The World Played Chess (3)

Chapter 1


August 29, 2015

I walked into a wall where once had been the entry to our kitchen. I’d had my head down, flipping through the pages of the journal I’d kept at seventeen and wondering what happened to the young man who had wanted to write.

“Damn,” I said.

Elizabeth looked up from the remodel plans she had spread across our dining room table and laughed. “Old habits die hard, I guess,” she said.

“I guess,” I said, rubbing where I had bumped my head. “When did this go in?”

“Yesterday. They’re moving the staircase tomorrow.”

“Moving the staircase?” I said, my tone sharpening and volume rising.

“I’m kidding.”

“Very funny.”

We were in the middle of a remodel that started with just removing a nonstructural wall between the kitchen and the dining room no one ever used. The kitchen had since doubled in size and shifted, to make the family room larger. Elizabeth decided a new kitchen needed new appliances, and a bay window, and, apparently, a new entry. I wasn’t complaining, at least not out loud. It would be nice to have a larger family room, which meant a larger flat-screen, in my way of thinking. It was also practical. Beau, our eighteen-year-old, who would be a high school senior, brought friends home after summer football conditioning, and that would likely continue after Friday-night games in the fall. I’d warned Elizabeth that eighteen-year-old young men after an extended workout were like stray dogs. Feed them and they would keep coming back. They did. I wished I had bought stock in Costco pizza.

Mary Beth, our freshman daughter, a basketball player, would likely do the same with her friends and teammates in the winter. Elizabeth and I had decided it was better to have them at home with friends than driving all over town.

Holding both William’s and my journals made me think of that lost dream—the one I had to be a writer, maybe even someday write a novel. I forsook that dream for a stable job and a stable income as an attorney. I had justified my decision to go to law school as best I could—I told myself that having a law degree would give me something to fall back on if the writing didn’t work out. I then justified becoming a lawyer by telling myself I would need to save money for when I took a sabbatical to write. More recently, I told myself my savings and investments would allow me to retire young, and that I could write that novel after both our kids graduated college.

I had only been fooling myself.

I had chickened out when I went to law school. I had been afraid to write, afraid I would fail. What would people think of me? Class valedictorian. And he’s a nobody. A failure.

And now? Well, the law was indeed a jealous mistress. Days became months and months became years and years became decades. I devoted too much time to my job. I stayed at the office late, got in early, worked too many weekends. It was easier that way, I suppose—not having the time to write, rather than admitting that I simply didn’t have the heart or the courage.

I pacified myself with things like the remodel, things we could afford, but, frankly, that I didn’t care about. I told myself Elizabeth and I could give our kids more than I had growing up with nine siblings, but I realize now that kids don’t want much, just to know they are loved.

Someone once said that failure is easier to live with than regret, and it pierced my heart like an arrow.

Dreams are hard to catch, aren’t they?

Especially if you don’t have the courage to try.

“What are you reading?” Elizabeth asked.

“A journal.”

She squinted, disbelieving. “Since when do you keep a journal?”

“I don’t.” I held it up. “I kept this one in 1979. My mother gave it to me. She wanted me to write the great American novel.”

“F. Scott Fitzgerald beat you to it,” Elizabeth said.

“Harper Lee fans might disagree,” I said. “As well as Hemingway fans.” I changed the subject, not wanting to dwell on my failure. “What are you doing, adding a second story?”

“Ha ha. The designer is coming over to discuss wall colors.”

“We have a designer?” I could see the price of the remodel increasing.

“It’s part of the contractor’s services,” she said. “But if you’re planning on quitting your day job to write novels, you might want to wait a year.”

Or thirty-six, I thought, but didn’t say. I considered my journal. “My mother gave this to me before my senior year in high school.”

“What made you even think of it?” Elizabeth asked. “Don’t tell me you were cleaning out the attic.”

“In this heat? It’s a hundred degrees plus up there. I’d die of heatstroke.” Like the guys William told me about who fried their brains in Vietnam’s heat and humidity. Another story I had not thought about in decades. “No, I got a package in the mail today from someone I knew a long time ago.”

“A girlfriend? Tell her you’re committed.”

“No kidding,” I said. “To this remodel. I might never get to retire.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. She ran her own real estate company and made a substantial salary.

“No, from a guy I worked with on a construction crew the summer I graduated high school. You remember Mike?”