Mazes and Monsters (13 page)

“Don’t be silly, Harold. He said: ‘No.’”

“Well, that’s good,” Andy said.

“You’re darn right it’s good,” his mother said. “He could have pushed the blue paint away, or just used it passively, but he had a preference and he made a choice. And he verbalized it! I know he can talk—he has an entire vocabulary just waiting to explode out of him, but it takes time. And I’ll give him that time.”

“How do you feel about going to Washington, Mrs. Goldsmith?” Beth asked.

“Whatever Harold wants is all right with me,” she said.

“What about your work?”

“Beth, don’t start that stuff with my mother,” Andy said. “You’ll get her all upset.”

“I’m not upset,” his mother said. “I can pursue my career in Washington. Besides, if it happens, it won’t be for a long time, and I can make great progress with Kevin in the meantime.”

“Your mother will be valuable wherever she goes,” his father said.

Daniel felt the little currents moving through the room: ambition, fear, hope, control, compromise. All through the long years of their marriage his parents had ridden those dangerous currents; two people paddling in tandem in a light canoe, keeping their balance, moving ahead. No matter what her own triumphs, she always put them aside for his father’s. It was true that someone else could continue with her work, but someone else could go to Washington instead of his father, and what would it really matter to anyone but Harold Goldsmith? And, of course, his wife. Maybe she cared as much about having her husband move up in the world as he did.

Beth sat in front of the fire with her face edged in gold. Her skirt was spread out like a nest, and Andy kept cracking walnuts with his strong hands and dropping the nutmeats into it. “I heard the most awful story today,” Beth said. “A man had a Dacron tube grafted into one of those arteries leading to the heart; you know, that operation they’ve been doing for ages. He died a few years later of an apparent heart attack, and when they did an autopsy they found he’d grown a rare kind of cancerous tumor around the Dacron graft.”

“Poor guy,” Andy said.

“Do you know what that means?” Beth said. “It means that it’s possible that synthetics cause cancer.”

“Something else to worry about,” his mother said. “Half the country will have to go nudist.”

“Remember that thing they did on TV?” Daniel said. “On
Fernwood Tonight
when Martin Mull had those mice in little polyester leisure suits to show that leisure suits cause cancer?” He laughed, remembering. He had liked that show, it was funny.

“Nothing is safe anymore,” his mother said angrily. “They do a satire on television and a couple of years later it comes true. There isn’t anything too farfetched or horrible to imagine. We’re destroying the planet.”

“With leisure suits?” Andy said. He laughed and popped a handful of shelled walnuts into his mouth.

“Go laugh,” his mother said. “You’re going to have to live in that world. Somebody’s going to have to do something about it.”

“Daniel will do something about it,” his father said calmly. He smiled at Daniel. “The future of mankind is in computers. We’ll have energy conservation systems, new transportation systems, community participation systems … we’ll get rid of poverty, waste—”

“Wait a minute!” Daniel said. “I can’t do all that.”

“I didn’t say you’d be the only one. But you’ll help.”

Why wasn’t he happier about saving the world, when everybody else seemed to want to?

“What about people who just want to tend their own garden?” Daniel said.

“No room anymore.” his father said. His mother nodded. “No room for nonparticipation. Be thankful you’re bright and have something to contribute.”

“I wish it would snow for Christmas,” Daniel said, to change the subject. “Remember the great big snows we used to have every winter? Now it doesn’t seem to snow till February.”

“The weather is changing,” his father said. “We’re tampering with the environment. You want snow? Good, that’s something you care about. Figure out a more efficient …”

Oh, shit, Daniel thought, closing out the sound of his father’s voice. He wanted a simple snowball fight and his parents wanted him to win the Nobel Prize. Could you have both? He wanted to please them, but he had only one life, and he didn’t want to end up old and bitter.

“Dinner is ready,” his mother said.

They sat in their accustomed places, passing around the platters of food. Since Daniel’s visit from college made him a sort of guest, they had all his favorite things to eat: little squab chickens, a bowl of stuffing on the side, peas, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top. They were his favorite foods because he was used to them; they reminded him of every special dinner since he was a child. For dessert his mother had bought a huge, gooey cake.

Beth nodded at Andy. He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of cold champagne and a tray of glasses.

“What’s that for?” his father said.

Andy grinned like the Cheshire Cat and popped the cork. “Beth and I have an announcement,” he said. He looked at her.

“We’re getting married,” they said in unison.

A shriek of joy and hugs and kisses from his mother, happy handshaking and a kiss for Beth from his father, a goofy smile from Daniel. Daniel felt so strange. He’d always thought of Andy and Beth as sort of married anyway, but now that they were making it official he was a little bit rocked. They would be on their own now, drawing away from the others, making a family of their own. They were lucky, he thought, to be able to make a commitment. So lucky … it was what he wanted to be able to do.

“When?” his mother asked.

“June,” Beth said. “We want a traditional wedding, I’m going to get a white dress, have bridesmaids, everything. We’re going to Mexico for our honeymoon.”

“Mexico is very interesting,” his father said.

“And affordable,” Andy said.

“I suppose now you’ll want to look for a nicer apartment,” his mother said.

The two of them looked at her in surprise. “What for?” Beth asked.

“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.

CHAPTER 6

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.

The discovery that one of those adults—Andy the
meshugge
—had chosen to betray her immortality by refusing to have a child of his own filled her with horror. It wasn’t that she wanted to play Grandma. She had enough little children to worry about at the hospital. It was that Andy was ending the greatest thing in life she had been able to do.