Read Online Kate Remembered by A. Scott Berg - Free Book Online Page A

green men strategically around the board, Dick leaned over and slapped her hand. “You can’t do that,” Dick shrieked. “He has to move his own men. It’s simply not fair otherwise.”
    â€œBut my partner is a complete idiot,” she countered. “He doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing, and it’s simply not fair for me to be penalized like this.”
    Dick held his ground. “You chose him,” he insisted. “You could have chosen Phyllis. But you took a chance on somebody new.
    â€œBut I didn’t know he was a complete idiot.”
    We were all on our second or third candies by now, and the caffeine was kicking in. The tempo of the game had discernibly picked up, as had our tempers. I was truly getting the hang of the game’s subtleties—such as they were—but after one unfortunate roll of the dice on my part, Kate stood up and said, “I give up. This is hopeless. I mean he’s positively hopeless.” Dick insisted she sit down, that she had to play this game to the bitter end, which I kept praying would come soon. I like to think the slight tremble in my hands was the result of the candy. But now the tables began to turn, and after one of Kate’s moves, Dick offered, “That was a great mistake on your part.” For the next several minutes they argued how Kate should have made her move. On Phyllis’s next turn, Kate criticized her. On mine, my opponent Dick took to offering me advice, with which Kate disagreed. “Now look,” I said, “you’ve all put me in a terrible spot. On one hand I feel I should listen to my partner, but on the other, Dick appears to be the best player and is on the verge of winning the game.”
    â€œDick is not the best player,” said Kate. “I’ve been beating him at Parcheesi all his life.” I followed my partner’s strategy.
    â€œWell, you’re not going to beat him today,” he said, making what everybody had to concede was a brilliant throw of the dice (and let’s remember, we’re throwing dice here!), which took advantage of my vulnerable position. On Kate’s next roll, Dick started in again, pointing out the errors of his older sister’s plays. Meantime, Phyllis slowly and silently kept rolling dice and moving her little red markers, until at last she threw her hands in the air and shouted, “I won! I won!” And sure enough, she and Dick had.
    â€œI protest this game,” Kate said with great authority, “on account of my having to play with a complete idiot.”
    â€œI resent being called an idiot,” I said, “just because I didn’t win this idiotic game. It’s mostly luck anyway.” At this, Dick took umbrage, claiming that it’s actually a game requiring great intelligence and a sense of strategy . . . which he suggested Kate was too impulsive ever to master. “Oh, you’re all a bunch of idiots, real idiots,” Kate said, putting the game away.
    â€œBut I won! I won!” said little old Phyllis with great glee.
    â€œYes, dear, you won,” said Kate. “Now why don’t you do something important, like get our dinner going.”
    I announced that I was going upstairs for a little peace and quiet. “Yes,” Kate suggested, “you meditate on how you lost us that game.”
    During dinner—warm beet soup and plates heaped high with vegetables, baked potatoes, steaks, and broiled tomatoes (“You must always have the wet of the tomato,” Kate explained, “with the dry of the beef”)—we talked about my current work, how I was attempting to paint a giant mural of Hollywood from its beginnings, through the life of Samuel Goldwyn. Kate loved the idea, insisting that he was the most colorful and compelling of all the movie moguls. “Of all those pirates, and they were all pirates,” Kate asserted, “I think he was the only one