I found the old tennis racket when I was clearing out some of my mother’s things. Not that she was dead, mind. No I had simply arranged for her to move into an old folks home where she could be cared for properly. Since my father had died a few years back, she had taken to wandering aimlessly around town in a nightgown and having the occasional fall.
No an old folks home was for the best.
But that old tennis racket brought it all back; memories I had largely forgotten for almost thirty years.
I was about 10 at the time. It was a warm summers evening and I should have been down at the Scout hut. But with my father away on business and my mother at her Wednesday evenings at the tennis club, I decided to take full advantage and go home and look through some naughty magazines I’d found.
As I let myself in I noticed my mother’s tennis racket was still by the coat stand in the hallway. It wasn’t like her to forget things, especially not for tennis. Then, suddenly, from upstairs came the sound of muffled giggles.
Cautiously I crept up the stairs, the giggling and strange groans becoming louder as I did. Peeking in through a crack in my parent’s bedroom door I saw my mother and Mr Rowntree, a man from her tennis club, rolling around naked upon the bed.
I fled the house in silence and sat out in the park until it was time to go home. When I got there Mr Rowntree was long gone and my mother was soaking in the bath, exhausted from an evening of energetic tennis.
I never told anyone though. How could I? I just blocked it out as if it never happened.
I look back at the old tennis racket in my hands. “Mum, shall I throw this old racket in the skip?”
“Oh no, I’ll be needing that,” she replies, a sudden glint in her eye. “Old Mr Rowntree says there’s a small but active tennis community at the home.”
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published at Red Bubble’s Twisted Tales. A 350 word challenge using ‘racket’ as a prompt.
Nice! Good for Mum