No Bridge Talk at the Dinner Table. Please.

My parents spoke a secret language. A language composed of English words, yet completely incomprehensible to me. They did speak to me, on occasion, in plain English, but mostly I listened to and more often tuned out this strange but familiar dialect. It was like the sound of static, really. At times it was merely background noise, even comforting, something that could lull you to sleep. At other times it grated on you, as static often does—impossible to ignore and even more difficult to make sense of.

The phrases went something like this, “It went pass, pass, one heart, a spade, pass, two spades, and we ended up in three no trump.” I can hear my dad’s booming voice, his hands flying around his face and over the dinner table, gesturing to the empty seats as if there were bridge players really sitting there. Or they’d just give each other hands. “So I’m sitting there with the ace-king-queen fifth of spades, two little hearts, singleton ace in diamonds, queen-jack fifth of clubs. Now tell me. What do you do?”

And this meant something to them. They reacted and responded to bridge hands as if the game were life itself. News of some ridiculously strange card combination and their voices sounded as if a new baby had arrived or a family member had won the lottery. They talked like this, in their language, with that kind of enthusiasm.

My parents were, they are, World Champion bridge players. So yeah, I get that bridge is a very big deal to them. I still never understood them talking like this, constantly.


We did eat dinner together at the dining room table pretty much every night. On Fridays, however, my dad hosted poker night at our house with a few of his golf buddies, a middle aged lesbian couple, and my mom’s bridge partner, Fran. Fran was terrified of cats and would make outrageous wheezing noises if our tabby entered the room. She’d clutch her bejeweled, spotty fingers to her polyester blouse and demand, “Get that thing out of here.”

My mom and I had slumber parties in her bedroom on poker night. We watched Dallas and ate greasy Mexican take out. I couldn’t tell you a thing about Dallas. I would usually draw pictures of ladies in intricate dresses, occasionally glancing up at the screen when my mom made a comment about the show. I loved those Friday nights. I liked staying up late, eating sloppy food on the day bed with the trundle and the frilly yellow quilt.

Dad’s poker games sometimes got rowdy, the old farts high on M & Ms and Tab. My father never drank and never served booze to his friends, but he loved his sweets. After poker they’d play Rubber Bridge and Oh Hell, Hearts I think, and something called Fan-tan. “Moooooooo,” they’d sing, when they had a bad hand. I don’t know why they did that. Sometimes, Mom and I would moo right back.


On Saturday nights I’d sleep over at a girlfriend’s or at my grandma’s house with my cousin, Adam. But before that, my parents and I would have our big dinner out. We tried to take turns picking the local restaurant. More often we’d end up compromising, in which case none of us were completely satisfied, just making do.

The restaurant nights were no exception to bridge talk. It would be an exaggeration to say that it was all they talked about, but not much of one. Their deep passion for the hobby, their secret language, definitely added at least ten years to their marriage, which started, after all, when they met at the bridge table.

At dinner, I’d make the occasional plea for them to speak normally, speak to me. Of course, once they stopped talking bridge, I could never think of anything to say. School was fine, my friends were fine. I guess I just wanted to be asked.

Once I even put up this sign in the dining room and my mom thought it was hilarious; she kept it up for years. It said something along the lines of “No Bridge Talk at the Dinner Table. Please.” I drew a table on the sign, with hearts and clubs and diamonds and spades floating wildly around little forks and spoons. Through the years I would half-heartedly point at the sign when I’d had enough, but my father would always have one more hand, just one more hand.

It wasn’t always so bad when my parents talked like this. They had their own world, so serious, that they referred to as “The Bridge World,” like you could go there on vacation, which they did, of course. All of our family vacations were based around tournaments. Anyway, I sort of created my own worlds too. I’d go to extreme places in my mind—falling in love, being famous, living in Africa. There were even morbid fantasies; I’d do things like imagine my cousin’s funeral until it was real to me, until I was crying. I’d map out these situations, going back now and then to change things around or replay a favorite scene. And I’d be there, really be on some island all alone, coconut milk dripping down my chin. I found myself astonished when reality set in, my mom asking me to pass the rolls. I’d jump, staring at a half eaten plate of spaghetti, amazed that my eyes were even open at all.