Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

“I’ll tell you before the game,” Jay Jay said. “When we’re all together.”

Sitting in Daniel’s room, in their circle, Jay Jay told them his plan. They looked at him and then at each other, confused, each waiting for someone else to tell them what to do. He could tell that they were both horrified and intrigued.

“It’s awfully dangerous,” Daniel said.

“That’s the point,” said Jay Jay.

“You spent the night there?” Kate said. “All by yourself?”

“Yup.”

“Did you see bones?”

Jay Jay smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Bones … of course, he would have to get some bones too. “However, if you’re too afraid to try my idea …”

“There’s a difference between being brave and being reckless,” Kate said.

“We’re still playing this game,” Daniel said. He sounded hurt.

Jay Jay shrugged. “Think about it. We have plenty of time.”

Robbie hadn’t said a word. “What do you think, Robbie?” Kate asked.

“I’ll do whatever everybody else decides,” Robbie said.

“Don’t you have your own opinion?” Jay Jay asked acidly. It annoyed him the way Robbie always deferred to Kate. Just like a henpecked husband.

“I think it would be kind of exciting,” Robbie said.

“You see?” Jay Jay said. “He’s the only one with imagination.”

“Let’s just play my game till we finish it,” Daniel said. “I worked like hell on this game.”

Jay Jay smiled his guileless little smile. “There’s plenty of time,” he said. “I’ll bring this up again.”

Kate glanced at Daniel as if to say, He’ll forget it. It’s just another of his crazy ideas.

But Jay Jay knew he would never forget it, and he wouldn’t give up. He had never been so excited by anything in his whole life.

Robbie was not allowed to sleep in Kate’s room every night; she said the bed was too small and he disturbed her. He understood. It was difficult to pay attention in classes, do homework, and keep alert in the game when you hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep. For him it was even more difficult than for her, because he had to keep up his stamina in swimming practice. Her practicality was mature and sensible, and he agreed with her plan that they only sleep together overnight on weekends, but still he couldn’t help feeling a little rejected. If she really loved him she would find a way … He drove into town and went to the thrift shop and bought a double mattress which looked quite clean, and dragged it up the dormitory stairs and into his room. He bought a set of sheets and a blanket in the shopping mall, made their bed, and brought Kate into his room triumphantly to show her his surprise.

“Now we can live together,” he told her.

A flicker of fear came into her eyes and her face was grave. “It’s too soon,” she said.

“What’s too soon?” Her rejection hit him like a physical pain. He could actually feel it, a tightening in his chest. “We’re together all the time anyway.”

“Robbie, I never lived with anybody before. I’m not ready. I love you, but sometimes I like to be all alone.”

“Why would anybody want to be all alone?”

“It’s too soon,” she said again, sadly. “I’ve got all these pressures of school … us being together is the best thing in my life, but please don’t try to change it yet.”

“I’m never going to leave you,” he said, “if that’s what you’re worried about.” Over her shoulder he could look out the window at his ugly view of the parking lot. He wondered if she thought his room wasn’t good enough, not romantic enough. “We can put the bed in your room if you’d rather.”

“It’s not whose room we live in,” she said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Robbie, it’s really sweet that you bought the bed. We can use it weekends. It’ll be a lot more comfortable.” She took his hand and smiled at him. “Trust me.”

He locked the door quickly and drew her down on their new bed, to use it and thus make it real. She didn’t protest. But he could feel something in her drawing away from him, and it maddened him and made him feel afraid. For the first time his lovemaking was wild, possessive; not tender, not sweet. She had always been the strong one, she made the decisions, she was the leader, but not this time, not now. He became so frenzied that he didn’t even care whether she liked it or not. He tried to make up for all the times he’d never been able to understand her as well as he wanted to, to obliterate that stubborn core that resisted all the love and need he wanted to lavish on it. He wanted — for once, at last — to win.

It was the best sex he’d ever had, and as soon as he was finished he felt guilty, because he’d liked not caring what she wanted. He looked at her nervously, wondering if she knew what he was thinking.

“Wow,” she said. Her tone was totally noncommittal. He didn’t know if he’d won or lost, and he certainly didn’t dare ask her.

It occurred to him, in the days that followed, that he had expected love to make his life complete, and had never expected that a relationship might be two difficult people trying to become one. He couldn’t imagine how he could have been so stupid not to have known it after the example he had right under his nose at home with his battling parents. But they were from another era, nearly dinosaurs, and he had planned to be different. He had planned for everything to be perfect. He’d thought he really had everything figured out, but now he looked at his life and realized he’d been asleep. His schoolwork was piling up on him. It seemed as if there were never enough hours in the day, and he wondered if he could get a leave of absence from the swimming team, tell the coach he was worried about exams. Other people did that, or else they got thrown off the team for not keeping up. He knew he’d been wasting a lot of time having fun, going to movies with Kate, just being with her, playing the game with his friends, daydreaming. It was as if there were certain gaps in his memory: time vanished.

But he did nothing about it. He kept on with swimming practice, he kept spending evenings with Kate when he knew he needed to study more than she because she was so quick, and he kept playing the game. The game was a great emotional release for him because it kept him from worrying about everything else, for a while anyway.

At night he began to dream again about his brother. Sometimes Hall was sixteen, looking the way he had when he ran away five years ago, and sometimes he was an adult Robbie hardly knew. If Hall was alive he would be taller, filled out, perhaps he’d have a mustache or even a beard. He’d be different. Maybe he was a junkie; skinny, sick. Or maybe he’d been dead for years and these were only wishes that would never come true.

The dreams were more complicated now. No longer did Hall come to sit on his bed in the moonlight and talk to him. Now Robbie found himself in a maze, with walls and floor of graph paper, filled with a strange bluish light, and he was running down these frustrating corridors after his brother. It was so neat, like a hospital, or a sketch made by a player. Maybe the dream symbolized that Hall was in a hospital somewhere, perhaps with amnesia. Robbie was always running, out of breath, trying to call out and finding that he had no voice. He could never run fast enough; his legs would ache and he would sink to the floor, drawn inexorably down like someone with a wasting disease. How his legs cramped and pained him! How futilely he tried to shout to tell Hall he was here, to stop and wait for him … He would wake up drenched with sweat, crying. His tears felt scaldingly hot, the tears of frustration. They almost burned his cheeks. He would lie in bed for at least twenty minutes, trying to collect himself, to get out of the dream into the real world again. It was just as well he didn’t spend every night with Kate. He never wanted her to see him like this.