The Bridge Ladies (21 page)

“Nancy Pelosi called,” Bea announces. Bridge is at Jackie's.

“I won a trip to Bermuda,” says Jackie, amused at such nonsense.

“People still call the house looking for Peter,” Rhoda says. This seems particularly cruel, as if a call from a solicitor isn't bad enough. And what are you supposed to say: “Sorry, he's dead.”

Everyone nods with recognition. They are all targeted for contributions by every possible organization. Their phones constantly ring with solicitors, telemarketers, pollsters, and scammers.

Once, when my mother answered the phone, a young, female voice on the other end said, “Grandma?”

She wasn't sure which granddaughter it was and took a guess. “Freddie?”

“Hi, Grandma, it's me, Freddie.”

“Hi, honey, is everything okay?”

The caller said she was in Mexico on spring break from college and lost her wallet. Could my mother wire some money right away? Freddie was still in high school.

“I hung up on her then and there,” my mother says. “I wasn't born yesterday.”

“They think we're idiots,” Bea adds.

When they sit down to play, a dispute over what to lead turns fiery. My mother had led trump, which is generally not done, Bea jumped down her throat. My mother looked both chastened and pissed.

“Why would you do that?” Bea wants an explanation.

“I was sleeping.”

The next hand, Rhoda makes a mistake, putting an ace on a trick her partner has already trumped. My mother and I exchange glances. We both saw it right away, a costly mistake in a hand of Bridge. It's a small thing, but the recognition between us feels conspiratorial.

Rhoda scolds herself, “Dumb, dumb, dumb, dummy.” It sounds like duck, duck, duck, goose.

“It happens,” Bea says, forgiving when you least expect it.

When they go down, Bea doesn't make a big deal of it, but I can tell she's annoyed. “Betsy,” she says. “It's the beautiful hands that can screw you.” The ladies settle down. Twice in a row, none of them have enough points to bid and the dealer has to go again. This constitutes some excitement as they show each other how few points they have.

Before we leave, Rhoda brings out her calendar to set the next week's game. It's my mother's turn to host, but she realizes she will be out of town. Impulsively, I volunteer. The ladies glance at each other: why not. It's been a year of free lunches and seems like the least I can do for the ladies. Later, my mother calls me and launches into a barrage of reasons why I shouldn't trouble myself, only then she also admits that she'd like the ladies to see my house, show it off. The mixed messages mount. She offers to make lunch or cater lunch. I resist all offers of help; isn't the point that
I
make the lunch? She knows better than to offer to polish a single serving piece, though I know it's probably killing her. Thanks to Anne, I've been able to hang on to some semblance of adult behavior around my mother. The Richter scale
is nowhere near registering anything like the earthquakes that erupted under our feet when I first moved back. It's more like a game of tug-of-war, only it's not clear how you define winning in this scenario: holding tight or letting go.

I never shop at Whole Foods. I resent the prices, and the varieties of kale make me anxious. But I find myself in the produce section, convinced the meal will turn out better if I shop here. I put ingredients in my basket and take them out. I'm not much of a cook, and while I've been standoffish with my mother, I have been in a tailspin all week trying to think of what I could make, rather what I could pull off. I am staring at a bin of brightly colored miniature peppers small enough to string a necklace with. I'm drawn to them and tiny yellow squash in the next bin. At the end of the row is a single ostrich egg you'd need two hands to hold. Its shell is veined and mottled like aging skin. What recipe could possibly call for this prehistoric egg? I'm tempted to buy it just for the sake of absurdity. Maybe I'll sit on it until it hatches, and give birth so some slick creature, its neck curved like a clef, its feathers like the quills on a porcupine.
Are you my mother?

I've been here for nearly a half hour and I'm still in the produce section. I have cold feet about the meal I've planned. This is all taking too much time. I check my phone. E-mails are piling up.
Stick with the plan.
I head over to the fish section. The tuna and salmon gleam. Shrimp is piled high into a pyramid. I could get a cashmere sweater for the cost of the swordfish. The man behind the counter is improbably cheery. When I ask for the swordfish, he flatters me. “Great choice.” When I choose one in the shape of Vermont and another Massachussetts, he again validates my choice. Overkill, I think
,
walking away with the fish wrapped in paper, heavy as a full diaper.

Last minute, Rhoda can't make it. I'm disappointed. The
Jewish touches were mainly to impress her. I even considered running out and buying napkin rings but got hold of myself. Rhoda and I have made a connection I hadn't expected. The Rhodas of my life have always put me on edge, women who are unbending in their opinions. Early on when Rhoda announced she was Victorian in her ways, she was unapologetic. I know that had I been her daughter we would have been at each other's throats. Or perhaps she would have sent me away to Miss Porter's School for girls, where I might have become a world leader or an equestrienne. Her absence means I will have to fill in for her. Look at it another way: I was about to become a Bridge Lady.

Monday morning, I start getting ready the minute I wake up, like a parody of a 1950s housewife anxiously preparing a meal for her husband's boss. Of course, I've made many dinner parties over the years and set the table exactly the way my mother has taught me: cutlery flanking the dinner plate just so, glasses placed above the knife in descending order. Emily Post via Roz Lerner has filtered down and taught me well. Though it wasn't just by rote. As a child, I loved helping her set the table, opening the mahogany box that housed her silver, lined with purple satin and velvet dividers, the forks, spoons, and knives, all facing in the same direction, snug in their slots. That gleaming world contained all the pageantry and order that my small being desired. In another life I might have been a soldier in the Queen's Guard.

I bought Bea her favorite Coke (“the real thing, not that diet dreck”), brewed coffee for Jackie, boiled water for Bette's tea. I had set out the cards and score pad the way the ladies do, prewashed the grapes and set them on the counter. In the nervous minutes waiting for their arrival, I glimpsed my reflection in the
kitchen window: Betsy Lerner, former Dead Head, poet, and pothead standing over the sink, staring down a stick of butter and contemplating whether to slice it into pats.

As I bustled about getting lunch together, I kept thinking about myself growing up as a teenager, the ladies standing for everything I wanted to get away from. Wasn't I the girl getting high in our high school parking lot with a boy I had an impossible crush on, the girl writing poems and wearing all black, or the girl who won a local Frisbee contest in the distance division. I can still feel the snap of my wrist as the disc released and caught a lucky current of wind that took it a little farther than it should have gone. Only now, setting a graceful table, making a meal, was I not my mother's daughter? Wasn't I doing all this for her?

Conversation starts with a rousing discussion of direct deposit and online banking, specifically paying bills online, which are met with universal distrust. The ladies want to know what Tweeting is, are not favorably disposed, and still don't grasp it after I explain the basics. I take out my smartphone to show them the app, and they rear back. (I make a mental note: stay current with technology.) But the meal goes swimmingly: The ladies loved the swordfish. Bea drained her Coke. Jackie was delighted with the strawberries, and Bette asked for the couscous recipe.

I'm insanely nervous as we head over to play. Until now, I've only played Bridge at the Manhattan Bridge Club in a supervised setting where you're allowed to talk and ask questions. I am drenched in perspiration before the first hand is dealt.

I am partnered with Bea, who is as quick as a snake. Bette and Jackie both take their time bidding and playing the hand. I feel less afraid of making a mistake in front of them. And here's the thing about Bridge: when you make a mistake in the bid
ding, it becomes immediately obvious to everyone when the “dummy comes down.” How it works:

One of the partnerships “wins” the auction with the highest bid.

The partner who first introduced the trump suit (or no trump) will play the hand (and is called the declarer).

The declarer's partner literally lays his cards on the table in four rows, each suit from highest card to lowest (as in Solitaire). This is the dummy. The declarer then plays both his own hand and the dummy's. (The dummy sits out.)

When the cards are laid out, everyone sees exactly how many points and how many trumps are in the dummy's hand and if the bidding was accurate.

It's the Moment of Truth and it is like taking off your clothes for the first time in front of a new lover: What have you got? Hopefully, you have what you advertised in your bids: a promise of so many points and so many trumps.

In big-girl games, there is no talking or commenting on the dummy, but here in Woodbridge, on Mondays, there is no end of debate or comment on the dummy. If it has lots of points and supporting trumps, the ladies admire it, saying things like “Oh that's beautiful” and “Thank you partner.” If it's a disappointment, they challenge the player: “How could you make that bid?” Or “Is there a reason you didn't mention your hearts?” A wrong bid can leave your partner in a precarious situation by not having enough strength to take the number of tricks you've committed to winning.

Right away, I start messing up the bidding. Bea is my partner, and when I lay down the dummy she reprimands me. “Betsy, you have to bid no trump with so many points,” or “Betsy, you can't raise with so few points,” and so on as I bid each and every hand incorrectly. I've learned the rules for increasing bids, but I have performance anxiety to the point where I really can't think
straight. Bea isn't being mean, but she sounds accusatory and a little shrill. I want to go home. I am home!

Only then Bea says, “Okay, let's see what we can do.”

She settles as quickly as she flares. She knows her way around the four sides of a Bridge table. If the hand can be salvaged, Bea can do it.

When Bette is my partner, she looks at me with big encouraging eyes. All along, she has been the Bridge Lady who most wants me to learn and always suggests I sit in on a hand or two when they play. I always decline, completely intimidated. I bid a little better with Bette as my partner, either that or I've calmed down a bit, and we actually win three hands. It could also be that the hands are less complicated. No two hands are exactly alike. Sometimes it's clear what to bid or whether to pass. Other times, there's more gray area, such as with an unbalanced hand or when you and your partner can't find a fit. When Bette tallies the score at the end of the afternoon, unbelievably, I am the big winner. The booty is all of three dollars, which I will take up to my office and pin on my bulletin board, as proudly as a storekeeper framing the dollar from his first sale.

“See,” Bette says, “you know more than you think you do.”

Forgetting that I was serving three women who weigh an average of a ninety-five pounds, I have lots of leftovers, which I pack up in Tupperware. They thank me profusely and promise to return the containers the following Monday and do.

As they are leaving, Jackie looks back. “Your mother would be very proud.”

During the first nervous week of my being a new mom, my in-laws came every day. My father had just had his first stroke and my
mother couldn't leave him. My in-laws would arrive late in the afternoon when the baby would predictably squall for an hour or two and nothing could soothe her. My well-meaning mother-in-law kept making suggestions to calm her, none of which worked and only provoked greater anxiety in me: change her formula, chamomile tea, leave her in her crib, hold her, bounce her. I felt clumsy and uncertain of how to care for this new creature.