The Cardturner: A Novel About Imperfect Partners and Infinite Possibilities

by Louis Sachar

  “Sophie was three years old when I first played bridge with her mother,” he said, answering my question. “Annabel and I were bridge partners; nothing more, nothing less.”

  43

  IMPs

  We drove the rest of the way without any more discussion about Annabel. She didn’t sound crazy to me, no crazier than any other bridge player. No crazier than I was when I asked if Annabel would ever redouble.

  I believed Trapp when he said that she was just his bridge partner, “nothing more, nothing less.” And I was glad. It meant Toni and I weren’t related.

  We were met at the hotel by Arnold and Lucy, friends from Trapp’s bridge-bum days.

  “We would have flown halfway around the world to be on a team with Trapp,” said Arnold.

  Lucy hugged my uncle as she gushed about how wonderful it was to see him playing bridge again. Then she got all flustered and apologetic because she had used the word see.

  “It’s all right, Lucy,” Trapp assured her. “I’m aware you have the ability to see me, even if I can’t see you.”

  “Well, it’s probably just as well you can’t see me,” Lucy said. “I don’t look like myself anymore.”

  “Have you ever looked like yourself?” he asked her.

  Lucy laughed and said, “No,” but then changed her mind and said, “Once.”

  Arnold and Lucy were married, but not to each other. Their spouses were also at the tournament, playing with other partners.

  “You should never play bridge with your wife,” Arnold told me. “It’ll ruin your marriage.”

  “Even worse, it will ruin your bridge game,” said Lucy.

  We checked into our rooms. I had my own room, as did Gloria. Trapp and Teodora were sharing a two-room suite, which made sense, I thought, despite what my mother would have thought. We had lunch at the café in the hotel. Hamburgers were thirteen dollars.

  Trapp, Gloria, Arnold, and Lucy went over old times, old friends, and old bridge hands too, some from more than forty years ago.

  “And then you bid one spade, despite having only three points and only two spades!”

  “It kept the opponents out of slam.”

  Just like Trapp, Arnold and Lucy seemed to be able to remember every hand they’d ever played.

  I had thought of bridge as an old person’s game, but I realized that hadn’t always been true. Fifty years ago they hadn’t been much older than Toni and me.

  “We’re probably boring poor Alton to death,” Lucy suddenly said.

  “What do you like to do, Alton?” Arnold asked. “When you’re not hanging out with an old fart like Trapp?”

  Everyone was staring at me. “Um, I don’t know,” I said. I knew better than to mention video games.

  “Is there a girlfriend?” asked Lucy.

  “I’m keeping my options open,” I said, not wanting to come across as a total loser.

  “Well, if I was forty years younger,” said Lucy, “and if I lost forty pounds …”

  For the record, I never described Lucy as overweight. I simply reported what she said. I have been very careful not to refer to any woman as old and fat.

  The tournament was held in an area of the hotel called the Grand Ballroom. There must have been at least three hundred tables. Interspersed between the rows were tall poles with letters at the top, A through Q, indicating the location of the different sections.

  At the sectional there had been three sections: A, B, and C. Q is the seventeenth letter of the alphabet.

  There were two directors’ tables, on opposite sides of the Grand Ballroom. One was for the pairs game, the other for the knockouts.

  We’d be playing in the knockouts. When we purchased the entry, we had to tell the director the team’s total number of masterpoints. Trapp had 11,200. Gloria had 5,050. Arnold had 12,800, and Lucy had 13,500.

  Would you believe it? All these bridge geniuses, and none of them could add four numbers in his or her head. They came up with four different totals, and all four were wrong.

  “Forty-two thousand, five hundred and fifty,” I informed them.

  Once all of the teams had turned in their masterpoint totals, the directors separated them into brackets. The sixteen teams with the most masterpoints were placed in the top bracket. The next sixteen were in the second bracket, and so forth.

  We were in the top bracket, no surprise there. What did surprise me was that we weren’t the team with the most masterpoints. We were actually sixth. There was one team with over 110,000, and another with 87,000.

  We got our table assignment. Gloria and Trapp sat North-South at A-5. Two women about my mother’s age were already seated in the East and West seats. The teammates of these women, two men, were sitting North-South at B-5, playing against Arnold and Lucy, who were seated East-West.

  Gloria explained my role, and the women accepted it without any degree of skepticism or amazement. Their only comment about Trapp’s blindness was when East, a woman with auburn hair and a nice smile, suggested he might want to try Braille cards.

  “I tried them,” my uncle said, which was news to me. “Couldn’t get used to it. I don’t know what it is. I never could remember my hand. I had to keep running my fingers back over the cards to be sure. But Alton just has to tell me once, and it sticks.”

  “Do you play bridge, Alton?” the other woman asked me.

  “Hah!” laughed Trapp.

  “I’ve played a few times,” I said.

  My uncle didn’t react to that, but I know my answer surprised him.

  Once we started playing, everyone was all business. It was clear, even to me, that both women were very strong players. The one who had mentioned Braille cards got a “Nicely played” from Trapp on the very first board.

  We would play the entire session against just this one team. The loser would be knocked out, and the winner would get to play in the second round that evening.

  After we finished the first six boards, Gloria called for a caddy, who took those boards over to Lucy and Arnold’s table. While we waited for the caddy to return, Gloria asked one of the women if she had played in China.

  “We both did,” the woman admitted.

  “I thought so,” said Gloria. “Congratulations.”

  It turned out our opponents had been a part of the U.S. women’s team that had won the world championship in China just a few months earlier. Gloria had recognized the auburn-haired one from her picture in a bridge magazine.

  “There are bridge magazines?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” said one of the women.

  “So when you’re not playing bridge, and not talking about bridge, you’re reading about bridge?”

  The women laughed.

  “Who are your teammates?” asked Trapp.

  “You don’t need to worry about them,” said East. “They’re nobody.”

  “Just our husbands,” said West, and they both laughed.

  The caddy returned with the six boards that had been played at the other table, numbers seven through twelve. We played them without shuffling.

  When we finished those six boards, the two women left the table, and Arnold and Lucy took their place. We compared results.

  The scoring for a team game is done differently than for a pairs game. They used something called International Match Points, but everyone just called them IMPs, as in, “We lost ten IMPs on board one. We won one IMP on board two.”

  This is the chart they used.16

  Difference in Points IMPs

  20–40 1

  50–80 2

  90–120 3

  130–160 4

  170–210 5

  220–260 6

  270–310 7

  320–360 8

  370–420 9

  430–490 10

  500–590 11

  600–740 12

  750–890 13

  900–1,090 14

  1,100–1,290 15

  1,300–1,490 16

  1,500–1,740 17
<
br />   1,750–1,990 18

  2,000–2,240 19

  2,250–2,490 20

  2,500–2,990 21

  3,000–3,490 22

  3,500–3,990 23

  4,000 and up 24

  On the first board at our table, the opponents got 420 points for making four spades. That was the one where Trapp had said “Nicely played.” At the other table, Arnold and Lucy had held the same cards as the women, and they had also bid four spades. But Arnold didn’t play it as well and went down one, giving their opponents fifty points.

  That gave the other team a total of 470 points on that board (420 + 50), which according to the chart was worth 10 IMPs.

  “Sorry, I guess I could have made it,” said Arnold.

  “No sorrys allowed,” said Gloria. “She played it really well.”

  On board two, our opponents made two hearts at our table, for 110 points. Lucy and Arnold made three hearts, for 140. We did thirty points better, so we got one IMP.

  Our best board was board nine. Gloria bid six hearts and made it, for 980 points. At the other table the opponents took the same number of tricks, but they only bid four hearts, for 480 points. We gained 500 points, which was worth 11 IMPs.

  Lucy tallied up the results. They beat us 29 to 26.

  I was stunned. I’d gotten so used to Trapp and Gloria winning all the time, it never even occurred to me that they could be knocked out in the first round.

  “Don’t look so upset,” said Lucy, fluffing my hair. “The match is only half over. We still have another twelve boards.”

  Arnold and Lucy went back to the other table, and the two women returned to ours. “Three?” one of the women asked.

  Gloria agreed that was the score; then, without further discussion, we started shuffling the boards.

  There are some hands where even a great player doesn’t have much of an opportunity to shine. He just passes and follows suit and is more or less at the mercy of his opponents. If they bid and play well, all he can do is go on to the next board, and hope that when his teammates play the hand, they make the same good bids and play the hand just as well.

  I think that was pretty much how the first half of the match went. In the second half of the match, Trapp had more opportunities.

  We won by 26 IMPs.

  44

  The Milkman’s Clothes

  Lucy said she knew a great Lebanese restaurant not too far away, but Trapp said he preferred to eat in his room. He was exhausted. “Besides, I’m sure Teodora has prepared some sort of macrobiotic delicacy for me.”

  “Lebanese food is very healthy,” urged Lucy.

  “I need to lie down,” said Trapp.

  “You’re coming, aren’t you, Alton?” asked Arnold.

  “It will be a lot more fun than a boring hotel room,” said Lucy.

  I had never eaten Lebanese food, but how good could it be if it was so healthy? Besides, I’d always wanted to order room service.

  “Not for Alton,” said my uncle. “They have video games in the rooms. Hah!”

  “Lebanese sounds great,” I said.

  Hah yourself!

  First I had to escort him to his room. “So you’ve played bridge a few times?” he suddenly asked me in the elevator.

  “Twice,” I said. “Once at my house, and then Thursday at the bridge studio with Toni.”

  I waited for some comment, but he said nothing more about it. He didn’t even ask how we did. I think maybe he was mulling it all over, letting it sink in.

  Teodora opened the door to his suite. “Did you get knocked up?” she asked, taking Trapp from me.

  “Knocked out,” said Trapp. “No, we’re still in it. Knocked up means you’re pregnant.”

  Teodora squeezed my arm and said, “Well done, Alton,” as if I deserved the credit for the victory.

  Knockouts go quicker than pairs games, since you play board after board against the same opponents and don’t have to wait for everyone else to finish and then move to a new table. Lucy’s husband and Arnold’s wife still had three rounds to go in the pairs game when we left for the Lebanese restaurant in Arnold’s rental car.

  “Is he really going to Chicago?” Lucy asked.

  “He booked the rooms,” said Gloria.

  “You think he’s up to it?” asked Arnold.

  “To tell you the truth,” said Gloria, “I think the nationals are what’s keeping him alive.”

  “He’ll win,” I said. “You just knocked out two world champions!”

  “Their husbands weren’t exactly world-champion caliber,” said Arnold.

  The Lebanese restaurant was in an old cement factory that now housed quite a number of upscale shops and restaurants. There were lots of exposed pipes and odd-looking pieces of machinery, but it was all for decoration.

  Lucy ordered a bunch of appetizers and salads for the table. It tasted pretty good to me, and everyone seemed to be enjoying the meal, until I ruined it by asking, “So what ever happened to Annabel?”

  All I got for an answer were three cold stares.

  I knew Gloria didn’t want me talking about Annabel in front of Trapp, but he wasn’t around now, so I didn’t see the harm. I pressed on. “Why has it been so long since Trapp played in a national tournament?” I asked. “Did something happen the last time? Is that why Annabel went insane?”

  “Who told you she was insane?” Lucy asked sharply.

  Her tone of voice caused me to shrink back. “I don’t know,” I said. “Just something I heard somewhere.”

  “What did you hear?” asked Arnold.

  “She gave the milkman a thousand dollars for his clothes. And then made him wear her clothes.”

  Their stares grew colder.

  “Maybe I heard wrong,” I said. “I don’t remember exactly.”

  “If you don’t know what it is you’re talking about, then you really shouldn’t talk about it, should you?” asked Lucy. Her anger surprised me.

  “She did not make the milkman wear her clothes,” said Arnold. “Annabel gave him some of Henry’s clothes.”

  “There was nothing untoward about it,” said Gloria. “They changed in separate rooms. Annabel put on the milkman’s uniform in order to sneak out of her house and play with Trapp in the nationals.”

  “Her husband kept her locked up like a criminal,” said Arnold. “The servants were under strict orders not to let her leave the house.”

  “I still remember the way she looked,” said Lucy, her voice softening. “In those days, people used to dress up for bridge tournaments. Women in dresses. Men in suits and ties. And there was Annabel in those white overalls, with her hair cropped short. She was absolutely radiant! Even without her hair and in those clothes, she was the most beautiful woman in the room.”

  “That was because she was with Trapp,” said Arnold. “Whenever she was with him, her face glowed and her eyes sparkled like diamonds.”

  “She was in love with him?” I asked.

  “And he was even more in love with her,” said Lucy.

  “But in the car, he said she was just his bridge partner.”

  “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t in love with her,” said Lucy. “It just means he was a fool.”

  45

  Thugs in Business Suits

  The year was 1963. Trapp and Annabel were playing for the national championship. It was a two-day, four-session event. After the first day, half the field was eliminated, leaving only the best of the best.

  “All the legends of the game were there,” said Arnold. “Goren, Jacoby …”

  “And Annabel and Trapp had as good a chance of winning as any of them,” said Lucy. “They were in fifth place going into the final session.”

  About an hour into the session, a group of men entered the playing area. “Thugs in business suits,” Arnold called them. The men spread out and walked up and down the aisles between the rows of tables. Lucy said there were more than twenty of them, but Arnold said there were only twelve.

 
Arnold and Lucy had also been playing in the event, but not with each other. Gloria hadn’t been there, but she had heard all about it.

  One of the thugs spotted Annabel, and then they all converged on the table.

  “Two men were holding Annabel,” said Lucy, “and the rest formed a wall around her. She was dragged away, kicking and screaming.”

  Lucy’s voice cracked as she spoke. Forty-five years later, the memory still brought tears to her eyes.

  “Couldn’t anyone stop them?” I asked.

  “Your uncle tried,” said Arnold. “I drove him to the hospital. He had a busted nose and three broken ribs.”

  “What about the police?” I asked. “Did they have nine-one-one back then?”

  “This was Chicago,” said Arnold. “Those men were the police.”

  That was the last time Lucy or Arnold ever saw Annabel. It wasn’t until almost six months later that they learned she had been locked up in an insane asylum.

  “The Rolling Brook Sanitarium,” said Arnold. “Trapp went there almost every single day, but they wouldn’t let him see her. He demanded to speak to her doctor, but they wouldn’t let him do that, either, because he wasn’t family.”

  “But then when Nina became involved,” said Lucy, “they wouldn’t let her talk to Annabel either.”

  “Who’s Nina?” I asked.

  “Annabel’s sister,” said Gloria.

  “Trapp and Nina must have filed half a dozen lawsuits on Annabel’s behalf,” said Arnold, “but the King family controlled the judges, too. The judge said he couldn’t do anything without a signed affidavit from Annabel. But how were they supposed to get a signed affidavit if they weren’t allowed to see her?”

  Not even the other patients were allowed to see her. She was kept isolated for more than two years.

  “She wasn’t insane when she entered Rolling Brook,” said Gloria, “but after two years …”

  The only way Trapp could find out any information about Annabel was to wait in the parking lot, and then bribe the orderlies and janitors when they got off work. Most had never seen her, but they had heard rumors about her. And they heard her screams.