A Good Death by Gil Courtemanche Page A

do you think Bobby Fischer did his homework? No, he worked on his openings.”
    And I learn that my father knows how to play chess quite well. No, I’m not learning that, I am remembering how, when I was four or five years old, he plunked me down in front of a piece of wood with little tin soldiers on it and tried, without the slightest success, to teach me the patient yet cunning advance of the pawns, the sneaky strategy of the knights, and the overwhelming power of the queen. I didn’t understand a thing, and he mated me in two moves, the classic trick of fathers who want to impress their children even as they’re humiliating them. Since I’d already been humiliated a hundred times, I decided to loathe the game and take pleasure in disguise and imagination. By which I mean the puppet plays I put on for my brothers and sisters, and declaiming the poems of Rimbaud at school concerts to parents who were shocked to discover that their children were learning things as ridiculous as “A red, U black…” and what’s this about a boat that has had too much to drink, and Ionesco, whom I understood not at all except that the dialogue in The Bald Soprano resembled the rare conversations I’d had with my father.
    “Anyway, that’s what I mean. When Grandpa was still talking, he asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I said, Bobby Fischer, and the next minute we were playing chess. I beat him easily, but he was happy that he’d at least put up a good fight. Can you imagine it? Your father, who has even more pride than I do, smiling after losing a game of chess? Since then we’ve become friends. With my mother it was hopeless. She sort of understood the pawns, but after that, nothing. I beat her in five moves, and you can take it from me, she wasn’t happy about it. Grandma doesn’t know the first thing about chess, not even who Bobby Fischer is. But she cuts out all the accounts of chess matches in the newspapers. I offered to teach her the basic rules, and Grandpa burst out laughing. He looked at me like I was one of his buddies and I would understand why he laughed. Before a tournament, I come here and explain my tactics and strategies to them. They drink tea and listen without understanding a word I say, but they never interrupt and then they ask me to phone them after each match to tell them how I did. Okay, maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that only old people know how to listen. Maybe it’s because they don’t have much of a life of their own that other people’s lives interest them so much. All parents do, though, is talk.”
    “And that’s all they do to make you love them, is listen?”
    “No, they talk, too, but only to answer questions. And they don’t answer them the same way. It’s like they take more time than parents do, or teachers. They think about things. Maybe they have to go back over their whole lives before they reply, or like they have so many memories and experiences that they know it’s not easy to give answers. I don’t know where all these words are coming from, because I don’t usually talk like this, but believe me, their answers give us our freedom.”
    Answers that don’t say no, that invite reflection. I’m discovering parents, especially a father, I’ve never known.
    It’s time we went back upstairs and rejoined the tribe, at least for me. I’ve learned a bit about my nephew, which is enough for me. And Isabelle will be looking for me. My father is probably asleep, and that thought I find comforting.
    “William, do you really not love your mother?”
    “Yes. No. I love her the way anyone loves their mother. But at my age it’s hard to love. No, I love her, but not like I love my grandparents. When I see them, I always feel like it’s for the last time. Don’t you think that makes it easier to love them? And Grandpa seems so happy when I’m around. That makes it easier to love him, for sure. Mom doesn’t make it easy. And neither do I. I don’t give her a lot