Read The Bridge Ladies for Free Online Page B

night. She overbid. He lost the hand as a result. She called him a bum. He slapped her. She shot him dead.
    The ladies are at no risk of emotional outbursts where Bridge is concerned. They keep their game and themselves in check. Thought bubbles often hang in the air. What would happen if the ladies gave voice to their fears and frustrations, if someonerang a bell and they stepped inside the ring instead of dancing around the ropes?

    When it’s Bea’s turn to host Bridge, she treats the ladies to lunch at the Athenian Diner, then it’s back to her condo for cards. The diner is right out of Saturday Night Fever with purple leatherette booths, mirrored walls, and cut-glass chandeliers. It hasn’t changed much since I went to high school. It was the place where most of the school’s clubs hung out after sports games or debates or choir concerts. After a win, the entire football team and cheerleading squad would take up residence. I half expect to still see them when I arrive to meet Bea. It’s also one of her regular breakfast spots and she tells me to meet her there for our first talk. She is already seated when I arrive. Before saying hi, she points out her booster seat, “I’m shrinking, Betsy, what can I tell you?”
    Bea waves over our waiter, “Omar, my friend would like to order and I’ll have my usual.” Omar winks in response. Maybe he is just playing along, but I get the feeling he cares about Bea; she is probably the only customer in the greater New Haven area who has bothered to learn his name. I guess that he is in his thirties, handsome with jet-black hair, easy in himself. He takes my order and collects the menus. Bea reminds him that she likes her rye bread seedless. “Got it, mama,” he says, clearly not needing reminding, then whispers to me from behind the menu, “Cougar,” and winks again.
    When I ask Bea to tell me about her hometown, she wearily says she can’t remember what she had for lunch the day before, as if bringing up memories is as heavy as the famous green limestone quarried in Bedford, Indiana, where she tells me she is from.
    â€œThey used that stone for the Empire State Building, you can google it,” Bea adds proudly.
    Though she claims she can’t remember, Bea begins to describe the town’s central square, looking upward at the fluorescent lighting, her eyelids fluttering. “There was the courthouse, the hotel, a grocer, a feed store, and a five-and-dime.” Pleased with herself and her powers of recollection, Bea perks up and says, “How do you like that, Betsy?”
    Bea often ends a sentence with a question, but that first day I didn’t know if she was looking for an answer, or just making a point.
    As I sit down with each of the ladies, they also claim they can’t remember anything, as if struck by a case of collective amnesia. Memories don’t flood back exactly so much as dangle like the letters on an eye chart glowing on the wall, some within reach, some still too blurry to make out. For Bea, the dusty town of Bedford turns Technicolor as memories come back to life, like the Bantam rooster that got into the nuns’ chicken coop and fertilized the whole lot!
    â€œThey thanked my father,” Bea says, still amused. “Those nuns never had so many chickens in their lives.”
    A teacher called Craigy Gunn preached that you don’t make fun of people’s names. “And with a name like that you can see why! It’s still good advice,” she says, thumping the table the way a doctor checks a knee for reflexes. And every Friday night during basketball season she cheered on the boys who were invariably defeated by the team from Gary, Indiana.
    â€œGary was a town of steelworkers,” Bea tells me. “Those kids were gigantic!”
    A little girl in the next booth, maybe two years old, pops up and stares at us. When Bea waves hello she quickly ducks, then