The Queen's Gambit

by Walter Tevis

  At home she tried a Russian game book, but she couldn’t concentrate. She started going through her game with Foster, setting the board up in the kitchen, but the moves of it were too painful. That damned Stonewall, and the hastily pushed pawn. A patzer’s move. Bad chess. Hungover chess. The telephone rang, but she didn’t answer. She sat at the board and wished for a moment, painfully, that she had someone to call. Harry Beltik would be back in Louisville. And she didn’t want to tell him about the game with Foster. He would find out soon enough. She could call Benny. But Benny had been icy after Paris, and she did not want to talk to him. There was no one else. She got up wearily and opened the cabinet next to the refrigerator, took down a bottle of white wine and poured herself a glassful. A voice inside her cried out at the outrage, but she ignored it. She drank half of it in one long swallow and stood waiting until she could feel it. Then she finished the glass and poured another. A person could live without chess. Most people did.

  When she awoke on the sofa the next morning, still wearing the Paris clothes she had worn when losing the game to Foster, she was frightened in a new way. She could sense her brain being physically blurred by alcohol, its positional grasp gone clumsy, its penetration clouded. But after breakfast she showered and changed and then poured herself a glass of wine. It was almost mechanical; she had learned to cut off thought as she did it. The main thing was to eat some toast first, so the wine wouldn’t burn her stomach.

  She kept drinking for days, but the memory of the game she had lost and the fear of what she was doing to the sharp edge of her gift would not go away, except when she was so drunk that she could not even think. There was a piece in the Sunday paper about her, with one of the pictures taken that morning at the high school, and a headline reading CHESS CHAMP DROPS FROM TOURNEY. She threw the paper away without reading the article.

  Then one morning after a night of dark and confusing dreams she awoke with an unaccustomed clarity: if she did not stop drinking immediately she would ruin what she had. She had allowed herself to sink into this frightening murk. She had to find a foothold somewhere to push herself free of it. She would have to get help. With a great sense of relief, she suddenly knew who it was she wanted to get help from.

  THIRTEEN

  Jolene was not in the Lexington directory. Beth Tried information in Louisville and Frankfort. No Jolene DeWitt. She could have married and changed her name. She could be in Chicago or the Klondike for that matter; Beth had not seen or heard from her since the day she left Methuen. And there was only one thing to do if she was to go through with this. Her adoption papers were in a drawer in Mrs. Wheatley’s desk. She got the folder out and found a letter with the Methuen name and slogan at the top of it in red. The phone number was there. She held the paper nervously for several moments. At the bottom it was signed in a small, neat hand: Helen Deardorff, Superintendent.

  It was almost noon, and she had not had a drink yet. For a moment she thought of steadying herself with a Gibson, but she could not hide the stupidity of that idea from herself. A Gibson would be the end of her resolve. She might be alcoholic, but she was not a fool. She went upstairs and got her bottle of Mexican Librium and took two. Waiting for the tension to ease, she walked into the yard which the boy had mowed the day before. The tea roses had finally bloomed. The petals had fallen from most of them, and at the end of some of the stems were spherical, pregnant-looking hips where the flowers had been. She had never noticed them when they were blooming in June and July.

  Back in the kitchen, she felt steadier. The tranquilizers were working. How many brain cells did they kill with each milligram? It couldn’t be as bad as liquor. She walked into the living room and dialed the Methuen Home.

  The operator at Methuen put her on hold. Beth reached over to the bottle, shook out a green pill and swallowed it. Finally the voice came, shockingly crisp, from the receiver. “Helen Deardorff speaking.”

  For a moment she couldn’t speak and wanted to hang up, but she sucked in her breath and said, “Mrs. Deardorff, this is Beth Harmon.”

  “Really?” The voice sounded surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “Well.” During the pause that followed it occurred to Beth that Mrs. Deardorff might have nothing to say. She might find it as difficult talking to Beth as Beth did talking to her. “Well,” Mrs. Deardorff said, “we’ve been reading about you.”

  “How’s Mr. Shaibel?” Beth asked.

  “Mr. Shaibel is still with us. Is that what you called about?”

  “I called about Jolene DeWitt. I need to get in touch with her.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Deardorff said. “Methuen cannot give out the addresses or phone numbers of its charges.”

  “Mrs. Deardorff,” Beth said, her voice suddenly breaking through into feeling, “Mrs. Deardorff, do this for me. I have to talk to Jolene.”

  “There are laws—”

  “Mrs. Deardorff,” Beth said, “please.”

  Mrs. Deardorff’s voice took on a different tone. “All right, Elizabeth. DeWitt lives in Lexington. Here’s her phone number.”

  ***

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Jolene said on the phone. “Jesus fucking Christ!”

  “How are you, Jolene?” Beth felt like crying, but she kept the quaver out of her voice.

  “Oh my God, child,” Jolene said, laughing. “It is so good to hear your voice. Are you still ugly?”

  “Are you still black?”

  “I am one black lady,” Jolene said. “And you’ve lost your ugly. I saw you in more magazines than Barbra Streisand. My famous friend.”

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  “Jealous.”

  “Jolene,” Beth said, “did you ever get adopted?”

  “Shit, no. I graduated from that place. Why in hell didn’t you mail me a card or a box of cookies?”

  “I’ll buy you dinner tonight. Can you get to Toby’s on Main Street at seven?”

  “I’ll cut a class,” Jolene said. “Son of a bitch! U.S. Champion at the historic game of chess. A genuine winner.”

  “That’s what I want to talk about,” Beth said.

  When they met at Toby’s the spontaneity was gone. Beth had spent the day without a drink, had her hair cut at Roberta’s and cleaned up the kitchen, almost overcome with the excitement of talking to Jolene again. She arrived at Toby’s a quarter of an hour early and nervously turned down the waiter’s offer to bring her a drink. She had a Coke in front of her when Jolene arrived.

  At first Beth didn’t recognize her. The woman who came toward her table in what looked like a Coco Chanel suit and a full, bushy Afro was so tall that Beth could not believe it was Jolene. She looked like a movie star, or a rock-and-roll princess—fuller in the figure than Diana Ross and as cool as Lena Horne. But when Beth saw that it was in fact Jolene, that the smile and the eyes were the Jolene she remembered, she stood up awkwardly, and they embraced. Jolene’s perfume was strong. Beth felt self-conscious. Jolene patted her back while they hugged, and said, “Beth Harmon. Old Beth.”

  They sat down and looked at each other awkwardly. Beth decided she had to have a drink to see her through this. But when the waiter came, blessedly breaking the silence, Jolene ordered a club soda and Beth had him bring her another Coke.

  Jolene was carrying something in a manila envelope, which she set on the table in front of Beth. Beth picked it up. It was a book, and she knew immediately what it was. She slipped off the envelope. Modern Chess Openings. Her old, nearly worn-out copy.

  “Me all the time,” Jolene said. “Pissed at you for being adopted.”

  Beth grimaced, opening the book to the title page where the childish handwriting read “Elizabeth Harmon, Methuen Home.” “What about for being white?”

  “Who could forget?” Jolene said.

  Beth looked at Jolene’s good, beautiful face with all the remarkable hair and the long black eyelashes and the full lips, and the self-consciousness dropped away from her with a relief that was physi
cal in its simplicity. She smiled broadly. “It’s good to see you.” What she wanted to say was, “I love you.”

  During the first half of the meal Jolene talked about Methuen—about sleeping through chapel and hating the food and about Mr. Schell, Miss Graham and the Saturday Christian movies. She was hilarious on the subject of Mrs. Deardorff, imitating her tight voice and her way of tossing her head. She ate slowly and laughed a lot, and Beth found herself laughing with her. It had been a long time since Beth had laughed, and she had never felt so easy with anyone—not even with Mrs. Wheatley. Jolene ordered a glass of white wine with her veal and Beth hesitated before asking the waiter for ice water.

  “You not old enough?” Jolene said.

  “That’s not it. I’m eighteen.”

  Jolene raised her eyebrows and went back to her veal. After a few moments she started talking again. “When you went off to your happy home, I started doing serious volleyball. I graduated when I was eighteen and the University gave me a scholarship in Phys. Ed.”

  “How do you like it?”

  “It’s all right,” Jolene said, a bit fast. And then, “No, it isn’t. It’s a shuck is what it is. I don’t want to be a gym coach.”

  “You could do something else.”

  Jolene shook her head. “It wasn’t till I got my bachelor’s last year that I really caught on.” She had been talking with her mouth full. Now she swallowed and leaned forward with her elbows on the table. “I should have been in law or government. These are the right days for what I’ve got, and I blew it on learning the side straddle hop and the major muscles of the abdomen.” Her voice got lower and stronger. “I’m a black woman. I’m an orphan. I ought to be at Harvard. I ought to be getting my picture in Time magazine like you.”

  “You’d look great with Barbara Walters,” Beth said. “You could talk about the emotional deprivation of orphans.”

  “Could I ever,” Jolene said. “I’d like to tell about Helen Deardorff and her goddamn tranquilizers.”

  Beth hesitated a moment. Then she said, “Do you still take tranquilizers?”

  “No,” Jolene said. “Hell, no.” She laughed. “Never forget you ripping off that whole jarful. Right there in the Multi-Purpose Room in front of the whole fucking orphanage, with Old Helen ready to turn into a pillar of salt and the rest of us with our jaws hanging slack.” She laughed again. “Made you a hero, it did. I told the new ones about it after you was gone.” Jolene had finished her meal; she sat back from the table now and pushed the plate toward the center. Then she leaned back, took a package of Kents from her jacket pocket and looked at it for a moment. “When your picture came out in Life, I was the one put it on the bulletin board in the library. Still there as far as I know.” She lit a cigarette, using a little black lighter, and inhaled deeply. “‘A Girl Mozart Startles the World of Chess.’ My, my.”

  “I still take tranquilizers,” Beth said. “Too many of them.”

  “Oh, you poor thing,” Jolene said wryly, looking at her cigarette.

  Beth was quiet for a while. The silence between them was palpable. Then she said, “Let’s have dessert.”

  “Chocolate mousse,” Jolene said. During dessert she stopped eating and looked across the table. “You don’t look good, Beth,” she said. “You’re puffy.” Beth nodded and finished her mousse.

  Jolene drove her home in her silver VW. When they got to Jan-well, Beth said, “I’d like you to come in for a while, Jolene. I want you to see my house.”

  “Sure,” Jolene said. Beth showed her where to pull over, and when they got out of the car Jolene said, “That whole house belong to you?” and Beth said, “Yes.”

  Jolene laughed. “You’re no orphan,” she said. “Not anymore.”

  But when they came into the little entryway inside the front door, the stale, fruity smell was a shock. Beth had not noticed it before. There was an embarrassed silence while she turned on the lamps in the living room and looked around. She had not seen the dust on the TV screen or the stains on the cobbler’s bench. At the corner of the living room ceiling near the staircase was a dense cobweb. The whole place was dark and musty.

  Jolene walked around the room, looking. “You been doing more than pills, honey,” she said.

  “I’ve been drinking wine.”

  “I believe it.”

  Beth made them coffee in the kitchen. At least the floor in there was clean. She opened the window out into the garden to let fresh air in.

  Her chessboard was still set up on the table and Jolene picked up the white queen and held it for a moment. “I get tired of games,” she said. “Never did learn this one.”

  “Want me to teach you?”

  Jolene laughed. “It’d be something to tell about.” She set the queen back on the board. “They’ve instructed me in handball, racquetball and paddleball. I play tennis, golf, dodgeball, and I wrestle. Don’t need chess. What I want to hear about is all this wine.”

  Beth handed her a mug of coffee.

  Jolene set it down and got out a cigarette. Sitting in the drab kitchen with her bright-navy suit and her Afro, she was like a new center in the room.

  “It start with the pills?” Jolene asked.

  “I used to love them,” Beth said. “Really love them.”

  Jolene shook her head twice, from side to side.

  “I haven’t had anything to drink today,” Beth said abruptly. “I’m supposed to play in Russia next year.”

  “Luchenko,” Jolene said. “Borgov.”

  Beth was surprised that she knew the names. “I’m scared of it.”

  “Then don’t go.”

  “If I don’t, there’s nothing else for me to do. I’ll just drink.”

  “Looks like you do that, anyway.”

  “I just need to quit drinking and quit those pills and fix this place up. Look at the grease on that stove.” She pointed to it. “I’ve got to study chess eight hours a day, and I’ve got to do some tournaments. They want me to play in San Francisco, and they want me on the Tonight Show. I should do all that.”

  Jolene studied her.

  “What I want is a drink,” Beth said. “If you weren’t here, I’d have a bottle of wine.”

  Jolene frowned. “You sound like Susan Hayward in those movies,” she said.

  “It’s no movie,” Beth said.

  “Then quit talking like one. Let me tell you what to do. You come over to the Alumni Gymnasium on Euclid Avenue tomorrow morning at ten. That’s when I work out. Bring your gym shoes and a pair of shorts. You need to get that puffy look out of you before you make any more plans.”

  Beth stared at her. “I always hated gym…”

  “I remember,” Jolene said.

  Beth thought about it. There were bottles of red wine and white in the cabinet behind her, and for a moment she became impatient for Jolene to leave so that she could get one out and twist the cork off and pour herself a full glass. She could feel the sensation of it at the back of her throat.

  “It’s not that bad,” Jolene said. “I’ll get you a couple of fresh towels and you can use my hair dryer.”

  “I don’t know how to get there.”

  “Take a cab. Hell, walk.”

  Beth looked at her, dismayed.

  “You’ve got to get your ass moving, girl,” Jolene said. “You got to quit sitting in your own funk.”

  “Okay,” Beth said. “I’ll be there.”

  When Jolene left, Beth had one glass of wine but not a second. She opened up all the windows in the house and drank the wine out in the backyard, with the moon, nearly full, directly above the little shed at the back. There was a cool breeze. She took a long time over the drink, letting the breeze blow into the kitchen window, fluttering the curtains, blowing through the kitchen and living room, clearing out the air inside.

  ***

  The gym was a high-ceilinged room with white walls. Light came in from enormous windows along the side where a row of strange-looking machines sat. Jolene was wear
ing yellow tights and gym shoes. The morning was warm, and Beth had worn her white shorts in the taxi. At the far end of the exercise room a doleful-looking young man in gray trunks lay on his back on a bench, pushing up weights and groaning. Otherwise they were alone.

  They started with a pair of stationary bicycles. Jolene set the drag on Beth’s at ten, and sixty for her own. By the time they had pedaled ten minutes Beth was covered with sweat and her calves were aching.

  “It gets worse,” Jolene said.

  Beth gritted her teeth and kept pedaling.

  She could not get the rhythm right on the hip-and-back machine, and her ass slid on the imitation-leather bench she had to lie on while she pushed the weights down with her legs. Jolene had set it for forty pounds, but even that seemed too much. Then there was the machine where she raised the weights with her ankles, making the tendons in her upper legs stand out and hurt. After that she had to sit upright in what reminded her of an electric chair and pull in weights with her elbows. “Firm up your pectorals,” Jolene said.

  “I thought that was a kind of fish,” Beth said.

  Jolene laughed. “Trust me, honey. This is what you need.”

  Beth did them all—furious and terribly out of breath. It made her fury worse to see that Jolene used far heavier weights than she did. But then, Jolene’s figure was perfect.

  The shower afterward was exquisite. There were strong water jets, and Beth sprayed herself hard, getting the sweat off. She soaped herself thoroughly and watched the foam swirl on the white tiles at her feet as she rinsed it off with a stinging hot spray.