Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

“Well … that place you’re in looks so … temporary. People get married, they get dishes, silver, furniture …”

“We have that stuff,” Andy said.

“Maybe you’re right,” his mother said. “After you have your first child you’ll have to move anyhow.”

“We’re not having children,” Beth said. “Certainly not for a long time, anyway, and then only one.”

His mother looked horrified for a moment, then carefully composed her face. It was her habit not to argue with her children; she wanted to be their friend. But there were bright blotches of pink on her cheeks.

“The world can’t be that bad,” she said, “not to want children.”

“It’s not the world,” Beth said calmly. “I’m not sure I want to be a social worker forever. I’m applying to law school, and after that I might go into politics.”

“You can go into politics and have children,” his mother said.

“We have time to decide,” Andy said. “Beth’s only twenty-four.”

“At twenty-four I had you already.”

“It’s a different world, Mom.”

“I know that,” his mother said sharply. She busied herself with pouring more coffee, cutting more cake, forcing it on them, insisting, even though they were full. It was as if by starting to serve dessert all over again she could erase time, make what he and Beth had just said disappear. “I guess then,” she said finally, “it’s up to Daniel.”

“To do what?” Daniel asked. “Talk them into it?”

“No,” his mother said. “To have children. You can’t both let me down.” Her tone was light, but forced. She wanted them to think she was just joking, and yet she wasn’t, and she wanted them to know that too.

He couldn’t make her any promises, but a part of him wanted a lot of kids, a houseful of them, all happy and noisy and having fun — and him teaching them games and playing with them.

After dinner Daniel and Andy went outside to shoot baskets in the hoop in the garage door, the way they had done since they were little boys. It was a joke now, because Andy was a professional and Daniel just fooled around, but they liked to keep up the tradition. The air was cold and crisp, with a bite to it, but not the sort that forecasted snow.

“You know,” Andy said, “I always envied you. Everything was so easy for you. It was always so hard for me. But now I don’t feel that way anymore. I think it’s hard for you too.”

“It is,” Daniel said. “I always envied you. ”

“Me?”

“Yep.”

“I never knew that.” Andy tucked the old basketball under his arm and put his other arm around Daniel’s shoulders, walking with him as if he were explaining a court maneuver to a student. “You can do anything you want, Daniel,” he said. “You can be anything you want. They don’t mean to hassle you. Whatever you decide to do with your life, they might make a fuss at first, but they’ll go along.”

“I guess,” Daniel said. “But I have to live my own life anyway.”

“All they want is for us to be happy,” Andy said. “Their idea of what’s supposed to make us happy isn’t always ours, but they mean well.”

“I know. I love computers … do you think it’s selfish to want to make up games for them? Somebody has to make up the games in the world.”

“You couldn’t have said it better.”

“It didn’t impress them much,” Daniel said. “Hey, I’m really glad that you and Beth are getting married.”

Andy grinned. “We’re all excited about it.”

They walked together back into the warm house that smelled of pine cones which Beth had gathered and tossed into the fire. Daniel and his father sat down at the small table in front of the window, the way they always did at night, and played chess. The chessmen waited for him, in their same positions, while he was away at college, and he wondered what his father would do when he was gone for good.

But he wasn’t going to think about that now. He had to concentrate to beat his father, so Daniel gave the moves his full attention. It was very important to him to win at games. He didn’t care about winning at sports, or in life, but games were different. A game was the only thing that was exactly what you wanted it to be.

Back in high school, before Ellie Kaufman had ever met Harold Goldsmith, the girls were fond of making lists of the qualities they wanted in a future husband. “Good personality” and “Sense of humor” were high on the list. “Good character” and “Intelligent” were added dutifully so one would not seem too frivolous. “Attractive” was at the bottom of the list, mainly because it was such a given — who would dream of marrying an un attractive man? — that it was added as an afterthought. Ellie had no list. There was only one thing she wanted in her future husband: He would have to be better than she was in everything.

It was not that she had a low opinion of herself; quite the contrary. She knew she was attractive, bright, had a good character, and boys seemed to like her personality. But she knew she couldn’t stand to live with a man who wasn’t better than she was — not just as good, but better. How else could she respect him? How else could she defer to him? How else could he take care of her? If she were going to settle for a man who was the same as she was, then she might as well take care of herself.

She met Harold at college. She knew right away he was better than she was, but he never acted as if he knew it, which was fine with her. “Conceited” was definitely not on her list of attributes. They were married right after she graduated, and they had Andy while Harold was in graduate school. They were of that group of people who met at college, stayed at college, and simply never went home again. If she hadn’t met and married Harold she would have gone to graduate school; as it was, she never stopped taking courses.

It was the early 1950s, and so Ellie always had an excuse for taking the courses so she wouldn’t seem to be thinking of deserting her husband and baby for a career. Harold was a professor so her courses were free. She’d have to be a fool to waste that opportunity. She took art appreciation, painting, sculpture, pottery, and psychology. When Harold got appointed to Harvard she certainly couldn’t give up a chance to study there, so she began working for a Master’s. Andy and Daniel were both in school so she had enough free time. Her friends worried about the effect on her children’s mental health, as if she had deserted them.

“I’m not going to work, ” Ellie told her friends. “It just seems a shame to waste all those credits.”

When she had her degree in Art Therapy it seemed not only silly but a sin to waste her education, so she got a job working with emotionally disturbed children. The children were a mix of rich and poor, so in a way she could claim she was really doing social work even though she was being paid. She loved all the children, even the ones who bit her.

When Andy got his degree in Recreational Therapy and his own apartment, and Daniel went away to Grant, Ellie was ready to tell her friends that she had entered a career as a way of letting go of her sons less painfully. But by then her friends had been through the women’s movement, and they told her they admired her for knowing what she wanted all along. She stopped making excuses.

Here she was, married twenty-seven years, a very different person from the unformed creature who had married Harold Goldsmith because he was better than she was — and now she knew he was better than she was only because she loved him and chose to think so. They had never had a fight that was bad enough for them to think of a divorce, she had never cheated and was sure he hadn’t, and they still had a good time together. The fact that she and Harold had been responsible for creating two adults who would live after them and do good things in the world made her feel immortal, a part of eternity.