Open: An Autobiography

Then someone jolts me from my reverie, tells me to stand over here for a group picture. A flash goes off, a happy occasion, but daunting. We have so far to go. The fight to get the school opened, accredited, funded, will be rough. If not for my progress these last few months, fighting to reconstitute my tennis career, to recapture my health and balance, I don’t know that I’d have the stomach.

People ask me where Brooke is, why she isn’t here for the groundbreaking. I tell them the truth. I don’t know.

NEW YEAR’S EVE, the close of 1998. Brooke and I throw our traditional New Year’s Eve party. No matter how disconnected we may be, she insists that during holidays we give no sign of trouble to our friends and family. It feels as if we’re actors and our guests are an audience. And yet, even when the audience isn’t here, she playacts, and I follow along. Hours before our guests arrive, we pretend to be happy - a dress rehearsal of sorts. Hours after they’re gone, we continue pretending. A kind of cast party.

Tonight there seem to be more of Brooke’s friends and family than mine in the audience.

Included in this group is Brooke’s new dog, an albino pit bull named Sam. It growls at my friends. It growls as if it’s been briefed on what Brooke thinks of all of them.

J.P. and I sit in a corner of the living room, eyeballing the dog, which is lying at Brooke’s feet, eyeballing us.

That dog would be cool, J.P. says, if it were sitting here. He points to the ground beside my feet.

I laugh.

No. Really. That’s not a cool dog. That’s not your dog. This is not your house. This is not your life.

Hm.

Andre, there are red flowers on this chair.

I look at the chair where he’s sitting and see it as if for the first time.

Andre, he says. Red flowers. Red flowers.

AS I PACK FOR THE 1999 AUSTRALIAN OPEN, Brooke frowns and stomps around the house. She’s irritated by my attempted comeback. It can’t be that she resents my hitting the road, given all the tension between us. So I can only assume she thinks I’m wasting my time.

She’s certainly not alone.

I kiss her goodbye. She wishes me luck.

I reach the round of sixteen. The night before my match I phone her.

This is hard, she says.

What is?

Us. This.

Yes. It is.

There’s so much distance between us, she says.

Australia is far.

No. Even when we’re in the same room - distance.

I think: You said all my friends suck. How could there not be distance?

I say: I know.

When you get home, she says, we should talk. We need to talk.

What about?

She repeats, When you get home. She sounds overwhelmed. Is she crying? She tries to change the subject. Who do you play?

I tell her. She never recognizes the names or understands what they mean.

She asks, Is it on TV?

I don’t know. Probably.

I’ll watch.

OK.

OK.

Goodnight.

Hours later I play Spadea, my practice partner from New Year’s Day one year ago. He isn’t half the player I am. There have been days in my prime when I could have beaten him with a spatula. But I’ve been on the road for thirty-two of the last fifty-two weeks, not to mention the training with Gil, the struggles with the school, and the maneuvering with Brooke. My mind is still on the phone with Brooke. Spadea edges me in four sets.

The newspapers are cruel. They point out that I’ve been ousted early from my last six slams. Fair enough. But they say I’m embarrassing myself. Too long at the fair, they say.

Agassi doesn’t seem to know when to hang it up. He’s won three slams. He’s nearly twenty-nine years old. How much more does he really hope to accomplish?

Every other article contains the threadbare phrase: At an age when most of his peers are thinking about retiring -

I WALK IN THE DOOR and call out Brooke’s name. Nothing. It’s midmorning, she must be at the studio. I spend the day waiting for her to come home. I try to rest, but it’s hard with an albino pit bull eyeing you.

When Brooke gets home, it’s dark and the weather has turned bad. A rainy, wintry night.

She suggests we go out for dinner.

Sushi?

Lovely.

We drive to one of our favorite places, Matsuhisa, sit at the bar. She orders sake. I’m starved. I ask for all my favorites. The blue fin sashimi, the crab toro cucumber avocado hand roll. Brooke sighs.

You always order the same thing.

I’m too hungry and tired to bother about her disapproval.

She sighs again.

What’s wrong?

I can’t even look you in the eye right now.

Her eyes are wet.

Brooke?

No, really, I can’t look at you.

Easy does it. Take a deep breath. Please, please, try not to cry. Let’s get the check and go. Let’s just talk about this at home.

I don’t know why, but after all that’s been written about me in the last few days, it’s important that tomorrow’s newspapers don’t report that I was seen fighting with my wife.

In the car Brooke is still crying. I’m not happy, she says. We’re not happy. We haven’t been happy for so very long. And I don’t know if we can ever be happy again if we stay together.

So. There it is. That’s that.