Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

The car drove away and he was alone; Merlin in his cage in one hand, his suitcase in the other, his cowboy hat on his head to remind him that he was the great Jay Jay, the one of mysterious glamour. The doorman, in his dark green winter uniform, came out to the sidewalk.

“Mr. Brockway.”

“Good afternoon, Paul.”

He had graduated from being Jay Jay to being Mr. Brock-way when he went to college. It was Paul’s way of being nice; it was ridiculous, but he rather liked it. All those lonely years at high school where the other kids were so much older they looked on him as a rather amusing mascot, but never a friend; the humiliation of graduating at fourteen when everyone else was eighteen, and tall, and having a sex life and social life that didn’t include him — all of that was somehow shut off into the past when he became a College Man. Mr. Brockway. There wasn’t one soul from high school he even spoke to now, not that he’d spoken to them very much then either.

“Help you with your bag, Mr. Brockway?”

“Thank you.”

The doorman took his bag to the elevator and Jay Jay gave him a dollar.

The marble floors of the lobby were as polished as ever, the mirrors gleamed, not a bulb was out in the crystal chandelier. The enormous Christmas tree loomed in the corner, decorated with colored balls and lit. There were Hanukkah candles on the mantel. No tenant was to be ignored in this season of goodwill and holiday tips.

Jay Jay let himself into the apartment with his key. His mother, Julia Brockway, was a rather famous decorator, with some very well-known, rich clients, and her large, highceilinged apartment was a showplace for her new ideas as well as a home. He noticed that she’d moved the furniture around in the living room again, and this year’s tree was decorated with nothing but hundreds of tiny, perfectly tied, red-and-white checked bows. She always kept things around that smelled: sachets, pomander balls, incense, perfumed candles, sticks of vanilla. She even put special perfume on the light bulbs so they scented the room when they were lit. This Christmas the theme seemed to be cloves and cinnamon.

“I’m here, Mom,” he called.

She came floating out of someplace in the back vastness of the apartment, looking chic and slim and beautiful. He looked like her; the same pointed face and mass of golden curls, the small-boned quickness, but it was more suitable on her. She was wearing a white silk bathrobe and had all her makeup on, so he knew she was getting ready to go out.

“Darling,” she said, in her light voice that was like water. She could be Queen of the Sprites. She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed the air near his cheek so as not to mess up her makeup. Then she looked him over. “I think you grew a little. Did you? I hope so.”

“I’m not growing anymore,” Jay Jay said. “Where are you going?”

“To a cocktail party at the French Embassy. Then dinner at a new place in SoHo that got a good review in Vogue. Everything nonfattening. Even the champagne, apparently — it has less sugar content.” She clapped her hands. “Let me show you your Christmas present!”

“Now?”

“Of course now. You’d see it anyway.”

She led the way to his room. His heart sank. He knew already what it would be, and he felt the anger roaring through him, choking him. She always killed his identity, she made him disappear into her own fantasies — please don’t, Mom, say you didn’t do it again …

“ Voilà !” She flung open the door. She had redecorated his room completely; he couldn’t even recognize it.

“Oh, shit,” Jay Jay said.

When he had left for Grant in September he had left a cozy, warm, masculine room with antique furniture and tan-and-white-striped fabric on the walls. He’d just gotten used to it. When she had changed the last room he’d gotten to like he had thought the new one was too staid and stuffy, but after a while he had grown to like it too. And now all the warmth had been stripped away to the stark white bareness of High Tech. It looked like a goddamn hospital. Everything was built-in and hidden, the bed was a four-poster made of steel things that looked like girders, a mover’s pad was the hideous cover, and the brightness of those shiny unadorned walls was blinding.

“Where’s my stuff?” he screamed.

“It’s in the cabinets,” she said. “Don’t you scream at me. I worked my tail off to get this ready for you in time for the holidays.”

“I liked it the other way. Where’s my furniture?”

“Don’t you like your new room?” she asked. She looked hurt.

“Don’t I like it? I just told you I hate it. Why do you always act like you’re deaf when I talk to you?”

“Maybe because you scream when you talk to me,” she snapped. “Do you know how many clients would give their eyeteeth to have a room like this, done by Julia Brockway?”

“Your clients remove their eyeteeth by hand every night and put them in a glass of water,” Jay Jay said.

“You’re a fresh little kid.”

“My room is my turf,” Jay Jay said. “It’s my nest. My cave. I don’t want you changing it around when I go away. And Merlin hates it too.” Merlin was blinking his eyes. “Tell her, Merlin.”

“Birds can’t talk,” Merlin said.

“Coward,” Jay Jay said to him. “Mom, when you change my environment without my permission you obliterate me. You’re going to make me schizophrenic.”

“I doubt that,” she said. She pouted now, and crossed her arms over her breasts like the statue of a saint. “You know I’d never do anything to hurt you, Jay Jay. I just thought it would be interesting.”

For you or for me? he thought, but he didn’t say it. His poor mother; she would never understand him. Right now his beloved antique furniture was probably sitting in some client’s bedroom. His mother treated all the furniture in their apartment with the same cavalier attitude as she did Jay Jay’s, except for a few pieces that were irreplaceable and to which she was devoted. Even those, he suspected, she loved for their investment value. He wondered if there was anything — or anyone — in the world that had his mother’s purely emotional affection.

He and his mother made up finally, in a way. Their fights never lasted long. She was an orderly person, and as she was always in a hurry to go somewhere, she didn’t like to leave an untidy unfinished argument behind. He apologized for being too surprised to realize her goodwill; she apologized for shocking him without warning. She did not promise not to do it again. Redecorating his room was the only thing she knew how to do for him.

As soon as she had left for her cocktail party Jay Jay took all his old movie and movie star posters out of the closet, got a hammer and some picture hooks, and banged the nails into her newly enameled, very expensive walls. The posters made the room look a lot better. He hung Merlin’s cage from the top of the frame of the four-poster bed. “Poor Merlin,” he said.

“Poor Jay Jay.”

At least she’d had the decency to leave him his television set. He found it tucked away in one of the built-in cabinets, bolted down to a pullout, swiveling shelf. Jay Jay went to the kitchen, where the cook had left some cold chicken and endive salad in the refrigerator for him. There were also two bottles of his mother’s best white wine chilling there; he supposed in case she brought some friends home with her after dinner. He appropriated one for himself. The cook had also baked his favorite brownies.

He took the food and wine into his room, locked the door, fed Merlin, lit a joint, and settled down in front of the TV to watch a rerun of The Maltese Falcon, one of his favorite films. He’d seen it about twenty times.