Ace of Diamonds. My grandpa’s parched hands flip over the card. Then another: Eight of Spades. Jack of Diamonds. Two of Clubs. Queen of Hearts.
My grandma comes into the room with a fresh cup of coffee–black–in a plain white mug. She sets it down in front of my grandpa as he thanks her politely, still focused on his game of Solitaire. I am sitting across from him at the dining room table, swiveling my chair, digging my small fingernails into the white leather armrest seams, fidgeting as I watch him play. The cards are laid out in five columns of five cards each, red and black, red and black. He works carefully, his thick reading glasses titillating on his nose, his eyes shifting left, then right, then left again. He makes the occasional grunt or thoughtful sigh, then turns over another card, adds it to his pile, then another, then another. Occasionally, I quietly point to one, assisting in my own small way. After a few minutes, he is out of moves.
He sets down his stack, stares at the spread in front of him.
“Nope!” he says. He lifts his eyes to mine. “Not this time.”
I crack a grin, then watch as he sweeps his hand across the cards, gathers them quickly, shuffles, and deals them again.
Grandpa plays Solitaire over and over until he grows bored, needs a smoke, or it’s time for dinner. Granny has her own distractions–puzzles, ten thousand pieces each, spread out over the length of a large plastic table under the living room window. When I visit, I sit on the couch and play with the Rubik’s Cube that always sits on the lamp table, trying to place my fingers on all the scattered matching colors, as if I can will them to assemble. Of course I can’t, but it’s all I know to do with it.
I am bored. I empty a plastic container of dice on the carpet, examining the clear red die and the small wooden die and the other distinct little cubes before remembering I have no traditional, practical, or entertaining use for any of them. So I invent my own games: stack them like bricks in a tiny house, arrange them into shapes or number patterns, pick up a handful and shower them down on the rest like the skies are plummeting and listen to the tiny knocking, clacking collisions.
There are times, however, when the three of us play together. Times when the shuffling of cards means Crazy Eights and the clacks are those of Aggravation marbles or wooden Crokinole discs. The games are always traditional or ancient, boxes yellowing on closet shelves. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is the thud of the card deck on the table; the metallic shuffle of pennies, cold and copper-scented in an old coffee tin when we scoop them out to play Ten Penny. My grandma’s soft and sweet laughter, my grandpa’s bellow at the end of a hand. The bittersweet wait for something to put an end to the quiet, the empty smile of silence.
Grandpa riffles the card deck, taps it straight on the table, slides it into the box. He turns on the television, forgets his losing streak, his one sweet joy–one win in dozens of losses–already days behind him.
Eventually I will learn to play Solitaire alongside him at the table, each of us with our own set of cards. We will sit in a mutual quiet, a shared independence, amid spades and hearts and the stately frowns of monarchs–our flips and shuffles and occasional mumbles the only breaks in the silence. The difference between us is that I play with only four columns, rather than five–my child’s mind still far too impatient, too eager for joy.
