Lost Boys Part 25

"Stevie told us to get out."

"Are you fine here?"

"Yes.

But Robbie looked so solemn that Step knew that he had heard, that he was worried. "What's wrong, Road Bug?"

"Stevie doesn't like me anymore," said Robbie. His face twisted up to wring out his tears.

"Sure he does, Robot Man," said Step. He sat down by Robbie and put his arm around him. Betsy, of course, began to cry too, since crying was getting Robbie so much attention from Daddy. Step put an arm around her, too, but his attention remained on Robbie. "Stevie's just having a hard time right now."

"What's so hard about it?" asked Robbie. "He just sits around and plays computer games or he plays with Jack and Scotty and he never plays with me."

"Jack and Scotty?" asked Step.

"He's always playing pirates with them, or playing train or something, and he won't play with me, and Betsy's no fun."

"No fun," said Betsy.

"I mean she's just a baby"

"Baby in Mommy's tummy," said Betsy.

"Road Bug, it's hard, you think I don't know that?" said Step. "Stevie's having a hard time at school and I think he's still a little mad at me for making him move. And so he needs to be by himself a lot."

"Then how come he's always playing with Scotty and Jack?" asked Robbie.

Step had to think for a minute. What in the world could he say to that? You have to understand, Robbie, that your brother is retreating from reality into a wonderful magical world full of good friends, which has only one drawback-none of the rest of humanity can get to that place.

"Robbie, can't you just be patient with Stevie for a little longer?" said Step. "He doesn't hate you. He loves you, he really does. He just isn't able to show it as much right now. A year from now you'll look back on this time and you'll say-"

"Don't say 'a year from now,"' said Robbie disgustedly.

"Why not?"

"That's what Mommy always says. 'A year from now you'll look back and laugh."'

His imitation of DeAnne was dead on. Step had to laugh. "Can you do my voice?"

Robbie immediately deepened his voice and said, "Life's a b.i.t.c.h, ain't it?"

"b.i.t.c.h," said Betsy.

Step was appalled. "I've never said that to you."

"No, you say it to Mom when you think we're not listening," said Robbie. He was very proud of himself.

"Well, now I know that you are listening," said Step.

"What's a b.i.t.c.h, Daddy?" asked Robbie.

"It's just a word for a mommy dog," said Step.

"Woof woof," said Betsy.

"Why did you say life's a mommy dog?" asked Robbie.

"That what a mommy dog say!" shouted Betsy. "Woof woof woof!"

"Believe me, Robbie, when you get older, you won't even have to ask. The answer will just come to you."

Step unfolded himself and stood up. DeAnne was standing in the doorway to the boys' room, jiggling with silent laughter. "If you hold all that laughter inside," said Step, "it might make the baby pop out."

She laughed all the harder-but still silently.

"Could it really make Mommy pop?" asked Robbie.

"No, Road Bug, I was joking," said Step.

"Why is it a joke when 1 don't think it's funny," said Robbie, "But when I tell a joke and you don't think it's funny, then you say, 'That's not a joke'?"

"Because I'm the official funny-decider of America," said Step. "Back in 1980 when they elected Ronald Reagan to be president, I got elected to be the national funny-decider, and so if I say it's a joke it's a joke, and if I say it isn't it isn't. Next year they'll elect somebody else, though, because I'm not running again."

"Is that true, Mommy?" asked Robbie.

"What do you think?" asked DeAnne, her eyes wide in a mockery of innocence.

"I bet this is a joke, too," said Robbie.

"You are right indeed, my brilliant boy," said Step.

"If Mommy's laughing does that mean you aren't going to yell at each other anymore?" asked Robbie.

At the word yell, Betsy opened her mouth and let out a fullthroated holler.

"Betsy, don't do that!" said DeAnne. "They can hear you on the street. People will think we're child-abusers."

"We weren't yelling at each other," said Step.

"Yes you were," said Robbie.

"We were arguing because we didn't agree about something," said Step. "That happens sometimes. And maybe we got too loud because we both care very much about the thing we were discussing."

"What were you discussing?"

Thank heaven he didn't understand the actual words we said, thought Step. "We were talking about stuff that only grownups talk about."

Robbie chanted derisively: "Grown. Up. Grown, up."

"Yeah, well, someday you'll be a grownup and then you won't think it's so cute. Now play with your sister."

That's where they left the question of taking Stevie to a psychiatrist-nowhere. It was the first clause in article one of the unspoken const.i.tution of their marriage: If they disagreed about something it was a tie vote, and no one had the power to break a tie, but they both had to promise to think about the other person's side. So Step was thinking about DeAnne's point of view, and DeAnne was thinking about Step's, but this time Step knew that he would never, never agree with her, and he knew that she would never see things his way, either.

Except that in the back of his mind, he knew that he would see things her way. That somewhere in the future he would realize that they really were out of their depth in dealing with Stevie's problem, that Stevie wouldn't just give up on these imaginary friends, and Step would end up walking through the door of a psychiatrist's office one day, taking his own son to the witch doctor to get an incantation that would make the evil spirits go away. It made him angry to think about that, though, and so he put it to the back of his mind and hoped desperately that the whole issue would just stay there, would just go away along with Stevie's imaginary friends.

The memo finally came down from Ray Keene that it was time for all the creative staff to evaluate the IBM PC and come up with a recommendation. This is it, thought Step. This is what will decide whether I can sign the contract with Agamemnon, the big one that will let me quit this job and never see d.i.c.ky Northanger or Ray Keene again. As long as Eight Bits Inc. decides not to support the IBM machine.

And there were plenty of reasons not to support it. The biggest reason was that it was a crippled machine from the start. The operating system was a kludged-together imitation of CP/M; color graphics was only an option, and even if you paid some obscene amount extra to get it, all you got was four colors on the screen at a time, and it was no compensation that you could switch between a set of cool colors and a set of warm colors. The only sound came from a repulsive little onboard speaker that made you want to answer the door whenever it buzzed. It was like somebody had examined the Atari 800 and the Commodore 64 and said, "How can we strip these machines down so there is nothing left that would be remotely interesting to any human being?"

And that's what the other programmers were all saying. It would be easy enough for Step just to let their words go unchallenged. d.i.c.ky would take his negative report to Ray, the machine would be dropped, and Step would walk away clean.

Only he would not be clean. Because he knew that a failure to support the IBM PC would be the death knell, in the long run, for Eight Bits Inc. If he didn't speak the truth as he saw it during this time when Eight Bits Inc. was paying for his expertise, then he was a cheat and a liar, even if no one ever knew it, and Step couldn't live with that.

So he spoke up. "OK, it's crippled," said Step. "But it has one feature that no other microcomputer made today has."

"What's that?" asked Gla.s.s. His voice was full of challenge, since he was the most vociferous opponent of the PC.

Step pointed to the letters IBM on the case.

"What is that!" demanded Gla.s.s. "That's nothing!"

"That's everything," said Step. "That's a vast national sales force, that's credibility, that's reputation, that's big corporations being willing to spend a hundred thousand dollars or half a million dollars putting these things on people's desks."

"We don't do business software," said d.i.c.ky quietly.

"Business software will be done by somebody," said Step. "Somebody will do a terrific word processor loaded with features because you can put 256K of RAM in this thing, 512K, you can have a word processor that will stand up and dance if you want it to."

"n.o.body will ever put 512K on this thing," said Gla.s.s. "You can't fill 512K with meaningful code!"

"Don't get mad at me, Gla.s.s," said Step. "I'm just telling you what I think. The machine's a piece of s.h.i.t, but it's an IBM piece of s.h.i.t, and where we're looking at maybe half a million 64's in use today, we'll see a million, two million, three million of these on people's desks."

"What does it matter what's on people's desks?" said d.i.c.ky contemptuously. "We don't do business software. We write programs for the home market."

"You think a businessman doesn't want to play a game now and then? You think a businessman doesn't want to have a real computer at home?"

"Not for this price," said d.i.c.ky. "Not when he can get a Commodore 64 with a printer and a monitor for half what he pays for this overpriced box alone."

It occurred to Step that by being honest he had accomplished what he really wanted. With Step firmly committed to voting for developing software for the IBM PC, d.i.c.ky would be even more firmly committed to killing any possibility of Eight Bits Inc. turning to the IBM. I couldn't have set it up better if I had planned it, he realized. So it was with a light heart that he said, "You're wrong, d.i.c.ky. We're going to see the IBM market take off until it's the only market."

"Except Apple," said Gla.s.s. "That piece-of-junk company just won't die no matter how useless its computers are."

"You're forgetting the Lisa," said d.i.c.ky. It was a joke, and so everybody laughed. The poor, pathetic Lisa, a vast overpriced machine whose only selling point was that it made pictures of your disk files instead of just giving them names-as if you needed a picture of a file folder to tell you that your file was a file! "Step probably thinks there'll be nothing around but the IBM and the Lisa."

"Make whatever recommendation you want," said Step. "I can't disagree with a single bad thing anybody's said about the IBM PC. Just tell Ray that I cast a dissenting vote, OK?"

"Oh, I'll be sure to tell him," said d.i.c.ky. "I'll tell him that you agree with our a.s.sessment as programmers, but that in your great wisdom and vast experience as a businessman you think we should support the IBM PC based solely on business considerations. I'll go see Ray right now, I think."

d.i.c.ky left the room, almost swaggering.

Step could have shouted for joy.

"Man, you just been shat on," said one of the programmers.

"But it was only d.i.c.kys.h.i.t," said Gla.s.s, "so it smells like little roses."

"Little pansies," said another programmer.

"Chanel Number Two," said Step. They all dissolved in laughter.

Robbie and Betsy were safely strapped into seatbelts, while Jenny's innumerable herd was bouncing around in the back of the Renault like Ping-Pong b.a.l.l.s in a room full of mousetraps. "Don't you believe in seatbelts?" asked DeAnne the first time they rode anywhere together.

"I believe in seatbelts all right," said Jenny, "but carmakers don't believe in big families. There are never enough."

"You could belt in as many as you can," DeAnne suggested.

"And the ones without seatbelts, what's the message they get from that?" asked Jenny. "Mommy loves the other kids and doesn't want them to die in a crash, but you don't need a seatbelt."

DeAnne laughed, but it still made her feel queasy. "So the solution is to protect none of them? Why not double them up?"

Jenny just looked at her. "DeAnne," she said, "I bet I'll have as many kids live to adulthood as you will. I'm leaving Steuben next month, so let's just figure that there are some things about each other's lives that we aren't going to be able to fix."

"I'm sorry," said DeAnne. "I wasn't criticizing. I just didn't understand."

"I don't understand either," said Jenny. "And we've got to get this dinner over to Sister Ho's house." DeAnne reluctantly pulled the car out of the Cowpers' driveway, even though she and Step had never before violated their rule that their car never moved without every pa.s.senger strapped down.

Now it was late in May, and it seemed as though once or twice a week there was something that required her and Jenny to do some kind of Relief Society compa.s.sionate service together. "Compa.s.sionate service" invariably meant fixing a meal for somebody. Child in the hospital? The Relief Society brings you dinner. Husband lost his job? Again, dinner. Down with pneumonia? Dinner.

No, thought DeAnne. That isn't fair. The Relief Society does a lot of other things-hospital visits, taking old widows shopping, and that time Sister Bigelow spent three days getting that woman and her two sons with a car that broke down on I-40 installed in a rented mobile home with borrowed furniture. It's just that meals seem to be the main thing that Jenny and I get asked to do.

DeAnne was getting just a little bit tired of it. "Isn't there a compa.s.sionate service leader in this ward?" she had asked Jenny on the phone that morning. The kids were in the back yard playing, and DeAnne was sitting down resting her back because the baby was sticking about nine feet out in front of her now and just standing up took as much work as lifting heavy crates all day.

"There is one," said Jenny. "Sister Opyer. She was called because of inspiration. I know that because no rational person would have called her to do it. Amazingly enough she's been sick every time Ruby Bigelow calls on her to do anything, and now Ruby just calls us."

"Why not release her and call someone else to the position?"

"You don't do that around here," said Jenny. "Sister Opyer wants the position-she just doesn't want to do the work. So if Ruby released her, she'd be hurt and she'd go inactive and all the women in the ward would say that Ruby drove her out of the Church."

"But that's nonsense!"

"You just don't understand the South yet, DeAnne," said Jenny. "I give you about a year. Then it'll suddenly dawn on you that all these sweet, nice, kind-talking people are stabbing you in the back, and you'll think, What a bunch of hypocrites! Then a year later, you'll realize that they aren't hypocrites, they're just so polite that they talk in code. When they say, 'Why I'd be glad to, soon as I can,' that means 'Better do it yourself because I never will.' When they say, 'You think up the most interesting ideas,' it means 'You are plumb loco, woman!' You just have to learn the code."

"How long did it take you to learn it?"

"I'm still learning it,'.' said Jenny. "They still surprise me. But the basic rule is, yes means maybe and maybe means no."

"Why don't they just say what they mean?"

"Confrontation!" cried Jenny. "That would mean confrontation! To say no right out in front of G.o.d and everybody? Impossible. No true southerner is capable of it. It would be unseemly. It would be rude."