Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories (13 page)

I learned that whoever was dealing chose the form of the game. The deal passed from player to player in a clockwise direction. Betting within each round followed the same clockwise rule. Some games were called Draw; in those each player held his cards in his hand, not revealing them to anyone. He had to guess other players’ holdings from their behavior and their betting and how many cards they drew. Other games were Stud; each player’s cards lay overlapping on the table, forming a wiggly spoke toward the center, some cards faceup and some facedown. The down cards were called “the hole.” A player could look in his own hole but not in anybody else’s.

During my twenties I kept brief company with a fellow who played in a big-money weekly, and I discovered from him that my parents’ pastime had been poker in name only. “Two winners?” he said, laughing. (In my parents’ Stud games the best hand usually divided the money with the worst.) “What’s Chicago?” he wondered. The lowest spade in the hole split the pot with the high hand, I diffidently told him. “Racist nomenclature, wouldn’t you say?” he remarked.

“Oh dear.”

“I’m sure the gatherings were pleasant,” he quickly added.

White chips stood for nickels, red for dimes, blue for quarters. My mother was forbidden to deal her frivolous inventions like Mittelschmerz, where the most middling hand won, and Servitude, where you had to match the pot if you wanted to fold. The ante was a dime in Draw and a nickel in Stud. You couldn’t bet a dime in Stud until a pair was showing, and the amount of the raise could be no greater than the initial bet, and there were only three raises each round. In short: very small sums were redistributed among these friends. Even between them my parents rarely recovered the price of the sandwiches.

And yet everybody—or at least every man—played with ardor, as if something of great value were at stake: a fortune, a reputation, a king’s daughter.

T
HE PATRIARCH DEALT FIRST
that evening. “Five-card Draw,” he announced. “Ante a dime.”

He dealt five cards to everybody. From my chair I could see only Sam’s cards and my mother’s. Sam had a jack/ten and I knew he’d draw to it. My mother had a low pair and I knew she, too, would draw.

The patriarch turned to his left. “If you please.”

“Ten cents,” the cantor responded, and tossed in a red chip.

“Raise,” the rabbi said. Two red chips. He was sitting to the left of the cantor and to the right of Sam. I couldn’t see Sam’s face, only his crummy cards. Of the rabbi I could see only a portion of his curls.

“Call,” Sam said, matching the rabbi’s bet. He put in two red chips.

“Raise,” my mother said, on her silly pair of fives.

The usurer smiled and called. Dad passed a hand over his brow and called. The patriarch folded. Everybody else called.

The draw began. The cantor drew one card, the rabbi two, Sam three. My mother drew two. She picked up the five of clubs and a queen. The usurer drew one, and seemed to welcome the newcomer. My father drew one, and frowned, but that message, too, could have been false.

The next round of betting began with my mother. She bet ten cents. The usurer folded. Dad folded. The cantor folded. The rabbi tossed in a red chip. Sam folded, his shoulder shuddering.

The rabbi and my mother laid their cards on the table. He had three nines to her three fives.

Did it happen exactly that way? A deck of cards has fifty-two factorial permutations—fifty-three factorial times two if you use jokers. (The Torah study group didn’t play with jokers, though my mother had made a plea for their inclusion.) Fifty-two factorial is an enormous number. Roughly that many angels dance on any pin. Furthermore, two decades have passed since the night the rabbi’s three nines (missing the spade) beat my mother’s three fives (missing the diamond) in the first game of the weekly group. I would be wise to distrust my memory.

Yet I can see the moment as if it were happening now. The two of them inspect each other’s cards. My mother then smiles at the rabbi, looking up at his eyes. The rabbi smiles at my mother, looking down at the pile of chips.

“I was dealt two pairs,” says my father’s thrilling voice. “But I didn’t improve.

“I was dealt one pair,” my mother says.

“You raised on a pair?” my father says. “God help me.”

“I improved!”

“Insufficiently,” the usurer says, and smiles.

The rabbi leans forward and sweeps the pile of chips toward him. A white one rolls onto the floor. I pick it up, and idly stow it in the front pocket of my jeans.

At the Torah study group I learned the politesse of dealing, at least as it was practiced there. In Stud games, though everyone could see all the up cards, it was the custom for the dealer to name them as they appeared. Also he commented on the developing hands. “Another heart, flushing,” the cantor might have said in the second game, dealing to the rabbi. “Possible straight,” he said, as a nine followed an eight in front of Sam. “Good low,” as a four followed a six in my mother’s display. “No visible help,” he sympathized when the usurer’s jack of diamonds took on an eight of spades like a bad debt. “Who knows?” he would shrug sooner or later; and then, reverting to the Yiddish of his ancestors, “Vehr vaist?”
Vehr vaist?
was the standard interpretation of some unpaired, unstraightening, unflushing medium-value hodgepodge. If the player behind this mess didn’t fold when he received yet another unworthy card, the dealer’s “Vehr vaist?” became ominous, reminding us that there were cards we couldn’t see, things we couldn’t know.

On Sunday nights it was my job to refill the drinks, and to tell people on the telephone that my parents were out. This work kept me pretty busy. One of the calls was always from Margie.

“What’s he wearing?” she inquired by way of hello.

“A cassock.”

“Stop that! Torturer …”

“Gray pants, gray striped shirt, tan sweater.”

“Thanks. I’m absolutely devouring Rebecca at the Well, next week’s portion. Are you going to the ceremony for the Czech scroll?” And without waiting for an answer, “What are you wearing?” And without waiting for that answer, either, “I’m wearing an exceedingly biblical outfit. How old do you guess Rebecca was when she watered the stranger’s camel?”

“Thirty.”

“Thirteen!”

I went back to the game. The deal had gone around to the cantor again, or so I think I remember. Seven-card Stud. Now I stood behind the patriarch. My mother was wiping her glasses with a handkerchief. She wore glasses over her Wedgwood eyes to deflect admiration, my father had told me. His great-grandmother had achieved the same thing with a matron’s wig.

“The pair of queens bets,” the cantor said, nodding to the patriarch.

“Ten cents,” the patriarch said.

“I call,” the cantor said, making the cadence sound like the beginning of a declaration of love. Some thirty years earlier, just out of high school, he had fought on the beaches of Anzio. I figured he had picked up his rich tenor on the march north. He had met his wife in Paris, after the liberation.

Sam did not conceal his disappointment in the cards he was being dealt. But disappointment was different from misery. He became noticeably miserable when the game ended and he had to go home. Sam had two sons, but both had escaped from his gloomy house. One was a physiotherapist in New York and the other was something unspeakable on the West Coast—at any rate, Sam wouldn’t speak of him.

As far as I was concerned, Sam’s wife was as dead as Margie’s poor mother. She was just a pale face seen briefly at the kitchen window or an arm pulling down a second-floor shade. One rainy morning, when I was home from school with a cold, she ran down her front path after the mailman in order to give him a letter—perhaps one she’d forgotten to post, perhaps one that had been wrongly delivered. The mailman took the letter. Mrs. Sam turned and walked slowly back up the path. The wind further unsettled her scant red hair and her pink wrapper was coming undone and the rain lashed her squirrel face.

“Why is Mrs. Sam so strange?” I’d asked my mother.

“She drinks.” My mother knew about drinking. She worked in a family-service agency.

At ten thirty, right after the patriarch had taken an entire pot by winning both high and low, Mother pushed back her chair. “Count me out.”

“Already?” Sam moaned.

The men continued to play. My mother took the platter from the refrigerator and plugged in the coffee while I removed the empty beer glasses from the table and cut a defrosted carrot cake into eight slices. My mother loaded the glasses into the dishwasher, and I resumed my perch on the high stool and at last allowed myself to observe the rabbi. I did this at Margie’s behest. I myself was in love with our chemistry teacher.

The rabbi was about thirty. He had a doctorate in sociology as well as a certificate of ordination, and he knew how to play the guitar. He was haltingly eloquent. Since his arrival two years earlier, attendance at Saturday-morning services had swollen. Every Friday night, Margie washed her hair with shampoo and then with flea soap, which added body. On Saturday mornings she put on a velvet skirt and a blouse with romantic sleeves. She walked to the synagogue. After services she descended to the social hall and drank the sweet wine and the seed cookies the Sisterhood provided. Sooner or later she edged toward the rabbi. The women behind the refreshments stiffened. Poor motherless vamp! Margie said something about the Torah portion. The interpretation was always borrowed from the Hertz commentaries but the vivacity was all her own. The rabbi gave her a kindly reply. She moved away.

The game now being dealt was seven-card Stud. The rabbi unabashedly peeked twice at his hole cards. His eyes were as black as calligrapher’s ink. There were faint smudges under them. His hair made my fingers tingle. All at once I became unable to reconstruct the chemistry teacher’s face in my mind. The white chip I had picked up earlier scorched my groin. I was no longer peeking at the rabbi for Margie’s sake; now I was feasting my eyes on him for myself. I noticed that he had stopped checking on his pair. Through the medium of the darkened kitchen window, he was feasting his eyes on my mother.

That chilly replica of our kitchen in the window was like a photograph that a son of mine might one day look at; he’d cautiously name me and my parents and wonder about the identity of the other five figures—the theatrical man with the gray hair, the bearded old fellow, the Latin lover, the shrimp, the young man burning up inside. I thought of my inquisitive descendant, not yet born, and then I thought of the Czech Torah, alone in its locked room, waiting to be born again. I shivered and shook myself—not like a dog, I hoped, again eyeing the rabbi. Maybe like a water nymph?

The rabbi lost to the patriarch, as I recall. It was now the last game. Dad announced pot limit, an unbuckled end to the evening. Pot limit was five-card Draw: any number of raises allowed, and you could bet the amount that was already on the table.

My father dealt. Chips hit the table immediately. Dad’s was the only hand I could see. He wisely folded a jack/ten when it was his turn, but everybody else stayed in for three raises. At the draw everybody took two cards except for the rabbi, who took none.

There was a hoarse murmuring at this display of strength or nerve.

“Check,” the patriarch said.

“Check,” the cantor echoed.

The rabbi bet the pot. It amounted by then to five dollars or so.

“Too rich for me,” Sam said, and folded.

But the usurer, smiling his tolerant smile, raised back. The patriarch and the cantor folded.

And then the rabbi raised again. I stepped down from my stool and slid behind the patriarch. I heard a squish: the pumpkin on the windowsill had imploded. I passed the cantor and stopped behind the rabbi. He held four spades to the king, and the nine of clubs.

Shocked by this four-flush that our man of God was so recklessly promoting, I nonetheless managed to obey my father’s directions. I did not snicker, did not gasp, did not smile, did not frown, did not incline my head farther or change the angle of my shoulders or grip the back of the rabbi’s chair any tighter than I was already gripping it. But my forehead felt as if a flame had been brought very near, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that my hair was on fire.

The usurer glanced up in order to evaluate the rabbi’s face. He could not have avoided seeing mine, too. Who could fault him for misinterpreting my close-wrapped excitement?—I must be looking down on a royal straight flush, he’d have thought; or at least four of a kind.

“The pot’s yours,” the usurer said graciously to the rabbi. He showed his straight, which he was not obliged to do. The rabbi collapsed his own fan of cards with one hand and collected the discards with the other and merged his nothing with the other nothings. He was under no obligation to show what he’d held. I knew that good poker strategy recommended allowing yourself sometimes to be caught in a failed bluff. But a successful bluff is best not proclaimed, particularly one that you guess has been aided by the kibitzer behind your back. My father told me later that my face resembled a tomato.

T
HOUGH THE CEREMONY
to receive the Czech Torah was scheduled to begin at two o’clock, the entire congregation and a host of other people had assembled by a quarter before the hour.

We crowded into the pews of the sanctuary—an octagonal room paneled in light oak, its broad windows unmediated by stained glass. The room glowed in the radiant afternoon.