Lost Boys Part 27

She seemed relieved. What, had she worried that he was somehow drifting away from the Church? Why would it relieve her when he went home teaching?

Never mind.

He turned the heat on the griddle. "If the salad's ready then I'll start toasting the sandwiches," he said.

"Yes, sure," said DeAnne. "I'll call the kids." She struggled to her feet and left the room.

Two months left, thought Step, and she's already so big she's got the pregnant-woman waddle. What's it going to be like for her by the end of July?

Lee Weeks lived in a simple ranch-style house out in the county, but there was a lot of yard around it and it was all meticulously landscaped and manicured. And the driveway was a turnaround. La-di-da, thought Step as he drove up and parked at the front door.

Mrs. Weeks answered the door. She was slim, and Step imagined that she probably thought of herself as tall, though of course she was much shorter than he was. She brought him into the living room and engaged him in conversation; he was aware that she was extracting information from him, but it wasn't really the information he expected her to be interested in. She did ask what he did for a living-the standard American status measurement-but then she went on to talk about an odd array of things, including local politics.

Gradually it dawned on him that she was testing him. But for what? She found out that he thought the mixed-race city schools should be consolidated with the mostly-white county schools. That he opposed Jesse Helms and his racist attacks on Governor Hunt, his probable opponent in the next election. What could this possibly have to do with Lee? Yet it was only when Lee's mother was certain that Step was a staunch civil rights supporter that she finally called her little boy into the room.

Little boy! When he walked into the room, Step realized that the kid must be at least six-five, because Step, at six-two, found himself staring straight into Lee's chin. Nineteen years old, tall enough to be an NBA guard, and his mother still wouldn't let him drive or go out with strangers until she interviewed them. Strange indeed. Especially since he was really a good-looking kid. Surely somewhere along the line he would have found out that he was attractive to women and got himself out from under her thumb.

Lee was cheerful enough, though, and when they finally got out into the car, Lee started laughing. "Mom's really something, isn't she!"

"A very interesting woman."

"She treats everybody like a patient." Lee seemed to be full of barely smothered mirth.

"A patient?"

"Oh, she's a shrink, didn't you know? Couldn't you feel yourself being a.n.a.lyzed?"

"I guess I could," said Step.

"She's nice, though," said Lee.

That was a weird thing to say about your own mother, thought Step. And he said it with such detachment that she could have been anybody. His teacher. His chauffeur.

Which, in fact, she was.

It was already well after eight o'clock, so Step had been right when he guessed that they'd probably only get to make one visit tonight. Step had decided on Sister Highsmith, an elderly widow, since she would presumably be glad to see them and wouldn't throw him any curves as he was introducing Lee to the idea of home teaching. On the way to her house, he briefly told Lee what home teaching was all about.

"Oh, so we're not, like, giving a lesson," said Lee.

"A message is all. Very brief. And then drawing her out, letting her talk. She's been a widow for twenty years, and she's kind of a talker. Doesn't get much company, so whoever comes over is going to get an earful. But that's fine-that's part of what we're coming for. To help her feel connected to the Church. To life."

"I thought you said this was your first time visiting these people."

"That's right. I've never met this sister, in fact. Or anyway, not that I remember."

"Then how do you know so much about her?" asked Lee.

"I don't know anything about her."

"She's a widow for twenty years, she's lonely, she's a talker..."

"Oh, well, that's just stuff that the elders quorum president knew about her. I mean, she's had home teachers before us."

"So we report on these people?"

"Man, you make it sound like we're spying," said Step, laughing.

Lee didn't laugh.

"Lee, it's not like that. We don't pry. People tell us what they want to tell us. Most of it's just like stuff you'd tell any friend. And we don't talk about it except if the Church needs to get involved. Like, for instance, this one family back in Vigor, Indiana, the dad was a trucker but he broke his leg playing touch football. They weren't even active in the Church, but I was their home teacher and I went to their house and the mom spilled her guts about how they didn't have any money and no insurance and they didn't know where to turn. She had a job, but as she said, she was getting paid like a woman, so they were not exactly going to make ends meet. They didn't have anything to eat till she got paid on Monday. So I invited them over to dinner at our house. And then I went and got her visiting teachers and we went to the store and did a week's worth of grocery shopping and dropped it off at their house."

"Oh," said Lee.

"We didn't tell anybody else in the ward except the bishop, and he got in touch with them about welfare a.s.sistance and it was all very discreet. You see what they need, and then you do it. If that's spying, I wish I had more spies in my life." Which was true enough-presumably someone had been a.s.signed to home teach Step's family, but they had never shown up. Home teaching was a great idea, but it just didn't happen all that often, and when it did it usually wasn't much more than dropping by, taking up a half hour with empty conversation, and then saying, Well, let us know if you need anything, and then they were gone till the last day of the next month. No need to tell Lee that yet, though. Why not let him think that Mormons actually took home teaching seriously and watched out for each other faithfully? There'd be plenty of time to be disillusioned later, and in the meantime Lee might have got into the habit of doing it right.

When they got to Sister Highsmith's apartment building, Step and Lee waited in the car for a moment while Step led them in a short prayer. Help us know what she needs and provide it for her, help her know that she can rely on us-that sort of prayer. Then they went up to the door and knocked.

It took forever for her to get to the door, but when she got there it was as if she were receiving royalty. She was dressed to the nines and her stark white hair looked as though she had just stepped out of a beauty parlor. She was gracious and elegant, as was her home, though it tended to be a little too knick-knacky for Step's taste. A grandma house, he decided, a grandma house where the grandchildren never came, so that nothing had ever had to be put up out of the reach of children.

But there were pictures of children, and so Step asked about them, and that was good for fifteen minutes of talk about how wonderful they were but their parents just didn't seem to take the gospel seriously and the children were downright frivolous sometimes, all except her son's eldest girl, who was quite a serious child and wrote to her once a month, without any prompting from the girl's parents, which is a very fine thing in this day and age when children have no respect.

When that subject wound down-that is, when Sister Highsmith started asking about his family-he answered her briefly and then commented on the fact that she didn't seem to have a southern accent. That was good for another fifteen minutes about all the moving around that she and Nick had done before he retired from the military and they settled in Steuben. He died a year to the day after he retired, even though he had just invested most of their savings and all of her inheritance in a little fast-food franchise, but it turned out that Der Wienerschnitzel just didn't do all that well in Steuben. It just wasn't a southern franchise, they realized too late-southerners didn't want mustard and onions on their hot dogs, they wanted chili and Cole slaw and they also wanted a place to sit down and they weren't going to pay Der Wienerschnitzel prices to do it. So the business wound down and even though she lost all that money, she didn't mind, because she had plenty of pension money on top of social security and her life with Nick had been a good life and if he had lived he would have made the franchise work, she was sure of it. So now it was just a matter of waiting until the Lord saw fit to take her home to heaven so she could be with Nick again.

"Do you really think he's in heaven?" asked Lee.

It was the first thing he had said in Sister Highsmith's house after the initial greeting, and the question just hung there in the air for a moment, as Sister Highsmith tried to discern whether he was challenging her a.s.sessment of her husband's righteousness.

"Brother Weeks here is new in the Church," Step explained. "I don't think he's suggesting that Brother Highsmith isn't in heaven, I think he's asking a doctrinal question."

"Oh, yes," said Lee. "I didn't think of it that other way-no, of course he's in heaven! I mean, even people who open hot dog franchises can still go to heaven, right?" He laughed, and Sister Highsmith and Step politely laughed along, though Step was meanwhile thinking, OK, let's get this boy out of here. Apparently Mommy hasn't given Lee much chance to learn what you do and don't say, and what you do and don't joke about.

"What I was asking," said Lee, "was whether you think your husband is a G.o.d."

Step cringed inside. What had the LeSueurs taught this boy? Step loathed the way that some Mormons bandied about the idea of G.o.dhood as if it were first prize at the county fair and really good Mormons would bring it home like a giant stuffed bear.

"I mean that's what first attracted me to the Mormons," said Lee. "Was the idea that human beings can become G.o.ds. I've always felt that. And then I saw this movie about how that's what you Mormons all believe and so I phoned up the church here in town and the missionaries came by."

"What was the movie?" asked Step. "Was it by any chance called The G.o.dmakers?"

"Yes, that was it," said Lee.

"That's an anti-Mormon film," said Step. "It distorts our doctrines beyond all recognition. And the answer to your question is no, Sister Highsmith does not believe that her husband is a G.o.d. He's a man, and a good man-am I right, Sister Highsmith?"

"The very best sort of man," she said. "He became a colonel before he retired."

"Yes," said Step, "and now his spirit has left his body behind and he lives on with those of his family who died before him. But Lee, becoming holy and perfect enough to fully share in G.o.d's work is very rare and when it does happen it would happen only after long development and a long, long time after death and to most people it never comes at all. It's not like becoming a colonel." And then, to help Lee realize that the discussion should now end, Step added, "And it's not a doctrine that we discuss much." Or at least, if we have any sense of proportion we don't discuss it much. We don't even understand what Joseph Smith meant by it, for heaven's sake! Much better to concentrate on things like loving your neighbor and trying not to screw up your life and the lives of everybody around you than to get into mysterious doctrines.

Apparently mysterious doctrines were all that Lee wanted to talk about. "I think about becoming a G.o.d all the time," he said. "I think it would be neat to design planets and stuff. I could sure do a better job than this world."

Sister Highsmith blanched, and Step knew that she would not be reluctant if he now got Lee out of the house. "Well," Step said, "it was wonderful to meet you, Sister Highsmith. Can we have a word of prayer before we go?"

"Oh, do you have to go already?" she said.

Step cringed again, waiting for her to say the obligatory Don't go, wait awhile, it's early yet.

But she didn't say it. "Well, how sweet of you two to come by. And I'd be glad if you'd say the prayer, Brother Fletcher."

Yes, Lee had really put the stamp of strangeness on this evening. Sister Highsmith was glad to see them go-not exactly the best finish for the evening.

Out in the car, Lee seemed oblivious to the idea that he might have said something wrong. "That was neat," he said. "To be able to talk like that about things that I've just kept bottled up inside for years. I mean, that's the best thing about the Mormons, I can tell my secret thoughts and people understand. Not like Mom, I can't tell her anything or she just a.n.a.lyzes me to death."

I can understand that, thought Step, if you talk very much about becoming a G.o.d. To a psychologist, no less!

"I can feel it inside me, you know," said Lee. "All the time. Sometimes even a voice. And I know that it's the voice of G.o.d, it's the presence of G.o.d, just like Sister LeSueur told me. She said she had a vision about me, that I had the seeds of G.o.dhood inside me and I was just waiting for the gospel to bring it out of me. Sometimes I think that if I could just strip away all the weakness of this body that just ties me down to earth I could fly. And I don't mean just flapping around like a sparrow or something, I mean soar up to the stars, go from planet to planet. I feel like that sometimes. I mean, sometimes I think that I really have done it, that yesterday I was on another planet just like this one, only the old one wasn't as real, this one is the real one, the other one was just an imitation and now, for the first time, I can see what reality is, what it means to be alive, and I think, No one else can see this, I'm the only one who can see this, because the G.o.d inside me has opened my eyes. Everybody else sees it, I mean, but they don't really see it. They see but they don't-they can see but-"

He was beginning to sound almost frantic, as if the right word were just out of reach and he couldn't quite find it. So Step offered a finish for this impossible thought. "You're saying that they apprehend it with their eyes, but you comprehend it."

"With my soul," said Lee, "yes, just like that! That's got to be the Spirit of G.o.d, making the connection between us so you know what I'm saying even before I say it!"

Brother Freebody might have warned Step a little better about what he meant by Lee Weeks having some weird ideas about doctrine. Or maybe Lee hadn't been this extreme about it when Freebody talked to him. Or maybe Freebody hadn't believed that he was hearing what he was actually hearing when Lee said it.

"And sometimes I know that I'm the only real person in the world. No offense," Lee added quickly.

"No, that's not an uncommon feeling," said Step. "It's called solipsism. The idea that nothing is real except the self."

"No, I don't just mean a feeling, like anybody can get. I mean I know that G.o.d sees me and recognizes me as his kindred spirit, like a lost twin. n.o.body but me ever feels like that. Only I can't tell that to anybody but the Mormons, because you understand! You've known about it all along."

Patiently Step tried to explain the fact that the gospel of Jesus Christ was mostly about how we treat other people, and not at all about becoming the most powerful being in the universe and getting into a first-name relations.h.i.+p with G.o.d. That was for the bozos on TV who talked about Jeeee-zuz as if he was their old high-school chum or something. Lee listened to everything that Step was saying, nodding wisely and agreeing to all of it. But Step was sure that Lee was missing the whole point of everything.

When they got to Lee's house, his mother was waiting at the door. She seemed to size them up as they came from the car, and by the time Step got up to the house, she was beaming. Only on the porch did it occur to Step that there was no reason for him to have walked Lee to the door. That was what Step did with thirteen-year-old babysitters, to make sure they got in safely. Home teaching companions over the age of eighteen you could just let out of the car. But for some reason Step had just expected himself to come to the door.

"Please come in," she said warmly. Her whole demeanor was different. This was the woman on the telephone. What had happened since eight o'clock?

"I can't stay," said Step. "Got to get home. I don't see my family half enough as it is."

"Oh," she said, looking disappointed. "Perhaps some other time."

"Well, in fact you'll probably see me a couple of times a month. We home teach four families, and we do it every month."

She raised her eyebrows, but she seemed to be pleased all the same. "How nice," she said. "What a very social church you have."

"I suppose so," said Step, thinking how wearing that sociability could sometimes be.

"And how was Lee?" she asked.

Lee was standing right there. It was so outrageous, to ask about him as if he were a small child in another room, and not an adult, a man, standing right beside her. Yet Lee beamed. He seemed to expect a good report card, and so Step delivered one. "Lee was great," he said. "He spoke right up and we had a good visit."

No need to tell Mommy that Lee got a bit weird about doctrine. To explain that, he'd have to explain the doctrine, and it always sounded deeply weird to nonmembers. Or it should, anyway-it wasn't quite natural, the way Lee had taken right to it, and all the wrong way. You had to build up to understanding it, and it was a sure thing that Lee had neither the buildup nor the understanding.

But there was plenty of time, if he stayed in the Church. A lot of people came into the Church with serious misconceptions about the gospel-no matter how clear the missionaries were, people were going to filter ideas through their own preconceptions and come out with something skewed at least a little bit off plumb, and sometimes a lot more than a little bit. If they stuck with it, though, and realized that correct opinions about doctrine weren't anywhere near as important as learning to serve other people, to accept and fulfill responsibility, then eventually they'd loosen up enough to come around and change their beliefs, too, or at least not be upset that most Mormons didn't see things the same way.

Outsiders usually seemed to think of Mormons as automatons, obeying a charismatic prophet the way Jim Jones's followers obeyed him in Guyana. The reality was almost the opposite-stubborn, self-willed people going off every which way, with bishops and other ward leaders barely able to hold them all together, all the while tolerating a wide range of doctrinal diversity as long as people would just accept their callings and then be dependable. There was room even for Lee Weeks, who seemed to be obsessed with a rather inflated view of his own divine potential; given that the 1st Ward already had Dolores LeSueur, Lee's ambitions could certainly be taken in stride.

"I'm so glad," she said. Step was relieved to see Mrs. Weeks smile.

But no, it was Dr. Weeks, wasn't it? "Lee says you're a psychologist," said Step. The idea of her being a psychologist seemed somehow very important. Then he realized why-Stevie. Stevie and DeAnne's idea of what they ought to do for him. Suddenly Step looked at Dr. Weeks in a different light.

"Not a psychologist," she was saying. "A psychiatrist. The M.D. isn't much-just years of medical school and interns.h.i.+p and residency." She chuckled.

"I'm sorry," said Step. He almost added, What Lee actually said was, She's a shrink. But he decided that he shouldn't get on her bad side because maybe she was the one who could bring Stevie back from the company of Scotty and Jack.

"Oh, I'm used to people getting the different branches of our profession confused," said Dr. Weeks. "I'm called a psychoa.n.a.lyst just as often, and of course that's wrong, too. That's more of a priesthood than a profession, anyway."

She spoke with a light, amused tone, but Step took the words as a very good sign. He liked this woman, this shrink.

"Well," Step said. "Till next time, OK?"

"Right!" said Lee.

When Step got home, DeAnne was in the kitchen, waiting for him. Everything was cleaned up, and she was reading a book. It was the Anne Tyler novel he had bought her more than a month ago. "You just getting around to that?" he asked.

"No, I started it back when you first gave it to me," she said. "But then I didn't like her for a little while."

"Oh," said Step. "And now you've kissed and made up?"

She made a face at him. "It was just something that the character said in the beginning. This old woman is in bed, probably dying, and she thinks how her children ought to have had an extra parent instead of just her. The husband ran off."

"And that made you mad?"

"No, it was that she had decided to have her second and third child for just that reason. So she could have extras. When the first one almost died of croup. I thought it was the most awful idea, to have your later children as spares in case you lost the early ones."

"It's not really so awful," said Step. "People thought that way for thousands of years. What does it say in Proverbs about a man having lots of sons? Blessed is he who has a quiverful, or something like that."

"A quiver," said DeAnne. "How phallic."

"Actually, it's the arrow that's phallic. A very confused s.e.xual image."

"Anyway" said DeAnne, "I just couldn't believe Tyler really meant that. So I just reread that opening again and I realized that that was just what the character had thought, not Tyler herself. And in fact the character realized right away that each child had become an irreplaceable person and not just a spare in case one of the earlier ones didn't work out."

"So now you can read it."

"Oh, who has time? But I thought I'd just check it out to make sure I liked it well enough to take it into the hospital with me."

"You've got two months till the end of July," said Step.

"I like to plan ahead. What if I got stuck in there with just People magazine?"

"If you like I can bring you the Enquirer as soon as the baby's delivered."