Mazes and Monsters (31 page)

“Will you miss me, Merlin?” Jay Jay asked. “We’ve never been separated this long.”

“Poor Jay Jay,” Merlin said.

“No, lucky Jay Jay. I am going to become a world traveler, and I’ll tell you all about it when I come home.”

His mother tapped gently at his bedroom door. She was dressed for the evening, in something white and cool. “Darling?”

“
Maman! C’est vous.
”

“If I’m your
maman,
you can call me
tu,
” she said. “My little boy! I can’t believe you’re all grown up, going off to Europe with your friends. I almost feel like a crone. It’s a good thing I had you when I was so young. Next thing you know, I’ll be ready for some face work. How depressing. Anyway, I brought you a list.” She handed him a white envelope.

“What’s this?” Jay Jay said.

“Names and addresses of people to call when you’re in Europe,” she said matter-of-factly. “My friends. Nobody goes to Europe without a list.”

Her friends? Jay Jay didn’t know whether to be touched or laugh at the irony of it. She had never let him see any of her friends socially here in New York, but when he went to Venice, Rome, Paris, London … He couldn’t imagine what her foreign friends would be like, but he was sure he didn’t want to meet them. He was going to meet Daniel’s friends, and Kate’s friends, who would all be traveling too and were much more suitable for someone his age with his life.

“I wrote to them,” his mother said.

“You did?”

“I couldn’t have you springing on them out of the blue. They know you might call. You don’t have to if you’re too busy, but you might want to.”

“Well, thank you,” Jay Jay said. He decided to be touched. He wasn’t going to call them anyway. On the other hand, suppose some of them were really exotic … wouldn’t it be great to show them off to Kate and Daniel! “Do any of them have a castle?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Actually, a few of them do.” She looked with disapproval at the clothes he had spread out on his bed. “And they dress for dinner.”

“Oh.”

“You still have a week, you can buy something decent.” She blew him a kiss and was gone.

Jay Jay opened the envelope and looked at the list, neatly printed in his mother’s perfect hand. He wished she’d put an asterisk next to the ones who had castles. He also wished Robbie could have come with them. That would have made the trip complete. But Robbie wasn’t ready yet for anything that strenuous, and besides, he was seeing a psychiatrist every day.

A picture flashed into his mind of Robbie’s father, the last day of school when everyone was rushing to get out and Mr. Wheeling had come up to drive Robbie’s car home and to pack his things. Robbie’s father had seemed so normal—a typical successful businessman type—not a bit like the fecalite. Mr. Wheeling was exactly what Jay Jay would have pictured to have an all-American son like Robbie, and look what had happened. He looked sad and worn, as if he were still surprised at the unexpected event that had shaken his life. There was only a moment to speak during the end-of-year exodus, but Robbie’s father had said to come visit when he was near Greenwich, and Jay Jay had said they all certainly would; he and Kate and Daniel, who would be coming to New York at the end of June.

“Europe will be a good learning experience for you,” Daniel’s father said. Daniel and his parents were having a leisurely Sunday breakfast in the kitchen of their house in Brookline. Everything in the yard was blooming. You could see it from the kitchen window—what his mother called her “accidental garden”—flowers and vegetables all growing together in a haphazard way. Years ago, when Daniel and Andy were little, they had planted radish and carrot seeds in among her roses, and thus it had remained, with new additions each year.

“And you’ll have fun,” his mother said. “I think people should do everything they can that’s interesting and fun while they still have the chance.”

“The chance is never over,” his father said.

“Oh, you know what I mean. While he’s young and free.”

She’s talking about Kate and me, Daniel thought. She still likes to think Kate is just a romance that will go away. He didn’t tell her that he and Kate had discussed the future: let his mother get used to Kate first. Daniel knew she would. When he’d told his parents that he wanted to go to Europe this summer with Kate and Jay Jay and had asked them for the money, they had agreed right away. He’d gotten three A’s and a B plus on his final exams, and his parents were pleased that he had worked so hard. That was another thing they didn’t know … that he hadn’t really worked very hard at all. He thought how many secrets had been kept from them through the years; some the inevitable process of his growing up and separating from them, others through his need to keep the peaceful equilibrium of their home intact. Perhaps if he had told them about the game they would have understood.

“Venice, Rome, Paris, London …” his mother said. “Eurail passes, student hostels … what energy you three have!”

“We never met Jay Jay,” his father said. “He’s the gourmet, isn’t he?”

“I guess you could call him that,” Daniel said. How could he explain Jay Jay? How could anyone explain Jay Jay to someone who hadn’t actually met him?

“Wait till you see how expensive Europe is,” his father said. “I don’t think you’ll be doing much three-star dining.”

“We don’t care,” Daniel said cheerfully.

“Of course they don’t,” his mother said. “Picnics of bread and cheese and wine … museums … art galleries … wait till you really see with your own eyes the streets and buildings you’ve only seen in photographs. The sense of history is incredible. You’ll never be the same again.”

“And Andy and Beth will be in Mexico,” his father said. “Ellie, I think you and I should take a trip somewhere.”

“I’m game,” his mother said cheerfully. “One of the nice things about being the mother of sons is that after a wedding you’re not exhausted. I’ll go to the travel agent tomorrow and get some brochures. I’d like to go someplace that’s not too hot.” She gathered up the Sunday papers they had read and began looking for the travel section. “I’m glad that story about that missing Grant boy ended and I don’t have to see it anymore. Every time I read about it I felt so upset. You did say you didn’t know him, Daniel? I guess you couldn’t—it’s such a big school—but I’m surprised because he lived right in your own dorm.”

“I lied,” Daniel said quietly.

He looked at his parents, their faces turned toward him in bewilderment, and he knew he not only wanted but
needed
to tell them the whole story. He’d been so tired when he came home from college that he hadn’t been able to face explaining it all and living it over again, but now he was ready.

“Why would you lie?” his mother asked.

“Because I was one of the people who played the game with him in the caves.”

“You
what?
”

“In the caves?” his father said. “
You?
”

They both looked stunned; not accusing or angry, simply stunned. “
Why?
” his mother asked.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” Daniel said.

His father was shaking his head. “Wait,” he said. “Please … first explain the game to me. I want to know what kind of power a game can have that would make a group of normal, intelligent college students want to risk their lives.”

“Oh, yes,” his mother said. “Tell us …”

So Daniel explained the game, as best he could. It had taken him months to learn how to be a good player, so he obviously couldn’t tell them everything in half an hour, but he got across the basics, and more importantly, what the game had meant. His parents nodded; they were really trying to understand.

“I’ve thought about it a lot lately,” Daniel said. “I think the game was psychodrama.”

“Working it out,” his mother said. She kept nodding. “Yes, yes. But what problem were
you
trying to work out, Daniel?”

“I think the game was my way of competing without getting hurt,” Daniel said. “In real life you try difficult things, you win or you lose, and sometimes it hurts too much. We took the game very seriously but it was still a fantasy. Your character could get killed, but it wasn’t really you.”

“But it could have been!” his mother said.

“I know. And now when I look back I wonder how we could have thought life was scarier than that.”

“Who else played?” his father asked.

“Kate, Jay Jay, Robbie, and me. For Kate it was a way of not feeling helpless. For Jay Jay … I guess it was the same for different reasons. And they both liked the fantasy. Robbie was the one who needed the fantasy too much.”

“I wish you had told us,” his father said. “Maybe we could have talked about it, tried to help.”

“I didn’t even understand it myself,” Daniel said.

“And now that you do?” his mother asked.

“I just know I don’t need the game anymore.”

“And the others? That boy Robbie?”

“We’re all going to be fine,” Daniel said. He thought about Robbie again, and the stabbing—the part he had kept trying to forget—and he wondered if anyone, even Robbie, would ever find out what had really happened. They all just had to keep believing the “Killing” was part of Robbie’s imagination, like the rest of the game. He felt sick.

“Are you okay?” his mother asked, peering at him with a concerned frown.

“Sure. I was just remembering it for a minute. You don’t have to worry. We went through a bad experience and came through the other side.”

“And you’ll never want to do it again?”

“No,” Daniel said. “Never.” He smiled at her and let the present and future flow into him, and the sick feeling went away. “My life is too full of good things now. I’m not afraid of being afraid, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, yes,” his mother said. She looked at his father, and for the first time their faces relaxed. They smiled back at him. “Yes, we do.”

EPILOGUE:

HE THAT IS ALONE

Summer 1980

It was a beautiful morning at the end of June when Kate, Daniel, and Jay Jay drove from New York to Greenwich to visit Robbie. There were a few white puffs of clouds in the bright blue sky, and the trees were radiant with fat, green summer leaves. Grass was lush on the sides of the highway, and the air sang with all the life of a summer day: birds, insects, animals, children at play. Kate had never been happier.

She was with the people she loved, and while she was at home she had accidentally solved a problem she had thought was insurmountable. She was going to write her novel at last: she had the story she wanted to tell.

That was the greatest thing of all—her novel! Suddenly she was filled with ideas, her writer’s block gone. She would write a book about what had happened to the four of them from playing the game; their fears about life which had been conquered, the terrible thing that had happened to Robbie, and what the game had really meant. Now, at last, she had an experience to tell about, a real story. All her thoughts fell into place so easily. She would simply write about herself and her friends. She would have to reveal her feelings, for the first time—and to strangers—and that would be harder to do than anything she had ever done in her life, but she wanted to. Kate realized that the feelings she’d thought were so shameful, and were so painful, were the same as other people’s, and there was nothing wrong with them. Daniel had taught her that. A wave of such tenderness and love for him swept over her that she felt as if she were melting away.

“She’s thinking about her book again,” Daniel said. “I can always tell when her eyes get glassy.”

“You’re supposed to be watching the road, not my eyes,” Kate said.

“Am I right?” he said. “You’re thinking about your book?”

“Maybe,” she said. She laughed happily.

“I always said we’d all be famous,” Jay Jay said.

“I’ll start it next fall at school,” she said, thinking out loud. “I’ll have to hand in two thousand words a week for my creative writing course, so I can hand in pieces of my novel. If I do more than two thousand words that’s all right too. I feel like I could write the whole book in one year.”

“You had better make me sophisticated and devastatingly attractive,” Jay Jay said.

“Naturally,” Daniel said. “It’s fiction.”

“May your hair fall out when you’re twenty-five,” Jay Jay said.

“Oh, no!” Kate said. They all laughed.

“And Merlin’s going to be in it, isn’t he?” Jay Jay asked.

“Of course,” she said. She looked out the window at the landscape flashing by; suburbs deepening into country, so close to the city and yet so peaceful and different. This was possibly the most gorgeous day she had ever seen.…

“Music!” Daniel commanded. “I want music!” He had given Kate a cassette player for her car for her birthday, and it had become his favorite toy. “It’s Jay Jay’s turn to pick the tape.”

Jay Jay reached over from the backseat and snapped in the score from
Spellbound.
He had given Kate a dozen tapes for her birthday, and nine of them were from old movies. He had told her they were the classical music of tomorrow.

“I wish you’d play
Manhattan,
” Kate said.

“You can play it when it’s your turn,” Jay Jay said.

“How about if I bribe you?”

“There is nothing I want,” Jay Jay said. “I have everything.”

“Bullshit,” Kate said. They all laughed.

“That’s a great-looking watch, Jay Jay,” Daniel said.

Jay Jay held up his wrist, displaying a dull-black steel watch with a complicated dial. “You know what this was? This was going to be the treasure when we finished the game. Actually, I bought one and hid it in the caverns, and then I bought a duplicate for me. Isn’t it great?”

“Yes,” Kate said. She felt a small pang. She would have liked to have won it. “Where’s the other one?”

“In the caverns forever,” Jay Jay said.

“And rest in peace,” said Daniel.

“Amen,” Kate and Jay Jay said.

They turned in at Robbie’s family’s driveway. There was the big white house, the fruit trees, the rose garden, and down the hill the sweep of manicured grass that ended in a vista of weeping willow trees, a pond with ducks swimming on it, and behind that dark, cool woods. It was all green and peaceful out there, the splash of wild flowers the only other touch of color against the silvery water. Kate felt more aware of colors now than she ever had before, just as her skin was more sensitive to touch and changes of temperature. It was as if, now that she knew for certain she was going to be a writer, everything had to be observed and stored away. Or perhaps it was because she had regained the energies she had given to the game.