Four of a Kind

by Valerie Frankel

  “Your nihilism is bad for the children,” he said, which made her laugh.

  Bess peeked at her pocket cards. Two of hearts and five of diamonds. A terrible hand. Rags. She should fold.

  She said, “Raise five.”

  Carla said, “Tim, the paella smells amazing.”

  Alicia said, “I hope it’s done soon. I’m dying of hunger.”

  Robin said, “Is it spicy?”

  “You bet,” said Tim. He yelled, “Joe! Five minutes’ dinner warning!”

  “I can’t eat it,” sighed Robin. “Spicy makes my stomach crazy.” She dealt the flop.

  Nothing good for Bess. No pairs, nor a possible straight. She said, “Raise twenty.”

  Carla said, “You’re raising twenty, no royals, no straight cards, no flush draws. Either you have a pair of aces, or you’re bluffing.”

  Alicia folded. “All night long, she’s had a pair of aces or was bluffing.”

  Robin folded, too. “A confounding new strategy?”

  “It’s called having fun,” said Bess. “Life is short. I might as well go for it every hand.”

  Carla folded and said, “You’re usually the first to fold.”

  Robin turned over Bess’s pocket cards. “Squat.”

  “I bluffed,” said Bess.

  “You don’t go from cautious to reckless overnight,” said Robin. “I do, but you? No.”

  She thinks she knows me so well, thought Bess, who shrugged and said, “I had a lumpectomy last week.”

  Stunned silence from the women. Tim in the kitchen froze, mid-pour, and then spilled wine.

  Carla said, “You didn’t call me?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone,” said Bess. “Except Borden and the kids.”

  “But I could have helped,” said Carla, “or recommended a surgeon at LICH.”

  “I went to Sloan-Kettering,” said Bess. “I had two surgeons in the O.R., actually. The breast surgeon, and a plastic surgeon, in case. If the lump was obviously cancer, they would’ve done a mastectomy and reconstruction.”

  “But it wasn’t cancer,” said Robin.

  “Benign.”

  “Jesus, Bess,” said Alicia. “You must have been terrified.”

  Carla leaned back, scowling. “Why would you choose to go to a hospital in the city, when the hospital two blocks from your house has excellent facilities and surgeons?”

  “Sloan-Kettering is the best,” said Bess. “Everyone knows that.”

  “I don’t know that,” said Carla, clearly offended.

  Bess shrugged. “I’m sorry you’re insulted, Carla. But your feelings were not a high priority for me last week.”

  Another silence. Tim coughed and said, “I’ll check on Joe.”

  Robin made slow, steady eye contact with Alicia and Carla. She said, “I’ll speak for the group. We’re glad you’re all right. But we would have loved to help you and support you. We still want to help. What can we do?”

  “Nothing,” said Bess. “What could you have done for me? You couldn’t have the surgery for me. Or taken the pain for me. I didn’t want people around. The boys got a crash course in learning how to take care of themselves. It’s about time they did. Amy doesn’t need me anymore. Borden managed with everything else.”

  Alicia said, “We could have kept you company. Played Brooklyn Hold ’Em, bedside.”

  Bess shrugged again. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Robin said, “I think it’s weird that you didn’t tell us.”

  “Agreed,” said Alicia.

  “I wasn’t broadcasting the news,” said Bess. “It was a private thing. I kept it within the family. And we’re not in the habit of doing things for each other, unless it’s a consequence of winning at cards. Look, I really like you all. But five months ago, we didn’t know each other to say ‘Hi.’ I wouldn’t expect you to rush to my hospital bed or to drop your lives to hold my hand. I didn’t want that. I didn’t need it. If you’re upset, I apologize for not telling you before. I’m telling you now.”

  “Keeping us abreast,” muttered Alicia.

  Robin said, “You’re acting like this is no big deal.”

  “It’s not!” said Bess. “I had a harmless lump. It’s gone. End of story. Nothing to circle the wagons about. And now that that’s out of the way, let’s eat!” Cupping her hands around her lips, she yelled, “Tim! We’re starving out here!”

  “If this was no big deal, why the big nihilism announcement? Which, by the way, is making a bit more sense,” said Alicia. “But not really. You’re acting odd.”

  “Like they took out the lump, and put in an attitude,” said Robin.

  Carla said, “No, she’s being pragmatic. I respect that.” To Bess, she said, “I’m not insulted that you chose Sloan-Kettering over LICH. That’s a personal decision that you make with your family. There’s no reason any of us should discuss it with each other. Bess’s right. We hardly know each other. We play cards once or twice a month. That’s all.”

  “We’re spiraling downward,” said Robin. “We do better when we talk about men and sex.”

  Alicia shushed Robin as Tim and Joe came into the living room/kitchen area.

  Tim said, “Are we ready to eat, or do you need a few more minutes?”

  Carla said, “We do better when we don’t talk at all. Let’s just play cards.” The Black Queen hugged a pillow to her chest, as if donning a protective shield.

  “Don’t be so touchy, Carla,” said Bess, sounding obnoxious even to her own ears. “You’re totally overreacting. I had no idea you were so sensitive.”

  “Back that up,” said Carla. “You can edit that sentence to ‘I had no idea,’ and leave it at that. She’s right. We are a bunch of strangers.”

  “And diverse!” said Alicia, trying to keep it light. “Maybe this is the night we finally make some plans for the committee. Bess?”

  Bess shrugged, her new favorite gesture. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “We’re not strangers, Carla,” said Robin.

  “What are we?” demanded Carla.

  None of them knew what to say.

  Except Tim. “We’re hungry?” he asked.

  “That is true,” said Alicia.

  Carla stared at the wall, or the stack of boxes against it. The woman was clearly uncomfortable, as if she were among enemies, not friends. Bess looked from woman to woman, and saw each as if she’d suddenly removed a mask. The faces seemed off, askew. Who were they, really? A random collection of mothers. She’d told them she had a lumpectomy, inelegantly, perhaps, and how did they react? They were angry at her!

  Bess should have known that Alicia, Carla, and Robin would disappoint her. Like Amy, who reacted to the news of the lump by saying, “I don’t want to get cancer!” and then, after Borden took her to her room for a chat, she sulked behind her closed door all night long. Simone had been even worse. She didn’t return Bess’s explicit voicemail—“I might have breast cancer, Mom”—for three days. When Simone finally did phone, she spent the first ten minutes of their eleven-minute conversation apologizing for not calling sooner, but she was in Johannesburg attending a conference on women’s rights and she couldn’t get a signal. “But how are you?” asked Simone, finally, the line crackling and patchy. All Bess could think to say was, “I’m fine.”

  And she was fine. No cancer. Tiny scar on her otherwise enviable breast (for her age and number of children). There was nothing wrong with her, and why should she expect or hope to be treated with special kindness by anyone? None was forthcoming, except from Borden and her boys. Eric, Charlie, and Tom had been sweet, making cards for her, bringing her snacks on the breakfast tray. They wrote and performed a little play for her, pretending to be gods from Mount Olympus, looming from on high, deciding her happy fate. Bess had been treated better by the men in her life than the women.

  In Alicia’s seedy apartment, the silence grew, as each woman waited for the others to speak. Tim gave Joe a bowl of paella, and the boy knew enough to flee from the tox
ic air in the main room.

  Tim, on the other hand, was not going anywhere in a hurry.

  “Here’s how we’ll do it, women,” he said. “We’re going to eat, and then we’re going to play cards. You don’t have to say a single word to each other for the rest of the night. But no one leaves until this horrible tension breaks.”

  Bowing to the will of the only man in the room, the four women did as they were told.

  8

  Carla

  If Carla needed one word to best define her life, it would be: “Hurry.” Constantly behind schedule at the clinic, she hurried through patients. Then she hurried home to make dinner for Zeke and Manny. She was getting sick of hearing herself say, “Let’s go,” and “Move it or lose it.” When her sons dallied, she took it personally. She’d made the necessary concession to let them walk to the clinic after school by themselves. The boys liked being trusted with a taste of independence, if only for the ten minutes it took them to get from Brownstone to LICH. But they resented having to do their homework in her office for two or three hours until she finished for the day. They preferred hanging out at Bess’s or Robin’s.

  Boo-hoo and too bad, thought Carla, washing her hands at the sink for the tenth time that day. Was it wrong to deprive them of Pop-Tarts and YouTube? She liked her children where she could see them. Bess let her kids run wild. Last week, when Carla arrived to pick up the boys from the Clinton Street townhouse, Bess yelled up the stairs, and the kids came running down. Carla calmly asked Bess what they’d been doing all afternoon, and Bess just shrugged. They could’ve been watching Internet porn for all Bess knew (or seemed to care).

  Robin was hardly more vigilant. The last time Carla picked up her sons there, Robin was making Zogby calls while Zeke, Manny, and Stephanie were in the living room watching an R-rated movie on HBO. Carla walked in on them in time to see a gunman (black, of course) in a speeding taxi shooting bullets at a family of four (white) in a station wagon on the highway. Carla tried to turn off the TV, but there was no switch so she asked authoritatively for the remote. Stephanie, clearly not used to decisive voices, got flustered and couldn’t find the box. Carla told her to look harder, and the girl started to cry. Enter Robin, who looked stunned to find her daughter upset, Carla fuming, Manny and Zeke chagrined, and the TV blasting machine gunfire. Robin managed to turn the damn thing off and apologized. But Carla knew: Robin wasn’t sorry. She was angry that Carla made her daughter cry. Was Carla the only mother left in the world who tried to shield her children from the garbage that came at them from every direction?

  That was the last time Carla had seen or spoken to Robin. Bess was checked out emotionally, mentally, or both. Alicia had been flying under the radar for weeks. Carla’s only contact with the other players had been Bess’s emails to the entire Brownstone mailing list about the upcoming winter fund-raiser. A Seventies-theme casino night. As the winner of the last poker game, Bess extorted promises from Carla, Robin, and Alicia that they’d all attend. The event wasn’t for another couple of weeks (thank God), so Carla wouldn’t have to think about it. She hated parent-oriented events at Brownstone. She felt conspicuous, like a raisin in a bowl of oatmeal.

  Carla wondered if their most recent, painfully awkward committee meeting was their last. None of the women seemed motivated to set a date, or even discuss what had happened. The game might’ve run its course. Claude would be delighted to hear it. He’d been hinting that Carla should make new, other (black) friends. He wanted to go on couples dates. The boys were older, he said. They were responsible enough to walk from school to the clinic. Why couldn’t they stay alone at home for a few hours, so Carla and Claude could go out by themselves?

  “If the Obamas can make time for a weekly date night, so can we,” he said one night in bed after they’d made love.

  Carla had been thrown by Claude’s sudden romanticism. Since the last card night (it annoyed Carla that the others still referred to it as a “committee meeting”), when she’d come home complaining, Claude had been more attentive. He fixed the bathroom door. He brought home eggs. Was Carla’s disconnect with Alicia, Bess, and Robin an aphrodisiac for him? He must’ve felt neglected, or resentful that she’d ventured so far afield. Now she was back, and disheartened. The game had cooled; Claude had heated up. Being pleased with herself for having a happy man at home was nothing to be ashamed of.

  “Are you still at the sink?” said Tina, her impatient nurse. “You can’t wash the black off, Mommy.”

  Carla snapped back to the present. Embarrassed, she turned off the water and dried her hands. She’d been zoning out so often lately. Her focus was slipping. Tina was holding out a couple of charts.

  “Last two, right?” asked the doctor. She’d already seen thirty patients today.

  “And then we’re done for the weekend,” said Tina. “Exam room one, ear infection. Room two, fungal rash.”

  “I love to end the workweek with a contagious skin condition,” said Carla. “Check in on the boys, would you, please? Make sure they’re not on my office computer.” The lure of illicit websites was too much for them. At home, she had parental controls on the computer. But not here.

  Tina agreed, and literally pushed Carla through the door of exam room one, where a girl and her mother waited.

  “Don’t I know you?” asked the woman.

  Carla lifted her eyes from the girl’s chart to take a closer look. Yes, the mother and daughter were familiar to her. The woman was well dressed, a heavyset black woman—Caribbean black, Carla guessed. She was professionally dressed in a black skirt and flat-heeled boots, but the bright red jacket spiced up her look. Carla should try more jackets, not rely so much on scarves and voluminous sweaters to camouflage her thick midsection.

  “Carla Morgan,” she said, holding out her hand to the woman, a Mrs. Hobart, according to the chart. “I think I’ve seen you at Brownstone. My sons are in the fourth and seventh grade there.”

  “Okay, yes, I can place you now,” said Mrs. Hobart, smiling faintly. “Shauna is in second grade.”

  Carla turned to Shauna and asked, “It hurts?” She snapped on some gloves, and unhooked the otoscope from the wall charger. The girl nodded. “Let me take a look.”

  She examined the child’s ears—both of them red, but not full of fluid. “This is your first visit to the clinic?” she asked.

  “We usually go to Dr. Stevens’s on Remsen Street,” said Mrs. Hobart, speaking of a pediatrician in private practice in the Heights. A kind and smart man. When he sent patients to the hospital for testing, Carla often worked with him. “He’s out of town this week, and his office referred us here,” Mrs. Hobart explained.

  Carla nodded. Thank God for Dr. Stevens. A referral from one of his patients meant a $50 co-pay and a nice chunk from private insurance.

  “She started complaining about her ear yesterday,” said Mrs. Hobart. “I’m embarrassed I waited a whole day to bring her in.”

  One day? That was lightning speed. Carla said, “Well, from the look of it, Shauna’s infection is only just starting. I might not have noticed much evidence of infection yesterday.”

  “Thanks for saying that,” said Mrs. Hobart. “I still feel guilty.”

  Carla smiled at her patient, and then the mother. “You have nothing to feel guilty about. I’ll write you a prescription for antibiotics.” Seeing Shauna’s reaction, Carla added, “Bubblegum flavor. How’s that sound?”

  The girl smiled and said, “Thank you, ma’am.”

  What a polite, well-behaved child! Carla replied, “You’re very welcome.”

  “We have a church retreat planned for this weekend,” said Mrs. Hobart.

  “Where to?” asked Carla.

  “A mountain lodge in upstate New York.”

  “Mohonk?” asked Carla. “Our church sponsored a family retreat there last year.”

  “Same place,” said Mrs. Hobart. “So you can understand how much we’re looking forward to it.”

  “I’ll give Sh
auna her first dose now. If you can dose her again at bedtime, she’ll feel better in the morning. I see no reason you can’t go on the trip. Just bring the medicine with you.”

  “You are a lifesaver, Dr. Morgan,” said Mrs. Hobart, eyes filled with relief and gratitude.

  Carla basked in the woman’s appreciation and respect. What a refreshing shift, not having to absorb annoyance, anger, and blame for making a diagnosis. “Call me Carla,” she said.

  “Renee.”

  The two women smiled at each other, and Carla registered a click-into-place feeling that one gets upon discovering a like-minded soul. While Carla wrote a prescription, she glanced at the contact information sheet in the chart. Renee Hobart had listed her employer as a law firm in the city. Was she married? Carla had to check, out of rank curiosity. Yes. A husband and father in the picture. His contact info had him working at the same firm. A gainfully employed, professional, churchgoing, African-American couple. Exactly what Claude had in mind for couples dates. Come to think of it, why include the husbands at all? Carla and Renee could have a thing. Her poker game seemed to be crumbling. Those friendships hadn’t been based on anything concrete, anyway. She and Renee, on paper at least, had so much in common.

  She felt the urge to say something, ask her to coffee, but it seemed inappropriate. Maybe she’d email her next week? Did she need an excuse? If so, what would that be?

  Incredibly, Renee (a mind-reader?) said, “I know you’re very busy—so am I—but I’d love to grab coffee after drop-off some morning.”

  “Me, too!” blurted Carla, sounding way too eager.

  “Great,” said Renee. “I’ll give you my card.”

  The women exchanged paper—business card for prescription slip—and an understanding. Carla felt buoyed by the unexpected friendly encounter. She sailed through her next and last exam of the day, a little boy whose feet were crawling with fungus. His openly hostile mother scowled at her child for not knowing exactly when his toes started itching, and at Carla while she explained the lengthy treatment course.

  As usual, Tina escorted the patient out, and cleaned up the exam rooms. The janitorial staff would do the hard work later in the evening. Carla left the charts on Tina’s desk and washed her hands one more time. Then Carla was free to go.