by Walter Tevis
She carried the cups over to the table. She had begun to sense in herself an enormous calm, like the calm she had felt that day at the high school when she knew she was unbeatable. When she set down the fourth cup she turned and looked back at the glass jar. Fergussen would know that pills had been stolen. That could not be hidden. Sometimes her father had said, “In for a dime, in for a dollar.”
She took the jar over to the table and poured the contents of the Dixie cups back into it, stepped back and checked. It would be simple to lean over from the outside and lift the jar out. She knew, too, where she could hide it, on the shelf of a disused janitors’ closet in the girls’ room. There was an old galvanized bucket up there that was never used; the jar would fit into it. There was also a short ladder in the closet, and she could use it safely because a person could lock the door on the girls’ room from the inside. Then, if there was a search for the missing pills, even if they found them, they couldn’t be traced to her. She would take only a few at a time and wouldn’t tell anyone—not even Jolene.
The pills she had gulped down a few minutes before were beginning to reach her mind. All of her nervousness had vanished. With clear purposefulness, she climbed up on Mr. Fergussen’s white table, put her head out the window and looked around her at the still-empty room. The jar of pills was a few inches from her left knee. She wriggled her way through the window and onto the stool. Standing up high there, she felt calm, powerful, in charge of her life.
She leaned forward dreamily and took the jar by its rim in both hands. A fine relaxation had spread through her body. She let herself go limp, staring down into the depths of green pills. Stately music came from the movie in the Library. Her toes were still on the stool and her body was loosely jackknifed over the window ledge; she no longer felt the sharp edge. She was like a limp rag doll. As her eyes lost focus, the green became a bright luminous blur.
“Elizabeth!” The voice seemed to come from a place inside her head. “Elizabeth!” She blinked. It was a woman’s voice, harsh, like Mother’s. She did not look around. Her fingers and thumbs on the side of the jar had gone loose. She squeezed them together and picked up the jar. She felt herself moving in slow motion, like slow motion in a movie where someone falls from a horse at a rodeo and you see him float gently to the ground as though it could not hurt at all. She lifted the jar with both hands and turned, and the bottom of the jar hit the window ledge with a dull ringing sound and her wrists twisted and the jar came loose from her hands and exploded on the edge of the stool at her feet. The fragments, mixed with hundreds of green pellets, cascaded to the linoleum floor. Bits of glass caught light like rhinestones and lay in place shivering while the green pills rolled outward like a bright waterfall toward Mrs. Deardorff. Mrs. Deardorff was standing a few feet away from her, saying, “Elizabeth!” over and over again. After what seemed a long time, the pills stopped moving.
Behind Mrs. Deardorff was Mr. Fergussen in his white pants and T-shirt. Next to him stood Mr. Schell, and just behind them, crowding to see what had happened, were the other children, some of them still blinking from the movie that had just ended. Every person in the room was staring at her, high on the miniature stage of her stool with her hands a foot apart as though she were still holding the glass jar.
Fergussen rode with her in the brown staff car and carried her into the hospital to the little room where the lights were bright and they made her swallow a gray rubber tube. It was easy. Nothing mattered. She could still see the green mound of pills in the jar. There were strange things happening inside her, but it didn’t matter. She fell asleep and woke only for a moment when someone pushed a hypodermic needle in her arm. She did not know how long she was there, but she did not spend the night. Fergussen drove her back the same evening. She sat in the front seat now, awake and unworried. The hospital was on the campus, where Fergussen was a graduate student; he pointed out the Psychology Building as they drove past it. “That’s where I go to school,” he said.
She merely nodded. She pictured Fergussen as a student, taking true-false tests and holding his hand up when he wanted to leave the room. She had never liked him before, had thought of him as just one of the others.
“Jesus, kid,” he said, “I thought Deardorff would explode.”
She watched the trees go by outside the car window.
“How many did you take? Twenty?”
“I didn’t count.”
He laughed. “Enjoy ’em,” he said. “It’ll be cold turkey tomorrow.”
***
At Methuen she went directly to bed and slept deeply for twelve hours. In the morning, after breakfast, Fergussen once again his usual distant self, told her to go to Mrs. Deardorff’s office. Surprisingly, she wasn’t afraid. The pills had worn off, but she felt rested and calm. While getting dressed she had made an extraordinary discovery. Deep in the pocket of her serge skirt, survivors of her being caught, her trip to the hospital, her undressing and then dressing again, were twenty-three tranquilizers. She had to take her toothbrush out of its holder to get them all in.
Mrs. Deardorff kept her waiting almost an hour. Beth didn’t care. She read in National Geographic about a tribe of Indians who lived in the holes of cliffs. Brown people with black hair and bad teeth. In the pictures there were children everywhere, often snuggled up against the older people. It was all strange; she had never been touched very much by older people, except for punishment. She did not let herself think about Mrs. Deardorff’s razor strop. If Deardorff was going to use it, she could take it. Somehow she sensed that what she had been caught doing was of a magnitude beyond usual punishment. And, deeper than that, she was aware of the complicity of the orphanage that had fed her and all the others on pills that would make them less restless, easier to deal with.
***
Mrs. Deardorff did not invite her to sit. Mr. Schell was seated on Mrs. Deardorff’s little blue chintz sofa, and in the red armchair sat Miss Lonsdale. Miss Lonsdale was in charge of chapel. Before she had started slipping off to play chess on Sundays, Beth had listened to some of Miss Lonsdale’s chapel talks. They were about Christian service and about how bad dancing and Communism were, as well as some other things Miss Lonsdale was not specific about.
“We have been discussing your case for the past hour, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Deardorff said. Her eyes, fixed on Beth, were cold and dangerous.
Beth watched her and said nothing. She felt something was going on that was like chess. In chess you did not let on what your next move would be.
“Your behavior has come as a profound shock to all of us. Nothing”—for a moment the muscles at the sides of Deardorff’s jaw stood out like steel cables—“nothing in the history of the Metheun Home has been so deplorable. It must not happen again.”
Mr. Schell spoke up. “We are terribly disappointed—”
“I can’t sleep without the pills,” Beth said.
There was a startled silence. No one had expected her to speak. Then Mrs. Deardorff said, “All the more reason why you should not have them.” But there was something odd in her voice, as though she were frightened.
“You shouldn’t have given them to us in the first place,” Beth said.
“I will not have back talk from a child,” Mrs. Deardorff said. She stood up and leaned across the desk toward Beth. “If you speak to me like that again, you will regret it.”
The breath caught in Beth’s throat. Mrs. Deardorff’s body seemed enormous. Beth drew back as though she had touched something white hot.
Mrs. Deardorff sat down and adjusted her glasses. “Your library and playground privileges have been suspended. You will not attend the Saturday movies and you will be in bed promptly at eight o’clock in the evenings. Do you understand?”
Beth nodded.
“Answer me.”
“Yes.”
“You will be in chapel thirty minutes early and will be responsible for setting up the chairs. If you are in any way remiss in this, Miss Lonsdale has been instructe
d to report to me. If you are seen whispering to another child in chapel or in any class, you will automatically be given ten demerits.” Mrs. Deardorff paused. “You understand the meaning of ten demerits, Elizabeth?”
Beth nodded.
“Answer me.”
“Yes.”
“Elizabeth, Miss Lonsdale informs me that you have often left chapel for long periods. That will end. You will remain in chapel for the full ninety minutes on Sundays. You will write a summary of each Sunday’s talk and have it on my desk by Monday morning.” Mrs. Deardorff leaned back in the wooden desk chair and folded her hands across her lap. “And Elizabeth…”
Beth looked at her carefully. “Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Deardorff smiled grimly. “No more chess.”
***
The next morning Beth went to the Vitamin Line after breakfast. She could see that the hasp had been replaced on the window and that this time there were screws in all four of the holes at each side of the padlock.
When she came up to the window Fergussen looked at her and grinned. “Want to help yourself?” he said.
She shook her head and held her hand out for the vitamin pills. He handed them to her and said, “Take it easy, Harmon.” His voice was pleasant; she had never heard him speak that way at vitamin time before.
***
Miss Lonsdale wasn’t too bad. She seemed embarrassed at having Beth report to her at nine-thirty, and she showed her nervously how to unfold and set out the chairs, helping her with the first two rows of them. Beth was able to handle it easily enough, but listening to Miss Lonsdale talk about godless communism and the way it was spreading in the United States was pretty bad. Beth was sleepy, and she hadn’t had time to finish breakfast. But she had to pay attention so she could write her report. She listened to Miss Lonsdale talk on in her deadly serious way about how we all had to be careful, that communism was like a disease and could infect you. It wasn’t clear to Beth what communism was. Something wicked people believed in, in other countries, like being Nazis and torturing Jews by the millions.
If Mrs. Deardorff hadn’t told him, Mr. Shaibel would be expecting her. She wanted to be there to play chess, to try the King’s Gambit against him. Maybe Mr. Ganz would be back with someone from the chess club for her to play. She let herself think of this only for a moment and her heart seemed to fill. She wanted to run. She felt her eyes smarting.
She blinked and shook her head and went on listening to Miss Lonsdale, who was talking now about Russia, a terrible place to be.
***
“You should’ve saw yourself,” Jolene said. “Up on that stool. Just floating around up there and Deardorff hollering at you.”
“It felt funny.”
“Shit, I bet. I bet it felt good.” Jolene leaned a little closer. “How many of them downers you take, anyhow?”
“Thirty.”
Jolene stared at her. “She-it!” she said.
***
It was difficult to sleep without the pills, but not impossible. Beth saved the few she had for emergencies and decided that if she had to stay awake for several hours every night, she would spend the time learning the Sicilian Defense. There were fifty-seven printed pages on the Sicilian in Modem Chess Openings, with a hundred and seventy different lines stemming from P—QB4. She would memorize and play through them all in her mind at night. When that was done and she knew all the variations, she could go on to the Pirć and the Nimzovitch and the Ruy Lopez. Modern Chess Openings was a thick, dense book. She would be all right.
Leaving Geography class one day, she saw Mr. Shaibel at the end of the long hallway. He had a metal bucket on wheels with him and was mopping. The students were all going the other way, to the door that led to the yard for recess. She walked down to him, stopping where the floor was wet. She stood for about a minute until he looked up at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “They won’t let me play anymore.”
He frowned and nodded but said nothing.
“I’m being punished. I…” She looked at his face. It registered nothing. “I wish I could play more with you.”
He looked for a moment as if he was going to speak. But instead he turned his eyes to the floor, bent his fat body slightly and went back to mopping. Beth could suddenly taste something sour in her mouth. She turned and walked back down the hall.
***
Jolene said there were always adoptions around Christmas. The year after they stopped Beth from playing chess there were two in early December. Both pretty ones, Beth thought to herself. “Both white,” Jolene said aloud.
The two beds stayed empty for a while. Then one morning before breakfast Fergussen came into the Girls’ Ward. Some of the girls giggled to see him there with the heavy bunch of keys at his belt. He came up to Beth, who was putting on her socks. It was near her tenth birthday. She got her second sock on and looked up at him.
He frowned. “We got a new place for you, Harmon. Follow me.”
She went with him across the ward, over to the far wall. One of the empty beds was there, under the window. It was a bit larger than the others and had more space around it.
“You can put your things in the nightstand,” Fergussen said. He looked at her for a minute. “It’ll be nicer over here.”
She stood there, amazed. It was the best bed in the ward. Fergussen was making a note on a clipboard. She reached out and touched his forearm with her fingertips, where the dark hairs grew, above his wristwatch. “Thank you,” she said.
THREE
“I see that you will be thirteen in two months, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Deardorff said.
“Yes, ma’am.” Beth was seated in the straight-backed chair in front of Mrs. Deardorff’s desk. Fergussen had come and taken her from study hall. It was eleven in the morning. She had not been in this office for over three years.
The lady on the sofa suddenly spoke up, with strained cheerfulness. “Twelve is such a wonderful age!” she said.
The lady wore a blue cardigan over a silky dress. She would have been pretty except for all the rouge and lipstick and for the nervous way she worked her mouth when she talked. The man sitting next to her wore a gray salt-and-pepper tweed suit with a vest.
“Elizabeth has performed well in all of her schoolwork,” Mrs. Deardorff went on. “She is at the top of her class in Reading and Arithmetic.”
“That’s so nice!” the lady said. “I was such a scatterbrain at Arithmetic.” She smiled at Beth brightly. “I’m Mrs. Wheatley,” she added in a confidential tone.
The man cleared his throat and said nothing. He looked as if he wanted to be somewhere else.
Beth nodded at the lady’s remark but could think of nothing to say. Why had they brought her here?
Mrs. Deardorff went on about Beth’s school work while the lady in the blue cardigan paid rapt attention. Mrs. Deardorff said nothing about the green pills or about Beth’s chess playing; her voice seemed filled with a distant approval of Beth. When she had finished there was an embarrassed silence for a while. Then the man cleared his throat again, shifted his weight uneasily and looked toward Beth as though he were looking over the top of her head. “Do they call you Elizabeth?” He sounded as if there were a bubble of air in his throat. “Or is it Betty?”
She looked at him. “Beth,” she said. “I’m called Beth.”
During the next few weeks she forgot about the visit in Mrs. Deardorff’s office and absorbed herself in schoolwork and in reading. She had found a set of girls’ books and was reading through them whenever she had a chance—in study halls, at night in bed, on Sunday afternoons. They were about the adventures of the oldest daughter in a big, haphazard family. Six months before, Methuen had gotten a TV set for the lounge, and it was played for an hour every evening. But Beth found that she preferred Ellen Forbes’s adventures to I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. She would sit up in bed, alone in the dormitory, and read until lights out. No one bothered her.
One evening in mid-September she was alon
e reading when Fergussen came in. “Shouldn’t you be packing?” he asked.
She closed her book, using her thumb to keep her place. “Why?”
“They haven’t told you?”
“Told me what?”
“You’ve been adopted. You’re being picked up after breakfast.”
She just sat there on the edge of the bed, staring at Fergussen’s broad white T-shirt.
***
“Jolene,” she said. “I can’t find my book.”
“What book?” Jolene said sleepily. It was just before lights out.
“Modern Chess Openings, with a red cover. I keep it in my nightstand.”
Jolene shook her head. “Beats the shit out of me.”
Beth hadn’t looked at the book for weeks, but she clearly remembered putting it at the bottom of the second drawer. She had a brown nylon valise beside her on the bed; it was packed with her three dresses and four sets of underwear, her toothbrush, comb, a bar of Dial soap, two barrettes and some plain cotton handkerchiefs. Her nightstand was now completely empty. She had looked in the library for her book, but it wasn’t there. There was nowhere else to look. She had not played a game of chess in three years except in her mind, but Modern Chess Openings was the only thing she owned that she cared about.
She squinted at Jolene. “You didn’t see it, did you?”
Jolene looked angry for a moment. “Watch who you go accusing,” she said. “I got no use for a book like that.” Then her voice softened. “I hear you’re leaving.”
“That’s right.”
Jolene laughed. “What’s the matter? Don’t want to go?”
“I don’t know.”
Jolene slipped under the bedsheet and pulled it up over her shoulders. “Just say ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘Yes, ma’am’ and you’ll do all right. Tell ’em you’re grateful to have a Christian home like theirs and maybe they’ll give you a TV in your room.”
There was something odd about the way Jolene was talking.
