by Robert Maxxe
"But these are school hours," Carrie observed critically.
Patrick shrugged. "It was lunch time. They probably just ran over during recess."
Carrie turned away. She didn't like to think that kids might already be playing hooky on the first day the arcade was open. Though at least Nick wasn't there; if he had been, Patrick would have mentioned it.
She went back to preparing the phone orders for delivery, and no more was said about the arcade. She decided, however, that it might be a good idea if she went at the end of the day to have a look at the place for herself.
During the afternoon there were a couple of unexpected rush orders—Liz Dettweiler's refrigerator had gone on the blink the very day of the surprise sixtieth birthday party she was throwing for her husband and what did Carrie have to feed thirty-eight people?—and by the end of the day Carrie was bushed. Even if she'd thought of going to the arcade, she would have put it off in favor of going home. But she didn't think of it. She forgot.
After dinner that evening, Nick stayed in the kitchen to help clear the table and load the dishwasher.
"Can I go out?" he asked when the chore was done.
Carrie ticked off the reflex questions. "Finished your homework?"
"Yup. I'm two assignments ahead in math."
"Where do you want to go?"
"Town," Nick said. "Meet some of the guys."
"Meet them where?"
"The new place—the arcade."
Carrie poured soap powder into the dishwasher and turned it on. She didn't know why, but she wished she could deny Nick permission. It wasn't that she believed that nonsense about the Mafia, or cared if Nick spent a dollar or two. She just sensed something about the pull of the place, and didn't like the way it had sprouted up so suddenly in the smooth, stable life of the town. It was like a weed pushing up through concrete—a tiny, insignificant thing that could make a fissure in a solid surface.
But there were no grounds to refuse Nick, none at all. Almost a year ago, when he turned twelve, Nick had been granted the right to go out by himself after dinner, provided he asked permission, let Carrie know where he would be, and didn't stay out much more than an hour. During the summer, Carrie has eased the time limitation. She didn't worry about Nick traveling by himself around Millport. Three or four times a week he would take his bike and ride over to Dougie Bannerman's for their band practice, or down to Elm Street, where the kids gathered at Osgood's soda fountain. Nick was very good about observing the rules, and always returned home well before his bedtime.
"Mom?" Nick prodded when Carrie's silence lasted. "Can I go now?"
"Sure, go ahead," she said. "Just be careful."
Nick was already pulling open the back door. He stopped and squinted at Carrie.
"Careful? Of what?"
She had to wonder herself what had been behind the warning. Simply that vague unfocused apprehension. A mother's fears.
"I meant," she said, "on your bike—now that it's dark."
"Oh."
"And be home by nine."
"Earlier," Nick volunteered. "They're having try-outs at school tomorrow for the soccer JV, and I want to be sure I'm rested." He went out.
From the window over the sink, Carrie watched him ride down the driveway on his bike, legs pumping furiously. Setting his cap to make the soccer team, two assignments ahead in math. No need to worry about Nick.
She gave Emily her bath, then sat on her bed and read a few pages from Mary Poppins Comes Back, until she saw that Emily had fallen asleep. Then she made herself a cup of cinnamon tea and brought it into the living room. Sitting on the sofa, Carrie opened the New York Times. Wednesday's "Living" section had good recipes sometimes, things to try for the store. But she looked first at the news, conscientiously determined to bring herself up-to-date on what was happening in the world. As usual, she fell asleep over the paper.
She woke to the sounds of Nick clattering back into the house. True to his word, he was home well before nine.
"Have a good time?" Carrie called drowsily.
"Okay," Nick shouted back as he climbed the stairs. The standard reply.
She straightened the living room and collected the newspaper to bring to her bedroom. It would be added to the stack by her bed that she planned to go through any day now.
At the top of the stairs, she paused before turning toward her room. A responsible parent, she thought, might probe a little into Nick's experience at the arcade.
But it was too late. Looking into his room, she saw the light was already out.
The next morning Carrie was in the store surveying the shelves with Stan Josephson, a food jobber who took her monthly orders for certain imported items, when Peg Wessel came in. "Hi, Carrie," she trilled. "Got a minute for me?"
"You'll have to wait till I've done my business with this gentleman," Carrie answered coolly. She surmised at a glance the reason for the visit. Cradled in one arm Peg Wessel had a thick sheaf of papers; undoubtedly they were fliers, and Peg was making the rounds, asking everyone on Elm Street for permission to tape one up in their windows. Peg was Millport's professional do-gooder and champion of all worthy causes. "Why don't you go a few other places and come back?" Carrie suggested.
"That's all right," Peg said. "I'll wait."
Carrie took her time with the jobber, making sure she had every item she wanted, going over the order twice very carefully. Then, since the holiday season wasn't far off, she took as an afterthought an extra dozen jars of the Italian brandied cherries and the French chestnut puree. She kept Peg Wessel waiting a good long time. But at last the jobber left.
"Come back to my office," Carrie said briskly to Peg, who had remained standing against a wall of shelves. Though she could hear how cold and bitchy she sounded, Carrie couldn't help it: Peg Wessel was the one person in the world Carrie genuinely detested.
A smug, opinionated woman who regarded every shift in the status quo as a threat to the whole fabric of her existence—a life as deliberately styled and colored as the yellow hair she wore styled in a jeune fille page boy—Peg Wessel had not been glad about Carrie's settling in Millport as a full-time resident. Nor had she liked it that Carrie came with plans to start a business and support herself. Exactly why Peg had taken this badly, Carrie could never figure out. She was only aware that in the early days Peg had been her enemy. It was Peg who had contrived to inject fear into other local women that an attractive young widow moving into their midst could upset invisible balances, even imperil their marriages. She had done it insidiously, one of those people capable of performing evil magic by sleight of tongue, the "unintentional" innuendo, the remark that gets "accidentally" overheard. It was months before any of the other women had finally broken faith with Peg and invited Carrie to a dinner party, where she learned why she had been frozen out.
Since then, Carrie had become a fixture in town, and a popular favorite of most wives (who relied on her for help with their dinner parties). Now Peg was always friendly—and no matter what Carrie did to discourage Peg's swarming familiarity, it went unnoticed.
In the office, Carrie motioned Peg to the extra chair. "Would you like coffee?" she asked. There was some warm on the electric percolator, and Carrie felt like a cup herself.
"That would be lovely," Peg said, putting her armload of papers on a corner of the desk.
Carrie poured two mugs.
Peg declined cream and sugar and took a long sip. "Mmmm. Carrie, your coffee is absolutely the best in the whole world."
"What did you want to see me about, Peg?"
"This." She handed Carrie a paper from the stack.
It was indeed a flier, announcing a "panel discussion" to be held at the high school auditorium on a Friday night next month. A headline gave the discussion's theme as "Video Games: Is It Time to Push the Panic Button?" A couple of the panel members were listed. One was Howard Ryman, principal of Millport High; the second name was Wendy Patowski. The flier also promised "other distinguished gue
st speakers."
"Who," asked Carrie, "is Wendy Patowski?"
Peg looked askance. "You really don't know? She's had quite a lot of publicity lately. I suppose you work so hard, Carrie, that you don't have time to keep up with the news."
"Who is Wendy Patowski?" Carrie repeated.
"She's a woman, just like you or me, who organized a group in her town that chased out one of these arcades. The movement has gone national and now she speaks all over the country."
Carrie handed back the flier. "Tape one in my window, if you want."
"There's one other thing, Carrie. We're hoping to get a couple of thousand signatures on a petition before the meeting. Wendy says it would help push things along."
Carrie hesitated before asking to see it. If Peg Wessel was pushing to close the arcade, that struck Carrie as just one more reason to keep it open. Peg epitomized all that was small-minded and prejudiced. And yet, Carrie thought, it would be no less pusillanimous to rule out automatically any viewpoint simply because it was held by someone you disliked.
"Let me read it," Carrie said.
The short manifesto at the top had clearly been dashed off in a white heat by Peg herself. Decrying the proliferation of video games, it described them as "irresponsible by-products of technology, pointless computerized garbage that pollutes the minds of our precious young people"; and it called for the immediate closing of the Elm Street arcade "so that this poisonous electronic plague can claim no more innocent victims."
Carrie scanned the signatures. The first was Peg's, the next her husband's, and the third belonged to Helen Luchek, who lived next door to the Wessels and had two-year-old twins. There were just four other names. Peg's effort didn't seem to be meeting with much more success than George Patterson's legal fund.
Carrie passed the paper back. "I can't sign this, Peg."
"How can you not care? You're a mother."
"I care very much. But the social value of these games—or lack of it—and the effect on our kids aren't the only issues."
"I don't see any others," Peg said.
Carrie reeled them off. "Freedom, justice, censorship."
"Oh tush." With a flip of her hand, Peg dismissed the cornerstones of the Bill of Rights. "How does that come in?"
"You think it's fair to close down somebody's business just because we don't like what's being sold? Doesn't strike me as very different from somebody trying to close Treats because they think I oversalt all my patés."
"Oh, Carrie, be serious—"
"I am. The idea behind my business isn't so different from the arcade's. I'm trying to give people pleasure too. But you couldn't really say there's any redeeming social benefit in eating creamed herring or hazelnut cheesecake."
Peg Wessel laughed loudly, a sound somewhat resembling the call of a loon. "Goodness, it's not the same at all. What you sell isn't potentially dangerous. What do you think it does to children—staring for hours and hours into those little screens, shooting laser guns, fighting space battles? It's poison for their eyes, and it trains them in violent behavior. How do you stack that up against hazelnut cheesecake?"
"All that cholesterol?" Carrie said. "It can kill you. . . ."
Suddenly suspicious that she was being mocked, the other woman's expression grew grave and tight. "There's no comparison," she declared.
But Carrie was having fun now. "Isn't there? It's just a matter of appetites and how you indulge them. And the answer is the same in both cases, a sensible diet. If we don't want our kids to get misled, it's our job to lay down rules, steer them in a better direction. Removing temptation is just a cop-out, a way of avoiding the hard work of being a parent. It's like outlawing chocolate cake because it makes some people fat and they don't have the willpower not to gorge themselves." Not bad, Carrie thought; she could have helped the justices of the Supreme Court liven up their opinion in the matter of video games.
Peg rose and pulled down the colored sweat shirt she favored along with jeans for daytime wear. "I can see we're getting nowhere," she said, sweeping up her papers. "Though, frankly, Carrie, I expected more help from you. I never could have imagined you'd reduce a serious matter like this to a discussion of . . . of calories!"
Carrie smiled and shrugged. If the point of her analogy had been so completely missed, no further word could possibly make a difference. Peg frowned, and walked out of the office.
Carrie made no move to see her out of the store. But when she went out front a few minutes later, Peg was still there, taping her flier in the window. Carrie stood by until the job was finished, and then held the street door open. As Peg exited with her armload of fliers, she muttered a couple of words hotly under her breath. They sounded to Carrie like "chocolate cake."
Carrie started to laugh, but the impulse died. She believed everything she had said to Peg Wessel—as a matter of principle. But then she remembered her encounter with Mr. Peale, and her feeling that Mr. Peale was a man with a mission.
She was long overdue, Carrie realized, for taking a look at the arcade—the place that for some unaccountable reason Mr. Peale had initially kept a secret.
7
Weekdays during the off-season her closing time was five-thirty. But by five o'clock there hadn't been a customer in the store for the past forty minutes. The street outside looked unusually quiet and lifeless. She told Patrick they were closing early.
They locked up together and, after saying good-night to Patrick, Carrie stood and watched him walk away. For all their camaraderie at work, she still knew almost nothing about how he spent his own time. He lived in a room rented from an elderly widow with a large Victorian house, but Carrie had never been invited there. She couldn't remember him ever making or receiving a personal phone call in the store. Once or twice she had brought Patrick home to dinner, but the evenings had been stilted and uneasy; the friendship that blossomed at work wilted quickly in the social setting. Carrie wondered if she had reached out enough, and thought of shouting after him. Maybe he'd like to walk with her to the arcade.
But then he turned a corner and the chance was lost. She went off in the other direction.
Walking along, she was struck again by the rare emptiness and quiet. Once each year there was a day like this that seemed to mark the turning point between fall and winter. Nothing at all was moving. Other stores had closed early, too. In the rich golden light of the late October afternoon, the town looked almost as if it had been trapped in amber.
Approaching the arcade, Carrie was struck by a funny thought. Maybe everyone had departed from routine for the same reason. Right now the cottage was crammed inside with shopkeepers magnetized by their curiosity, parents anxious to inspect this potential "electronic plague."
But the sidewalk outside was as empty as the rest of the street. On balance, Carrie thought, the cottage certainly did look ten times better than when Pooh had lived there. It helped that the signs hadn't been turned on yet—no garish blue light shone from the windows.
She felt a surge of annoyance, however, as she came up to the entrance and saw that the old oak door of the cottage had been replaced by a smoked-glass panel with an anodized aluminum frame. The modern door, which clashed with the traditional style of the building, was a violation of the tenant's pledge to preserve the original facade. Stepping up to pull the metal handle, she peered through the glass panel. She could see nothing but darkness broken by pinpoints of colored light. She went in.
There was no tumult, no jostling mob. She was alone. Having braced herself against a crowd, the absolute silence was strangely stunning. She stayed by the door, scanning the interior. It was dark except for shafts of dim light that fell from recesses in the ceiling. Each shaft, pale as a moonbeam, shone down on one of the machines. There were nine in all, arranged in a "U," four along each side and one facing away at the rear center. She understood why Patrick had remarked at the number. In the shopping center's pizza parlor half a dozen machines had been jammed into a single corner. Here, in a spac
e vast by comparison, there were only nine, set many feet apart—isolated islands in the sea of darkness.
From Patrick's description Carrie had expected a restful atmosphere, subdued lighting, pale colors. She could see that the walls and carpet were indeed a neutral gray. Oddly, though, the effect wasn't tranquil. With the minimal light, it induced in her the sensation of floating in space, being helplessly adrift in a boundless vacuum. She felt momentarily dizzy, even a little starved of breath, and had an impulse to flee back into the light and air.
But then it passed. And she realized that she was only in the thrall of a decorator's clever effects. Those who entered the arcade were meant to feel exactly this way: as if they had been cast into the empty vastness of a galaxy where the machines were the only oases of life, planets in the fathomless sea of the cosmos.
She took a step toward the first machine on her right. She moved tentatively, imagining she might fall weightless into a void before she reached the game. The video screen, glowing with colors, seemed to become more intensely bright as she moved closer.
Then she noticed that the halo of light beamed down from the ceiling had dimmed slightly. She took another step forward and the light faded a bit more. Maybe there was a pressure-sensitive area around the machine—as a player went nearer, the ceiling fixture adjusted automatically. Testing the theory, Carrie took a step back. The light brightened a little. She went forward again. The light dimmed. Clever. The increased darkness enhanced the video screen and made the player focus more intently on this harbor of light. Coming up to the machine, Carrie felt somewhat as if she were "docking" in space.
It was not like any others she had seen, Carrie realized as she stood directly in front. There were, of course, similarities—a video screen placed above a waist-high control panel. But this machine was much larger, more imposing. The screen was substantially bigger, too, and curved slightly around so that there was an illusion of sinking into its image, being embraced by three-dimensional depths. From each side of the chassis, right-angled protrusions emerged, bracketing the head of the player in the manner of a "wing-back" chair. Carrie was just wondering what the wings were for, when the sound began to pour out. They were stereophonic speakers.