He didn't finish the sentence, as he reached down and lifted up the corners of the bag again, so the bugs went back to falling inside it. Of course, the ones that had already spilled onto the outside of the bag now slipped off onto the counter and into the sink and onto the floor, still damp with spilled milk.
"Can't you do anything right," said DeAnne, finishing his sentence for him.
"That's not what I was going to say," said Step.
"Yes it was," said DeAnne.
"I was going to say can't you at least hold it open again, and then I realized that you couldn't, and so I did it.
Don't put words in my mouth, especially when they're mean and nasty words that I didn't even think of saying."
"Now you're supplying the mean and nasty words just fine by yourself," she said.
"Just get out of the kitchen until I get this cleaned up, will you?" said Step. "Do you think 1 enjoy handling dead June bugs? Do you think it makes it any easier to have you standing there not helping at all and trying to pick a fight with me in the meantime?"
Struggling against tears of anger, biting off the retorts she thought of, DeAnne fled the kitchen. Had any of the bugs touched her hands? She rushed into the kids' bathroom and washed with Lava soap, gritty and rough, trying to get them clean. Only it wasn't bug-touches she was washing away, it was the pointless argument.
She rinsed and dried her hands and then went in to waken Stevie. During the school year she had started the custom of waking him by rubbing his back as he lay asleep. Usually at some point his eyes would suddenly fly open and he'd say, "Morning." Today, though, his eyes stayed closed and he murmured, "No school."
"I know there's no school, honey," she said softly. "But your father and I want to talk to you about something this morning before he goes to work."
Now his eyes flew open. "OK," he said.
She knew now that he would quietly climb down from the upper bunk and get dressed without waking Robbie. She headed back for the kitchen.
Step was using a paper towel to pick up dead bug bodies from the kitchen counter and put them in the garbage bag. In the meantime, water was running in the sink and the disposal was on. She imagined him hosing dead bugs into the drain and then the garbage disposal blades chopping them into tiny bits. It made her shudder again, and she felt her empty stomach churn with nausea. "Thank you for taking care of that," she said.
"You might want to wipe off the milk carton and put it back in the fridge," he said coldly.
Well, she deserved to have him speak coldly to her. She had let her revulsion about the bugs turn into sniping at him, and he hadn't deserved it. Still, she had to eat something to settle her stomach, and she couldn't eat it in the kitchen, not till all the bugs were gone. "Step, I'm sorry," she said.
"Fine," he said.
She knew that when he was angry with her, it was better not to try to force a conversation. Better to wait, to let him calm down, and then he'd be gentle with her and they'd apologize to each other and he'd insist it was his fault and that would be fine. But sometimes she just couldn't stand to do it that way because while he needed to be alone after a quarrel, she couldn't bear to be alone, she felt the separation as sharply as if he had struck her and so she had to speak to him, had to explain herself, had to get his reassurance that he didn't hate her, that he still loved her and wanted her with him. It was completely irrational, she knew. But then so was his need to be alone after a fight.
"Step, I'm sorry," she said.
"And I said fine." His tone said it was not fine.
"I mean I'm sorry but I have to say this."
"So say it," he said impatiently, not looking at her.
"I need you to wash the counter. Everywhere that the bugs touched. I know it makes no sense at all but I don't think I can stand to do anything in the kitchen today if you don't wash it for me first. Please."
"I was already planning on it," said Step. He tossed his paper towel into the bag after the last June bug corpse. Then he gathered the top of the bag together, held it up in one hand, and spun the bag so that there was a hard twist right under his hand. He pulled the plastic tie tight around the twist. He was so deft about it, thought DeAnne. As if he had everything down to a science. As if his hands already knew all the secrets about how to do things, to make things happen. She wondered how it felt, to know that you could just think of doing something and your hands would know how to do it.
He carried the garbage bag outside, and while he was gone she dared to go into the kitchen and it wasn't hard after all, as long as she didn't go near the sink, didn't go near the window which was still partly open. She could hear him outside, lifting the lid of the garbage can to put the bag inside. She wiped down the milk bottle and got out a bowl and a spoon and poured the raisin bran and the milk and put the milk back into the fridge and then she knew that she couldn't stay in the kitchen another minute. She fled into the family room.
Stevie was there, playing a computer game. It must be the new one Step bought for Stevie's birthday, she thought, even though it cost fifty dollars that they could ill afford. There was a pirate ship in full sail, and not far off there was another ship, and they were maneuvering to fire broadsides at each other. It reminded her of the movie Captain Blood, which she had never seen before she got married, but Step had seen it as a boy, he had read the book and loved it, and when it came on cable he had taped it and made the whole family watch and it was a good movie, wonderful dumb fun. Errol Flynn, a real swashbuckler. This game was like that. She ate spoonfuls of cereal that got steadily soggier, and she watched from the couc h as Stevie played.
"Come on," Stevie said softly. "You can do it."
He spoke with an intensity DeAnne hadn't heard from him since they moved here.
"Come on, Roddy."
Had he even named the tiny people in the computer games?
"That's right, help him out, Scotty. You can do it."
He was pretending that his imaginary friends were part of the computer game. Well, that's all right, thought DeAnne. At least in the computer game they were really up there on the screen, you could see them. Maybe by playing this Lode Runner game Stevie would move his imaginary friends out of the back yard and up on the screen, where they'd just go away whenever he switched the computer off. Maybe this was a problem that would heal itself and they wouldn't have to take him to a psychiatrist after all, or at least maybe they wouldn't have to take him for very long.
"Hurry up, Jack! Roddy's in trouble and Scotty can't-that's it! Smooth! Got him!"
And with that the two ships swept each other with broadsides and then grappling hooks flew through the air. DeAnne was very impressed. It was almost like a movie, there was so much realistic movement on the screen. Not so ... so limited-seeming, like all the other computer games she'd seen. Like Hacker Snack, for that matter. If this was the competition, Step was going to have to do some superb programming to match it.
"Well if you'd get into it instead of just standing there, David, you'd have more fun," said Stevie.
Her heart chilled. He was talking to the computer figures as if they were alive. As if they could hear him.
Not just the "come on, come on" stuff that people said while watching football or basketball games on TV, but a full conversation, as if the screen were talking back. Stevie wasn't getting any better, and the computer game wasn't any help.
She thought back over the names. The regulars, Jack and Scotty, and the new one he had mentioned yesterday, David, and now a fourth. Roddy. It was getting worse.
She could hear Step turning off the water in the kitchen and she was finished with the raisin bran and it was almost time for Step to leave for work. "Stevie, maybe you better pause the game for a minute so your Dad and I can..."