My Sister's Chessboard

I tried, but it's a memory I can't get away from. I don't remember ever feeling that tired, ever. Announcements of departing and arriving trains echoed in my mind, fused with the echo of my footsteps on marble tile as I walked through the Union Station grand hall. Walking in from Front Street, I tried unsuccessfully to ignore unpleasant smells of cleaning chemicals blending with the sweaty throng of tension-scurrying passengers on a cold February morning.

That was behind me as I leaned back against the headrest, relaxing a bit for the first time today. A soft chime signaled our departure, and I enjoyed the train's easy rocking as it gathered speed. I appreciated the empty seat to my right; I didn't feel like chit chat – this morning more than ever. On a train to Ottawa, I thought about the next five hours, a trip I never expected to make.

I took the printout from my pocket and unfolded the e-mail, rereading it for what seemed like the millionth time. It was the impersonal nature of the message that I found most disturbing. The subject line simply stated there had been a death in the family. Some young lawyer in Ottawa sent me an e-mail to tell me that my sister, Ursula, was dead. That was two days ago, and I haven't slept since. God, I'm so damned tired.

Where had it gone so wrong between us? I wondered.

We used to be . . .

         To call us best friends didn't come close to describing us. Ursula was my little sister, and I would have protected her with my life. People used to say, "You never see one of those kids without the other."

It's been so much fun to tease her. In the church, I could always get her to start giggling at the worst possible time . . .

I couldn't finish the thought. Recalling my sister's giggle-turned-to-laugh was enough, I looked around to see if anyone was watching me rub my eyes dry with my jacket sleeve.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and thought about those by-gone days during church service. Mom and Dad finally learned to sit between us. But if I leaned forward and made eye contact and made a face, she would start to squirm. I knew her giggle was sure to follow.

So many memories of dear Ursula and our time together. B it was chess that connected us.

Can you appreciate what it took to entertain ourselves in a small Ontario town in 1937?  The radio was our connection to great stories. Sure, there were always books, and Ursula was the avid reader between us. The librarian once told her that she had read every book in our small-town library. She was teasing Ursula, of course. Still, it was closer to the truth than not.

Reading. That's what Ursula was doing the first time our lives changed, forever.

"I’ve just been reading about a game,” she said, surprising me one night. I can close my eyes and still hear her young voice.

“Chess,” she said when I didn’t respond.

She read about chess into the night and wake up first thing in the morning and continue on.

“I need an opponent.”  She sprang this on me as we walked to school one morning, and it wasn’t a request. With that, our chess wars began.

I developed a rather vigorous game and played with a clumsy élan. I admit to rushing headlong into deadly traps she managed to set for me. Even now, I still smile at the thought.

Ursula was the strategic thinker between us and was always two, three, four, and more moves ahead of me. I still see that smirk she formed as we played. When she had that look, my game was lost. Nothing I would conjure up would help.

Filled with that memory, something inside gripped my heart as the train glided into the Ottawa station. As it slowed, I felt the severe shock of another memory – the memory of our last game of chess together.

It was a second and final time our lives would change forever. A young boy at age nine was ill-prepared for such a life-changing event

The battle over the checkered board wasn’t about chess, really. It was her decision to leave our home town. She was leaving me. She was going to move to Ottawa. The audacity, I remember thinking. What was she thinking? Imagine falling in love with a man from another city and want to be with him?  When had it happened, and why had I not seen the likely conclusion?

I will always regret my bullish and stubborn nature leading to what followed. I was selfish, I know, but I honestly could not imagine life without her smile.

We started to fight, something we had never done. During the sweetness of our youth, we would often bicker, debate yes – but fight – never. Yet, in one life-defining moment, I got to my feet, flinging the board and pieces to the floor, and stormed out the door. We never spoke again.

I can hear what you might be saying. People don’t cut someone out of their life for something as trivial as what I describe. I know it sounds unbelievable, but that’s the way it happened. I can only insist that it did happen that way. I disowned my sister because she fell in love and abandoned me. I’ll never be able to provide an adequate explanation for what I’d done. Now, these many years later, any hope for redemption vanished when I read that lawyer's e-mail.

* * *

Ottawa in February can be a snow-lovers delight. Today the sky was a dome of blue, with no clouds to spoil the view. I saw a glimmer of February sun filtering between blinds. I watched dust motes drifting through like passers-by. I sat in his darkly paneled office as the lawyer handed me the key to Ursula’s condominium. There were words of condolence and well-wishes offered, but I’ll never remember them.

Her condo turned out to be a solid-looking brick, semi-attached. Walking through the door to a home I’d never known, I felt a strangeness. I was aware of a presence – her presence. It was a feeling of that long-ago bond we shared. I swear I could almost hear her childish giggle. I had to stop myself from turning toward the sound that echoed inside my own head.

I walked through the rooms. Her husband had long since passed, and the decor was clearly hers. Each room had a look and feel I knew it was Ursula’s – a sensation I could still recognize. All the wasted years I’ve imposed on myself, I thought.

After I had wandered through my sister’s home, here and there, touching the fragments of her life lovingly. I ended up in her office, sitting quietly at her desk. It was neat. Her room was always an example of tidy, unlike mine. I glanced up at the full bookcases lining two walls and smiled. She still loved books.

I turned my attention back to the desktop, spreading legal paperwork across the surface. The lawyer had said the inheritance was substantial. The money was meaningless to me now as I looked at the papers.

Isn’t our real legacy the memories we leave behind?

The legacy of my time wasted away from Ursula was a crushing memory. I’d lived a solitary life. In retrospect, it’d been a good one. None of it, however, was shared with my sister. Could a life indeed be said to have been well lived if it wasn’t shared with the one you love most?

I sat appalled at what I had so impulsively excised from my life that terrible day.

I don’t know what made me look over at a table in the corner, a small table with a chessboard and two side chairs. It was arranged as if two opponents had decided to take a spot of lunch mid-game and would return at any moment. I wondered who her unsuspecting opponent had been in her final days.

I stood and walked over to the table.

I looked down at the pieces, a tingling memory forming, snowballing into a full-blown silent scream. My body felt the shock as if I’d been shot. The chess pieces were lined up . . .

A chill passing through me. I looked intently down at that board. I realized it was the exact placement of those pieces. After all these years, I thought. Each chess piece was in the precise order of the unfinished game we’d played on my sister’s chessboard.

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