Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

“Only Picasso,” Jay Jay said.

She laughed. “You know Federov?” she asked, turning and linking her arm in the arm of the man who had just come up behind Jay Jay. Federov! The greatest male ballet dancer with the golden hair and famous love life. Jay Jay could hardly believe he was standing here with both of them at once. “This is Justy’s son,” Petrova said.

She knew ! The fecalite must have actually mentioned him some time to these people! He, Jay. Jay, spoken about in his absence, to them !

Suddenly it was easy: people talked to him, introduced him to other people, laughed at his jokes, made a fuss over him. He even had people to sit next to when dinner was finally begun. Joe Henry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who often got drunk at parties and punched someone (but never at Justin Brockway’s parties), talked to him about the possibility of life in outer space. Well, not really to him alone — to four other people too.

I fit in, Jay Jay thought. I really do.

Then why wasn’t he having a better time? He had just as good a time at the parties he gave at college. As he finished the strawberry trifle and chocolate mousse he had figured it out. These people here in this room had a shared history of fame and achievement; his was only in the future. He was still an outsider.

He pictured his ideal party. It would be several years from now, and everyone would be just as illustrious as the people here, but they would all be his friends: the ones who had climbed to the top together. Kate would be there, and she would be the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. Perhaps she would also write scripts; only for him of course. He would be the Academy Award-winning actor. Merlin often appeared with him on interview shows. Daniel would be the great computer genius who had made millions from the games he had invented, and who had a villa in the South of France — where they were all invited every summer. Jay Jay’s friend Perry, who had been in pre-med at Grant, would have discovered the cure for cancer, and was up for the Nobel Prize. Everyone knew he would get it. Robbie … what about Robbie? He had started too late to be an Olympic swimmer. Poor Robbie, too average to keep up with the rest of them, his affair with Kate long over, had disappeared from their lives. Jay Jay’s father, of course, would not be invited, unless he wished to crash. But his sister Sarah, who would be just about the age Jay Jay was now, would be devastatingly beautiful, and she would be there with the son of one of the people who was here now. She would be a little diffident, because she knew she had only been invited through Jay Jay’s generosity.

Jay Jay closed his eyes and smiled. His party would be so chic that even his mother would be there.

When Julia Brockway was a little girl, she once overheard one of her teachers tell another that she was “a cold fish.” She was Julie Burns then, an enchantingly pretty little blond girl who was tidy and punctual, and she thought for a few days about what a cold fish might be, and if it would keep her from being popular, give her bad marks, or in any other way upset the balance of her life. She decided it wouldn’t, and put it out of her mind.

By the time she was in college, and boys were falling all over themselves to make a good impression on her, she realized there was something about her that was different from the other girls, and that it was valuable. Other girls seemed to suffer from an excess of emotion; they wept when boys they loved didn’t call, they claimed to have broken hearts. Boys always called Julie Burns. Her inaccessibility made her seem like a mirror; they saw themselves reflected and were happy. The first and only man she fell in love with was Justy Brockway, and he immediately suggested they live together. He was a genuine eccentric, a genius, a charmer, and she was sure living with him would be more fun than anything she had yet experienced, so she agreed. They took an apartment together, off campus. Each told the college authorities they were taking the apartment with a relative, for financial reasons. Living in sin, in 1962, could still get you expelled.

When Julie discovered she was pregnant, she and Justy discussed whether she should have an abortion or they should get married and have the child. They decided on marriage. He couldn’t imagine that having a baby would interfere with his life in any way, and she thought it would make her an adult. Actually, having Jay Jay interfered with their life together very little. Their small apartment was always filled with friends, any of whom could be called upon to serve as an impromptu baby-sitter. Jay Jay’s first summer they left him with her parents while they went backpacking in Europe. The following summer they went in grander style, and Jay Jay stayed with his paternal grandparents. By then Julie and Justy knew people they had met in Europe, as well as people from college, and their European student friends often came to stay with them for extended periods, thus providing the Brockways with even better baby-sitters because their guests had to do something to pay them back for the free lodging.

Julie couldn’t understand why her few married friends gushed on about their babies. It was her opinion that a child had to accommodate its parents, not the other way around, no matter what the baby books said. Justy felt that if they treated Jay Jay as an adult he would become precocious, which was what he wanted. He couldn’t have stood it if his son hadn’t been bright. Since Jay Jay was obviously brilliant, and quite quickly gave a reasonably good imitation of a small adult, Justy was pleased.

As soon as Julie and Justy graduated, they moved to New York, where he got a job in publishing. At first they had a rather wretched little apartment, because they had very little money, but Julie began to realize that she had a talent for decorating, and that she liked it. She did some interesting things with their apartment, and then she took a few courses, and began to read all the decorating magazines. When Jay Jay entered First Grade at four, able to read but unable to tie his shoes, Julie got a job as a receptionist at a decorating firm. She was well liked, eager to learn, and no fool, and soon worked her way up to an assistant. Justy was an editor now. They moved to a better apartment. Julie decorated it, and Justy began giving parties for specially chosen people, instead of just free-for-alls. In return, they began to be invited to parties where they met people who would be helpful in their careers. They both discovered they were fascinated by success.

If they hadn’t been so busy doing interesting things they would have noticed earlier that they had fallen out of love, if indeed they had ever been in love, and that they no longer interested each other. One afternoon, Justy decided to bring home a young woman he’d just shared an excellent lunch with — he was feeling so mellow he decided he deserved to take the afternoon off and go to bed with her. Besides, she was an author he was trying to steal from another publisher, and she had been trying to get him into bed for months. On that same afternoon, Julie brought home the handsome, married, president of a large corporation, who had been trying to get his hands on her for months. She, however, had no intention of giving in. She intended to show him her apartment which she had decorated so cleverly, impress him, and tell him she couldn’t possibly do anything with him because her son would be home from school and her husband home from the office.

They all met at the same time. The four of them were very civilized and had a drink together. Afterward Justy and Julie discussed it, the way they had discussed whether or not to have their baby. This time they discussed whether or not to get a divorce.