DeAnne laughed. “You got us pegged, all right.”
“So, I had the Sunday school hour—I don’t go to gospel doctrine class, the teacher and I don’t see eye to eye—and I ducked into the clerk’s office, looked up the Vigor Ward in the Church directory, and made a long distance call to your home ward. Talked to your ward clerk, and asked him if they had any ward members who had just moved to Steuben, North Carolina, and he said, Yes, of course, the Fletchers, and they were the most wonderful people, Sister Fletcher had been the education counselor in Relief Society and Brother Fletcher was the elders quorum president and conducted the choir, they had three kids and a fourth due in July, and they were great speakers, we ought to get them both to talk in sacrament meeting as often as possible—”
“Oh, that was Brother Hyde, he was just being sweet.” DeAnne could not believe that Brother Hyde had actually remembered when their baby was due, or that he had given that information to a stranger. But then, they were all in the Church, weren’t they? And that meant that they were “no more strangers, but fellow citizens of the saints,” or however it went in Paul’s epistle to—to some bunch of Greeks. Or Romans or Hebrews.
“Yes, well, I’m sure,” said Jenny. “He also gave me your address, and then I remembered that I had driven right by your moving van last Friday or whenever it was that you moved in and it never occurred to me that a Mormon family would move in only around the block from me. I mean, to have a Mormon neighbor. That just doesn’t happen in Steuben.”
Even if Jenny hadn’t been meticulous about shelving the books alphabetically by author and in the right groupings, DeAnne would have enjoyed having her there, just to have relief from her own brooding. Somehow, with a completely different upbringing, Jenny had managed to acquire a similar attitude toward the Church. The difference was that Jenny was willing to say right out things that DeAnne would never have dared to admit to anyone but Step.
“I had to get here first,” said Jenny, “or your introduction to the Steuben First Ward would have been Dolores LeSueur, our ward prophetess.”
“Your what?”
“She’s in the vision business. She has revelations for everybody. She’s been dying of cancer for fifteen years only she keeps getting healed, but with death breathing down her neck she has become so much closer to God than ever before—and I’m sure that she was so close to God before that they probably shared a toothbrush. She can’t say hello without telling you that the Spirit told her to greet you. You’ll just love her.”
“I will? I don’t think so, if she’s the way you describe her.”
“Oh, you will, because if you don’t that’ll prove you’re a tool of Satan and an evil influence on the ward. Don’t worry, as long as she gets her way about everything she’s harmless.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. If she’s in charge of a ward activity, everything will go her way. If she decides how you ought to run your ward organization, then your organization will run that way.”
“You mean she claims inspiration?”
“Oh, she claims inspiration every time she has to use the John. No, if you don’t agree with her, she just gets all her disciples to nag the bishop until he makes you do it her way just so they’ll leave him alone. And if the bishop doesn’t give in to her, she goes to the stake president, and if he doesn’t give her what she wants, she calls Salt Lake until somebody there says something she can use to bludgeon you into submission. But don’t let me bias you against her.”
DeAnne said what she always said, because she knew it was right to reject malice. “I’d rather form my own opinions.”
Jenny cocked her head and studied DeAnne for a moment, as if to see Just how judgmental DeAnne might be. “Oh, I know this sounds like gossip. It is gossip. But I promise you, that’s all I’ll ever say about Dolores until you mention her again yourself. I just happen to know from experience that about six weeks from now, you’ll be really glad to know that somebody else in the ward sees through her act. Nuff said. I’m probably too blunt, I know, but I grew up on a ranch in Santaquin where manure was a word we only used at church on Sunday, so I just speak my mind. For instance, I’ve noticed that you keep watching my kids and shooing them away from things and that means that your kids must be well-behaved and trained not to break stuff. Our strategy was to make sure we didn’t own anything that we cared if it got broke. But I’ll tell you what, we’ve about done with the books so let me finish this box and I’ll get my monsters out of here so they can go back to tearing up my house.”
“I really wasn’t thinking . . .”
“We’re careful of our children about the things that count,” said Jenny. “A friend of one of the secretaries where my husband works had a cousin here in town who lost her little boy. Only she didn’t even realize he was missing for ten hours. Can you believe that? I may not know what my children are doing every second, but I know where they are.”
“Jenny, I like your kids, they’re not a problem.”
“Good. So do I. This evening you bring your family on down to my house for supper. We’re two blocks up Chinqua Penn that way, turn right on Wally—that’s a street, not a bum in the road—and we’re five doors down on the right.”
“I really couldn’t put you out for supper—my kitchen is put together now, so—”
“I’m sure you’re really looking forward to thinking up some kind of supper and stopping your unpacking long enough to prepare it,” said Jenny.
DeAnne couldn’t pretend that Jenny wasn’t right, and besides, her mind was still back on what Jenny had said before. “That woman whose little boy was missing. Did they find him?”
“I don’t know,” said Jenny. “I never heard. By the way, in case you’re wondering, I don’t cook southern, I cook western. That means that there won’t be nothin’ deep-fried or even pan-fried. And I cook western ranch, not western Mormon, which means you won’t be getting some tuna casserole and a Jell-O salad, it’ll be an oven roast and baked potatoes and gravy, and I already bought enough for your whole crew so don’t make it go to waste, just say yes and show up at six.”
That was that. Jenny finished the box, called her kids, plunged out the door, and the kids straggled along behind her. DeAnne felt invigorated by Jenny’s visit. Even better, she felt at home, because she knew somebody now, she had a friend.
She looked at her watch. It was two-thirteen. She was supposed to be at school to pick Stevie up in two minutes.
She bustled into the bedroom and dragged the kids out of bed—Robbie was actually asleep, today of all days—made them carry their shoes and socks out to the car and managed to get to that parking lot on the top of the bluff overlooking the school by twenty after. There were still a billion cars and parents there, or anyway more than the parking lot was designed to handle, and tons of children around—but no Stevie. He must have come up the hill and looked around and then, following her instructions, headed back down to wait for her in the principal’s office.
She managed to get both of Elizabeth’s shoes on her at the same time, and Robbie got his own on with the velcro straps fastened down—thank heaven for velcro. It was almost two-thirty when she finally herded the children into the front of the school. The last of the buses was just pulling away. Stevie was sitting in Dr. Mariner’s office. The second he saw her, he was on his feet and heading out the door.
“Just a moment, Mrs. Fletcher,” said the secretary.
DeAnne turned back to face her.
“If you aren’t able to pick up your child on time, may I suggest that you have him ride the bus? Or arrange for the after-school program?”
“I’ll be on time from now on,” said DeAnne. “Or we’ll set him up for the bus.”
“Because this room is not a holding area for children, it’s a working office,” said the secretary.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” said DeAnne. “It won’t happen again.”
“We like children very much here,” said the secretary, “b
ut we must reserve this area for adult business, and we appreciate it when our parents are thoughtful enough not to—”
“Yes,” said DeAnne, “I can promise you that the only way I’ll be late to pick him up again is if I’m dead. Thank you very much.” Seething inside, she left the office, Elizabeth on her hip and Robbie in tow. Stevie was waiting at the front door of the school.
“I wasn’t very late,” said DeAnne. “But I thought that maybe your class hadn’t gotten out yet, so I waited at the top of the hill.”
Stevie nodded, saying nothing. As soon as she caught up with him he walked briskly on ahead, leading the way to the stairs up the hill.
Robbie broke free of DeAnne’s grip and caught up with Stevie, but his relentless conversation couldn’t penetrate Stevie’s silence. He must be really angry with me, thought DeAnne. Usually Robbie could pull him out of a sulk in thirty seconds flat.
When they got to the car, DeAnne apologized again for being late, but Stevie said nothing, just got into the front passenger seat while she was belting the kids into their seats in back. “Is Stevie mad at me?” whispered Robbie at the top of his voice.
“I think he’s mad at me,” said DeAnne. “Don’t worry.”
She got into the car and backed out of the parking place, navigated a narrow road among a small stand of trees, and finally pulled out on a main road. Only then could she glance down at Stevie. “Please don’t be mad at me, Stevie. It’ll never happen again.”
He shook his head and a silver tear flew from his eye, catching a glint of sunlight before it disappeared onto the floor. He wasn’t sulking, he was crying.
She reached out and caught his left hand, held it. “Oh, Stevie, what’s wrong, honey? Was it really so bad?”
Again he shook his head; he didn’t want to talk about it yet. But he didn’t take his hand away, either. So he didn’t hate her for being late, and when he was able to he’d tell her what happened and he’d accept whatever comfort she could give. She held his hand all the way home.
He didn’t want a snack—he headed straight for his room. She kept Robbie out, though it took practically nailing his feet to the kitchen floor to do it. She ended up giving Robbie and Elizabeth their snacks, and then decided that they needed a walk outside. They’d been cooped up in the house all day, and even though it was the first week of March it had been a warm winter, not a flake of snow even in Indiana, and almost balmy ever since they got to Steuben. They could walk down and make sure they knew which house was the Cowpers’ while it was still daylight.
She leaned into Stevie’s room. He was lying on his bed, facing away from the door. “Stevie, honey, we’re going to take a walk. Want to come?”
He mumbled no.
“I’m going to lock the doors. I’ll only be gone a few minutes, OK? But if there’s a problem, we’ll be out in front somewhere, we won’t go out of sight, OK?”
He nodded.
Out on the street, she realized for the first time that there weren’t any sidewalks. They couldn’t even walk on the grass—people planted hedges right down to the street. How completely stupid, how unsafe! Where do children rollerskate? Where do you teach children to walk so they’ll be safe? Maybe people in Steuben haven’t noticed yet that cars sometimes run over children in the road.
It made her feel trapped again, as if she had found out that they would have to live in a house with no hot water or no indoor toilets. I had no business bringing my children to this uncivilized place. In Utah I could have kept them on the sidewalk and they would have been fine.
In Utah.
Is that what I am? One of those Mormons who think that anything that is different from Utah is wrong? She mentally shook herself and began giving the kids a revised version of the sidewalk lecture. “Stay close to the curb and walk on the lawns wherever you can.”
Robbie was bouncing his red ball in the gutter as they walked. It was one of those hollow rubber ones about four inches across, small enough for a small child to handle it but big enough that it wasn’t always getting lost. “I wish you hadn’t brought that, Robbie,” said DeAnne.
“You told me it was an outside toy, and we’re outside.”
“Well, if it bounces into the street, you can’t chase it, you have to wait for it to roll to one side or the other, all right?”
Robbie nodded hugely—and then kept on nodding, not so much to annoy his mother as because nodding with such exaggerated movement was fun. “Look, Mom, the whole world is going up and down!”
Of course, he had not stopped bouncing the ball, and at this point the inevitable happened—it bounced off his toe and careened down the gutter away from them, rolling into the road and then drifting back to the curb, where it disappeared.
“My ball!” cried Robbie. “It went down that hole!”
Sure enough, the ball had, with unerring aim, found a storm drain and rolled right in. This was the first time DeAnne had really noticed what the drains were like, and again she was appalled. They were huge gaps in the curb, and the gutter sloped sharply down to guide the flow of water into them. The effect was that any object that came anywhere near them would inevitably be sucked inside. And the gap was large enough that a small child could easily fit into the drain. Naturally the people who designed roads without sidewalks would think nothing of creating storm drains that children could fit into.
“Mom, get it out!”
DeAnne sighed and set Elizabeth down on the neighbor’s lawn. “Stay right by your sister and don’t let her go anywhere, Robbie.”
Of course, this meant that Robbie grabbed hold of Elizabeth’s arm and Elizabeth began to scream. “I didn’t mean tackle her and pin her to the grass, Robbie.”
“She was going to go into the street,” said Robbie. “She’s really stupid, Mom.”
“She isn’t stupid, Robbie, she’s two.”
“Did I go in the street when I was two?”
Elizabeth had stopped screaming and was tearing grass out of the neighbor’s lawn.
“No, Robbie. You were too scared that a motorcycle might come by. You had this thing about motorcycles. You used to dream that they were coming to get you and eat you. So you never went into the street because that’s where the Motorman was.”
In the meantime, DeAnne was down on her hands and knees, trying to see anything at all in the storm drain. It was too dark.
“I can’t see anything,” DeAnne said. “I’m sorry, Robbie. I wish you hadn’t brought the ball on this walk.”
“You mean you aren’t going to reach in and hunt for it?”
“Robbie, no, I’m not,” said DeAnne. “I can’t see in there. Anything could be down in that hole.”
Suddenly he looked terrified. “Like what?”
“I meant that I just don’t know what’s in there and I’m not going to go reaching around for it. For all we know it’s eight feet down, or the ball might have already rolled halfway to Hickey’s Chapel Road.” She gathered up Elizabeth and took Robbie’s hand and they walked on toward the street where the Cowpers lived.
“Stevie said this was a bad place.”
“Stevie said what?”
“A bad place,” said Robbie, enunciating clearly, as if his mother were deaf.
What could Stevie have meant by saying such a thing to Robbie? Did he mean the house? The neighborhood? School? Steuben?
Robbie looked over his shoulder again toward the drain. “Do you think that someday they’ll find my ball down there?”
“Since the ball isn’t biodegradable, it will probably still be there for the Second Coming.”
Robbie was still trying to extract meaning from that last statement when they got to the second corner. DeAnne stopped there and counted down five houses on the right. The Cowpers’ was a one-story brick house with a station wagon in the driveway, with two kids climbing all over the top of it. DeAnne would never let her kids climb on the car. They could fall off. They could damage something. The hood of the wagon was up, and as she watched, she sa
w Jenny emerge from the hood, where apparently she had been fixing something in the car. Jenny stretched her back, looked around, and saw DeAnne. She waved the gray doughnut-shaped thing she was holding. DeAnne waved back.
Jenny yelled something, but DeAnne couldn’t hear her, and it embarrassed her to have somebody yelling to her on the street. So she waved again, as if to say yes to whatever Jenny said—which was probably something like, See you at six, or, Nice weather we’re having—and then turned and herded her little flock back toward home.
“Kitty!” shouted Elizabeth right in DeAnne’s ear. “Kitty! Kitty!”
A jet-black kitten scurried across the road just as a car came speeding by. The cat dodged out of the way; the car made no effort to slow down or stop. DeAnne’s fears about the dangers of the street in front of their house were all confirmed.
“Wow,” said Robbie. “We almost had a kitty pizza.”
Another Step-ism.
The cat headed straight for the storm drain and disappeared.
“Mom!” screamed Robbie. “The yucky hole got him!”
Robbie ran a few dozen steps toward the hole. Then he realized that he was not in the protection of his mother and started to run back. But he could not bring himself to leave the kitty, and so he stood there beating his fists against his hips, demanding that his mother hurry, hurry!
“Honey, the kitty probably goes down into that hole all the time and plays there.”
But Robbie wasn’t hearing anything she had to say. “The snake got him, Mom! You got to save him, you got to!”
Of course Robbie would imagine a snake down there. Step had taken them to a science museum and they had watched a snake eating a mouse. Robbie couldn’t let go of the memory. Snakes had replaced the Motorman.
She knelt by him and put her arm around him to calm him. “Robbie, I promise you, there is no snake down there. Whenever it rains here, the water all rushes down into that drain, and if there were any snakes living down there they would have been washed out to the ocean years ago.”
“The yucky hole hooks up to the ocean?” asked Robbie.
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