“What do you mean?” he murmured absently as he stared at the long line of cards and then looked at the one card that remained in her hand. She could tell he was wondering if he should take the cards he needed and hope she didn’t throw her last card and go out, or whether he should leave the cards and hope for something better. It was all chance, much like their lives now. And even in a game of chance, he weighed every option, keenly aware that she was on the brink of winning. It was the same way he approached life. Was the choice he had to make worth the risk?
His eyes came up to her, comically narrowed into slits of suspicion before he made his move. He took three cards from the pile and laid down a trio, which left him with four more in his hand. She smiled at him, gave him a wink, picked up a card, and weighed her own options.
Place the card that matched her trio of twos down with the others, or let him have a chance to catch up to her score? Hmm.
She looked up at him, saw the uncertainty there, and decided to let him have one more chance at it. She threw the card she’d been holding in her hand down on the discard pile, and waited to see if he’d pick it up. She’d noticed he’d collected two jacks, so he must need the one she’d held.
With a grin of triumph, Matteo picked up the card and threw another one on the discard pile, which left him with one card in his hand. They were evenly matched now, so when she took the next card and it played on his jacks, she put it down with the rest of her, along with her card that matched the twos, and grinned at him.
“Floating,” she whispered with wide eyes, a mock evil expression of triumph on her face.
“That’s not a thing, you either go out, or you don’t,” he said immediately, but he didn’t look certain.
“That’s not how I learned to play it. This is how Trina taught me to play,” she countered and dared him to question it with a playful glare.
“Hmph. She cheats anyway. Well, I guess since we’re playing by your rules, you’re floating. Does that mean I pick another card up?” His dark eyebrows were up now in question.
“It does.” She nodded. She’d been bored with the game, almost too consumed by her own worries to enjoy the moment, but the last few plays had brought her around. She would have enough points to beat him now, and it was very rare to beat Matteo at any kind of game.
“Fine.” He pretended to be offended and picked up a card with a very snooty expression. “There, I can’t go out.”
He put the card he’d picked up down on the discard pile and she picked up one of her own from the pickup pile. It matched her trio of kings, so she put it down on that pile and put down the last card in her hand. “Done.”
“It’s only because you cheated.” He mock-pouted and collected the cards to shuffle them up. “Trina has taught you some very bad rules, I have to say.”
“No, I think you’re just a sore loser!” She got up from the table to get a glass of apple juice and asked if he wanted anything.
“A bottle of water, please. Is there any more of that salsa you made, the one with cheese? That was nice.”
“There is, it’ll take a minute to reheat it.” She pulled out everything she needed, felt a tremor go through her arm as she pulled plastic from the bowl of salsa, and paused to wait it out.
“What’s wrong?” He’d noticed the way she’d stopped, but then, he was very observant.
“Nothing, just my arm going numb again.” She dismissed it all, but he got up to come over to her.
“Let me do it then. I forgot about that. Let me help, Marie.” He gently nudged her out of the way, and she was grateful he did. He might notice that her arm was shaking if he hadn’t. It wasn’t numb at all, not really, it was a tremor that she couldn’t control.
“Thanks. I’ll get a couple of bowls and a bag of nachos.”
The snow outside was only piling up, but Anton had gone into town to get more food the day before. There was plenty of firewood and the power was on. There was a generator at the back of the house, in case the power went off, so everything was great. She was just stuck inside again.
At least this time she could go outside if she wanted to. It was the weather that trapped her today, not her husband. She watched as Matteo put the salsa in the microwave, and how careful he was when he brought it back to the table. He was just as careful with her.
“Why are you always so… precise?” she stressed the word, paused, and nodded. “Yes, ‘precise’ is the right word. Why is that?”
“Celeste wasn’t an easy woman to be around,” he started. Every now and then he’d slip something about his childhood into the conversation, or he’d answer a question she had. Most of the time he’d change the subject quickly, but she understood that. “I learned to be very careful - to not spill, break, or drop anything around her.”
“She sounds like my mother. It was alright for her to throw things, break things, but if I got one thing wrong, I had hell to pay.”
“You understand then.” He slipped into the chair opposite her where they sat in the middle of the table. He put the glass bowl down on a potholder with a large spoon in it. “We had very similar childhoods, in many ways, I think. Only, your mother was ill; my aunt was just a scary bitch that liked to torture me in the name of making me a man. The kind of man she wanted me to be.”
“Lucky for me you still have a mind of your own.” She dipped some of the salsa into her bowl and pulled out a nacho chip.
“As do you.” He smiled as he relaxed and ate their snack. “It’s amazing we aren’t completely broken, you now?”
“We adapted, both of us, in our own ways, I guess,” Marie volunteered, her eyes far away, her memories somewhere in the past. “My mother used to hate it that I could just turn off and put up with her. I sometimes, when I was little, thought she wanted to make me run away from home. But if I tried to leave, she’d always drag me back one way or another.”
“Like when you tried to go to LSU?” he asked, his eyes watchful, curious.
“Yeah, but even when I was younger. She used to tell me that if I called child protective services on her, or told the teachers about how she used to hit me and stuff, that she’d hunt me down and bring me back, no matter what.” Marie shivered as memories flooded in, painful ones. “I couldn’t understand it. She hated me, told me every day, in very plain language, that she hated my every existence. Yet, she didn’t want to let me go.”
“I guess she wanted to have you as her whipping boy, so to speak. Without you, who else would she have to abuse, to complain to, to blame?” Matteo felt the way her eyes cut to him, sympathy in her gaze.
“It was the same for you, I guess?”
“In a way, yes. Celeste didn’t tell me she hated me, or that I should have been aborted, but she was cruel. At least, until I learned what exactly she wanted me to be, to act how she wanted me to act. I remember once, she’d rewarded me with a puppy, a tiny little thing that followed me around all the time. When it was six months old, it had an accident in the house because I was in bed ill and hadn’t been able to let him out. She had him euthanized.”
“Fuck, Matteo.” The wrenching pain his words caused her was apparent in her voice as she spoke. “That’s awful.”