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When she finally decides to leave Moscow, she makes three phone calls: one professional one to the airline to book her ticket for Tuesday night, one excited one to Benny to let him know about her arrival and one anonymous one to the papers, filled with faked certainty that Beth Harmon would, in fact, arrive in New York on Wednesday.
Benny is leaning on his car when she exits JFK, his posture cool and collected as ever- still, he breaks his facade the moment he sees her and she is sure her face mirrors his in the way they both grin so wide it feels like there is not enough space to contain it. The distance between them is closed in a few steps and they are engulfed in each other’s arms, her feet sweept off the ground, her face buried in the crook of his neck.
“Welcome home, champion,” Benny whispers in her ear and Beth laughs.
In the car, they talk. They talk about how cold Moscow was, how the radio commentators could never do justice to the magnificence of the halls she got to play in, how a man with ripped gloves and the brightest smile she has ever seen gave her the greatest run for her money in a game with wooden makeshift pieces in a Russian square.
Beth stares at Benny while Benny stares at the road ahead. His hand lingers a little every time he shifts gears or changes the radio station, while hers remains safely tucked away in her glove on her lap.
The first signs of exhaustion make their appearance when she finally drops her suitcase in his living room, which is messier than she has ever seen it. There are empty coffee cups and take-away food containers and books and sheets of paper all lying around, evidence of the night Benny and the others sacrificed their sleep -and probably part of their sanity- to help her win.
“Sorry for… all this,” Benny says as he descends the stairs and drops his keys and his hat on a shelf, vaguely gesturing to the general disorder. To say she doesn’t mind, would be an understatement. “The boys all left town, but they are sending their best. Matt and Mike are asking if they can forge your signature on a couple of your pictures and sell them.”
Beth, in all her tiredness, still manages to laugh. “Tell them I’ll sign them myself when I see them, so they better drop by Lexington soon enough.”
Benny just nods, trying to hide any sign of being hurt at the sound of her being in another state, all those miles away. She called him to go pick her up from the airport. She walked into the apartment like that was the only place she wanted to be- at least for now. If anything, she was choosing to spend her first night back home with him. So why was he being such a coward, walking to his cold empty bedroom when the woman of his life was standing beautiful, and radiant, and there , in the middle of his living room?
“Benny?” her voice stops him dead in his tracks and he slowly turns around on his heels, his heart skipping a beat. “I never got to thank you. For all you and the boys did for me,” she says, and for someone who could justifiably be drunk on the confidence of having beaten the best chess player in the world in his own home court, she definitely did not look like it. Instead, she looked innocent, vulnerable, truly grateful. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
He takes a few steps closer, and it’s not his style to be hesitant, but he is. This is not speed chess, his mind having raced ten moves ahead before his opponent has even touched their pawn. Here he is reluctant, calculating, scared he is going to ruin the one good thing he has hoped for during so many sleepless nights.
“Beth,” he starts, realizing it’s the first time he has called her by her name since she set foot on American soil, “like hell you could. I’ve read your game, I’ve heard about it on the radio, I’ve played that damn game so many times I will probably have dreams about it for a month. We stayed up all night, calculating Borgov’s moves, strategizing your reactions, your defences, your tactics, everything that could go wrong or right. And he still found a way to surprise you, because that’s what makes him Borgov.” Another step, and now if he holds out his hand he can touch her. His heart is at his throat as he puts a perfectly curled strand of hair behind her ear. “And you still found a way to beat him. Because that’s what makes you Beth freakin’ Harmon.”
She kisses him. Or maybe he does. In love, you don’t have to wait for your opponent to play first.
Hours later, as the first rays of sun adorn the city and Beth has somehow forgotten she has been awake for too long, they lie tangled up in Benny’s sheets, their eyes fixed on each other as if one is going to disappear if the other one blinks.
“I do mean it, you know. That I couldn’t have done it without you,” she says and when Benny opens his mouth to protest she kisses him and that’s enough to keep him silent for a while. “Not just with the plans and strategies,” she explains. “Chess is what I know, it’s what I’m good at. My problem was that I felt alone and scared and my throat was itching for alcohol or the pills to make the doubts go away, to get that kick that would put me back in my place. Knowing that there are people on the other side of the world rooting for me, believing in me, running on caffeine and stale pizza to make sure I have a chance of winning? It was all the kick I needed.”
Benny pulls her closer and kisses her forehead. “You make it very easy to believe in you.”
It’s the last thing she hears before drifting off in his arms, his finger running circles on her back, making her feel safer and calmer than any quantity of Librium ever could.
They drive back to Kentucky together and somehow, they manage not to say a single thing about chess during those endless hours on the road. Instead, she tells him about the songs Alma used to play on the piano and about the games she and Jolene used to play before going to bed back in Methuen. He speaks about the few months he lived in California and how he took up smoking when he was still in high school but stopped a few years later because he couldn’t breathe right. She whispers about her mum and her demons and that day in the car when she was nine that her life turned upside down. His hand lingers, and this time hers is there to hold it tight.
They don’t go home straight away. When they pull over outside the graveyard, Benny stays behind and starts carving on a stick he found on the side of the road with his pocket knife, giving her space he knows she needs.
When Beth reaches the grave, she sits on the dry soil cross-legged and can almost hear Mrs. Deardorff’s disciplinary voice, because that’s not how ‘good Christian girls’ sit.
But she has stopped pretending to be religious for a while now- it just seems so exhausting to her. She has spent so long trying to predict her opponent’s next moves, that sitting and pondering about what comes after death, if anything comes at all, feels like a waste of perfectly functional grey matter. In the chess match with death, the winner is always pre-decided and no matter how long you manage to sneak your king around in a futile effort to run away, in the end you have to take a step back and let him hit the board. There is no shame in admitting defeat- a good man had taught her that.
“Hello, Mr Shaibel,” she says and lets a small smile creep up on her face. His grave is dirty but still in a decent state, a bunch of decaying flowers on one corner. Combined with the recent death date on the stone, it was a sign that people were still showing some effort -someone from the orphanage, maybe? or some kind relative?- but only until it will be socially acceptable not to do so.
She hasn’t been so close to the grave before- after the funeral, she looked from a distance as the caskett went down into the ground, keeping her sadness to herself and not willing to share it, that or any other awkward interaction with the numbered old teachers that decided to show up to pay their respects one hour late.
That’s the reason she didn’t know that right next to his was another tombstone, much older, the passage of time having taken a toll on it. Adelaide Johnson-Shaibel, it reads, and Beth feels a tear run down her cheek.
For so many years she could look at a chessboard, a damaged ceiling, even the behind of her eyelids and see whole matches play out, predict every move and outcome, witness the kings fall again and again, each time by a different enemy at their door. But standing under that cloudy sky of Kentucky, staring at the hyphen that signifies a life many years too short, she can see the hundreds of threads that end with someone carving it; terminal illness, car crash, a childbirth gone wrong? She is used to endless pathways lying in front of her, but not to all of them seeming so unfair, leading to such a, quite literally, dead end.
She looks back at Mr. Shaibel’s grave and the tears won’t stop coming. She weeps for his death and the death of his wife, that she never knew about but still hurts just the same, she weeps at the thought of the wall of his basement covered in pictures of her face and articles branding her with words and expectations so heavy for a teenager to bear, she weeps for the goodbye she never got to say because she was so caught up in her illusions of grandeur.
When the sobs die out and her tears dry, Beth opens her purse, too small to hold an actual newspaper, but big enough for one page. She unfolds the piece of paper, skims through the words embellishing her skills and achievements, until she comes to the sentence she was looking for. She clears her throat and reads out loud.
“Harmon, an orphan since nine years old, showed the first signs of her genius at that early an age, at Methuen Home, where she grew up after her mother’s untimely and tragic passing. She claims to have been taught the rules and principles of chess by the janitor of the orphanage, William Shaibel, her eyes lighting up when mentioning her origins.”
Her eyes are lighting up again now, as she puts down the article and looks at the dull grey stone again. “One last one,” she says, “for your collection.”
She moves to put it back in her purse, but something stops her. It’s his collection. Beth never really held on to pieces written about her- after some point they were too many, too repetitive, always lacking the details she would want them to include and favoring the pictures of herself holding some trophy that is now either sold or lying in some dusty cardboard box in the attic.
But Mr Shaibel did, no matter how many times clueless paparazzi threw around words like ‘Grandmaster’ without having any clue what they meant.
She uses her hands and a sharp stone that lies nearby to dig a small shallow hole right next to the grave. She puts the paper inside, but doesn’t close it.
Instead, she opens her purse and pulls out one of her most prized possessions, one worth -sentimentally and probably literally- way more than any of her trophies ever could. She doesn’t know if people noticed she never put the king Borgov handed to her after his resignation back on the board, or if they just let her get away with it. The delicate piece has been her constant companion since that day, a good luck charm, a souvenir of her greatest moment, a reminder that everything is possible. Everything Mr Shaibel deserved to have.
“Thank you,” she utters clearly, putting the king on top of the paper in the hole, the piece now hiding her face. “I owe you so much.”
At that, she can’t help but laugh, as an old memory dawns on her. She opens her purse one last time. One final offering.
She takes out two five-dollar bills, tucks them underneath the king and meticulously puts the soil back in place to cover it all.
She stands up, dusts off her pants to the best of her ability and smiles, her chest suddenly feeling much lighter. There is no photo on the grave and she knows the edges of his face are getting blurry in her memory- she doesn’t remember the exact shape of his eyes, the quantity of white hairs in his mustache, the sound of his voice.
She understands that she never really knew the man- and she will never get a chance to do so. But she is making an effort to know herself, the good and the bad, through the bright days and cloudy skies like the one above her. She is an orphan, but she is a daughter too, she is a friend, she is trying so hard not to be an addict. In certain circles, she is somewhat famous. She might be in love. And she probably wouldn’t be who she is if Mr Shaibel had not told her she is astounding, with the faith and confidence of someone saying the grass is green, under the blinding lightbulb that hung above their chessboard.
And for that she owes him everything- but those ten dollars are a good start.
Beth walks away from the grave with dirt staining her coat, stuck under her previously perfectly manicured fingernails. She leaves with a burning sensation in the back of her throat, the kind she knows she can extinguish with a sip or a pill. She doesn’t.
She gets into the car and kisses Benny, who doesn’t question neither the dirt nor the tear stains.
They drive home as the sun sets and when he asks if she wants to play chess after dinner, she says yes.
She realizes a checkmate is inevitable the moment he sets down his bishop and looks up expecting to see cockiness in his eyes, but all that’s there is love.
She lets her king drop and stands up, formally offering him a defeated handshake.
He stands up as well, and uses the handshake to pull her into a kiss.
She has never been this happy to lose.