Grandmaster

by David Klass

  Liu had chosen “My Heart Will Go On,” the theme song of the movie Titanic. After hearing it about a million times I hated that song more than just about any other. But then the music started up—flutes and recorders—and the first verse lit up on the monitor and Liu opened her mouth and something magical happened.

  She was a fantastic singer—a natural. From the first word out of her mouth, everyone in the room shut up and stared. She didn’t dance around on the stage or make wild arm movements or flip her long hair—she just stayed in one place and sang her heart out. I got the feeling she was really singing about her father, and how much she missed him.

  As she sang, I glanced at my own father and wondered how many more years would have gone by if we had not taken a chance on this weekend and started to understand and connect with each other.

  Liu finished a verse and reached back for my hand. I put it in hers, and she pulled me forward as the words of the chorus came on the screen and lit up. Now I am not a good singer, but I understood how much courage it had taken for Liu to reveal so much of herself to a room full of strangers, and I did my best to forget all my fears and just plunge in. Her voice seemed to welcome me and wrap around my own, and prop me up and fill in the rough cracks and lead my shaky baritone in the right directions. The chorus ended and she gave my hand a squeeze and whispered, “You’re no frog.”

  Then I stepped back and let her do her thing. When the second chorus came Liu reached back and took my hand again, and this time I was ready. But just as I stepped forward, the door to the Kinneys’ suite opened. Two people hurried from the short hall into the living room, and I stopped singing. Liu went on till the end of the line and then whispered: “Come on, Daniel, you’re doing great.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but we’d better stop.” I clicked off the music. “Liu, I’d like you to meet my mother.”

  My mom stepped forward, looking concerned and a little angry, and I saw my sister, Kate, behind her. Mom took in the party room for a moment with its dragons and disco ball. She gave my dad a long look—his face was flushed, the Hawaiian leis were draped around his neck, and he clutched an empty champagne flute. Then, squinting in the flash of the disco ball, Mom peered at me, still holding Liu’s hand. “Excuse me,” she said, “but could someone tell me what is going on here?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then my sister stepped out from behind my mom and asked: “Hey, are those California rolls? When do I get a chance to sing?”

  25

  This party was impossible to kill. It seemed to sweep on, with its own inner life and momentum. When my mom had stomped in, furious at my dad for staying when his health was in question and not exactly pleased with me for ignoring her commands to bring him home, I would have bet that would have derailed our karaoke soiree. But the disco ball flashed and I blinked, and the party seemed to have mysteriously gathered strength again, like a hurricane that has moved out over open water and regenerated.

  There was Mom, accepting a drink from Mr. Kinney and a fried dumpling from Dr. Chisolm. “Your husband is a genius,” Mr. Kinney told her. “A maestro.”

  “And we’re watching him very carefully,” Dr. Chisolm assured her. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

  And there was my sister, who loves Japanese food, attacking the sushi buffet like a killer whale closing in on a reef teeming with fish. A few minutes later, Kate had taken the stage and was singing Katy Perry’s “Firework” and throwing in her best hip-hop moves from summer camp.

  I introduced Liu to my mom. “She’s a seriously good chess player, Mom,” I said. “And she’s in a band, and she can sing like a real rock star.”

  Liu gave me a little smile and then took my mother’s hand without a hint of shyness. “It’s nice to meet you,” she told my mother. “Your son’s not so bad either.”

  “He’s full of surprises,” Mom agreed with a nod, studying Liu and, I think, liking what she saw. “But he doesn’t always listen to his mother.”

  “That unfortunately sounds pretty normal,” Liu’s own mother commented, stepping up to say hello. “If my daughter does half of what I ask, I consider myself lucky.”

  Mom soon dragged me away from the throng and peppered me with questions. “Is that the doctor who examined your father? Has he had more dizzy spells? Why is he drinking alcohol? He never drinks. And why are we even at this party? Don’t you guys have games to play tomorrow morning?”

  “One game,” I told her. “If our team gets four or five points, we can win this tournament, and a ten-thousand-dollar first prize. But Dad is gonna have to play his old enemy, and it’s gonna be brutal.”

  She looked back at me like I was insane. “Your father doesn’t have any enemies. He’s an accountant.”

  “No,” I told her. “You got that wrong. He’s a great warrior—the chief of our tribe—and he needs to relax before he goes into battle.”

  We both glanced over at him. Dad had spilled green tea on his shirt and was dabbing at it with a napkin while adjusting his eyeglasses. “Morris?” she asked me dubiously.

  “You’ll see for yourself,” I promised her.

  “And what about you?” she asked. “In only two days … you seem very different.”

  “I’m the son of a warrior,” I told her.

  Angry as she still was, Mom smiled. “I like your new friend,” she told me. “She has spunk.”

  Dad took the mic to sing an Elvis love song called “Love Me Tender,” which he dedicated to my mom. “Ruth came all the way from New Jersey, by late-night transit bus, to check up on me. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is,” he said. Then he crooned the syrupy song to Mom, and silly and off-key as it was, she smiled back at him. When it was done he came over and kissed her, and everyone clapped.

  I was getting tired, and was on the point of telling Dad that we should go to sleep when Liu’s mom and Mariel stepped up to the machine. They were the oddest pairing of the night—a rich blond society woman in a silk designer dress and diamonds, and a middle-class Chinese woman from the Bronx in jeans and a T-shirt, but they seemed to have struck a bond.

  They sang “We Are Family”—finishing the final verse arm in arm, with badly synchronized leg kicks. They were taking their bows when, all of a sudden, a scream shrilled from one of the bedrooms.

  The bedroom door flew open and Britney ran out, holding up her halter top to cover herself. The strap had been ripped. There was a red welt on her shoulder. “What happened, baby?” Mariel asked.

  Britney took a quick breath and said, “Nothing. I’m okay, Mom. Let’s go.”

  All eyes swung to Brad, who came strolling out of the bedroom, his hands in his pockets and a slight, uncomfortable smile on his handsome face.

  Mariel stepped up to confront him. “What just happened in there?”

  “Nothing,” Brad said, and tried to walk past her.

  But Mariel wasn’t budging. “Her shirt is ripped and she’s trying not to cry…”

  “Wardrobe malfunction,” he told her. “Ask her yourself.”

  Mariel turned and asked, “Brit?”

  “It was nothing,” Britney agreed in a whisper, turning her face away. “Mom, can we please just go now?”

  Mr. Kinney had heard enough. “Why does that girl have a mark on her shoulder?” he demanded from his son.

  Brad looked back at him. “Mind your own business.”

  Mr. Kinney reached out and grabbed Brad by the shirt. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that.”

  Brad shoved him away. It didn’t look like he pushed him that hard, but Mr. Kinney lost his footing and stumbled back and almost went down.

  Brad looked a little surprised at how the situation was escalating. “Nothing happened,” he repeated. “I’m getting out of here.” And he took a step toward the door.

  Mr. Kinney recovered and stepped in front of him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Brad squared his shoulders. He was two inches taller than his dad and twenty years younger. “D
on’t you even think about putting your hands on me again,” he warned.

  I think they would have fought, and I believe youth might have won out and the swim captain might have decked the hedge fund king, but when the first blow fell, it came from an unexpected direction.

  Mariel darted forward in a blur, drew back her right hand, and slapped Brad with her palm so that there was a very loud thwacking sound. He staggered back, tripped over a coffee table, and crashed to the floor. She stood over him. “Don’t you ever touch my daughter again,” she told him, and her face was so furious that Brad stayed down.

  Then Mariel put her arm around Britney and quickly led her daughter out of the room.

  My father came over to my mother, Kate, and me, and said, “Let’s go, guys. This party’s over.”

  26

  A fearsome knight in armor was chasing me through the Loon Lake Academy, galloping after me on a warhorse. I hid in our chemistry lab, ran down the first-floor hallway, and burst into the library, but I couldn’t shake him. He rode in right after me and drew his sword, and the fluorescent lights flickered off its sharp blade. Desperate, I crashed out through the library’s window and fled along the stone path toward Grimwald Pond. Hoofbeats click-clacked behind me, gaining on me. I glanced back and the knight raised his visor. There was no face there—only two black holes for eyes—and then his sword flashed down …

  And I woke up in my king-size bed in the Palace Royale Hotel, shaking and drenched in cold sweat. I hadn’t had a nightmare that bad in years. I glanced at the roll-away cot next to my bed—Kate was snoring loudly. The clock on the night table read three a.m. and I was positive I wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep.

  Click-clack. The hoofbeats from my nightmare came again, from our living room. I got up and tiptoed to the door in my bare feet and peered out. My father sat alone at the table in his blue cotton pajamas, moving chess pieces around a board with great concentration.

  I quietly closed the bedroom door behind me and walked out into the living room. Click—Dad slammed down a bishop. Clack—he took a pawn. He sensed my presence and glanced up. “Touch of insomnia?”

  “Bad dream,” I said. “What’s your excuse?”

  “I never sleep before the final round,” he told me. “But I’m guessing we’ll both sleep well tomorrow night at home.”

  The circles under his eyes had deepened. He looked like an anxious old raccoon that had been flushed from its hiding place and was about to be run over by a tractor. “You look really terrible,” I told him.

  “Thanks. You look impressively rotten yourself,” he said with a slight smile. “Let me guess—a weird nightmare?”

  “Extremely weird. How did you know?”

  “Chess nightmares,” he chuckled. “Nothing quite like them. It’s the stress of the tournament.” Dad motioned to the chair across from him.

  I sat and we looked at each other and both grinned at how ridiculous it was for us to be sitting there in a hotel suite in our pajamas at three a.m., facing each other across a chessboard. “So,” he said, “looks like there will be only four Mind Cripplers tomorrow. I got a late-night text from Randolph. He took his son home. And they’re not coming back.”

  I was surprised and a little angry. “But Mr. Kinney wanted to win the tournament more than any of us. We’re so close to that ten thousand dollars now. Without them, we don’t have a chance.”

  “He made a tough decision,” Dad said, “but I think it was the right one. Sure, he set the whole thing up, from suites to team shirts. But he has to try to teach that bully a lesson…” My father broke off for a second, and then glanced up at me. “Anyway, we can still win first place,” he pointed out. “We just need to sweep our last-round games.”

  “C’mon, Dad,” I said. “There’s no way I should even be two and two. Maybe lightning struck twice for once but never three times.”

  He gave a tired shrug. “I admit we’re both in a little bit over our heads. But since we’ve come this far, we might as well keep trying to stay afloat.”

  I glanced down at the chess pieces. “What’s this?”

  “Just a game from a long time ago,” he said. “I was white. George Liszt was black. We were playing for a spot on the junior national team that was going to compete in the world championships in Prague.”

  “And you remember the moves all these years later?”

  “Some people remember song lyrics,” Dad said. “Some can tell you the batting averages of every player in the Major Leagues. I remember chess games.”

  I looked down at the complicated position. “Did you win?”

  “No,” Dad said. “I was winning but the pressure got to me. And Liszt always knew just how to push me. He did this thing with his eyebrows, knitting them together. It drove me crazy. And he ground his teeth, but so softly that no tournament ref would call him on it. But I heard, and it totally screwed up my concentration. And during games he found insidious ways to remind me of my own worst faults and insecurities.” Dad looked down at the pieces and shrugged. “He was also a pretty good chess player.”

  “He said you were better.”

  “Once upon a time,” Dad admitted. “But that was way back when. What else did he say?”

  I hesitated. “He told me about Nelson Stanwick.”

  Dad nodded, and I could see the regret in his eyes. “Yes, that was an awful thing,” he said softly. “Nelson was a nice kid. Closest thing to a friend I had on the tournament circuit. Some mistakes you can’t take back. You just have to find a way to live with them. What else?”

  We were looking into each other’s eyes. “He said you tried to hang yourself with your belt,” I said softly.

  My dad looked back at me and didn’t say anything for several minutes. Then he whispered: “If you go rooting around in someone’s closet, Daniel, you’re going to find some shoddy old boots.”

  “Those are some pretty ragged old boots,” I replied. And then: “Why?”

  “I wanted … the pain to be over.” As if to punctuate the thought, his hand swept across the chessboard, knocking over the pieces. When it came to rest on a fallen bishop I could see that it was trembling and making the chess piece shake. He sat there for a long time, not moving or speaking. Dad suddenly looked old and frail—like an eighty-year-old man in a fifty-year-old body. “That wasn’t the first time I tried to kill myself at a chess tournament,” he finally told me. “But it was the last.”

  “Unless that’s what you’re trying to do now,” I whispered back. “We should just go home in the morning. We’re not going to win this thing, and you look awful.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m staying to see it through. I’ve made my decision, and I told your mother last night that I won’t go till it’s over. And for what it’s worth, I think you should at least try to win your last game.”

  “Of course I’ll try, but…”

  “Good,” he said, “because you’re better than you know. Now, there’s something I want to show you.” His hand swept over the chess pieces and, miraculously, they all seemed to leap to their starting positions. “This was the first game I ever memorized, when I was ten years old,” he said. “It’s a very silly game in a lot of ways, and it even has a silly name: ‘A Night at the Opera.’ It was played by Paul Morphy against two amateurs in 1858. He had been invited by one of them—a duke—to go to the opera and sit in his box. But when Morphy arrived, the duke challenged him to a game. Morphy wanted to see The Marriage of Figaro, but he agreed to play one game against the duke and a count who was also there. They played seventeen moves, and then Morphy checkmated them and watched the opera. It’s just a trifle, but for sheer clarity it may be the best attacking game ever played in the history of chess. Now watch.”

  He made the first nine moves, throwing out occasional comments like “Philidor Defense” and “Fischer himself annotated this game,” and then he stopped and looked at me. “Okay, up to now, any master might have made these moves. Now, watch this. Here comes M
orphy. No one else could have done it. You can feel him through these moves … Go ahead, you make the moves. I’ll tell you what to do…”

  He told me to sacrifice my knight, and I did, and the next move he told me to sacrifice my bishop, and I did, and soon he was telling me to sacrifice my queen. As I moved the pieces I watched my dad, and listened to his voice, and tried to see what he was seeing and feel what he was feeling. I don’t believe in séances or ghosts or spirit visitations, but something else—someone else—was right there with us in that room of the Palace Royale, floating above us, sitting next to me, staring down at the board and putting his hand over my hand as I moved the pieces, and smiling as if to say, “Don’t you get it? It’s a snap.”

  And I got it. Not all of it, but some of it. And when we were done with that game, Dad conjured the pieces back to their starting squares again and said, “Now, Morphy against his father, Alonzo. 1850. My favorite checkmate in the history of chess.” So we played that one, too.

  And at some point in the night my mother woke up and came out, but she didn’t say a word to break the spell. She just stood there watching and listening, trying to figure out what was going on as my father told me: “Fischer against Donald Byrne, the Game of the Century. 1956. He was only thirteen years old. Grunfeld Defense: Three Knights Variation. Hungarian Attack. Now, you move the pieces, Daniel … and let’s go!”

  27

  I walked into the Palace Royale’s pool fifteen minutes after it opened, and Britney was the only one there, swimming slow, sad laps like a mermaid in mourning. She wasn’t wearing her teensy-weensy purple bikini, but rather a sea-green one-piece that covered much more of her. The welt on her shoulder was almost gone, I noticed.

  I stood for a few seconds near the door, watching her circle back and forth, and she looked almost achingly beautiful. When she reached the wall she did a slow turn, saw me, and stopped. “Hi, Daniel,” she said. “I was hoping you’d come for a morning swim.”