Mazes and Monsters

by Rona Jaffe

  She was majoring in creative writing, but in the middle of last year after her first great love left her, and The Incident in the Laundry Room happened, and things started piling up on her, she began to get writer’s block. Now she was thinking of changing her major to English lit so she wouldn’t flunk out. She had tried and tried to analyze her problem, and she had finally decided it came from the fact that she really hadn’t lived yet. How could you write about things you didn’t know? She was only eighteen. She had a drawer full of lugubrious half-finished stories with titles like “City of Heartbreak” and “Children of Pain,” which she was ashamed to show to anybody. She couldn’t reveal herself in real life, but worse, she couldn’t even reveal her feelings in her stories. How could she ever be a writer if she wasn’t willing to get hurt by criticism and rejection? Half the time she didn’t know what she felt, and the other half of the time she wondered who would care anyway. She felt ignorant of all the secrets of real life. Being young was like being in a trap: you could try as hard as you could, but you couldn’t get out There—where the real action was—because you weren’t strong enough. Something had to develop, like a muscle, and she thought what that was, was maturity.

  That was one of the reasons she had fallen into the game so easily, embracing the fantasy of the mazes and her own character of Glacia the Fighter with such enthusiasm. It was like really being in a story. And you weren’t on trial, because you didn’t have to write it down to get a good mark. You had to be cautious every minute to save your life, to advance in the unknown places, to risk and seize and fight—and it made her feel exuberant.

  She looked at her watch. It was three hours earlier home in San Francisco, so her mother would just be getting back from law school. She’d made Kate promise to call as soon as she arrived safely at her dorm. Kate didn’t know any other mother who would let her daughter drive across country all by herself, and in truth she had been terrified the entire way, which was why she had done it. Kate always did things that frightened her, so she would get over them. Windows up, doors locked, radio on, eyes boring straight ahead, remembering that she was very good in karate in case she needed to defend herself; teeth clenched so tightly her jaws cramped, and not even aware of it until she saw the sign that said WELCOME TO PEQUOD. KEEP OUR CITY CLEAN and she realized she could hardly open her mouth.

  The phone she’d ordered had been installed. She hoped nobody had been there before her and run up a bill; you never knew what people would do. She dialed home.

  “Hi, Mom! I’m here.”

  “Hi!” Her mother was sounding really happy these days, ever since she’d gotten her head together and gone to law school to make her own life. “How was the trip?”

  “Fine,” Kate said casually.

  “You did have enough money for the motels?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “I knew you would. I don’t want you to be so cheap with yourself, Kate. I ought to be glad; I’m lucky. Most kids your age are spendthrifts. But I worry if you don’t eat decently and I want you to have a good time. Your father is not going to cut off the alimony until I get a job.”

  “That’s what he says.”

  Her mother chuckled. “Don’t you worry. By then I’ll be a lawyer and I’ll take him to court. Listen, did you know you forgot your skis?”

  “Yeah. I left them on purpose.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t have much time to ski last year. This year will be worse. Tell Belinda she can use them.”

  “Kate, are you saving me money again?”

  “No, I just don’t feel like skiing this year.” How could she explain to her mother about the game, how it took so much time? It was just too complicated. Her mother would start to worry that she was neglecting her studies.

  “When I think how much you wanted those skis, and how much they meant to you …”

  “Mom, just be glad I didn’t have my heart set on a horse.”

  “I’d kill you,” her mother said, laughing.

  “Listen, I’ve got to go now, this is long-distance. I’ll call you soon. Love you. Good-bye.”

  She hung up, and after carefully locking her room went down the hall to find out if Daniel had arrived yet.

  His door was open and she poked her head around the sill. He looked up and smiled, happy to see her. Kate thought how much Daniel looked like John Travolta—he was probably the best-looking guy in the dorm and he wasn’t even conceited. Six feet tall, a great body, bright blue eyes, dark hair, an incredibly sexy mouth, and besides that he was a computer genius who would probably make a million dollars when he graduated, working for one of the companies that would be competing for him. She had never been able to figure out why Daniel had decided to come to a school like Grant when he could have gone to Stanford or M.I.T. Maybe he wanted to be a big fish in a small pond. He got all A’s without any seeming effort, as if he was just treading water here. Women were crazy about him, but that didn’t make him conceited either. She was lucky to have him for a friend—she wasn’t sure she could handle him any other way.

  “Hey!” he said. “When did you get here?”

  “Just now.” She walked in and looked around Daniel’s new room. He was putting his things away. He had already taped up four gorgeous ecology posters from the Sierra Club, and they did a lot to brighten the dingy beige walls. On the floor was a row of brand-new track lighting waiting to be installed, and he had even brought a large plant. Jay Jay was sitting on the bed reading Playboy.

  “Ah, come on, Jay Jay,” Kate said, “are you reading that degrading shit?” She made a grab at his magazine and he pulled it away from her.

  “You bet I am,” Jay Jay said.

  “Naked women,” Kate said. “Exploitation.”

  “I am into voluntary celibacy this year,” Jay Jay said. “I just want to remember what I’m missing.”

  “Well, you won’t see anybody who looks like that at this school,” Daniel said.

  “Come on,” Kate said. “You’re an ingrate.”

  “I think I’m going to join Jay Jay,” Daniel said. “Voluntary celibacy. I want to be a virgin when I get married.”

  “You’re about two hundred times too late,” Kate said tartly. She wondered why her tone had come out more hostile than she’d meant it to be. Daniel was her friend, not her lover, and she didn’t care what he did. She looked at him carefully to make sure he wasn’t offended, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t flattered either; he just accepted it as part of the teasing they all gave each other.

  “Enough of this filthy, disgusting sex talk,” Daniel said. “Sit down and let’s get to serious business. We need a new player.”

  “I know,” Kate said glumly. She sat next to Jay Jay on the bed.

  “Maybe we should put up a notice on the bulletin board,” Jay Jay said. “Along with the gay rights meetings and the science club. Wanted: a Mazes and Monsters freak who can play at the third level and promises neither to fink out nor flunk out.”

  “I hate to get a stranger,” Kate said. “Who’s going to room with a stranger?”

  The other two nodded. The rooms were small; big enough for one person, but apt to be unpleasantly crowded for two. With two beds and two desks and two dressers and two chairs in one of these rooms the occupants would have to pick their way around the furniture or suffer bruised shins. They had decided to keep the bookcases in their game room, but it wouldn’t be much help.

  “First let’s get the player and then we’ll worry about living arrangements,” said Daniel. “I spent the whole summer working out the new maze. It is without a doubt the most stupendous, mystifying, horrifying maze ever invented, and what’s in it will blow your mind.”

  Kate shivered. She could see it already: the dark tunnels that so terrified her, the creatures that could be friend or foe …

  “Is it okay if I put up a notice?” Jay Jay asked.

  “Why not?” Daniel said. “Maybe somebody’s bored with the game they’re in and wants to seek new thr
ills with a new band of adventurers.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Daniel Goldsmith, of all of them, was the one with the most normal, happiest home life. If anyone was loved and admired by doting parents it was he. He had grown up in the comfortable suburb of Brookline, Massachusetts; his father was a professor of political science at Harvard, in nearby Cambridge, and his mother did art therapy with emotionally disturbed children at Mass General Hospital. It was an intellectual family, where bookshelves were overflowing with all kinds of books, good art hung on the walls, and classical music was always playing. On Friday nights his mother, who took being Jewish seriously, lit the candles before supper and said a prayer, and his father, who was not religious, tolerated it with a sort of wry fondness. Religion meant Family to his mother; the two were one: stability, the most important thing you could believe in. Besides security, his parents loved a good argument. Their house was often filled with friends having endless, spirited discussions about everything from politics to psychology, while his mother served coffee from a restaurant-size urn.

  Daniel was their joy, their hope. He was the bright one, the son with the wonderful future. His older brother, Andy, a handsome, easygoing young man, had chosen to be a gym teacher, and it was typical of their parents that they were just as proud of Andy as they were of Daniel, only in a different way.

  “Andy keeps kids out of trouble,” his mother said proudly, as if by teaching basketball in a middle-class suburban public high school he was single-handedly saving a flock of future juvenile delinquents. Andy shared an apartment with his girl friend, a pretty social worker named Beth, and his mother acted as if they were both in the same profession.

  Ah, but Daniel, he was extraordinary. He was the computer genius who would save the world. Goodness knows, the world was rotten and needed saving. What Daniel really wanted to do was make up games for computers. His parents thought that would be a nice hobby, something he could do on the side. They tried not to pressure him. After all, they knew that pressure causes rebellion.

  The only time they made a fuss was when he announced he was not going to M.I.T., but to Grant. They were horrified. To turn down M.I.T.?

  “I want to go away from home,” he said. “I need space.”

  “We give you space,” his mother said. “You can live in the dorm. We’ve been saving money for your education since you were born—you can live in the dorm or even have your own apartment if you like.”

  “Space is an overused concept of the Seventies,” his father said. “Space exists inside your own head.”

  “I don’t want to be in Cambridge, that’s all.”

  “If I see you coming out of the subway I promise not to say hello,” his mother said. She gave him a look of disgust and went into the kitchen.

  Daniel followed her. “Mom … I just don’t know what I want to be.”

  “Of course you know.”

  “It’s too soon. Everybody always knew, but I’m not so sure. I want to put my life on hold for a while.”

  “Terrific,” she said angrily. “And then you’ll come out of that Grant University and look for a job and they’ll say, ‘Sorry, we want someone from M.I.T.’”

  “You always said money was far less important than personal satisfaction.”

  She had a long, wicked-looking knife in her hand and was hacking at the fat on a roast of beef, making a mess. “It’s a rat race out there,” she said, without looking up.

  “I can always transfer,” he said weakly. He felt as if she were strangling him. His parents had always given him advice but never orders, and there had never been anything he hadn’t been allowed to do. Except fail. Or be ordinary. He suddenly envied his brother Andy for doing something simple that he loved, for never being hassled, for not having to be special.

  “I truly don’t understand, Daniel,” his mother said. She looked up at him, finally, and he saw that her eyes were full of tears. “I thought you were different from other kids. You always had such a sense of purpose. Did we fail you somehow? Did we do something wrong?”

  “No,” he said. He went over and put his arms around her. Her bones felt very small. “People don’t always run away from something bad. Sometimes people have to run away from perfection.”

  “We’re far from perfect,” she said, surprised, but he saw with relief that the tears in her eyes were gone.

  So he had gone to Grant. And now he was starting his Junior year, nineteen years old, comfortable with his work and his friends, involved in the game he had discovered at college, spending all his free time making up new and more devious versions. He also ran. He liked running down the long empty streets of Pequod at dawn, out to the suburbs that reminded him of Brookline, looping back past the shopping mall just as the giant produce trucks came pulling up; all the time planning strategies for the game. This was exactly what he had wanted to do with his life.

  Sometimes he varied the route of his early-morning run, several times going out to the forbidden caverns that lay to the east. They didn’t look so ominous from the outside. If it weren’t for the iron chain that had been bolted into the stones outside the main entrance, and the green and white sign that said DANGEROUS CAVERNS KEEP OUT, you would think they were just some picturesque caves under a hill. They looked like a tourist attraction. But he had heard they extended for miles under the ground, and were filled with bottomless lakes and black pools, stalactites and stalagmites, endless turns, and tiny, hidden rooms where a person could be lost forever. Worst of all, they were pitch-dark. Sometimes, running by, Daniel had a little thrill of curiosity; just to see. He supposed everybody had that feeling once in a while. It was probably what had inspired those two students to explore the caves so long ago, the students who had died.

  He simply had no concept of death. Sometimes, driving in a car when he knew he’d had too much to drink at a party, he was aware of danger, but it never occurred to him that he might be killed, even though people often were. You got killed in a war. Everybody knew that. Or someday, when you were middle-aged, the pollution of foul chemicals could give you cancer. But not now. Now he felt immortal. All the terrors of disease and unexpected death were for later, for other people.

  CHAPTER 4

  Feeling very new, young, frightened, and shy, Robbie Wheeling began his first day as an entering Freshman at Grant University. Back home in Greenwich, Connecticut, he’d been a star of sorts: captain of the high school swimming team, managing editor of the yearbook, popular and secure. Now he was a stranger in a strange place. The dorm he’d been assigned to, Hollis East, seemed huge, and his single room was bare and ugly. There was a lumpy single bed, a scratched wooden desk with a matching chair, a lamp that looked like it came from the Salvation Army, and a wooden bookshelf with graffiti on it. One closet. He’d been issued a key to the lock on his door, to guard all these possessions and whatever he’d brought from home. He dropped the last of his things: his duffel bag and the large carton containing his stereo equipment, and went to look out the window. Being a Freshman, the lowliest of the low, he was assigned a room at the rear of the dorm that looked out on a parking lot. There was his little tan Fiat Spider convertible, his graduation present from his parents, parked along with an assortment of cars belonging to the people he hoped he’d eventually meet, one small motorcycle, and a jumble of bicycles, all carefully chained and locked. Behind him, through his partly open door, he could hear girls’ voices and the stamp of feet along the hall. He wondered what it would be like to live in a coed dorm. Was there a lot of sex, or what? The thought of endless adventures cheered him up a little, and he began to unpack.

  He was eighteen years old, six feet tall, with the long, smooth muscles of a swimmer, and a face that was so handsome it was almost beautiful. Green eyes with a thick fringe of dark lashes, fair hair, and dimples. He’d never had any problem getting girls, but he thought now, here in this strange place, that he would like to find one person, fall in love, have a real relationship. He’d never had that, and it se
emed to be time. Maybe he could make it last for his entire Freshman year, or at least through the winter. He thought of a girl sitting on his bed, studying, snow falling cozily outside the window, and the room didn’t look so grim anymore. Women. He would have to remember to call them women. They were in college now.

  Robbie was glad to be away from home at last. There was nothing there at all for him, never had been, particularly ever since that night his brother ran away again and never came back. After that night Robbie could never look up at the stars without wondering where his brother was and if he was looking at them too, and if they looked the same where he was … or if he was still alive.

  His parents were victims of history. Strangers when they married each other way back in the Fifties; his mother just out of Vassar, his father all excited about his first job in an architectural firm; his older brother, Hall junior, born just ten months later—they were a whole family before his parents even got to know each other. His mother had told him that story a million times. In those days people didn’t live together before they got married. Other people’s parents who Robbie knew had gotten married the same way, and had kids, and they got along fine. But his parents fought and yelled, when they spoke to each other at all; endlessly recriminating each other about the past, their wasted lives, their unfulfilled dreams. Yet they would never leave each other. Something held them together, some need “to make it work.” Make what work? His mother had been an alcoholic as long as he could remember. In the suburbs alcoholics have one of two choices: drive their kids to the things they have to do and risk getting killed, or become housebound and trapped. When his mother stopped driving him Robbie was relieved.

  Now his father was the head of his own architectural firm, with a big office in New York, and his designs were featured in international magazines. As a symbol of his success, his father had had a different Cartier watch for every day of the week, until his mother got mad and smashed them all, the night his brother left. She’d smashed ten thousand dollars worth of watches in one night. That wasn’t the only thing that had been smashed in one night—their lives had, all of their lives … but he wasn’t going to think about that now.