A Sort of Love Story Part Two: A Chance Not Taken

by Travis Cravey

Annie Spratt

Peter Cortez had no need for an alarm clock. Almost fifty years of waking at 5:30 a.m. had made the item superfluous. It didn’t matter how late he went to bed, how much he’d had to drink, or whether he had somewhere to be. He opened his eyes at the same time.

And as he had done for almost thirty years, he rolled over to lay his arm on his wife’s shoulder. It too was a habit, born of so many mornings: hurried mornings, intimate mornings, forgotten mornings. So many mornings. And even after fifteen months of his arm falling untouched onto the mattress, he still reached for her.

He went to the bathroom, washed his face. He dressed for a morning run but found himself instead sitting at the kitchen table, lost in the past and so far removed from the present he hadn’t even noticed he was sitting in the dark.

After his wife’s passing Peter had “semi-retired” from his family’s business. His younger brother had offered to buy Peter out at a price that was impossible to turn down, yet still kept Peter on the payroll as a “consultant.” Juan would call Peter occasionally, ask for advice he didn’t really need, and then send Peter a check. Peter had bristled at this arrangement at first, but soon realized that this was his brother showing him how much he loved him, how sorry he was for the hand Peter had been dealt.

Mornings were still the hardest, not hearing her getting ready for work, not sharing a few moments to chat before they both rushed off to their professional lives. But Peter felt the solitude constantly, try as he might to move on. He had begun participating in activities that forced him to be social. He felt that BethAnne would want that. She had always been popular and in demand. She had run the Parish food bank, coached the girls swim team. Now that Peter had no work and nothing but the time he had left, he had sworn that he would try to be who she must have always wished he were: a man easily making contact.

Peter was scheduled to have lunch with an older man he played bocce ball with, and there was a softball game that night, if the weather didn’t turn. Peter started to stand from the table now that the morning had lit the room, when his hand fell on a postcard.

He was due to make a move in a game that had been lost for sometime. Peter sighed. He felt no joy playing anymore, he knew, because he had felt such joy playing when BethAnne was still there. There were things, like running in the morning, or watching baseball in the garage, or playing chess through the mail, that he had done as a way to separate from her for a bit. Things that were his, not hers. But now there was only himself, and he didn’t see the point. Running he still did, of course. He would be fifty-four next month and staying in shape was getting harder and harder. Baseball he had stopped watching, especially as he now played twice a week with an over fifty club. And he was finishing his correspondence chess matches, too. He had already been defeated in two other games, won a third against a woman in Vancouver, and was left with this final match. He wanted to be free of the things that had kept him away from her, and soon he would be.

Peter went to his desk, pulled out a binder and found the game. What had started as a very simple Nimzo-Indian opening had, by now, muddled into a plodding middle game where Peter’s opponent, a man named Mike Hollis, was playing aggressively. It wasn’t the first time Cortez had faced Hollis, and he knew Mike to be a strong tactical player, often to his disadvantage. Mike could easily overwhelm the fainthearted with brilliant moves, but would often fall apart in an endgame with a player who was able to hold out that long. The tactical blinders that Mike wore was why he had been so eager to take Peter’s pawn three moves back, unaware of a strategic advantage he had lost. Peter studied the board for a moment, seeing two or three possible lines he might take. The wise move was to threaten the poorly defended pawn at d3, as he had planned, which would allow his rook to control that file a few moves later. His concentration was broken by a tree branch slapping against the window as the rain started down. No, he thought, I’m done. He scribbled off a line regarding the storm, wrote his intentionally ill-conceived move, and put the card in the mailbox. The wind howled as he tried to close the front door, and he thought how glad he was that he hadn’t gone for a run on a day like this.