THE NEXT DAY OF MAGIC LESSONS WAS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME, EXCEPT THAT Grandma Melvyn sat in the recliner in the family room watching another Wheel of Fortune marathon while I worked on quarter rolling in the garage. I could hear her yelling at the TV through the door that led from the garage to the family room. All I can say is that it’s a good thing Grandma Melvyn was watching from home instead of the studio audience. Who knew game shows could be so violent?

Rolling quarters over my knuckles was not exciting, and doing it for hours made my hands sore. But it helped. The second day, I only spent one-third of my time hunting for quarters in the junk pile. The next day, only a fourth. After each day of practice, I improved. Maybe someday I could roll quarters without digging through junk at all. It seemed like I would be rolling quarters forever, but one day, when I got home from school, Grandma Melvyn was sitting at the kitchen table with a deck of cards.

“It’s time for a joker sandwich,” she said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

She answered with the Wicked Wobble Eye, which, it turns out, is her favorite answer to almost every question. I stopped talking and sat in the chair next to her. Grandma Melvyn pulled two jokers out of the deck and laid them faceup on the table. Then she shuffled the deck and held it out to me.

“Cut the deck and take the top card,” she said.

I lifted the top half of the deck and picked the seven of clubs from the bottom pile of cards. Grandma Melvyn nodded for me to stick my card back in the deck, so I did. After that, Grandma Melvyn put the jokers back in the deck and shuffled it. Then she coughed. (I’m not sure if the cough was important, but with Grandma Melvyn anything is possible. In any case, it was a big cough.)

Finally, Grandma Melvyn pulled three cards off the top of the deck and held them out to me.

“Here’s your sandwich,” she said.

I took the cards and looked at them. They were the two jokers on the outside, like slices of bread, with my seven of clubs squished in between like a slice of bologna.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

Wicked Wobble Eye. (See what I mean about that being the answer to everything?)

“That’s the joker sandwich,” she said. “Now let’s do a tomato-cheese sandwich.”

“How does it work?” I asked.

“You get up and make one,” she said.

“That’s funny,” I said.

“Why is that funny?” she asked, looking at me suspiciously. “Is the cheese moldy?”

“Wait,” I said. “You really want me to make you a sandwich?”

“They don’t make themselves,” Grandma Melvyn said.

Again … Wicked Wobble Eye.

I am not a great cook, but I got up to make Grandma Melvyn a cheese-and-tomato sandwich. While I looked for a knife, Grandma Melvyn picked up the cards and began to shuffle. Her hands were a blur as she shuffled over and over, each time moving the cards in a new shuffle. She knew more ways to shuffle cards than I had ever seen. Grandma Melvyn spread the cards into a single fan, then two fans. Then four fans. She waved the fans, and they melted into a single square deck, which she instantly stretched into a long card bridge. With a flick of her thumb, the cards gracefully flipped over one by one, cascading like a run of dominoes. She swept the cards together, shuffled once more, and swept them into a perfect fan arranged by suit: Spades, then hearts. Clubs, then diamonds.

Grandma Melvyn was showing off exactly like she’d told me not to do. And in case you were wondering, I did not point it out to her. I’m not an idiot. Besides, I was having too much fun watching her in action. I cut one thick slice of tomato (and almost one thick slice of my finger because I was too busy watching Grandma Melvyn to pay attention to making the sandwich), then I stuffed the tomato and a slice of cheese between two pieces of bread, tossed the sandwich onto a saucer, and sat down at the table.

As I sat down, Grandma Melvyn set the cards on the table and scooted them toward me. She took a bite of her sandwich and nodded toward the cards. The show was over. It was my turn.

I used to think that my shuffling was impressive, and maybe it is—for a fifth grader. But after watching Grandma Melvyn at work, I felt like my hands were gigantic blobs of rubber that I had no control over. I fumbled my shuffle, and half the cards fell on the floor.

“Sorry,” I said.

Grandma Melvyn raised an eyebrow and took another bite of her sandwich. I picked up the cards, squared them into a neat deck, took a deep breath, and began again. The cards slipped together in a clean shuffle. I did it again, then again, faster with each shuffle. Each time, I squared the deck perfectly before splitting it into two halves. Real card experts know exactly how many cards are in a stack just by the thickness of the stack. They do almost everything by feel. That is very important for tricks where you need to know the exact position of a card. I squeezed each half of the deck tightly, trying to tell if they had the same number of cards.

“Are you trying to squeeze the ink off those cards?” Grandma Melvyn asked.

I loosened my grip.

“The audience might be a bunch of Trixies,” Grandma Melvyn said, “but they can tell when you’re tense, and it makes them tense, too. It makes them pay close attention, and then it’s all over.”

I loosened my grip again and shuffled while Grandma Melvyn ate the last bite of her sandwich. The shuffle was smoother.

“Not bad,” Grandma Melvyn said, standing up and heading for the family room.

I smiled.

“But next time, add mayo.”