“Come join the shopping spree!” With this exhortation, the woman at a table near mine greets her friend who is approaching the cafe area of the bookstore, the third friend in the group to arrive. The bridge players meet at 11am, several times a week, and comprise four; their table is always reserved with a laminated pink sign; the members are elderly.
The first to arrive has brought a bag full of jewelry. “I have all this costume stuff,” she says, and pulls a jingle-jangle clutch of necklaces, secured with a scarf, from her bag. “Oooh!” the friends—one, then two, eventually three—sift through the haul and make exclamations, choose necklaces and offer payment. The jewelry-bearer declines. “Are you sure? Because we will pay you!” But “No.” No payment. She is cleaning house. “I don’t think I could ever get rid of my old things,” another of the ladies says. “I always think, ‘Maybe I’ll wear this sometime.’” “Nope. I’m cleaning out,” says the woman giving away her old things. They chime and clatter and chatter and laugh.
A trayful of ice water arrives on the arm of a young waitress. “Did you all see the picture of Aretha?” the four friends are saying to each other. “In her coffin.” “Yes! All that red.” To the waitress, “Do you know who Aretha Franklin is?” Everyone is laughing, even the college-aged girl distributing cold cups around the table, foursquare. “I do know who Aretha Franklin is,” the waitress replies, and she’s not bothered. She knows these women; she engages with them every week. I wonder, though, if she knew until now that Aretha had died. “She was dressed for a party!” another of the friends exclaims in awe, in admiration. “Yes! Those shoes, that red dress!” No sorrow, only laughter around the ice waters, and some timegrown—what? If not respect, at least appreciation, enjoyment, an element of awe. They will send this icon, this singer, this fellow woman of whom they speak with the affection of friends, on to glory in a gale of gold-toned, jingle-jangle peals of happiness.
They lay out their cards.
The quiet and serious young man who buys the used books for the store that houses the cafe walks past, en route from his big desk couched deep between the stacks—“Contemporary fiction,” “Classic Mysteries,” “Books about Books”—to the staircase below the trade paperback and Children’s sections. He carries a double stack of bright paperbacks, side-by-side, a precarious balance in any other hands but his, across the floor to the place they belong. He carries them like an accomplished waiter balances armfuls of dishes and silverware, with complete, confident cool. He holds them like a father handles his second newborn child, unafraid, now that he has borne the small heft of his first baby safely to toddlerhood. He knows that he will not drop a single one. This man who buys the used books loves the books, you can tell, or at least feels a respect for them, because he carries them along gently, with purpose, much like the sociologist Robert Coles says we should hand one another along, when we find ourselves together at the same place and time on this earth.
“Are there tables upstairs? I’d like to sit up there.”
A month or more earlier, there was no Reserved sign at the table where the bridge players sit today. I sat there instead, and plumb in the middle of one thought or another, a shaky, brittle voice intervened to express a hopeful query: “Aren’t there some chairs up those stairs?” Her companion, harsh and hard, answered at top register, “No. We’ll sit here,” two tables away from mine.
“Oh!” I piped up, not knowing I was speaking till the words were out of my mouth. “Yes, there are tables up there.”
“Thank you for listening.” The younger, harsher-answering woman’s none-of-your-business tone was icier, nastier, and more full of pain than just about any words I had heard before. I’d been slapped in the face from across the room, and was suddenly, in a rush of blood, aware of all the other patrons sitting quiet in the same space. I could hardly believe the sound of my own voice answering back.
“It’s really nice up there. I wanted you to know.” What was I thinking?
Again, “Thank you,” in no polite terms, the other, older, brittle-voiced woman said, waving my conversation away, as well. Thank you for intruding.
I wondered how closely, how constantly, the older woman lived at the mercy of this rude woman who might be her daughter. Did my attempt to help only make things harder on her? Later, I saw the older woman in the store, briefly alone. Should I signal her attention? Should I whisper, “Are you alright?” Mary Oliver, about her unloving childhood, says that adults can make changes to the way things are, but children can’t, and “in difficult situations [those children] are the victims of every sorrow and mischance and rage around them.” But this is true for some adults, too, I think. I think, but I do not know. Also, who owned that moment? Who owns this space? Who’s running this show? I do not know what sort of citizenship is actually, or should be, at play here in this cafe and bookstore, at this particular point in time. Just because we are in the same room, within earshot, do I have an obligation to hand this woman along to safety, to peace, to the joy of being seen? Do I have the right?
Today, after delivering his double stack of paperbacks upstairs, the used-book buyer descends and returns to his desk, colorful books resting safely on their shelves. The bridge players’ voices keep rolling toward me in waves, in gales, past the briefest silences. The women wear their joy on the surface together, like bright shining gold-set jewels. The most broken voice comes from the sprightliest body, the woman who walks briskly over to the counter to order, to ask for another napkin, to get a refill of coffee. “I’ve got to have another cup!” she trills at me, smiling as she strides past. I can tell she knows I’ve been hearing their game. The smallest and slowest woman, who entered the cafe in movements she will one day discover have become a shuffle, speaks with clarity. “You’ve got two trump?” one of the women asks her. “I’ve got five,” she booms. “Here you go!” They continue. “That’s beautiful,” I hear. “I’ve got nothing.” Their words that on the one hand mean nothing to me—I don’t know the game they’re playing—seem to mean more than they say.
How long have these four known each other? They are so deeply connected that I cannot imagine them connected to anyone else in the wide world—no husbands, no children, no also-elderly siblings. I cannot imagine them doing anything other than handing one other along, here and in this moment. When they exit the store and step out into the bold end-of-summer light, I could believe them simply fading out, a shimmer and then nothing in the glow of the sun, one last burst of laughter trailing behind on the brick store sidewalk before the parking lot begins. “That red dress!” “For a party.” “Yes!”
The book buyer will walk to his car later and drive home, where I imagine him carrying his own books around. But surely he bears other things than books and merchandise, things I cannot know. Surely he carries burdens of his own, and maybe those of others, and I hope other people hand him along, too, in a life I can’t see from my seat at this particular table.