Open: An Autobiography

And as 1996 wears on, safety seems like an especially precious commodity. Brooke is regularly receiving letters from stalkers, threatening her - and sometimes me - with death and unspeakable horrors. The letters are detailed, grisly, sick. We forward them to the FBI. We also ask Gil to work with the agents, monitor their progress. Several times, when a letter is traceable, Gil goes rogue. He boards a plane and pays the stalker a visit. He usually appears early in the morning, just after dawn, at the stalker’s house or workplace. He holds up the letter and says very softly, I know who you are and where you live. Now take a good look at me, because if you ever bother Brooke and Andre again, you will see me again, and you don’t want that, because then it will be on.

The scariest letters can’t be traced. When they rise above a certain gruesome threshold, when they threaten that something is going to happen on a specific date, Gil will stand outside Brooke’s brownstone while we sleep. By stand I mean stand. On the stoop. Arms folded. He stations himself there, looking left, then right, and he stays that way all night.

Night after night.

The strain, the sordidness, exact a heavy toll on Gil. He worries constantly that he’s not doing enough, that he may have missed something, that he’ll blink or look away one time and some creep will slither past. He becomes obsessed. He falls into a nearly debilitating depression, and I fall with him, because I’m the cause. I brought this on Gil. I feel deep guilt, and I’m beset by premonitions of doom.

I try to talk myself out of it. I tell myself that you can’t be unhappy when you have money in the bank and own your own plane. But I can’t help it, I feel listless, hopeless, trapped in a life I didn’t choose, hounded by people I can’t see. And I can’t discuss any of it with Brooke, because I can’t admit to such weakness. Feeling depressed after a loss is one thing, but feeling depressed about nothing, about life in general, is another thing altogether. I can’t feel this way. I refuse to admit that I feel this way.

Even if I wanted to discuss it with Brooke, we’re not communicating well these days.

We’re not on the same frequency. We don’t have the same bandwidth. For instance, when I try to talk with her about Frankie, about the satisfaction of helping him, she doesn’t seem to hear. After the initial fun of introducing me to Frankie, she’s cool about him, indifferent, as if he’s played his part and now it’s time for him to move offstage. This follows a precedent, a pattern that repeats itself with many people and places Brooke brings into my life. Museums, galleries, celebrities, writers, shows, friends - I often get more from them than she does. Just as I start to enjoy something, to learn from it, she casts it aside.

It makes me wonder if we’re a good fit. I don’t think so. And yet I can’t step back, can’t suggest we take a break, because I’m already distancing myself from tennis. With no Brooke and no tennis, I’ll have nothing. I fear the void, the darkness. So I cling to Brooke, and she clings back, and though the clinging seems loving, it’s more like the clinging in that painting in the Louvre. Holding on for dear life.

As Brooke and I approach our two-year anniversary, I decide that we should formalize our clinging. Two years is a meaningful benchmark in my love life. In every previous relationship two years has been the make-or-break moment - and I’ve always chosen break. Every two years I grow tired of the girl I’m dating, or she grows tired of me, as if a timer goes off in my heart. I was with Wendi two years, and then she declared our relationship open, which pre-figured the end. Before Wendi I was with a girl in Memphis for exactly two years, and then I bolted. Why my love life runs in two-year cycles, I don’t know. I wasn’t even aware of the pattern until Perry pointed it out.

Whatever the reason, I’m determined to change. At twenty-six I believe this pattern needs to be broken, now, or I’ll be thirty-six, looking back on a series of two-year relationships that went nowhere. If I’m going to have a family, if I’m going to be happy, I’ve got to break this cycle, which means pushing myself past the two-year mark, forcing myself to commit.

Of course, technically, it hasn’t been two years with Brooke. With our hectic schedules, with my playing and her filming, we’ve actually spent only a few months together. We’re still getting to know each other, still learning. Part of me knows I shouldn’t force a decision. Part of me simply doesn’t want to be married right now. But who cares what I want? When is what I want ever a good index of what I should do? How often do I enter a tournament, wanting to play, only to lose in the early rounds? How often do I enter reluctantly, feeling like hell, only to win? Maybe marriage - the ultimate match play, the ultimate single elimination tournament - is the same way.