Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Margo had been at the Shack that morning and the booth had been empty—she noticed it every morning now, and every morning she didn’t comment on it.
It was now three-fifteen when she got to Bernie’s. The week of being there at three-fifteen had become a routine she didn’t examine.
She let herself in.
He was in his chair with a book in his lap he was not reading. He’d gotten better at pretending he hadn’t been dozing—the book was open to a different page than yesterday, at least.
“You’re supposed to be walking,” she said.
He glanced at his walker. “I walked to the kitchen this morning. Twice.”
“The kitchen is ten feet.”
“Twenty, if you count the return trip.” He shifted the book to the side table. “What’s in the bag?”
She set the paper bag on the counter. “Mandarins. More bread. A jar of those pickles from the place on Forest.”
Margo turned the jar in her hand.
“I don’t like pickles,” he said.
She stopped. “Since when?”
“Since always.”
“Bernard. You’ve been eating pickles at the Shack since we opened.”
“I’ve been eating the bread the pickles come on. The pickles I move to the side of the plate.”
“I have never once seen you move a pickle.”
“I’m discreet about it.”
She stood at the counter looking at him. She had never once noticed what he did with his pickles.
“What else do you not eat?”
“I’m not giving you a list.”
“Too late. What else.”
He shifted in the recliner. “There was a situation in 1974 involving a mango smoothie at the grand opening of that juice bar on PCH. The one that lasted three months.”
“I remember that juice bar. The owner wore a headband.”
“His name was Daryl. The smoothie was terrible. I was sick for two days. I have not eaten mango since.”
She laughed and put the pickles in his refrigerator anyway. He’d come around or he wouldn’t.
“Walk to the table,” she said. “I’ll play you cards.”
He looked at her. Looked at the walker. Shifted forward in the chair and made his way up slowly, using the arms the way the physical therapist had shown him.
He lowered himself into the kitchen chair and set the walker against the wall. “There,” he said, and pointed toward the sink. “Cards are in the drawer. Second one down.”
He pulled out a deck of cards with flamingos on them and handed them to her. They were soft at the edges, the corners rounded from years of shuffling, and they smelled faintly like the drawer—pencil shavings and wood. She shuffled. He watched her shuffle—with attention and without comment.
“My brother gave me these,” he said. “Years ago. Thought the flamingos were hilarious.”
“They definitely are hilarious.”
“He wanted me to get the manatees. Said they had dignity.”
She laughed. “I suppose he was right about that.”
“He’s right about most things. Won’t stop reminding me.”
Margo dealt. Ten each. Set the deck between them. Turned the top card. Eight of hearts.
“You first,” she said.
He drew, held it a second and discarded.
She pulled from the deck—a queen she didn’t need. She put it on the pile and picked up her tea—she’d made it while he was walking to the table, two mugs, his black, hers black, both from the cabinet where she’d put them yesterday.
“Your brother call this week?” she asked.
“Sunday. He calls every Sunday. Has for as long as I can remember.”
“That’s a long time to call every Sunday.”
“He’s a loyal person. Lonely, but loyal.” Bernie rearranged something in his hand. “He wants me to come to Florida.”
“Are you going to?”
“I’ve been to Florida. Once was sufficient.”
“What’s wrong with Florida?”
“It’s flat. The whole state is flat. You can see Tuesday from Monday.” He took a card from the deck. Kept it. “And the hurricanes. Every September he calls me from a closet. Last time the cat was on his head.”
Margo almost smiled. She discarded.
“Lots of people love Florida,” she said.
“As they should. Just not for me.”
“They probably wouldn’t have you anyway.”
“Probably not. He has a cat now,” Bernie said. “Named it after me.”
“He named a cat Bernard?”
“He named it Bernie. The cat does not respond to it.”
“Smart cat.”
They played through the first hand without keeping track, just finding the rhythm. The fridge hummed in the corner. His card memory came back faster than she’d expected—by the sixth draw he was holding tight and discarding with purpose.
She knocked with a six.
“Already?” He laid down his hand. Counted. Met her eyes. “You’ve been playing without me.”
“I play with Eleanor on Thursdays.”
“Eleanor plays gin?”
“Eleanor plays everything. She just doesn’t tell people.”
She tore a sheet off the yellow legal pad on his writing desk. Wrote MARGO and BERNARD in two columns. She drew a line under each one and wrote the score.
“We’re keeping track now?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
The second hand she took. The third he took—a clean gin that caught her holding fifteen points she’d been saving for the wrong run.
“That was lucky,” she said.
“That was patience.”
“Patience looks a lot like luck from this side of the table.”
He gathered them up. His hands were steady. Large hands, the knuckles prominent.
She shuffled. Dealt.
“How’s the painting,” he said, arranging his hand.
She drew and set it in her hand. “It isn’t.”
“What do you mean it isn’t?”
“I mean I haven’t painted. The canvas has been on the easel since the night of your knee and I haven’t touched it.”
He looked at her over his cards. “What’s it of?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You put up a canvas without knowing what you’re painting?”
“Sometimes that’s how it works. You put up the canvas and you mix a color and you wait for the painting to tell you what it is.”
“And it hasn’t told you.”
“Not yet.”
He drew. Looked at it. Set it in his hand.
“It will,” he said.
She didn’t answer. She drew, discarded and they kept playing.
The afternoon light came through the front window first, crossed the floor in a slow rectangle, reached the table by four, and by five was on the wall behind the stove, turning the white cabinets the color of warm bread.
“Do you remember the storm?” she asked. “Seventy-nine. The big one. The one that took out the pier.”
“Of course I remember the storm that took out the pier. I lost the newsstand awning.” He set down a card. “The whole front panel. Flew off in the middle of the night. I found it two blocks up on someone’s lawn.”
“I sandbagged the Shack until three in the morning.”
“I know. I helped you.”
She looked at him. “You did not.”
“I came over around midnight. You were hauling bags from the back and the water was already at the curb. I stacked the south wall. You told me to do the doorframe next.”
She put her cards down. She could see the night—the rain, the dark, the water—but she couldn’t find him in it.
“I don’t remember that,” she said.
“It was dark. And you were busy.” He looked at his hand instead of at her. “The water went down around three. You told me to go home. I would have stayed.”
Margo’s hands didn’t move. She sat with the queen of spades and the four of diamonds and a run of hearts she’d been building for three draws and she looked at this man across the table and tried to find him in the rain and the dark of a night decades ago. She couldn’t. But he’d been there.
She picked up her cards and didn’t look at him.
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
“It was.”
She knocked. He laid down. She wrote the score.
By five-thirty her column read 94 and his read 67 and the light on the wall behind the stove had gone from warm bread to gold.
She crossed 100 on the next hand.
“That’s the game,” she said.
She tore another page off the legal pad. Wrote across the top:
MARGO | BERNARD 1 | 0
She walked it to the fridge. Found a magnet—there were three on the side, one shaped like a slice of pizza, one a generic round black one, one that said KLEIN’S NEWSSTAND in faded letters and an old phone number. She used the round one. Centered the page on the door at eye level.
Bernie was watching her from the table.
“That’s going to be embarrassing for me,” he said.
She put the flamingo cards back in the drawer. “Should be motivating.”
“Whose fridge is this?”
“Yours. With my score on it.”
She came back to the table and finished her tea. The mug was nearly cold. Outside the window the garden had gone dark enough that the lemon tree was just a shape.
“Girls get out there all right?” he asked.
“Stella sent me a photograph last night. And a text—apparently Sam made them Campbell’s for dinner.”
“Campbell’s?”
“From a can, Bernard.”
“At a dinner table.”
“With cornbread from a box. No egg.”
He shook his head slowly. “That’s a choice for an arrival dinner.”
Margo reached into her bag, found her phone and held it across the table. She showed Bernie the rock in the late light the canyon on fire.
Bernie took the phone and looked at it for a long moment. “That girl has an eye.”
“She does.”
He handed the phone back. “Sam was always looking at the next thing. Even when she was small—ten years old, sitting on a cot in the back office, drawing the same rock formation over and over. But she was never drawing what was in front of her. She was drawing what was next.” He picked up a card and set it down.
“I used to think it was ambition. Took me a long time to realize it was just the way she was built.”
Margo watched him. “You watched her grow up.”
“I watched all of them grow up. Sam. Rick. Anna. Tyler. Meg.” He rearranged his hand. “Sam was the one I worried about. The others had roots. Sam had wind.”
He didn’t say anything else about it. She gathered the flamingo cards back into their worn cardboard box and set the box on the corner of the table where she could find it next time.
“Same time Wednesday?” she said at the door.
He was looking at her. The room behind him, the table where they had played, the fridge with the page on it, the walker against the wall.
“You still owe me a rematch,” he said.
“Wednesday, Bernard.”
She let herself out and pulled the door closed until she heard it click.