"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 Dicky. I could let them fire me and collect unemployment. But no, you won't let me get out from under Dicky'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 sud den 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 glass 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 shirtsleeve.
"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."