The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2010

Queen of Hearts

Margaret R. Davis

The evening before my father died—to hear my mother tell it, anyway—the two of them were playing Gin Rummy. They were sitting in the living room at the collapsible card table my mother used for bridge games with her lady friends. As they were finishing up for the night, a card fell to the floor. My father tried to pick it up but his hand somehow flipped it out of reach. It landed in the corner of the room behind the little table that separates the big couch from the easy chair. “Oh, forget it. We’ll get it in the morning,” my mother quotes herself as saying.

The next day turned out to be relatively mild after a string of bitterly cold December days. The sun was out and it was dry underfoot. Jim, my father, decided it was just the right day to take the car in to get the brakes relined. He’d been hanging onto a discount coupon from Jansen Tire and Brake Service for just this day.

After breakfast, the two of them set out. Jim drove even though he was a nervous, grumpy driver. On this day, my mother was, as usual, relieved when they reached their destination without any near misses or angry outbursts on his part. They pulled into the open garage doors of Jansen’s. Jim opened his window. “Quick, Maddy, where’s that coupon?” he said to my mother. She’d been holding it the whole way and handed it to him. A young mechanic approached them and Jim waved the coupon out the window.

“Fine,” the young man said, “Just drive the car up onto that ramp there.”

For a few moments, Jim didn’t move. My mother glanced at him. He was clutching the steering wheel, his hands at a “nine-three” position, staring straight ahead. “Jim,” she prompted, “straight ahead, just in front of us.”

He put his foot on the accelerator, the car moved a few feet, and stopped again. “Just a bit further, Sir.” The mechanic sounded impatient.

Then my mother heard what were to be my father’s last words. He whispered, “Maddy, I can’t do it.” And his head collapsed forward onto the wheel.

Now, my father had suffered for years from heart trouble. When he collapsed like that, my mother had no doubt his heart was to blame and she shrieked for help. The mechanic pulled Jim out of the car, laid him down on the ground, and administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Others in the office called 911, brought a chair for my mother, and gently mumbled soothing words to her while they waited.

Continuing with my mother’s account, later on that awful day, she was sitting in her living room feeling dazed and inconsolable. Someone, whom she remembers as her cleaning woman Chloe, was with her. Chloe said, “Look, there’s a card on the floor.” My mother told her, “Yes, Jim dropped that last night.” Chloe picked up the card and handed it to her.

At this point in my mother’s story, an expression of tenderness comes over her face and her voice becomes husky. “Do you know,” she asks her listeners, “what that card was?”

It’s a rhetorical question that she answers herself. “It was the Queen of Hearts. Can you imagine that? It was Jim speaking to me from beyond the grave. He knew I’d find that card after he was gone. It was his way to tell me he loved me.”

Today, my daughter Anne and I are visiting my mother in the nursing home where she now lives. It is 20 years since my father died. Anne, now 18, must have heard the Queen of Hearts story innumerable times. Once, when she was at the quarrelsome age of 15, she challenged her grandmother. “Now, Grandma,” she said. “How could he possibly have known what card to drop?”

I tried to shush her but my mother responded serenely. “Oh, darling, wait till you get older. You’ll find that life is full of mysteries. Beautiful mysteries that we shouldn’t question.”

Today, Anne reacts, as I do, to the latest telling of the tale—with a fond smile and tacit agreement. At the end of our visit, we settle Mama in her bed for her afternoon nap. “I’ll see you as usual next week,” I say. “Anne will be going back to school in a couple of days so you won’t be seeing her again until spring break.”

As Anne and I drive home, I suggest we stop for coffee. I spend so little time alone with my only daughter. In the café, we sit at a small window table and order two lattes. As we sip, I gaze approvingly at my lovely girl. She smiles. “Grandma never gets tired of telling that story, does she? She doesn’t even seem to know we’ve heard it before.”

“Doesn’t know or doesn’t care. She and Dad had such a tempestuous relationship. He drank too much and they’d have terrible fights about it. I think she longed to rekindle the romance they’d once had.”

“And, of course,” Anne said, “that card story is very romantic. Quite a coincidence, wasn’t it? I mean, that card he dropped being the Queen of Hearts?”

I hesitate. I have never told my side of this story to anyone. Would it hurt anything to tell Anne, I wonder?

I say, “That’s a really old story, you know.”

“It sure is. I’ve been hearing it ever since I can remember.”

“No, I mean it dates back to way before Grandpa’s death.”

She looks puzzled. I push on with the explanation I’m not sure I should give. “You see, years before his death, when I was just a little girl—about ten or so—I was playing cards with a friend after school. We were sitting at the same card table Mama used, in the living room. About five o’clock, Mama told us to clear up the cards. I knew she was expecting Dad home any minute. The night before, he’d come home drunk after midnight. They’d screamed and raged till three in the morning. I was sure he’d get home early that evening to try to make up with her.

“So my friend and I gathered up the cards. We were fooling around and managed to send one card skittering into the corner. Under the little table between the big couch and the armchair where it’s really hard to reach.”

Anne’s eyes are wide. Her mouth has formed an O.

I continue. “I was too lazy to climb over the furniture to get the card. Anyway, a few minutes later, Dad came home. I whined at him to get the card for me.

“He picked it up and we could both see it was the Queen of Hearts. I expected him to hand it to me but just then Mama walked into the room. She had her customary after-fight ‘come-coax-me’ look on her face. My father got up from the couch and walked to her, holding out the card. He said, in what sounded to me like a pathetically drippy voice, ‘The Queen of Hearts.’ He added, ‘Maddy, you’ll always be my Queen of Hearts.’

“My immediate reaction was a silent yuck. I looked at my mother, fully expecting to see a look of withering scorn in the face of such corny sentimentality.”

I pause and take a sip of coffee. Anne leans toward me, resting on her arms and cradling her cup. “And?”

“Well, I was astonished at her expression. As though she had been longing to hear something just like that and her dreams had been answered. Her face crumpled and there were tears in her eyes. I just couldn’t take that. I left the room and marched off to my bedroom in disgust.”

We both laugh. Anne says, “So what happened? Did they make up?”

“Oh, yes. They always did”

After a thoughtful silence, Anne says, “You’re telling me the Queen of Hearts incident didn’t happen the day before Grandpa died. It actually happened years before that? So all these years Grandma’s been lying?”

How shall I end the story, I wonder? Really, I never should have started this explanation. My mother is right. There are some mysteries that should be left alone.

“Not entirely. She and Dad really were playing cards the evening before his death. A card really did fall on the floor and she suggested they leave it until morning. But the cleaning lady didn’t pick up the card the next day. I did. I was the one who was with her. I’d rushed to the tire place to get her when they called with the news. I’d spent the day with her at the hospital, with the doctors and police.

“That evening, back at her house, we were in the living room and I spotted the card on the floor. Picking it up, I remembered the earlier incident in my childhood and glanced at it. As I put it back into the pack on the table, I realized Mama had been watching me. She said, ‘What was it?’

“And then I saw she had that same look on her face. That look of longing and hope. I said, ‘What do you think it was?’ She almost shouted, ‘The Queen of Hearts.’ Then the tears came and she sobbed, ‘I knew it. He’s sent me a message from across the divide. He knew I would pick up that card later. It’s his way of telling me he loves me.’”

Anne’s eyes are misty. She says, “Oh, other. And now she has a story to tell for the rest of her life.”

“She does that.”

We finish up our coffee and leave. Walking back to the car, shoulders hunched against a sudden gust of cold wind, Anne asks, “And what was the card really? The one you picked up.” Before answering, I wait until I’ve unlocked the car doors and we’re safely ensconced in the warm seats.

“What do you think it was, Anne?”

Her eyes look into mine and she hesitates a moment before she answers. “The Queen of Hearts.”

“Of course.”

Gently, she reaches over to stroke my hand on the steering wheel and then we drive home. There’s no need for me to say anymore. She obviously doesn’t want to know anymore.

To be truthful, as each year goes by, I myself find it harder and harder to remember what that card was. I am, however, quite sure of what it wasn’t.