“Weird stuff is happening to us all the time,” said Step. “Makes me feel special.”
“Jeremy’s problems sure put things in perspective, though, don’t they?” said DeAnne. “I mean, it’s hard to get excited about Sister LeSueur’s silliness when you’ve seen your baby in a glass box like that. And that anonymous record—”
“Still bothers me,” said Step.
“Me, too,” said DeAnne. Then she reached out and put her hand on Step’s leg, feeling the muscles flex and move as he moved his foot from the brake to the accelerator. “Step,” she said, “thanks for seeing Dr. Weeks. I don’t know if I would have been able to get her to come forward with her diagnoses. It was obvious she was trying to keep us from finding out what exactly it was that she was doing to Stevie. If you hadn’t kept pushing, we wouldn’t have known.”
“I only did it because I knew you were with me on it.”
She squeezed his leg. “I love you, Step.”
“I love you, too,” he said. “I’d love you even more if you’d remember that I’m very ticklish on my leg and when you squeeze just above the knee like that I’m likely to have a fit and lose control of the car.”
She squeezed his leg again, repeatedly, but even though he was very ticklish there, he had learned how to relax his stomach muscles and resist laughing—a technique that had allowed him to survive childhood with an older brother who was a merciless tickler. “You’re no fun,” she said.
“Try it again when you’re in shape to do some serious tickling.”
“I hope it’s soon,” she said.
“So do I.”
When they got home, they found Stevie in the family room sitting on the couch, and told him the news right away: He wouldn’t be going back to Dr. Weeks.
“Oh, OK,” he said. “She was kind of stupid anyway.”
“Oh?” asked DeAnne.
“She said that Jesus was just like Santa Claus,” said Stevie. “Only everybody knows that Santa Claus is just a story.”
“Well,” said Step, “she believes that Jesus is just a story, too.”
“That’s only because she doesn’t listen when he talks to her,” said Stevie.
“I guess not,” said Step. He glanced at DeAnne, caught her eye. “Clearly dissociative,” he said, grinning.
She shook her head at him. He shouldn’t try to joke like that around Stevie—he was likely to catch the drift of what he was saying.
“Does this mean I can still play with my friends?” asked Stevie.
DeAnne sighed. It was one thing to realize that Dr. Weeks was simply playing out her own prejudices, and quite another to suppose, just because Weeks was no help, that Stevie didn’t still need help.
“I’d rather you played with your brother and sister,” said DeAnne.
“But when I’m not playing with them, I can play with Jack and Scotty and those guys? “Cause we got a new kid.”
DeAnne wordlessly got to her feet and left the room. Stevie watched her go in silence.
“Do what you need to,” said Step. “Do what you think is right.” Then he, too, left, following DeAnne into the bedroom, where she clung to him in silence for a long while.
They brought Zap home from the hospital after two weeks in intensive care, with a bill for more than eighteen thousand dollars and no diagnosis. It had finally come down to a day when Step and DeAnne were standing there listening to a doctor who had come in from Chapel Hill. He was describing several procedures and drugs they could try “in case” Zap’s condition was caused by this or that, until Step said, “I don’t think I want my son being treated for an undiagnosed condition.” The Chapel Hill specialist looked at him in surprise; his whole demeanor changed; he was more respectful, almost apologetic for his early tone. “Oh, I didn’t realize you were a doctor,” he said. There was not a trace of irony in his tone, and so Step realized that this specialist really was proposing things that he might not have so confidently proposed if he had thought Step and DeAnne actually knew anything. That was enough for them.
The hospital was very good about things. They accepted two thousand dollars and a promise to pay at least half the balance as soon as Step got his option money from Agamemnon—or else the completion money for the 64 version of Hacker Snack, whichever came first.
Then they brought Zap home and began the slow process of discovering just exactly how much was wrong with him, and how little they could do about it.
The only really good thing that had come out of Zap’s long hospital stay was that they realized how much they could depend on people in the 1st Ward who they had thought were merely acquaintances, and now discovered were true friends. Vette remarked on it, too. You have a good ward, she said. They really care about you.
If only there were something about Stevie’s condition that could evoke the same community response that Zap’s had brought forth, thought DeAnne. If only they could rally around Stevie, and fast and pray for him. Maybe they should tell people about what Stevie was going through, and give them a chance to help him. But no. There was too great a chance that in the case of a mental illness and not a physical one they’d shy away, they’d shun the boy and make his isolation even worse, his descent into madness steeper and faster than ever.
And could we really blame them? thought DeAnne. If I were a mother of a normal child and I heard that a little boy of his age was seeing hallucinations of imaginary friends, would I really be willing to let them play together? Would I feel so much compassion for someone else’s child that I would put my own child at risk of being hurt in some outburst of madness? No, the hurts of the mind were too strange, too invisible, too magical to hope for the same kind of tolerance and help from even the best of people.
It frightens me, thought DeAnne. Why should I expect others to be better than I am?
So Stevie’s problem remained a matter for their family alone. Until a newspaper article forced them to see things another way.
12
FRIENDS
This is the headline on the front page of the Steuben Times-Journal on the morning of Sunday, 21 August 1983: SERIAL KILLER IN STEUBEN? The headline brought fear to the hearts of parents all over the city, for this was not a tabloid, and the story was not irresponsible shock journalism. The chief of police had formed a task force that included the county sheriff’s office and had close liaison with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. They were also bringing in outside experts on serial killers, especially those who specialized in the kidnapping and murder of young boys.
For several months, the police had been deeply concerned about the number of unexplained disappearances of young boys in the Steuben area, cases in which no body was ever found and no motive could be guessed at for the child to have run away, even after the most heartless questioning of the distraught parents. And there was also a rhythm to the disappearances. Not a definite pattern, not a disappearance on a certain day of each month or anything showy like that. Just a space of a couple of months or maybe three between disappearances.
And for the first time anywhere, the names of all the boys believed to be possible victims of the supposed serial killer were listed together. Their pictures appeared above the fold on the front page. There were seven of them; all of them had disappeared since May of 1982; and the disappearances were becoming steadily more frequent, with less and less time between them.
This was the lead article; in fact, there were no other articles on the front page except a sidebar on the head of the investigation in Steuben, a detective named Doug Douglas, who had been a rather colorful figure during the civil rights disturbances of the sixties, when he vowed that anyone violating city ordinances would be arrested and taken to the Steuben city jail, but that by God everyone who went into that jail would come out in exactly the same condition they were in when they entered it. Some in those days said that this would let the niggers think they had free reign to do what they wanted in Steuben, but in fact the most important result was that the racial
disturbances ended very quickly and were replaced by talk and compromise. Douglas had been chief of police then, the youngest one in Steuben’s history. Years later, the mayor who was elected in the Reagan sweep of 1980 demoted him to chief of detectives, and some said it was a long-awaited payback for Douglas’s racial evenhandedness in the sixties. But instead of resigning or even complaining, Douglas just kept right on doing his job. The story was designed to reassure the city that one of Steuben’s finest was on the case. It was also designed to reassure the black community that even though all the victims were white boys, the investigation would not take on racial overtones, and blacks would not be singled out for harassment.
But the Fletchers didn’t see this article on Sunday morning, because they didn’t have time even to glance at the paper in the hurry of getting ready for church. This was the last Sunday before school started, and yesterday they had been so busy buying school clothes for Stevie and Robbie, who was starting kindergarten this year, that neither Step nor DeAnne had remembered to do a laundry and therefore the morning was spent fishing wearable clothing out of the laundry baskets in the kids’ closets and pressing them so they’d look presentable at church.
The boys were dressed; DeAnne was taking snarls out of Betsy’s hair; and Step had the assignment of changing Zap’s diaper and getting him dressed for church.
About the only time Zap was any trouble was when he was being changed. He slept a lot, and even when he was awake, he didn’t interfere with the process of dressing or feeding. Step almost wished he would, to show some vigor, some real awareness of the world. He rarely even cried. And as for moving his body, well, he seemed to have no muscle tone, no firmness to him. Now and then he’d move in a jerky kind of way, but most of the time his arms and legs were fairly loose and springy. As if he didn’t much care where his limbs went. Zap’s legs, though, always seemed to move back into a frog-like position, the knees widespread, the feet tucked up right under his buttocks. This meant that when his diaper was getting changed, his heels kept springing right into the midst of whatever was in his diaper. It made changing him a real challenge. Step would stretch Zap’s legs out long and straight, and massage his thighs and calves, saying, “That’s my long boy, see how tall you are when I stretch you out? Stretch out those legs, long boy.” But it did little good. When the diaper came off, the heels moved right back up into place, and it seemed as though it took three hands to change him. Three hands or an extra couple of baby wipes to clean his feet.
Still, Step was becoming rather adroit at the challenges of diapering a baby who thought he was a frog, and he soon emerged from the bedroom with Zap lying prone on his forearm, his head cradled in Step’s hand, his little legs dangling—froglike—as they straddled Step’s biceps. It was Step’s favorite way to carry the babies when they were very small. DeAnne had been horrified at first, since it looked like a football carry, but they both soon realized that when Step held a fussy baby in that position, the fussiness usually subsided, at least for a while.
Step could hear, from the screeching in the kitchen, that Betsy was still getting her hair combed. So he stood wordlessly in the door of the family room, watching Robbie crash his Matchbox cars together and Stevie play a computer game.
Not that it looked as though Stevie was actually playing anything. From where he was, Step couldn’t see the screen, but he could see Stevie’s hands on the controller, and he just wasn’t moving it. Oh, now and then a sort of lean to the left or to the right, but most of the time he was just watching the screen, his face transfixed. “Do it, Sandy,” he whispered. “Come on, now, now, now. That’s it!” And then, “No, Van, no, not like that, he’s going to get you, do you want him to get you? You’re too quick for him, if you just run.” As usual, Stevie was naming the characters in the computer game after his imaginary friends. But what kind of game was this, where apparently something engrossing was happening on the screen and yet the player of the game had hardly anything to do? It couldn’t be much fun, for the player to have so little control that he hardly had to move the joystick from minute to minute. Yet Stevie was completely involved in it. Step had to see the screen.
He stepped into the room, walking behind Stevie and looking at the screen. It was that pirate ship game again, thought Step. I never did find that disk.
“Hey, Daddy, watch me crash these guys together!” said Robbie.
Step glanced down at Robbie and watched the two cars crash, as Robbie made an elaborate show of making the cars fly through the air and bash into the bookshelves and then rebound off of everything else in sight. “Enough, enough,” said Step, “you make me want to never get in a car again!” Robbie laughed uproariously.
Step looked back at the computer screen, but it was blank. Stevie had switched off the game and was standing up from the chair. “Why’d you turn it off?” Step asked.
“Time for church, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is!” called DeAnne from the other room. “It would be nice if we could arrive on time for once, instead of parading up the aisle like beauty contestants during the opening hymn.”
Step helped the kids pile out to the car and strapped Zap into the carseat in front while DeAnne got Robbie and Betsy to share the middle seatbelt in back so that she and Stevie could cram themselves in and use the seatbelts by the doors. “No doubt about it,” said DeAnne. “We ought to start taking both cars to church.”
“This still works,” said Step.
“Only because you don’t have to sit in back,” said DeAnne.
Step immediately got out of the car and walked around to her door and opened it.
“Oh, Step, don’t make a scene just because I—”
“I’m not making a scene—you are, my love. What I’m doing is playing Sir Walter Raleigh and letting you tread upon my cape. Please, let me sit back here with the kidlets and you drive. Maybe it’ll convert me to the idea of taking two cars to church.”
“Step, I really don’t feel up to driving yet,” she said. “It hasn’t even been a month.”
“I thought you were better.”
“Mostly,” she said. “Drive. I shouldn’t have complained, and now we’re going to be late.”
“Sorry,” said Step. “I was just trying to be nice.”
They weren’t late, though, and they got a good bench on the side. Step was singing a solo with the choir, and Robbie had a talk in Primary, and so it was a busy Sunday for them. When they got home, the kids were starving and Step fixed dinner while DeAnne nursed the baby, which was a grueling experience for her, since Zap had a way of clamping his jaws down hard every now and then, nearly pinching her nipple off, or at least that’s what she said it felt like.
“I think you ought to switch to formula,” said Step. “The next kid’s going to resent it if Zap succeeds in biting the nozzle off the firehose.”
“I’m giving him formula sometimes, but this really is better for him, and he likes it better,” said DeAnne. “I’ll toughen up.”
“Mm,” said Step. “Calluses and scar tissue—very sexy.”
“If he’s still doing this when he gets teeth, Step, that’s weaning day—cold turkey, I’ll tell you.”
If he’s still doing it. If he learns. If he changes. If he starts sleeping on some reasonable schedule, instead of sleeping eighteen hours and then staying up twenty-four. If somebody figures out what all those scans and probes and measurements from the hospital mean. If somebody will just put a name on whatever it is that’s wrong with Zap so we can start dealing with it—or not dealing with it. Whatever turns out to be appropriate.
The kids came in and ate the tuna patties that Step had made—a Depression-era recipe that his mother had raised him on. The kids seemed to like it well enough, provided that Robbie was allowed to pour six ounces of ketchup on his.
Then, finally, the kids went down for naps—or for lying in bed reading or staring at the ceiling, in Stevie’s case—and DeAnne finally went out front and brought in the paper while Step
sat down and idly looked among the disks lying loosely around by the Atari, trying to find something that might possibly be that pirate game. He got sidetracked, though, by the Lode Runner disk, which he booted up and began to play. It was a nifty little character-based game in which the eight-pixel player-figure has to run around collecting all the treasures on the screen while bad guys try to chase him. The way the treasures were arranged in the changing landscape made each level a new puzzle, and Step soon found himself addicted. This is a great game, even though it’s so deceptively simple. No gimmicks like the ones I’m using in Hacker Snack. Just a fundamentally sound design that allows itself to unfold in new ways, over and over and over again. I need to learn from this.
He became aware that DeAnne was standing behind him. “Step,” she said. “You need to come in and look at this story in the paper.”
“In a minute,” he said.
“Can’t you pause the game or something?” she asked.
“If it’s that urgent,” said Step. He reached for the space bar to pause the game, but it took too long, and his player-figure died.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said DeAnne. “Did I make you lose?”
“I’ve still got eight lives left,” said Step. “A real Christian game. Lots of chances for resurrection. But I’m bucking for the rapture at the end.”
She didn’t laugh, not even her courtesy laugh, the one that said I don’t know why you thought that was funny but I love you. He followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table. The headline at once caught his eye, and he read the whole story—quickly, but not missing anything. He hadn’t pored over a hundred thousand pages of Spanish-language newspapers while researching his dissertation without learning how to distill the essence from a newspaper story in a very short time.
“This is scary stuff,” said Step. “I know you’re already careful with the kids, and so am I, but I really think we shouldn’t even let them in the back yard without being out there with them the whole time.”
Lost Boys: A Novel Page 40
