The Chess Match

Every Sunday afternoon, Lucy carried the wooden chess set across the hall to Grandma Ruth's apartment. When Lucy was seven, Grandma had taught her how each piece moved, and now that she was ten, Lucy was sure she was ready to win. She set up the board in about thirty seconds and pushed a pawn forward before Grandma had even sat down.

Lucy played like a hurricane. She slapped her pieces onto squares, grabbed every piece she could take, and tapped her foot while Grandma thought. Grandma Ruth, on the other hand, never hurried. She folded her hands under her chin and studied the board as if it were a map of a city she was about to visit. Then, with one quiet move, her bishop slid all the way across the board and captured Lucy's queen. "Where did that come from?" Lucy groaned. "It was there the whole time," Grandma said. "You just didn't look."

Lucy lost that game in twelve moves. Before the next one, Grandma Ruth gave her a new rule. "Before you touch a piece, sit on your hands and count to ten," she said. "Then ask yourself what my last move is planning." Lucy thought the rule was silly, but she tried it anyway, sitting on her hands and counting under her breath. By the count of six, she noticed something she had never seen before: Grandma's knight was creeping, one jump at a time, toward her rook.

Lucy still lost the second game, but it lasted almost an hour. Near the end, she spotted a trap Grandma had set and moved her rook out of danger just in time. Grandma Ruth raised her eyebrows and smiled across the table. "Now you're playing chess," she said. "Before, you were only moving pieces." Lucy set up the board for another game, slowly this time, one piece at a time.