That store Floyd managed probably should have been closed long ago or at least moved out to one of the malls, but it had been in the family a long time, always on that same corner of Sixth and Main, literally the cornerstone — or cornerstore — of the family legend, so John was reluctant, history sparing what history had abandoned, to shut it down, at least so long as his father was alive, and Mitch, though he had turned over most of the local day-to-day operations to his son and had announced his retirement more than once, showed no intention of cashing his chips in soon, on the contrary. Mitch’s wartime profits had made him the largest landowner in the county and an influential business leader throughout the state, he was a major player in the area and felt that staying in the game was what kept him in the pink and his golf score down. He did not want to get in John’s way, though, so, complying with the old wild oats dictum, once his to lay on John, he moved his financial dealings away from home and out into the national and international markets, crossing paths with his boy only when it came to a profitable exploitation of his local landholdings. John was just a kid, still in his mid-twenties when they worked up their first big project together, a neighborhood mall on the road out to the golf course, the town’s first. Barnaby was still very much in the picture then, so it was a shopping center solid as Main Street and appealingly brick-cottagey, built in a semicircle around a parking lot with a fountain in the center and potted bushes lining the border, but it was soon found to be, as John had chafingly predicted, woefully inadequate. John called it a misuse of light and space, meaning he wanted more blacktop and more glass and less superfluous detail. The bushes blocked the display windows, the fountain (long since paved over) collected excrement and graffiti as wishing wells caught coins and used up valuable parking space, the heavy brickwork inhibited turnover renovations and the personal expression of the shopkeepers, and Barnaby’s ban on marquees and neon and rooftop signs, Mitch’s son felt, was like banning popcorn in the movie theaters. Worst of all was the lack of expansive unobstructed brightly lit shop floorspace, America’s no-tricks answer to all the mirrored Versailles of the world, a mistake that John, riding over his father-in-law’s muttered objections, put right on all his future shopping centers, but one never resolved in that first mall, now limited to arts and crafts boutiques, beauty parlors, and home video outlets. Barnaby’s latest fiasco, his attempted raid on the family company, Mitch found repugnant and in fact completely loony, as though Audrey’s death might have knocked Barn off his rocker, but, father to one, longtime business crony of the other, he did understand what divided John and his father-in-law, at least while the old curmudgeon was not yet himself so cruelly divided. John’s first constructions had been high school and college theater sets: fantasy structures thrown up and knocked down in a day, and sufficient unto it, as the saying went, constructions Barnaby would never even acknowledge as such. Barnaby’s first was his own home, a classic pictured to this day in books on twentieth-century American architecture, books John scoffed at as the purblind trivia of academic twinkies who wouldn’t know which end of the hammer to pick up.
Clarissa, diminutive queen of the mall rats and the pool punks, would have loved her grandfather’s description of her daddy’s constructions as “fantasy structures.” Especially the malls. Pure magic. They were, always had been ever since she was little. Like fairy kingdoms, sun palaces. They let her run wild in them back then and she could do no wrong and everybody smiled at her and gave her treats and presents, it was very exhilarating. Her daddy used to bring circus acts and musicians and famous comedians to the malls to draw the crowds, and there were always coin-operated machines to ride or play and free badges and balloons from the stores and special decorations for every season with Valentine redhots and chocolate Easter bunnies and Fourth of July fireworks and Halloween masks and corn candies and Christmas Santas. When she was only five years old she was a model in a spring swimsuit show out there, and she never forgot how they laughed and cheered, especially her daddy with his dazzling eyes lit up, when, in the middle of her routine, she tucked one arm in and, with a smile like the ones she’d seen on television, let the shoulder strap fall to her elbow. It was electric. Then her daddy built the new mall with the big food court in it and that became her favorite. Still was, even though there was an even fancier one now out by the highway. All the big kids started hanging out there in the food court, and lots of intense things were going on, grown-up things, though in the beginning she didn’t know exactly what. Just that they seemed too important to miss. And now, for the first time, she was no longer allowed to run free, she always had to be with her mother or Granny Opal, the only grandmother she had left, so that just proved it. Something was happening. Luckily, there was a video games arcade right next to the taco bar and she could always get them to take her and Jennifer there (they were best friends now and both curious as cats), and then go for a coffee and leave them alone. It helped when her granddad had his stroke, because the retirement home was out near the mall and Granny Opal or her mother, whichever one was with them, often slipped away then to pay him a visit. Anyway, Clarissa was in high school now and too old to be chaperoned, and she said so in no uncertain terms. This was her real life and it wasn’t fair to let her miss it. Jen, who was a preacher’s kid, loved it at the malls just as much as Clarissa did; her word for it was “spiritual.” She said she thought there was something phony about church and Sunday school with their blowhard Moseses and dead Jesuses, the malls were where God was going to show Himself (or Herself) if anywhere at all. You could just feel it. She and Jen figured out most things out there — the dare-me shoplifting, the ripped-off stuff for sale, the alcohol snuck into the rootbeers and milkshakes, the secret pot smoking and the funny pills and the furtive dealing, what was going down at the far end of the parking lot when people paired up and went out there for a while, all that — and they started dressing in printed album-cover tee shirts and leather jackets and chains and torn designer jeans so as to fit in better. Jen even got herself a nose ring, though she never wore it back home at the manse, she said it really freaked her mother. Clarissa was not so sure about this. Jennifer’s mom used to be a hippie, and she was still spaced out a lot of the time. Which could be fun, she now knew. There was a lot of cigarette smoking going on out at the mall, too, of course, it seemed like everyone had the deathweed habit, but Clarissa didn’t go that far. It was the one completely serious thing her father had ever said to her: “Clarissa, please. Promise me. Don’t.” And she had promised, and she’d never break her promise either, though she took it for granted if it wasn’t tobacco, it was okay. Her dad loved her, but he was no square.