The Cardturner: A Novel About Imperfect Partners and Infinite Possibilities Read online

  “Hi,” Toni said again.

  The bushy-haired man glanced at her, then turned back to his partner and muttered, “I hate playing against beginners.”

  We began with board ten, and, as usual, I screwed up both the bidding and the play. Only this time it got us a top board!

  My final contract was two diamonds, and I was the declarer. I managed to take my eight tricks, but I should have made an overtrick. Every other East-West had bid four spades and had only taken nine tricks, because of an unlucky lie of the cards. I took fewer tricks than everyone else, but I was the only one with a positive score.

  The blond man glared at me. “How can you only bid two diamonds?” he demanded. “Your partner opened the bidding, and you had fifteen points!”

  “I didn’t think she’d pass,” I said in my defense.

  He sneered at me, then said, “What an idiot!”

  “And then he played it as badly as he bid it,” his partner added. “That’s why I hate playing against beginners. They give everyone else tops, and then they fix us.”

  “You were a beginner once too,” Toni pointed out.

  He looked down his nose at her and said, “Believe me, if I played as badly as your partner, I would have quit the game a long time ago.”

  Toni was the “idiot” on board eleven. I’m not sure what she did exactly, but this time our opponents were happy about it.

  “I knew you were stupid,” the bushy-haired man said, laughing at her. “I just didn’t know you were that stupid!”

  Toni turned red. “Well, now you know,” she said quietly. Her cheek was quivering. I was afraid she might cry.

  The men were still laughing as I removed my hand from board twelve, which thankfully was the last hand of the day. I sorted my cards. It was a lousy hand. My only high cards were a king and two jacks.

  Toni set the 1♠ card on the table. I probably should have passed, but I raised to 2♠. The bushy-haired guy bid 3; then Toni surprised me by bidding 4♠.

  North doubled, snapping the red card on the table with a flourish.

  I knew I should have passed the first time!

  I passed, South passed, and it was Toni’s turn again. She was thinking.

  “You can’t go back to three spades,” said the blond guy, and he and his partner chortled over that one.

  Toni didn’t seem to notice their laughter. She reached into her bidding box, then gently set her bid on the table. It was the blue card with two Xs.

  The men stopped laughing.

  It was the first time I had ever seen anyone use the redouble card.

  North led the ace of diamonds, and I set my pitiful hand on the table. “Sorry,” I said. “This is all I got.”

  “Thank you, partner,” said Toni. “The five, please.”

  I played the five of diamonds, as directed.

  There was an intensity in her eyes that I had never seen before. She carefully watched every card the opponents played. Her voice was flat yet authoritative as she dictated what card I was to play from the dummy.

  After the first six tricks, she had won four, and the opponents had won two. She could only let them win one more.

  “Jack of clubs, please.”

  I played the card as directed.

  My jack won the trick, and Toni won the next trick in her hand.

  It was around this point that I noticed the blond guy squirming in his chair. When Toni won the next trick, the bushy-haired guy started squirming too.14

  North won the next trick, but he wasn’t happy about it. He sighed disgustedly, then led a card, and Toni took the last three tricks.

  “First she squeezed me out of my exit cards,” the blond man griped, “and then she endplayed me.”15

  “Well, you shouldn’t have doubled!” accused his partner. “You warned her of the bad spade break.”

  “I wouldn’t have doubled if you hadn’t made that lousy three-diamonds call!”

  “It got you off to the right lead! We would have set it if you switched to a club at trick two. You needed to break up the endplay.”

  “Yeah, right! I’m supposed to see that far ahead? On the first two hands she can barely follow suit, and then she suddenly turns into Syd Fox!”

  Four spades, doubled and redoubled, was worth 1,080 points. North and South were still arguing as Toni and I got up from the table.

  “Wow, you did great!” I said to her, away from the table. “Or I guess I’m supposed to say, ‘Nicely played, partner.’”

  “I didn’t do it alone,” said Toni.

  I smiled. “That’s nice of you to say,” I told her, “but all I did was bid two spades. You did the rest. I don’t even know what an endplay is.”

  Toni looked down at her shoes. “That’s not what I meant,” she whispered. “My grandmother told me to redouble. She also told me what cards to play.”

  She looked back up at me, smiled nervously, then said, “I think those two idiots made her mad.”

  40

  The Subconscious Mind

  So that was what Cliff meant when he said Toni was cray-zee. He meant she was crazy! Nutso! Bonkers! Out of her freaking mind!

  No, I didn’t really think that, but before you start thinking I’m crazy too, I did not believe she had heard the voice of her dead grandmother. I was no expert on schizophrenia, but it was my belief that what Toni had heard was her subconscious mind.

  I knew Trapp had been giving her bridge lessons. She also had been his cardturner before me, and had watched him play hundreds of hands. I believed that somewhere, deep down, she had absorbed it all. She knew more than she knew she knew.

  When those guys said all those mean things, it was Toni, not her grandmother, who got mad. Her anger formed a connection between her conscious and subconscious minds, a bridge, if you will.

  I didn’t say any of that to Toni. I tried my best not to show any alarm or surprise at her confession.

  She was looking at me nervously, anxiously. Her eyes seemed to be pleading with me.

  I think I might have said “Oh.”

  Whatever reaction she wanted from me, she apparently didn’t get it. She abruptly left the bridge studio without even waiting for the final score. I think she might have been crying.

  For the record, we finished in last place with a 35 percent game. Without her “grandmother’s” help, we probably wouldn’t have broken 30 percent.

  I awoke in the middle of the night, suddenly realizing that I could have made three hearts on board twenty-four if I had played the ten instead of the queen! Toni wasn’t the only one with an overactive subconscious mind.

  41

  Entourage

  The regional was a six-day tournament, but we were only going for two days, Wednesday and Thursday. I crammed a change of clothes into my backpack.

  It had been almost a week since my game with Toni, and I hadn’t talked to her since. I knew she and Cliff had spent some time together, but if she told him about our bridge game, he didn’t mention it to me.

  “Are you going to have your own room?” my mother asked me.

  “I guess so,” I said. “Trapp can afford it.”

  “I’m well aware of what Uncle Lester can afford. What about Teodora?”

  “What about her?” I asked.

  “Is she going to have her own room too, or is she going to be sharing a room with Uncle Lester?”

  “She’s his nurse,” I said. “She needs to be near him.”

  “That’s what worries me,” said my mother.

  I hadn’t told my mother my theory about Sophie being Trapp’s daughter.

  I parked in Trapp’s driveway and loaded his and Teodora’s luggage into my car. Teodora kissed me on the cheek and called me her gallant young knight, pronouncing both the k and the n. Captain barked at me. I think the dog knew from the suitcases that I was taking Trapp away from him for a couple of days.

  I would have been happy to pick Gloria up at her condo, but she had told Trapp that was too far out of the way
, and insisted on meeting us at a parking lot near the freeway. If I had known that the parking lot would be deserted, and that the restaurant connected to it was boarded up and covered with graffiti, I would have insisted on other arrangements.

  I pulled into the parking lot and there was Gloria, standing by her car, wearing every piece of jewelry she owned, purse in one hand, a flowered suitcase by her side.

  Don’t these people ever watch the news? I wondered.

  I made her move her car to a busier parking lot. She called me a worrywart.

  “Alton takes such good care of us,” said Teodora, sitting behind me. She massaged the back of my neck.

  Before you get the wrong idea about Teodora, I just think she’s one of those people who seem to overflow with love and warmth. And if my mother was right, and she did share some of her love with my seventy-six-year-old uncle, well, good for him, I thought. Good for both of them!

  “Used to be,” Trapp said, “when I’d go to a bridge tournament, I’d never stay in a hotel room. I’d just sleep on someone’s couch—if I was lucky enough to get the couch! There might be five or six of us bridge bums crashed out on the floor. Now I’m staying in a suite at a four-star hotel—with my entourage. You’d think I was a rock star!”

  “You are a rock star,” said Teodora.

  “And everything’s booked for Chicago,” Trapp added.

  “What’s Chicago?” I asked.

  “My next gig,” said Trapp. “Hah!”

  “The nationals are in Chicago this year,” said Gloria. “And I plan to pay for my own hotel room and airfare.”

  “Too late,” said Trapp. “Mrs. Mahoney has already done it online.”

  “He flies me to Chicago,” said Gloria. “Puts me up in a fancy hotel. Gosh, what will the neighbors think?”

  “Ooh-la-la,” said Teodora.

  “Hah!” laughed Trapp. “What else am I supposed to do with all my money?”

  In the back of my mind, I could hear my mother say, Now’s your chance, Alton! I could almost feel her elbow jabbing me in my side. Tell him about your father losing his job.

  I ignored my mother’s voice. I had my own agenda. “When you used to go to tournaments and sleep on floors,” I began, “was that when Annabel was your partner?”

  In my rearview mirror I saw Gloria cross her arms back and forth in front of her face, telling me not to go there.

  “No, that was before Annabel,” said Trapp. “When I was sleeping on floors, Annabel was playing bridge in the White House.”

  Despite Gloria’s gesture, I couldn’t let that pass.

  “The White House?” I asked.

  “Ike was an avid bridge player,” he said.

  Ike, in case you don’t know (I didn’t), was the nickname of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. When he ran for president, his campaign slogan was “I like Ike.”

  “Sounds like a TV sitcom,” I said.

  “TV was still new then,” my uncle said. “I remember we all had such high hopes for it. We thought it would bring culture to the masses. Hah! Little did we know that it would lower everyone’s cultural and moral standards.”

  “I like television,” said Teodora.

  “It was a different era back then,” said Gloria. “Nowadays, everyone walks around in their own little world, plugged into their cell phones or iPods. We used to interact more with each other. We played games like charades, or board games like Scrabble or Monopoly. And of course, the greatest game was bridge.”

  “Alton likes video games,” said my uncle. “He chases little pixels of light.”

  I ignored the remark. “So you were telling me about Annabel playing bridge in the White House?”

  In the rearview mirror, Gloria dragged her finger across her throat, but I pretended not to notice.

  42

  Annabel and Ike

  President Eisenhower had regular bridge games at the White House. To be invited to play was considered a tremendous honor. After Henry King was elected to the Senate, he insisted that his young wife learn to play, just in case such an opportunity arose.

  Annabel was only nineteen when her husband was elected senator, and she was thirteen years younger than he was. She had been a competitive diver, and nearly made the 1952 Olympic team. Henry King had watched the Olympic tryouts. He had seen her perfect body turning gracefully through the air. He overwhelmed her with his wealth and power, and they were married the day after her eighteenth birthday.

  In Washington, and no longer diving, the obedient wife channeled all her competitive energy into the game of bridge.

  “She would play once a week with other congressmen’s wives,” Trapp said. “They just played a penny a point, but she regularly came home with forty or fifty dollars. One time she won a hundred and seventy-seven, much to her husband’s displeasure.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I thought he wanted her to learn bridge.”

  “He wanted his wife to fit in with the other genteel and dignified ladies, eat little tea sandwiches, that sort of thing. He didn’t want a cardsharp. In fact, he used to tell her to try not to do so well.”

  Then the big moment came. Eighteen months after he was elected to the Senate, Senator King and his wife were invited to the White House to fill in at bridge.

  “This was what he had hoped for,” Trapp said, “but it turned out to be the most humiliating experience of his life. And it was only the first of a series of humiliations.”

  Eisenhower was quick to recognize Annabel’s bridge talent and, by comparison, Henry’s lack thereof. Every compliment he paid to Annabel was a slap in the face to her husband. The president made jokes at Henry’s expense. “Whenever Henry’s the declarer, there are two dummies!”

  The president, who had been a World War II general, believed that the same qualities that made him a successful leader also made him a good bridge player: judgment, patience, decisiveness, and most importantly, the ability to think clearly and plan ahead.

  “Annabel had all those qualities,” said Trapp. “Henry King had none of them. In the president’s eyes, King wasn’t just a bad bridge player, he was an incompetent fool.”

  But thanks to Annabel, the Kings became regulars at the White House bridge game. “She’s smarter than you, Henry, and a hell of a lot better-looking,” Eisenhower once said to him, only partially in jest. “Just what do you bring to the equation?”

  In the end, Henry King did what once would have been unthinkable to him. He turned down a presidential invitation, making up some excuse about why he couldn’t attend the bridge game.

  “That’s okay, Henry,” Ike said to him. “We don’t really want you anyway. Just send your charming wife.”

  That was the first time he hit her.

  “But it wasn’t the last,” Trapp said. “He also forbid her to ever play bridge again.”

  “You have to understand, Alton,” said Gloria, “those were different times. In many ways, a woman was considered the property of her husband.”

  “Especially if your husband was someone as rich and as powerful as Henry King,” said Trapp. “He was also thirteen years older than her, so she felt dominated in that way as well.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “If she never played bridge again, how did you and she become partners?”

  “Once bridge gets in your blood, it’s hard to quit. She started sneaking out of her house to play in bridge tournaments with one of the other wives from her bridge group. Of course, that woman didn’t have anywhere near Annabel’s skill.”

  “Which is why she called you,” I realized. “Not just to borrow a book.”

  “Perhaps,” said Trapp. “I didn’t know any of this when I first started playing with her. I didn’t know that if her husband found out she had been to a bridge tournament, he would beat her. ‘I am the King!’ that maniac would shout at her. ‘It is your duty to serve and protect the King!’”

  Annabel showed up at a tournament with a black eye. She laughed it off, claiming she had hit it against the
corner of the kitchen cabinet when she had bent down to pick up an almond. On the second day of the tournament she showed up with two black eyes.

  “That was when I learned the truth,” said Trapp.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “What could I do?” he asked me. “Like Gloria said, those were different times. Police rarely got involved in so-called domestic squabbles. They certainly wouldn’t get involved when the alleged wife beater was a very powerful senator from a very prominent family. I asked her to be more careful.”

  From the backseat, Gloria was once again gesturing for me to put an end to this discussion.

  “Would she ever redouble?” I asked.

  “What?”

  I repeated the question.

  “Redouble?” he asked. “What do you even know about redoubling?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’ve never seen anyone use the redouble card. I was curious if Annabel ever did.”

  “There’s usually no reason to redouble,” he said. “You have very little to gain, and a lot to lose.”

  “So she never did?”

  He smiled, thinking about her. “She did it all the time,” he admitted. “She’d do it to rattle the opponents. Shake their confidence. But before you ever think about redoubling, you better be able to play the cards as well as Annabel.”

  In the backseat, Teodora had joined Gloria in her effort to get me to change the subject, but I still had one more question. I needed to be very careful how I asked it. It required finesse.

  “When you first met Annabel,” I said, “how old was Sophie?”

  “Sophie?” he repeated. “She must have been … Hah!” he suddenly laughed. “You know why he’s asking that, don’t you?”

  Gloria and Teodora remained silent.

  “He thinks I’m Sophie’s father. Toni’s grandfather. My nephew is accusing me of adultery.”

  “No, I was just curious,” I said lamely. My blind uncle had seen right through me.