Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

She knew now he was gone for good.

Long before she was Kate’s mother, Meg Porter had grown up as a perfect child of the Fifties. She fervently believed every movie she’d ever seen, and when life did not turn out like the movies she never questioned the movies; she thought something was wrong with life. She was a cheerleader in college, leaping around with pom-poms, and she was also an honors student. She was a mischief-maker who never did anything really bad, so she didn’t get in trouble. People thought she was cute. When she was at college her friends used to say: “I have to get married before all the good ones are taken.” Surrounded by the “good ones,” popular and secure, Meg waited for her own special Mr. Right. She knew when he came along she’d know it immediately, just like in the movies.

Mr. Right was Alan Finch. She found his name romantic and English. He was a veteran, a former lieutenant. They were always lieutenants in the movies. He even looked like an actor; the nice one who got the girl at the end. He was four years older than she was and seemed experienced and sophisticated. She met him on a blind date in Senior year, and after that first date neither of them went out with anyone else.

They were married right after she graduated, and moved to San Francisco because Alan had always wanted to live there. It didn’t frighten her to leave her family and friends. It made her feel grown-up. Alan would be her family and friends now — her very best friend, and they would live happily ever after.

They got a little apartment in Berkeley, which they painted themselves, and after they had Kate and Belinda they moved across the bay and bought their house. Meg learned how to be a gourmet cook and how to take care of plants; she tended the children and the cats and dog; they bought furniture, books, records, quilts, rugs, antique toys, a car. Every time she and Alan acquired something together she felt it was another brick in the good wall that was going to keep them safe and secure forever. The thing that made their little world complete was the children. Kate and Belinda were bright and beautiful and fun. Meg worked hard to make their home a haven for Alan to return to every evening after a dangerous day out in the market, gambling with other people’s money, making his conquests. She was happy to live through him. His glories were hers too. She pictured the two of them growing old together.

When he told her they had already grown old together she was shocked. What did he want her to be that she wasn’t? She begged him to tell her what he wanted, and he answered that he had been cheating. She was willing to forgive him. They had been married fifteen years and had a whole life they’d built together; cheating wasn’t enough to tear that down. He said he was bored, sad, disappointed. He acted as if it were her fault. She didn’t understand. She had never been bored. How could he be sad and disappointed when he had everything they’d dreamed about when they were engaged and planning their future?

He tossed her and the children away as if they were biodegradable.

After a while Meg got over her anger and bitterness. She decided Alan was crazy. She had her two wonderful daughters, and they were her best friends. She loved them fiercely. They made her laugh. They were so vulnerable under their coolness that she wanted to stand like a Valkyrie and protect them, but she knew she couldn’t. The best thing she could do for them and for herself was to have a new life of her own.

She went out on blind dates. They were the former “good ones,” now on their second or third go-round, but they didn’t look so good anymore. She wondered why they didn’t treat her the way men had in college.

When Kate went to spend the weekend before Christmas at her father’s, Meg Finch had her last date. She had met him briefly at a party the month before, where her hostess recommended him as “the best bachelor in California.”

The first thing he said to her was that he was dismayed she had cut her hair. He said he had preferred it curly; it was sexy, like pubic hair. She thought of jumping out of his car, but he was driving fast, down a residential street that was far away from any transportation, and it was raining. He took her to a bar called Fantasy: wall-to-wall mirrors, blue, red, and green lights reflecting off them, a young man in a full-length mink coat leaning languidly against a white piano. Her date asked her about her life. At least that was familiar.

Meg told him about law school, how frightened she had been at first because she thought everyone else would be so young, and how happy she was to find quite a few women her age in her class. She told him how she admired those other women for starting all over again, for fulfilling old dreams or daring to reach for a new one.

He said he bet none of them had ever had an orgasm.

She felt like crying, running away, or screaming at him. But she did none of those things: she blushed. She was back in the time tunnel to the girl she had been when she was dating at college — passive, agreeable. Then the colored lights in the bar swirled around and a floor show started. It was an S&M show. Whips and chains. Meg walked out and took a taxi home.

After the weekend Meg told Kate about her date. They both laughed over the telling of the story, now safely in the past, but underneath Meg was angry. She announced that had been her last date, and she meant it. From now on she would only go out with friends. If a man wanted to see her it would have to be on her own turf, at dinner in her own home with her daughters. She wanted normalcy, not sparring and humiliation.

Meg was planning to cook a big Christmas dinner — that was comforting. She had invited friends and told the girls to ask their friends too. Not everybody had a family that made a big fuss over holidays. Kate had brought Christmas presents for herself and Belinda from their father, and the girls insisted on opening them right away. The presents looked as though Norine had picked them. Kate had received sexy lingerie: a satin teddy and a nightgown and peignoir. Belinda had been given a plaid flannel bathrobe. They were both disappointed. But since each of them loved the other’s gift, they traded happily. Their father never gave them the right thing; it was as if he didn’t know them at all.

And then Kate broke the news. Alan was about to become a father again. Meg knew Kate and Belinda were only pretending they didn’t care; as for herself, she was numb. The man who had walked out on her six years before was a stranger now. They would always be tied together by their children, but he no longer had the power to break her heart. Men remarried and started new families; he wasn’t the first. She wasn’t even really surprised. She only wished that instead of just telling Kate he had picked up the phone to tell her too, like a friend.

But that was another of her romantic fantasies that one by one were being replaced by reality. Long ago she had dreamed that she and Alan would be best friends. Now she knew they would never be friends at all.

She decided she wouldn’t let it matter. She was still a romantic. The world was askew, but she would always have dreams. She would have her own life now, on her own terms, and she would make it work.

Jay Jay looked at the outside of the Park Avenue apartment building where he and his mother lived, collecting himself now for the stress family confrontations always seemed to bring. Other people liked going home; he went home because there was nowhere else to go.

“Good-bye!” Robbie yelled behind him, putting his little car into gear. “Merry Christmas!”

“Good-bye,” Jay Jay called back. “See you soon.”