I arrived at the carnival ready to give my all. But if the anxious excitement had been familiar, so was the letdown I now felt. In the same ancient past, the first boy to whom I’d offered my young self had nearly died of fear. I tend to rush things, tend to be disappointed, and tend not to learn anything from the experience.
The carnival grounds were nearly deserted. There was nobody to give my all or my anything to.
Instead, I helped Beth unwrap and stack several boxcar loads of hot dog rolls. I opened industrial-size jars of mustard and relish and filled trays with potato chips and coleslaw.
“Now, run along, you three,” Beth insisted after a time, and heigh-ho, we finally went to the fair. Sam, Karen, and I milled around, checking the various offerings before the real crowds arrived.
I was impressed by the extravagance and size of what was, after all, a local fund-raiser. I had expected amateurish, homemade games, but this was a large, ambitious affair sprawling over several acres of a shopping center’s street-side parking lot.
Which was not to say it was thrilling or even interesting for a long spell, as Sam and I tagged behind Karen and observed, or participated in, games with blow tubes and balloons, tiny fishing rods and goldfish, and a picture version of blackjack.
And then it became that time of evening when outlines grow fuzzy and I suspect I have contracted glaucoma. And suddenly, the lights went on.
“Ooooh, look!” Karen shouted as the scalloped umbrella of the merry-go-ground came alive with white sparklers and the Ferris wheel spun in multicolored glory.
The mechanisms, spokes, engines, and gears disappeared, and only the glitter remained. We were suddenly in another place altogether, at a carnival real and true where nothing ordinary could happen. Karen wasn’t the only one to sense the magic. People began arriving and filling the walkways.
“The sky jumper, Daddy,” Karen said. “Can I go on it now, before everybody wants to?” We wandered over to a huge plastic bubble with a trampoline interior, and I held Karen’s shoes as she bounced around inside of it. “Sam,” I said, now that we were alone, “what did Mackenzie want to talk about today? Can you tell me?”
Sam looked surprised, but mildly, as was his wont. “Old history,” he finally said. “Nothing particularly relevant, I should think. Something that happened in college, to be precise.”
“To you?”
He shook his head and seemed to feel that answered my question.
I prodded. “So the two of you reminisced about the good old days?”
“They weren’t good at all just then,” Sam said. “The fellow in question hanged himself. In the upstairs bathroom of the fraternity house.” He shook his head. “Horrible time. A few days before graduation. His, of course. I was only a freshman, a pledge. I had thought of him as the ideal, something to aim for. He was about to begin a military career in the Air Force. Good record, good-looking, popular, and he hanged himself three days before graduation.”
“Why?”
“Nobody knew. They say he left a note for his folks.”
“I mean, why would Mackenzie ask you about a dead fraternity brother?”
“I’m sure he had his reasons.” Sam had an unbelievable lack of curiosity. “His questions were very specific.”
Karen bounced out of the sky jumper, and I handed her the red canvas shoes. “Specific how?” I asked Sam. “What were they?”
Sam, who was now helping his daughter tie her laces, looked up at me and sighed. I could tell before he spoke that I had definitely exceeded his limits. Frankly, I was surprised he had told me anything. “You might want to ask your detective friend about it yourself,” Sam finally said before returning to his paternal duties.
I stood corrected. And then, speaking of the devil, or detective, I saw my defender shuffling toward us, his shoulders slumped. “Havin’ fun?” he asked pleasantly when he reached us.
“Oh, a keen time. Frankly, marking vocabulary tests is more exciting than this detective business.”
Sam stood up, groaning like a geriatric case. “Hungry, you two? Karen needs sustenance.”
“We’ll join you at the food booth in a few minutes,” Mackenzie said. It was the changing of the guard, and the Wymans walked off. “I brought you somethin’,” he said. “Now that you’re officially redeputized, you might want to feel more like a trained professional. We are expert in disguises, you know.” He pulled a tangled plastic mess from his jacket pocket. “Voilà,” he drawled, putting on heavy plastic eyeglasses supporting an enormous red nose and black mustache. “See? You’ll wear this and be out of danger completely. People will rush to tell you secrets, never guessin’ your true identity.” He transferred the glasses and mustache to my face.
“It’s hard to breathe in there, ah know,” he said. “This is no line of work for snivelers.”
“We’re going to wander around like this?” I asked, sounding a lot like a duck.
“Not ‘we.’ You. Ah’m doin’ a stint at the food booth. Impressin’ your sister on company time.”
“Sorry,” I said, taking off the nose. “The mustache clashes with my hair. Before you split, could you tell me something? Why did you ask Sam about a fraternity brother of his?”
“Tell you what,” he said as we walked the fairgrounds, dodging happy carnival-goers. “Try to figure it out while I serve. If you can’t, I’ll explain it all later. Clue—I used information you yourself gave me.” We arrived at Beth’s stand. He clicked his heels. “Mackenzie reporting, Ma’am. We also serve who only stand and serve.”
Beth glowed as she explained the intricacies of manning the various scoops.
“I think I’ve got it,” he said finally. “Why don’t you take a break? You must be exhausted.”
Beth looked bemused and very young. “I’d love a chance to look around,” she said.
I knew what she planned to look at. My soul. Outside, in the shadow near the booth, she took my arm. “He is a perfectly wonderful man,” she said. “There aren’t many like that. I do hope you’re making the most of this opportunity.”
“I worship the ground he walks on. I think of him night and day. I’ve never met anyone like him before.” I knew I was setting myself up for further complications later, but my words made Beth so happy, it was worth it.
“Do not, however, plan the wedding yet,” I added.
“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.”
“Do not push. Do not pass ‘go.’ Do not oversell.”
“What on earth am I selling?”
“Coleslaw, because nothing else is on the market. Remember that.” I walked back and ordered the works from Mackenzie, and then, anchored by Sam at my side, a sagging paper plate in one hand and Karen holding the other, I sauntered off.
“I want to ride the Ferris wheel,” Karen said. “Come up with me, Aunt Mandy?”
“I can’t just now,” I said, shoving the hot dog roll into my mouth. “I’m eating.”
Her father offered to be her copilot. I walked beside them to the waiting line. I didn’t even like looking up and seeing those little seats dangling and lurching, stopping and starting.
“Aunt Mandy’s afraid,” Karen said as we edged forward in line.
“I’m eating. I told you.” I broke a single potato chip into four sections, chewing each one slowly.
“Fortunes?” a voice sang out. “Let the Gypsy read your palm. Fifty cents. Only fifty cents for charity.”
She wore a black wig, heavy makeup, and a red satin gown recycled from a bordello. Without the beige hair and shotgun questions, Sissie Bellinger was hard to recognize.
“Fortune, Meester?” she asked Sam. “Geepsy weel read your palm.” She tossed her head and stomped like Carmen. I knew why she hadn’t gone far in the theater.
Sam smiled and pulled out more of his declining capital. “Why not?” he said. “Fortunes all around. On me.”
The line moved up again. We’d be the next batch to fill up the Ferris wheel. I could either be honest and admit my fears—and have them try to help me conquer them, or I could keep on eating. I chewed a single cube of relish.
Sissie wasn’t terrifically inventive. She oohed and aahed at Karen’s little hand. “I see travel in the sky in your future. Excitement.”
“The Ferris wheel!” Karen said with delight. Then even she caught on. “You can see we’re in line! No fair!”
“Geepsy knows fortune from lines on your hand, little one,” Sissie said. But she sighed and looked for something new. “Here, a strong lifeline, see? A long life. Adventures. Much love. But you have a strong will. You must listen to the wisdom of your parents. Always.”
Karen scowled. She looked as if she might report the palmist to the Better Business Bureau.
Sissie polished her act for the grown-up clientele. “The line of the heart is not so long as the line of the head,” she said to Sam. “You’re a thinker. A deep man. And I see a good marriage here with much affection and kindness from this long heart line.” She ran her fingers lightly over his palm. “But not altogether the thinker,” she said with a low chuckle. She prodded the fleshy area near his thumb and suddenly remembered her accent. “Thees ees the mound of Venus. For love.” She chuckled again. “Yours ees very well developed.”
And I would have sworn he’d gotten that puffiness from holding a pen tightly, but what did I know? It was an intriguing new aspect of Sam. He pursed his mouth in an attempt not to smile.
“Next,” the guardian of the Ferris wheel said. “Fill ’em up, folks. Come right along.”
“You coming, Aunt Mandy?”
“I’m eating.” I stepped away from the line as the others entered the boxy, teetering seats.
“I’ll do yours now,” Sissie announced.
“It’s all right. I’ll take a rain check. My palms are greasy anyway.”
But Sissie grabbed my free hand, laughing and tossing her acrylic tresses. “Your brother-in-law, he paid for eet,” she said. I still clutched the plastic fork.
She shook her head slowly, making her gold-hoop earrings sway. “Umm.” She turned my palm up with a surprisingly strong grip. The fork hurt my fingers.
“The head here is not so well developed as the heart.” She looked up at me from under her false lashes. “You are the type to leap before looking? To become involved in things before you understand them, then?”
“Perhaps,” I said lightly. No flattering sexual surprises in my palm, I guessed. Sissie kept her pale brown eyes on mine and her fingernail dug into my underdeveloped head line, if that was what that wrinkle was.
“Yes,” she said, looking back at my palm. “Yes, you do. You interfere. You don’t think. It is a dangerous trait, one to be avoided.”
“In general, Sissie? Or in some specific instance you’d like to mention?”
“In every instance,” she said slowly. “Look.” The smell of camphor floated off her black wig. “The lifeline.” She ran her fingernail down the curvy line near my thumb. “It breaks. Poof! Soon, perhaps.”
I looked. She was right about the break, although no specific termination date was imprinted. “Wow,” I said. “You must have majored in palmistry at Bryn Mawr. But what does it mean?”
“What do you think it means? Stay out of things that don’t concern you. Don’t make things worse than they are. Save your life.” My hand twitched, or flinched, trying to break her grip. “Good,” she said, “you are finally nervous. Perhaps your head is beginning to work as it should.”
“The fork is beginning to work its way through my skin, Sissie. Let go. It’s your hand that’s twitching. Or showing.”
She stared at me, still clenching my hand. Her nail and the fork tines dug into my flesh. Maybe she was trying to elongate my lifeline as an act of charity.
“Sissie,” I said softly, “what is it that you want?”
“Only what I deserve,” she snapped. “Nothing more.” She threw my hand away like a crumpled napkin and swished off, threadbare red satin and thick black hair merging into the crowd.
I looked down. My abbreviated lifeline smarted from her claws. It ended with the half-moon imprint of a nail. “This is where you get off,” it seemed to say.
I wasn’t supposed to be playing sleuth, only gathering information, but I knew that my encounter with Sissie would sound like much less than it had been, so I began my own deductions, despite Mackenzie’s warnings.
The Ferris wheel crowd returned to earth. “Forty minutes, folks, before the auction” sounded over the loudspeaker. “All booths and amusements will close in forty minutes. There’s still plenty of popcorn and fun, so step right up.”
It was a siren call to Karen, who obviously had been given an unlimited pocketbook. “I want to go to the Magic Maze of Mystery,” she said. “Before it closes.”
“I don’t think you’ll like it,” I protested. The kid slept with a Sunny Bug night-light and the hall door wide open. She didn’t seem the type for even fake, hokey scares.
“Nicholas Nelson went through. He said it was okay. He said there’s a gorilla in there who’s really his father.”
“Sam, do you think she should—” But Sam looked oddly distracted. “I’ll, ah, meet you there, or at its exit,” he said. “I have to—excuse me, please. Here.” He handed over the little cardboard tickets he’d bought and walked toward a Porta-John at the edge of the parking lot. He’d been a brave man to add the Ferris wheel to the food concession’s offerings.
“Please, Aunt Mandy? It won’t scare you.”
“I’m not worried about me.” We walked over to the sidewalk and the shops. Next to a place called Denim Heaven, a vacant store had been boarded and blackened. Above the dark window an old sign still read “Fresh Fish.”
“They’ve done an incredible job,” the volunteer said while ripping up our little tickets of admission. “The family who runs the theatrical supply house downtown took the whole thing on themselves. Not your run-of-the-mill fun house. You’ll love it.”
I doubted that. I think fear should be a rare and unwelcome intruder, not an invited guest. I avoid horror movies and terrifying novels, and I cannot understand how haunted houses and chambers of horrors could be considered attractions. But I had used up my cowardice allowance at the Ferris wheel. The old fish store didn’t look too big, so I sighed, decided that this was more likely to be short and boring than anything else.
Karen, jumping up and down with eagerness, took my hand and we entered the black-painted door.
“AHEEYAH!”
That was hello in Magic Maze talk. It was also a new sort of instant aerobics. I waited until my heart resumed something like its normal pace and tried to adjust my eyes to the black void.
“Welcome,” the electronic voice crackled. “The Magic Maze of Mystery needs more victims. Try to find your way through. Just try!” The voice found the idea hilarious and convulsed into delirious shrieks.
My eyes did not adjust. There was nothing to adjust to. This was the darkness of the blind, total and impenetrable.
“Where are you, Karen?” I whispered. We had dropped our hands with our opening screams. I put my hands out to find her. “Oh, excuse me!” I pulled my hand back from the spongy touch of someone’s generous bosom. But no one answered. I put my hand out again. The Maze was lined with soft, padded walls. And they were close together, so that miles of pitch-black corridors could fit inside a little fish store.
I should have chosen the Ferris wheel.
“Karen?” I said, taking a step. My foot sank into dark softness. The floors were also padded, alive, yielding, and terrible.
I hated the place. I yearned for the former fish market, for white, gleaming cases and silvery skins and hard fluorescent lights. I lost my bearing with no solid walls, no solid earth, to step on. “Karen?” I repeated. My voice was muffled by the padding, drowned out by another scream on the sound system.
The Maze was hot. Padded and stifled and musty. “Karen?” She had disappeared into the stuffing.
“Here,” a small voice whispered. “Here.” I took two more tentative steps on the unsure ground and bumped into her. She took my hand, and step by step, arms outstretched, we made our way around a corner.
“BOO! I’LL GET YOU!” The recorded voice wasn’t nearly as frightening as was the total absence of light.
Karen finally remembered that she hated the dark. “I don’t like this,” she whimpered. “Carry me?”
I theorized that one pair of legs, even carrying a little girl, could speed up this trip. The going was difficult with only one free arm and Karen’s legs bouncing against my thighs. The padded floor felt far away. I couldn’t remember where my legs ended.
We turned and twisted along, hopefully not backtracking. Karen controlled herself, whimpering softly until wet, wormlike tendrils dripped across our faces. At that, she screamed, directly into my right ear.
“It’s spaghetti!” I shouted, pushing us around yet another turn.
“GGGRRRRRRHAH!” shouted a furry gorilla, illuminated in a burst of green light. “YEEEOWRL!”
“You’re Nicholas’s father!” Karen screamed. “You aren’t scary! You aren’t! You aren’t a gorilla at all!” Nevertheless, she put both her hands around my neck in a stranglehold. “Run!” she shouted.
But I couldn’t, not on the soft flooring, not with my heavy burden. “Karen, we must be near the end of this place. Could you walk the last few feet? Please?”
She sniffled, braced herself, and let me put her down. Her grip on my hand was like a vise. Between Sissie’s claws and the fork a while ago, and Karen now, I figured I was going to have to discard that hand by the end of the evening. We moved even more slowly as Karen fumbled along, moving only after she had tested the ground several times.
“YEEEK!” the walls screamed.
“I don’t like this place,” Karen said again and again.
“We’re near the exit.” There was no sign that my assumption was correct. I had no idea where I was heading, or if I was merely retracing my steps. I groped along the side wall, formulating complaints to the people who’d designed this terrifying and dangerous place.
Then suddenly, my hand missed, cut through empty air. No wall. Nothingness. I groped in the other direction. More nothingness. I lost all sense of direction and felt lost in an enormous void. Where were its edges? Where was the way out?
“YEEEE!” the building said. “YEY-YAH-HEHEHE-HE!” It didn’t stop, so that I was deafened and dislocated. My breathing accelerated as I fought off panic, my free arm flailing, my whole body frozen in place, afraid to move and fall, become lost—
And then a red burst of pain exploded in the dark. Something heavy hit my neck. I screamed—but the invisible speakers outdid me. I lurched forward, dropping Karen’s hand, struggling to regain my footing and not to cry.
“I hate this!” Karen screamed, but I could barely hear her.
“YOU’LL NEVER LEAVE MY MAZE!” the electronic maniac screamed.
“Mommy!” Karen wailed.
What in God’s name had slugged me? That couldn’t be part of the tour. There was something or someone nearby, and I had no idea of the size of our arena or the location of my attacker. My impulse was to curl up, hide, become too small a target.
“I want my mommy!” Karen repeated.
I was afraid to say anything at all.
“YEEEEEAH!” the walls screamed.
There was no way to avoid whatever had cracked me on the neck, and I couldn’t stand there in the dark. I groped and stumbled until I found Karen, who screamed and then grabbed on to me. I pulled her, propelling us in the direction I hoped was forward.
And directly into a solid mass of flesh that pushed back, hard.
“MYSTEREEEE!” the walls screamed.
“What the—” a voice shouted.
“MOMMY!” Karen continued.
A large hand grabbed me, pulled me, pushed me. For the second time in my life—and in the week—I instinctively raised my knee.
I heard a groan.
The hand fell away.
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!” Karen screamed, filling the dark, filling my mind.
“DON’T SCREAM!” I answered, rationally or not, and I ran forward blindly, tripping on the mushy padding, pulling both of us down.
I heard heavy breathing.
“GET UP!” I screamed.
And then I saw the three-sided slit of light that had to mean a door. And finally, a dim red light above it that spelled safety, E-X-I-T.
“Run!” I shouted. “That way!” And despite the spongy footing, we galloped to the back door.
I didn’t stop until I was outside on the firm cement behind the Maze, surrounded by parked cars and streetlights. It was a fish store in a shopping center, I told myself. But it had been all my childhood nightmares boiled in a cauldron until it condensed into those noises, the lost floors and walls and sense of direction, the menacing stranger. It had been the whole last week, bound up in a dark package that held nothing normal, nothing solid, and nothing that made sense.
“Let’s find your daddy,” I said, but the back door opened, and now that I was back in a normal world, I wanted to see what manner of monster emerged.
It wasn’t a monster. It was the Hunchbacked Clown of Notre Dame. A strange doubled-over figure in bright patchwork pantaloons and whiteface craned its neck in my direction. “Mandy!” it said from its crouched position. “What are you doing here? Christ, you wouldn’t believe what happened in there.”
I stared at Gus. My neck still hurt. It felt as if somebody had wanted to break it.
“I bumped into somebody,” he said, “and Jesus…”
I guess I should have confessed, explained, but I was physically sore and mentally troubled. The vague, enormous fear I’d had inside the Maze had diminished into a hard little question mark.
“Why were you in there, Gus?” I was going to require a fantastic answer. Like me, Gus was not the type to consider using up a break from his work for a dash into a midnight-dark padded cell. Unless he had seen me, followed me, almost managed to break my neck.
“Petey,” he said with a sigh.
“What’s that? Code?”
“That’s that.” A young blond boy came out by himself, smiling.
“Petey!” Karen exclaimed with delight.
“Sissie asked me to take him through,” Gus said slowly, wincing. “I don’t know why I agreed. I wish I could rub where it hurts.”
“I stayed in all by myself,” Petey Bellinger said.
“That was fun, wasn’t it?” My hypocritical niece’s voice was blithe.
“Yeah,” Petey said. “Want to do it again? I wasn’t scared, but some people screamed.”
“They must be babies,” Karen said with scorn.
“I didn’t think you’d be out this soon.” The appearance of Sam was like a lighthouse beam in a storm. He no longer appeared dull, predictable, unexciting. Or rather, he was all those things, and they were wonderful. The action-packed life was not for me. I was in pain. I no longer trusted my friends. I felt ill and confused and over my head, and I didn’t want to stay at this party any longer.
“Gus Winston,” Gus said, introducing himself.
“Ah, yes, Mandy’s friend.” Sam shook Gus’s hand.
I didn’t know anything anymore. I felt much younger and less worldly-wise than Karen, and I wanted a night-light and a bedtime story that ended happily.