leave,” she added, glaring at Alice. “I don’t know why you can’t learn not to discuss these things in public. You’re the one, Elin, always complaining about the press and the intrusion. I raised you to keep fights out of the public square.”

Poor Mother, all she’d ever wanted was for the two of us to behave. And break the decades-long record for the most Ladies’ Singles Grand Slams in tennis. Other than that, her demands had been really quite reasonable. Oh, if one of us could have managed a successful personal relationship along the way too, she might have liked that. Still, as she liked to tell me in training when I could never quite get that extra bit of topspin on my backhand: We’d call the Vatican when we got a miracle.

“Can you get Parisa