Page 74 of Off Court Fix

“Well,” Crosby says with a sigh. “Actually, no, she can’t really play now. She fell and fractured her wrist and has it in a cast and... you know, she’s old, so she needs physical therapy and—”

“Crosby,” I say his name firmly because he’s going off on a tangent without giving me a starting point. “Where is your mom?”

“Out on the North Fork. In an assisted living facility.” He sighs. “But if you ask her, she’s still here in this house, and I’m still a seven-year-old troublemaker. But sometimes, I’m older. And my bastard of a father, he’s around, but he’s not. Probably out at the casino on the reservation or down in Riverhead at some pub watching games and chewing his nails raw while he loses bet after bet.”

My heart hurts now because sometimes it’s painful to be right.

Crosby expels a heavy breath. “Anyway, yeah, my mom, she’s in a home, where she’s been for years. But she’s here if you ask her. That’s because she has Alzheimer’s and it’s pretty advanced. She probably won’t make it to Christmas. She, uh, stopped recognizing me about, I don’t know, maybe eight months ago?”

My mouth puckers into a pout, and even though I’m feeling all sorts of things toward Crosby at the moment, empathy slips through. I grab his hand and pull it into my lap. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t tell you that because I want your sympathy. This is an explanation.”

But listening to Crosby tell me of his childhood, of a semi-broken family, a father who cared more about craps tables and races than his son acting out and his mother working herself to the bone, I can’t help but focus less on the details than on the pain seeping out of his voice I don’t think he hears. The way his face remains stoic, unfazed, totally removed as he stares off when he shares his story tells me maybe Crosby doesn’t know just how bad he’s been hurting. Because it’s agonizing to hear it. I can’t imagine living through it too.

“The irony,” Crosby says with a chuckle, “is that my dad, who probably would’ve robbed a nun at gunpoint if it got him twenty bucks, got me into umpiring.”

I’m as surprised as I imagine my face shows, but then it hits me. “He wanted you to fix matchesfromthe chair,” I whisper. I can’t say I’ve never wondered about it, umpires and line judges making calls that are wrong. But it seemed out of the realm of possibility.

“I never have directly,” Crosby insists, but the admission doesn’t make me feel any better. “Did I think about it? Sure. I was a kid being raised by a gambling fiend. It’s not me just feeding you bullshit, with technology these days, challenges, it’s impossible to do that. And when I started out umpiring, the idea went out the window for me. When I sit in that chair, I respect it. BecauseI’mrespected. But I also knew players were out there trying to live the dream and going broker than broke doing it. You might not understand. I mean, there are players out there who go to tournaments and end up spendingmoremoney than they earn if they win. Not everyone has a family to back them or sponsors. With me, they made more money by losing.”

I might not relate to the players Crosby speaks about, but I understand what he’s saying. And yet, I still feel disgusted. Because tennis isn’t as easy asgame, set, match. I work my ass off—both to win points and to lose them. But Igetto play. I had a father who could afford top coaches and travel, and then I had companies endorsing me. I know not everyone starts out with the privilege I did. But I also know tons of players who understand the meaning of sacrifice, who give it their all—their mind, their body, their livelihood—to play like a champion even though, in an instant, they could be nothing more than a loser.

Crosby shuffles on the couch beside me after I pull my hand from his. “Hunter... I want you to understand something, Maxine. I don’t regret the work I did for him. I needed the money at first because when my dad died, my mother couldn’t do it on her own. And then she got sick, and I needed money to get her the best care...and since you want honesty, yes, I bought my car with that money. I fixed the pipes in this house with that money. But no one got hurt.”

“That doesn’t make itright.”

“No,” Crosby agrees. “I never said it was right. I said it was necessary, apart from the car, I guess. I needed to fix things, starting with what my dad ruined. He kept making the wrong choice. Over and over again. He chose the idea of money over his family—his wife and child. Your brother? He chose drugs over you. But life is full of choices. The difference is I didn’t choose to break rules for myself. I chose to break rules to take care of the only person in this world who ever took care of me.”

I came to Crosby’s home wanting to hear remorse dripping from his voice as he tells me he regrets being part of a cycle so vicious it caused his own father’s demise. But what I hear is far from that.

“Everyone is addicted to something, Maxine.”

This I agree with. But being addicted and having an addiction are two different things.

“My mom, my brother,yourdad... you know something? If it wasn’t opioids or booze, if it wasn’t gambling, it would’ve been something else. The details are circumstantial, Crosby, but the story is the same. And you know something? You in that chair... you’re seen. You’re heard. Me on the court? I’m seen. We both went to tennis trying to be something important because we were always second to something else—addiction.”

He shakes his head. “Do you know how I feel more important? Knowing right now my mother is taken care of. And trust me, if I could’ve done all the caretaking myself and worked enough just to putfoodon the table, I would’ve. But she can’t be alone. Where she is, it’s the best place for her.”

I tilt my head. “What would happen when your father was alone?”

“It’s not the same.”

“He’d hurt himself gambling. He could hurt others, steal from others.”

Crosby presses his lips together for a minute before speaking, “I know the point you’re trying to make. But I’ve been at peace with this longer than you have. My mom is sick. My dad was greedy. Your mother... I’m sorry about them, Maxine. And Imeanthat.” He abandons my hand to cup my cheek. “I can’t imagine because I’ve never been there.”

But what Crosby doesn’t realize, more likely than not, is he has.

I catch sight of the piano. “If you’re involved with Hunter—”

“I’mnot.”

“Would you have told me?” I ask. “Would you have told me if I never crossed paths with him?”

Crosby bites his lip before releasing it from dental captivity with a sigh. “No. Probably not. Only because what you don’t know can’t hurt you, and the past is in the past.”

But I know. And it does hurt. It hurts more than it angers me because even though he’s older, I was Crosby a few years ago. I looked at Mason like he was pathetic and weak because that was easier than recognizing just how much and for how long he had been suffering.

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