CHAPTER 52
She left the office and dismissed her craving for a Casamigos.
Grace Sebold, still stashed away in Ellie Reiser’s high-rise, was her next stop.
It was a confrontation she had avoided thinking about all day, but one she could put off no longer.
She took a cab to Tudor City and found Windsor Tower.
Sidney gave her name and waited while the doorman called upstairs.
When he gave her the okay, Sidney slid into the elevator just before the doors closed.
Grace was waiting in the hallway when the car arrived.
“Hi,” Grace said.
Grace looked better than Sidney had ever seen her.
Her prematurely graying hair was fashionably styled, a stark change from the matted-down prison do that Sidney had known from her visits to St. Lucia.
Allowed to pamper herself with products other than prison-issued bar soap and foam shampoo, including assistance from a layer of foundation and blush that hid the pallor of her skin, the transformation was remarkable.
“Wow. You look . . . Is it cliché to say beautiful?”
Grace smiled. “I don’t care if it’s cliché, it’s the first time someone’s called me that in years. I actually feel like a person again. Come in.”
Sidney walked into the apartment. The long windows were filled with the lights of New York City.
“No Derrick?” Grace asked.
“No. We’ll get more footage later. Maybe next week. I need to talk with you about something that’s come up.”
“Sure. Whatever you need. Ellie’s not home from work yet. She was called in for a delivery.”
“Who is it?” came a voice from the other room.
Sidney recognized the slightly slurred speech of Marshall Sebold.
“It’s Sidney,” Grace said. “He’s been more”—Grace wobbled her head back and forth as she chose a word—“outgoing since I’ve been home.
My parents tell me, anyway. They said he had coiled into himself the last few years, but now he’s talking more.
It’s a good thing, but with guests he can be a little over whelming. ”
“Marshall and I have met before,” Sidney said. “Even before the other night. I spoke with him when I interviewed your parents originally. We actually played a game of chess.”
Grace smiled. “Of course, you did. He can sucker anyone into a game. He’s such a con man.”
They walked into the large living room, decorated with contemporary furniture and modern art. Everything was at sharp-right angles. Ellie Reiser, Sidney thought again, is doing well for herself.
“Marshall,” Grace said. “You remember Sidney, don’t you?”
Marshall sank into his wheelchair and looked down at his lap, his curled wrists and atrophied fingers slinking between his knees.
Sidney smiled. “Hi, Marshall.”
“Do you want to play chess?” Marshall asked, his voice muffled as he spoke into his chest.
“Sidney didn’t come to play chess, Marshall.”
“Just one game. Like before,” Marshall said.
Grace looked at Sidney and smiled. “Sorry. He’s a little stir-crazy locked away up here with me. As soon as we’re done shooting whatever remaining scenes you need, Marshall and I are thinking of heading up to Ellie’s lake house for a change of scenery. It’ll be good for both of us.”
“Probably a good idea.”
“Will you play?” Marshall asked again.
Sidney shrugged. “I’ll have a game, Marshall. You’ll remember that I’m not very good.”
“You’re a saint,” Grace said. She looked at Marshall. “One game. A fast one.”
Marshall took his hands from his lap and placed them on the wheels of his chair to roll himself into the den, where his chess set waited. As he passed Grace, she stuck her foot out and stopped the wheelchair’s progress.
“But only if you walk,” she said.
Marshall looked up from his chair, took his hands from the wheels, and placed them back into his lap, his chin falling again to his chest.
“Nope,” Grace said. “That works on Mom, not on me. You either walk to the den and sit on the couch, or Sidney doesn’t play with you.”
Sidney stood quietly as she watched the interaction between the siblings, catching both an aura of friendship and the maternal nature of an older sister who likely had been the only person, besides his parents, that Marshall could rely upon.
“Do you want to play or not?” Grace asked.
Finally Marshall pushed himself up from his wheelchair and walked to the den in only a slightly altered gait, his orthotic shoes clapping as he marched.
As soon as he sat on the couch and began to assemble the chess set, his curled wrists and stiff fingers magically unfolded as he gripped the pieces to place them on the board.
The transformation in stature, Sidney noted, was remarkable.
She remembered something similar from weeks before at the Sebolds’ home.
“He can do a lot on his own,” Grace said.
“But he has to be pushed. The TBI, the brain injury, has led to progressive muscular dystrophy. If he doesn’t use his muscles, he’ll lose them.
He never used to be this bad. It nearly broke my heart the first time I saw him in a wheelchair when he visited me at Bordelais.
I was shocked to get home and see that it had progressed so much.
My damn parents haven’t been making him help himself for years.
Without motivation, he’ll just sit in that chair and let his body atrophy to the point of brittleness.
He doesn’t know any better. He can’t help himself unless he’s reminded.
Now that I’m around, he’s reminded often.
More than he likes. I think he’s getting tired of me. ”
“I doubt that,” Sidney said.
“Chess is his only interest. When he plays chess, his physical ailments disappear. His muscles loosen and he can use his hands and fingers just as well as you or me. His speech improves and the slur disappears. The doctors explain it as tapping into a small portion of his brain that he can’t access any other way than through the analytics of chess.
When he utilizes this part of his mind, it supersedes his physical limitations.
Essentially, when he’s playing chess, he’s his old self.
Even though he doesn’t notice the change—at least, he’s never mentioned it—I think it’s why he likes playing so much. ”
“That’s amazing,” Sidney said, watching Marshall sit and move as if he had no physical ailment. “He walks really well.”
“It was worse just after I got home. It’s better now in just a few days since I’ve been pushing him.
I remember the doctors telling us, you know, before I went away, that with physical therapy he could reasonably walk for many years, well into his thirties.
Maybe even his forties, before he was confined permanently to a wheelchair.
I just have to stay on him. My parents .
. . I love them, but Marshall has been a lot to handle.
He’ll need more help than I can give him, but my parents were ready to shuffle him off to a full-care facility.
He’s not ready for that, and neither am I.
As soon as things settle down with the media, I hope to move back home and take better care of him until I can get a place of my own. ”
Sidney blinked as she stared at Grace. Seeing her with Marshall made this visit harder than it was already going to be. “You’re a good sister.”
“I’ll make coffee. Go play chess, then we’ll talk. What’s going on, by the way? Any problems?”
Sidney hesitated before she answered. “I’m not sure yet.”
Grace gave a quizzical expression. She nodded toward the kitchen. “We’ll talk when you’re done.” She squeezed Sidney’s wrist. “Thank you for playing with him, and for treating him like . . . an equal.”
Grace headed to the kitchen, and Sidney turned to the den, where Marshall was organizing the pieces on his new chessboard, the one his sister had purchased for him on her return home after ten years in jail. She walked into the den and sat down across from him.
“I like the new chess set,” Sidney said.
Marshall offered an indifferent look. “It’s not as nice as my old one.”
Sidney remembered the Lladró porcelain set from weeks before when she played chess in Marshall’s bedroom.
The intricate medieval pieces replaced now with traditional wooden figures.
The cheap, composite plastic chess case she looked at today seemed quite a leap from the elaborate, pinewood cases that held the competing black and white Lladró pieces.
“Why did Grace buy you a new one? Your old chess set was beautiful.”
“She doesn’t like to play on the old one. It brings back bad memories for her, so she asked me to put it away. For as long as she was gone, I did. I only took it down once, when you and I played.”
“Why does it bring back bad memories for her?”
Marshall shrugged. “Just reminds her of her old life. She wants a new life now. I don’t blame her. Like this chess set, I think she’s hoping her new life will be simpler than her old one. Black or white?” Marshall asked.
Sidney looked down at the pieces. “White.”
He pushed the stray pieces from his previous game with Grace over to Sidney. She arranged them in order.
“You open,” Marshall said.
Sidney moved her pawn forward.
Marshall quickly advanced his own pawn, immediately opposite.
“Why do you like chess so much?” Sidney asked.
Marshall shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“No idea?”
“I guess it’s because I used to play football, and chess is a way to compete.”
“Your mom tells me that you were quite a star in high school.”
Marshall stayed quiet.
“You still miss it? Football?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t watch it. I’ve never been able to watch an NFL or college game. It just makes me think of . . . what might have been.”
“Chess brings out that competitive edge. Is that why you never lose?”
“I lose,” Marshall said. “I just don’t like it when I do.”
Sidney looked toward the kitchen. Grace was out of sight. Sidney heard the faucet running as Grace filled the coffee pot. She looked back to Marshall.