The Bridge Ladies

by Betsy Lerner

  I was three when JFK was assassinated, five when the antiwar movement gained national attention, when horrific images of Vietnam were on the cover of Life magazine and on the TV. I was eight when Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated two months apart. Nine when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and when mud-sliding hippies took over a farm in Woodstock for three days of rock and roll. Every boy in my class wanted an astronaut suit; I wanted a suede vest with long fringe. On my ninth birthday the Manson Family killing spree started with the murder of Sharon Tate.

  In 1971, All in the Family captured the generational divide, splitting the world into Archies and meatheads. It defined the generation gap. I knew which side I was on. Like Nancy, I wanted my own apartment, my own car, and my own career. It’s not that I thought I could do anything, be anyone, my imagination wasn’t that bold, but I knew I wouldn’t be making meat loaf, carpooling, or playing Bridge. No fucking way.

  That said, my own rebellion lacked boys on motorcycles and police sweeps through the woods of our rural town. It was weight gain, tinted glasses, black T-shirts, and diaries. It was a combination of polarizing anger and debilitating sadness. Again and again, I’d paint myself into a corner I couldn’t escape. Teenagers sometimes ask each other grand questions: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? What would you do if you had a million dollars? Or in my case, how would you kill yourself? I had waded into the swamp of adolescence, first to my waist, then up to my neck. How do you tell normal adolescent mood swings from manic depression? How does a bank of clouds obscure the sky, slowly or all at once? Did I really sleep with a raft of selfish, stupid boys? And turn on nearly every friend I ever had?

  When I ask my mother about my teenage years now, she explains I was becoming difficult to live with. When I ask her to elaborate she says I was “rude, nasty, whatever.” And then she tells the same and only story she has repeated my entire life to explain what happened. “You were a perfect, bubbly, bright little girl, and the very day you turned thirteen you became surly, uncommunicative, and withdrawn.”

  She always said this in a spirited way as if she could pin all that misery to the day in August when I turned thirteen. Then she’d hurl one of her famous curses my way: I wish on you a daughter just like yourself. Yes, of course it was all said in fun. Only one question always remained: What did happen when I turned thirteen? And fifteen? And twenty-five? Why, when I needed my mother most, was she the last person on the planet I would turn to for help?

  “Are you bipolar?” My daughter was ten when she asked me. We were in her bed reading together before she went to sleep. It was something I knew I had to tell her one day, but I didn’t expect it to come this soon, and in the moment she had taken me by surprise. I felt instantly awash in shame. By way of explanation, she said that her friend’s mother has googled me. Google! Fucking Google. For the first time I regret having written a memoir about my illness. She was a toddler when I wrote it. At the time, a handful of friends suggested that it was irresponsible of me; what would my daughter think when she was old enough to read it? Insulted by the question, I was cavalier in my response: Aren’t men allowed to write about their illnesses, their affairs, their acts of aggression and unkindness? Why are women held to a higher standard? Why is our mothering called into question when we reveal something unpleasant? All of my indignation fell away when my daughter looked up at me. I had told the world my story, only now I faced the only person for whom the truth mattered. It was a straightforward question, but it felt as if a hole had opened up in the mattress and that I was about to fall through.

  “Yes,” I said, choking back tears. Hold it together. No matter that I hadn’t had a single “episode” since she was born, the stigma was as huge as the biggest sunflower against a southern wall, the dark velvet center large enough to swallow a small girl. I told her that medications don’t work for everyone, but I was fortunate because they worked for me. I asked whether she has any questions and stopped there, remembering to keep it simple. She hasn’t asked to see my medical chart.

  By then it seemed like she was barely listening, even bored, looking instead at her wall of pictures pulled from fan magazines: Zac Efron, Hilary Duff, and Raven from That’s So Raven. Then she turned on her side, put her hand on her hip, and said unequivocally, “I don’t have it.”

  I desperately wanted to believe that I had broken the chain of secrets and untruths, that I was not my mother, only I now suspected that it didn’t ultimately matter what I thought or what I knew or what I told myself. I was convinced that had my mother told me the truth about her life, had leveled with me about her father, her depression, if she could have talked about Barbara, we would have had the opportunity to help each other, or at least know each other. But isn’t it also possible that I would have judged her, that she would have been even more diminished in my eyes?

  My daughter’s response had startled me, even though intellectually I knew this statement of differentiation was the healthiest response of all. She has her own will, desire, psychology, and agency. Only I feel fused to her, my little girl. I feel each and every disappointment of hers in my bones and every victory. When she ran in the baton race at her school, I felt the baton in my own hand, my legs pumping and lungs straining to reach the girl ahead for the handoff.

  Years later, when I relay this to Anne, she uncharacteristically speaks. First, her foot slowly circles like a marionette coming to life. “It does matter,” she says, “it matters that you told her the truth.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Get the Kiddies off the Street

  Barbara Barkin says I’ll never get better unless I play. Then she calls one night and says she has a partner for me. She is as excited as if she were fixing me up on a date.

  “He’s a very nice man. He just retired, something in finance, and is looking for a Bridge partner for the Tuesday game in Orange. His wife still works!”

  I back off, saying I’m not ready. Barbara will not take no for an answer. I need this, she’s sure of it. She gives me his number.

  “Call, call,” she says. “Call tonight. He’s expecting your call. Then call me.” If my mother pulled this, I would have killed her. But coming from Barbara, I go with it.

  Tuesday Bridge at the Orange Senior Center is held in the lounge. It starts at one but Barbara instructs me to arrive at twelve forty-five, when they collect the money and set up. The buy in is a dollar and the winnings are divided three ways among the top three winning partners. All over the room, seniors are reaching into handbags or fishing out wallets to pay up. There are about fifteen card tables, and the room is noisy with people socializing. I can’t tell if partners have regular tables; it looks a little like musical chairs, with people trying to find a place to play before they’re all taken.

  I spot my partner right away. He’s crisp in khakis and polo shirt, with a pair of tortoise readers perched on his nose as he scans the Wall Street Journal. He’s probably midsixties, still handsome in that unfair way that men age. I walk over and introduce myself.

  “Jonathan,” he says, reaching to shake my hand, super firm handshake. I immediately launch into the fact that I’m a beginner. Just then I spot Barbara and Bernard socializing. I’m happy to see them knitting in. They gave up their home and a wide circle of friends when they came to New Haven. After my dad became wheelchair bound, my mother used to say that between his brain and her body, they made up one person. Maybe Bernard and Barbara are one person now. Bernard has said if Barbara goes first, he’ll “take the hemlock.”

  “It’s true,” Barbara confirmed, “but I’ll survive.”

  And this also seemed true. It’s what women do.

  Nearly everyone else in the room, as far as I can tell, is in their eighth decade, some older, just a few younger. They say nothing prepares you for having children but the thing no one really prepares you for is aging, looking like a mushroom cap, your hands gnarled. Or your body shrunken down and in. Some of the women look like me
n. Some of the men look like women. Is this what it comes to? Will you never pluck your eyebrows again, your chin? I can’t help but wonder if this is where it will end for me, pushing my body forward with the help of a walker, neon tennis balls fixed to the front legs. Will my game ever improve? Will I have my marbles? Will I even be lucky enough to have a game of cards and camaraderie? I recognize, too, that the folks here are the lucky ones. I can’t help but think of the seniors who are homebound, or stuck in a facility watching Days of Our Lives.

  When I asked the ladies when they started feeling old, they all said seventy. “It’s when things break down,” Bette said. “Eighty is awful.” Bette Davis was right, “Old age ain’t no place for sissies.”

  Bridge is especially interesting to researchers who study the aging brain because it combines two elements that are thought to decrease the risk of developing dementia. For one, the game keeps you mentally sharp combined with the added social component. Isolation for older people can be disastrous.

  “A healthy human mind can go blank and quickly become disoriented,” according to a New York Times article, “At the Bridge Table, Clues to a Lucid Old Age.” My mother doesn’t believe that playing Bridge wards off dementia. “If you have dementia, you don’t play.”

  Bridge players do fear the day when they might slip. “We’re all afraid to lose memory; we’re all at risk for that,” said a woman at the retirement home where studies are being conducted on nonagenarian Bridge players dubbed “the super memory club.” Every older Bridge player I’ve talked to comments on how difficult it is when one player can’t keep up, makes mistakes, is clearly on a downward slide.

  Bernard Barkin is still a sharp and a terrific player though he has trouble holding the cards. His stroke has left his fingers bent. He’s slower at picking up cards and arranging them into suits, always apologizing to those he plays with. Barbara always shuffles and deals for him. It’s truly no big deal, but you can see on his face that it’s a blow, a reminder that he is no longer the vigorous man nicknamed Buck coaching basketball or covering his side of the tennis court with power and grace. When my father could no longer handle the cards, he used a card holder, but that didn’t last long. For others it’s a decent solution; for him it was humiliating, like wearing a bib.

  The Bridge Ladies are exceptional in this way: all of them sharp, quick, and independent. It’s hard to image a day when one might no longer be welcome, what they would do should they come to that crossroads. Another member of the super memory club also noted a sad correlation: when people stop playing, they don’t live much longer.

  The room is incubator warm. I feel sweat gathering at the underwire of my bra, the back of my neck, and my forehead. I tell the couple we are playing with that I’m a novice. When I played with the Bridge Ladies, I knew they would forgive any mistake. This is big girl Bridge. No training wheels. No questions allowed. The seniors are here to win, rack up points, take home the jackpot. It’s intimidating as hell. My mother tells me that they’re glad to play with a newbie; it means more points for them. Not especially comforting.

  My chest has tightened with the onset of a panic attack. Why did I let Barbara push me into it? I already know before we start that I’m totally out of my depths. I don’t even know the protocol for which person shuffles, cuts the cards, and deals. It didn’t seem important to me so I never paid attention, but Bridge players are fanatical when it comes to table etiquette. Put the cards in the wrong place at your peril. The rules seemed uptight in the extreme. Later, as I get more experienced, I will find myself hewing to all of the rules, enforcing them. There is an unspoken elegance like the changing of the guard as the cards are shuffled, cut, and dealt in a specific rotation. I recognize, too, that the protocol has a purpose. Bridge etiquette conveys both the decorum of the game and principles of fairness.

  It’s my turn to deal the first hand and I’m even afraid of messing up the deal and giving everyone the wrong number of cards. I tell myself to calm down. I know how to deal for god’s sake. And even if I do mess up, it happens. I pick up my cards and organize them by suit. Dealer bids first. My lessons have gone out the window. I’m flooded with anxiety. I was more relaxed when I lost my virginity!

  Our opponents tell me I’ll be fine. They are a married couple. She is petite, lovely, and curiously decked out in a turquoise bear claw bolo, turquoise rings, and a matching belt perhaps from a recent spending binge on Pueblo.com.

  “It’s just a game,” she says. Make no mistake: people who say it’s just a game are out for blood. I’ve seen it over and over. It’s the kind of thing you say to psych someone out, to establish dominance. Nothing is just a game, especially Bridge. The man flicks his ear and tells us he’s hard of hearing. His wife continues to speak in very soft tones. Gaslight! His Velcro strap sneakers are so large you can’t distinguish the right foot from the left. Jonathan asks if I play the “Weak Two.” He might as well have asked if I swing or like leather. What the hell is the “Weak Two?” Later I will learn that the Weak Two and bids like it are called conventions and they generally convey hands with exceptional distribution, in this case six of the same suit and between five and ten high-point cards.

  The bell rings. Shit.

  I open my cards: I have fourteen points and five Spades. I have to bid. I freeze. I feel my back wet with perspiration, my shirt clinging. Everyone waits for my bid. My shorts have crawled up my crack. They are still waiting. I make a first bid of “one Spade.” Okay, nothing bad happens.

  Only when it is Jonathan’s turn, he says, “two Hearts,” and I freeze again. I’ve learned that his response means he has eleven-plus points and five Hearts only I can’t access this information. I don’t know if I should make another bid or pass. Instead, I hear the “Bohemian Rhapsody” in my head, and it’s crowding out all rational thought.

  Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the fandango.

  “Can I ask a question?” I am met with stern glares. That would be a no. When I blow the hand, I want to go home. Only I’m not five years old. I have to stick it out. I tell myself I’m learning. But nearly every card I play is wrong. I watch my partner’s disbelief as the opposing team takes the tricks that should have been ours. I’ve been taking lessons for nearly a year. If it weren’t for the ladies, I would have probably quit by now. Maybe I should play bingo! Maybe I need Bridge special ed. At the very least, my chair should be marked with a handicap sign.

  After we play four hands, the bell rings to signal time. Partners sitting in the East/West position rotate to a new table. Jonathan and I are North/South and stay put. The room looks like a senior square dance until everyone finds their new table. Jonathan reviews the last hand with me. I can see his mouth moving. I can tell by his tone that he is trying to be gentle. But I can’t hear a word he says. The next couple comes and I am grateful to pull some hands too weak to bid and thus pass.

  This team has been partners and friends for more than fifty years. The taller woman wears slacks and a shirt with a faint floral pattern. Her partner is petite and wears a dress and a broach that looks like a marigold. They both have white hair as light as meringue. When I tell them that I’m a beginner, they just look at me: who cares. They are quick to bid, quick to discard, quick to collect tricks, and quick to win and tally their points. I’ve noticed that Jonathan likes to pull a card from his hand and tap it on the table multiple times before he discards, the way a tennis player bounces a ball before a serve. I can’t tell if he’s buying time to think or showing off.

  I lose the one hand I get to play (having won the auction) because I fail to “pull trump at the outset of the hand.” Pulling trump is generally the first order of business: drawing out the opponent’s trumps so no one can trump your winners in other suits. It’s also one of the very first things you learn, and Bridge players refer to it as “getting the kiddies off the street.” When I started playing, I wanted to hold on to my trumps, thinking I would need them later in the game. It took a long time before I realized
that you need to get the trump out early so no one can trump you later. It seemed counterintuitive to me. When the tiny woman plays a trump and Jonathan overtrumps it, her friend says, “Don’t send in a kid to do a man’s job.” I hadn’t heard this expression before, but after a time I become more familiar with Bridge vernacular. The first time I heard myself say “Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” I realized I’d crossed a line. In between hands, the two women exchange Bridge patter in the form of encouragement: “Good job,” and “That was a rough one,” and “Barely squeezed that out.”

  The rotation is such that we never play with Barbara and Buck, but Barbara rushes over at the end of the afternoon. She is eager to know how I did, if I enjoyed myself. Will I play again? Only just then, Bernard calls her over.

  “Wait a minute, Bernard,” she calls back.

  “Barbara,” he calls again, more urgently.

  “Shhhh,” she says, slapping the air with her hand.

  “Now, Barbara!” This time there is panic in his voice, and she rushes over. I see her take his face in her hands and look into his eyes. She says something and he nods. Then she hurries back to retrieve her bag and apologizes for the disruption, says she’ll call and we’ll talk. Then she quickly joins Bernard at the door, reaches around his back, and together they make their way out of the center.

  Watching them I long to rush home and hold John’s face in my hands. We had become distant in a longer-than-usual stretch of marital ennui. Nothing was wrong; nothing was right. I hoped we would still be together in our eighties, that there would be things to talk about. If we made it, would we draw close, fall back in love the way we did at the beginning? Is this the reward of a long marriage? No one expects to be the couple in the restaurant sitting in silence, having run out of things to say, or unable to muster the energy to say them. Whenever we spotted one of these grim couples, we’d feel sorry for them, convinced that would never happen to us, the arrogance of youth on our side.