The Bridge Ladies (30 page)

Across the room Jackie and Dick are sitting with three other couples. They all must know how lucky they are. The odds are against them in marriages of over sixty years, with both spouses still in relatively good health. Every year, Dick and Jackie exchange anniversary cards. This year, their sixty-third, they picked out the same card for each other of a lion and a lioness. I nearly swoon; how romantic is that? Jackie brushes it off.

“Come on, don't you think it's incredible?”

Both of them independently cruising the racks at Walgreens or CVS and picking out the same card.

She shrugs.

“What do you think it means?” I urge her for an insight.

“That we're on the same page?”

Once Jackie told me that the secret to marriage was that she accepts Dick for who he is. It struck me as a completely radical concept. Was I supposed to accept my husband for who he is? Was I supposed to accept myself? On good days, we considered ourselves works in progress. Our parents didn't wonder what they would be when they grew up, or for that matter
if
they'd grow up. They were grown-up!

I notice Jackie is wearing her three-pronged ring. She told me some time ago that it was her lucky ring.

“Lucky for what?”

“Flying at first. I got it when we started flying and always wore it.”

“And now?”

“For life, I guess.”

Rhoda has come alone, but she mentions that she's seeing George later. He comes over every weekend, and she cooks a Shabbat meal for him on Friday night. More than once Rhoda has mentioned that George loves her cooking and he's always grateful.

“You can make him an egg and he loves it!”

They go to the movies, lectures, and plays. They socialize and travel. They go on cruises together! (The ladies believe they share a cabin.)

“George is a gentleman,” Rhoda says, and then to illustrate, “a gentleman in the truest sense of the word. He always opens doors and pulls your chair out.” They've never gone Dutch on anything!

It's clear that George meets Rhoda's high standards, and that's saying something. He even meets with Beth's approval. Rhoda naturally felt some trepidation the first time the two of them met. But the day went exceedingly well and Beth sent an e-mail that night: “I love him. He's a keeper!” Her son was also happy for her, happy for the companionship.

Once, when Bridge was at Rhoda's, Bette asked if George brought the flowers on the coffee table.

“George always brings flowers,” Rhoda said, a little cocky, and who can blame her: finding love in her eighties.

“Why don't you get married?” Bette asked.

“Then there'd be no flowers!” Rhoda laughs loudly at her own joke.

“It must be nice,” Bette said, “to have a companion, someone to watch TV with.”

“Don't be so naïve, Bette,” Rhoda shot back.

Rhoda and George have been together for three years. When I asked her if she was in love, she blushed. Then she said yes, very much so.

They are all here, the Bridge Ladies. If you didn't know them you would never guess that they've been together in a club for over fifty years, thousands of lunches, many more thousands of hands of Bridge. All the bowls of Bridge mix, the disputes over bad bids, the number of tricks taken, tricks lost. Their club has more staying power than most marriages. Children born, schooled, launched into the world. A tidal wave of worries, a string of happy days, a family singing together in a station wagon on a long ride home. The nest emptied. Husbands buried.
Sunrise
,
sunset.

I had assumed the Bridge Ladies' bond was inviolable, enviable. I imagined they confided their deepest secrets, confessed their worst fears, worried about their children, and groused about their husbands. You know: what happens at the Bridge table stays at the Bridge table. I often wished the ladies tasted some of our freedom to sleep with different guys before committing to one. My mother once said all cats are gray in the dark. As far as I know she didn't have a control group. I wished the ladies felt that they could have pursued careers: Bette on Broadway, my mother an author, Jackie her own travel agency, and Rhoda a
rabbi. Bea, well, she could have done anything: feed the hungry, start a social media company, or become a Grand Life Master at Bridge. I wanted them to confide in each other and draw comfort from doing so. I wanted them to hug!

Their periods never aligned like girls in a dorm, they never got high and drove through the winding roads of Woodbridge with the windows down, the volume up on a Bruce Springsteen ballad or a Bob Marley beat. They never did anything really stupid, rocked any boats, or went out very far on any limbs. They haven't fought any wars or even picketed any causes. For the most part, they upheld the conventions they were raised with. Mostly, they've hung in. They meant their marriage vows when they said them. They raised their children and they continue to help them into adulthood when they falter, meet with life's rough breaks: loss of jobs, divorce, health problems, money problems. When I stumbled out of the starting blocks of my life, my mother said she believed in late bloomers. And when I stumbled again, she repeated it. I never thought I would say this, but I think the Bridge Ladies are brave.

Driving my mother home from the memorial, my mother mentions a piece about the poet Edward Hirsch that she just read in the
New Yorker
(for the record, she is the only person I know who is up-to-date on her
New Yorker
s).

“Do you know him?”

“I don't know him but I've read him.”

“Really?”

“Mom, I have an MFA in poetry.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Why?”

“There's a piece on him in the current
New Yorker
, have you read it?”

“What about it?”
I'm like a year and half behind.

“Well, he lost a son and he's written a book about it. Something in there really touched me.”

“What about?”

“You'll read it, you'll see.”

“Just tell me.”

“It's about suffering.”

The conversation ends there. I go home and look up the article. I see it right away, the verse near the end of the piece:

Look closely and you will see

Almost everyone carrying bags

Of cement on their shoulders

That's why it takes courage

To get out of bed in the morning

And climb into the day.

“My life is over,” Bette confides in my mother when they are back on the trail a week or so after Arthur has died, their sensible shoes crushing the leaf rot as they turn the corners.

“It's not over, Bette,” my mother says. “It's shattered.”

How many times has my mother's life been shattered? Her father a tyrant, her coat in flames, pushing a sad carriage with a blank face. And what of our chapel, its shards of stained glass—yellow, orange, burnt orange—soldered together like an antique map. What is it like for my mother to return to this place? Her young life shattered; the pieces here?

Sometimes, when we were young and winters more brutal than they are now, ducks would come to our half-frozen
pond, fooled into thinking they could rest a while only to die, trapped beneath the encroaching ice. We'd beg our father to go out on the ice and save them. He'd tamp at the edge with his boot, attempt to take a step, only then you would hear it: ice cracking almost like electricity beneath the surface. We'd all step back then, both roused and relieved. Then we'd go back inside.
Empty-handed.

Bette finally returns to Bridge after a few more weeks. She says she feels as if she has lost half of her brain. She can't focus, can't concentrate. I don't imagine for a moment that returning to Bridge marks an actual turning point, rather some desire for camaraderie, some need to put on lipstick and pearls or to feel something familiar like a deck of cards with its elegant symmetry and iconic suits: Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades.

Lunch is at The Woodbridge Gathering, a very low-key deli with no emphasis on decor. A very sweet waitress brings over menus. The front pieces of her ponytail have come loose and swing back and forth in front of her glasses like windshield wipers. Bette is late. There has been some miscommunication between her and my mother; they were going to meet at a gas station for a tutorial. In the midst of this confusion, Bette slips in like the cat whose been missing for days. She pulls up a seat, and that's it: No royal welcome. No hugs or kisses. No one says anything.

I'm shocked. Bette has been gone for more than six months. She has lost Arthur. Am I living in a parallel universe where the expression of emotion is punishable by death? Couldn't they just once step down from Mount Rushmore and give someone a hug? Instead, talk meanders from topic to topic. Jackie's granddaughter is getting married in Maine. She likes the young man
very much. A conversation about paperless invitations ensues. Spoiler alert: the ladies do not like them.

When I see Bette next, I don't want to call attention to the fact that no one made much of her return, but I feel indignant on her behalf.

“Aren't you surprised there wasn't more of a welcome?”

“No, not really.”

“You mean you weren't upset when no one brought up Arthur? The memorial?”

Bette thinks more deeply now before answering. “No, I really wasn't. I would have brought it up if I needed to. I think they were being respectful of my feelings. Anyway, I didn't want to talk about it. It was nice to take my mind off it and just play Bridge.”

My mother and I take the plunge. We decide to go as partners to the Tuesday game at the Orange Senior Center, where we had taken Bridge lessons and where I played with Jonathan and nearly collapsed from anxiety. It's October and I haven't been able to get into New York to play at Honors, I haven't been able to find a peer group to play with in New Haven, and I'm worried that I will forget everything. We goad each other on and finally find a Tuesday to play. I've been studying my Bridge books more, playing on my app, and have told myself to relax. I can handle it this time. It's my mother who is intimidated and a little freaked out, as if she's getting into bed with someone new after being with the same person her whole life. She knows her way around the Monday game with the ladies, but the players here are known to be fierce; some play every day of the week.

I have newfound respect for how my mother has managed since my father died nearly a decade ago. She never asks for
help with the big things, finances and house repairs, and has a handyman do everything else: change lightbulbs, install a new mailbox, and clean the gutters. I've always thought of her as completely dependent, somewhat bumbling even. That was the dynamic between her and my dad. He was the person who got things done. As he declined, it was left to her to take care of everything, gradually then completely. When I ask her how she did it, she said, “Dad had taken care of everything. After he got sick, I'd push myself out of bed every day and say, ‘You're up. It's your turn. You're at bat.'”

I have a newfound respect for the seniors at the Orange Senior Center, too. The place is lousy with hearing aids, walkers, accessories that could make a drag queen weep. The men come with flip phones attached to their belts in leather cases like Eagle Scouts. But they're fierce. They know their way around a hand of Bridge and I suspect a whole lot more. How many collective compromises, broken hearts? How many in safe marriages, or worse, unsafe? Some have cheated on their spouses or never loved them; some have broken their children's spirits; doubtless some were broken themselves. How many bags of cement?

Inside, the room is filling fast, and it's that same old feeling of musical chairs. My mother and I nab seats with a man and woman though it's not clear if they are a couple. Only when the man makes a mistake, the woman rips him a new one, which leads me to think they are married. I can't tell if we've been dealt fairly straightforward hands that are easier to bid, but we bid and make three out of four hands. Next we play with Bea and her partner. She introduces us and we exchange chitchat, but when the bell rings, it's all business. It's my deal and when I open my hand I have exactly thirteen points and five Spades, including the Ace, King, Queen in honors.

“One Spade,” I say, confidently.

“A Spade, you say,” my mother replies conspiratorially, running her fingernail against the fan of cards worthy of a Liberace glissando.

We will make that hand and more before moving to the last table, where my mother recognizes a woman whom she knew a hundred years ago and they exchange pleasantries. She whispers that she'll fill me in later, implying that the woman is a real piece of work.

Overall, we win half the hands we play and feel very positive about our partnership. Bridge made a team out of us. Three hours later, no worse for wear, we leave the center.

“We weren't the worst,” I say.

“Far from it. You were really good, Betsy. You're a lot better than you think you are.”

“Would you play again?”

“Definitely,” she says.

It's still light out, but cooler now. As we head across the parking lot, my mother looks at me, “Aren't you going to button your coat?”