Chapter 4: A Straight and a Pair of Twos

Nana Hildy lived in a brick house on Cheesman Park, and on Wednesdays she played poker for matchsticks.

I arrived at six, still in the clothes I had slept in.

Tiernan had driven me, and the whole way I had kept asking him who would want me to believe my sister was gone.

"Whoever flipped that photograph," he said, and parked.

"That's not a name."

"Ask your grandmother. She knows the family better than I do."

He stayed in the truck, because Nana does not allow men at the table until the third hand.

She opened the door in a gray cardigan with her reading glasses on a chain.

"You look terrible," she said.

"I drank four coffees yesterday, by force."

"Then you'll need something to do with your hands. Come in. Sit. You are going to play."

The table was already set up in the dining room, with a green felt cloth and two glass bowls of wooden matchsticks.

I sat.

Nana dealt, with a flick of her wrist that she had learned in a Reno casino in 1971.

"One matchstick to open," she said.

I put in a matchstick.

"Raise you five."

I put in six, because I had to put in her five and match her one.

"No, dear. Five."

"I put in the one first."

"The one was the ante."

"It's still a matchstick."

"Call it or raise it."

"I'll call," I said, and put in five.

She looked at my face for a while.

"Raise you ten."

I put in ten.

"Raise you twenty."

I put in twenty.

She leaned back in her chair, and the glasses swung on their chain.

"Gwendolyn. Do you understand that you can fold?"

"I can't fold. You didn't fold."

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