Pickle Perfect

One

Lulu stared at her laptop, trying to will away the distractions. Behind her, Aunt Laverne muttered indecisively while she sorted the greener tomatoes into a cardboard box marked Neighbors. Below the table, Lulu's three-year-old daughter, Zoe, was testing out a variety of animal growls while slamming a plastic dinosaur into the underside of the wooden tabletop. Add in her uncle Rooster's clunking footsteps as he rounded up sports glasses and sunscreen for their Costa Rican pickleball vacation, and Lulu had to knock her knuckles against her forehead to keep her head in the game.

Yet there was hope on the horizon. If she powered through, she could finish grading this batch of assignments by three o'clock and put Zoe down for her nap. Then she could stand in the shower for at least five blissfully undisturbed minutes. Lulu's attention drifted as she indulged in a daydream involving a closed door and nothing but quiet. Since her daughter's birth, her fantasies had shifted from hot and steamy sex to hot and steamy showers.

"You've been at this for hours, sweetheart." Laverne brushed aside Lulu's dark, springy curls and placed a hand on her niece's shoulder. "How 'bout a break?"

"I will. In a bit."

Aunt Laverne tsked. "I hope at least it's good reading material. How are the young entrepreneurs this year?"

"What they lack in academic integrity, they make up for in technology skills. Want to hear?" she asked, not waiting for the response. Tilting the screen, she read from her laptop. "'In this plan, I will estimate revenue based on indexed market research and recumbent pricing strategies.'"

"What kind of gibberish is that?" Rooster called from the stepladder in the pantry.

"My Intro to Business class. They have to build a marketing plan and tell me the best way to pull an audience to their brand. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that this one was not written by a ninth grader." With only one week until spring break, and with the end of the school year on the horizon, her students were tossing blind, ninety-nine-yard Hail Mary passes with every assignment.

"Probably the kid's parents wrote it," Rooster said. "Or they copied the paper from a webline."

"More likely, the kid's AI generator wrote it. And it's online. Or website. There's no webline."

"Ought to be." Sighing, he climbed off the stepladder. "I give up. Has anyone seen my spare pickleball paddle?"

"Did you check the car?" Laverne asked. "I think I saw your pickleball bag in the trunk."

"The car?!" Rooster asked, his brow dipping with skepticism. "Why would I put my pickleball paddle in the car?" A hand injury had stymied Rooster's hopes to play with his partner, Meg, in the high-stakes Picklesmash tournament three years ago, but since then, he had been making up for lost time. And now, with an all-inclusive pickleball vacation less than three days away, he was downright exuberant. Lulu hadn't seen Rooster this excited about something since Zoe's birth.

She adjusted her laptop to align it with the angle of the tabletop while Rooster lumbered off to the garage. She clicked open her assignment instructions and reread the example she had posted for her students.

"Oh shoot," she muttered to herself. Instead of writing "servicing the public sector," she had written "servicing the pubic sector."

Massaging her scalp, Lulu consoled herself with the fact that she was, likely, the only one who actually read the instructions.

Still, Lulu pushed through. The grading and the meetings and all the outside-of-instruction-time minutiae were totally worth it for the rewards. Lulu loved the perfect balance and empowerment of teaching and learning. She thrilled when her lessons clicked, and she could see the results when a single student's face lit up with an "aha" moment. Sharing her own excitement with her students felt like a way to reclaim the energy that sometimes waned in the wake of single parenting . . . and adulting in general.

Wistfully, she glimpsed the bag of pickleballs that would probably push her uncle's suitcase into the realm of oversized luggage. Rooster's pickleball enthusiasm reminded her of her own fire, that vibrant readiness she had once felt with a racket in her hand. Once in a while, she still sensed that longing around the fringes of her tangible memory, like it was only last week and not fifteen years ago-when the pleasure of placing the right tennis shot was a win in itself, and back when she had every intention of playing professionally. In fact, until her parents' death in a car accident at the end of her senior year, Lulu had designed a precise trajectory to guarantee her success.

Now, Lulu was struck with the irony. She taught her students to build business plans but had put her own future on the back burner. Getting Zoe down for a nap and taking a quiet shower was about as far into the future as Lulu could schedule. And the shower would be a stretch.

"What do you think?" Waving a head of broccoli, Laverne swooped into Lulu's line of vision. "Does it last ten days? Or should I put it in the box for the neighbors?"

"Please just leave it in the fridge," she said, pulling some patience in through her nose. "When you're gone, Zoe and I will sit at this table and do nothing but eat broccoli." It was the least she could do. After all, even though she had struck out on her own for the years after college, moving back into her aunt Laverne and uncle Rooster's home with her infant daughter three years ago was the life raft keeping Lulu afloat. With her parents gone, Laverne and Rooster were not only Lulu's godparents, but they had adopted the role of Zoe's grandparents, too.

Yet why, Lulu wondered, did there have to be so much last-minute vacation preparation? Why not just buy less groceries if they knew they were going on a trip? And keep an itemized, alphabetized packing list for warm and cold weather vacations and a photo catalog of outfits for each day. That's what she would do-if she ever went anywhere exciting. Besides the shower.

And for an instant, she let her mind whisk itself away on a fantasy. One of these days, she promised herself, she would get away to a tropical beach or a mountain retreat for some self-care time. She just wanted to wait until Zoe was fully potty-trained. And into a solid university program.

"Found it!" Rooster said, coming back into the kitchen as he smacked the paddle at an invisible ball. "My paddle was in the car! Can you believe it?"

Beneath the table, Zoe tugged on Lulu's shirttail. "Lookit, Mommy. Mr. T likes jelly. Just like me and Papu." She offered her mom the plastic tyrannosaurus, coated with purple goop.

Lulu plucked the sticky dinosaur from her daughter's fingers. Clearly, Rooster did not understand that sugar was akin to toddler jet-engine fuel.

"Zoe, honey?" she asked, knowing the answer. "Are you feeling ready for your nap?"

"Nope." The three-year-old sighed sadly, like a fifty-year-old boss who was going to have to let go of a long-time employee. "No nap."

Lulu shut her eyes a moment and exhaled. No nap, she reminded herself, is not a global crisis.

Hearing her niece's sigh, Laverne stepped away from the fridge to rub comforting circles onto Lulu's back. She nodded to the business plans on Lulu's laptop, "How 'bout some help with your grading?"

Lulu paused, tempted. Aunt Laverne, now retired from her long career as a successful playwright and stage actress, did have a keen eye for language. "I could pre-read them for you," Laverne suggested. "Take the pressure off. Then you can slap on a grade after I'm done."

There would be no grade-slapping. "No, thanks. I got this."

Eyeing her niece, Laverne pulled up a chair and hunched into Lulu's personal-space bubble. "Let me try. Just show me one."

Knowing her aunt's stamina for tenacity, Lulu conceded. "Fine." Scooting her chair out of the mix to make way for the hostile takeover of her laptop, she said, "Skim it, then read it, then click on the student's name, then you can write a comment. Or you can push this button here to record a comment, and I'll score it later. The essential question is, What techniques attract a consumer to a product?"

Laverne's eyes glazed over. "You lost me at skim it. But I'll figure it out." Peering at the screen, the older woman mumbled to herself as she skimmed the writing until finally she barked out a laugh. In her theatrical voice, she read, "'I would market my car wash business by helping people see how dirty their cars are. One thing I could do would be to use my finger to write Wash Me on the teachers' cars.'" Laverne shot Lulu a look of wry surprise. "'And if I'm still not earning enough money, I bet I can figure out a way to make the cars dirtier.'"

Lulu shrugged. "Welcome to my world." Yes, this was the sort of reading material that had already sucked away seven school years of her weekends. But the grading had to be done, and it was kind of nice that someone else could commiserate for once.

"If you want to give it a try, you can make a comment," Lulu offered. "Type it into this comments box. Or just record with the microphone. What advice do you have for . . ."-she read the header-"Carson Manning?"

"Well." Pursing her lips, Laverne turned back to the screen. "It's not very good."

"You can't say that. These are fourteen-year-olds. You have to say something encouraging."

Laverne bent over the laptop, clicked on the microphone, and said, "Good work. A-plus."

Carson Manning's name turned green. A little "read" checkmark appeared with a ping.

"O-kay." Lulu pinched the bridge of her nose. "You just sent that." Carson Manning was probably jumping up and down on his bed or texting his classmates about his first A ever. "I better take back the wheel."

"One more. Let me try one more." Laverne fiddled with the mouse, scrolling through the student names and checking and unchecking boxes.

"You don't have to do all that. Just click on another student. Here." Lulu reached over and pointed the cursor on Kavya Bhatt's responses. "Try Kavya. She writes well."

From under the table, Zoe murmured, "I need to go potty."

"One sec, sweetie."

A light thunk sounded from beneath them, followed by several seconds of silence while Zoe waited for some kind of validating reaction. Then the toddler struck up a piercing wail.

Nipping back into the kitchen from, well, who knew where-Lulu had long since given up guessing how her uncle always seemed to be at the ready-Rooster found his granddaughter and ducked his head beneath the table. "I gotcha. Papu's gotcha."

"Oh, this student's answer is much better than the other one," Laverne said, invested in Kavya's business plan. "Listen to this." She read, "'There are many ways to attract consumers to products, but traditional advertising is not always the solution. Sometimes, stirring up bad press is a great way to get attention from your target audience. Like how "The Rocket" got himself kicked off the pickleball pro tour. On purpose, if you ask me. And now, everybody's talking about his brand.'" Laverne squinted. "The Rocket?"

"The Rocket?" Rooster set his granddaughter on her feet. "Whoo, boy. She's got that right. Everybody's talking about Tyler 'The Rocket' Demming."

At the mention of Tyler's name, Lulu's head snapped up. She shot her uncle a startled look. Rooster guffawed. "You didn't hear about that? Tyler Demming. Your old tennis team friend, right? Hold on. Let me find it."

"Rooster . . ." Laverne warned, shooting her husband a meaningful look. "I don't think Lulu wants to see that."

But Rooster had already pulled up the video and pressed the phone into Lulu's palm. Heart jackhammering, Lulu's mouth dropped open as she watched the action on the little screen.

There was Tyler Demming in all his long-haired, tatted-up glory. Just as handsome, maybe even more so than when she'd last seen him in the flesh fifteen years ago. Just as dreamy as the night when they'd lain on the cool pavement of the moonlit court and he had promised to never break her heart-and then instead went and crushed it to smithereens.

Sure, she had caught glimpses of him in the media over the years. During the hype about his switch from tennis to pickleball and his subsequent rise to glory on the small court, it seemed Tyler Demming was everywhere. Lulu would be going about her day when his famous physique would pop up online, advertising men's cologne and boxer briefs and teeth whitener. Or gracing the cover of the sports section of the Seattle Times when he took gold at pickleball nationals. Or in those static images in the tabloids in the supermarket checkout line, where she learned that the player had finally settled down and married the foxy sports commentator Sapphire Roe.

At that last thought, the residue of a thing she refused to call jealousy flitted through her brain. She pressed her lips into a thin line.

Now, as Tyler "The Rocket" Demming smirked at the camera in living, moving color, her nerves began to whistle. Fifteen years had almost been long enough for her to get over her mixed feelings for him, a push-pull that felt like it was breaking her apart. But the sensory reverberations still clung to her.

Tyler's muscles glistened with a sexy sheen of recent exercise, and he beamed with his annoyingly charismatic grin. "Winner, winner!" Tyler crowed as he pulled several paddles from his bag. Laying the paddles on the pavement, he took his time swaddling the handles in cotton bandages. The video caption scrolled. Wild-man Tyler "The Rocket" Demming Takes Gold but Gets Tossed Off Tour.

"Unbelievable." Lulu shook her head in disgust. Of course he would go ahead and throw away a golden opportunity. Talk about on-brand.

"Just watch," Rooster crowed, still absorbed in the video. "It's a doozy."

"Rooster. Turn that racket off," Laverne urged, but by now, both Lulu and Rooster were hypnotized by the action.

Lulu glared at the screen in disbelief as Tyler, a mischievous gleam in his eyes, held the paddle heads and took a lighter to the wrapped handles. Whooping with glee, the pro player began juggling the flaming pickle paddles. Mid-toss, he called out, "This is for you. You know who you are!" He beamed and shouted, "And now, the spin maneuver!"

Lulu scolded the part of her brain that wanted to stare, not at the spectacle, but at his sculpted limbs and fluid athleticism. Because she was over him. Enough of her precious months had been wasted pining over that lost love. Tyler Demming was nothing more than a pinching reminder of a difficult time.