"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 internship 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 psychoanalyst 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 some thing like that."
"A quiver," said DeAnne. "How phallic."
"Actually, it's the arrow that's phallic. A very confused sexual 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."
"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 analyzed 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 God to retire so he can move into the job, like Sister LeSueur.
It's more like he thinks that he already is God, or at least a god, 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 psychia trist, 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."