Crooked Little Heart

In the coastal Marin County town of Bayview, California, 13-year-old Rosie Ferguson and her best friend and doubles partner, Simone Duvall, are ranked number one in girls' 14-and-under doubles in northern California. Rosie lives with her mother, Elizabeth, sober for four years through Alcoholics Anonymous, and her stepfather, James, a struggling novelist. Rosie's biological father, Andrew, died in a car crash when she was four, and his absence pervades the household.

A disheveled, middle-aged drifter named Luther has been following the tournament circuit since the previous year, watching Rosie with unsettling attentiveness. Police confirm he has done nothing illegal, and officials cannot bar him from public venues. An old-timer claims Luther is a veteran with a head wound that affected his cognition.

Rosie is undergoing what Elizabeth calls a "sea change," oscillating between sweetness and hostility, longing for the romantic attention of boys who ignore her. She carries hidden wounds: When she was nine, Mr. Thackery, the father of her then-best friend, exposed himself to her. Elizabeth, deep in alcohol addiction at the time, was unable to help, and Rosie turned instead to Rae, Elizabeth's closest friend, a weaver and recent Christian convert. Charles Adderly, a 76-year-old family friend and surrogate grandfather to Rosie, is dying of cancer. Elizabeth still grieves Andrew intensely. A recurring pain haunts her: Early in her courtship with James, she called him late at night to say she loved him, and a woman with an English accent answered. James insists she misdialed, but Elizabeth has never believed him.

At a tournament in Fremont, Rosie plays a semifinal against 11-year-old Marisa DeMay. Playing poorly and panicking, she calls a ball out that clearly caught the baseline, her body blocking Marisa's view. The lie works: Marisa falls apart, and Rosie wins. Afterward, Mrs. DeMay graciously sews a loose button onto Rosie's shirt, and Rosie sits stiffly, connected by a white thread to the mother of the girl she cheated.

The cheating becomes easier. At subsequent tournaments, Rosie calls close balls out on critical points when no one else is watching. Luther, however, sees everything and watches with a knowing smile rather than reporting her. Rosie begins to feel his gaze as an "anointing" that both terrifies and comforts her.

Simone crosses a threshold of her own. At a dance at the tennis club, she disappears with Jason Drake, an 18-year-old player, and later confesses that Jason partially penetrated her. Weeks pass and Simone's period does not come. At Planned Parenthood, a pregnancy test confirms what they feared. They raise money for an abortion, but Simone cancels the appointment twice.

Charles dies on a summer afternoon while Elizabeth and Rae sit with him. At the memorial, Rosie stands rigid, refusing comfort, but when Lank, James's best friend since childhood and a gentle elementary school teacher, sings "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," Rosie buries her face against her mother's side and cries.

Elizabeth begins a prolonged emotional collapse, spending days in bed, crying about things she cannot name. At the house of Hallie Randall, one of Rosie's popular classmates, she climbs onto a trampoline with Rosie, and a buried childhood memory surfaces, leaving her sobbing on the canvas. For over a week, Rae, Lank, James, and Simone take turns lying beside her.

Feeling invisible, Rosie hits herself in the face with her fist, then with the corner of a trophy, and tells her family a trophy fell from a shelf. The bruise brings an outpouring of concern, and for a few days she feels visible and loved.

Simone has a miscarriage scare that sends her to the emergency room, but the baby is fine. Afterward, Simone tells Elizabeth she wants to keep the baby because she has never had anything of her own. On a hike, Rosie tells Elizabeth about the pregnancy but cannot confess her cheating, substituting another detail about Simone for the admission she cannot make.

James and Elizabeth's marriage cracks open. She confronts him about the women from their courtship, and he admits he slept with someone else while they were dating, apologizing for years of lying. He tells her he feels married to both her and Andrew, that Andrew's presence is like a body hidden under the house. They begin a tentative reconciliation. Elizabeth has a revelatory insight, envisioning Luther and Andrew side by side: Luther is Andrew's shadow, a figure arrived to help her release her dead husband.

One evening, Rosie finds Luther at the Greyhound bus depot. He tells her he once had a daughter, a champion athlete he last saw 30 years ago. He reveals that he cheated in his own career and offers the distinction that changes her: "You don't need to see yourself as a cheater. Because that's not who you are. You're someone who cheated." On the moonlit tennis court of his former home, he teaches Rosie to improve her serve by holding her left hand up, pointing at the toss, for one extra second before swinging.

That night, Rosie confesses to Elizabeth: "I cheat. I cheat in tennis." Elizabeth is stunned but holds her. A letter from the sportsmanship committee notes complaints about Rosie's line calls; when she meets with the committee, Rosie admits her cheating. J. Peter Billings, her coach at a wealthy tennis club, berates her for the disgrace. She walks out mid-lecture and stops playing. Simone has already been expelled from the club for her pregnancy. Rosie has Simone cut off all her thick black curls, an act that strips her to essentials.

At the year's final tournament in Palo Alto, Rosie and Simone enter as the number two seed, Simone visibly pregnant and moving with difficulty while Rosie covers nearly the entire court. Luther arrives wearing a blue cap with the letter "F," which Rosie reads as "frame," a reminder to hold the ball in her sights before striking. Using his techniques, she serves aces. In the finals, they face Deb Hall and Sue Atterbury; Rosie cheated Deb earlier in the season. The match reaches a third set. At match point against them, Deb smashes an overhead that lands just past the baseline, and Rosie calls it out honestly. In the final rally, Rosie chases down a lob Simone cannot reach, waits an extra beat as Luther taught her, and smashes a winner down the middle. As Luther rises to leave, Elizabeth calls, "Aren't you going to stick around and watch her win?" He replies, "I just did," and walks away.

Rosie discovers Luther has checked out of his San Francisco hotel permanently. That night, lying in bed with Elizabeth, she finally grieves Andrew, remembering riding on his shoulders through town, his freshly washed hair smelling of her baby shampoo. They cry for all the years of having missed him. Elizabeth tells James she may now let Andrew "go and be what he is. Which is dead." She can also let Rosie go and be what she is: "a young woman."

On a cool weekend, Elizabeth takes Rosie to the Pacific tide pools. They crouch over a rocky pool, watching hermit crabs and anemones. Elizabeth watches her daughter walk ahead down the beach, singing softly, no longer a golden child but her own fierce person. She closes her eyes "with the sudden feeling that something that had dropped was rising on its own."