Elizabeth came into the room in her diaper, carrying her swimsuit. DeAnne laboriously sat on the couch to help her get it on. “I can’t just put it on you like I used to, Elizabeth,” said DeAnne. “I can’t reach over my tummy. You have to step into the suit.”
It took about a dozen tries, but Elizabeth was finally standing in her swimsuit and now DeAnne could pull it up and tie it behind her neck. “Are you going to come out into the sprinkler, too, Stevie?” she asked.
Stevie didn’t stop playing even for a moment. “No,” he said.
“You used to like to,” said DeAnne.
Robbie ran into the room, wearing not only his swimsuit but also the Superman cape that DeAnne had made for him two Halloweens ago. “Ta-da!” he shouted. “Ta-da!”
“Here you are to save the day,” said DeAnne.
“Turn on the sprinkler, Mommy!” shouted Robbie.
DeAnne leaned to the side and sort of rolled up onto her feet, supporting her weight on the front of the couch as she did. She felt like an elephant she had seen once in a movie, wallowing in the mud.
“Stevie,” she said. “You used to like to play in the sprinkler.”
“It wouldn’t be fair,” he said.
“What wouldn’t be fair?” she asked.
“’Cause I can and they can’t.”
She knew the answer, but still she had to ask. “Who can’t?”
“Scotty and Jack and those guys.”
She curbed her frustration and spoke in what she hoped was a reasonable tone. “Well, they can’t play computer games with you, either.”
“Yes they can,” he said.
She opened the back door and Robbie and Elizabeth burst out into the sunlight. She turned back into the dark cave of the family room, where Stevie now seemed to be only a shadow in the corner, his head silhouetted against the bright screen, where a train sped along a track.
“Stevie, even if they can’t play with you in the sprinkler, if your friends are really your friends, they’d want you to play in the sunlight. Real friends wouldn’t stop you from playing with your brother and sister sometimes. Your brother and sister need you, too.”
She couldn’t believe she was talking to Stevie as if his imaginary friends were real.
But if these imaginary boys were at the center of Stevie’s life, then shutting them out would mean shutting Stevie out, too. She had to try to reach him, and if this was the only door he held open, then she would reach in through that door.
Stevie reached behind the computer and switched it off. “OK,” he said. “I’ll get my suit on.”
She felt weak with relief as she turned the water on.
The sprinkler began its sweep back and forth across the lawn. Elizabeth ran through it, screaming. Robbie, however—the one who had suggested this—hung back. “Go on!” DeAnne said. “Just run through it and get wet. The water won’t hurt.”
Robbie still hesitated.
Then Stevie came out, walked over to where Robbie was, took him by the hand, and said, “OK, they’re about to drop the bomb on us, let’s run!” And, screaming, he and Robbie ran through the water.
DeAnne went back in the family room and brought out the folding chair she always used when she sat in the back and watched the kids play. She sat there, watching, and thought, Somebody wants me to think that he’s watching, too. Somebody wants me to sit out here in my back yard and be afraid.
Well, it’s working.
Step knew that something was bothering her, so when he woke up at three in the morning and found her side of the bed empty, he was not surprised. He knew why she couldn’t sleep. The letter from the mortgage company had laid things out in no uncertain terms. “Your single payment was insufficient to keep this account open. If we do not receive in our office all back payments and late fees, along with the July payment currently due, for a total payment of $3,398.40, by 22nd July, we will begin foreclosure proceedings against the property.” It was only then that Step discovered that DeAnne had not paid the back payments in June, when the first check from Agamemnon arrived. She hadn’t spent the money on anything else; it was still there, ready to be paid. But it had been strange, to say the least, for DeAnne simply not to pay. It wasn’t as if they didn’t owe the money. It was their moral obligation to pay it. They had decided together that they would pay it. And yet the money still waited in the bank.
DeAnne had obviously been unwilling to discuss it with Step last night. She agreed at once that she would send the payment tomorrow, but she seemed distracted, as if she wasn’t paying attention. She told him twice about Stevie playing with the other kids in the sprinkler, and she seemed jumpy. Now she couldn’t sleep. Well, neither can I, thought Step. He got up and went in search of her. He found her in the family room and started reassuring her about the mortgage.
“It’s not the house, Step,” she said. “But you were so worried about it tonight that I didn’t want to pile on anything more.”
“You were protecting me? That’s not how it’s supposed to go.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We depend so much on your being able to concentrate on your work. But I can’t handle this alone.” She gave him the record and the envelope it came in. “It was waiting at our front door.”
As soon as it started playing, he recognized it. He had the car-radio habit as DeAnne did not, and the song was hot right now. He had even liked it, the cleverness of it, the nastiness. But not when someone sent it anonymously to his family. He took it off the stereo before it finished playing. Then he broke it in half and carried the pieces outside to the garbage. There was nothing he could say that would reassure DeAnne. He could only take her to bed and hold her until finally she fell asleep.
He slept badly the rest of the night, and the next day at work, the question kept nagging at him. Who could have sent it? Who would want to disrupt their lives, fill them with fear?
DeAnne had figured that whoever it was knew Step better than DeAnne—but that didn’t really leave anybody out, because it seemed as though Step had made all the enemies they had anyway. Who, after all, would want them to think that they were being watched? It might be Lee Weeks, of course, punishing them for the baptism thing. Or Gallowglass, after the Fourth of July picnic—he had been cool and distant at work ever since, and who knew what might be going through his mind in response to the clear accusation in Step’s actions that day?
There were others who might harbor ill feelings, too. It might conceivably be Mrs. Jones, who had missed her last month of teaching and, according to Dr. Mariner, would not be coming back next year. Could she have sat at home, brooding, until she thought of sending that record to make the Fletchers suffer a little, too? It could even be Sister LeSueur, though that seemed beyond possibility—it was hard to imagine her ever hearing a rock song, let alone buying one, even as a satanic weapon.
Dicky? It couldn’t be Dicky. He was a vindictive man, Step already knew that, and they had already had one confrontation too many. But surely Dicky would confine his vengeance to bureaucratic infighting at work. Wouldn’t he?
It was an appalling list, really: Lee, Class, Mrs. Jones, Dicky Northanger, Sister LeSueur—these were the people who definitely felt they had cause to hate or fear or resent Step Fletcher after he had lived in Steuben, North Carolina, for less than five months. Just think how many enemies he could make by New Year’s! Yet he hadn’t set out to make any enemies at all. He had come to Eight Bits Inc. expecting to be friends with Dicky Northanger—he had liked him well enough during interviews. It was Dicky who decided to be Step’s enemy. It was Sister LeSueur who intruded into their lives, not the other way around. It was Mrs. Jones who singled out Stevie and mistreated him—should Step have let it go on, in the effort to be a “peacemaker”? What kind of peacemaker would he be, how blessed exactly would he be, if he pursued peace at the expense of his children’s happiness?
As for Glass and Lee, well, standards of reasonable behavior clearly did not apply. No one could blame him f
or their enmity, surely.
By ten o’clock he realized that he was not going to get anything meaningful done this morning. He might as well go hang out in the pit and see if he could pretend to be useful there.
On the way he passed the spare office where unused equipment was stored and noticed that someone had left the light on. Step opened the door just enough to snake his arm in and flipped off the light.
Someone inside the room bellowed.
Step flung the door open and flipped the light back on, already apologizing as he did. “I’m sorry, I just assumed somebody had left the light on, I didn’t know anybody was using it.”
He had already closed the door when he realized that it was Dicky who was in that room, sitting at a cleared-off desk, and the computer he was using was not a 64 or an Atari or any machine Step had seen before. He opened the door again. “Excuse me, is that the Lisa? We haven’t got a Lisa here, have we?”
Dicky had already covered the machine with a tarpaulin and he was halfway to the door. Step’s having opened it yet again clearly unnerved him. “Dammit, you sneaky son-of-a-bitch, haven’t you spied enough for one day?”
“Since when is it spying to open the storage room?” asked Step. “Is this some sort of top secret project?”
“No, it’s a Boy Scout computer, and it likes to sleep in a tent,” said Dicky.
But by now Step had already seen what Dicky had carelessly left uncovered—the large empty box on the floor with the name Compaq emblazoned on it.
“Sorry, Dicky,” said Step. “Perhaps a locked door would do the job.”
“I was just getting up to lock it when you barged in for the third time—I hope you’ll forgive me for counting.”
“Sorry,” Step repeated. “I’ll never switch off another light at Eight Bits Inc., I promise.” He drew the door shut behind him.
As he walked down the corridor, he heard Dicky open the door again and then slam it shut. Oof, Dicky, feel better now?
Step got to the door of the pit, set his hand on the handle, and then turned around and headed back to his office. He picked up the phone and called DeAnne. “Have you mailed that check to the mortgage company?”
“Not yet,” she said.
“Don’t.”
“Why not? What happened?”
He told her about what he had seen, and how secretive Dicky had been about it. She didn’t get it.
“The Compaq computer is an IBM clone. And Dicky is working on it secretly.”
“Oh,” she said. “The agreement . . .”
“If Eight Bits Inc. is supporting the PC when I quit, I can’t do any programming for the PC for a year. I’ll already be cut off from the 64 and the Atari as it is. I have to quit today, DeAnne. It may already be too late.”
“If it’s already too late,” she said, “then what good will it do to quit? The baby isn’t born. He’s due on the twenty-eighth. But it might not be that long, he might be early. Elizabeth was.”
“And Robbie was a week late and we had to induce him at that,” said Step. “Don’t you see? If I don’t quit now, today, then I can’t quit at all.”
“But would that be so very bad, Step? It’s been so much better since you stopped working such late hours.”
He wanted to scream at her. No, it hasn’t been any better, it’s just been shorter. But he didn’t scream. In fact, he lowered his voice, and he spoke rapidly, because he felt such urgency to persuade her. “My position here is deteriorating all the time. I’m not in charge of anything. My only authority comes from skulking around helping with programming and game design behind Dicky’s back, and even that isn’t all that valuable anymore because I’ve pretty much taught the programmers everything I know. In a month I could be so completely under Dicky’s thumb that every hour of every day would be unbearable. He’d reject everything I wrote, make me do it over and over again for the stupidest reasons. In fact he already does that, I just ignore him and don’t make the changes he suggests, but what if I couldn’t ignore him anymore? You don’t know what you’re saying when you tell me I should just stay on.”
“Step, I’m just asking you to stay until the baby—”
“No, you’re not. You’re asking me to stay indefinitely. No end in sight. Because Dicky knows that I’ve seen the Compaq. He knows that the secret will be out, and when he tells Ray, we’ll get a memo announcing it so the news comes from them, not from me. Do you understand? It’s now, this minute. I can’t even give notice. I just have to quit and get out.”
“You can’t do that, Step, it wouldn’t be right.”
“Nothing has been right about working for them all along. Suddenly I’m supposed to be noble?”
“You have to give them two weeks notice and then if they challenge your right to do PC games, you can say that at the time you gave notice, Eight Bits Inc. was still not supporting the PC.”
“Oh, right, I’m sure that that would hold up in court.”
“It might,” she insisted.
“Look, DeAnne. Call your Uncle Mike. He’s a lawyer. Ask him what we should do. Tell him about my agreement with Eight Bits Inc.—read him the agreement—and see what he thinks. And for that matter, ask him what we should do about the house. What will happen to us if we hang on to that money to cover the cost of the baby.”
“You mean let them foreclose?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Oh, Step, we can’t—that’s not honest.”
“No, DeAnne, if we had signed the mortgage intending not to pay, that would be dishonest. But the whole premise of the mortgage is that they recognize that we might not be able to pay, in which case they have the right to take the house. Well, we can’t pay, and so they get the house.”
“But we can pay, Step. We have the money in the bank right now.”
“The money that’s in the bank right now is not house money, it’s just money. Our money. If we use it to pay for the baby, then I can quit the job today, right now, and we might still have a future with Agamemnon. Don’t you understand that?”
“So you want to quit your job so bad that you’ll walk off without giving them notice, you’ll let them foreclose on the house, and you’ll let us go into the birth of our baby without insurance?”
“I thought you wanted me to quit this job, too. I thought you wanted me to come home. To be with Stevie. To be a family again.”
“Well, I’m not going to be the villain in this, Step. If you want to quit, then quit.”
“Oh, so it’s all right if I am the villain, is that it? This time we don’t make the decision together, I have to make it alone, so if it works out wrong then it’s my fault and only my fault forever. If I wanted that kind of life I would have married my mother!”
“That is the stupidest and cruelest thing you’ve ever said, Step.”
“Oh, you think so? Then try this. Just imagine how you’d feel if I came to you and said, Oh, isn’t it a little selfish of you to insist on having the baby now? If you really loved the family, you’d carry it another six months and you wouldn’t complain about it, either.”
Then, because he hated himself so much that he could hardly stand to hear his own voice on the telephone, he hung up without waiting for her answer.
Either she would call him back, or she wouldn’t.
After a couple of minutes, when she hadn’t called back, he sat down at the typewriter and wrote:
Dear Ray:
I hereby resign my position with Eight Bits Inc., effective immediately. There is no need to pay me for today’s work. Thank you for giving me the privilege of working with you for the past months. I’m sorry for any inconvenience my resignation might cause you.
Sincerely,
He pulled it out of the typewriter and signed it.
He felt so free.
Then he tore it up into small pieces and dropped them into the wastebasket.
The phone rang. It was DeAnne. She was sobbing, barely able to speak. “Step, I’m so sorry, I’m so sor
ry, I was being selfish,” she said.
“No, I was the selfish one,” he said. “I won’t quit. I’ll wait till the baby comes, and if Eight Bits Inc. is supporting the PC by then, well, then that’s the way it goes. Maybe that’s what the Lord planned for us all along.”
“No,” she said, “no, that’s wrong. What the Lord planned for us was Agamemnon. You know that, it all went so smoothly in San Francisco, and you really like Arkasian and he’s kept all his promises and the money is good, you’ve got to reach out and take it, you’ve got to. It’s only my fear, my stupid fear that made me say those things and try to get you to stay at Eight Bits and I was wrong, can’t I be wrong? Can’t I say I was wrong and then you just do the thing you were right about wanting to do?”
It was the same argument, only they had changed sides. When they both realized that DeAnne was now urging him to walk out immediately, they ended up laughing.
“Let’s go back to plan A, DeAnne. Call your Uncle Mike. I’ll be right here when you call me back.”
“I’ll call you right back. I love you, Junk Man.”
“I love you, too, Fish Lady.”
He sat down at the typewriter and wrote another letter. It was like the first one, except that it gave two weeks notice. The resignation would be effective as of August 2nd. And if the baby didn’t come by the twenty-eighth when it was due, then they’d induce it, and it would be born under Eight Bits Inc.’s insurance policy. It was the best compromise Step could think of.
He set the letter on his desk and this time he didn’t sign it. He just sat there, eyes closed, waiting for DeAnne to call back. And he prayed, silently: Let Uncle Mike be home. Let him give us the right advice. Keep Ray Keene from sending a memo about the PC until after. Make it work out right, somehow.
The phone rang. It was DeAnne.
“He said to let the house go,” she said.
“The house?” he asked. Was the house really the issue? Well, yes, it was—to DeAnne. Because to her it was a matter of honor to pay their debts, and so if her uncle advised them to let it go, it would ease her conscience considerably, and in the long run that would be very important.
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