The Cardturner: A Novel About Imperfect Partners and Infinite Possibilities Page 4

  “Why are diamonds trump?” Leslie asked me.

  I just used that as an example. A different suit is trump for each hand. It had to do with the bidding, which I still didn’t quite understand.

  A person plays a card and the next three people all have to play a card of that same suit. The person who plays the highest card wins the trick. If you can’t follow suit, you can either discard or play a trump. There are a total of thirteen tricks in each hand of bridge.

  13

  In the Garbage

  I got to thinking. Toni Castaneda had been Trapp’s cardturner before me, before she asked, “Are you sure?” But how could she have taken him to the bridge studio during the week? School had only just ended.

  “She’s homeschooled,” my mother explained. “Uncle Lester taught her bridge as one of her courses. They wouldn’t let a girl like her into a real school. She’d freak out!”

  “Why? What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s nuts. The whole family is nuts. Her mother, her grandmother. Did you know they could be extremely wealthy, but Sophie threw their money in the garbage? And I don’t just mean a few million dollars. I’m talking real money.”

  I always thought a few million dollars was real money. “What do you mean she threw it in the garbage?” I asked.

  “Just what I said,” said my mother. “In the garbage!”

  She then explained that Sophie Castaneda’s father had been Henry King, one of the wealthiest men in America. “Sophie didn’t appreciate her parents and all they did for her. She ran away from home when she was fifteen, and when she turned eighteen she legally divorced them.”

  “You can do that?” I asked.

  “Don’t be smart,” said my mother.

  Sophie eventually married Martin Castaneda, and they had a daughter, Toni. Sophie had refused to let her father ever see his granddaughter, or even talk to her on the telephone.

  Sophie’s father’s lawyers sent her a letter, trying to arrange a meeting between grandfather and granddaughter. They offered Sophie five hundred thousand dollars for a onetime visit, and one million dollars per year after that for regular monthly visits. In addition, her dad promised to include both daughter and granddaughter in his will.

  It was the letter that Sophie had thrown in the garbage. She sent a short note back to the lawyers. My daughter is not for sale. When Henry King died, years later, he didn’t leave them a penny.

  14

  National Championship

  Cliff wanted to know how much money Trapp got for winning.

  Nothing. He earned masterpoints.

  Gloria explained it to me after the game on Saturday while Trapp was in the men’s room.

  She said there are bridge clubs in almost every city in the United States, and that they’re all part of the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL). The results of each and every game are sent to the ACBL. That organization keeps track of who won, and awards masterpoints.

  That first day I was his cardturner, when Gloria and Trapp won, there had been fourteen tables, so they won 1.4 masterpoints. Notice the decimal point. That’s one and four-tenths. You need five hundred masterpoints to become a Life Master.

  “Is Trapp a Life Master?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said.

  “Are you?”

  She said she was. I asked her how many masterpoints she had.

  “A little over five thousand.”

  “Wow!”

  “There are higher rankings than Life Master. At one thousand points you become a Silver Life Master. At 2,500 you’re a Gold Life Master, and you need 5,000 to be a Diamond Life Master.”

  “So you’re a Diamond Life Master,” I said.

  She shrugged as if it were no big deal, but I could tell by her smile that she was proud of her accomplishment.

  “How many masterpoints does Trapp have?”

  “Eleven thousand.”

  I wasn’t surprised.

  “How about Wallace?” I asked. I wondered if there was some sort of competition between Gloria and Wallace.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think about eighteen hundred. He’s a very strong player. Much better than I am. He just doesn’t play as often.”

  “What’s the highest rank you can get?” I asked.

  “Grand Life Master,” said Gloria. “You need ten thousand masterpoints for that.”

  “So Trapp’s a Grand Life Master.”

  She shook her head. “No. To be a Grand Life Master, you also need to win a national championship.”

  So far, I had just taken Trapp to club games. It turns out there are also bridge tournaments, where you can earn a greater number of masterpoints if you win, but the competition is much tougher.

  There are three types of tournaments: sectionals, regionals, and nationals. In order for Trapp to win a national championship, he would have to win a major event at a national tournament.

  “Has he ever played in a national?” I asked.

  “Only one time, but listen to me, Alton,” she said, suddenly sounding very serious. “You must never ask your uncle about that.”

  “Why, what happened?”

  She stared at me a moment, then just shook her head. “That was over forty years ago,” she said. “It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “Well, do you think he’ll ever try again?” I asked.

  “I think that’s the reason he’s started playing again, despite his illness, or maybe because of his illness. He wants to give it one last shot.” She looked me straight in the eye and said, “That’s why you’re here.”

  In the back of my mind I heard my mother’s sweet and loving voice: Don’t screw it up, Alton.

  15

  The Perfect Partner

  Trapp came out of the men’s room. “How’d we do?” he asked.

  “Fifty-nine percent,” I said. “Second place.”

  “I should have switched to the ten of clubs at trick two,” he said.

  He was speaking to himself. He knew I didn’t know what he was talking about. He was still muttering about club switches and heart tricks as I led him out to the car.

  Gloria probably shouldn’t have told me not to ask him about the last time he played in a national tournament. As I drove him home, it was all I could think about. What wouldn’t Gloria tell me? After all, what’s the worst that can happen at a bridge tournament?

  “So, who’s your partner going to be for the national tournament?” I asked. “Gloria or Wallace?”

  (Gloria didn’t say I couldn’t ask him about that tournament, just not the one forty years ago.)

  “What!” he snapped. “Who said anything about playing in the nationals?”

  “Gloria just mentioned—”

  “Gloria’s a dreamer. How am I supposed to compete against the best players in the world when I can’t even see the cards?”

  “You see the cards better than anyone,” I said.

  “Hah!” he scoffed, but I noticed a hint of a smile. “You may find this hard to believe, Alton,” he said, “but bridge is tiring. I get worn out after just one session. That probably sounds strange to you. From your point of view, all I do is sit on my keester for three hours.”

  “No, I know,” I said. “It’s like I told my friend Cliff. Bridge is more like a sport than a game. A mental sport.”

  “At tournaments you play two sessions per day,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m up to it. I don’t know if they’ll even let me play.”

  “They have to let you play.”

  “Tournaments have strict rules,” he said. “The club is willing to accommodate me and my cardturner. You may not be allowed to sit with me at a tournament.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  “There’s a sectional tournament in two weeks,” Trapp said. “Gloria’s checking with the ACBL to see if I’ll be allowed to compete.”

  “So then she’ll be your partner?”

  “If I play.”

  We drove in sil
ence for a while. He could sue them, I thought, if they wouldn’t let him play in the tournament.

  “Gloria has more masterpoints than Wallace,” I said, “but she says that’s because she’s played a lot more. She says he’s a better player than she is.”

  “They’re both excellent players,” he said. “I’m honored to play with them.”

  “But you’re better,” I said.

  “They can see the cards,” he said, as if that made a difference.

  “You had a seventy-two percent game with Wallace,” I said. “I think he should be your partner for the nationals.”

  He sighed.

  I thought that would be the end of it, but then he said, “Wallace can play the cards better, but Gloria is a better partner.”

  I didn’t understand.

  “Like you said, bridge is a sport,” he explained. “But it’s a team sport. You and your partner have to work together. Wallace is like a basketball player who’s always shooting the ball. He can make some amazing shots, but he wouldn’t have to take those shots if he passed the ball more often.”

  It was too bad, I thought, that Gloria couldn’t play the cards as well as Wallace, or that Wallace couldn’t be as good a partner as Gloria.

  “I guess it’s hard to find the perfect partner,” I said.

  “Wallace and Gloria are still looking,” he replied.

  I doubted that.

  We drove in silence for a while, but then he said, “It’s easier to find a wife.”

  I turned off Ridgecrest onto Skyline, then made my way up the tangled web of streets toward his house.

  I thought our conversation had come to an end, but he surprised me. “I used to have the perfect partner,” he said. “Used to have a wife, too.”

  “Were they the same person?” I asked.

  “No, sisters.”

  I waited for more, but there was no further explanation. I glanced over. His jaw was set tight and it seemed as though his face had turned to stone.

  16

  The Milkman and the Senator’s Wife

  As I drove back to my house, I tried to put the pieces together in my mind. About forty years ago, Trapp had been married. His wife’s sister was his “perfect” bridge partner. Then something happened at a bridge tournament. Trapp’s partner went insane, he and his wife got divorced, and he never played in a national tournament again.

  His wife’s crazy sister, his perfect partner, was the mother of Sophie Castaneda, who was the one who threw the letter in the garbage.

  Sophie was the mother of Toni, who had yelled “Shut up! Leave me alone!” at me when we were six, and who had also made the terrible mistake of asking Trapp, “Are you sure?”

  I don’t know if that makes any sense to you, but it didn’t to me.

  When I got home I asked my mother how long she had known Sophie Castaneda.

  She flinched at the name. “I’ve known of her for a very long time. I’ve only met her a few times.”

  “Did you ever meet Sophie’s mother?”

  “No.”

  “Then why do you think she was insane?”

  “I don’t just think she was insane,” said my mother. “She was sent to an asylum.”

  “Is that why Sophie divorced her mother?”

  “Sophie didn’t divorce her real mother,” my mother corrected me. “Senator King remarried after Sophie’s mother was put in the insane asylum.”

  “Sophie’s father was a senator?” This was news to me.

  “He would have made a damn good president, too,” my mother added.

  “So what kind of crazy things did Sophie’s mother do?”

  “Everything. The way she lived was crazy! She was the reason Henry King never became president. Mind you, I was just a little girl at the time, but I heard stories. One time, she gave the milkman a thousand dollars for his clothes.”

  I had never heard of a milkman. I supposed it was like being a mailman, only with milk instead of mail.

  “He was still wearing them at the time,” my mother continued. “She paid him to take off his clothes and give them to her. And then she made him wear her dress and all her underneath things.”

  “And he wore them?”

  “For a thousand dollars, he did. That was a lot of money in those days.”

  I thought it was a lot of money in these days. I walked down the hall into my room and tried to make sense of what my mother had told me. I wondered if she had her story straight.

  I hate to say this about my own mother, but she doesn’t always know what she’s talking about.

  I picked up a deck of cards and practiced shuffling. Gloria had taught me how to shuffle cards so that they’d flutter perfectly together.

  If it was something my mother had heard when she was just a little girl, then who knows who told it to her, or how much of it she understood? It seemed to me that maybe the senator’s wife had been doing something else with the milkman, and the senator came home unexpectedly, and they both just grabbed whatever clothes were the closest. That made a little more sense, but either way, my uncle’s “perfect partner” sounded a bit weird, to say the least.

  17

  Finesse

  Besides trying to find out what happened forty years ago, I was also trying to figure out bridge. I never admitted it to my uncle, but I paid attention to every card he played and listened closely to all the bridge gibberish, trying to make some sense out of it.

  I learned what it meant to finesse.

  Suppose Gloria is dummy, and has both the ace and queen of spades. (We won’t worry about her other cards.)

  Trapp would like to win two spade tricks. The ace will win one, of course, but he also would like to win a trick with the queen. But how can he do that? One of the defenders still has the king of spades.

  The answer lies in a play known as a finesse. It will only work if the West hand is the one with the king.

  Trapp will lead the ♠2. Let’s say West plays the ♠5. Then Trapp will tell dummy to play the ♠Q, which will win the trick. If instead West plays the ♠K, Trapp will play the ♠A from dummy, and then win the next trick with the ♠Q. No matter which card West plays, he’s screwed.

  “That’s so cool!” Leslie said when I showed this to her.

  I thought it was cool too.

  It only worked because West had the ♠K. If East had the king, then she’d be able to win a trick with it. A finesse gives you a 50 percent chance.

  Once I understood it, I noticed finesses popping up a lot.

  This time Trapp hopes that East has the K. If so, he can finesse it by leading the eight from dummy. If East plays the king, Trapp plays the ace. If East doesn’t play the king, Trapp plays the queen.

  You can also finesse queens.

  Gloria leads the ♣4, and hopes that East has the ♣Q. If East plays a small club, Gloria can win the trick with dummy’s jack.

  By the way, when I showed this to Leslie, I used real cards, not a bridge diagram. If you find it difficult to follow the diagrams, try using a real deck. For the first hand, you can also try dealing East the king of spades instead of West, and you will see why the finesse won’t work.

  A finesse is a cool play that allows you to win two tricks with the ace and queen of a suit, even though one of your opponents holds the king. It has a 50 percent chance of success, depending on which one of your opponents holds that king.

  18

  The Housing Crisis

  Nights were the hardest for me. I usually didn’t think too much about Katie, or Cliff and Katie, during the day, and even if I did, I was strong enough to handle it. I was weaker at night and sometimes came close to calling her even though I knew I’d regret it.

  I had to force myself to think about something else. Sometimes I would deal out bridge hands. I’d play all four hands, pretending I didn’t know which cards were in each hand. Leslie would sometimes join me, but on this night, I was alone.

  It was Wednesday. Trapp had played with Wallace earlie
r in the day, and they had won with a 61 percent game. They had argued after every hand, but not as much as they had when they’d had their 72 percent game.

  There was a knock on my door. A moment later my parents entered, Leslie in tow. Her eyes were red, and my parents wore very somber expressions.

  My first thought was that Uncle Lester had died.

  “What’s wrong?”

  My father got right to the point. “My company is having to cut back,” he said. “I was fired.”

  “You weren’t fired,” said my mother. “You were laid off.”

  I’d heard vaguely about something called “the housing crisis,” but it didn’t mean much to me until that moment.

  What happened was this. A lot of banks made bad loans. People couldn’t pay them back, and many people lost their homes. The banks lost a lot of money and stopped making new loans, which meant people stopped buying houses, which meant builders stopped building houses, which meant nobody needed insulation material. Which meant my father was out of a job.

  “Are we going to have to move?” Leslie asked.

  “We’ll be fine,” my mother assured her, or maybe it was herself she was assuring. Then, turning to my father, she said, “You hated that job anyway, always itching all the time.”

  “So, how are things going between you and Uncle Lester?” my father asked me. “Are you two bonding?”

  “I guess.”

  “Has he mentioned his will?” asked my mother.

  “No.”

  “Do you know if he even has a will?” asked my father.

  “No, Dad, strange as it may seem, Trapp and I haven’t talked about his will.”

  “Well, you need to find out if he has one,” said my mother.

  “And when it was last updated,” said my father.