Motherhood was not a career. It was life. A good life, one she had no intention of giving up, but it was not complete enough for her. She needed to do something that reminded her that she was human.
She had been saying this to her good friend Lorry Tisch, who managed the educational TV station in Salt Lake City, when Lorry started laughing at her. “You have a career, dimwit! Every bit as fulfilling as mine!”
“If you tell me that motherhood is supposed to be enough—”
“Listen, Deen, back before you and Step were married, when Step was back and forth between Mexico and Washington working on that project for the Historical Department and he was only home one Wednesday night right in the middle, why was it that you didn’t have time to see him? Remember now, he was already the love of your life, and you couldn’t spare him the one night in two months—”
“I had a responsibility,” said DeAnne.
“Young Adult Relief Society president, and you had a presidency meeting. You could have changed the day! You could have canceled that week’s meeting!”
“Why are you bringing all this up again, Lorry?”
“Because you’ll sacrifice anything for your career. Even Step. You almost lost him over that one, you know. I had to talk to him for three hours that night to keep him from giving you an f.o. note.”
“Please don’t tell me what the letters stand for,” said DeAnne.
“Your career is the Church, Deen. Whatever your calling is at any given moment, that’s what you live for, and everything else better get out of your way. So don’t give me any more b.s.—that stands for booger samples—about not having a career. You had a career when we were both in high school and you practically ran the whole Young Women program while the adult leaders just stood out of your way.”
DeAnne had realized that Lorry was right. She had a career, one that she could pursue without setting aside her family. So she threw herself into her callings with renewed enthusiasm, and hadn’t let up since, through their years in Salt Lake City, in Orem, in Vigor. Wherever they went, as soon as the strongest women in the ward realized how reliable, how competent, how inventive she was, they would go to the bishop and begin to ask for her to be called to a position in their organization. Almost immediately she would find herself in the inner circle of the best women in the ward, aware of everything, all the family problems and marriage problems and money problems, all the women who couldn’t get along with each other, all the women who could be relied on and all the women who couldn’t. Armed with this knowledge, she was able to make a difference. Her programs ran smoothly and she carried out all her assignments, but to her that was the minimum. Far more important was the work she imposed on herself—trying to help the sisters become a bit more patient with others’ failings, more tolerant of strangeness, more loving and less angry, more obedient to the laws of God and less compliant with the mindless demands of tradition.
It was a life’s work, because it never ended—and yet she had seen progress, she had made breakthroughs. And when she compared her career in the Church with the careers of her friends—even one as remarkably successful as Lorry, who was now programming director for a network station in a major market—she was not unsatisfied, for while she would never get the fame or recognition or money Lorry had, at the end of every working day what had Lorry accomplished? “M*A*S*H” reruns slotted between Carson and the new Letterman show.
If the Church was DeAnne’s career, then moving to a new town—indeed, moving across town to a new ward—was like a job transfer. The Church was the same everywhere, in its broad outlines. There were the same callings to be filled, the same basic tasks to be performed. But the people were different; the way they fit together in the ward was always new. Each new ward had its own customs, its own traditions, its quarrels and its cliques.
Most important, though, was the fact that in each new ward, DeAnne never knew what her calling would be. It took time to become known, time for people to find out what she could do. And in the meantime, the bishop would be looking at the ward roster, trying to find someone to teach a Primary class or run the library. DeAnne would, of course, accept any calling she was given and do the best she could with it, but she had seen many times how someone could get put in one slot, and as long as they lived in that ward that’s all that people ever saw them as. She had said it to Step as they prepared to move to Steuben: “I wonder who I’ll be in our new ward.”
“Who you’ll be? You’ll be DeAnne Brown Fletcher, of course.”
She knew better. In Vigor she had been counselor in the Relief Society, one of the leading women in the ward, part of everything going on. In Salt Lake City she had been the young women’s president; in Orem she had worked with the young women’s organization at the stake level. Each role was different; in each place, because she had a different calling, the other Saints saw her differently, saw her as the role she filled.
And why not? That was how careers were supposed to function, wasn’t it? That was the difference between a career and a job, wasn’t it? A job was just something you did—but a career, that was who you were. Step had a history Ph.D., but nobody saw him as a historian because that wasn’t his career; he was a game designer, because that’s where his accomplishments were. Well, DeAnne had been an accomplished Relief Society counselor in Vigor, and now in the Steuben 1st Ward she would be someone else, and she was eager to know who.
They had moved often enough that they were now experts on how to get involved immediately in the new ward. Some people entered a ward shyly, quietly, just coming to the meetings and gradually getting to know people. But that could leave you without a calling for months and months, which would drive DeAnne crazy. So she and Step had perfected a technique of moving into a ward quickly and deeply, so they would be involved almost at once. They joined the choir.
Step had a strong baritone voice that could handle most tenor parts, and since every ward choir in the church was hurting for men, and especially for tenors, he was immediately the star of the choir. DeAnne’s soprano voice was not quite so rare, but she learned parts very quickly and sang with strength—and on pitch. Besides, she played the piano and could fill in for a missing accompanist. There was always a core of music people in every ward, trading assignments and helping each other out in all the organizations. By becoming known to the music people, DeAnne and Step were soon known to everyone—known and valued. Because their attendance at choir was as faithful as possible, people also knew they were, as Mormons called it, “active.” They could be counted on. If they were given an assignment, they would show up and fulfill it. Thanks to their choir connection, within weeks of moving into each new ward they were well and widely known.
They had followed the same program in the Steuben 1st Ward, and the technique worked just as effectively. When they showed up at the Sunday afternoon choir practice—their kids in tow and well armed with paper to draw on and books to read and, in Elizabeth’s case, a few soft toys to play with while Stevie watched her—the choir director looked them over and immediately said, “We’ve got a new man in the choir!” DeAnne always heard that statement with amusement. In a few moments the choir leader would apologize, whereupon DeAnne would reassure her that she understood that men were at a premium and sopranos like her were a dime a dozen.
As she took part in the familiar rituals of choir practice, DeAnne felt warm and comfortable and welcome. Even though she knew not a single one of the people there, they were Mormons and they were music people and so she knew them all, and knew that they knew her and her husband and already, already they belonged.
The next week DeAnne substituted for a Primary teacher—the Primary president’s husband was one of the basses, and apparently when the Primary president was fretting about a teacher who was out of town, he must have said, “Why not ask the new sister to fill in? Sister—Fletcher, I think.” And the following week Step substituted in gospel doctrine class. He had spoken up a couple of times in class the first two weeks, and
word was getting around that he had a doctorate in history, which gave him great prestige in a mostly blue-collar ward, so it was only natural they gave him a try as teacher of the adult Sunday school class.
During the next week, the bishop called DeAnne and set up an appointment for her and Step to come see him. Saturday was the only day she could count on Step being home at any reasonable hour before Sunday came, and so Saturday it was. Sure enough, she was called to be a Primary teacher—the usual calling for a woman new in a ward—and Step was called to teach the gospel doctrine class. Step was elated. He loved to teach and hated administrative callings—he had not really enjoyed being elders quorum president back in Vigor. Besides, gospel doctrine class was a Sunday-only calling; there’d be no meetings during the week, and that meant that there’d be no conflict between his job and his calling.
DeAnne bided her time, however. She was a good Primary teacher and loved working with the little children, but she knew that she would not be in Primary very long—something would open up in Relief Society and she would be brought in. She knew this because the Relief Society president, Ruby Bigelow, had made a point of sitting beside her the second Sunday they went to choir practice, and when the singing was done, they had chatted like old friends for a quarter of an hour, before the kids made it clear that they were hungry enough to start eating the pews. Sister Bigelow already knew that DeAnne had been education counselor in the Relief Society in Vigor—Jenny Cowper had told her—and they swapped stories about disastrous homemaking meetings they had lived through. “I hope I get a chance to know you better,” Sister Bigelow had said after that first conversation.
It happened the last Tuesday night in April. A phone call from the bishop. He wanted to speak to Step first. Step talked for only a few moments, said, “Sure, of course, no problem,” and then called DeAnne back to the phone. That told her at once that the bishop had a new calling for her, and had checked with her husband first—she didn’t mind the custom; she only wished that they’d do the same when the shoe was on the other foot, and check with the wife before calling the husband to a new position.
“Hi, Sister Fletcher,” said the bishop.
“Hi again,” said DeAnne.
“I hate doing this on the phone, but I have to catch a plane in an hour and I won’t be back before Sunday and Sister Bigelow would have my hide on the wall if I didn’t get you called so you could be sustained this Sunday.”
So it was going to be a Relief Society calling. She was almost relieved about that; because of her good experience in Vigor, she still thought of herself as a Relief Society person. And she liked Sister Bigelow. It would be good to work with her, and good to be with the women of the ward.
“Sister Mansard has just been called to the state Relief Society board, and that leaves the ward without a spiritual living teacher. Sister Bigelow and I both think that you’re the one the Lord wants in that position. Will you do it?”
Of course she would do it, though she was astonished that she was being given spiritual living. That was far and away the most prestigious of the four Relief Society teaching positions. In her most ambitious moments DeAnne might have hoped to teach cultural refinement. Sister Bigelow must have an amazing amount of confidence in a newcomer.
Thus it was that, almost exactly two months after they arrived in Steuben, DeAnne finally knew what her career in this place was going to be. She was relieved; she was delighted. Like Step, she would be a teacher, in the organization she loved best and with the assignment she valued most.
“When you think about it,” said Step, “you and I have probably the two most influential teaching positions you can have. If the Lord brought us to Steuben to make a difference in this ward, he couldn’t have put us into better callings to accomplish it.” DeAnne could only agree. It felt good to have those callings, as if the Lord was reassuring them that this move was the right thing to do, that they were in the place where he wanted them to be.
If only Stevie could get that same confidence in where he was, in what he was doing. But it was harder for a child, even one as bright and mature for his age as Stevie. He hadn’t yet had enough experience with life to be patient, to know even when things were unpleasant and hard that it all had a purpose, even fear, even pain, that it would end up preparing him to be a fine man who would understand the suffering and loneliness of others. There was plenty of time, though. That was the nice thing, that in a couple of years she could say to Stevie, “Do you remember how hard it was for you when we first moved here? Why, you even had imaginary friends that you played with, you were so determined to be lonely! And now look at you, with all these friends, and doing so well in school!” If only she could skip over the next few years, and take him to that place right now, so that he could see that this crisis in his life would pass.
In the meantime, she had her career in this place, and so did Step. Actually, Step had two careers, so while he hated working with some of those strange people at Eight Bits Inc., he had the relief of Sundays, a chance to talk to people who understood the way he saw the world, to be a servant of the Lord instead of a servant of Ray Keene.
For Step, of course, teaching the gospel doctrine class was easy. He didn’t think about it during the week, didn’t even prepare it until sacrament meeting, usually. He’d read a couple of chapters in the Old Testament while the speakers droned on, jot some notes, and then a few minutes after sacrament meeting ended he’d stand up in front of the class and dazzle them. In a way he’d been preparing all his life to teach a class like this—all it took was a few moments of thought and he could draw out of his memory enough insights into the scriptures to keep the class members pondering and exploring for a week.
For DeAnne, though, teaching was a much more involving task. For one thing, women in Relief Society expected far more preparation from their teachers. There had to be visual aids, and sometimes handouts, and sometimes treats, which meant that DeAnne had to plan each lesson for days, for weeks. For another thing, DeAnne soon found that Sister Bigelow apparently relied on her teachers to be part of the leadership of the Relief Society. She was often on the phone to DeAnne, asking her to help with this or that—to call a list of sisters, for instance, and ask them to take food over to so-and-so’s house because her mother had been in the hospital and she shouldn’t have to worry about cooking. “I’m so sorry to put all these things on you,” Sister Bigelow said, “but our compassionate service leader isn’t—well, isn’t always able to do what’s needed.”
DeAnne understood perfectly—the compassionate service leader was no doubt one of those who were given callings that they weren’t really capable of doing yet, to help them grow. In the meantime, others had to take up the slack and get the job done while the sister with the calling was learning how to get her act together.
DeAnne took on all these assignments gladly and fulfilled them at once. After all, this was her career. To make those phone calls while Robbie and Elizabeth were down for their naps, to cut out visual aids for her lesson while Elizabeth colored beside her and Robbie practiced his letters—that was how life was supposed to be lived, connecting always with her children, and always with the sisters of the ward.
But the most pressing part of her work was that spiritual living lesson—if she didn’t do that well, then she’d be less effective in anything else she did. The sisters here had to learn to have confidence in her from the start, and it would be hard, since some would be a bit resentful of a newcomer being given such a plum of a calling. Furthermore, her first teaching assignment was right away, on the first of May. She had no choice but to let a few things slide at home—the remaining boxes could stay packed until after the lesson was done.
On Sunday she was so nervous she woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep. When Step got up at eight o’clock, he found the children already dressed in their Sunday clothes, eating breakfast. “What, does church start at eight-thirty instead of nine?”
“I just wanted us not to be all in a r
ush going to church today,” said DeAnne.
Step smiled and put his arm around her. She knew that he wasn’t much of a hugger by nature, but he knew she needed physical contact, so when he noticed that she needed it, he gave it. Today she hadn’t realized how much she needed the reassurance of his arm around her, but she felt calm go through her in a warm wave, and she clung to him for a moment. “You’re going to be wonderful,” he said. “You always worry so much, but you’re a great teacher and they’re going to love you.”
All through sacrament meeting she could hardly listen to the people bearing their testimonies, she was so nervous. During Step’s lesson in Sunday school, she kept glancing down at her notes, making sure that she knew exactly what she was going to say. For a moment, though, his words brought her out of her reverie. He was telling the story of the time when Joshua was all upset because a couple of men were prophesying in the camp of Israel, and he wanted Moses to come and stop them. Step paraphrased Moses’ answer: “Don’t be jealous on my behalf. I wish all the people were prophets.” Then Step launched into his riff about how the Lord expects every Saint to receive guidance from the Lord, and not rely on anyone else, not even the prophet, to tell them every move to make in their lives. For one awful moment, DeAnne thought, He’s going to give my lesson. I should have told him what my lesson was about because he’s going to cover the whole thing right here and in Relief Society it’s going to sound like I’m just repeating what my husband said, which would completely undercut the whole point I want to make.
But Step went on to a discussion of ritual, and DeAnne breathed a sigh of relief, though she drew a little star in her notes and wrote “Step” beside it, right at the spot in her lesson where she should refer to what Step had said in Sunday school. She’d make it work.
She wasn’t counting on Sister LeSueur.
Lost Boys: A Novel Page 14
