Excerpt from The Trojan War Museum by Ayse Papatya Bucak, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Her first look at the Turk is no more than a glance. But when she looks more steadily at him, she wants to laugh—at his height, his fur-lined robes, his ridiculous turban. There is an air of the absurd to the whole occasion, playing chess on stage against an oversized toy–but she finds she feels sorry for him.  His dark downcast eyes, painted on of course, make her think of a serious man forced to attend a costume party. He's sad, she thinks, before she can chase the idea away. He reminds her of Thomas on the occasions when he was forced into society and she was the one to comfort him with the thought of coming home again.

She settles in her seat, arranges her skirts, focuses on the ivory pieces in their familiar formation in front of her.  She looks out into the audience, tries to see her children, but all is darkness and shadow.  

Thomas Jr. is fourteen, while Margaret is eleven, but in recent months they have twinned themselves.  During meals they stare across the table, one at the other, refusing any longer to eat meat and pretending—yes, pretending, she is certain—they are able to communicate without speech.  They take long walks by themselves, and force her to wait through long silences before they will answer any question. They all live now in her father's house; she herself sleeps in the room she had as a child, a strange comfort, and the children have two small rooms adjacent to each other, with a door in between.  At night she can hear them talking across the divide, though as much as she strains she cannot make out what they say. During the days they frequently close themselves in one room or the other, and though she stands often outside the door, it is so quiet that she feels forbidden to enter or even knock. 

She has thought sometimes of sending Thomas Jr. away to school.  

Perhaps she is jealous.  They have each other.  

But she is their mother; it is grounded in love, her concern.

She herself has stopped going to meetings, no longer calls on anyone, rarely receives calls from anyone; she has refused all invitations for missions and cancelled those that were already scheduled.  Perhaps her children's strangeness is merely a reflection of her own. She cannot seem to move forward in her old life, nor determine how to begin anew.

"Madam will have the first move," Maelzel says, though she knows that is not the Turk's custom.  It is because she is a woman, she assumes, but she does not argue.

It was Thomas who taught the children chess, and after his disappearance (death, she tells herself) it was her father who taught her, when she and the children moved into his house, when it became clear Thomas was not returning and that she needed both shelter and a job, and her father had, so gently, offered both.  Now the four of them play long tournaments, the only thing to reliably keep the children in her presence. 

She had thought she was a good mother.  Before.  

She studies the pieces, imagines the game ahead.  She wants very much to win. For them, she thinks, so they will be proud of her.  She should find it wrong she knows, to want so much, to be on this stage even, but it is hard to believe now that God would concern himself with such things. 

She is embarrassed to see her hand quiver as she raises it over the board, but thankfully only Maelzel is close enough to notice.  She glances up at him, and he smiles.  

"Do not worry, Madam, he has not leapt at anyone yet," he announces loudly and the crowd laughs.

How angry people make her lately.  She constantly wishes for more grace, but finds herself failing daily at the task of merely being kind.  Only her father is still patient with her.

It has been a surprise to her, how grief has changed her.

Excerpted from The Trojan War Museum: And Other Stories. Copyright (c) 2019 by copyright holder. Used with permission of the publisher W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.