It was not sunny the day Antigone first saw Tom, but she remembers it as though the sky was so bright that she had to look away. He was standing on the knoll above the fifth hole of the White Pines golf course — a tricky elevated green that he was watching her make a mess of — and he had a rake or some other piece of equipment propped on his shoulder like a gun.
“That’s a nice swing you’ve got there,” he said in an unabashedly leering way.
In reality it was not the sun, but his words, and the grin that accompanied them, that made Antigone look away. It was 7 a.m. and she was alone on this leg of the course, but she looked around to see who he could be talking to. She was wearing khakis and a wind breaker and she had her hair pulled back and stiff wire-rimmed sports glasses on — and anyway she was not the sort of woman men spoke to that way.
“You,” he said, and laughed. “Who’d you think I was talking to?”
“I don’t know,” Antigone said, and felt nervous and resentful of the fact that he was addressing her across such a distance. She was deaf in one ear and it would be hard for her to hear.
As if he were reading her mind, Tom started down the slope toward her, rake or whatever it was bobbing, and Antigone straightened up and made herself look him in the eye. He was handsome — this was the first thing that occurred to her, and he was older than she had thought on account of his greenskeeping uniform. He was also the sort of man she was a little bit afraid of: broad shouldered and muscular, with a kind of jocular swagger that suggested he might like motorcycles and bleached blondes, and feel at home in a cut-away tank top.
“Tom Vinetti,” he said, extending his hand. She took it gingerly in her own. It felt hot and dry and surprisingly heavy.
“You look like a real pro,” he said grinning. “I’ve been watching you.” He was standing close enough that she could smell his breath, which was minty, as if he had just gargled. “You playing Saturday?”
“I’m supposed to,” Antigone said, as if the club championship were not something she looked forward to all year, but something she was required to participate in. The wind made a rude ripping sound with the hood of her jacket and then rushed through the pines on the side of the hill.
“Well alright then,” Tom grinned. “I’ll be seeing you around.”
Antigone nodded dumbly as he started back up the knoll with long, bouncing strides.
“Hey,” he called down to her when he was at the top. “You didn’t tell me your name.”
For a moment she considered lying, but she was not quick enough to think of anything else. “Antigone,” she said, coloring and expecting the usual What’s that? or For real? But he just nodded as if he’d heard this a thousand times before, and she felt a swell of gratitude.
* * *
Antigone had always felt her name was a barrier to the world rather than a point of entry. It was so beautiful and dramatic — so ill-suited to her practical good sense, ordinary features and solid, athletic frame. It advertised her mother’s embarrassingly grandiose expectations and generally filled Antigone with a sense of shame. She had certainly not lived up to it in twenty-nine years of calm, orderly and disciplined life.
This was not something her mother wanted to accept. Why don’t you take a trip to Paris or enroll in African dance classes? she would suggest. Why don’t you color your hair or learn to paint or buy a new dress? But Antigone did not want to dance or paint or shop. She wanted to golf. Of course, she no longer harbored dreams of becoming a professional, as she had in high school, but she still enjoyed being the chosen favorite at various eastern seaboard country-club tournaments. She took pleasure in concentration and walking and being outdoors. And this was a good thing, wasn’t it? She was a practical girl. She lived alone in a condo five miles from the Fairfield County town she had grown up in, and took care of her parents’ house while they cruised distant oceans with the Yale Club in the summers and wintered in Florida. She worked in marketing at a large processed food company and played thirty-six holes every possible weekend — and ignored her mother’s needling about club socials and her co-workers’ busy-body-ish suggestions that she put her profile on Match.com. After all, she was satisfied with her life: She was not looking for romance.
Part Two
The next time Antigone saw Tom she was on her way to her regular Sunday night summer supper at the White Pines Club dining room. It was a meal she looked forward to when her parents were out of town; she could sit comfortably with fellow golfers and old friends of the family and not worry about making small talk.
This was a particularly beautiful night — warm and damp and full of the smell of cut grass, and Antigone was in a light, even expansive mood. The tournament was only a week away and she had played very well that afternoon: thirteen greens in regulation, and only twenty-seven putts.
“Caught you looking serious again.” Tom’s voice accosted her from behind as she walked the pebbled path to dinner. She whirled around, and there he was on the other side of the boxwood hedge, holding a giant pair of clipping shears.
“Oh!” Antigone gave a little laugh on account of her surprise and her good mood.
“Thinking about the big day?”
She stiffened. Was he mocking her?
“No,” she lied.
Tom regarded her seriously for a moment and then, suddenly, plunged the shears into the dirt on his side of the hedge and leapt over it, landing right in front of her. “You’re not going to eat with all those cotton tops in there, are you?” he asked.
“The dining room?” Antigone replied, taken aback. It took her a moment to understand what he meant by cotton tops. They were not all old, she thought defensively, although at the same time, a picture of Sunday night supper in the big, carpeted room swam before her eyes and she realized she was usually the only person without dentures or her estate planned.
“Nah,” Tom shook his head and winked. “You’re coming with me.”
Antigone was going to protest but he took her arm in such a definitive and commanding way that it would have taken an awkward struggle to resist.
* * *
This was how she found herself sitting across from Tom in a little place at one end of the local mini-mall, sharing a bottle of Chianti and a large Hawaiian pizza. On the ride over she had listened to him talk about his monthly gig as a stand-up comedian at the Starlight Steakhouse and his passion for snowmobiling as if it were not so unusual that she, Antigone Doyle, was driving into town with a handsome greenskeeper instead of sitting at dinner with the Chapmans and Penniworths. Somehow she could not think how to protest. But sitting there with Tom sprawled across his side of the booth, one arm draped over the back of the seat, knees wide and brushing against hers under the table, this pretense of normalcy began to seem downright foolish.
“Why did you ask me to come here?” Antigone finally girded herself to ask. Her voice came out too loudly.
“Why?” Tom sat forward and leaned his muscular forearms on the table. “Because,” he said, then sat back again and smirked at her sideways as if he were a little shy. “I think you’re pretty.”
“Oh,” Antigone said, stunned by his answer. She thought of her long face and heavy thighs and could not quite believe him. Was this a joke of some kind?
Tom did not seem embarrassed by his admission and moved right on with the conversation. He was from Tennessee but he liked it up here — he liked the winter and he liked the culture and he liked his job, except for the joy riders, he added darkly.
“The joy riders?” Antigone asked, although her head was still spinning with the idea that this man across from her thought she was pretty.
The joy riders, Tom explained, were local kids who stole onto the course at night and hot rodded around in golf carts, leaving a mess for him to deal with on Mondays: flat tires, mud streaks, empty beer bottles, ripped putting greens. Spoiled kids with no idea about respect or value. Tom shook his head.
Antigone tried to focus on this rather than what exactly she looked like — she could not even remember the last time she had really looked in a mirror.
But what about her, Tom wanted to know. What did she do? Where was she from? What were her hobbies, besides golf?
Antigone reeled her mind in to provide answers. When she got to hobbies though, she was stumped. There wasn’t really anything else — she just liked golf.
“It’s your passion.” Tom said, and the way he said it Antigone colored.
“Well–” she began, but he interrupted.
“Hey, that’s a good thing,” he said. “Everyone should have a passion.”
By the time the bill came Tom had asked her about a million and one questions. Did she like her job? What was her favorite kind of food? What was her favorite season? Did she like living here? Antigone’s brain felt stretched from coming up with answers. She was not sure anyone had ever asked her these things before.
“C’mon,” he said when they were done, standing up and reaching his hand out to touch her elbow as if they were a comfortable married couple and this were the most natural thing in the world. Antigone let him guide her out the door. Tom called out a goodbye to the owner as he steered her through the door and for a moment, Antigone lost track of herself as Antigone Doyle, 135 pounds, 5’ 6”, in a pink polo shirt and pleated khakis and became simply, thrillingly, a woman on the arm of a man who thought she was pretty.
Part Three
For the next two days Antigone went to work and watered her plants and fed the cat and cooked herself dinner the same way she always did, but her brain felt entirely different. Roast chicken was her favorite food and spring was her favorite season, and golf was not just something she liked, but her passion. And a handsome man had taken her out to dinner.
She got up early on Thursday morning to head to White Pines to practice her approach on the 4th and 10th holes and she took care to wash her hair and put on her best windbreaker. It was actually sunny this time and the grass on the course glowed an almost unnatural green. There were no other cars parked in the lot and the club house looked empty. Antigone felt a flash of disappointment. Which was stupid. There was the tournament on Saturday to concentrate on — wasn’t that enough?
“Please replace your divots,” a voice boomed at her as if through a megaphone and she whirled around to see Tom cupping his hands around his mouth from a golf cart.
“I am–” she started to protest before she realized that he was joking.
“Come over here a minute,” he said, and with a lurch of excitement, Antigone walked over. “Drive around with me.” He patted the seat beside him. And Antigone hoisted her clubs into the back of his cart and climbed up beside him, irrepressibly smiling.
* * *
So it went for the next week — when Antigone was at White Pines, she kept her eyes and ears open for Tom, and most of the time she would see him. And a little rush of excitement would always sweep through her. Thank goodness her mother wasn’t here to observe the flirtation! You know what he’s after, Antigone could hear her saying. And You could certainly do better. But no one other than Milton Carol, in the ninth grade, had ever been “after” Antigone before, and she loved the feeling of Tom’s interest in her — the way he would put a hand on the small of her back to steer her around a corner or help her up into the cart, the way his eyes twinkled suggestively when they were talking. Most of all, she loved his interest in the details of her life: her cat’s name, what she’d had for dinner the night before, the route she took to work in the mornings. It made her life feel special.
It was the day before the tournament that he kissed her.
They were standing at the edge of the pine wood and he was describing his plot to catch the joy riders, who had been out on the course again the night before. Next Saturday night he would camp out behind that giant rock at the edge of the wood above the second hole and shine his Coast Guard light on them when they came out. He’d scare them off even if he couldn’t actually get his hands on their grubby, silver-spoon-licking little faces. Talking about the joy riders seemed to bring out a rough side of Tom that was slightly scary, but at the same time exciting.
Good plan, she affirmed and smiled broadly in appreciation.
“What’s that?” he said suddenly, pointing at her midriff.
“What?” she said, alarmed, but saw nothing. When she looked up there was a brief moment of confusion as she saw his nose suddenly very close, much bigger than she remembered, then realized it was his whole face — his eyes and mouth — and he was kissing her — a little roughly as if to ensure he got a good purchase on her lips before they moved past him.
“Got you,” he laughed when he pulled away. Antigone just stared at him.
“Hey,” he said, picking up her hand and slipping suddenly into a deeper, more romantic voice. When he kissed her this time Antigone felt a Jello-y , not unpleasant drunken feeling sweep out from her gut over her elbows and knees. She had never been kissed like that before.
“I’ve been wanting to do that,” Tom said.
Just then another golf cart appeared on the rim of the hill and Antigone took an instinctive step away. Immediately she worried that Tom would think she was ashamed of him, though in fact it was herself and the ridiculousness of her own dowdy self being involved in something so romantic as a kiss on the golf course. But when she turned back to him, Tom had already jumped back into his cart and was pulling away. Out of the men’s line of sight he put two fingers to his lips and then tipped them in her direction. And looking after him, Antigone swelled with the pride of their secret. He was her lover — the word had an almost nauseatingly exciting ring to it in her mind.
Part Four
On the first day of the tournament, Antigone felt different than she usually did before a competition. She had been unable to sleep the night before and when she got out of bed her heart felt skittery and anxious. The protein shake she mixed herself made her gag — she had never before realized how noxious the strawberry-flavored powder tasted. She tried to think about her swing, but found herself thinking instead about whether Tom would be able to seek her out, and whether he would kiss her. She hoped, despite the riskiness of it, that he would. So what if anyone saw them! He made her feel reckless.
The club was a zoo though, and Antigone realized as soon as she got there that there was no way Tom, even if she saw him, would be able to kiss her. For all she knew there were rules against a greenskeeper indulging in this sort of behavior. She tried to think like the old, practical Antigone Doyle.
When the first round began, Antigone waited for her usual calm and professional frame of mind to kick in, but by the 5th hole it was clear that it was gone. She made ridiculous, sloppy mistakes she had never made before — hooking her second drive into the woods, and then hitting the ball so fat as to barely make contact. On the 3rd hole she barely missed hitting Patsy Kent in the middle of her backswing. For the first time in her life she actually considered walking off the course.
* * *
It was around the bend of the twelfth hole that she saw Tom with Jane Conlon. Jane was a good golfer; she was not playing on account of her torn ACL. Antigone had heard all about this at the dinner table a few Sundays ago. Jane was divorced, and had a sharp, shrill laugh and a head that looked almost eerily large for her skinny frame.
At first glance it seemed innocent enough. Tom and Jane were behind the onlookers and the only reason Antigone could see them was because she was above, on the rise of the hill, lining up her shot. Jane was laughing in her usual crazy way and her short, blunt-cut hair bobbed in time with the shake of her shoulders. Tom swung up into his cart, one hand on the pole. As he leaned in to start the engine, he turned back to Jane and put two fingers to his lips.
A wave of dizziness swept through Antigone and for a moment she thought she should sit down. But there were, of course, people behind her waiting for her to hurry up and take her shot. She looked down at the ball and across the little valley to the flag and tried to ignore the white blur of Tom’s golf cart bumping away below. The ball clicked satisfyingly against her seven iron, but then took an odd right turn and landed well short of the green. Antigone did not care. She replaced her divot with cheeks burning and a loud rushing in her ears. How foolish she had been to think Tom really cared for her! He probably loved Jane, or all homely, lonely lady-golfers. She played the next six holes as if in a trance, and when she finished with a score of 91, did her best to avoid all the concerned, curious faces offering platitudes and condescending comfort. She kept her head down, and plowed her way through the crowd to her car.
* * *
At home, Antigone took off her golf gear and put on an old pair of chinos and stomped outside to weed the flower beds. The dirt stung under her nails and the weeds were prickly and her knees hurt from pressing into the ground. It was good, she told herself, a suitable reward for her foolishness. Who had she thought she was? And who had she thought he was? As if in confirmation of this line of thinking, her mother’s grating, concerned voice (“What happened? I just got off the phone with Lynn MacAdoo. . .”) drifted out through the kitchen window from the answering machine. Antigone did not pick up.
Uncharacteristically, when Antigone came back inside, she opened up the liquor cabinet and poured herself a glass of the special West Indian rum her cousin Louise brought back from a Caribbean cruise. It burned her throat going down and made her cough but it felt good, too — a strong tugging at the back of her knees and a heady lightness in the top of her skull.
She must have been a little drunk because she found herself naked and staring at her body in the mirror. Then it occurred to her that it was Saturday night. It was dusk. Tom would be setting up to catch the joy riders. It gave her a pang of shame and regret followed by anger. She stared at herself in purple twilight, at the dark and pale places of her body, at the straight lines and curves. She had not done this for a long time — possibly ever. And she did not feel thick or stumpy or square or any of the usual things she considered herself to be. There was a solidity to her body that she found suddenly interesting, even beautiful. Had Tom imagined what she would look like with her clothes off? The idea made her both excited and mad.
And maybe it was this feeling that gave her the idea: She could go tell him she didn’t appreciate being made a fool of, that if he thought she was just sitting around waiting for someone like him to come along and woo her (the word was her mother’s), he was wrong. It would not be hard to find him: She knew where he had planned his stupid little stakeout. The liquor gave her freedom from afterthought. She pulled her clothes on and grabbed her keys and in under ten minutes she was at White Pines.
Part Five
It was almost completely dark by the time she pulled into the parking lot. She could see the untidy collection of golf carts gathered at the back of the club house like a crowd of eager listeners and briefly it occurred to her that her car might spoil Tom’s scheme, but she didn’t really care.
Out in the fresh night air she started toward the ninth hole hurriedly, keeping her head ducked low and upper body bent from the hips as if somehow this posture would obscure her silhouette in the moonlight. The wind whistled in her ears and up in the trees a hoot owl called. The whole situation was so satisfyingly eerie and fairytale-ish that when she had actually huffed and puffed her way up the hill and saw Tom sitting against the giant rock, she almost turned around. Why was it she had come again? But it was too late — he had seen her. His face registered surprise and then an almost foolishly easy delight.
“Tiggy!” he exclaimed. “C’mon over here.” He patted the ground beside him as if it were no great surprise that she would be here.
She hesitated and felt the sweat trickle under her arms and stand up on her brow. He patted the ground again, rustling the dead leaves beneath him, and she obeyed.
“Hi,” she said awkwardly as she crouched and dropped heavily down beside him. She wondered if her breath smelled the way her mother’s did when she drank and clamped her mouth shut.
“Hey,” Tom said, patting her knee and craning his head around to make sure he hadn’t missed the joy riders on the plain below. “I’m glad you came — you’re gonna help me catch those bastards.”
Antigone didn’t know what she had expected but not this total normalcy — it was as if nothing was any different, and he hadn’t blown Jane Conlon a kiss.
He lifted the binoculars to his face with one hand and put the other on the high beam lantern lying on the ground beside him. “Not here yet,” he said, sweeping his gaze over to the main building and the lot behind it. “Hey — how’d you do today?” He put the glasses back down and looked over at her.
Antigone stared at him, feeling suddenly very confused. “Terrible,” she said after a pause.
“Hm,” he said, squinting at her through the darkness. “Well,” he shrugged, “shit happens.”
This echoed in Antigone’s head and sounded surprisingly wise. They were silent for a few minutes and Antigone tried to remember what it was that she had wanted to say to him about Jane Conlon and what she had seen from the 9th hole. But she did not actually feel angry about it anymore.
“Did you come up here just to find me?” Tom said as if he had read her mind.
Antigone hesitated. “No,” she said. “I mean yes. I wanted to–” she cast about wildly for a moment, “see the joy riders.”
“Ha!” Tom said, handing her the binocs. “Well, you’re in the right place.”
Antigone held her hand out and then surprised them both by doing something very strange. Instead of putting them to her eyes, she leaned in and kissed Tom on the lips. She didn’t care if he had been flirting with Jane Conlon. She didn’t care if he had been flirting with seven other women. He kissed her back and for a moment Antigone felt that her life was as fabulous and important and dramatic as her name.
“Hey,” Tom said after a few minutes. “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” And he grabbed the binoculars. “They’re here! Look at that — would you? Look at that!”
And as he jumped to his feet, Antigone looked down at the green below and there they were: the joy riders in their stolen golf carts, fanning out in a kind of primitive star.
One of them let out a primal, joyous whoop, and Tom echoed this as he leapt out from behind the rock with his light. There was a moment of panic in which a few of the joy riders abandoned their carts and became quick black shapes running toward the wood while others sped up and careened crazily, frantically across the fairway. And somehow, as Antigone looked down at the chaos, she found herself joining in, whooping madly in a voice that was hers but different, freer and more exhilarated, louder and less reasonable, striking a key that she had never heard before.
