Black Lady, Chase the Lady, Crubs

A woman who hates the card game Hearts is saddled with parents (and a husband) who absolutely love it.

History:
The story won the 2018 Verdi L. Tripp Fiction Award for the online literary journal Joy of the Pen.

Written By:
Greg Tulonen

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The best thing about the divorce, as far as I was concerned, was knowing that I'd never have to play another fucking game of Hearts ever again. No more condescending lectures about how I shouldn't have led low diamonds or shouldn't have passed high hearts or shouldn't have thrown the queen – because seriously, who gives a shit? I might have been able to tolerate the games themselves if they hadn't always been accompanied by Jeremy's insufferable little teaching moments. Jesus Christ, would I not miss those.

"Do you understand why that was a bad play, Maeve? Clubs had already gone around three times. What's three times four?"

"Jeremy, let's just play."

"I'm just trying to explain. I'll think you'll actually enjoy yourself more if you understand what's going on. Three times four is twelve, right? Now, how many cards in a suit?"

"I don't want to do this, okay?"

"Come on, Maeve, how many cards?"

"Please stop talking."

"There are thirteen cards in a suit, right? So if twelve clubs have fallen, that leaves just one, the one you led with. You get it? That's why everyone was able to dump hearts on you. Now do you see? Honey, do you understand? Honey?"

I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, right? Look, I'm sorry about the profanity, but if you've ever played Hearts, you understand. And if signing the divorce papers meant I could kiss off game night once and for all, well then, pass the fucking pen.

#


But wait. Get this: Half an hour after we decided that yes, we actually would separate, and yes, Jeremy would be moving out in the morning, he still expected us to go through with game night, one last time.

We were slumped on opposite sides of the sofa, wrung out and exhausted by this life-altering decision we had just made, when Jeremy stood up and said, "Well, should we get ready?"

I honestly didn't know what he was talking about. "Ready for what?"

He produced an incredulous puff of air. "Game night, of course. The babysitter will be here any minute."

I looked at him for a full six beats. "You can't be serious."

"Why not? Why should we spoil your parents' night with our bad luck?"

I was still working out my response to that one when Jeremy spoke again: "Besides, we can't just send the babysitter away."

It was easier to pounce on that flank. "Of course we can. What's she going to do, sue us for lost wages?"

Jeremy flashed an indulgent smile. It was the kind of smile a parent might give an endearingly misbehaving toddler. It was the kind of smile that made me want to scoop out his left eyeball with a grapefruit spoon. Looking at him, I realized that every single thing about him was irritating: His haircut, his collarless shirt, his idiotic waterproof diving watch.

"C'mon, Maeve," he said. "Be a sport, just this once."

Just this once. Can you get over that? I was too tired to argue the point. "Fine," I said, "Let's get ready."

Number of times Jeremy has been diving: zero.

#


I'll be fair. I want to be fair. It's hard to admit this even now, but here's what happened on our first date: After dinner (an okay Thai restaurant Jeremy picked), after the movie (a documentary about a paraplegic cabinetmaker – which, yes, he picked), Jeremy invited me up to his apartment, in theory to loan me a Replacements CD – which, being honest, was a flimsy pretense to begin with. We were standing in his entryway, chatting. He hadn't yet offered me a drink and I hadn't yet taken off my coat, but these gestures were in the air, waiting to be expressed. I noticed a row of Billy Gideon books on a nearby bookshelf, and I said: "Oh, you like Billy Gideon? I've met him, you know." That last bit was delivered with excruciatingly false casualness, the memory of which fills me with shame. Jeremy actually froze, his mouth dropping open as if I'd just told him I was John Lennon's niece. Later that night, I let him play with my breasts and finger me a little.

#


You don't know who Billy Gideon is. That's okay. Billy Gideon is the five-time winner of the World Series of Hearts and author of Gideon's Rules of Gameplay, which you may have consulted once or twice if you needed to look up whether a straight beats a flush or what the hell Euchre is. But unless you're among the afflicted, you haven't read or even heard of his other books, Hearts On My Sleeve and Hearts of Gold and Not for the Faint of Hearts and Billy Gideon: A Heart-to-Hearts Talk. Don't worry about it. You don't want to have anything to do with that world.

I wasn't lying, though. I have met him. When I was 14, our family vacation was to the North American Hearts Association tournament in Akron, Ohio. My parents had each anted up the two-thousand-dollar buy-in (which: Jesus Christ!), earning them each a seat at one of the higher-numbered tables (the higher the table number, the lower the player's world rank, if he or she even is ranked, which my parents are not). This was a tournament, winners playing each other and advancing to the lower tables, all for a chance to take on Billy Gideon at table one.

I mean, other families go to Epcot Center, right? We went to a dumpy convention center decked out with 50 card tables and 200 folding chairs. And bleachers, if you can believe that. People actually come out to these things just to watch. I ask you, what is wrong with this world?

This is what I grew up with. My parents are perfectly ordinary in every way save one: Accountants with their own modest firm, two cars, a butcher they know by name, and a single-minded obsession with the most irritating card game ever invented, an obsession that found me at age 14 on an uncomfortable bleacher seat in Akron, Ohio crammed between two overweight Rotarians rather than working on my tan in Orlando, Florida.

My mother was knocked out early in the tournament by a run of bad luck and a disastrous moon shot attempt, beaten by a very nice gym teacher from Texas. "Fucking fuck me up the ass," my mother said when she lost, and the Texan patted her hand consolingly. (She only swears when she plays Hearts.) But my father made it all the way to Table One and the man himself. I've seen football players who just won the Super Bowl carry on less than my father did that day. He fell to his knees and wept, I swear to God.

I'll tell you this: Billy Gideon was short, even shorter than I was at 14, four of his stubby fingers encircled by garish rings. His hair, thinning on top, flowed magnificently behind him, down to his shoulders. He greeted my father and the other two finalists (a librarian from New Jersey and a college professor from Maine) with an air of pompous regality. "Congratulations on making it this far," he said without getting up from his chair. "Are you ready to take on the king?"

"Yes sir!" shouted the finalists, my dad loudest of all.

"Just so you know," said Billy Gideon, "the king plans on giving his queen away as much as he can tonight." He winked and added (entirely unnecessarily) "The queen of spades that is." Like, yeah, we get it. But everybody yukked it up like the loyal subjects they were.

Long story short: Dad won. He shot the moon on the last hand. Billy Gideon had one chance to stop him, but he ducked Dad's nine of hearts lead and Dad held no other losers. The crowd went bananas and Billy Gideon shook Dad's hand. Then he sat there on his throne and autographed every card in a comically oversized deck, handing one card to every tournament finalist, saving the queen of spades for my father. On it he wrote, "A queen for the Kingslayer. Congratulations! -Billy Gideon." Dad had it framed and hung it in his study, right next to his wedding photo and his diploma from Dartmouth. So, my parents spent four thousand dollars between them and came home with a signed playing card. And I'm the unreasonable one.

#


Game night began before we were married, which really should have been enough of a warning. The first thing my father asked when he found out I was seeing someone new was, "Does he like Hearts?" The very first thing, the way another father might ask "What's he do for a living?" or "Is he Catholic?"

When I brought Jeremy home, my parents left a deck of cards out on the kitchen table but didn't say anything about it. Subtle. We ate in the dining room -- pork loin and mashed potatoes, a specialty of my father's. Mom made a salad and cooked asparagus on the grill. Jeremy brought an expensive bottle of wine that turned out to be mediocre. After dinner, Jeremy, like a good suitor, helped to clean up in the kitchen. When he spotted the deck on the table, as he was clearly designed to do, he picked it up and said, "Do you folks play cards?"

"Once in a while," said my mom, more casually than was plausible.

"When we get a chance," added my dad, pretending to be engrossed in loading the dishwasher.

"How about Hearts?" said Jeremy, sealing our fates. "You guys ever play Hearts?"

At that, my mother actually clutched her chest, and my father looked like he was ready to put down a dowry.

Before I even knew what was happening, this was a once-a-week thing. Every Saturday night, God help me, we all sat down together for another game. Even after Ethan was born, this kept up, the teenage girl up the street proving to be a maddeningly reliable babysitter.

And like I said, it might not have been so bad if not for Jeremy's endless efforts to teach me to be a better Hearts player.

"You knew your father was shooting the moon, right?"

"Jeremy, seriously. Don't even–"

"You passed him high hearts and no losers."

"Honestly? I can't remember what I passed him."

"I mean, if you're not going to take the game seriously–"

"I'm really, really not."

"If you're not going to take the game seriously, it makes it less fun for everybody."

"That's fine. You guys play. I'll read a book."

"Come on. Don't be like that. It's better with four."

Then there were the clubby conversations they enjoyed, rehashing among themselves the minutiae of every previous hand: I thought for sure you were shooting… Weird distribution in that hand, wasn't there? I had a fistful of diamonds… I didn't know what you were up to with that pass… You sure were deep in spades… For crying out loud, were the games so goddamned fascinating that they had to relive every second of them only minutes after the fact? Christ.

Look, I'm not an idiot. I teach comparative literature at the community college and can name every president since Coolidge. When the rules and strategies of Hearts are being (condescendingly) explained to me, I absolutely get it. What I'm saying is that it all makes sense. I understand perfectly the difference between good and bad gameplay. It's just that when the cards are dealt, and I hold them in my hand for the first time, all I see is chaos. And after that, people are talking and cards are hitting the table and everybody's waiting for me to take my turn, and all those rules and strategies float away like mold spores off an old orange. Even now, thinking about those games, my stomach clenches.

When you think about it, the whole thing is unfair: Jeremy's condescension, my parents' silent embarrassment, all of it. My brain just works differently than theirs. Should color-blind people be held accountable if they can't pick out matching clothes? Should someone born with no hands be given a hard time for not being able to play the piano? How is this any different?

All right. I'm going tell you about what happened on that final game night, the last game of Hearts we ever played together, but first, I want to tell you about something that happened six months later. Maybe it won't make a difference to you, but I think maybe it justifies everything. I'm just saying: People can get too hung up on cause and effect. Sometimes, the chronological order of events isn't the best way to consider things, if you really want to understand them.

Here's what I'm talking about: Six months after the separation, I called my mother, hoping Ethan could spend the night with them, single motherhood having just about driven me crazy. The babysitter up the street was off to college, just in time for it not to matter anymore. "I think we're busy tonight," my mother said.

I frowned into the phone. "You think you're busy or you are busy?"

"Well, tonight might not be the best night."

"Why? What's going on tonight?"

"I just think we might have plans."

"Wait a minute. You think you might have plans, or you definitely do have plans?"

"Oh, well, you know, I guess we have plans."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm talking to you on the phone."

"Mom, this conversation is very strange. Why are you being so weird?"

"I don't think I'm being weird."

"Then why won't you tell me what your plans are? Are you and Dad going to a swingers party or something? That was a joke."

"Well, I'll tell you. But I just don't want you to get upset."

"Okay, now you're freaking me out. What's going on tonight?"

I counted in my head all the way up to nine before she answered. "It's game night," she said.

I was confused, then relieved, then confused again, all in about half a second. I was confused because as far as I knew, game night had died right along with my marriage. I was relieved because if my parents had started up game night with someone else, the pressure was off me to ever play the cursed game again. I was confused the second time because if my parents had started up game night with someone else, I couldn't imagine why my mother would be so reluctant to tell me so, unless…

"We've started playing again with Jeremy. And Julie."

Julie. Jesus Christ. Julie is Jeremy's new girlfriend, or as Ethan refers to her, "Good Mama." This is tolerated by all, thought cute by all.

Now, I ask you: It's not just me, is it? This is a major betrayal, right? Knowing this, couldn't you forgive me just about anything? Even something that had occurred earlier? Couldn't you?

"He's the father of our grandson," my mother said, because I hadn't said anything.

"Which means you're supposed to be civil to him at birthdays and graduations, not invite him into your home along with whoever he happens to be fucking at the moment. Jesus Christ, Mom!"

"There's no call for language. Julie is very nice. And she happens to be an excellent Heart player."

"Well, that just makes it all better, doesn't it?"

My mother sighed. "Let's talk when you're feeling more rational, okay?"

"Sure. Just don't count on that being anytime soon."

#


"Are you ready?" Jeremy called to me, standing at the door, his scrubby deck of blue Bicycle cards pinched in his left hand. (My parents have cards, of course, but Jeremy believes his deck is lucky.)

"Obviously not," I snapped. "If I was ready, I'd be at the door, yes?"

Ethan sat on the sofa next to the babysitter, watching an animated program about a family of beekeepers who solve mysteries. He glanced up at me briefly. The babysitter's gaze didn't waver from the television.

"I just don't want to be late is all."

"It's game night, not a movie. We'll get there when we get there."

Later, in the car, Jeremy asked me, "What are we telling your parents?"

"What are we telling my parents about what?"

Jeremy sighed and we drove the rest of the way in silence.

#


I've read that one sign that you're insane is when it's perfectly obvious to you that you're the sane one and that everyone around you is crazy. The reasoning is that it's far more likely that you're the one with the problem. But there must be exceptions to that rule, right? The people who work in insane asylums, for example, or people stuck in a family of Hearts fanatics.

When we arrived for that final game night, Jeremy didn't tell my parents we were separating. He didn't say anything at all. He just sat down at the dining room table and started shuffling. My parents don't think that kind of behavior is weird. They just sat down at the table too and Dad said, "Cut for deal."

I don't remember much about the game we played that night, but I'm sure there was nothing remarkable about it. I'm sure I fell behind fairly quickly and took the queen of spades more often than not. I know that Jeremy didn't reveal the slightest indication that something might be wrong between the two of us, and that my parents didn't seem to notice my tension at all. At one point I said I had to go to the bathroom.

"I'll make tea," said my mother.

I went upstairs and sat in the bathroom for as long as I thought would be socially acceptable. Then I sat there awhile longer. I remember wishing I smoked, so I could sneak a cigarette.

When I came out of the bathroom, I had to pass by my father's study to get to the stairs, and when I did, I saw that stupid framed queen of spades signed by Billy Gideon. Without even realizing what I was doing, I crossed the floor of Dad's study and took it off the wall. Feeling hypnotized, I cracked open the frame and peeled the card from its matte. I held it for a moment, thinking that I was the first person to actually touch the card since the framer had mounted it years earlier. Then I opened the study window.

My parents' dining room is directly below the study. Seated at the dining room table, Jeremy and my parents would have a clear view out the dining room window of anything that dropped from the study. That's what I was thinking as I began carefully, methodically tearing the card into tiny pieces and tossing the pieces out into the night.

This is what I was thinking: I bet it looks like confetti. I thought: I bet it looks like snow.





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