Chapter Text
Beth has many memories of her mother, but one in particular sticks out after Moscow, and Benny.
“Remember how I said men would want to teach you things?” Alice asked
“Yeah.” Said Beth.
“You say yes,” corrected Alice, “‘yeah’ is for everyone else. But one day, there might be a man who likes you. And maybe you like him. He might want to teach you things too. And maybe he won’t. You just need to make sure he can handle you. We’re fractals, you and I. The closer you look the more details there are. You can’t simplify yourself, or make yourself smaller, for a man.”
“Is that why Daddy isn’t here?”
Alice nodded. “Your Daddy couldn’t handle me, either.”
Beth thinks that perhaps she and Benny are both fractals, too complex to ever be compatible, which is maybe why she stops by Harry’s office at the supermarket every time she goes to get groceries, and maybe why she meets him outside the college after his classes are over. It’s not a surprise when he asks her out, and Beth realizes as they sit across from each other at a diner that she’s never been on a proper date before.
Once, this would have been awkward, as Beth struggled to see through the haze of the pills and the wine, but now it is natural. Harry invites her back to his apartment, and as night falls, they stumble towards the bedroom, pulling off clothes as they go. It is better than the first time, now that Beth knows what it should be like, and she doesn’t pick up a book when they’re done. Harry does not talk about chess, or anything else for that matter, and he does not try to hold her, seemingly sensing her vulnerability. He stays next to her, as close as he can be without touching, like he somehow knows exactly what she needs. After that, she spends more nights at his apartment than at her own house, and while it’s wildly different and mildly less exciting than her time spent in another apartment with a blond-haired cowboy, it is not unpleasant. Harry accompanies her to tournaments sometimes, but no one dares comment on it, even that same cowboy, who she speaks to occasionally; just surface-level conversations about chess, nothing else.
As with the first time he asked her out outside of the small community college, it is not a surprise when Harry proposes, either. Maybe Beth had wasted her one great love in life with Benny, or maybe there was no such thing, but after spending so much time with a person as she had with Harry, it was easy to grow to love them even if you didn’t in the beginning. Her love for Benny had come suddenly, and left that way. She’d had to earn her love for Harry, but there’s no doubt it’s there when she slips the ring on her finger. The first time she wears it to a tournament, she catches Benny staring at it, and she can tell it throws him off because he should be able to hold his own for longer than twelve moves. He does not shake her hand when she wins.
Back in Kentucky, she sells Alma’s house to a nice middle-aged couple with two children, and occasionally she sees the wife around town. Once, the woman tells her that a man in a leather coat had been asking after her, and asks if Beth knows the man. Beth tells her not to worry, and spends the rest of the day in a daze.
At a tournament in Atlanta, Beth is on edge knowing she’ll have to play Benny. Harry seems to sense this, because he whispers a joke in her ear and takes her hand. She smiles in an attempt to reassure him. She wins, again, and this time she does not extend a hand for him to shake before turning her back and walking towards her hotel room.
At home, life goes on. She stays clean and sober, she goes to the diner with Harry on Friday nights, and occasionally she lectures at the college. Sometimes they make the drive to Townes and Roger’s and the four of them eat dinner together, and sometimes she visits Jolene. Harry graduates from college, and things with them are the same as ever. Life with him is not dull, but it is routine. He knows how to talk her down when she’s having cravings, or what to do when she gets a little too vulnerable. He knows how to handle her.
She does not see Benny again until the US Open, in 1971. She backs him into a corner that even she herself couldn’t get out of if she tried, and the ghost of something long kept buried stirs within her as he looks her in the eyes for the first time in years. When he resigns, she knows that the game is finished. Both the game on the board between them, and whatever the game was they’d been playing in life. It is over.
Beth extends a hand, which Benny shakes. When she lets go of his hand, she lets that long-buried ghost of a feeling go too.