Lost Boys Part 13

"You need my address," said Step.

"Give me your card."

"I don't have a card. I just moved and, well, I don't have a card."

"Write it on the back of mine. And keep one of these for yourself." Step pocketed one card, put the Chinqua Penn address and phone number on the back of the other, and returned it to Arkasian. Arkasian took it, put it in his pocket, and held out his hand. Step took it. Arkasian's grip was large and firm and it made Step feel ... safe. Like he was in good hands now.

Arkasian didn't let go of his hand. "What I've said to you about my plans ...," he said.

"I don't spy for anybody," said Step. "And Ray Keene knows better than to ask me to." Though of course Ray could ask him to sneak around and run the programming behind d.i.c.ky's back, and Step would do that. I pretend to be so clean, but I'm really not.

That was what Step thought as he left the Agamemnon booth. I'm only somewhat clean. I only have some standards that won't bend. And if Arkasian had offered me enough money maybe I would have folded on all of them. He probably thinks I'm a good man who can be trusted, but I know that I can only be trusted until I think that being trustworthy won't get me what I want. Even as it is, I'm a sneak and a cheat, coming here to talk to one of Eight Bits Inc.'s most powerful compet.i.tors when it was Eight Bits that paid for me to come to this convention in the first place. I tricked them into paying for me to fly to a job interview with a rival. I'm even getting paid for the time that I spent here.

By rights I should share the idea for the atlas with Eight Bits Inc. My employment agreement says so, that any ideas I come up with while I work for them belong to them.

Then he thought: That's easy. All I have to do is propose the atlas to d.i.c.ky, and make him think that I really want to do it. He'll shoot it down. He'll kill it, just to spite me. If I get him to do it in writing, I'm home free. I'll have proof that I offered it to them and that clears me.

Sneaky. I'm so sneaky.

That night, Gla.s.s tried to get him to join him and the marketing guys and some young programmers at Apple who were working on software for the Lisa. They were going to drink their way through San Francisco, and Step begged off. "But we need a designated driver," said Gla.s.s.

"Take a cab," said Step.

"Oh, yeah," said Gla.s.s. "I forgot. This is a real city. Cabs."

So Step had the hotel room to himself when he called DeAnne and told her everything that had happened with Neddy Cranes and Dan Arkasian. He loved hearing the relief, the excitement in her voice. "It's not a sure thing," he said. "But the money for the 64 adaptation is."

Then she thought of something that could go wrong. DeAnne was good at thinking of things that could go wrong. "Only if you can get Eight Bits Inc. to stop working on their own 64 adaptation."

"I'll just tell them to stop."

"Right, you'll walk in and say, I sold it to Agamemnon."

"No, I'll just tell them that I won't sell it to them."

"And they'll ask why, since you work for them, and especially because they've got so much invested in it now."

"Not my fault."

"Not your fault, but then they fire you anyway because you're not a team player."

Step sighed. "This is all very complicated."

"It's all a matter of timing, isn't it," said DeAnne. "Because what if things come to a head about the 64 adaptation before we actually get a contract from Agamemnon, and then you tell Eight Bits Inc. they can't do it and they fire you and then you don't get the contract from Agamemnon after all."

"But what if the contract comes first and the 64 adaptation doesn't come to a head until after Ray decides not to develop for the PC and after Arkasian decides that he will develop for the PC."

"Everything depends on other people," said DeAnne.

"Everything always depends on other people," said Step. "And maybe the Lord is looking out for us a little. Maybe G.o.d has a plan."

"Well, if he planned for you to work for Agamemnon, why didn't he get us to move to California instead of this side trip to Steuben? Or even leave us where we were? We were happy in Indiana. Stevie wasn't playing with imaginary friends there."

That was something new. "Imaginary friends?"

"I realized it today. I mean, it's been going on for weeks. Almost since we moved here. He comes home from school so morose, I don't think he has any friends there, I mean I've asked him who he plays with at school and he says, n.o.body, but I didn't worry because then every now and then he says, Jack and I did this, or Scotty and I did that. So I thought, he does have friends, he just wants me to feel sorry for him."

"Heck, I didn't even know he talked at all."

"He's not a catatonic or anything, you know. Just depressed."

"Oh, well, that's OK."

"On Sat.u.r.days I've been spending time with you, doing the shopping we had to do, all the work, all the unpacking, you know? But this Sat.u.r.day you were gone, and I was lonely, and so I just sat on the patio for a while reading that Anne Tyler book you got me while the kids played. Robbie and Elizabeth were playing two-man tag or something, anyway they were chasing each other everywhere, but Stevie just sort of sat there on the lawn, and then he wandered around, touching the fence, touching the wall of the house, stuff like that. It worried me. He used to play with the younger kids, and here he is still sulking or something and he doesn't play with them, even though Robbie kept coming up to him and saying, Play with us. Anyway, then I went inside and did the laundry and stuff, but I kept checking on the kids because that's what I do- "Madame Conscientious."

"That's me, Junk Man. But what I'm saying is, I know Stevie never left the back yard and I know that no other kids were there. But then at supper I asked him, What were you playing there in the back yard today? And he says, Jack and me were searching for buried treasure. And I say, You mean at school? Because that's where I thought Jack was. And he says, Jack doesn't go to school."

"Are you sure he understood what you were asking?"

"Yes. I mean, I asked him right then, Well when did you search for buried treasure with him? and he says, Today, and I say, Where? and he says, In the back yard mostly"

"Isn't he a little old for an imaginary friend?"

"Yes, Step, of course he is. Way too old. It worries me."

"Maybe he's just pretending that his friends from school are part of his imaginary game at home. You know, including them even though they aren't there."

"I'm not making this up, Step. He actually said that Jack doesn't go to school. Doesn't that sound like an imaginary friend?"

"I forgot that you said that he said that. I haven't had a chance to think about this the way you have."

"Step, he doesn't have any friends at school, apparently, and at home he's not playing with his brother and sister, he's playing with imaginary friends-even when the kids are right there, when I'm right there. Tonight I tried to get the kids to play Life with me, you know Stevie's always liked that game, but he wouldn't play. I made him play, but he wouldn't move his car or handle his money, I ended up spinning for him even, like he was just a dummy player, and he just sat there staring off into s.p.a.ce."

"Is he still punishing us for making him move and go to a new school?"

"What else can I think?" asked DeAnne.

"Things have to work out," said Step. "They have to work out so I can come home, work at home. So we can get life back the way it's supposed to be. I feel so helpless, so cut off, my boy is having these problems, he's so angry at us, and I can't do a thing, I'm trapped. How do other men do it? Going to work all the time? And then these housewives want to go to work just like the men, so they can be cut off from their families, too, when what should happen is all the men coming home, to put the family back together."

"I know, Step. At least that's how we need it to be."

"So pray for us tonight," said Step. "Pray for this contract to come through. For all the timing to be right."

"I don't know if I should be praying for things like that," said DeAnne. "It's so selfish."

"Listen," said Step, "even Christ expressed a personal preference before he said, Thy will be done."

"Yeah, but then look what happened to him!"

He hooted with laughter. "I can't believe you said that."

"I didn't mean it to be so-sacrilegious."

"It wasn't, Fish Lady, it wasn't."

"Things will work out," she said.

"I love you," he answered.

"I'll pick you up at the airport tomorrow," she said.

"We're all coming in on the same flight, "he said. "So I can just hitch a ride home with one of the ones who parked there."

"I want to meet you at the airport, Junk Man. The kids want to meet you."

How could he tell her-he didn't want his children there when Gla.s.s got off the plane. He didn't want anybody from Eight Bits Inc. to see his family. The kids were still pure, still untouched by this slimy company, and he just didn't want them to be defiled by having Ray Keene tousle Robbie's hair or d.i.c.ky Northanger chuck Stevie under the chin or Gla.s.s look at Betsy.

"Please," he said. "Keep the kids home. Let me come home to them. To you. Please."

"Whatever you say, Junk Man." But he could tell she was hurt.

"Please understand," he said.

"Fine, it's fine," she said, though it was clearly not fine. "I love you."

"I love you more," he said. Another ritual. "Not a chance," she said. The ritual answer. "Hang up first," he said. She did.

6: Inspiration

This is the career DeAnne found for herself: In high school she realized that the only way a decent woman with no skills could make money was as a burger flipper or a waitress. So she set about getting a skill. When she entered college, she could type a hundred words a minute. She earned enough money as a part-time secretary in the Child Development and Family Relations Department to pay for the materials to make her own clothes and the gas she used driving the old red Volkswagen to the Y and back. She mastered the mag-card electronic typewriter, got a raise, and saved enough to pay for a semester in Paris.

Her choice of major was less practical. She loved art and music and literature, and so she majored in humanities, even though she knew that there was no career on earth for which a humanities degree was regarded as a serious qualification. But that didn't matter. In the back of her mind she knew that motherhood was going to be her career, as it had been for her own mother. She studied humanities so she could create a home filled with art and wisdom for her children. If she ever needed a job, she could walk into any office, type a flawless 300-word page in three minutes or less, and be hired on the spot.

It turned out, though, that motherhood wasn't quite the career she had hoped it would be. For one thing, motherhood was always preceded by months of misery. If it hadn't been for Bendectin, which barely controlled her perpetual nausea during the first four months of each pregnancy, she would have vomited her way into the hospital with every child, and the nausea never really went away until the baby was born.

More important, though, was the fact that each newborn was a complete barbarian. She and Step put prints of great art on the walls and played records of great music of every kind, but that was background-her main activity was chasing, feeding, wiping, washing, changing, scolding, comforting, and containing her impatience with the little vandals. There were wonderful moments, of course, but they were few and far between, and while DeAnne loved her children and took pride in caring for them, she could never find any measurable accomplishment in her life. When Step finished working he wanted peace and solitude; she was dying to have an adult to talk to. And when Step helped her with housework or tending the kids, the fact that he was perfectly competent at everything told her that nothing she did could only be done by her-except nursing the newest baby, and baboons could do that.

Motherhood was not a career. It was life. A good life, one she had no intention of giving up, but it was not complete enough for her. She needed to do something that reminded her that she was human.

She had been saying this to her good friend Lorry Tisch, who managed the educational TV station in Salt Lake City, when Lorry started laughing at her. "You have a career, dimwit! Every bit as fulfilling as mine!"

"If you tell me that motherhood is supposed to be enough-"

"Listen, Deen, back before you and Step were married, when Step was back and forth between Mexico and Washington working on that project for the Historical Department and he was only home one Wednesday night right in the middle, why was it that you didn't have time to see him? Remember now, he was already the love of your life, and you couldn't spare him the one night in two months-"

"I had a responsibility," said DeAnne.

"Young Adult Relief Society president, and you had a presidency meeting. You could have changed the day! You could have canceled that week's meeting!"

"Why are you bringing all this up again, Lorry?"

"Because you'll sacrifice anything for your career. Even Step. You almost lost him over that one, you know. I had to talk to him for three hours that night to keep him from giving you an f.o. note."

"Please don't tell me what the letters stand for," said DeAnne.

"Your career is the Church, Deen. Whatever your calling is at any given moment, that's what you live for, and everything else better get out of your way. So don't give me any more b.s.-that stands for booger samples-about not having a career. You had a career when we were both in high school and you practically ran the whole Young Women program while the adult leaders just stood out of your way."

DeAnne had realized that Lorry was right. She had a career, one that she could pursue without setting aside her family. So she threw herself into her callings with renewed enthusiasm, and hadn't let up since, through their years in Salt Lake City, in Orem, in Vigor. Wherever they went, as soon as the strongest women in the ward realized how reliable, how competent, how inventive she was, they would go to the bishop and begin to ask for her to be called to a position in their organization. Almost immediately she would find herself in the inner circle of the best women in the ward, aware of everything, all the family problems and marriage problems and money problems, all the women who couldn't get along with each other, all the women who could be relied on and all the women who couldn't. Armed with this knowledge, she was able to make a difference. Her programs ran smoothly and she carried out all her a.s.signments, but to her that was the minimum. Far more important was the work she imposed on herself-trying to help the sisters become a bit more more patient with others' failings, more tolerant of strangeness, more loving and less angry, more obedient to the laws of G.o.d and less compliant with the mindless demands of tradition.

It was a life's work, because it never ended-and yet she had seen progress, she had made breakthroughs. And when she compared her career in the Church with the careers of her friends - even one as remarkably successful as Lorry, who was now programming director for a network station in a major market-she was not unsatisfied, for while she would never get the fame or recognition or money Lorry had, at the end of every working day what had Lorry accomplished? M*A*S*H reruns slotted between Carson and the new Letterman show.

If the Church was DeAnne's career, then moving to a new town-indeed, moving across town to a new ward-was like a job transfer. The Church was the same everywhere, in its broad outlines. There were the same callings to be filled, the same basic tasks to be performed. But the people were different; the way they fit together in the ward was always new. Each new ward had its own customs, its own traditions, its quarrels and its cliques.

Most important, though, was the fact that in each new ward, DeAnne never knew what her calling would be. It took time to become known, time for people to find out what she could do. And in the meantime, the bishop would be looking at the ward roster, trying to find someone to teach a Primary cla.s.s or run the library. DeAnne would, of course, accept any calling she was given and do the best she could with it, but she had seen many times how someone could get put in one slot, and as long as they lived in that ward that's all that people ever saw them as. She had said it to Step as they prepared to move to Steuben: "I wonder who I'll be in our new ward."

"Who you'll be? You'll be DeAnne Brown Fletcher, of course."

She knew better. In Vigor she had been counselor in the Relief Society, one of the leading women in the ward, part of everything going on. In Salt Lake City she had been the young women's president; in Orem she had worked with the young women's organization at the stake level. Each role was different; in each place, because she had a different calling, the other Saints saw her differently, saw her as the role she filled.

And why not? That was how careers were supposed to function, wasn't it? That was the difference between a career and a job, wasn't it? A job was just something you did-but a career, that was who you were. Step had a history Ph.D., but n.o.body saw him as a historian because that wasn't his career; he was a game designer, because that's where his accomplishments were. Well, DeAnne had been an accomplished Relief Society counselor in Vigor, and now in the Steuben 1 st Ward she would be someone else, and she was eager to know who.

They had moved often enough that they were now experts on how to get involved immediately in the new ward. Some people entered a ward shyly, quietly, just coming to the meetings and gradually getting to know people. But that could leave you without a calling for months and months, which would drive DeAnne crazy. So she and Step had perfected a technique of moving into a ward quickly and deeply, so they would be involved almost at once. They joined the choir.

Step had a strong baritone voice that could handle most tenor parts, and since every ward choir in the church was hurting for men, and especially for tenors, he was immediately the star of the choir. DeAnne's soprano voice was not quite so rare, but she learned parts very quickly and sang with strength-and on pitch. Besides, she played the piano and could fill in for a missing accompanist. There was always a core of music people in every ward, trading a.s.signments and helping each other out in all the organizations. By becoming known to the music people, DeAnne and Step were soon known to everyone-known and valued. Because their attendance at choir was as faithful as possible, people also knew they were, as Mormons called it, "active." They could be counted on. If they were given an a.s.signment, they would show up and fulfill it. Thanks to their choir connection, within weeks of moving into each new ward they were well and widely known.

They had followed the same program in the Steuben 1st Ward, and the technique worked just as effectively. When they showed up at the Sunday afternoon choir practice-their kids in tow and well armed with paper to draw on and books to read and, in Elizabeth's case, a few soft toys to play with while Stevie watched her - the choir director looked them over and immediately said, "We've got a new man in the choir!" DeAnne always heard that statement with amus.e.m.e.nt. In a few moments the choir leader would apologize, whereupon DeAnne would rea.s.sure her that she understood that men were at a premium and sopranos like her were a dime a dozen.

As she took part in the familiar rituals of choir practice, DeAnne felt warm and comfortable and welcome. Even though she knew not a single one of the people there, they were Mormons and they were music people and so she knew them all, and knew that they knew her and her husband and already, already they belonged.

The next week DeAnne subst.i.tuted for a Primary teacher-the Primary president's husband was one of the ba.s.ses, and apparently when the Primary president was fretting about a teacher who was out of town, he must have said, "Why not ask the new sister to fill in? Sister-Fletcher, I think." And the following week Step subst.i.tuted in gospel doctrine cla.s.s. He had spoken up a couple of times in cla.s.s the first two weeks, and word was getting around that he had a doctorate in history, which gave him great prestige in a mostly blue-collar ward, so it was only natural they gave him a try as teacher of the adult Sunday school cla.s.s.

During the next week, the bishop called DeAnne and set up an appointment for her and Step to come see him. Sat.u.r.day was the only day she could count on Step being home at any reasonable hour before Sunday came, and so Sat.u.r.day it was. Sure enough, she was called to be a Primary teacher-the usual calling for a woman new in a ward-and Step was called to teach the gospel doctrine cla.s.s. Step was elated. He loved to teach and hated administrative callings-he had not really enjoyed being elders quorum president back in Vigor. Besides, gospel doctrine cla.s.s was a Sunday-only calling; there'd be no meetings during the week, and that meant that there'd be no conflict between his job and his calling.

DeAnne bided her time, however. She was a good Primary teacher and loved working with the little children, but she knew that she would not be in Primary very long-something would open up in Relief Society and she would be brought in. She knew this because the Relief Society president, Ruby Bigelow, had made a point of sitting beside her the second Sunday they went to choir practice, and when the singing was done, they had chatted like old friends for a quarter of an hour, before the kids made it clear that they were hungry enough to start eating the pews. Sister Bigelow already knew that DeAnne had been education counselor in the Relief Society in Vigor-Jenny Cowper had told her-and they swapped stories about disastrous homemaking meetings they had lived through. "I hope I get a chance to know you better," Sister Bigelow had said after that first conversation.

It happened the last Tuesday night in April. A phone call from the bishop. He wanted to speak to Step first. Step talked for only a few moments, said, "Sure, of course, no problem," and then called DeAnne back to the phone. That told her at once that the bishop had a new calling for her, and had checked with her husband first-she didn't mind the custom; she only wished that they'd do the same when the shoe was on the other foot, and check with the wife before calling the husband to a new position.

"Hi, Sister Fletcher," said the bishop.

"Hi again," said DeAnne.

"I hate doing this on the phone, but I have to catch a plane in an hour and I won't be back before Sunday and Sister Bigelow would have my hide on the wall if I didn't get you called so you could be sustained this Sunday."