On the thirty-eighth move he brought his rook crisply down to her second rank for the first threat of mate. She could see clearly enough how to parry that, but behind it were more and more threats that would either mate her or take her queen or give him a second queen. She felt sick. For a moment it dizzied her just to look at the board, at the visible manifestation of her own powerlessness.
She did not topple her king. She stood up, and looking at his emotionless face, said, “I resign.” Borgov nodded. She turned and walked out of the room, feeling physically ill.
The plane back to New York was like a trap; she sat in her window seat and could not escape the memory of the game, could not stop playing through it in her mind. Several times the stewardess offered her a drink, but she forced herself to decline. She wanted one only too badly; it was frightening. She took tranquilizers, but the knot would not leave her stomach. She had made no mistakes. She had played extraordinarily well. And at the end of it her position was a shambles, and Borgov looked as though it had been nothing.
She did not want to see Benny. She was supposed to call him to pick her up, but she did not want to go back to his apartment. It had been eight weeks since she left her house in Lexington; she would go back and lick her wounds for a while. Her third-prize money from Paris had been surprisingly good; she could afford a quick round trip to Lexington. And there were still papers to sign with her lawyer. She would stay a week and then come back and go on studying with Benny. But what else had she to learn from him? Remembering for a moment all the work she had done readying herself for Paris, she felt sick again. With an effort she shook it off. The main thing was to get ready for Moscow. There was still time.
She called Benny from Kennedy Airport and told him she had lost the final game, that Borgov had outplayed her. Benny was sympathetic but a little distant, and when she told him she was going to Kentucky for a while he sounded irritated.
“Don’t quit,” he said. “One lost game doesn’t prove anything.”
“I’m not quitting,” she said.
In the pile of mail waiting for her at home were several letters from Michael Chennault, the lawyer who had arranged for the deed to the house. It seemed there was some kind of problem; she did not yet have clear title or something. Allston Wheatley was creating difficulty. Without opening the rest of the mail she went to the phone and called Chennault’s office.
The first thing he said when he came on the line was “I tried to get you three times yesterday. Where’ve you been?”
“In Paris,” Beth said, “playing chess.”
“How sweet it must be.” He paused. “It’s Wheatley. He doesn’t want to sign.”
“Sign what?”
“Title,” Chennault said. “Can you get over here? We’ve got to work it out.”
“I don’t see why you need me,” Beth said. “You’re the lawyer. He told me he’d sign what was necessary.”
“He’s changed his mind. Maybe you could talk to him.”
“Is he there?”
“Not in the office. But he’s in town. I think if you could look him in the eye and remind him you’re his legal daughter…”
“Why won’t he sign?”
“Money,” the lawyer said. “He wants to sell the house.”
“Can the two of you come here tomorrow?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the lawyer said.
She looked around the living room after hanging up. The house still belonged to Wheatley. That was a shock. She had barely seen him in it, and yet it was in fact his. She did not want him to have it.
Although it was a hot July afternoon, Allston Wheatley was wearing a suit, a dark-gray salt-and-pepper tweed, and when he seated himself on the sofa he pulled up the creases in the pants legs, showing the whiteness of his thin shanks above the tops of his maroon socks. He had lived in the house for sixteen years, but he showed no interest in anything in it. He entered it like a stranger, with a look that could have been anger or apology, sat down at one end of the sofa, pulled his pants legs up an inch and said nothing.
Something about him made Beth feel sick. He looked exactly the way he had looked when she first saw him, when he came to Mrs. Deardorff’s office with Mrs. Wheatley to look her over.
“Mr. Wheatley has a proposal, Beth,” the lawyer was saying. She looked at Wheatley’s face, which was turned slightly away from them. “You can live here,” the lawyer said, “while you are finding something permanent.” Why wasn’t Wheatley telling her this?
Wheatley’s embarrassment made her somehow squirm for him, as though she were embarrassed herself. “I thought I could keep the house if I made the payments,” she said.
“Mr. Wheatley says you misconstrued him.”
Why was her lawyer speaking for him? Why couldn’t he get his own lawyer, for Christ’s sake? She looked over at him and saw he was lighting a cigarette, his face still inclined away from her, a pained look on his features. “He claims he was only permitting you to stay in the house until you got settled.”
“That’s not true,” Beth said. “He said I could have it…” Suddenly something hit her with full force and she turned to Wheatley. “I’m your daughter,” she said. “You adopted me. Why don’t you talk to me?”
He looked at her like a startled rabbit. “Alma,” he said, “Alma wanted a child…”
“You signed the papers,” Beth said. “You took on a responsibility. Can’t you even look at me?”
Allston Wheatley stood up and walked across the room to the window. When he turned around, he had somehow pulled himself together, and he looked furious. “Alma wanted to adopt you. Not me. You’re not entitled to everything I own just because I signed some damned papers to shut Alma up.” He turned back to the window. “Not that it worked.”
“You adopted me,” Beth said. “I didn’t ask you to do it.” She felt a choking sensation in her throat. “You’re my legal father.”
When he turned and looked at her, she was shocked to see how contorted his face was. “The money in this house is mine, and no smart-assed orphan is going to take it away from me.”
“I’m not an orphan,” Beth said. “I’m your daughter.”
“Not in my book you aren’t. I don’t give a shit what your god-damned lawyer says. I don’t give a shit what Alma said either. That woman could not keep her mouth shut.”
No one spoke for a while. Finally Chennault asked quietly, “What do you want from Beth, Mr. Wheatley?”
“I want her out of here. I’m selling the house.”
Beth looked at him for a moment before speaking. “Then sell it to me,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” Wheatley said.
“I’ll buy it. I’ll pay you whatever your equity is.”
“It’s worth more than that now.”
“How much more?”
“I’d need seven thousand.”
She knew his equity was less than five. “All right,” she said.
“You have that much?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I’m subtracting what I paid for burying my mother. I’ll show you the receipts.”
Allston Wheatley sighed like a martyr. “All right,” he said. “You two can draw up the papers. I’m going back to the hotel.” He walked over to the door. “It’s too hot in here.”