Lost Boys Part 28

"I thought you had enough of me throwing up already."

Truth was, she hadn't thrown up that much with this baby. The best morning-sickness period of all four pregnancies. Maybe that was a good sign. Maybe this baby was going to be no trouble. Maybe Step wouldn't have to lie beside his bed every night for the first three years of his life, humming "Away in a Manger" over and over again. Maybe this one wouldn't wake up with screaming nightmares: Maybe this one wouldn't periodically decide to hit a sibling over the head with something heavy.

Then it occurred to him that DeAnne was not waiting up at the kitchen table to read a book-she could have done that in bed. She was waiting up to talk to him at the opposite end of the house from the children.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said. "How did it go?"

"Fine. Lee's a little weird, but Sister Highsmith was fine. A nice old lady who likes to talk but then she's never boring, so it's OK. Not a lot of woes and troubles, either. Most of what she talks about is bragging about her late husband or her wonderful children or her even more wonderful grandchildren who are being spoiled or overprotected by her very stupid children."

"I thought her children were wonderful."

"Only when they were children," said Step. "Now they're parents and so they've become stupid. Hey, it happened to our parents, didn't it? And it's happened to us, too."

"Are we really stupid parents, Step?"

"By definition," said Step. "I was a brilliant parent till Robbie was born. Then all the things I'd learned about parenting went right out the window. Robbie was completely different from Stevie and so nothing that worked with Stevie worked with Robbie. I think that's why second-child syndrome develops. You know, nice cooperative first child, rebellious and troublesome second child.

The first child was raised by confident parents. The second child was raised by parents who were nervous wrecks, trying to apply first-child methods to second-child problems. No wonder second kids want to spend most of their teenage years screaming at their parents."

"Poor Robbie. And what explains Elizabeth's temper?"

"I haven't a.n.a.lyzed third-child syndrome yet," said Step. "Give me time. She's still very, very short."

They sat in silence for a few moments.

"Did you meet Lee's mother?" asked DeAnne.

"Sure," said Step. "It's kind of impossible not to. She guards Lee like a tigress. I felt like I was going through a job interview just to get her to call Lee into the room so we could go."

"I can understand being protective."

"Yeah, well, especially with Lee. The kid's got a twisted sense of what it means to be Mormon."

"Oh really?"

"It's not so much that he can hardly wait for G.o.d to retire so he can move into the job, like Sister LeSueur. It's more like he thinks that he already is G.o.d, or at least a G.o.d, and he thinks Mormonism is cool because we seem to be the only ones who understand that a divine person like him is possible."

"How strange," said DeAnne.

"But he's young. Young people fantasize about a lot of things." Step had been thinking about his own youthful thought that maybe someday he would be president, or a great conquering general like Frederick the Great, or a doctor who discovered the cure for cancer. But now, when the words came out of his mouth, he instantly thought of Stevie. Of what Stevie was fantasizing. Not some grandiose megalomania. Just having a friend, that was all. A couple of friends. Did that make him crazy? It was Lee Weeks who was crazy if anybody's child was, and his mother was a psychiatrist, for heaven's sake.

"She's a shrink, too," said Step, following his own thought and not the thread of the conversation.

"Who is?" asked DeAnne.

"Lee's mother," said Step. "She's a shrink. That's what he called it. He said, She's a shrink. But she's nice, though."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"No, I mean, that's what he said. That she was nice though. As if to be nice was sort of a contradiction to being a shrink."

"So now we actually know a psychiatrist," said DeAnne.

"Well, not like we're intimate friends."

"But at least we wouldn't be sending Stevie to a stranger."

It came to him all at once. DeAnne knew perfectly well that Dr. Weeks was a shrink. And it wasn't just that. DeAnne had set up the home teaching appointment, had pushed him into doing his church calling, which she had never done before, just so that he'd meet a psychiatrist. In fact, Dr. Weeks might well be one of the shrinks on the list she got from Jenny's pediatrician. There couldn't be that many shrinks in town. DeAnne had manipulated him. It made him feel sick and angry, and he wanted to say something really cruel and walk out of the room.

Instead he just sat there, thinking. What had she done, really? Just helped him to do his home teaching. Just helped get him into a position where he'd meet a psychiatrist. What was so bad about that?

She didn't tell me, that's what was so bad. She maneuvered me to this position instead of persuading me to it.

But Step hadn't left her much room to think that he'd be open to changing his mind. And so if she really felt strongly about getting help for Stevie, maybe she thought there was no other way. So it isn't that she manipulated me. No, I feel angry and sick because I'm ashamed that I'm the kind of husband whose wife thinks she has to do this kind of manipulation in order to get from her husband what she thinks her child needs.

I must be a really terrible husband, in her view, that she has to fool me. Like the giant's wife in Jack and the Beanstalk. Doing her best to save the life of the small person in her care by keeping him out of the way of the cruel, awful, tyrannical husband.

When the silence had grown very long, he said, "Maybe you could find out her office number and set up an appointment for Stevie. If she takes children."

"Do you think she'd be good for him?"

No, Step thought. I don't think any more of psychiatrists now than I did before. Less, in fact, because she's so weirdly protective of her own son. Treating him like a child at this age. No wonder he has power fantasies, with her shepherding him through life as if he were incompetent to zip his own fly after peeing. What's she going to do for my child when her own is Lee Weeks?

That wasn't fair. Just because she couldn't see the problems in her own family didn't mean she couldn't see clearly the problems in others. When Step had been elders quorum president, he had seen a lot of things clearly about other people's lives, but his own was just as murky to him as ever.

"She might be," said Step. "As good a chance as anybody else. And like you said, we know her."

"You know her," said DeAnne.

"Well, anyway," said Step. "Make the appointment. And then we have to figure out how to break it to Stevie that we're taking him to a shrink."

"It will help if you don't call her a shrink in front of him."

Oh, you've already thought this all through, I'm sure. "Well don't call her a psychiatrist, either," said Step. "Call her a therapist."

"Why? A psychiatrist is a doctor, and a therapist isn't. Sheila is a therapist."

"In contemporary American culture," said Step, "going to a psychiatrist means you're crazy. But going to a therapist means you're rich and stylishly uptight."

"I hate it when you talk about 'contemporary American culture' this and 'contemporary American culture' that."

Well, I hate it when you treat me like a puppet you can maneuver however you want. I didn't know how much I hated it till now, because up till now you had never done it.

"Can I get you anything to eat?" asked DeAnne.

"I've already gained about fifteen pounds working at Eight Bits Inc.," said Step. "The candy machines are killing me. The last thing I need is a snack."

"Just asking," said DeAnne. "Are you upset about something?"

Yes. "No. I'm just tired. I wasn't planning on spending tonight home teaching."

"I'm sorry," said DeAnne. "I told you, I wasn't trying to set it up for tonight, I just figured you wouldn't mind if I tried to establish contact with your companion. Are you coming to bed soon?"

"I suppose," said Step. "Is there anything good on Thursday nights?"

"We have forty channels," said DeAnne.

"Yeah," said Step, "but thirty-three of them are Jimmy Swaggart clones trying to heal hemophiliacs with the hemoglobin of the Holy Spirit. Or was that Ernest Ainglee?"

"It was that weird crewcut guy with the crazy eyes," said DeAnne. "Don't stay up too late. You have work in the morning, you know."

DeAnne left before she could see how Step tensed up at those words. Yes, I have work in the morning. I don't have to have work in the morning, though. I could walk in and give notice tomorrow and tell Keene where to stick his d.i.c.ky. I could let them fire me and collect unemployment. But no, you won't let me get out from under d.i.c.ky's thumb, because you don't trust me to make enough money to pay for the baby, you don't even trust me enough to talk to me rationally about getting a psychiatrist for Stevie. You have to trick me into it.

Step hated feeling such rage toward the person he loved most. And it wasn't the yearning love of young romance, but rather the kind of love that made her feel like part of his own self, so that he couldn't imagine a future without her beside him. To be so savagely angry at her was terrible.

He went to the sink to get a drink of water. Is this how divorce begins? he wondered. A feeling of terrible rage, of betrayal, a sudden discovery that maybe the marriage isn't as real and honest and strong as you thought it was? Then it builds up and builds up and builds up and then you find yourself living in an apartment somewhere and seeing your kids on weekends.

No, he said to himself. No, I forbid it. I will not let it happen, and neither will she. I'll just have to work on being the kind of husband she doesn't think she has to manipulate. Lord, help me to be whatever it is she needs me to be so we can hold this thing together. Just get us through this summer. Through this year. And then we won't need any more help, we'll be OK.

He set down the gla.s.s and turned around. There she was, in the doorway, her eyes red-rimmed.

"I knew she was a psychiatrist," said DeAnne.

"What?"

"I set up that home teaching appointment for you because her name was on Dr. Greenwald's list, and I thought that if you met her maybe you'd like her and even trust her and then you'd take Stevie to her. I didn't actually lie to you but I still didn't tell you the truth."

The tears spilled over her eyes onto her cheeks. She angrily wiped them away with her s.h.i.+rtsleeve.

"I know you hate me now," she said. "We don't trick each other and lie to each other, ever, and now I did it."

Step walked to her, put his arms around her. "I knew that you knew," he said.

She leaned away and looked up at him. "You did?"

"Not earlier, but here in the kitchen, I realized it. That you set me up."

"And you aren't mad?"

"Yeah, I was mad," said Step.

"But you didn't say anything," she said.

"No," said Step. "I got a drink of water instead."

She gave a little laugh that was almost a sob. "That doesn't make any sense at all," she said.

"I know," said Step. "But that's what I did. And I'm not angry now, because you told me."

Now she cried in earnest. Clinging to him. Tears of relief, of release. "Step, you can quit your job. You really can. It's wrong of me to make you stay. You hate it there, and we'll make it anyway, I know we will. So what if we lose the house in Indiana. It's just a house. It's just money. I can't stand the thought of you going every day to a job you hate just because I'm so scared of things being so out of whack in our lives."

"That's OK," said Step.

"I mean it," she said. "You can quit. And we don't have to take Stevie to a psychiatrist, either. I really don't have to have everything my way, you know."

"I know," he said. And he knew that, for the moment at least, she really meant it. But he couldn't take this capitulation of hers seriously. Her need for him to stay at work till the baby came was real and deep. And as for taking Stevie to a psychiatrist, it was the only solution she had thought of for her sense of helpless frustration with Stevie. He couldn't deny her that unless he could come up with something better, and he couldn't.

"I mean it," she said.

"I know you mean it," said Step. "But I won't quit. For now, anyway. But it means a lot to me that if I just can't take it anymore, you'll understand."

"I will, Step, I really will. It's up to you. I'll just expect that one of these days you'll come home and say, It was time, and that'll be fine with me. I want you to come home! I want you here with me and the kids. Our life was so good in those days."

"It was, wasn't it," said Step.

"And it still is," she said. "My life is still good because you're in it. Everything good in my life comes from you."

Step shook his head. He knew she meant it, but in fact he knew that it wasn't true. Even the good she found in him was really the goodness she had put into him, the goodness he had put on himself like a disguise in order to get her to marry him. He had known that she could only be happy with a husband who was good in certain distinct ways. Like going to church with absolute faithfulness, and fulfilling his callings, the whole nine yards. And so for her he started going to church again, and she never realized that it was a sacrifice he was making out of love for her, in order to be part of her. She thought it was his own desire, and she loved him for it. But what she was really loving was herself, reflected back to her. And even now, when she clung to him, it was not Step the historian or Step the programmer she was clinging to. It was Step the faithful Mormon, and she had given him that role herself. It was Step the father of her children, and those, too, had been her gift.

"Make the appointment with Dr. Weeks tomorrow," said Step. "We'll start him as soon as school lets out a week from tomorrow. So he never has to leave cla.s.s to go see his psychiatrist."

She clung all the tighter to him. "You're really something, Junk Man," she said.

Yeah, thought Step. When you get your way.

And then he pushed the nastiness out of his mind and just held her. This is what love is, he thought. Doing what you don't want to do, because she needs it so much. And it isn't that bad. And it isn't that hard.

9: June Bugs

This is what Stevie got for his eighth birthday, on June 3, 1983: his first wrist.w.a.tch; a large Lego set which could be made into a castle; four pairs of shorts and four tank tops; his first dress slacks, white s.h.i.+rt, and kid-size tie for Sunday; and a computer game called Lode Runner for the Atari. It was a decent number of presents, despite their financial situation, but Step and DeAnne suspected that the present he liked best was that when school was dismissed at noon on his birthday, he was through with second grade, through with that school, through with those kids, and home at last for the summer.

In fact, that was what Step wrote to Stevie on the inside of his birthday card: "You made it, school's out, you were brave and strong and we're proud of you." Stevie read the card silently, looked up at his father without a sign of emotion on his face, and said, "Thanks."

That Sunday at church Stevie wore his new Sunday clothes for the first time, and when the bishop called him up to the stand to announce that he was going to be baptized that afternoon, it almost broke Step's heart to see how small he was, and yet how much he had grown; how young and how old their eldest had become.

After sacrament meeting, DeAnne took the kids and led them off to Primary. While Step was still gathering up his notebook and scriptures to head for gospel doctrine cla.s.s, Lee Weeks came up to him, obviously bursting with excitement about something.

"Your son's getting baptized!" said Lee.

"That's right," said Step.