The Carpenter & the Queen (2 page)

“A pawn,” Emma said.

“Right. It moves forward only one at a
time—except the first time it can move two. It attacks diagonally.
And this one?” He held up a piece for their inspection.

“The horse!” Marissa exclaimed.

“Knight,” Paul corrected. “How many spaces
can he move?”

“Three?” Aubrey answered this time.

“Right. Two one direction, one another, like
an L.”

“Why can’t it move all in one direction?”
Emma chewed her bottom lip.

“I don’t know.” Paul frowned. “Maybe he’s
got a war injury and he can’t walk straight.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Emma
declared.

“He’s the only piece that can jump.” Paul
lifted the black knight and held him up for the girls to see.
“That’s why he can get to pieces that the others can’t.”

“Could he still jump if he didn’t move in an
L?”

Paul rubbed his palm over his crew cut as he
thought. With as much as he knew about the game, and as little as
the girls did, they could still stump him.

“Emma, I have no idea. It’s just the way it
is.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Now,” he asked trying to regain his
instructional momentum, “what piece is the most important?”

“The king!” Emma and Aubrey called it out at
the same time.

“Right. Lose him and you’ve lost the
game.”

Paul set the black king on the light square
next to the black queen. “Oh, what’s this piece next to him?”

“His wife,” Marissa said.

“The queen. She can move any direction, as
many spaces as she wants, so she’s valuable for protecting the
king.”

“Can she jump?” Aubrey asked.

“No, no jumping. Somebody has to clear the
way for her first.”

The girls nodded.

“You first,” Paul prompted.

The girls argued amongst themselves about
which piece to move first. Marissa insisted they move the king, but
Emma prevailed in her choice and brought out the king’s knight.

“I want him to jump,” she explained.

“The Zukertort opening,” Paul observed.
“Impressive.”

None of the girls had any idea what he
meant, but they smiled at the praise. Paul advanced his queen’s
pawn two squares and waited for the girls to return. After much
consulting, the girls decided that each would take a turn moving
pieces instead of their having to agree on each move. Marissa got
the next move, and she brought out her rook diagonally, past the
pawns blocking its way. Paul pursed his lips, considering if he
should correct the girls or not. He decided to leave things alone,
see what his nieces would do. They would win, of course, but it
didn’t matter. He was used to losing.

When Paul’s sister Beth entered the room
several minutes later, Paul had lost a knight, a bishop, four
pawns, and a rook.

“You people getting hungry?”

“Dreadfully,” Emma proclaimed.

Paul looked up to exchange an amused glance
with Beth, but her eyes did not meet his. She was watching the
girls. Paul caught a movement in his peripheral vision. Marissa,
who was sitting on her knees, bounced up and down, giggling. What
she had done was immediately evident when Paul looked at the
board.

“Hey, my queen is missing. And my bishop!
Who’s taking my pieces?”

“They’re captured,” Aubrey said, now
giggling as well. “We’re winning.”

“You’re cheating,” Paul said.

Beth laughed and returned to the
kitchen.

With her mother gone, Marissa felt even
braver. With no stealth whatsoever she reached out and grabbed the
last of Paul’s knights and stuck it in the hiding place under her
legs.

“What’s going on?” Paul asked.

While her sister and cousin continued
giggling, Emma chewed her bottom lip, then moved her queen to knock
over Paul’s king.

“Do I say checkmate now?” she asked.

Paul feigned irritation at his loss. “You
girls are ruthless,” he said. “This old man never had a chance.” He
was only forty-two, but he felt ancient compared to the
single-digit crowd.

Marissa now burst out laughing and stood up,
pulling out his pieces from beneath her.

“So that’s what happened,” Paul said.

“Tickle fight!” Marissa yelled and took a
flying leap for Paul.

He saved his vital organs by catching her
under the arms, but the force of her jump pushed his back to the
floor and wrenched his right leg. He swung her to the floor,
rolling on his side and wincing in pain.

“Watch out for the war wound.”

The girls laughed.

“Let’s play tag,” Aubrey suggested.

“No, we’re done. Time to clean up.”

Motioning for the girls to follow his order,
Paul pulled himself up painfully, unable to conceal his
grimace.

“Will you play tag with us, Uncle Paul?”

“No.” He sensed his own sharpness and tried
to explain. “You wore me out for now.”

The girls pouted but did not follow him out
of the room.

He limped down the hall toward the bathroom,
dragging his leg. The limp was less on good days, but this wasn’t
one of them. He would need to be careful or his sisters would
notice and fuss over him. Once in the bathroom, he closed the door
behind him and opened the medicine cabinet to search for the pain
relievers. He was ready to get back to a life of solitude and
peace. He found the bottle he needed, opened it, and shook two
tablets into his hand.

Closing the cabinet, he saw his reflection
in the mirror and studied it. He was just a little under six-feet
tall, enough to have an inch or two on his sisters, but shorter
than both their husbands. His nose and chin dominated his face in
such a way that he thought of himself as a caricature of a man. His
brown eyes were glassy and dull. Growing out his dark buzz cut
would only reveal thick, weighty hair that made him look messy.
There was a time, after the accident when he had thought about
dating again, when the pain of losing Linda had abated enough that
he could look in the mirror and take stock of who he really was. He
rubbed the stubble on his chin. He hadn’t shaved today. No, there
wasn’t anything about him that a woman would want.

He went to the kitchen, careful that his
limp should not be more pronounced than usual, and pulled out a
slice of bread to munch on. Nora and Beth stood at the counter,
shredding lettuce and cutting vegetables for the salad.

“We hear you lost,” Nora teased. With her
dark hair pulled back in a pony tail, her chin looked sharp, and
she reminded Paul of their mother, although he had no intention of
speaking that thought aloud.

“Hey, I was playing by the rules.”

Beth shook her head. Her hair was lighter
than her two older siblings, and her chin less prominent, although
she had the family nose—long, straight, and triangular. “You’re not
letting the girls win, are you?” she asked.

“I say yes, and you give me a lecture. I say
no, and my pride . . .”

“Well, let’s not damage that,” Nora said.
“Tenuous as it is.”

Beth mentioned something about the stew on
the stove, but Paul didn’t listen. He noticed for the first time
how the cabinets in Nora’s remodeled kitchen did not line up flush
with the door jamb. He ran his hand along the moulding and
frowned.

“What did you find now?” Nora asked.

“Either the door’s not plumb, or the
cabinets aren’t. Your carpenter should have been able to hide
that—if he knew what he was doing.”

“That’s Richard’s doing.” Nora was referring
to her husband. “And the man at Home Depot.”

Paul winced. If he had known his
brother-in-law was responsible, he would have kept his mouth shut.
He wished he could think of the perfect thing to say to diffuse the
awkward situation, but nothing came to mind. Beth saved him
instead.

“You’ve spoiled us. We can never be
satisfied with anything manufactured now. You ought to get back
into it.”

This was the third time this topic had come
up in as many days.

“Too much time standing,” Paul replied.

“You stand when you want to,” Nora chided.
“You’d have plenty of business here, if you’d take it. You might
even meet some beautiful woman who needs her kitchen
remodeled.”

Beth sighed dramatically. “Stainless steel
appliances, custom cabinets, granite counters, and true love.”

The door into the kitchen from the garage
opened, revealing Richard and Beth’s husband Kevin carrying grocery
bags.

“So, how many men does it take to buy ice
cream?” Beth glared at her husband in irritation.

“Three,” Richard replied. “Two to buy new
flat screen TVs, and one,” he pointed to Paul, “to keep the women
distracted.”

Paul laughed when he saw his sisters’ angry
faces.

“I had nothing to do with this.” He raised
his hands to show his innocence.

“And we didn’t buy any TVs,” Richard
said.

Richard and Kevin gave each other a high
five and laughed.

“We looked,” Richard admitted. “We just
didn’t buy.”

“You better not have,” Nora scolded, swiping
the bag with the ice cream from his hand. “Or you’d be sleeping in
the garage tonight.”

The banter continued for a few more minutes,
but Paul stopped listening. The good-natured teasing his sisters
shared with their husbands contrasted sharply with the insults
Linda had hurled his way whenever they were with other people. She
couched the barbs in jokes, which made them hurt all the more. Paul
only responded with lopsided grins. He always lost in witty
repartee, but he was a champion at silence. He couldn’t watch his
sisters’ marriages without thinking of his own failure at “happily
every after,” which accounted for his infrequent, short visits.

Much later in the evening, after supper, a
movie, and a gifted dramatic performance by the girls as they
pleaded with their parents to let them stay up, the house quieted.
Beth, Kevin, and Marissa went home. Richard and his girls went to
bed. Paul was pulling out the sofa bed when Nora came out to help.
Together they straightened the sheets and unfolded the blankets in
silence until Nora finally spoke.

“I worry about you.”

Paul paused, surprised. “No reason to.”

“You’re alone so much.”

“I like it that way.”

“I feel like you’re doing some kind of
penance.” Nora avoided his gaze, smoothing out the quilt. “Like
since the divorce you think you don’t deserve to be around
people.”

“I don’t
want
to be around a lot of
people. There’s a difference.”

Nora traced the quilt squares with her
finger.

“Have you thought about dating again?”

“Can you just leave it alone?”

Her mouth became a thin line, turned down at
the edges. He had spoken too sharply and hurt her feelings.

“I’m perfectly happy,” Paul tried to
explain.

Nora did not look convinced, but that didn’t
surprise Paul. He didn’t believe himself either.

* * * * *

As he drove the six hours home, Paul felt
guilty for being so anxious to leave. A long weekend was all he
could take of the family. Now that they had seen him, they wouldn’t
beg him to drive down for a while, and he could do what he wanted
in peace. He liked being the one who occasionally dropped in to
family life but wasn’t a part of it.

Paul had learned this behavior from the
best—his father. He had traveled for work, coming home only on the
weekends. As a boy, Paul used to chafe at being surrounded by so
many women and longed for his father. But any difference his
father’s presence might have made was a fiction Paul had created.
Even when his father was home, he rarely spent any time with the
children. His one passion was chess, and that was how Paul had
negotiated the little one-on-one time he had with his dad.

Paul was just six or seven when his father
taught him how to play. As he thought about it now, Paul realized
it was a wonder his father had the patience to explain repeatedly
how the different pieces moved. Paul had never been what anyone
would call a fast learner.

In those early games, his father would
remove his own queen before the game began. “It’s a handicap,” his
father had said, “to give you a chance.”

Paul always lost.

“Why don’t you ever let me win?” Paul had
asked.

“I can level the playing field,” his father
replied, “but I won’t win the game for you. You’ve got to learn
that in life there are no free moves, and every mistake costs you
something.”

Years later, Paul knew the truth of this
advice, noting sardonically his bad leg, his ex-wife, and his
barely profitable online business. He was living his life in check,
hemmed in from all sides. This was probably why Paul had taken to
making chess sets, as a way of controlling the game. So far, it
hadn’t worked.

Maybe it was time to move to a bigger city,
to get back into carpentry. Paul wasn’t sure about anything
anymore, except that a new year had begun. He didn’t have any
resolutions but to live through it, which in itself didn’t give him
much to look forward to. However, he was human, and no matter how
much he wanted to hide in pessimism, hope kept creeping up, hope
that this year, things would be different.

3

“I don’t know about you,” Claire commented
to Sam at the breakfast table, “but I’m ready to make some changes
around here.”

They sat in folding chairs at a card table
in the kitchen nook.

“Are we getting a home theater?”

“No, but nice try. We’re redecorating.”

Sam sighed in disappointment.

“All this wallpaper is nasty. We need some
color on the walls, don’t you think?”

“Whatever.”

“We’re going to make up a plan for each room
of how we want it to look. We can’t spend a lot of money, of
course, but we can paint, buy some more furniture, and make it feel
more like ours. What do you think?”