Lost Boys Part 26

"Well, I always say what I think, and I prefer it when other people do, too."

"Of course," said Jenny. "You're a westerner. And the southerners in the ward all think that us westerners are the most crude, pushy, bossy, obnoxious, contentious, cantankerous fight-pickin' chest-pokin' rapscallions as ever crossed the Mississippi going the wrong way. If you catch my drift."

"Was that cowboy talk?" asked DeAnne.

"Trust me," said Jenny. "You'll never get a southern Relief Society president to release somebody who doesn't want to be released. Oh, she'll hint around about how it must be such a burden for poor Sister Opyer and I just don't know how you manage, you sweet thing, what with being so poorly all the time and still having to carry on the burdens of your calling. And if Sister Opyer ever said, It does seem so hard sometimes, but I can manage, then Ruby'd know to release her right off. But instead Sister Opyer says-I was there once, and I think I can remember-she said, 'Oh, Sister Bigelow, it's my calling that sustains me, it gives meaning to my life to know that in the midst of my own suffering I can go out and relieve someone else's.' And you know that after that, Ruby's got no hope of releasing Sister Opyer even if she dies."

"So we do her job," said DeAnne.

"Hey, it's the Lord's work and it needs to be done and we can do it."

"You're more of a Christian than I am."

"So do you want to make the salad or the ca.s.serole?"

"I'd like to make the biscuits."

"Not a chance," said Jenny. "You don't know how to make southern biscuits yet and I don't have time to teach you."

"They just look like Bisquick drop biscuits to me," said DeAnne.

"Don't ever say Bisquick around the women of the ward. Might as well sew a scarlet B on your dress after that."

"Salad, then," said DeAnne.

So instead of resting, DeAnne made a Jell-O salad and put it in the fridge to set. And then, along about one-thirty when the kids should have been napping, DeAnne strapped Robbie and Betsy into the car and drove over to pick up Jenny and her brood. They had talked about maybe one of them just tending all the kids while the other took the meal over, but then they realized that DeAnne was too pregnant and tired all the time to deal with Jenny's rowdy crew and DeAnne also couldn't deal with the terror she felt whenever her kids were at Jenny's house and besides, Jenny knew the way and DeAnne needed to get out of the house so there was no other way to handle it-they both went and took the kids.

The family they took dinner to lived way out in the county, and on the long drive back home the kids all fell asleep. Quietly Jenny asked how things were going with Stevie. "Did you decide to go with any of the names that Dr. Greenwald gave you?"

"Step's against taking Stevie to anybody like that," said DeAnne. "I mean really against it. He's not rational about it. I think he'd rather that I had an affair."

"Men," said Jenny. "And they say we're irrational."

"Well, there's some reason for it, but he never says," said DeAnne.

"Does he have some relative who's a shrink?" asked Jenny.

"No," said DeAnne. "Why?"

"I mean, I have an uncle who's a real estate agent and so I hate all real estate agents. I just see one and I want to go get my gun."

"Because of your own uncle?"

"The sleazeball of all sleazeb.a.l.l.s," said Jenny. "I can't go into detail because of the little pitchers in the back, but believe me, if you knew this guy you'd want to impose the death penalty for general offensiveness."

"Well, he's got no shrinks in his family, anyway," said DeAnne.

"So," said Jenny, "when are you going to take Stevie in?"

"I said, Step won't do it."

"You're at home," said Jenny. "Now that he works human hours, he carpools, so you have the car. You also have the checkbook. Take Stevie in and what's Step going to know till you've done it?"

DeAnne was appalled. "Would you really do such a thing to Spike?"

"If Spike ever dared to put his foot down and forbid me to do something that I knew my child needed, h.e.l.l yes!"

"Well Step didn't put his foot down," said DeAnne. "We just didn't agree, that's all."

"Well then what's the problem?" asked Jenny. "If he didn't forbid it, then you can just go and do it."

DeAnne was nonplussed. It was as though Jenny came from a different tribe with strange marriage customs. "Jenny" she said, "Step and I don't do things about the children until we agree."

"I can see it now," said Jenny. "The child bleeding to death on the lawn, and you on the phone talking it out with Step."

"It's not like that," said DeAnne. Then she closed her mouth and decided it would be better if she said nothing else.

After a minute, Jenny broke the silence. "Um, if you want to kill me, could you wait till we've got the kids out of the car?"

"What?" asked DeAnne.

"You're going about sixty and this is a thirty-five zone."

It was true. DeAnne immediately put on the brake and the kids lurched around in the back, making grumbling noises in their sleep. "Sorry," said DeAnne.

"Look, be mad at me if you want," said Jenny, "but it's Step you're mad at and you know it. Call it what you want, he's stopping you from doing what you know is right for your child. The mother bear in you is not happy DeAnne. Besides, one of those doctors is even in the ward. Well, she's not a member herself, but her son just joined."

DeAnne made a connection in her mind. "Step was just a.s.signed to a home teaching companion like that. A young man whose mother isn't a member but she drives him to church."

"That's the one," said Jenny. "She's a shrink. Dr. Greenwald told me she was probably the one most likely to have an opening, too."

"Why, because she's no good?"

"Because she's a woman," said Jenny. "Most men have a harder time going to a woman therapist, and a lot of women have an easier time going to a man. Or they think they will, anyway. Dr. Greenwald said. It's like gynecologists. I for one don't understand why any woman would go to a male ob-gyn ever, now that there are women doing the job, but they still dominate the business. Anyway, she's got a connection with the Church and she's sympathetic. She's more likely to understand."

"Understand what?"

Jenny laughed. "I can see you've never been to a shrink. They think religious people are crazy"

"Not true," said DeAnne, thinking at once of Sheila Redmond back in Vigor. "I knew a therapist and she and her husband were serious Christians. Not Mormon, but they certainly didn't think it was crazy to be religious."

"Have you ever taken the Minnesota Multiphasic?"

DeAnne vaguely remembered that she had taken it once, but couldn't recall anything more than that.

"It's got questions all over it like, Do you believe that G.o.d sometimes talks to you? I mean, that's our whole religion, isn't it? That G.o.d still talks to human beings. And by their rules it means we're crazy!"

For the first time DeAnne began to think that maybe Step was right. If psychiatrists were really like that, then it could be a disaster to take Stevie to see one. As Step said, they didn't really cure people that often. And if the psychiatrist actually did talk Stevie out of his belief in the gospel ...

"What I'm saying," said Jenny, "is that maybe you can talk Step into it if he knows the shrink and trusts her. So just make sure he does his home teaching and meets Lee Weeks's mom."

Step came home with his trophies: a copy of his employment agreement, excluding Hacker Snack and any work he might do for computers not being supported by Eight Bits Inc., and the memo from Ray Keene stating that Eight Bits Inc. would not be supporting the IBM PC. He thought DeAnne would be overjoyed.

"I can quit now," he said.

"Not really" she said.

"The option in our contract with Agamemnon says that at any point in the first six months I can send them a letter saying I'll be working on PC programs for them, and that's it. We get a check. And when I turn in Hacker Snack for the 64 we get another check. And when I turn in Hacker Snack for the PC, we get another check. Which means that before Christmas, if I work hard enough and learn 8088 machine language quick enough, we'll have had a total income this year of more than fifty thousand dollars."

"That's fine when all that money comes," said DeAnne. "But what about right now? You may have noticed that we have a baby due in July. I don't think we're going to be able to get a new insurance policy that will cover a preexisting pregnancy."

Step looked at her belly for a moment, as if the baby might come up with an idea.

"You can't quit till the baby is born," she said. "As it is, the first check from Agamemnon will barely catch us up on the house in Vigor." She held up a letter. "They're warning us that we have thirty days to bring the loan current before they'll begin foreclosing on the house."

"But don't you see?" said Step. "If I quit right now, we'll have enough money to pay for the house and the baby."

"Do you think I haven't gone over the figures?" said DeAnne. "Do you think I haven't read the Agamemnon contract? Do you think I haven't calculated all our payments down to the penny? If you quit now, and anything goes wrong with the pregnancy, we'll be in such deep trouble that we'll never get out. We need the insurance. We've got to be covered."

She was right, but she was also wrong. "DeAnne, Ray's decision not to support the PC is a deep and serious mistake. Somewhere along the line-and I think it'll be soon-Ray will realize that and there'll be another memo. We have a brief time right now when I can quit and go straight into PC projects. But if Eight Bits Inc. is supporting the PC when I quit, then I have to wait a year before I can do anything but Hacker Snack for Agamemnon, and we really can't live on just Hacker Snack for one year, even if it sells brilliantly."

DeAnne looked away from him; he could see that she was trying to control her emotions. "I don't know what to do, then," she said.

"I can't even afford to buy a PC until we exercise our option and get the check from Agamemnon," said Step.

"If we lose the house in Indiana," said DeAnne, "that'll be on our record forever. Every loan application there'll be a questionhave you ever been in default on a loan? Have you ever had a mortgage foreclosed?"

"We won't lose the house," said Step. "We'll lower the selling price, what about that? We won't even get our equity out. That's fifteen thousand down the toilet, but-"

"It's more than that," said DeAnne. "It's the money we spent on the new furnace and the air-conditioning and the rewiring and the Anderson windows and I wish we'd never moved! If we had stayed there and you had just gone to San Francisco on your own, you could have signed with Agamemnon and we'd still be in the house and-"

"DeAnne," said Step, "what good will it do for us to start second-guessing ourselves? We had no way of knowing Agamemnon would take me on-we wrote to them, didn't we? And how would I have gone to San Francisco? We were already broke."

"I know," she said. "But I feel us circling and circling around in a whirlpool, getting sucked down, and this job is something to hold on to."

"What we need to hold on to is my ability as a game designer," said Step. "I'm good at it. I've seen it at Eight Bits Inc. I really do see things that other programmers don't see. I have a knack for it. You've got to trust me, DeAnne, not the check from Ray Keene."

"Don't put it that way!" There was fire in her eyes. "Don't you dare put it that way! Trust in you-I've trusted my whole life to you, the lives of my children, my whole future forever So don't tell me that if I ask you not to quit your job until after the baby is born it means I don't trust you."

"We're fighting about money," said Step.

"We're not fighting at all," said DeAnne. "We're worrying together."

"I'll stick with the job for a while. But if it starts looking like Ray's going to change his policy, I'm quitting on the spot. Not even giving notice. I can't afford to give up this Agamemnon thing."

"Fine, that's good."

But it wasn't good, Step knew. Ray Keene wouldn't give any advance signals that he was going to change his mind. He'd just send around another memo, announcing that Eight Bits Inc. was going to support the PC. It wouldn't even mention that there had ever been a different policy. And there Step would be, holding that new memo, feeling his future slip away. I'll be under d.i.c.ky's control, then, Step thought. For years and years and years.

Still, at the moment he knew that DeAnne's fears were more important than his. So he would stay on the job, and they would just have to pray that Ray Keene would be really stupid.

To help ease the tension, Step took over fixing dinner. It was simple-toasted tuna and cheese sandwiches-and while he was doing it, DeAnne could go lie down. But she stayed in the kitchen and tore up lettuce for a salad. Step knew that her way of relaxing was to be with him, to talk to him. His way was exactly the opposite. What he needed was to be alone in the kitchen, fixing dinner, concentrating on the task at hand, letting his tension slip away. But DeAnne could never seem to understand that. When she saw that he was tense or upset or worried, she tried to minister to him, fuss over him, chat with him until he wanted to scream, Just leave me alone! He never did, though. Now he stayed in the kitchen with her as she talked about her day, letting her unwind, knowing that he would be able to get off by himself later, that when he sat down at the 64 in his office and started working on the Hacker Snack adaptation again, he could shut everything out and that would be good solo time for him.

As Step was still mixing up the tuna and Miracle Whip, the phone rang. It was a woman. "Is this Mr. Fletcher?"

"Yes," said Step. "And who is this?"

"I'm Lee Weeks's mother. I understand you want to take him somewhere tonight."

Step was puzzled. He hadn't called Lee Weeks yet. He was too busy. It was nearly the end of the month, and so he needed to call him if he was going to get any of his May home teaching done. He had even said so to DeAnne. But he hadn't actually called Lee Weeks. And he certainly had not planned on going out home teaching tonight.

"Just a second," he said on the phone. "Can you hold on for a second?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Weeks.

Step covered the handset and looked at DeAnne. "It's my home teaching companion's mother. She thinks I'm planning to take him somewhere tonight."

"Yes," said DeAnne. "I called her for you. I thought you wanted me to help you get it scheduled."

"Tonight?" asked Step. "You didn't mention it to me."

"I didn't actually talk to anybody," said DeAnne. "I left a message on her machine, that's all. That you wanted to take him home teaching. I don't think I said tonight, but maybe something I said gave her that impression."

Step uncovered the phone. "Sorry for the delay," he said. "Yes, I wanted to take Lee home teaching. I've been a.s.signed as his companion. What we do is, we go visit in the homes of a few families in the ward. We teach a little lesson, we see if they need anything. Like a permanent Welcome Wagon, without the gift certificates."

She laughed. "Well, that certainly sounds fine. But I'd like to meet you before you take him. You know that he doesn't drive. Sometimes he tries to, and you must understand that he is not to drive. He doesn't have a license. And I need to meet you, I think."

"Yes," said Step. "I'd be glad to meet you, and I won't let him drive." How old did she think her son was? At nineteen, the poor kid still had his mother screening anybody who came to pick him up and take him anywhere. And she made such a point of his not driving.

Maybe he's an epileptic or something. Maybe he can't drive and it isn't just that she's being overprotective. Give the woman the benefit of the doubt.

"Lee will be ready at seven-thirty," said Mrs. Weeks. "Do you think you can have him home by nine?"

"Between nine and nine-thirty," said Step. "We wouldn't be able to visit anybody later than that anyway."

"Well, I'll look forward to meeting you, then."

She gave him the directions and they said their good-byes.

Step went back to the tuna fish, feeling glum. "I was all set to really plunge into Hacker Snack tonight," he said. "This wasn't a night that I wanted to go home teaching."

"I'm sorry," said DeAnne. "I've been thinking through what I said, and I'm sure that all I said was that my husband, Stephen Fletcher, wanted to set up an appointment to go home teaching with Lee Weeks. She's the one who interpreted that to mean tonight."

"Fine," said Step. "I wasn't blaming you." DeAnne seemed really upset. Or worried, anyway. She still hadn't calmed down since the conversation about quitting. "She sounds nice."

"So you're going home teaching then?"

"Yes," said Step.