Middlegame

by Seanan McGuire

  In the kitchen, Heather Cheswich laughs and slides the yams into the oven. It feels like she’s been waiting years for Dodger to invite people to Thanksgiving dinner. She loves her daughter more than anything, but a mother worries. A mother worries a lot. Dodger has never made friends easily or seemed to mind spending most of her time alone with her math books and her chessboard. Even chess, which initially seemed like a way to get the girl to socialize—hard to play a two-person game by yourself—yielded none of the social benefits Heather was hoping for. After less than two years of competitive play, Dodger retired, claiming it wasn’t fair.

  She’ll never admit it, but Heather was starting to fear that her brilliant, beautiful little girl would be alone for her entire life, never realizing there was any other option. So naturally, when she wanted to bring her classmates home for a real family meal, both Heather and Peter were delighted to agree. Buying a slightly larger turkey was a small price to pay for knowing Dodger is finally making friends.

  The sound of laughter from the hall is like music. She knows Dodger’s voice, high and perpetually excited, spiking on every other word, like she’s afraid a failure to show her delight might bring the conversation crashing to a halt. The male voice beneath it is unfamiliar; tenor, light enough to provide a counterpart to Dodger’s heavier stresses, like a soothing ribbon of reason. A third voice comes in intermittently, female, deeper than Dodger’s, with a flat bottom note that speaks of a calm deadpan, a rational approach to the world. The fourth voice is also female, higher and sweeter than the others. Together, they make a choral blend Heather has been waiting to hear since the day she brought her daughter home from the airport. This is what it sounds like when your little girl is living in the world.

  She steps into the kitchen doorway, unashamed of the cranberry sauce on her apron and flour on her hands. She’s not worried about embarrassing Dodger in front of her friends; not on Thanksgiving. They’re grad students. All they’re going to care about is the food. “Hello,” she says, beaming beatifically before she sees them. That’s a good thing: it makes it possible for her smile to freeze.

  The first female voice must belong to the short, curvaceous girl in the jeans and green sweatshirt. Her hair is strawberry blonde, and for some reason it makes Heather think of the color she gets when she tries to wash blood out of cotton, a color that isn’t pink and isn’t red, but is its own unique, nameless shade, the aftermath of carnage. Her eyes are blue and cold, irises rimmed in startling black. There’s no denying her prettiness, but she looks at Heather the way a snake looks at a mouse, and for a moment—only a moment—Heather is very aware of the beating of her heart, the feeling of the muscle expanding and contracting, and how easily that process could be disrupted.

  Heather assigns the second female voice to the slender Indian girl. Her skin is brown, her hair is black, and she is lovely, dressed in a slightly-too-formal yellow sundress too thin to keep her warm almost anywhere else in the country. California’s eternal springtime must seem like a blessing. She, too, looks like a predator in her own way, but a hawk rather than a tiger, safer and more distant, assessing the world and belonging to it at the same time.

  Oddly, though, the predator girls are not the problem. Heather has met Dodger’s classmates before, students from her Gifted and Talented courses, child geniuses all too aware that everything they did was weighed and measured against the presumption of their brilliance. They are a predatory race by nature, these children of the golden mean, terrified of their edges being dulled by the world, measuring the love of their parents against the number of perfect scores they can achieve. Heather always tried to be kind to them, hoping they’d warm to her awkward, sensitive daughter, who approached her own brilliance more as a game than a calling. They might have been good for each other. But always and inevitably, Dodger was a better mathematician, or a worse abstract thinker, and would either be fled from as competition or discarded as deadweight. No; the predatory ones are not Heather’s concern.

  It’s the boy.

  Dodger is tall for a girl and he’s short for a boy; they present an almost matched set when standing side by side. His hair is brown, but his eyes are the same clear gray as hers, shading toward white around the pupils, until it seems he must be blind; no one with eyes that light can possibly be able to see.

  Their builds are similar, with the necessary allowances for gender: his shoulders are broader, his hips narrower; her face is rounder, but the structure of the skull beneath is so alike that it makes Heather’s breath catch in her throat. And their faces …

  Heather Cheswich has waited twenty years for the doorbell to ring and a red-haired woman with freckles on her nose to appear on her stoop, saying politely that she made a mistake, she wants her daughter back, and she hopes they’ll understand. She prepared herself for legal challenges, for teenage tantrums ending with shouts of “you’re not my real mother.” She got none of those things. She has almost stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop, and now here it is, in the form of a politely smiling young man who looks so much like her daughter that it physically hurts.

  Do you even know how much he looks like you? she wonders, and forces herself to speak. “Hello,” she says, dusting her floury hand against her hip before she offers it in greeting. “I’m Heather, Dodger’s mother.”

  “Erin,” says the first girl, taking the offered hand and shaking it with perfunctory quickness. “You have a lovely home.”

  “Thank you,” says Heather.

  “Smita,” says the second girl. “I appreciate the invitation. I didn’t want to sit alone.”

  “Nonsense; it’s our pleasure,” says Heather. “The more the merrier.”

  It’s the boy’s turn. He takes her hand, shakes, smiles. “I’m Roger,” he says. “I know I was a last-minute addition. I really appreciate your having me.”

  He has a New England accent, thick as pancake batter, oozing over every word. Heather freezes again, this time in fear. It’s been years since Dodger was attacked, years since her recovery was complete, but the boy who hurt her was never found … and that boy spoke with a New England accent. (The papers reported it as Boston. That was easier. That was the simpler route.)

  Roger looks at her with evident sympathy. It’s like he knows what she must be thinking, somehow understands the words she’s too frozen and afraid to say. Dodger’s smile is fading, slipping away by inches.

  There are questions here, questions that should be asked, but Heather’s not going to be the one who ruins this day. She refuses. So she smiles again, more sincerely, and turns to her daughter as she says, “Daddy’s out back prepping the turkey, and I’ve got things under control in the kitchen. Why don’t you grab something to drink and take your friends out to the patio?”

  “Okay, Mom,” says Dodger, relief flooding her features. She bounces over to kiss her mother’s cheek before turning to her friends and asking, “Coffee, lemonade, or root beer?”

  “Root beer,” says Erin.

  “Lemonade,” says Smita.

  “Coffee,” says Roger, with the sort of reverence most people reserve for the names of celebrities, saints, or vacation destinations. This time, Heather’s smile is sincere. They’re so at ease with one another; there’s no way Roger had anything to do with what happened to her little girl.

  There’s just no way.

  * * *

  The Cheswich home isn’t large enough to be considered palatial, but it’s huge, especially for a home presumably maintained on a professor’s salary. Roger looks at the living room with its cathedral ceiling and the hallway with its hardwood floors, and feels like he’s made a mistake. Thanksgiving belongs in an old English colonial house with repairs visible to the baseboards and the ceiling, if you know where to look. There should be signs of wear and tear on the wallpaper, not this pristine showroom shine.

  Dodger glances at him, grimaces sympathetically, and says, “My folks were afraid we might have to sell and move when I was a kid. Daddy had tenure
, but there were budget cuts, and tenure doesn’t keep you employed if your department goes away. They inherited the house from Mom’s grandparents. I never met them, but Great-Grandpa was some sort of apple baron or something, and they had a lot of money back in the day. So I always knew if I wanted to make a mess, I should either make it in my room or go outside and make it there.”

  Roger thinks of blood sinking into the ground, of messes made in ways and in places that can never be cleaned. He doesn’t say anything. It wouldn’t change anything. The past is set in stone, and he’s not a sculptor; he doesn’t get to go back and make something like that not happen.

  Something about that thought nags at him, like a mosquito buzzing around his head. It’s such a strange way to frame things. He’s not a sculptor. But that opens the possibility that someone else could be; that such sculptors could exist in this world.

  Clearly he needs more coffee. He gulps it as Dodger burbles about renovations, about how some of the prize money from the various mathematical puzzles she’s solved over the years has gone back into the house, always with her consent, sometimes with her insistence, shoring up the foundations that kept her safe. There’s a door at the end of the hallway; she opens it, and they’re looking out on the backyard, and the roses, he sees the roses, the ones she showed him when they were children, the ones that always seemed so bright and beautiful to him, like roses grown in the Up-and-Under.

  Their colors are as faded as any other roses. He sighs. Dodger glances at him and he closes his eyes, hiding the gesture behind a yawn as he looks through her eyes, looks out and sees the roses, as bright and as beautiful as ever.

  He wonders what she gets when she looks through his eyes that she doesn’t see through her own.

  “Did you not sleep last night?” asks Erin.

  He opens his eyes, but not before Dodger looks in her direction and he sees her through a different perspective: sees that her hair is strawberry blonde, not ashy, as he’d always assumed; sees her cheeks are flushed, even though it’s not that warm, even though they haven’t been doing anything to leave her in that state. It’s strange. It’s attractive, even. She’s still dangerous, but it’s a pretty sort of danger, the kind he could get used to.

  Then his eyes are open, and the color is gone, one more layer of meaning removed from the world. “Not enough,” he says, with a smile and a shrug. “I was excited about the idea of eating a real meal for a change. Sue me if there’s something wrong with that.”

  “If grad students wanting to eat properly is something worth litigating, we’re doomed,” says Dodger, and drags him into the backyard. There’s her father, standing near the fence—so much higher and sturdier than it was when they were kids, when Dodger’s fascination with the gully was safe, and not the disaster it became—and fiddling with the barbecue, where he’s grilling asparagus and corn to go with the turkey. He raises a hand in a wave. All four of them wave back but don’t approach. It’s better to let the people who enjoy playing with fire to finish before getting too close, at least if the goal is continuing to have hair that’s not burning.

  There’s a table set up on the patio where they’ll be eating dinner, and a pair of sliding glass doors lead into the kitchen where Heather is working. They must have taken the long way through the house to avoid disturbing her. It’s an easy conclusion to reach, and is reinforced when Dodger steers them to a smaller table off to one side and says, brightly, “I’ll be right back.”

  She’s gone before any of them can object. Roger exchanges a look with Erin and says, “We’re about to get covered in glitter.”

  “Craft herpes can strike anyone at any time,” she says dryly.

  “Practice safe crafts,” says Smita. Erin laughs. She’s still laughing when Dodger returns with a laundry basket full of supplies, dropping it onto the table and beaming at them.

  “I was set up inside, but Mom said I should move out here once you arrived, since four of us is more than she could reasonably be expected to bear,” she says blithely, and begins unpacking the basket. “Who wants to string popcorn?”

  “Is there another option?” asks Roger.

  “We need to make more paper chains,” says Dodger.

  “Maybe you should have invited Candace to this thing,” says Erin, looking dubiously at the bowl of cranberries. “She’s the one with an interest in early childhood development. This is probably like taking a final exam for her.”

  “Candace flew back to Portland yesterday,” says Dodger. She waves a hand at the sky, like she’s indicating the arc of Candace’s flight. “Besides, she’s a vegetarian. I don’t think she’d appreciate the carnage that is my family Thanksgiving.”

  “Well, on behalf of the world’s meat-eaters, I want to thank you in advance for the carnage,” says Roger dryly. “I’ll string popcorn for you, Dodge. How hard can it be?”

  It can be quite hard. The popcorn is crumbly and the cranberries are slick, trying to shoot away when he holds them too tightly, rolling out of the path of the needle when he doesn’t hold them tightly enough. There’s a trick to this, and while he may have known it as a child, the skill seems to have left him. Only Erin seems to have the knack: for her, the craft supplies behave perfectly, the needle finding its angle every time. Silence falls, punctuated by the snick of scissors slicing through construction paper, the occasional soft curse word, and the distant sound of Dodger’s father swearing amiably at the barbecue.

  The first Roger knows of Peter Cheswich’s approach is when a male voice—a voice he’s heard countless times through Dodger’s ears, but only once through his own—says behind him, “It’s nice to see a normal-looking garland. When Dodger does them, she always winds up using the popcorn to make a Fibonacci sequence, with the cranberries as markers between the numbers we’re supposed to pay attention to.”

  “Why is this not surprising?” asks Smita.

  “You thought it was cute when I was four, Daddy,” says Dodger, looking up from her latest paper chain. She wrinkles her nose, scrunching up the lower half of her face like a much younger girl. It’s both endearing and a little weird. Roger has only ever seen her guard this low when they were alone together in her room, her holding a marker, him staying out of her way.

  “It’s still cute,” says Peter. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

  Erin and Smita have been through this process before, often enough to know the expected steps. They turn, smiles on their faces. Roger does the same. In his case, the smile feels like it’s cemented in place, so tight and heavy that it might crack and fall off at any moment. Dodger’s mother was an easy bar to clear compared to this.

  I might have been better off going home, he thinks, and feels his skin tighten, becoming two sizes too small. No. He would not have been better off going home. He doesn’t know how he knows that, but he does, oh, how he does. Going home would have been the end of all things.

  This may not be much better. “This is Erin, one of my housemates, Smita, from the biology department, and Roger, my best friend and most tolerant companion,” says Dodger.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cheswich,” says Erin, holding out her hand.

  Peter, laughing, shows her his own grease-stained fingers. “I’m normally all in favor of normal social ritual, but right now, I think it’s better if I leave you in the condition I found you in,” he says. “I’ll shake later, after I’ve had time to wash up.”

  “Good plan,” says Erin.

  “Hello, sir,” says Smita.

  Peter’s attention shifts to Roger, taking his measure. Even if Roger didn’t know that Dodger had never bothered to date during high school—it took time away from more important things, like homework—he’d be able to tell from the look on her father’s face. He’s been the first boy a few girls ever brought home. All of their fathers looked at him like that, with a mixture of hope and suspicion, like he could either rescue or ruin their daughters.

  Aren’t you going to be surprised
, he thinks, and keeps smiling his forced smile, and says, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  Like Heather before him, Peter goes still, the blood draining from his face, leaving him a silent, staring statue of a man.

  “Can you show me where the bathroom is?” Erin asks abruptly, looking at Dodger.

  “But—” She wants to help. It’s written all through her voice, in the desperation of that single, unsteady syllable. She wants to fix this. Roger saved her life, and her father is her father, and she needs them to get along, because she can’t imagine a world without either one of them. They’re essential to the future as she sees it, a future made up of careful equations and perfectly arranged consequences.

  “I really have to go,” says Erin, all clenched teeth and tight syllables.

  “I would enjoy knowing the bathroom’s location as well,” says Smita.

  Dodger sighs. She knows her duty as a hostess, even if she doesn’t want to do it. “I’ll be right back,” she says to Roger and her father, neither of whom are listening. She stands, beckoning for the other girls to follow, and together, the three disappear back into the house.

  Roger doesn’t move. He’s looking at Peter, waiting for the explosion he knows is coming. He could try to talk his way out of this—he’s persuasive when he wants to be, always has been—but he doesn’t say a word. Trying to change the way this plays out will do him no good, and may do him a great deal of harm. He knows that. He knows, and still he has to bite his tongue to keep the words prisoned inside, where they can’t get out and make things worse.

  Finally, Peter asks, in an almost conversational tone, like he’s remarking on the weather, “Did you think I wouldn’t know your voice? That you could come into my home, my place, and sit here with my daughter, and I wouldn’t remember you?”

  “No, sir,” says Roger. “I almost didn’t come, because I knew you would, and I didn’t want to ruin your Thanksgiving. But I was going to have to meet you eventually. There was no way to avoid it. This seemed like the best way to do it without you calling the police the second I opened my mouth.”