The Bridge Ladies

by Betsy Lerner

  When Bette comes home every night from the hospital there are at least a dozen messages on her phone; she is too exhausted to answer any. Sometimes my mother or another friend has left a meal on her porch. She doesn’t have an appetite. Her refrigerator and freezer are filled with food she hasn’t touched.

  On the morning my father died I had arrived early at hospice. I didn’t have a premonition. I just liked being there alone with him in the early hours, the empty parking lot scored in rows of herringbone. Inside it was so quiet you could hear the wheezing of the breathing machines. I would pick up a Starbucks on the way and just sit quietly in his room before the nurses made their first rounds of the day. That morning, my father was sleeping on his side. Usually he was on his back. I slipped off my shoes, climbed into the bed, and curled around his back the way he did with me when I was little and needed help getting to sleep.

  I started to quietly sing all the songs we loved: “Downtown,” “Winchester Cathedral,” and my favorite “If the Rain’s Got to Fall,” slipping into our best cockney accents: Sunday’s the day when it’s got to be fine, ’cause that’s when I’m meeting my girl. I was my father’s girl. We resembled each other physically, were business-minded and social chameleons; we earned money and lent it, we battled the bulge, and we liked to make people laugh. He couldn’t say no to me, peeled off a twenty and then another when I was going out with my friends.

  When I turned fifteen and sixteen, my father couldn’t understand my clothes, my friends, my music, or what was happening to me when depression enveloped itself around my teenage life. He once told a therapist that his other daughters were fine, implying there was something wrong with me. Why couldn’t I get with the program? Why did I reek of pot? What had happened to his straight-A girl who used to sail down our front hallway into his arms when he came home from work? Why had I become sullen, uncommunicative; why could he no longer make me laugh?

  The Bridge Ladies would say I was spoiled. That my father was a pushover, that there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for his daughters. In many ways, this was true. Often he would openly defy my mother and approve of things she had vetoed: going to a movie on a school night, buying a treat, or staying up late. Of course what they didn’t see, at least with respect to me, was how all that indulgence, all of his generosity, was contingent on my doing what he wanted. Many fights, the worst of them, ended with him saying: After all I’ve done for you.

  What could you say to that? It was an excruciating double bind: I fiercely disagreed with him and deeply craved his approval. Eventually our differences came to define our relationship: he was disgusted when I moved into an East Village tenement with a friend (“If this is how you want to live”). When he read my first published poem, he threw the small magazine on the floor (“If that’s what you want to write”). And he acted as if I were throwing my life and my money away when I pursued an MFA in poetry instead of an MBA. (Okay, he called that one.) My mother had often equated him with King Solomon for his keen and fair decision-making skills, and she deferred to them. We all know how that story ends: the baby is spared. Why did I always feel cut in half?

  You could hear the nurses dispatched from the nursing station by the squeak of their white wedgies making early-morning rounds, beginning the administration of morphine like earth-bound angels. I knew if my mother had seen me beside my father, she would have turned away or told me to get up. We are not a family of easy affection, physical displays. I knew there would be no support groups for my mother, she wouldn’t join the grieving people in the mauve-colored solarium at the hospice, pamphlets scattered on the coffee tables for people of every faith looking for solace. She had hidden her grief for her entire life. Why would she start now?

  Holding my father like that was almost unbearable. I longed for one more movie, one more gin game, one more walk around the neighborhood on a brisk fall day when we would sell wooden brooms and lightbulbs for the Lions Club with me proudly holding the cigar box we used to collect the checks and cash, keeping the bills in their own tidy sections like the Monopoly bank.

  When the nurse came I was afraid she would chase me out, but she said she would come back. Still I got out of bed a minute later, feeling embarrassed. When she returned she gave him more morphine and said it was close. Soon after his skin roiled purple, as if boiling beneath the surface. It was like a great wave gathering force in the middle distance of a dark ocean. I ran to get the nurse then called my mother and sisters from the pay phone. Then I flew out of there to get my younger sister. I knew he would be gone when I returned, but I was too afraid to stay. I couldn’t watch him die.

  When we got back, a cloth like a shower curtain was pulled around his bed. My mother and Nina were collapsed in the chairs beside his bed. Nina had gotten there in time to say good-bye, but it was my mother who had been with him when he died. I never could bring myself to ask what she said, if anything. If she thanked him for the fun they had, the nights under the boardwalk, the Broadway shows. If she told him how sorry she was about her depression, how it robbed them of joy when the baby finally came, or how grateful she was for his constancy, his soldiering on in the face of losing Barbara. If she said what she never says: that she loved him.

  I stepped inside the curtain. His skin was porcelain, as if all the blood had drained from his body. He looked like a marble saint lain out on a tomb in the shadows of an Italian church. I openly wailed, could not control it. Then my mother, my sisters, and I were squired into a small room to make arrangements. There was a half-eaten leftover sheet cake from the day before, garish with neon pink and green icing. We dared each other to eat it and started laughing hysterically, the way you do when life is most absurd and cruel. My sisters and I hugged. My mother was untouchable.

  CHAPTER 18

  When the Student Is Ready, the Teacher Appears

  I return to the Manhattan Bridge Club. Its down-at-the-heels, vaguely grimy aspect remains reassuring to me with its rickety tables and bald carpet. This is a regular Tuesday-morning session conducted on a drop-in basis. A brief lesson is followed by two hours of supervised play. As the group gathers, it’s clear that most of the attendees know each other. Chitchat is exchanged about summer vacations. One woman says she is going to Wyoming for the umpteenth time. She loves it! A couple chimes in that they went there in the 1970s and search their collective brain for the name of the hotel they stayed in. The husband snaps his finger next to his temple in an effort to call forth the name. She starts vocalizing, “The West something, The Western. That’s not it.” This kind of conversation usually elicits suicidal ideation on my part, but I sort of smile as I follow the thread.

  “It will come to me, it will come to me.” The woman closes her eyes and tenses her entire body as if she were moving her bowels.

  When older people can’t remember something they get really upset. Is this the beginning? Are they losing it? They don’t recall that people of all ages forget where they left their keys, forget to pay their bills, can’t recall the capitol of Wyoming. Mind-bendingly, the couple is still trying to recover the name of the hotel. Next to them, I overhear a side conversation between a woman wearing wooden beads the size of testicles and a man in a straw cap. She is grilling him on where he works and what he does. I can’t tell if she is hitting on him or just being friendly. The male-to-female ratio is roughly about ten to one. Then, two more women enter. One is quite beautiful, a languid Modigliani with half-closed eyelids. The other is chipper and annoying as she scuttles off to the ladies room and mouths to her friend to watch her bag as if it contained uranium.

  The teacher finally arrives nearly fifteen minutes late. He is wearing black slacks, a black shirt with white pinstripes as thin as floss, and black slip-on shoes. I imagine that he has just gotten off work as a dealer at a casino or as a rumba instructor at a dancing school. He is tall with an athletic build but also graceful and precise in his movements. It’s hard to pin down his age, maybe midthirties. When he greets us he apologizes for bei
ng late but doesn’t dwell on it, then he introduces himself, Jess Jurkovic. He welcomes us, reminding us that we are here for the Tuesday lesson and supervised play, just in case anyone has boarded the wrong train. Three students have set up bidding boxes at one of the tables and left a seat free for him, which he assumes like a king on his throne. It’s where thousands of games have been played, the borders scored and scuffed with use, the scene of many victories and defeats. He sets up an open hand, meaning all cards visible for each of the four hands, and he asks us how the dealer would bid (dealer always bids or passes first). I am astonished at how deep and sonorous his voice is, fit for late-night radio, and how he imparts his enthusiasm and wisdom for the game in equal parts superiority and affection.

  Everyone crowds around the table and starts counting the points in each hand, assessing the distribution of cards according to suit, throwing out suggestions. He fields each one and tosses it back. After we offer all the wrong answers, he revels in showing us the best way to bid the hand, sitting up a bit straighter in his chair and eager to hold forth.

  I start looking at the other people gathered and notice inconsequential things: a label sticking out of a shirt, orange nail polish, a woman with dyed brown hair that sits atop her head like chocolate icing swirled on a cupcake. When did I develop attention deficit?

  Jess is always respectful even as people widely miss the mark with their suggestions. He aims for clarity and asks repeatedly if we understand before moving on. He couldn’t be more patient and derives pleasure when we get something right. I notice the delicate way his hands hover above the cards, as if guiding a planchette over a Ouija Board. His fingers are large with trimmed nails, skin pale and smooth. All of his gestures emanate from his hands, and later I will learn (okay, google) that he is a jazz pianist. He approaches the cards like the keys on a piano, still, then ready to strike. I suspect Bridge and music form the double helix of his elegant mind. His teaching style is a combination of vaudeville, high noon, opera, and drama.

  Now, in addition to teaching, Jess goes to the thrice-annual Bridge Nationals. Sometimes he comes back “humbled,” sometimes happy. He has over 2,100 Master Points, which is the player-ranking system used by the American Contract Bridge League. The highest ranking player in the country has over 80,000 points. You earn Master Points by playing in tournaments sanctioned by the league and advance according to the size and ranking of the tournament. Like the colors of karate belts that designate levels of mastery, bridge players climb the ladder from Rookie to Bronze Life Master, Silver Life Master, Gold, Diamond, Emerald, Platinum, and finally the highest title conferred: Grand Life Master. Bridge ranking rewards mastery and confers respect.

  Jess is the first person I’ve spoken with who has both mastery of the game and exudes the enthusiasm of the brightest kid in the class.

  “It’s the most interesting, deep, and scientifically based game, and for me it’s like music in that you’re always a student. I find it wonderful and exciting and beautiful. I see it almost aesthetically as well. I love the cards. I even love the beautiful designs on the backs of cards.” All of this tumbles out when we first sit down to speak. I quickly add that I love the beauty of the cards as well, and we start talking about them as if they were Picassos.

  Jess started playing with his parents and grandparents. “We muddled through without really knowing the rules.” Then he found a book on Bridge (William Root’s Commonsense Bidding), and it was a revelation. “I discovered you can actually communicate—it’s not a big guessing game.” It isn’t? He treated the book like a college course, writing what was in essence a paper on every chapter and quizzing himself afterward. Then he got the Bridge Baron app and began playing on the computer, which he describes as a crash course. He played social Bridge in college, and when he moved to New York he found his way to the Manhattan Bridge Club, and entered the competitive world of the game, entirely self-taught.

  I notice that the man with the straw hat has changed his eyeglasses to a pair with lilac-tinted lenses. The lady with the testicle necklace is checking e-mails. This is an unspoken no-no. The Wyoming-loving older couple appear to be very happy together, nodding at one another when they grasp a concept.

  “Shall we?” The lesson concluded, Jess invites us into the main room with more card tables to start supervised play. I overhear some of the students asking about the future of the club; there are rumors that it’s merging or moving or both. He tells us that it’s true; the Manhattan Bridge Club is closing its doors in two weeks’ time and merging with a club called Honors on the East Side. The location of the clubs, on either side of Manhattan, is representative of the club’s personality or culture. The Manhattan Bridge Club is a West Side club, meaning the people are generally more down-to-earth, lots of teachers and social workers. You would never know who is a sharp player by the casual way he dresses. The women wear loose-fitting clothes and the men wear their slacks pulled up a bit too high. If someone is dolled up or wearing some kind of Brooks Brothers ensemble they are in the minority and stick out.

  Honors, we are led to believe, is a bit more hoity-toity, just as the East Side of Manhattan is more moneyed and its people more status and appearance conscious. When I ask another teacher what the people are like there, she puts her hands to her face and pulls the skin back in imitation of a face-lift. When I eventually make my way over to Honors in the coming weeks I see what folks have been talking about. It’s as if the Manhattan Bridge Club itself has gotten a face-lift. The decor is less like a community room and more like a country club. The signs around the place are laminated, and there are framed pictures of awards and fine-art posters from museums like in a fancy doctor’s office.

  A few more people show up for the supervised session, which takes us to thirteen students. With three tables of four, one of us is odd man out. As we head over for the tables, it’s clear to me as the newest student here that I am the odd man. The others either know each other or have come as partners. I am a big girl and I have to ask if I can join, pull up a chair, and rotate in. But I’m paralyzed. The table of women closest in age to me is engaged in conversation. The other two tables are filled; people are already shuffling. I get a strong vibe that none of the tables wants to adopt a rescue dog; playing with a fifth means less individual playtime. Standing there is also humiliating. Finally, Jess comes over and pulls up a chair to the corner of the table with the women and says I should sit there. No one looks too pleased. Marshaling all the maturity at my command, I say hi and introduce myself. The four women go around the circle and mechanically say their names.

  The game begins and immediately the women at our table start calling Jess over for help. He stands behind each one, computes the value of the hand—the strength and length—in a few seconds and asks what they would do. As they point to the card they think they should throw or whisper bids from behind the fan of their cards, he shakes them off or nods yes. Sometimes he peppers you with questions: How many points do you have? How many do you need to bid or respond? What is your partner telling you with his bid? He wants us to think for ourselves and is not apt to supply answers. By the end of the two hours, I notice him blinking more rapidly or cracking his neck, the first signs of strain.

  I become a semiregular at Jess’s Tuesday-morning session, now located at Honors Bridge Club. I wish I had the time to go every Tuesday because it is the highlight of my week. There is a kind of theater surrounding Bridge that has me in its thrall. Though I’ve been coming for a few months, I still feel like an outsider. Every week the same damn drill: tables of four are already deep in conversation, catching up, kibitzing. Some tables only have one or two people sitting at them. Though often when I’ve shyly asked if a seat is free, I’d be met with the glare of the commuter who doesn’t want to lift his bags off the seat next to him. Other times, a person apologizes: they are saving seats. I didn’t have this much trouble in the high school cafeteria.

  Still, I keep coming back. Each week, I’d eventually find a t
able with the stragglers and polecats. The two hours of play would fly by in a flash. I’d learn something with every hand. I began to understand how the finesse worked. I saw that losing a few tricks early could put you in a better position for winning more tricks later. And the cardinal rule: pull trump first. Listening to Jess each week, I began to focus more. It was his voice, his tone, and his wry sense of humor. One week a woman said she was too afraid to play a certain card.

  Jess looked at all of us. “The cards don’t have emotions, right?”

  I was all emotion, terrified of my cards. Even though I was gaining confidence in some areas, discarding could still feel like facing a firing squad. I wasn’t the only one who still got flustered. A tall blonde once turned entirely red while she played a hand, her chest, neck, and cheeks spread with color like spilled wine on a white tablecloth. Another woman had to run to the bathroom twice while playing. People called out a constant stream of questions for Jess, and he caromed from table to table like freshly broken billiard balls flying in every direction.

  Then Jess said something that changed the whole way I approached the game. He was supervising the next table over from mine, but it caught my attention. He didn’t say: listen carefully here is a key insight. He just offered it like any other advice or coaching he doled out on a regular basis. “You’re telling a story,” he said. “You and your partner are having a conversation through the language of bidding. You each have a story to tell.”