28. Forced Moves

“If we must live on a desert island, make it fertile and rich with opportunity, not so barren and unyielding that all of our moves would be like forced moves in chess.” —Daniel Dennett

For two days after her fight, Jen didn’t leave the house. The first day, her head felt foggy and her muscles ached. She lay in bed reading the magazine that Britt-Shane had shown her in the locker room, which she had given to Jen on the drive home.

“While most reporters have been discouraged by the actress’s elusive ways, we have followed Jen’s descent into obscurity, her small-town life, and the new passion that now consumes her every waking moment.”

Was this the reporter, Jen wondered? Someone who had been following her around North Middleton, unnoticed, as she “descended into obscurity.” Was Lorna O. Lee the woman who had surprised her at the side of the mat and caused her to lose her fight?

Amid the confusion and disappointment following her knockout, Jen tried had tried to piece together how it had happened. At first all she could remember was the face of the reporter, floating disembodied like a ghost above the mat, dissolving into a flash of white as Jen fell. As she rode home silently in the passenger’s seat of Britt-Shane’s car, the rest of the fight had slowly begun to materialize: the girl’s first hard kick, Jen’s strong counterattack. She had begun to feel confident that she would win, had felt her dominance against the girl. Then the reporter had appeared and ruined it all.

Jen looked down at the magazine and snorted in annoyance. The sound hurt her head, and she thought for a moment that she might throw up. Drank too much, she said instinctively to herself, and then remembered that she hadn’t had a drink in over five months.

She stayed in bed the rest of the morning, watching the small travel alarm clock she had bought at the drug store as it approached eleven forty-five, the time she usually left home for Sunday sparring class. As it crept towards noon, when the class began, she told herself, I could still go. I could be late, she said to herself at eleven fifty-seven. If I left right now, I’d get there fifteen minutes past the starting time.

As though to test this theory, she raised one arm up off the bed and held it in the air. Then she dropped it back down to the bed, exhausted from the effort. No, there was no way she could spar today; there was no decision to be made. Don’t even look at the clock, she told herself, forcing her eyes shut.

Then the clock’s hands both pointed to twelve. Class would be starting right now. Jen wondered whether Britt-Shane was there. She had won her fight yesterday and gone home in a great mood, with a celebratory date already arranged with her new love interest, Brittany. Maybe she’s too hung over for class, Jen thought, feeling a little hopeful. But she knew it was likely to be a false hope. Britt-Shane was no doubt arriving at class right now, receiving a hero’s welcome, congratulations all around. Too bad about Jen’s fight, they were probably saying to her, and maybe she replied, Yeah, Jen really screwed up.

Jen wished she were there to silence their whispers and show how tough she was, how indifferent to her loss. It’s not too late, she thought. I don’t need to be on time the day after the fight. Then she rolled over, closed her eyes, and slept for the rest of the day, dreaming of sparring class and the derision of her classmates.

The next day, she moved from the bed to the couch downstairs, bringing Zen for the Troubled Mind by Thomas Fo with her. It was one of the books that she had special-ordered, and she had only read it once so far. She didn’t feel like starting it from the beginning, so she let it fall open to a page in the middle.

“One of the greatest obstacles to our spiritual progress is excessive focus on our own mistakes. We judge our own mistakes with a harsh condemnation that we would never apply to others. When our friends make mistakes, we tell them to forgive themselves, move on, that no one is perfect. But we obsess over our own mistakes with a kind of reverent fascination. Even when we know objectively that the mistake is forgivable, even when we are forgiven by those we have wronged, we cannot help but be transfixed by our own past mistakes, nurturing them with a fascination that speaks more of love than disgust or self-censure.”

Jen put the book down next and on her stomach and stared at the ceiling, marveling at how Thomas Fo always seemed to know precisely what was going on in her life. But when she picked the book back up and resumed where she had left off, she was even more startled.

“Imagine a boxer who regrets dropping his guard and getting punched. He stops what he is doing, scowls, berates himself for his carelessness. Of course, while he is dwelling on these thoughts, he loses focus on the present moment and gets punched again.

“Any boxing teacher will tell you that one of the most important lessons for a beginning boxing student is not to react to getting hit. The new student will stop the drill each time he makes the wrong move, because he feels that he must spend time recognizing his mistake. ‘Damn,’ he will say, or ‘Sorry,’ or ‘Why do I keep screwing that up?’ That is what our culture, with its focus on self-assessment, tells us we must do—acknowledge the mistake and criticize ourselves preemptively, before others have a chance to do it for us.

“Any moderately experienced student of boxing knows to forget the error and stay in the moment. A fighter must take advantage of each fresh, new moment and the opportunities for success it affords, rather than reflecting on past failures, whether those failures occurred six months ago or six seconds ago.

“We would be wise to emulate the boxer and not allow ourselves to be distracted and weakened by self-criticism. Of course it is important to reflect on our mistakes and learn from them, but only during appropriate times. A fighter reviews his fight once it has ended, noting the strengths and weaknesses of his performance. If he is wise, he critiques himself dispassionately, indulging in neither self-congratulation for his strengths nor self-flagellation for his weaknesses. And no matter what, he must not let the mistakes of the past impair his ability to move positively into the future.”

All right, Thomas Fo, Jen said to herself, putting the book down. I’ll go back to class. Tonight. Then she fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until midnight.

She returned to the academy the next evening. When she arrived for the seven-thirty intermediate-advanced class, Britt-Shane was not waiting at their regular spot in the back by the mirror. Maybe she’s in the bathroom, Jen thought, peering at the door behind her as she stretched, hoping to see Britt-Shane appear.

Once Jen had stretched for five minutes, with no sign of Britt-Shane, she had to accept that her training partner might not be coming to class. Perhaps she hadn’t yet recovered from her victory celebrations, Jen speculated. But explanation didn’t seem too convincing, given that Britt-Shane had been in class every day since Jen had started training, even on a few mornings when her skin had been noticeably greenish and her breath had still stunk like cheap vodka.

As she stood scanning the gym one last time, hoping that Britt-Shane would appear from behind the desk or the mysterious bamboo screen, Master Park came over to her. She wondered what he wanted to say. Her experience had taught her that he conserved his words, at least the ones directed at her, but there was certainly plenty to discuss today, three days after her humiliating loss of her first fight.

He didn’t say anything at first. Instead he just stood and looked at her for a moment, as though waiting for her to speak. Jen thought of saying something about the fight, some acknowledgment or apology for her poor performance. But she remembered Thomas Fo’s words: forget the error and stay in the moment. She resolved not to say anything about her fight unless Master Park mentioned it himself. She would focus on her training right now, today, and moving into the future.

In that case, the first question was who would be teaching her today.

“Where’s…” said Jen, but stopped because she didn’t know what to call her training partner.

“I told her not to come,” said Master Park, interrupting her.

“Oh,” said Jen. “Why?”

Master Park folded his hands across the chest of his white uniform. “She needs to focus on her school. She dropped her statistics class. Did you know that?”

“No,” said Jen, feeling guilty. She had often suspected that Britt-Shane couldn’t be putting much work into her classes if she was at the academy training Jen every night and all weekend.

“I told her take a week off,” said Master Park. “Then she can come back, but only four days a week, like she used to.” He narrowed his eyes accusingly at Jen. She felt the urge to defend herself: It wasn’t my fault, she thought. I never told her to come in every night. It was all her idea.

Instead, she stared silently at Master Park, keeping her expression carefully blank, as she had learned to do back in her days as a yoga student.

She wondered what she would do on the nights that Britt-Shane wasn’t there to train with her. Rob was already leading the rest of the class in some kicking drills. Jen sighed inwardly, resigning herself to a moment she had long anticipated, when she would lose her special status as a private student and move into the regular class. It wasn’t that she minded being part of the group; it was just that Rob always taught those classes. In fact, she had been bracing for the awkward moment that she would have to take instruction from Rob ever since she came to the academy the day after he had kissed her and then confessed that he was in a committed relationship. But the moment had never come; each day, Britt-Shane had arrived and saved her from the unpleasantness.

Jen had avoided being instructed by Rob for so long that she was almost eager for it to happen, just to get it over with already. Besides, she didn’t have any hurt feelings about him anymore, just a vague sense of wariness and distrust.

Realizing that Master Park still hadn’t spoken, Jen said, “Should I go join the class then?”

Master Park shook his head. “No. I’m going to train you,” he said.

“Oh,” said Jen, trying not to let her surprise show on her face. “Okay.” She wondered if she were in trouble for losing her fight. Maybe she had gotten Britt-Shane in trouble, too, for not training her properly. That could be the real reason she wasn’t in class tonight. Queasiness rose up in Jen’s stomach and she wished for a moment that she had not come back to the school, that she had stayed at the lake house for a few more days or weeks or forever.

“Let’s go in the back,” Master Park said.

“In back?” Jen repeated. Now she was really shocked. In her four months at the academy, she had still not learned what lay behind the mysterious bamboo screen. She had asked Britt-Shane several times and only received vague replies: “It’s just a back room,” she would say, as though this weren’t self-evidently the case.

And in fact, when Britt-Shane put it that way, Jen wondered why the space behind the screen fascinated her so deeply. Storefronts had back rooms, and schools had offices; nothing so odd about that. Yet when Master Park emerged from the back, he didn’t look like he was coming from an office. It made Jen think of an exercise they had done in her drama class: emerge from a door as though you had just come from a business meeting, a party, cooking dinner in the kitchen, making love in a bedroom. He seemed to be acting the wrong role every time he came through the door.

I’m probably just imagining it, she thought, as he led her past the screen and through the door that Jen knew lay behind it from her surreptitious observations. Too many acting classes make your mind crazy.

They emerged into a cramped hallway that seemed normal for the space behind a storefront. There were several closed doors along its walls; Master Park opened the one closest to them and led Jen into a small room that she expected to be an office.

Instead, she found herself in a tiny makeshift living room. The linoleum floor, the same adobe color as the floor of the academy, was covered by a dark Oriental carpet. There was a small dining table with three chairs around it; the fourth chair had been pulled out to face the short sofa that sat against one wall. Between the chair and the sofa was a coffee table topped with a neat stack of magazines and a wooden chess set. A small bookcase in the corner held far more books than it was designed for, so many that they had been stacked in vertical piles reaching from the bottom to the top of each of the three shelves.

I suppose this is why he doesn’t look like he’s coming from an office, she thought, although this lounge still seemed a bit incongruous with what she had expected, although she didn’t know quite what that was.

“Have a seat,” said Master Park, pointing at the table.

Jen walked obediently to the table and seated herself in a chair that faced out into the room. Master Park remained standing. So, Jen thought, now I’m going to get a lecture.

“You lost focus,” said Master Park.

“I know,” said Jen. She wanted to add that it wasn’t her fault, that someone distracted her, that reporter, that woman who was stalking her, but she stopped herself. She knew better than to make excuses.

Master Park continued to look at her, and Jen felt that she should say something else. She thought of apologizing for her mistake, promising that it would not happen again. But then she thought of Thomas Fo and remembered that there was no reason to spend unnecessary energy acknowledging her errors. She could not guarantee that it would not happen again, and the way to prevent it was through her future actions, not her words.

If anyone was going to chastise her, she resolved, it was Master Park. She would agree with his assessment, if it was correct, but she would not waste her energy criticizing herself. She returned his gaze silently.

“Do you know how to play chess?” he asked.

She nodded, waiting for whatever analogy he was about to draw. A chess player must not get so focused on his…pawn…that he allows the opponent to capture his…queen? She wasn’t sure about the exact names of the pieces, but she could imagine where this was going.

“Really?” he asked, looking surprised and pleased. “Do you play often?”

Jen was confused. She hadn’t taken his question literally, and now she was afraid that she had inadvertently lied to her teacher for the sake of expediting the conversation. But thinking about it for a moment, she remembered that she had played chess as a child against her grandfather, although that had been almost twenty years ago.

“No,” she said, embarrassed. “Never.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” said Master Park, his smile fading. “That’s okay. You’re going to start.”

He walked to the bookcase, knelt, and began to shift the books around on one of the shelves.

“Here it is,” he said, pulling out a thin, worn paperback and holding it in the air. He stood and handed the book to Jen.

“Fundamental Strategy for Chess,” Jen read aloud. Then she stopped, incredulous. She looked up at Master Park.

“It’s by Thomas Fo?” she asked.

The smile returned to Master Park’s face. “You know him?” he asked.

“I’ve read all his books,” said Jen. Except she had never heard of this one; she had no idea he wrote about subjects other than Zen philosophy. “Well, I thought I had. I didn’t know he wrote about chess.”

“He has written about many subjects,” said Master Park. “He is a favorite author of mine, and a very dear friend. Someone I know very well.”

“You know him?” Jen exclaimed, her excited voice bouncing off the walls of the small room. She was about to apologize, but Master Park smiled, evidently appreciating her enthusiasm.

“As well as I know anyone,” said Master Park.

Jen opened the book to its title page and stared at the title and author, still incredulous that Master Park was assigning her books by her favorite author. A dear friend. Maybe he would introduce her some day.

“You read this during the regular class,” said Master Park, walking to the door. “After class, we will play.”

Uh oh, thought Jen—she would need to at least remind herself what all the pieces did before then. She turned to the back of the book to see if it had an index.

Master Park walked out the door, then turned back to look at her.

“Do you know why I want you to play chess?” he asked.

Jen closed the book and looked up. “Because chess is like taekwondo?” Jen guessed.

Master Park looked at her skeptically. “How is chess like taekwondo?” he asked.

Damn. She had fallen for it again. Her teacher had tricked her into saying the wrong thing and now he was going to yell at her. “It’s not,” said Jen, quickly. “I was wrong.”

“Of course it is,” said Master Park. “You read and think about how. You’ll tell me when I come back.”

He left, and she opened the book again, now frantic to get started with her ambitious task. In the next hour, she would need to figure out how chess was played, and then how it was like taekwondo.

Chapter 29