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Beth first learns what sex was after she calls Mr. Shaibel a cocksucker – a memory that makes her cringe remembering it even years after the incident.
It is her best friend and foster sister Jolene who tells her about it.
Beth stares at the pictures in her biology book - and wonders why on earth anyone would want to do such an utterly disgusting thing.
That thought hadn’t really changed throughout high school. Watching couples make out makes something – fascination and disgust – course through her.
Townes is handsome. Utterly so. And he wasn’t a particularly bad chess player either. Beth likes to look at him and felt a shiver when he touched her, but she doesn’t feel the butterflies everyone says they experience. All she felt was sulkiness and a slight disappointment when she realized there was only one bed in the room and the man had a roommate.
She doesn’t really care much about that, though. She has Benny Watts to beat.
But everyone else does care. So when some guy – she didn’t even know his name till she went to their ‘bachelor pad’ – propositions her, she figures she may as well as see what others apparently do.
It is incredibly underwhelming.
She feels next to nothing after that earth-shattering sharp pain when he’d first gone inside. What on earth do others see in this nonsensical time-waste?
She wishes she can explain this thought process to her mother, who seems to think she is now going to sleep with everyone in sight and would just not stop talking about safety. And agreeing first before actually having sex.
And then Alma dies.
Another mother. Gone.
She returns from Mexico City in a daze of drinks and pills and funeral planning. She dreads having to live in that empty house with reminders of her mother around every corner. That constant cold dark feeling tightens around her stomach.
Harry Beltik appears though. He’s nice. Sweet. Not nearly as good a chess player as her, but he does know things and have books she doesn’t. And sex with him is. . . Peaceful. Nice. Not as terrible as her first experience, but not exactly clarifying why people are so obsessed with it.
But he says he’s in love with her. Beth doesn’t much understand the concept of love, much less romantic love. Emotions still make her cringe. She doesn’t have the time for them. Or else she would think about Alice, Alma, the orphanage and other things that give her nightmares and leave her dry heaving. People are complicated. She distances herself from him – whether on purpose or simply subconsciously, she’s still uncertain – which makes him leave, giving her a warning which stirs both annoyance and unease throughout her body.
The pride and the sorrow of chess. Was that going to be her too?
Beth goes to the U.S. Championship in Ohio, being away from the ghosts in Kentucky like a breath of fresh air.
Chess. She knows how to do chess. She doesn’t have to think about or understand other people. Like Margaret. Why would she marry and have a child only to turn to alcohol if those things were truly as satisfying and wonderful as society said?
She doesn’t understand what to make of Benny Watts. She remembers fantasizing about taking his knife from its holster and plunging it into his chest over a chessboard – the game on which she’d won. And drawing ugly mustaches and horns on his photos in magazines.
But she likes bantering with him. He seems to seek her out for some reason, too. And he’s handsome. In a different way from Townes or Harry, with golden hair like the sunrise from the orphanage window.
He embarrasses her, taking away hard earned money, beating her over and over until she had to ultimately give up. This makes her angry, murderously angry, but not irrationally so. Like a sheet of ice over her heart. She is going to trounce him in the finals. The match that actually matters.
She doesn’t know why she agrees to go to New York with him. Maybe because she knows she went to pieces with Borgov in Mexico, and that though Harry had helped – she’s not actually sure if she could have beat Benny without the strategies and help he’d given even though she’s relatively certain she could have – she’d need more help.
Maybe it’s because of the way he’d looked strangely at her when she asked if he played through games in his own head – like she’d asked him if he breathed or ate.
Maybe it’s because the tiredness she’d always felt in her life – in every aspect of it except chess – had grown more and more over encompassing. The thought of going back to Kentucky, to the house that had been her home when her mother had been there, laughing and drinking and watching tv and playing the piano and living, where she’d meals for Harry and studied with him, where he wasn’t anymore – makes every single thing inside her shrivel up and her feel like vomiting.
Maybe it’s because she just wants to see if she can really go without drinking.
Anyway, she agrees.
She does know why she touched Benny’s hair though. Partly to distract him from going on more about her drinking – but it’d been mostly an impulsive decision. It looked soft. And golden. Beautiful, in a way few things in her life these days are.
He seemed to have thought that that meant she wanted sex, though, which perplexes her. Is touching someone an indication of that? She’s never had friends other than Jolene, Matt and Mike - and maybe some other girls at the orphanage, Harry and Townes – so she’s not really sure.
People are so confusing. And ridiculous.
Cleo is amazing.
She’s beautiful in a way that makes Beth want to stare. Beth can’t stop admiring the matter-of-fact ways she praises Beth, says she doesn’t know chess rules in a room full of its players and criticizes modelling. She makes Beth want to show off, not much more than she already did, but still.
Revenge on Benny is sweet.
She’s learned that gambling is Benny’s vice, in a similar way the drinks and pills are hers. She knows he goes out to poker games. That that’s his main income source, which explains why Beth hasn’t seen him at many tournaments. She uses that.
All in all, revenge really is a dish best served cold.
She can’t help taunting him with her win(s), leaning on the railing of the staircase. Nor the delighted blush that creeps up when he says that not even Borgov has done that to him in years.
Then he grabs her arm. She doesn’t really see what liking his hair has to do with anything, much less chess.
She then remembers that Benny had thought she’d meant she wanted sex with that. She’d forgotten about it. But she agrees when he insists.
It’s. . . nice. Better than Harry. She can finally understand why people like it, but she still doesn’t particularly care for it. She doesn’t mind it, it’s easy with Benny, enjoyable, too, but she feels no particular urge to do it again.
Still, Benny had started it. The least he could do was bask, instead of jumping straight to chess like they’d spent the time reading instead of sleeping together. This certainly doesn’t feel like Alma’s many favourite tv shows said it would.
She turns away from him and goes to sleep.
She wants to kiss him in the airport, which is a novel feeling. She doesn’t know why she wants it, either. Especially after she’d followed him to a poker game, and he’d ignored her. She’d been angry, but Benny had made an attempt at a semblance of an apology.
It’d resonated with her too. She did keep everyone at a distance. She’d never really allowed her mother completely in, either. She thinks Mama would be proud. All alone. Her little genius girl. The rounding error.
She barely remembers anything about that night.
Flirting with those men, drinks, talking and laughing, more drinking, Cleo’s lips on hers. Her hands. Everything is a blur.
No wonder she lost. No fucking wonder.
She can’t entertain the thought of New York for more than a moment. She wants reassurance, she wants companionship, she wants Mike, Matt, Jolene, Townes, Harry – but most of all, Benny. But she can’t stand that he’d begin analyzing the game the moment she steps off the plane. She knows it’s bad, but her pride can’t stand being told every point she went wrong. She wants to drink. She wants the pills. She wants to forget.
She wants to be anyone but Beth Harmon, the little orphan prodigy, the rounding error, the wash-out before she’s 21.
She thinks of the way Alma tried to comfort her after Las Vegas, how she held her hand throughout the car ride, and orders a martini on the plane.
Her hands shake.
There’s a shock in store for her.
Allston wants the house? The house where he made Alma feel like a prisoner? Her mother’s house? Her first home? Her house now? The one he promised her?
No way. Over her damn dead body.
She may sell it in the future. But not to Allston fucking Wheatley.
She pays the exorbitant amount, watches the money she and her mother had painstakingly saved disappear with a pang. She redoes the house to remove her mother’s ghost from it. Her own blue colour. She leaves Alma’s favourite painting hung up, though – and grandma Josie’s piano.
She doesn’t even know who grandma Josie is. She always thought she’d have more time to get to know.
The days soon fade into drinking.
She should practice. She had the opportunity to go to the Soviet Union. But her hands refuse to take the chessboard out. She worries she’s run out of steam. That her previous wins were being underestimated and luck – a favour from the universe to the girl whom it’s run over multiple times.
Benny calls. Harry does. The twins send her letters, which go unanswered. Then they call too.
She doesn’t care. She doesn’t want to exist. She wants to stop the pain. Her house smells of booze and vomit. She knows Alma would hate it.
That at least makes her want to clean the place up, but her body is weak, and her head is spinning. She doesn’t even remember if she’s drunk or hungover.
They call from the Kentucky State Championship. Her first ever tournament win. She agrees to come. She stumbles into the bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror for the first time in days.
“Ugly, pathetic idiot,” She whispers. “Rounding error.”
She wonders what it says about her that she doesn’t care anymore. That she thinks Mama was right.
She can’t stop thinking about Annette Packer. The girl said she admired her. Her. A drunk, broke, crazy person.
Then she wakes one day, gasping, and goes to the toilet and pukes.
She sees things with a sudden clarity she hasn’t felt in a while: if she continues in this vein she is almost certainly going to lose the sharp edge of her gift. She needs to pick herself up. But she feels an empty hopelessness spread through her. She can’t do this herself, but she doesn’t want her chess friends to see this pathetic version of her.
She goes into a spiral of self-pity and nearly reaches for a pill when she remembers a person who has never, ever taken any of her crap, who has advised her and confided in her.
Jolene is a breath of fresh air. The way Harry was after her mother’s death, and Benny after Harry’s departure, but in a much more significant way. Calling Mrs. Deardorff and everything else she had to do was entirely worthwhile.
Jolene tells her exactly what she doesn’t want to hear, but needs to anyway. She forces her out of the house to the gym and to play squash, which makes Beth sweat in exertion and triumph and drives away the urge of oblivion for at least a while.
She gives her back Modern Chess Openings, which makes Beth shriek, a third in laughter, a third nearly crying, and the last in anger.
Beth thinks she’s going to make an amazing radical lawyer, and tells her so.
Jolene tells her to shut up and go back to staring at the chessboard, but she looks pleased.
Mr. Shaibel dies.
Beth and Jolene go to the funeral. Which looks more like a line to the marketplace than that, with everyone looking bored and business-like. Beth thinks of how she never went back to visit or thank the man, of the envelope somewhere in the attic, of the ten dollars she never repaid. Something ugly swells in her throat and heart.
Beth cries her heart out after she sees Mr. Shaibel’s wall of newspaper clippings, the letter, magazine covers and the photo in particular, in a way she doesn’t remember ever doing.
Jolene holds her.
If hearts can actually turn to stone, Beth thinks, standing in front of her mother’s grave that evening by herself, hers is halfway there.
“Did you ever find your family?” Beth asks Jolene while they take a water break from their Saturday game. Jolene had been abandoned, with just “Jolene Dewitt” written on a slip of paper.
Jolene purses her lips but doesn’t burst out, much to Beth’s relief. “Nah. Couldn’t find any black family with ‘Dewitt’,” She laughs a laugh entirely free from humour. “Who needs them anyway?”
“Well,” Beth says awkwardly, not sure how to comfort. “You have me.”
She does. Now that they’ve reconnected, Beth doesn’t plan on ever losing Jolene ever again. They were close when they were girls and that has translated into adulthood. Jolene is her sister, though she doubts she’d ever be able to say it loud. She doesn’t feel as uncomfortable regarding emotions about her as she does about other emotions in general.
“Nice of you to say, cracker,” Jolene replied snarkily, “Come on, I want to beat you again.”
But her smile and the way she squeezes Beth’s arm say everything instead.
Beth doesn’t want to think about Benny’s cutting voice when he says she could go by herself and not to call him again.
She feels her heart go brittle and crack in a way similar to when she switched on the light and saw Alma not breathing, when Harry told her to be careful and left and when she resigned in Paris, and wonders again if this is what people mean by their heart breaking.
But this time she isn’t alone. Beth calls Jolene and listens to her insult her and talk about paralegal work, and that helps.
Beth has barely enough money to go on the trip after refusing the sponsorship and writing the cheque. The extra thousand she’d needed, Jolene had given her.
Jolene thinks she’s worth it. Jolene believes in her.
That isn’t enough to heal her completely, to stop looking in the mirror and seeing an ugly addict, to stop remembering her mama saying “A mistake, a problem, a rounding error” but it’s enough to keep her taking one breath in after another, to regain some of that confidence, to go to Russia alone.
She beats Luchenko. The others too, but beating one of her idols, someone who’d been World Champion before she’d been born, and hearing him say she was the greatest chess player he’d ever played. . . .
Well.
She feels like she is seeing the world in new colours. She’s ready to face Borgov.
The night before the finals, she lies and looks at the green dainty-looking pill case. She remembers the way her father yelled, her mama’s iron-tight grip on her arm and later the wheel, the tear trailing down her cheek as she tells her daughter to close her eyes, the swerve and the sight of the truck, the ugly sound of the crash, the debris, the screams, and the wreckage.
Her breathing becomes uneven. She shoots up from the bed, grabs the bottled, and goes to the toilet.
She hesitates.
It’s the finals in the Moscow Invitational. The most important match of her life till now. Maybe she needed it.
Her grip tightens, and she remembers all the people she’s met along the way. All her achievements. She’d played Paris sober until that fateful match. She’d played all the matches here sober too.
She takes a deep breath and flushes the pills.
She clings to Townes, a sob of happiness building up until she forces it back down.
She understands what Benny meant when he said it would be hard to be alone here. Watching Borgov and the others help Luchenko made her feel deeply, inextricably lonely in the beautiful but strange country.
Seeing a familiar face is worth everything.
It is nice to finally have a conversation about that fiasco in Vegas. The misunderstandings, the hurt feelings and the unspoken words. The two of them had met only once after that, interacted in a solely professional way, and sent a couple letters back and forth.
But hearing Benny’s voice. . . . “Benny?” She breathes, longing and disbelief mixed. She purses her lips to stop happy tears when she hears Harry’s and Matt’s and Mike’s, and even Levertov and Wexler’s voices.
She’s believed in. They all gathered together to help her, despite the way she treated all of them.
Her heart fills, and she genuinely believes she can win the game.
Beth sits in front of the old man, lacing her fingers together.
She remembers the nervousness of making the final move, the worry that she’d done a miscalculation. The way Borgov had smiled and given her the queen piece. His saying ‘It’s your game.’ How he’d hugged her and everyone had clapped, and she’d felt breathless and dazed – in a good non-alcoholic/drugs way – and the light feeling in her heart that she didn’t think she’d ever felt before.
She remembers all the people who’d had an influence on her life, whom she had disappointed and mistreated so many times, but had stuck by her anyway. Mr. Shaibel. Jolene. Alma. Matt. Mike. Harry. Townes. Benny.
She remembers signing autographs, the way crowds had gathered around the building, the way people had called her name. The incredulous joy she’d felt at the cheering and seeing Townes in the crowd. Her nerves and awe at seeing her and Borgov’s game on large screens outside and being played by people standing outside on the streets, waiting to see her.
She remembers refusing to dance to the tunes of the Christian organization, saying things about religion she didn’t believe in and condemning others she didn’t want to condemn, and she remembers defying her agent and walking out of the car because she was tired of others telling her what to do.
She knows there will be hell to pay with the State Department later on.
But she wants to play the game she loves, that she’s dedicated her life to, for fun. Without a timer. Without being tense about losing a tournament. Discover it again the way she had when she was eight in the orphanage basement.
So for now. . . .
“Let’s play,” She says to the man in Russian. There’s a resounding cheer around her.
Lexington is calm. So very different from high-stakes Moscow.
Beth has invitations for many tournaments, after coming back from her press tour that she’d insisted be cut short after she was back in her own state. She’d been barely a month outside her home, and she is exhausted.
But in a good way. She’s back on her regime with Jolene, and she’d repaid the loan with interest. Jolene had been indignant at the extra, but Beth had insisted. Jolene had come back into her life at her lowest point, and she was certain she wouldn’t have been able to do it without her.
Jolene had said that Beth had done it all herself and she’d just cheered and jeered from the sidelines.
She’d talked to Harry, discussing the Sicilian opening, his job at the supermarket and what she was going to do next. She’d apologized for their last meeting. Harry had waved it off, saying he was glad she was feeling better. She’d hugged him.
She’d invited Matt and Mike to the house once she’d made it liveable again. Talking to her friends again had been fun. They’d made her promise that she would call them if she ever needed anything, and not to lose touch again.
She considers, and then sends bottles of Russian vodka with thank-you notes to Levertov and Wexler. It would be a relief to get them out of the house; they had been a gift, but an unending temptation when she had a nightmare and got reminded of her mother, her fingers twitching.
She wonders what to do about Benny. He’d told her not to call again, but he’d called in Russia. He’d helped her. She lov- is extremely fond of her other friends, but Benny gets her in a way none of them do. He could still go toe-to-toe with her in their matches. He was her first professional loss.
In the end, she decides to send a letter. He hadn’t said anything about that. She’s unsure about what to sign it (Yours, mama would have scoffed at, and Love, her mother had hated signing off as) but ultimately goes for an Awaiting a response in avoidance.
She’s on a long ramble to walk off the urge to drink when she runs into Annette Packer. The women get ice cream together, and Beth tells Annette she’s glad she gets to follow her passions the way she did.
“Thank you,” Annette says with a shy smile. “I still play chess, you know, in an amateurish way, and I do want to get married one day. But I want to be a doctor first.”
Beth can’t associate with the wanting-to-get-married, but they commiserate on the difficulty of being unattached women in a man’s world. Annette mentions their last meeting and how Beth was her inspiration, and then winces.
Beth sighs. Here she goes again. “I should say I’m sorry, for last time,” Beth says, smiling ruefully. “I. .” She pauses. “I wasn’t in a good place then.”
“I could tell.” Annette says, smiling back, though there was a sadness in her smile too. Beth can tell that there is something there, but unlike her younger self, she doesn’t want to pry. “Are you feeling better?”
Beth has a home. She had a mother, and she grieved her. Her mama drove them into a truck, and she still has nightmares about that. Her adopted father was somewhere on the other side of the country after trying to evict her from her own house. She’d talked to Matt and Mike the previous week and Jolene had called her excitedly to tell her about a case. She’d looked in a mirror and not hated herself. She’d gone for a walk instead of succumbing to the urge for a pill.
“I’m getting there,” She says, and both their smiles grow wider.
She takes back her title of Kentucky State Champion. She goes to an Open and wins it. She gives Townes an exclusive for the Lexington Herald Leader. She prepares for the World Championship, and before that, a tournament at Vienna. She calls Borgov and practices her Russian by talking to him. He promises to take her bird watching the next time he sees her. She asks him to give her best wishes to Luchenko.
She’s beaten Borgov before. But this would be a series of games, and she would have to win the majority. She goes back to Harry’s books and Benny’s ‘work-man’ chess.
Her doorbell rings. She opens the door, and her mouth drops. “Benny? What are you doing here?” She asks in astonishment.
“A surprise for the world champion?” Benny suggests.
“I’m not world champion yet,” Beth answers automatically. They both laugh.
“Yet, she says,” Benny teases. “Can I come in?”
“Of course,” Beth says, happy that the tenseness from before doesn’t permeate their conversation. She’d hug Jolene or Harry or Matt and Mike or Townes at this point. Should she hug Benny?
The moment passes, though, and they laughingly play a few games. Beth beats him most of the time, but Benny wins twice, once by a sudden rook combination, and the second. . . . by doubling her pawns.
Beth pettily refuses to talk to him for the next couple of hours. Benny jokingly begs her, and they argue playfully through dinner.
Beth doesn’t want to talk about serious things. Emotions still make her uneasy. How much she cares for her friends disturbs her. But she knows that before they’ve cleared the air, they’re not going to be able to truly strike up a healthy friendship.
“So,” She clears her throat awkwardly. “You came here—why did you come?” She loses her nerve when she has to say ‘to see me’. You can beat Borgov, she chides herself, but you can’t talk to Benny Watts? Get a grip, Beth.
“You mean in remote Kentucky?” Benny snorts. But he becomes solemn too. He hesitates. “I guess I didn’t want to leave things at that phone call,” He says at last. “But I didn’t know if you’d want to see me. But then you wrote the letter. . . .” He takes it out of his pocket and Beth realizes he’s actually carrying it around. “And I . . . . wanted to see you.” She can see how much effort it takes for him to say that. She doesn’t think she would’ve had that much courage. “Speaking of, why didn’t you call instead?”
“You said not to call again,” She says, then blinks. “I just realized we were both thinking the same thing.”
“For geniuses, we’re idiots,” Benny says dryly, but his eyes are lit with something. Happiness, Beth supposes. She can feel the same unease and satisfaction at talking to her … Whatever Benny was to her.
“It’s genii,” Beth corrects, and both of them burst into laughter. Looking uncertain, Benny reaches out to touch her hand. Her breath catches. They stare at one another. “Benny. . . .” She says softly.
“Do you want me to ask if you like my hair?” Benny says. “Or if you’re sober?”
“I’m definitely sober,” Beth says. “But I don’t think this is a good idea. At least without talking.”
“Alright,” Benny breathes. “What do you want to talk about?”
Beth feels nervous, fidgety. She’s talked about feelings – with Jolene and Townes. But romantic or sexual urges still don’t come to her. She doesn’t get how Jolene can wait for her man to get a divorce and still talk about him, or the way Townes’ eyes soften when he talks about his boyfriend.
But she owes Benny this. When she’d gone to New York, she may not have been on external influences, but she hadn’t cared about her life, still grieving her mother and her loss to Borgov and not dealing with anything healthily.
“What does this mean?” She asks finally. “Is this a let’s-do-this-whenever-we-see-each-other thing, or a r-relationship or what?”
Benny blinks. “I don’t know,” He says. “Whatever you want, Beth. Seriously. I just. . .” He hesitates. “I know that I miss you.”
“I—” Beth swallows. “I miss you too.” She whispers. She breathes through her panic. “But Benny, I don’t feel those things like you do.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I – I guess, I don’t feel romantic stuff. I don’t get why people want to be in romantic relationships or get married.” Beth holds her breath. That’s the first time she’s ever told someone that.
“Okay,” Benny says. “I think I – okay. I can’t empathize, but I get it.” He sees the look on her face. “Am I the first person you’ve told?”
She nodded.
“Oh. I – um. I’m glad? Honoured. It’s good that you told me.” Benny stammers.
“Look at Benny Watts wordless,” Beth laughs. She squeezes his hand. “Thanks, Benny. You’re a good friend.” She panics again after that. What if Benny doesn’t want to be referred to as that?
But Benny just smiles cockily. “Of course I am. We can talk more tomorrow?” He suggests.
She nods, too relieved to bring up her lack of sexual attraction or desire. It isn’t like she’s perfectly clear on that herself. She knows she enjoyed herself with Benny and even Harry and Cleo. But she doesn’t need it the way others seemed to. She’d be perfectly happy having a relationship with Benny that wasn’t sexual in nature. She files that for later.
Jolene’s boyfriend breaks up with her, saying that divorce was too messy and too damaging to their reputations. Jolene says that that her being black would make it worse was implied. She’s putting on a brave face, but Beth knows her and she can tell that she’s shaken up and upset. Even though she privately think her friend not being stringed along anymore is a good thing, she’d invited Jolene for a weekend retreat to her house, with ice cream and Alma’s favourite movies and Jolene’s favourite black poetry and radical books.
They have fun, but Jolene is clearly broken-hearted. Beth hates romantic relationships. All they do is mess things up. She hates not being able to comfort her friend properly. Even when she’d been rejected by Townes, or at least she’d thought she had been, she’d not felt much about it.
Beth tells Jolene in a rush about her not feeling much in the way of romantic or sexual. Jolene considers that and tells her that’s good for her, she’ll never have her heart broken and she thinks she’s heard about people completely uninterested in marriage in her radical friends.
Beth feels light, almost as happy as when she played against Russian chess lovers in the open. She apologizes teasingly for stealing the show from Jolene’s broken heart and her friend reacts in extreme mock offence.
Thinking about that, Beth isn’t able to control herself, a week later. She sees a couple kissing one another in the house opposite hers, and children running around in another, and she’s not able to play the game from one of her books. She feels anxious and foreboding. Her stomach twists and her hands shake. She needs a drink.
She’s so far gone that she nearly relapses.
She was at the pharmacy and about to ask for one of the bottles of wine when she catches sight of the chess magazine, with her on the cover page, the picture Townes had taken before she’d entered the car in Moscow – the first one ever that Beth had seen and thought, Wow, I look nice, - and she realizes with a rush what she’s about to do.
Her sobriety is hard fought for and hard-won. It’s even harder to maintain. She rushes back home and calls Benny, and talking to him helps, but it’s not enough to relieve the urge. Benny had to go for some prior engagement. He offers to cancel, but she tells him to go on.
She paces. She needs a drink. She feels like she’s going through withdrawal again, and it’s been a long while since something like this happened. She can’t bother Jolene with this when she’s going through her own troubles, Matt and Mike are off managing a tournament somewhere, and Harry’s exams are going on.
She throws on her running clothes, and before she knows where she’s going, she’s reaching Annette’s flat, where she’s been thrice.
“Beth?” Annette says in surprise. She doesn’t look like she’s busy, Beth realizes with relief, “Is everything alright?”
Beth clears her throat, still feeling shaky. “I’m just – not feeling too good, and I wondered if you’d fancy a game of chess or a run?”
Annette seems to glean what’s going on. “Sure, come on in, I’ll put on a pot of coffee and you can get out the chess set.”
Annette isn’t nearly at Beth’s level, but she’s good enough to have made it to the quarter finals of the State Championship – she’d won seventh. Playing her is calming. Calming enough that her hands finally stop shaking, and she’s able to sip her coffee.
“How’s med school?” She asks, as they set up for a second game.
“Oh, the usual,” Annette says, rolling her eyes. “A lot of studying, a lot of cramming, a lot of running around in the hospital wards and a lot of people doing double takes when they see a female med student.”
Beth rolls her eyes back and smiles.
“Feeling better?” Annette asks quietly.
“Getting there,” Beth says just as quietly, and the two of them exchange smiles.
“I hear you’re leaving for Vienna soon,” Harry says when she drops in on him while shopping at the supermarket.
“Yeah, I am,” Beth says, grinning. She’s nervous, but a good nervous. “Not as illustrious as the Moscow Invitational, but a pretty good assembly all the same.” She’s seen the list of players – Diedrich, Hellstrom and Shapkin were playing, but not Borgov or the others she’d played before.
“Ah,” Harry’s quiet for a moment. “Are you. . . Taking someone with you?”
Beth blinks. “No. Why?” She’ll admit she misses travelling with her mother, but she doesn’t need to take someone else. Benny’s promised to be her second via phone, with help of Levertov.
“Just asking,” Harry smiles weakly. “Beth. . . . Do you think we’d ever be able to go back to, you know, what we were?”
Her breath catches. She takes a moment to think of what to say. The person she had been a year ago wouldn’t have hesitated to rip Harry’s heart out, but the man is her friend. “I don’t think so, Harry,” She says finally.
Harry breathes out. “Yeah, I figured.” He says with a wry smile.
“You deserve someone better,” Beth moves on, holding a hand to stop Harry’s protest. “I mean, someone better for you, not – just better than me in general.” She realizes she actually means that, and she puts that thought away for later perusal. “You need someone who loves you, someone who will support your engineering and have a quiet life with you. Not me, I’m off to a tournament somewhere every other month, I’m on magazine covers and in the press and I don’t—” She hesitates. “I don’t get romantic feelings very well anyway.”
Not exactly the truth, but she’s trying to comfort Harry, not barge in with her own confession.
Harry’s smile is more genuine. “I guess so.” He pauses. “What we had was pretty great, though.”
Beth laughs. “Sure,” She agrees. “You taught me a lot in chess, and now you’re – one of my best friends,” She says after only a brief hesitation.
“Thank you, Beth,” Harry says gently. Her other friends would’ve teased her about them teaching the ‘world champion’, as they call her among themselves, something, but not Harry. Harry was the kindest soul Beth had ever met. “You’re my dearest friend, too.”
Beth smiles back at him.
Vienna is beautiful. Moscow holds a special place in her heart, though, so it would always come first. Beth has won all of her games decisively, except for one where there’d been a couple of frights and an adjournment.
She’s playing Georgi Girev. His play has improved, but so has hers, and yet he’s still able to keep her on her toes throughout the game – 46 moves, nearly as many as her game with Borgov.
In New Mexico, she’d tried and succeeded in distracting him because she’d wanted to win, and hated losing and therefore resorted to underhanded tactics. Now older and wiser, she is more sympathetic to his downcast expression as he resigns.
“It is an honour to play and lose to you, Miss Harmon,” Girev says gravely.
Beth fights a smile. “And you too, Mr. Girev,” She says. “You’re one of the best here. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could beat me in a few years.”
She’s surprised to find out that she doesn’t actually mind it and does actually believe it, even though she’ll definitely improve as well. She thinks it’ll take about a decade for them to get more or less evenly matched, though she doesn’t say it.
“Thank you, Miss Harmon.” Girev says, sounding less sad.
Beth leans forward. “Have you been to a drive-in movie yet?”
Jolene and Mike are throwing a party at her house to celebrate her win in Vienna and to wish her best of luck for the World Championship in only a few more months. Beth and Matt have their suspicions as to what’s going on between them, but since Jolene’s break up was only two months ago, she doubts anything is actually formalized between them.
Benny comes up early, claiming that the two of them could head up to Massachusetts for another tournament from her house a week after the party. Clearly, he’s expecting to stay at her house the entire time, and when Beth dryly wonders aloud what he’d have done if she refused, Benny argues that this house was entirely too big and she owed him for hosting her in New York. The conversation deteriorates from there into speed chess, which both of them enjoy immensely.
Benny clears his throat. “I think we should finish our conversation from last time.” Beth swallows. Benny had stayed for only five days last time before departing, and it hadn’t been brought up again then.
“I – okay,” She says quietly. She’d told Jolene. This would be fine.
It isn’t.
“What do you mean you don’t feel it?” Benny asks incredulously. “How can you say that we can have a – something if you don’t want romance or sex?”
Beth feels like she’s slapped. She retreats to anger from the hurt. “It’s not my choice,” She snaps. “And I told you, it’s not that I don’t enjoy sex, I just wouldn’t mind not doing it.”
“How is that different?” Benny demands. “Beth, I – God, I’m practically in love with you! What exactly do you want me to do?”
“What do you want me to do?” Beth replied angrily, ignoring the something in her chest that simultaneously rises in incredulous happiness and falls in dread at the confession. “I was exactly the same way in New York, you didn’t mind then!”
Benny sighs. “I wanted something more, Beth, that’s the point,” He says tiredly. “I think I should go.”
“I think you should go too,” Beth says, her voice trembling. She sits on the couch, blinking back tears as Benny took most of his stuff and left.
She’d thought she was over this – ruining relationships and feeling alone and wanting to drink. God, she wants a drink. “Idiot,” She whispers to the mirror. “Pathetic idiotic addict. Why do I ruin everything?”
She calls Jolene and vents to her. Jolene swears at Benny and reassures her. “I’m coming in there early,” She says.
“You don’t have to,” Beth says weakly. But she really wants her best friend and sister with her right now.
“Yes, I do,” Jolene says firmly. “Don’t listen to the white pirate boy, Beth. You’re amazing just the way you are.”
Beth takes a deep breath and tries to believe that.
The party comes soon enough. Matt and Mike come bounding up and lock her into an embrace. She laughs and hugs them back. Mike apparently wants to settle down and go to college. Matt wants to continue travelling and playing chess and organizing chess tournaments. It’s the first major disagreement Beth has seen them have. She hopes they work it out.
“He shouldn’t want to do it just because of Jolene,” Matt grumbles.
“Maybe he’s not,” Beth suggests. “Maybe he wanted to do it anyway and his – whatever with Jolene just expedited it.” Matt looks stubborn. “Look, Matt, don’t fall out with your brother over this, okay? It’s not worth it. I’m sure you can come to a compromise.”
“Maybe,” Matt agrees reluctantly. “Anyway, we’ve come to celebrate you, not to whine about our lives.” His smile is more genuine, so Beth lets it go, not one for emotional serious discussions anyway.
Townes and Roger come in together, Townes pressing a kiss to her cheek and Roger giving her flowers she accepts. Harry turns up with his little sister Felicia “Call me Lisa” Beltik. She’s adorable, and likes maths. Seeing as Beth likes maths too – it’s her favourite subject, probably because of mama – they get along splendidly.
“Didn’t know you did maths so well, Harmon,” Benny says, looking awkward. He’d turned up with Hilton, who’d given regrets from Arthur’s side, whose cousin’s wedding is the next day. Beth isn’t sure whether to ignore or answer him, but the choice is taken out of her hands.
“Yeah, Beth isn’t stupid,” The ‘unlike you’ is very loud on Jolene’s side. Benny clearly gets it, because he flushes and looks from Jolene to me. Jolene’s smile becomes fonder, “She was the little maths topper in Methuen, too. That’s how you got into chess, huh, hon?”
“Really?” Annette says. She’d come with her friend Justin Ambrose from medical school. He’s awkward, but friendly, Annette likes him and Townes seems to like him too. Beth will have to keep an eye on him, but for now, he seems fine. “How did that happen?”
“I always finished my sums first,” Beth explains. “So I got the job to go to the basement and clean the dusters. Mr. Shaibel always played in the basement and so. . .” She lifts a shoulder in a shrug.
“And the rest is history!” Harry says, grinning widely. “To Beth Harmon, grandmaster, U.S. Champion, and the one who defeated the World Champion!”
“Our soon to be World Champion!” Benny cheers, raising his mug. Usually everyone would have alcohol, but out of respect for her, all of them have coke, juice or coffee. Though if Arthur were here he would probably have insisted on making tea for everyone. He was slightly obsessed with it.
Beth feels her cheeks warm as everyone toasts to her. She feels ridiculously happy at having the people she loves most in the world all in the same room. She catches Benny’s eye, though, and quickly turns away. The only dark spot.
“Alma would be really, really proud of you, Beth,” Mike says earnestly.
Beth looks up at him, heart in her throat. She’s nearly forgotten Mike and Matt knew her mother too. “You - you think so?”
“We know so!” Matt scoffs. “Remember how many dates with that boyfriend of hers she missed so she could see your matches?”
“I mean, she never understood a thing, and she still cheered and whistled when you won,” Mike added. “Imagine what she’d say to you beating Borgov and winning Moscow and Vienna tournaments!”
“She’d probably take me shopping,” Beth says with a soft smile. Both Matt and Mike laugh, probably remembering Alma’s fascination with discounts.
“Any parent should be proud to have a child like Beth,” Townes says, smiling at her and raising his glass to her.
“I want to be just like Beth when I grow up,” Lisa announces.
“That’s a very good thing to be, Lisa,” Harry says with a soft smile.
Beth smiles, heart full.
Benny apologizes. He says he was being too emotional, that he'd tortured himself by wondering if she returned his feelings and thus ignored her own. They talk, argue some more and play chess, and in the end, he comes back in with his things. Beth gives him the guest room. They decide to take things as they come and see what they could do.
Beth takes a sip of her coke as she watches the stars from the chair in her courtyard. She has the world championship in a couple months; something she feels a familiar mixture of dread, nerves and excitement. Ever since she’d defeated him, Borgov had turned from an unbeatable stone man to someone human, with a family. She likes talking to him. She doesn’t fear him anymore.
She hopes she can be world champion.
Her twenty-first birthday is soon. Jolene and she were going to sign papers to become one another’s next-of-kin, and she was going to have to write a will.
If and when she becomes world champion after competing, she wants to start two trusts or charities: one for orphans which actually benefited them, unlike the ones in her and Jolene’s childhood, and the other for girls to achieve their dreams – like Beth with her chess, Jolene with law, Annette with medical science and Lisa with maths.
Things aren’t perfect. She still wants to drink more often than not. She bought pills the other week before Benny found out and asked her to throw them out. She has nightmares and still sees her mother’s ghost in her house. She still has no idea what she’s doing or where she’s going with her life.
But she’s visited mama’s and Mr. Shaibel’s and her mother’s graves. She can look at the mirror and smile. She has the best friends she could ever ask for. She doesn’t need or want a romantic relationship, but Benny is still there for her in any way she wants. And each day, she inhales and exhales, keeps breathing, and moves forward.
A good enough opening, she thinks.
But Beth is not a chess piece. We leave the girl, once nine, now twenty, lying on the grass under the stars, and waiting to live the best of the rest of her life.