The Queen's Gambit (4 page)

The teacher, Mr. Hume, was saying that you should have green leafy vegetables at least once a day. He began to write the names of vegetables on the board. Outside the big windows on Beth’s left, pink japonica was beginning to bloom. She studied the drawing of a naked man, trying vainly to find some secret.

***

Mr. Ganz was back the next Sunday. He had his own chessboard with him. It had black and white squares, and the pieces were in a wooden box lined with red felt. They were made of polished wood; Beth could see the grain in the white ones. She reached out while Mr. Ganz was setting them up and lifted one of the knights. It was heavier than the ones she had used and had a circle of green felt on the bottom. She had never thought about owning things, but she wanted this chess set.

Mr. Shaibel had set up his board in the usual place and got another milk crate for Mr. Ganz’s board. The two boards were now side by side, with a foot of space between them. It was a sunny day, and bright light came in the window filtered through the short bushes by the walk at the edge of the building. Nobody spoke while the pieces were set up. Mr. Ganz took the knight gently from Beth’s hand and put it on its home square. “We thought you could play us both,” he said.

“At the same time?”

He nodded.

Her milk crate had been put between the boards. She had White for both games, and in both of them she played pawn to king four.

Mr. Shaibel replied with the Sicilian; Mr. Ganz played pawn to king four. She did not even have to pause and think about the continuations. She played both moves and looked out the window.

She beat them both effortlessly. Mr. Ganz set up the pieces, and they started again. This time she moved pawn to queen four on both and followed it with pawn to queen’s bishop four—the Queen’s Gambit. She felt deeply relaxed, almost in a dream. She had taken seven tranquilizers at about midnight, and some of the languor was still in her.

About midway into the games she was staring out the window at a bush with pink blooms when she heard Mr. Ganz’s voice saying, “Beth, I’ve moved my bishop to bishop five” and she replied dreamily, “Knight to K-5.” The bush seemed to glow in the spring sunlight.

“Bishop to knight four,” Mr. Ganz said.

“Queen to queen four,” Beth replied, still not looking.

“Knight to queen’s bishop three,” Mr. Shaibel said gruffly.

“Bishop to knight five,” Beth said, her eyes on the pink blossoms.

“Pawn to knight three.” Mr. Ganz had a strange softness in his voice.

“Queen to rook four check,” Beth said.

She heard Mr. Ganz inhale sharply. After a second he said, “King to bishop one.”

“That’s mate in three,” Beth said, without turning. “First check is with the knight. The king has the two dark squares, and the bishop checks it. Then the knight mates.”

Mr. Ganz let out his breath slowly. “Jesus Christ!” he said.

TWO

They were watching the Saturday-afternoon movie when Mr. Fergussen came to take her to Mrs. Deardorff’s office. It was a movie about table manners called “How to Act at Dinnertime,” so she didn’t mind leaving. But she was frightened. Had they found out that she never went to chapel? That she saved pills? Her legs trembled and her knees felt funny as Mr. Fergussen, wearing his white pants and white T-shirt, walked her down the long hallway, down the green linoleum with black cracks in it. Her thick brown shoes squeaked on the linoleum, and she squinted her eyes under the bright fluorescent lights. The day before had been her birthday. No one had taken any notice of it. Mr. Fergussen, as usual, had nothing to say: he walked smartly down the hall ahead of her. At the door with the frosted glass panel and the words
HELEN DEARDORFF—SUPERINTENDENT
he stopped. Beth pushed open the door and went inside.

A secretary in a white blouse told her to go on to the back office. Mrs. Deardorff was expecting her. She pushed open the big wooden door and walked in. In the red armchair sat Mr. Ganz, wearing a brown suit. Mrs. Deardorff was sitting behind a desk. She peered at Beth over tortoise-shell glasses. Mr. Ganz smiled self-consciously and rose halfway from the chair when she came in. Then he sat down again awkwardly.

“Elizabeth,” Mrs. Deardorff said.

She had closed the door behind her and now stood a few feet away from it. She looked at Mrs. Deardorff.

“Elizabeth, Mr. Ganz tells me that you are a”—she adjusted the glasses on her nose—“a gifted child.” Mrs. Deardorff looked at her for a moment as though she were expected to deny it. When Beth said nothing, she went on, “He has an unusual request to make of us. He would like you to be taken to the high school on…” She looked over at Mr. Ganz again.

“On Thursday,” Mr. Ganz said.

“On Thursday. In the afternoon. He maintains that you are a phenomenal chess player. He would like you to perform for the chess club.”

Beth said nothing. She was still frightened.

Mr. Ganz cleared his throat. “We have a dozen members, and I’d like you to play them.”

“Well?” Mrs. Deardorff said. “Would you like to do that? It can be arranged as a field trip.” She smiled grimly at Mr. Ganz. “We like to give our girls a chance for experience outside.” That was the first time Beth had heard of it; she knew of no one who ever went anywhere.

“Yes,” Beth said. “I’d like to.”

“Good,” Mrs. Deardorff said. “It’s settled, then. Mr. Ganz and one of the girls from the high school will pick you up after lunch Thursday.”

Mr. Ganz got up to go, and Beth started to follow, but Mrs. Deardorff called her back.

“Elizabeth,” she said when they were alone, “Mr. Ganz informs me that you have been playing chess with our custodian.”

Beth was uncertain what to say.

“With Mr. Shaibel.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That is very irregular, Elizabeth. Have you gone to the basement?”

For a moment she considered lying. But it would be too easy for Mrs. Deardorff to find out. “Yes, ma’am,” she said again.

Beth expected anger, but Mrs. Deardorff’s voice was surprisingly relaxed. “We can’t have that, Elizabeth,” she said. “as much as Methuen believes in excellence, we can’t have you playing chess in the basement.”

Beth felt her stomach tighten.

“I believe there are chess sets in the game closet,” Mrs. Deardorff continued. “I’ll have Fergussen look into it.”

A phone began ringing in the outer office and a little light on the phone began flashing. “That will be all, Elizabeth. Mind your manners at the high school and be sure your nails are clean.”

***

In “Major Hoople” in the funnies, Major Hoople belonged to the Owl’s Club. It was a place where men sat in big old chairs and drank beer and talked about President Eisenhower and how much money their wives spent on hats. Major Hoople had a huge belly, like Mr. Shaibel, and when he was at the Owl’s Club with a dark beer bottle in his hands, his words came from his mouth with little bubbles. He said things like “Harrumph” and “Egad!” in a balloon on top of the bubbles. That was a “club.” It was like the library reading room at Methuen. Maybe she would play the twelve people in a room like that.

She hadn’t told anyone. Not even Jolene. She lay in bed after lights out and thought about it with an expectant quiver in her stomach. Could she play that many games? She rolled over on her back and nervously felt the pocket of her pajamas. There were two in there. It was six days until Thursday. Maybe Mr. Ganz meant she would play one game with one person and then one game with another, if that was how you did it.

She had looked up “phenomenal.” The dictionary said: “extraordinary; outstanding; remarkable.” She repeated these words silently to herself now: “extraordinary; outstanding; remarkable.” They became a tune in her mind.

She tried to picture twelve chessboards at once, spread out in a row on the ceiling. Only four or five were really clear. She took the black pieces for herself and assigned the whites to “them” and then had “them” move pawn to king four, and she responded with the Sicilian. She found she could keep five games going and concentrate on one at a time while the other four waited for her attention.

From out at the desk down the corridor she heard a voice say, “What time is it now?” and another voice reply, “It’s two-twenty.” Mother used to talk about the “wee, small hours.” This was one of them. Beth kept playing chess, keeping five imaginary games going at once. She had forgotten about the pills in her pocket.

The next morning Mr. Fergussen handed her the little paper cup as usual but when she looked down into it there were two orange vitamin tablets and nothing else. She looked back up at him, behind the little window of the pharmacy.

“That’s it,” he said. “Next.”

She didn’t move, even though the girl behind her was pushing against her. “Where are the green ones?”

“You don’t get them anymore,” Mr. Fergussen said.

Beth stood on tiptoe and looked over the counter. There, behind Mr. Fergussen, stood the big glass jar, still a third full of green pills. There must have been hundreds of them in there, like tiny jellybeans. “There they are,” she said and pointed.

“We’re getting rid of them,” he said. “It’s a new law. No more tranquilizers for kids.”

“It’s
my
turn,” said Gladys, behind her.

Beth didn’t move. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.

“It’s my turn for vitamins,” Gladys said, louder.

***

There had been nights when she was so involved in chess that she had slept without pills. But this wasn’t one of them. She could not think about chess. There were three pills in her toothbrush holder, and that was it. Several times she decided to take one of them but then decided not to.

***

“I hear tell you going to
exhibit
yourself,” Jolene said. She giggled, more to herself than to Beth. “Going to play chess in front of people.”

“Who told you?” Beth said. They were in the locker room after volleyball. Jolene’s breasts, not there a year before, jiggled under her gym shirt.

“Child, I just know things,” Jolene said. “Ain’t that where it’s like checkers but the pieces jump around crazy? My Uncle Hubert played that.”

“Did Mrs. Deardorff tell you?”

“Never go near that lady.” Jolene smiled confidentially. “It was Fergussen. He told me you going to the high school downtown. Day after tomorrow.”

Beth looked at her incredulously. The staff didn’t trade confidences with the orphans. “Fergussen…?”

Jolene leaned over and spoke seriously. “He and I been friendly from time to time. Don’t want you talking about it, hear?”

Beth nodded.

Jolene pulled back and went on drying her hair with the white gym towel. After volleyball you could always stretch out the time, showering and getting dressed, before going to study hall.

Beth thought of something. After a moment she spoke in a low voice, “Jolene.”

“Uh huh.”

“Did Fergussen give you green pills? Extra ones?”

Jolene looked at her hard. Then her face softened. “No, honey. I wish he would. But they got the whole state after ’em for what they been doing with those pills.”

“They’re still there. In the big jar.”

“That a fact?” Jolene said. “I ain’t noticed.” She kept looking at Beth. “I noticed you been edgy lately. You having withdraw symptoms?”

Beth had used her last pill the night before. “I don’t know,” she said.

“You look around,” Jolene said. “They’ll be some nervous orphans around here the next few days.” She finished drying her hair and stretched. With the light coming from behind her and with her frizzy hair and her big, wide eyes, Jolene was beautiful. Beth felt ugly, sitting there on the bench beside her. Pale and little and ugly. And she was scared to go to bed tonight without pills. She had been sleeping only two or three hours a night for the past two nights. Her eyes felt gritty and the back of her neck, even right after showering, was sweaty. She kept thinking about that big glass jar behind Fergussen, filled with green pills a third of the way up—enough to fill her toothbrush holder a hundred times.

***

Going to the high school was her first ride in a car since she came to Methuen. That was fourteen months ago. Nearly fifteen. Mother had died in a car, a black one like this, with a sharp piece of the steering wheel in her eye. The woman with the clipboard had told her, while Beth stared at the mole on the woman’s cheek and said nothing. Had felt nothing, either. Mother had passed on, the woman said. The funeral would be in three days. The coffin would be closed. Beth knew what a coffin was; Dracula slept in one. Daddy had passed on the year before, because of a “carefree life,” as Mother put it.

Beth sat in the back of the car with a big, embarrassed girl named Shirley. Shirley was in the chess club. Mr. Ganz drove. There was a knot as tight as wire in Beth’s stomach. She kept her knees pressed together and looked straight ahead at the back of Mr. Ganz’s neck in its striped collar and at the cars and buses ahead of their car, moving back and forth outside the windshield.

Shirley tried to make conversation. “Do you play the King’s Gambit?”

Beth nodded, but was afraid to speak. She hadn’t slept at all the night before, and very little for nights before that. Last night she had heard Fergussen talking and laughing with the lady at Reception; his heavy laughter had rolled down the corridor and under the doorway into the ward where she lay, stiff as steel, on her cot.

But one thing had happened—something unexpected. As she was about to leave with Mr. Ganz, Jolene came running up, gave Mr. Ganz one of her sly looks and said, “Can we talk for just a second?” Mr. Ganz said it was okay, and Jolene took Beth hastily aside and handed her three green pills. “Here, honey,” she said, “I can tell you need these.” Then Jolene thanked Mr. Ganz and skipped off to class, her geography book under one thin arm.

But there was no chance to take the pills. Beth had them in her pocket right now, but she was afraid. Her mouth was dry. She knew she could pop them down and probably no one would notice. But she was frightened. They would be there soon. Her head was spinning.

The car stopped at a light. Across the intersection was a Pure Oil station with a big blue sign. Beth cleared her throat, “I need to go to the bathroom.”