Before she finished the sentence, Stevie had reached behind the Atari and switched it off. Just like that.
"Honey, you could have saved your game," she said. "You didn't have to switch it off."
"It's fine," he said.
Step came into the family room. "Hi, Stevie," he said. "Sorry you had to get up early on your first day of summer, but your Mom and I wanted to tell you what's going to happen today."
Stevie waited. Not even curious, it seemed.
Step looked at DeAnne.
Oh, is it suddenly my turn? Well, she supposed that was fair. "Stevie, we've been worried about you ever since we got to Steuben. You've been so sad and quiet all the time."
"I'm OK," he said.
"The problems in school that we didn't even know about-the Stevie that we knew last fall in Vigor would have told us if a teacher was acting like Mrs. Jones did."
"She's gone," he said.
"We know she's gone," said DeAnne. She could hear herself starting to sound impatient. It was so hard dealing with Stevie, with the way he deflected questions. "But even after she left, you didn't seem to get any happier."
"I'm fine," said Stevie.
Step came to her rescue, for the moment at least. "It's not just the way you've become so sad and quiet, Door Man. It's the way you don't play with Robbie and Betsy anymore."
Stevie looked down at his hands.
"And your friends," said Step. "It worries us that you play all the time with imaginary friends."
Stevie seemed to bristle.
"Don't get mad at me, Stevie, help me here," said Step. "You've been talking about Jack and Scotty for months, and yet when we watch you playing, there's nobody there."
"I'm not lying," said Stevie.
"Well what are we to think, honey?" asked DeAnne.
"I never lie," said Stevie.
"We're not saying that you're lying," said Step. "This isn't about lying. It isn't about right and wrong or anything like that. We just want to take you to a doctor."
"You think I'm crazy," said Stevie. He seemed even angrier, but he wasn't looking at either of them. He was looking into the gap between them.
"Stevie, no way," said Step. "We do not think you're crazy. We just think you're having a hard time dealing with things and we want you to get help from somebody who knows about hard times. An expert. A doctor."
Stevie said nothing.
"Her name is Dr. Weeks," said DeAnne. "Her son is a member of the ward, so she's not even a stranger, really."
"She's not a Mormon herself, though," Step said.
"That's right," said DeAnne. "But your father has met her and she's a really nice lady. She'll just want you to talk to her. Nothing more. Can you do that?"
Stevie nodded.
"Will you speak honestly and openly to her?" DeAnne asked.
Now his angry glare was turned directly on her. "I always tell the truth," he said.
"I know," said DeAnne. "I didn't mean that I thought you'd lie, I just want you to talk to her. To tell her what's happening in your life. How things seem to you. You don't talk very much to your father and me, so we thought maybe somebody else, you could talk to somebody else, outside the family."
Stevie just sat there, looking into the space between them again.
"Can I come home sometimes?" he asked.
"Oh, Stevie, it's not like that! I'm just going to take you for a ten o'clock appointment. You'll go in and meet her and talk to her and then we'll come home. It's just once a week, and you won't even be there a whole hour.
We wouldn't send you away from home, Stevie!"
Because Step wasn't pregnant he was able to get off the couch and kneel beside Stevie and put his arm around the boy For once, Stevie responded, turning his face toward his father's shoulder.
"Stevie," said Step. "Stephen, my son, you are the brightest star in the darkest night, do you think we'd ever ever let you go? You belong with us until you want to go, and I hope that doesn't happen until you're old enough to go on a mission and then get married. Years from now. We will never send you away, no matter what."
But you mustn't say that, thought DeAnne. What if he needed to be hospitalized? What then? That would make a liar out of you, Step. Unless you really mean it, and even if he needed treatment like that you wouldn't let him go. Some love that would be!
Then she thought, I wouldn't let him go, either.
"Stevie, if you tell us you won't go to this doctor," said Step, "then we won't make you go. It's up to you.
We don't think you're crazy or anything like that, but we think you're having a hard time and we think that maybe Dr. Weeks can help make things better for you, help you find a way to solve things for yourself. That's all. We'd really like you to try, but if you say no, we won't make you go.„
How can you say that! cried DeAnne silently. Leaving it up to him-that's like asking a little kid whether he wants his tetanus booster! What if Stevie says no, what then, Step, what about your promise to me that you'd take him?
"I don't want to," said Stevie.
And there it was. Thanks a lot, Step!
But Stevie hadn't reached his decision yet. "Can she really help people solve hard problems?" he asked.
"Sometimes," said Step.
"Then I'll go," said Stevie. He didn't seem angry anymore.
"Thanks, Door Man," said Step. "And if it doesn't work out, or if you don't like her, then we won't make you go to her anymore, OK? This isn't like school, there isn't a law that says you have to go. Got it?"
Stevie nodded. Then he got up and left the room. DeAnne wanted to ho ld him, comfort him. But if he had wanted her right then, he could have stayed. He wanted to be alone, and that was his right.
Step sat back down beside her on the couch and put his arm around her. "It went pretty well, I'd say" he said.
She said nothing.
"I know what you're thinking," said Step, "and it isn't true."
"What am I thinking, smart guy?" she asked.
"You're thinking that you're the worst wife and mother who ever lived on the face of the earth and I'm telling you, that's just the pregnancy talking."
"No it's not," she said.
"I know you hate it when I point out things like this, but you've always spent the last couple of months of every pregnancy in the slough of despond. The worst mother, the baby would be luckier if it was stillborn-"
"I've never said such an awful thing!"
"You said it about Stevie and you said it about Betsy."
"So I'm just a machine that hormones use to accomplish their evil purposes in the world," she said.
"I'm not saying that the feelings you have aren't real, Fish Lady," said Step. "I'm just saying that you can't believe the things they make you think. You're a wonderful wife, and I wouldn't have any other."
"Oh yeah? Well what have I done this morning that was so wonderful?" asked DeAnne.
"For one thing, you've kept my fourth child alive for another day, and that's a fulltime job all by itself. And you didn't tell me to stop when you thought I was letting Stevie decide not to go to the shrink."
"What, have you suddenly decided that you're a mind reader?"
"You sat on the edge of that couch like it was all you could do to keep from leaping at me and stapling my mouth shut," said Step. "I don't have to read minds. But you didn't do it. You trusted me, and it worked out. I'd say that gives you the hero-of-the-morning medal."
"No it doesn't," said DeAnne. "Not after the way I talked to you in the kitchen."
"Nothing that anybody says on the same day they find five hundred thousand June bugs staring at them through the kitchen windows is allowed to count against them," said Step. "Now give me a kiss before I go to work because my ride is outside."
She kissed him. Then: "You didn't get any breakfast," she said.