The Queen's Gambit

Hillbillies and The Dick Van Dyke Show, while Beth set up and went over
her two games, looking for weaknesses in her play. There weren’t any. Then
she got out the book by Reuben Fine on end-games and began studying.
The endgame in chess had its own feeling; it was like an altogether different
contest, once you got down to a piece or two on each side and the question
became one of queening a pawn. It could be agonizingly subtle; there was
no chance for the kind of violent attack Beth loved.
But she was bored with Reuben Fine, and after a while she closed the
book and went to bed. She had two of the little green pills in her pajama
pocket, and she took them after the lights were off. She didn’t want to risk
not sleeping.
The second day was as easy as the first, even though Beth was matched
against stronger players. It had taken her a while to clear her head from the
effect of the pills, but by the time she started playing her mind was sharp.
She even handled the pieces themselves with confidence, picking them up
and setting them down with aplomb.

---

There was no “Top Boards” room at this tournament. Board One was
merely the first board at the first table. For the second game Beth was at
Board Six, and people were gathered around her as she forced the master to
resign after taking one of his rooks. When she looked up during the
applause, there stood Alma Wheatley at the back of the room smiling
broadly.
In her final game, at Board One, Beth was playing a master named
Rudolph. He managed to start trading pieces in the center during the middle
game, and Beth was alarmed to find herself crowded into an ending with a
rook, a knight and three pawns. Rudolph had the same thing, except for a
bishop where she had a knight. She didn’t like it, and his bishop was a
distinct advantage. But she managed to pin it and trade her knight for it and
then play with great care for an hour and a half until Rudolph made a
blunder and she zeroed in on it. She checked with a pawn, traded rooks and
got one of her pawns passed with the king protecting. Rudolph looked
furious at himself and resigned.
There was strong applause. Beth looked at the crowd around the table.
Near the back, in her blue dress, was Mrs. Wheatley, clapping her hands
enthusiastically.
Going back to the room, Mrs. Wheatley carried the heavy trophy and
Beth had the check in her blouse pocket. Mrs. Wheatley had written it all
out on a sheet of hotel stationery that sat on top of the TV: sixty-six dollars
for three days at the Gibson, plus three-thirty tax; twenty-three sixty for the
bus, and the price of each meal, including tip. “I’ve allowed twelve dollars
for our celebration supper tonight and two dollars for a small breakfast
tomorrow. That makes our total expenses equal one seventy-two thirty.”
“It leaves over three hundred dollars,” Beth said.
There was a silence for a while. Beth looked at the sheet of paper,
although she understood it perfectly well. She was wondering if she should
offer to split the money with Mrs. Wheatley. She did not want to do that.
She had won it herself.
Mrs. Wheatley broke the silence. “Perhaps you could give me ten
percent,” she said pleasantly. “As an agent’s commission.”
“Thirty-two dollars,” Beth said, “and seventy-seven cents.”
“They told me at Methuen that you were marvelous at math.”
Beth nodded. “Okay,” she said.

---

***
They had something with veal in it at an Italian restaurant. Mrs. Wheatley
ordered herself a carafe of red wine and drank it and smoked Chesterfields
throughout the meal. Beth liked the bread and the cold, pale butter. She
liked the little tree with oranges on it that sat on the bar, not far from their
table.
Mrs. Wheatley wiped her chin with her napkin when she finished the
wine and lit a final cigarette. “Beth, dear,” she said, “there’s a tournament in
Houston over the holidays, starting the twenty-sixth. I understand it’s very
easy to travel on Christmas Day, since most people are eating plum pudding
or whatever.”
“I saw,” Beth said. She had read the ad in Chess Review and wanted very
much to go. But Houston had seemed awfully far away for a six hundred-
dollar prize.
“I believe we could fly to Houston,” Mrs. Wheatley said brightly. “We
could have a pleasant winter vacation in the sun.”
Beth was finishing her spumoni. “Okay,” she said and then, looking
down at the ice cream, “Okay, Mother.”
***
Their Christmas dinner was microwave turkey served on an airplane, with a
complimentary glass of champagne for Mrs. Wheatley and canned orange
juice for Beth. It was the best Christmas she had ever had. The plane flew
over a snow-covered Kentucky and, at the end of the trip, circled out above
the Gulf of Mexico. They landed in warm air and sunshine. Driving in from
the airport, they passed one construction site after the other, the big yellow
cranes and bulldozers standing idle near stacks of girders. Someone had
hung a Christmas wreath on one of them.
A week before they left Lexington a new copy of Chess Review had
come in the mail. When Beth opened it she found a small picture of herself
and Beltik at the back, and a banner headline: S
CHOOLGIRL
T
AKES
K
ENTUCKY
C
HAMPIONSHIP FROM
M
ASTER
. Their game was printed and the
commentary said: “Onlookers were amazed at her youthful mastery of the
fine points of strategy. She shows the assurance of players twice her age.”

---

She read it twice before showing it to Mrs. Wheatley. Mrs. Wheatley was
ecstatic; she had read the article in the Lexington paper aloud and then said,
“Wonderful!” This time she read in silence before saying, “This is national
recognition, dear,” in a hushed voice.
Mrs. Wheatley had brought the magazine with her, and they spent part of
the time on the plane marking the tournaments Beth would play over the
next several months. They settled on one a month; Mrs. Wheatley was
afraid they would run out of diseases and, as she said, “credibility” if she
wrote more excuses than that. Beth wondered to herself if they shouldn’t
just ask for permission in a straightforward way—after all, boys were
allowed to miss classes for basketball and football—but she was wise
enough to say nothing. Mrs. Wheatley seemed to take immense enjoyment
in doing it this way. It was like a conspiracy.
She won in Houston without any trouble. She was, as Mrs. Wheatley
said, really “getting the hang of it.” She was forced to draw her third game
but took the final one by a dazzling combination, beating the forty-year-old
Southwest Champion as though he were a beginner. They stayed over two
days “for the sun” and visited the Museum of Fine Arts and the Zoological
Gardens. On the day after the tournament Beth’s picture was in the paper,
and this time it made her feel good to see it. The article called her a
“Wunderkind.” Mrs. Wheatley bought three copies, saying, “I just might
start a scrapbook.”
***
In January, Mrs. Wheatley called the school to say that Beth had a relapse
of mono, and they went to Charleston. In February it was Atlanta and a
cold; in March, Miami and the flu. Sometimes Mrs. Wheatley talked to the
Assistant Principal and sometimes to the Dean of Girls. No one questioned
the excuses. It seemed likely that some of the students knew about her from
out-of-town papers or something, but no one in authority said anything.
Beth worked on her chess for three hours every evening between
tournaments. She lost one game in Atlanta but still came in first, and she
stayed undefeated in the other two cities. She enjoyed flying with Mrs.
Wheatley, who sometimes became comfortably buzzed by martinis on the
planes. They talked and giggled together. Mrs. Wheatley said funny things

---

about the stewardesses and their beautifully pressed jackets and bright,
artificial make-up, or talked about how silly some of her neighbors in
Lexington were. She was high-spirited and confidential and amusing, and
Beth would laugh a long time and look out the window at the clouds below
them and feel better than she had ever felt, even during those times at
Methuen when she had saved up her green pills and taken five or six at
once.
She grew to love hotels and restaurants and the excitement of being in a
tournament and winning it, moving up gradually game by game and having
the crowd around her table increase with each win. People at tournaments
knew who she was now. She was always the youngest there, and sometimes
the only female. Back at school afterward things seemed more and more
drab. Some of the other students talked about going to college after high
school, and some had professions in mind. Two girls she knew wanted to be
nurses. Beth never participated in these conversations; she already was what
she wanted to be. But she talked to no one about her traveling or about the
reputation she was building in tournament chess.
When they came back from Miami in March, there was an envelope from
the Chess Federation in the mail. In it was a new membership card with her
rating: 1881. She had been told it would take time for the rating to reflect
her real strength; she was satisfied for now to be, finally, a rated player. She
would push the figure up soon enough. The next big step was Master, at
2200. After 2000 they called you an Expert, but that didn’t mean much. The
one she liked was International Grandmaster; that had weight to it.
***
That summer they went to New York to play at the Henry Hudson Hotel.
They had developed a taste for fine food, though at home it was mostly TV
dinners, and in New York they ate at French restaurants, taking buses
crosstown to Le Bistro and Cafe Argenteuil. Mrs. Wheatley had gone to a
gas station in Lexington and bought a Mobil Travel Guide; she picked
places with three or more stars, and then they found them with the little
map. It was terribly expensive, but neither of them said a word about the
cost. Beth would eat smoked trout but never fresh fish; she remembered the

---

fish she’d had to eat on Fridays at Methuen. She decided that next year at
school she would take French.
The only problem was that, on the road, she took the pills from Mrs.
Wheatley’s prescription to help her sleep at night, and sometimes it required
an hour or so to get her head clear in the morning. But tournament games
never started before nine, and she made a point of getting up in time to have
several cups of coffee from room service. Mrs. Wheatley did not know
about the pills and showed no concern over Beth’s appetite for coffee; she
treated her in every way like an adult. Sometimes it seemed as though Beth
were the older of the two.
Beth loved New York. She liked riding on the bus, and she liked taking
the IRT subway with its grit and rattle. She liked window shopping when
she had a chance, and she enjoyed hearing people on the street talking
Yiddish or Spanish. She did not mind the sense of danger in the city or the
arrogant way the taxis drove or the dirty glitter of Times Square. They went
to Radio City Music Hall on their last night and saw West Side Story and the
Rockettes. Sitting high in the cavernous theater in a velvet seat, Beth was
thrilled.
***
She had expected a reporter from Life to be someone who chain-smoked
and looked like Lloyd Nolan, but the person who came to the door of the
house was a small woman with steel-gray hair and a dark dress. The man
with her was carrying a camera. She introduced herself as Jean Balke. She
looked older than Mrs. Wheatley, and she walked around the living room
with quick little movements, hastily checking out the books in the bookcase
and studying some of the prints on the walls. Then she began asking
questions. Her manner was pleasant and direct. “I’ve really been
impressed,” she said, “even though I don’t play chess myself.” She smiled.
“They say you’re the real thing.”
Beth was a little embarrassed.
“How does it feel? Being a girl among all those men?”
“I don’t mind it.”
“Isn’t it frightening?” They were sitting facing each other. Miss Balke
leaned forward, looking intently at Beth.

---

Beth shook her head. The photographer came over to the sofa and began
taking readings with a meter.
“When I was a girl,” the reporter said, “I was never allowed to be
competitive. I used to play with dolls.”
The photographer backed off and began to study Beth through his
camera. She remembered the doll Mr. Ganz had given her. “Chess isn’t
always ‘competitive,’” she said.
“But you play to win.”
Beth wanted to say something about how beautiful chess was sometimes,
but she looked at Miss Balke’s sharp, inquiring face and couldn’t find the
words for it.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No. I’m fourteen.” The photographer began snapping pictures.
Miss Balke had lighted a cigarette. She leaned forward now and tapped
the ashes into one of Mrs. Wheatley’s ashtrays. “Are you interested in
boys?” she asked.
Beth was feeling more and more uneasy. She wanted to talk about
learning chess and about the tournaments she had won and about people
like Morphy and Capablanca. She did not like this woman and did not like
her questions. “I’m interested in chess mostly.”
Miss Balke smiled brightly. “Tell me about it,” she said. “Tell me how
you learned to play and how old you were.”
Beth told her and Miss Balke took notes, but Beth felt that she wasn’t
really interested in any of it. She found as she went on talking that she
really had very little to say.
The next week at school, during algebra class, Beth saw the boy in front
of her pass a copy of Life to the girl next to him, and they both turned and
looked back at her as though they had never seen her before. After class the
boy, who had never spoken to her before, stopped her and asked if she
would autograph the magazine. Beth was stunned. She took it from him and
there it was, filling a full page. There was a picture of her looking serious at
her chessboard, and there was another picture of the main building at
Methuen. Across the top of the page a headline read: A G
IRL
M
OZART
S
TARTLES THE
W
ORLD OF
C
HESS
. She signed her name with the boy’s ball-
point pen, setting the magazine on an empty desk.

---

When she got home, Mrs. Wheatley had the magazine in her lap. She
began reading aloud:
“‘With some people chess is a pastime, with others it is a compulsion,
even an addiction. And every now and then a person comes along for whom
it is a birthright. Now and then a small boy appears and dazzles us with his
precocity at what may be the world’s most difficult game. But what if that
boy were a girl—a young, unsmiling girl with brown eyes, brown hair and a
dark-blue dress?
“‘It has never happened before, but it happened recently. In Lexington,
Kentucky, and in Cincinnati. In Charleston, Atlanta, Miami, and lately in
New York City. Into the male-dominated world of the nation’s top chess
tournaments strolls a fourteen-year-old with bright, intense eyes, from
eighth grade at Fairfield Junior High in Lexington, Kentucky. She is quiet
and well-mannered. And she is out for blood…’ It’s marvelous!” Mrs.
Wheatley said. “Shall I read on?”
“It talks about the orphanage.” Beth had bought her own copy. “And it
gives one of my games. But it’s mostly about my being a girl.”
“Well, you are one.”
“It shouldn’t be that important,” Beth said. “They didn’t print half the
things I told them. They didn’t tell about Mr. Shaibel. They didn’t say
anything about how I play the Sicilian.”
“But, Beth,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “it makes you a celebrity!”
Beth looked at her thoughtfully, “For being a girl, mostly,” she said.
***
The next day Margaret stopped her in the hall. Margaret was wearing a
camel’s-hair coat and her blond hair fell just to her shoulders; she was even
more beautiful than she had been a year before, when Beth had taken the
ten dollars from her purse. “The other Apple Pi’s asked me to invite you,”
Margaret said respectfully. “We’re having a pledge party Friday night at my
house.”
The Apple Pi’s. It was very strange. When Beth accepted and asked for
the address she realized it was the first time she had ever actually spoken to
Margaret.

---

She spent over an hour that afternoon trying on dresses at Purcell’s
before picking a navy-blue with a simple white collar from the store’s most
expensive line. When she showed it to Mrs. Wheatley that evening and told
her she was going to the Apple Pi Club, Mrs. Wheatley was clearly pleased.
“You look just like a debutante!” she said when Beth tried on the dress for
her.
***
The white woodwork of Margaret’s living room glistened beautifully and
the pictures on the walls were oil paintings—mostly of horses. Even though
it was a mild evening in March, a big fire burned under the white mantel.
Fourteen girls were sitting on the white sofas and colored wingback chairs
when Beth arrived in her new dress. Most of the others were wearing
sweaters and skirts. “It was really something,” one of them said, “to find a
face from Fairfield Junior High in Life. I nearly flipped!” but when Beth
started to talk about the tournaments, the girls interrupted her to ask about
the boys at them. Were they good-looking? Did she date any of them?
When Beth said, “There’s not much time for that,” the girls changed the
subject.
For an hour or more they talked about boys and dating and clothes,
veering erratically from cool sophistication to giggles, while Beth sat
uneasily at one end of a sofa holding a crystal glass of Coca-Cola, unable to
think of anything to say. Then, at nine o’clock, Margaret turned on the huge
television set by the fireplace and they were all quiet, except for an
occasional giggle, while the “Movie of the Week” came on.
Beth sat through it, not participating in the gossip and laughter during the
commercials, until it ended at eleven. She was astounded at the dullness of
the evening. This was the elite Apple Pi Club that had seemed so important
when she first went to school in Lexington, and this was what they did at
their sophisticated parties: they watched a Charles Bronson movie. The only
break in the dullness was when a girl named Felicia said, “I wonder if he’s
as well-hung as he looks.” Beth laughed at that, but it was the only thing
she laughed at.
When she left after eleven no one urged her to stay, and no one said
anything about her joining. She was relieved to get into the taxi and go

---

home, and when she got there she spent an hour in her room with The