“It does?” asked DeAnne.
“On the east side of town. The Open Doors Education Center. A really nice building, too. The city runs it now, but it was originally set up from contributions from the citizens. The parents of the kids with CP went around collecting until they had enough. And that’s still the feeling there. The full range of everything—no matter what Zap turns out to need, they’ll have it there. And also for preschoolers there’s the Daggett Center. They charge, because their support is from foundations rather than government, but it’s not that expensive. That kicks in when Zap is two. I mean, if you have to have a kid with neural problems, this is just about the best city in the U.S. for him to grow up in.”
Cerebral palsy. Well, at least they had heard of it before. As soon as they had this name for Zap’s problems, they talked about it with the kids in family home evening. Step told them about the kid he had known who had CP. “He was sixteen when I lived in Mesa,” said Step. “I was about thirteen. He was in the same ward as me. I thought when I first saw him that he was retarded, because he walked funny and his head rolled back and forth when he walked, and when he talked you could hardly understand him. But then I remember standing there in the hall one time—I was reading the Doctrine and Covenants, I think, it was my project right then—and he comes out of one of the classrooms and just stands there near me, and I guess he was so mad that he just couldn’t keep it in, he started talking to me. And it scared me, because he was strange, but I stood there and I listened and I realized that I really could understand him if I paid attention, and he was talking in complete sentences, and what he was doing was complaining about how the ward leadership wouldn’t let him do anything and it made him so mad. I remember he said. ‘They think I’m retarded but I’m not retarded, I get straight A’s, I’m smarter than they are, but they won’t let me bless the sacrament! They didn’t let me be baptized till I was twelve because they wouldn’t believe I was smart enough to be accountable.’ Of course he was saying all this really slowly, and he had a hard time forming the words, and I remember it was like a revelation to me. This guy wasn’t dumb. He was a person. And his feelings were hurt, and I was one of the ones who might have hurt them sometime, because heaven knows I had been afraid of him, I had thought he was retarded. But when he was done with his rant about how they wouldn’t give him a chance, I said, ‘I think you should bless the sacrament.’ And I guess that was all he needed to hear, just somebody agreeing with him, even a thirteen-year-old runt of a kid with a book in his hands, cause he said to me, ‘Well someday I will.’”
“Did he?” demanded Robbie.
“Before I left there, I saw him lurch up those stairs to the sacrament table. Must have taken him five times as long as anybody else to say the prayer, but he said every word, and when he handed the trays to the deacons the trays shook and sometimes the water spilled a little but he did it. And at first people were embarrassed, but then later I heard them saying, That’s one spunky kid, things like that. They were proud of him.”
Then DeAnne said, “You kids are going to have a special responsibility as Zap’s brothers and sister. You have to make sure that you treat him as naturally as you’d treat any other kid. That you never act ashamed of him in any way. Because if you act as if there’s something awful or shameful about Zap, then others will, too.”
“He’s my little brother!” said Robbie.
“That’s right,” said DeAnne.
“It won’t always be easy,” said Step. “My Aunt Ella is retarded, which isn’t the same thing, but she had a kind of look about her that made her seem strange and funny, and she was growing up in the 1920s, and people weren’t very nice about things like that, especially the kids weren’t. And my mom was her younger sister.”
“That’s Grandma Sal!” cried Robbie.
“Gammah!” shouted Betsy.
“That’s right, your grandma Sal,” said Step. “And when she was seven or eight years old, she was walking to school one day with Aunt Ella, and my mother tells how she was so embarrassed, she was really horrible to Aunt Ella, making her walk way behind her or on the other side of the street sometimes so that nobody would know they were together—but then, my mom was a little girl and nobody told her that she shouldn’t be ashamed. And one time this bunch of kids came up and started throwing stuff at them and yelling ugly names at them, just because Aunt Ella was retarded, and my mom, just a little girl named Sally then, she sat down on the curb and cried and cried, with those kids still running around and yelling, and Aunt Ella sat down beside her and put her arm around my mom and said, ‘Don’t cry, Sally. They don’t know. Don’t cry, Sally. They’re just mean.’”
DeAnne looked at Step rather oddly. “Why are you telling this story, Step?”
It occurred to him that the kids might get the idea that because Zap was their brother, they’d be teased or mistreated, and surely that wasn’t why he started telling it. For a moment Step was confused and couldn’t answer, so he did what any confused parent does, he pretended that he intended it to be a “teaching moment.”
“Why do you think I told this story, Robbie?” asked Step.
“’Cause we don’t care if they’re mean to Zap, because we’re going to walk to school with him anyway! And we’re going to walk right with him and not cross the street without him because then he’d be scared!”
Robbie had found the right lesson in the story even if Step had forgotten what it was supposed to be.
Then Stevie, without even being called on, said, “I think Aunt Ella was the smartest one, even if she was retarded.”
“Why?” asked Step, pleased that Stevie had come up with this on his own.
“’Cause all she cared about was that Grandma Sal was crying,” said Stevie. “She didn’t get mad at the bad kids, she just tried to make Grandma Sal feel better.”
“OK, I think we’ve all got the point of the lesson, haven’t we?” said Step.
“We have to tell Zap that he mustn’t cry!” said Robbie.
“Zap can cry if he wants,” said Step. “You know that’s a rule in our family, that we can cry whenever we feel like it. Stevie, what’s the main point of this lesson?”
“We’ve got to help Zap to be part of everything and not get left out and make sure people don’t think he’s retarded.”
“That’s very good, Stevie,” said Step. “Now, it may turn out as years go by that we might find out that Zap really does have mental limitations, that he really is retarded, and that will be OK, too, because my Aunt Ella’s been retarded all her life and she’s a good person and she’s made a lot of people happy. But chances are that Zap won’t be retarded. And no matter what, we still treat him right and we’re never ashamed of him.”
“We’re proud of him,” said Robbie. “He’s my very first little brother so I’m a big brother now!”
“Like me,” said Stevie.
Step turned to DeAnne. “I think we’ve got this covered.”
That ended the lesson. Robbie waved his arm around to lead the closing song and DeAnne helped Betsy say the closing prayer and then they had ice cream while DeAnne nursed Zap, shielding her modesty with a cloth diaper draped from her shoulder.
“Zap’s getting his dessert, too!” cried Robbie.
“Bet it tastes an awful lot like his dinner,” said Step. “And his salad, and his lunch.”
“And his cornflakes!” shouted Robbie. “And his tuna fish!”
“Do 1 have to feed the baby in another room?” asked DeAnne. But she didn’t really mind. None of their problems and worries had really gone away, but this was a good night. They were a happy family, for this hour, at least. That was enough for the day.
With only a few exceptions, that was how the autumn went. DeAnne drove Stevie and Robbie to their different schools every morning while Step stayed with Betsy and Zap. Even with two kids to take to school there was less stress in the mornings, because she didn’t have to get Betsy dressed and fed, too.
Not
that she could sleep in. She had to pull out of the driveway fifteen minutes earlier in the morning than last year, because so many other parents were driving their kids to school and picking them up afterward that traffic at the school was a nightmare. Fear of the serial killer had changed the lives of a lot of people in Steuben. The parents who couldn’t pick their kids up met the schoolbus at the stop. Working parents formed co-ops, and a lot of local businesses let people take their lunch hours at the time school let out so that fewer and fewer kids had to let themselves into an empty house after school.
Being a mother was a full-time job for DeAnne now, so much so that she even let some of her church work slide now and then, giving a couple of lessons that weren’t quite as well prepared as usual, though no one seemed to notice the difference. The focus of her life was now Zap—she had no choice, really. Whether it was lingering aftereffects of the phenobarbital or just Zap’s native sleep pattern, he tended to sleep for eighteen or twenty-four hours straight and then wake up ravenous. This was very uncomfortable for DeAnne, of course—either she had to wake up and force him to eat at least every eight hours, or she had to pump her milk and freeze it for him. She had too much for the times he was sleeping and not enough for his first meal when he woke up.
Also, since he spent so little of his time awake, she couldn’t bear the thought of him wasting any of that time lying alone in his bed. Because he didn’t have the use of his arms and legs the way normal babies did, he couldn’t experiment with rattles or even with his own body the way most kids did. Thus any time he spent awake and alone was completely empty, and DeAnne was afraid that he’d get bored and lose all interest in life and simply sleep himself to death. She was not about to let that happen. As far as she could manage it, there would be no empty hours. If he woke up at midnight, so did she, and stayed awake with him, talking and playing, moving his hands and feet for him, singing to him. She’d catch catnaps during the day when he was sleeping, and now and then she’d have a full night’s sleep. But it was wearing her down and she didn’t have much energy for the other kids. She couldn’t help it—they were able to supply so much more for themselves that they just didn’t need her the way Zap did. She still helped with homework and projects, as did Step, but Robbie and Betsy spent a lot of time entertaining each other—becoming quite good friends as Betsy began to catch on to some of the rules of civilized behavior. Stevie spent a lot of time alone.
Step tried to make up for DeAnne’s preoccupation with Zap by playing games with the kids, but as often as not he was fixing meals or doing laundry while DeAnne napped, and so he wasn’t actually involved in what the kids were doing. And whenever possible he closed himself off in his office, struggling with IBM PC assembly language until he finally realized that he could get similar results using the new Turbo C language, which amounted to throwing away all he had done so far and starting over. It was maddening work, in part because the computer was so annoyingly designed and he had to use so many kludges to make the graphics work halfway decently or to get the tiny PC speaker to produce sounds that didn’t make you want to sledgehammer the machine into silence. When Step was finding a bug or puzzling out a solution to a particular problem, his concentration was so deep that he’d look up from his computer wondering if DeAnne needed him to help fix lunch, only to discover that it was dusk outside and she was already in the kitchen washing up after dinner. Back in Indiana they had already determined that their lives worked more smoothly if she didn’t make it a point to call Step to dinner. If he was concentrating so heavily that he didn’t notice her calling the kids, then he wouldn’t want her to interrupt him anyway.
So they were both a bit hit-and-miss when it came to the three older children that fall, and when they noticed, as they often did, that Stevie was still involved with his invisible friends to the exclusion of almost everything else, it bothered them, but they were able to console themselves that it didn’t mean he was losing his mind or that anybody was out to get him. It was just a trial he was passing through, and in the end it might even strengthen him. In the meantime there was Zap and Hacker Snack and not all that much time left over.
On the first of September CNN was full of the news of Korean Air Lines flight 007, which had gone down over Soviet airspace, probably shot down by the Russians. Step and DeAnne were complete news junkies—they ate dinner with the TV blaring away in the family room so they could hear it in the kitchen.
The phone rang. DeAnne was already up getting something from the fridge and she snagged the receiver off the hook, said a couple of words, and handed it to Step. “It’s Lee.”
“Hi, Lee,” said Step. “You’re really something, calling me on the first day of the month. You’ll make me into a first-rate home teacher yet.”
“Don’t waste my time,” said Lee.
“Sorry,” said Step. What was his problem? “What did you call about?”
“I know all about it,” said Lee. “I know what you did. You’re the one who has to put everybody under the water yourself, aren’t you?”
“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t act innocent with me,” said Lee. “I can hear your TV on in the background. You’re tuned to CNN just like Mother. You put them in the water, all of them.”
“Lee, do you actually think I had something to do with that Korean Air Lines jet?”
“All I want to know from you is, are you prepared for the consequences of nuclear war? Because the Communists won’t let you baptize them. They’re not Christian, and they won’t put up with it. They’ll send the missiles. I’ve studied the effects of nuclear war. I know about nuclear winter. I know what it will be like for the common people. But you’re too smart to be trapped. Nobody can trap you.”
Whatever precipice Lee had been walking along all these months, Step realized, he was definitely over the edge now.
“Lee, there isn’t going to be nuclear war.”
Lee laughed. “Did you think you could just lie to me and I’d go away? No, I’m not going to forget you. I’m stuck to you like glue. When you get on that submarine, I’m going to be with you.”
“Lee, are you at home right now?”
“God is in me now, Step. I’m not even using the phone, what do you think of that?”
“Well I’m using the phone,” said Step.
“I don’t need telephones when God is in me. I can see you right now. I can see your whole family.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m everywhere. I’m in everything. I am love, Step. I am that I am.” He giggled. “Moses never did understand what I meant by that.”
“Lee, get ahold of yourself.”
“All of those people under the water, like Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea. You want to be Moses? Parting the water, drowning people? Well, you can be my prophet if you want to. But you’d better pray first. You’d better offer a sacrifice.”
Lee’s words had long since gone from strange to disturbing. “Where are you, Lee?”
“You can’t find me,” said Lee. “Nobody can, because I’m invisible.”
“Why did you call me?”
“Because you’re the only one who has the power to say no to me.”
“Not even your mother?”
“Shh.” Suddenly he was whispering. “Don’t tell her. Promise.”
“I can’t promise that, Lee. You need help.”
“No, you need help!” Lee sounded very angry, now, but he was still speaking in a fairly low voice. “You need a lot of help, because I’m going to stop you before you put everybody under the water. I will not allow you to destroy the world again.”
“Lee, I’m just a guy you go home teaching with.”
“I know that,” said Lee, derisively. “Do you think I don’t know who you are? You must be crazy if you think you can hide from me.”
“I’m hanging up now, Lee.”
“Don’t leave without me.” Lee suddenly sounded frightened, desperate. “Let me have a pl
ace on the submarine! I won’t eat much.”
“Good-bye, Lee.”
“Do you really have to go?”
“Yes.”
“OK.” Now he sounded cheerful. “Nice talking to you. Ta-ta for now!”
Step set the receiver back on the hook. “DeAnne, I need Dr. Weeks’s number.”
Before he finished saying it, she handed him a note card with the number written on it. “Her home phone?” he asked.
“I looked it up,” said DeAnne. “I had a feeling you’d be using it.”
When he got her on the phone, Dr. Weeks did not sound at all surprised to learn that Lee had called. “He said he was invisible,” Step explained. “He said that he was talking to me without using a phone.”
“Well, he was using the phone,” said Dr. Weeks.
“Yes, I know that.” He covered the receiver and whispered to DeAnne, “She thinks I’m crazy.” Then to Dr. Weeks he said, “Listen, something’s wrong with Lee and I wanted you to know, that’s all. He’s really upset and he’s talking about being God and he thinks I shot down flight 007.”
“Apparently you’ve become a power figure to him,” said Dr. Weeks. “These fixations never last and he means no harm.”
“So you’ve got things under control?”
“He palms his pills, you see,” said Dr. Weeks. “But eventually he has to sleep.”
“He’s on medication?”
“I don’t discuss matters like this with nonprofessionals,” said Dr. Weeks.
“Fine,” said Step. “Just keep your son from calling nonprofessionals and you won’t have to discuss it with them.”
“Thank you for your concern,” said Dr. Weeks. “I’ll handle things now. Good-bye.”
That was that.
“What did she say?” asked DeAnne.
“I guess she’s handling it.” But he thought of the delusions that Lee was creating about him and his family, and he wondered if Dr. Weeks really had anything under control at all.
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