While we walked around she talked from time to time in a pleasant voice about the apartment and about her cats. She asked me about my father in a kind of offhand way, and when I said he was doing okay she sniffed and said, “I never could figure out that boy. He was always so goddamned calm.” It was strange to hear that and to realize that Aunt Myra was fifteen years older than my father and, from the tone of her voice, didn’t care about him much. She was nothing like my father or mother, nothing like any adult I’d known. She may have been the last person I loved—and it was love at first sight.
That summer with Aunt Myra gave me a sense of the possibilities of a city that has never substantially diminished. I have forgotten the plays and ballets we saw, but I remember the marble floors, the high-ceilinged lobbies, the soft lighting at the bars between acts, and the expansive feeling to be in New York City at the theater. We saw holo shows and two museum openings and sky music concerts in Central Park. I remember elevators, before the Energy Acts outlawed them. I remember the lights in the upper floors of skyscrapers at night. And most of all, I remember walking down quiet streets on the East Side between rows of old brownstones, looking into the windows of brightly lit apartments, wanting to live in one more than I’d ever wanted anything before. I became a spiritual New Yorker while walking the East Seventies between Park and Second Avenue at the age of thirteen.
I also learned about eating from Aunt Myra—salads and desserts, arugula and chocolate mousse. My diet is a tribute to her memory. Myra taught me another thing—chess. After a week of shows and concerts, she announced that we were going to spend a night at home and entertain ourselves. “Do you play chess?” she asked me, looking up over her glasses. In her hand was a plastic packet the size of a billfold.
“No,” I said. “I play Monopoly.”
“Well, you can play that too with this thing. This electronic marvel,” she said. “But a smart young man should know chess.”
I started to say that no one played chess anymore, for the same reason no one ever did arithmetic: human effort had long been outclassed at that kind of thing. Luck games were what my generation played. But Aunt Myra was no dummy; she might have a point. “Okay,” I said, “will you teach me?”
“I’m going to roast a duck,” she said, “and then change for dinner.” She had just come home from shopping and was wearing her striped coveralls. “This will teach you the game. Learn it and we’ll play during supper.” She handed me the thing. “Unfold it on a table somewhere and press the red spot.” Then she went into the kitchen.
It was made of some kind of rough old plastic and it looked well-worn. I took it into one of the living rooms where a walnut refectory table sat by a window, pushed a few ginger jars, paperweights and African violets aside to create a space, and then unfolded it. It turned out to be a big white square about the size of a Monopoly board with a red dot at the lower left-hand corner. I pulled up a chair, seated myself in front of the board, and pressed the dot.
The surface was immediately covered with print, like a menu. Backgammon, Checkers, Chess, Go, Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders, Bridge, Poker, Canasta, Casino and so on, were listed down the left side, with a red dot to the left of each. On the right, in capital letters, were three options: 1. RULES AND INSTRUCTIONS, 2. PLAY, and 3. OPPONENT PLAY (CHOOSE LEVEL). This last was followed by the numbers one through twelve. At the bottom right-hand corner, in gold letters, was written MYRA BELSON.
I pressed “Chess” and “Rules and Instructions.” The print vanished and was replaced by a large chessboard, with green and ivory squares. A soft voice from the board said, “Voici le Jeu d’Échecs…”
“English,” I said, aloud.
“Yes,” the board said. “This is the game of chess, invented in India and modeled on warfare. It is played with thirty-two pieces, or men, as follows: Here is a pawn…” and the silhouette of a pawn appeared in the middle of the board. “Each player has eight pawns, placed on what is called the second rank.” The pawns appeared, black and white, in their starting positions.
I began to get interested. I could hear Aunt Myra banging pans around in the kitchen. I got up and went to get a beer before continuing. She had the duck in a pan and was slicing an orange for the sauce. I’d never eaten duck before. “What do you think of chess?” she said.
“Looks interesting.”.
“No sex and laser rays,” she said. She was referring to the kinds of pocket games people generally played, with 3-D visuals and all the screams and curses.
“That’s all right with me.” I took a liter of Nairobi beer from the refrigerator and a glass from a cabinet.
“Enjoy it, then,” she said. “But go easy on beer. You’re young.”
“I’ll never be an alcoholic,” I said, thinking of Mother.
“That’s good,” Aunt Myra said, putting her sliced orange around the duck. “Addiction is a pain for everyone concerned. I understand your mother is a lush.”
I’d never heard anyone talk that way before. “She drinks a lot of martinis,” I said.
“Mmm,” Aunt Myra said. She took down a mixing bowl and began making some kind of dressing in it. “I advise you to stay away from home as much as you can. Your father’s a cold fish and your mother drinks.”
“I work a lot,” I said.
“Do you like money?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That’s a start. You need a love affair.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t say I was terrified of girls. Terrified. I also didn’t say I’d discovered sex on the bus coming to New York.
I took my beer back to the table and went on with the lesson. Outside the window late sunlight shone on the facades of old mansions across the street. I thought for a while about sex and money and what Aunt Myra had said about staying away from home. I wished she would invite me to live with her; I was crazy about Aunt Myra and crazy about New York. I drank down a long glass of beer, feeling the spiritual warmth it gave my belly, and went on with chess. You moved the pieces by touching the silhouette with your finger; the piece vanished and reappeared on the square you touched next. The opponent’s pieces moved on their own. The voice gave instructions and recommendations, and after a couple of practice games where it showed me what I’d done wrong, I told it to be quiet and played against the board in silence. I was using the first level of the board’s flexible computer—built, I suppose, into the molecular structure of the plastic—and on the third game I beat it by queening a pawn. I was playing at level two when Aunt Myra brought in her blue Spode platter with a golden duck a l’orange on it. We ate with our fingers and played chess. Myra beat me thoroughly, and gave me some advice that was a lot more helpful than the machine’s. We played fast games until two or three o’clock in the morning; she won them all. It turned out Myra was a rated player and had won tournaments when young. I was hooked on chess.