The Queen's Gambit

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 physical 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 wearing 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.
The woman at the cafeteria was handing Beth a plate with salisbury steak
on it when Jolene pushed her tray up next to Beth’s. “None of that,” Jolene
said. She took the plate and handed it back. “No gravy,” she said, “and no
potatoes.”
“I’m not overweight,” Beth said. “It won’t hurt me to eat potatoes.
Jolene said nothing. When they pushed their trays past the Jell-O and
Bavarian cream pie, Jolene shook her head. “You ate chocolate mousse last
night,” Beth said.
“Last night was special,” Jolene said. “This is today.”
They had lunch at eleven-thirty because Jolene had a twelve o’clock
class. When Beth asked her what it was, Jolene said, “Eastern Europe in the
Twentieth Century.”
“Is that part of Phys. Ed.?” Beth asked.
“I didn’t tell all of it yesterday. I’m getting an M.S. in political science.”
Beth stared at her. “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” Jolene said.
When Beth got up the next morning, her back and calves were sore, and
she decided not to go to the gym. But when she opened the refrigerator to
find something for breakfast, she saw stacks of TV dinners and suddenly
thought of the way Mrs. Wheatley’s pale legs had looked when she rolled
down her stockings. She shook her head in revulsion and started prying the
boxes loose. The thought of frozen fried chicken and roast beef and turkey
made her ill; she dumped them all in a plastic shopping bag. When she
opened the cabinet to look over the canned foods, there were three bottles

---

of Almadén Mountain Rhine sitting in front of the cans. She hesitated and
closed the door. She would think about that later. She had toast and black
coffee for breakfast. On her way to the gym, she dropped the sack of frozen
dinners into the garbage.
At lunch Jolene told her about a bulletin board in the Student Union that
listed students who would do unskilled work at two dollars an hour. Jolene
walked her over on the way to class, and Beth took down two numbers. By
three o’clock that afternoon she had a Business Administration major
beating the carpets in the backyard and an Art History major scrubbing the
refrigerator and kitchen cabinets; Beth did not supervise them; she spent the
time working out variations on the Nimzo-Indian Defense.
By the next Monday, she was using all seven of the Nautilus machines
and doing sit-ups afterward. On Wednesday, Jolene added ten pounds to
each of them for her and had her hold a five-pound weight on her chest
when she did the sit-ups. The week after that, they started playing handball.
Beth was awkward at it and got out of breath quickly. Jolene beat her badly.
Beth kept at it doggedly, panting and sweating and sometimes bruising the
palm of her hand on the little black ball. It took her ten days and a few
lucky bounces before she won her first game.
“I knew you’d start winning soon enough,” Jolene said. They stood in the
center of the court, sweating.
“I hate losing,” Beth said.
That day there was a letter waiting for her from something called
Christian Crusade. The stationery had about twenty names down the side,
under an embossed cross. The letter read:
Dear Miss Harmon:
As we have been unable to reach you by telephone we are writing to
determine your interest in the support of Christian Crusade in your
forthcoming competition in the U.S.S.R.
Christian Crusade is a non-profit organization dedicated to the opening of
Closed Doors to the Message of Christ. We have found your career as a
Trainee of a Christian Institution, the Methuen Home, noteworthy. We
would like to help in your forthcoming struggle since we share your
Christian ideals and aspirations. If you are interested in our support, please

---

contact us at our offices in Houston.
Yours in Christ,
Crawford Walker
Director
Christian Crusade
Foreign Division
She almost threw the letter away until she remembered Benny’s saying
that he had been given money for his Russian trip by a church group. She
had Benny’s phone number on a folded piece of paper in her chess clock
box; she got it out and dialed. Benny answered after the third ring.
“Hi,” she said. “It’s Beth.”
Benny was a bit cool, but when she told him about the letter, he said at
once, “Take it. They’re loaded.”
“Would they pay for my ticket to Russia?”
“More than that. If you ask them, they’ll send me over with you. Separate
rooms, considering their views.”
“Why would they pay so much money?”
“They want us to beat the Communists for Jesus. They’re the ones who
paid part of my way two years ago.” He paused. “Are you coming back to
New York?” His voice was carefully neutral.
“I need to stay in Kentucky a while longer. I’m working out in a gym,
and I’ve entered a tournament in California.”
“Sure,” Benny said. “It sounds all right to me.”
She wrote Christian Crusade that afternoon to say that she was very
much interested in their offer and would like to take Benjamin Watts with
her as a second. She used the pale-blue stationery, crossing out “Mrs.
Allston Wheatley” at the top and writing in “Elizabeth Harmon.” When she
walked to the corner to mail the letter, she decided to go on downtown and
buy new sheets and pillowcases for the bed and a new tablecloth for the
kitchen.
***

---

The winter light in San Francisco was remarkable; she had never seen
anything quite like it before. It gave the buildings a preternatural clarity of
line, and when she climbed to the top of Telegraph Hill and looked back,
she caught her breath at the sharp focus of the houses and hotels that lined
the long steep street and below them the perfect blue of the bay. There was
a flower stand at the corner, and she bought a bunch of marigolds. Looking
back at the bay, she saw a young couple a block away climbing toward her.
They were clearly out of breath and stopped to rest. Beth realized with
surprise that the climb had been easy for her. She decided to take long
walks during her week there. Maybe she could find a gym somewhere.
When she walked up the hill to the tournament in the morning, the air
was still splendid and the colors bright, but she was tense. The elevator in
the big hotel was crowded. Several people in it stared at her, and she looked
away nervously. The man at the desk stopped what he was doing the minute
she walked up.
“Do I register here?” she asked.
“No need, Miss Harmon. Just go on in.”
“Which board?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Board One.”
Board One was in a room by itself. The table was on a three-foot-high
platform, and a display board as big as a home-movie screen stood behind
it. On each side of the table was a big swivel chair of brown leather and
chrome. It was five minutes before starting time, and the room was jammed
with people; she had to push her way through them to the playing space. As
she did so, the buzz of talk died down. Everyone looked at her. When she
climbed the steps to the platform, they began to applaud. She tried not to let
her face show anything, but she was frightened. The last game of chess she
had played was five months before, and she had lost it.
She didn’t even know who her opponent was; she hadn’t thought to ask.
She sat there for a moment with her mind nearly empty, and then an
arrogant-looking young man came briskly through the crowd and up the
steps. He had long black hair and a broad, drooping mustache. She
recognized him from somewhere, and when he introduced himself as Andy
Levitt, she remembered the name from Chess Review. He seated himself
stiffly. A tournament director came up to the table and spoke quietly to
Levitt. “You can start her clock now.” Levitt reached out, looking

---

unconcerned, and pressed the button on Beth’s clock. She held herself
steady and played her queen’s pawn, keeping her eyes on the board.
By the time they had got into the middle game, there were people
jammed in the doorway and someone was shushing the crowd and trying to
maintain order. She had never seen so many spectators at a match. She
turned her attention back to the board and carefully brought a rook to an
open file. If Levitt didn’t find a way to prevent it, she could try attacking in
three moves. If she wasn’t missing something in the position. She started
moving in on him cautiously, prying the pawns loose from his castled king.
Then she took a deep breath and brought a rook to the seventh rank. She
could hear at the back of her mind the voice of the chess bum in Cincinnati
years before: “Bone in the throat, a rook on the seventh rank.” She looked
across the board at Levitt. He looked as if it were indeed a chicken bone
and deeply imbedded. Something in her exulted, seeing him try to hide his
confusion. And when she followed the rook with her queen, looking brutal
on the seventh rank, he resigned immediately. The applause in the room
was loud and enthusiastic. When she came down from the platform she was
smiling. There were people waiting with old copies of Chess Review,
wanting her to autograph her picture on the cover. Others wanted her to sign
their programs or just sheets of paper.
While she was signing one of the magazines, she looked for a moment at
the black-and-white photograph of herself holding the big trophy in Ohio,
with Benny and Barnes and a few others out of focus in the background.
Her face looked tired and plain, and she recalled with a sudden remembered
shame that the magazine had sat with its tan mailing cover in a stack on the
cobbler’s bench for a month before she had opened it and found her picture.
Someone thrust another copy at her to sign, and she shook off the memory.
She autographed her way out of the crowded room and through yet another
crowd that was waiting outside the door, filling the space between her
playing area and the ballroom where the rest of the tournament was still in
progress. Two directors were trying to hush the crowd to avoid disturbing
the other games as she came through. Some of the players looked up from
their boards angrily and frowned in her direction. It was exhilarating and
frightening, having all these people pressed near her, pushing up to her with
admiration. One of the women who had got her autograph said, “I don’t
know a thing about chess, dear, but I’m thrilled for you,” and a middle-aged

---

man insisted on shaking her hand, saying, “You’re the best thing for the
game since Capablanca.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I wish it were as easy for me.” Maybe it is, she
thought. Her brain seemed to be all right. Maybe she hadn’t ruined it.
She walked confidently down the street to her hotel in bright sunshine.
She would be going to Russia in six months. Christian Crusade had agreed
to buy tickets on Aeroflot for her and Benny and a woman from the USCF
and would pay their hotel bills. The Moscow tournament would provide the
meals. She had been studying chess for six hours a day, and she could keep
it up. She stopped to buy more flowers—carnations this time. The woman
at the desk had asked for her autograph last night when she came in from
dinner; she would be glad to get her another vase. Before leaving for
California, Beth had mailed off checks for subscriptions to all the
magazines Benny took. She would be getting Deutsche Schachzeitung, the
oldest chess magazine, and British Chess Magazine and, from Russia,