DeAnne left the Relief Society room and began to comb the halls for her children. They were nowhere to be found. Step must have rounded them up, she realized, and she headed for the car, hoping Step would have the back of the wagon open so she could set down her lesson materials and Elizabeth's diaper-and-toy bag without having to fumble with keys or wait for Step to do it. Now that she was no longer keyed up about giving the lesson, everything seemed heavier and slower and she began to feel how much she needed some sleep. Not that she'd have much chance. Maybe Step would throw together some sandwiches for the kids while she took a nap before choir practice.
The back of the wagon was open. I may not need Step to save my soul, she thought, but he's pretty useful when I need someone to save my weary arms.
"How'd it go, Fish Lady?"
"It went interestingly."
"I sense a story."
"I'll tell you when there are fewer ears."
"I won't listen," offered Robbie from the back seat.
"Speaking of ear counting," said Step, "didn't you see Stevie in there?"
"Isn't he here?" asked DeAnne. She looked into the back seat. He wasn't there. How could she have failed to notice that one of her own children was missing? She really was tired.
"I didn't see him in there," she said.
"No problem," said Step. "I'll just go in and get him."
"Never mind," said DeAnne. "Here he comes."
Stevie was walking very slowly, looking down. Moping, thought DeAnne, that's what he's doing. He mopes to school from the car, he mopes from school back to the car, he mopes around the house all day, and he even mopes at church. "Sometimes I think he isn't even trying, Step," she said.
"Come on, Stevie!" Step called. "You have starving siblings in the car!"
"I'm not starving," said Robbie. "I had three cookies."
"Cookies?" asked DeAnne.
"Treats in class."
"Oh, sugar. Wonderful. I thought you didn't like cookies."
"These ones were chocolate chip," said Robbie.
"Were they as good as my chocolate chip cookies?" asked Step. "Nope," said Robbie. "They were terrible."
"Then why did you eat them?" asked DeAnne.
"Cause I won them," said Robbie.
"Won them how?" asked Step.
"I answered all the questions."
"Hmm," said Step. "I wonder what your teacher would have given you if you answered them right?"
"I did answer them right!" shouted Robbie, only he sounded cross instead of playful.
"Oh, I guess we're getting tired now," said Step. "OK, I'm through teasing."
Stevie opened the door behind DeAnne and got into the car. "Glad you could make it," said Step. "Hope it wasn't too much trouble, coming all the way out to the car like this."
"It was OK," said Stevie.
"Your father was teasing you," said DeAnne. "He was suggesting that you ought to come right out to the car after church. I worried about you."
"Thanks for translating for me," said Step. He sounded a little testy himself now.
"I wasn't translating," said DeAnne. She felt weary to the bone. "Let's just go home."
Step started the car and they pulled out of the parking lot onto the road.
"I really do want to know what you were doing," said Step.
Stevie didn't answer.
"Stevie," said Step.
"What?"
"I said I really do want to know what you were doing that made you late getting out to the car."
"Talking," said Stevie.
"Who with?" asked DeAnne. Maybe Stevie had found a friend, in which case she was glad he was late getting to the car.
"A lady."
Not a friend, then. "What lady?" she asked.
"I don't know."
DeAnne could feel Step suddenly grow alert. She wasn't sure what it was, but she always knew when he started to pay serious attention. He was still driving, but perhaps there was a bit more tension in his muscles, a slowness about his movement. Deliberate, that was it. He became intensely deliberate. Dangerous. Some one has come too close to his children, and the primate male has become alert. Well, she rather liked that; it felt comfortable to feel him bristle beside her. Of course, that feeling of hers was probably the primate female, gathering her children near her mate at the first sign of danger. We are all chimpanzees under the skin.
"What did she say to you, Stevedore?" asked Step.
"I didn't like her," said Stevie.
"But what did she say?"
"She said she had a vision about me."
His words came to DeAnne like a flash of light, blinding her for a moment: She had a vision. "Dolores LeSueur," murmured DeAnne.
"Yeah," said Stevie. "Sister LeSueur."
"And what did she say about her vision?"
"I don't want to say."
"You've got to," said DeAnne, barely able to control the emo tion in her voice.
Step reached over and gently touched her on the thigh. He was telling her to keep still, that she was too intense, that she wasn't going about it the right way. For a moment she resented him for daring to police her comments to her own son, but then she realized that she was simply transferring the anger she felt toward Dolores LeSueur to the nearest target, her husband. And he was right. They'd learn more from Stevie if he didn't know how upset they were.
"The reason we need to know, Stevie," said Step, "is that no matter what she thinks she saw, and no matter whether it was really a vision or just a dream or just something she made up, she had no business telling you about it."
"It was about me," said Stevie.
"In a pig's eye," murmured DeAnne.
"Sister LeSueur doesn't have a right to get visions about you, Stevie. She's not your mother and she's not your father, she's not your anything," said Step. "The Lord's house is a house of order. He isn't going to send visions about you to somebody who has nothing to do with you. So if she got a vision, I bet it didn't come from the Lord."
"Oh," said Stevie.
Step had laid the groundwork well, but now DeAnne was ready to know. "So what was the vision?"
"He'll tell us," said Step, "as soon as he realizes that it's right to tell us. You had a bad feeling when she was telling you, didn't you, Stevie? That's why you said you didn't like her."
"Yeah," said Stevie.
"Well, don't you think that maybe that bad feeling was a warning to you that the things you were being told were lies? It made you feel bad, didn't it?"
"Some bad and some not," said Stevie.
"Did she tell you not to tell us?" asked Step.
"Yes," Stevie said quietly.
"What?" said DeAnne, outraged.
"He said yes," said Robbie.
"I heard him," said DeAnne.
"Then why did you say `what'?" asked Robbie.
"Your mother was just surprised," said Step. "Stevedore, Stevie, Stephen Bolivar Fletcher, my son, you know what we've told you before. If someone ever tells you children that you mustn't tell your parents something, then what do you do?"
"I know," said Robbie. "We promise that we'll never tell, but then the very first chance we get we do tell you."
"And why is that?"
"Because no good person would ever tell us to keep a secret from our mom and dad," said Robbie.
"Remember that, Stevie?" asked Step.
"Yeah," said Stevie.
DeAnne heard something in his voice. She turned in her seat, turned all the way, and saw that he was crying. "Stop the car, Step," she said.
Step pulled the car at once into the driveway of a Methodist church parking lot. The parking lot was emptying out-apparently the Methodists got out of church about the same time the Mormons did.
"Why are you crying, honey?" asked DeAnne.
"I don't know," said Stevie.
"Stevie, whatever this woman said to you, it's time for you to tell us."
"She said ..." He started crying in earnest now, so it was har
d for him to talk.
"That's all right, Stevie," said Step. "Just tell us slowly. Take your time."
"She said I was a really special boy."
"Well, that's true," said Step.
"And she said that the Lord had chosen me to do wonderful things."
"Like what?" asked Step.
"Like Ammon," he said. "A missionary."
"Yes?"
"But first she said that I had to prove that I was good enough."
DeAnne felt as though she needed to spit something awful out of her mouth.
"Did she say what it was you had to do to prove yourself?" asked Step.
"T-teach my parents, she said."
"Teach us what?" asked Step.
"R-righteousness," said Stevie.
DeAnne felt the baby kick. Only it wasn't a kick, it was more like a push, a hard, sustained push against her ribs. The child must have felt her anger; the adrenaline must have crossed the placenta, and now she had made the baby angry, too, or at least excited, upset, energized. I must calm myself, DeAnne thought. For the baby's sake.
"Well now," said Step, "what do you think she meant by that?"
"I don't know," said Stevie.
"I do," said DeAnne. "Stevie, I taught a lesson today in Relief Society, and Sister LeSueur didn't like it."
"Why not?" asked Stevie.
"Because the lesson I taught said that every person can talk to the Lord and you don't need anybody else to tell you what the Lord wants you to do, because the Holy Ghost can talk right to your heart."
"After I'm baptized," said Stevie.
"Which is only a little more than a month away" said DeAnne. "And even now the Spirit of God can whisper in your heart, if there's a reason. But she didn't like me saying that."
"Why not?" asked Stevie.
"Because Sister LeSueur likes going around and showing other people how spiritual she is." DeAnne found herself remembering everything that Jenny Cowper had said to her, and now she believed it all, and spoke of it as if she knew it from her own experience. "She likes to tell people about visions the Lord has given her. She likes to have other people depend on her and do the things she tells them to do. So if people start realizing that true inspiration from the Lord will come right to them, and not to somebody like Sister LeSueur, why, she won't be as important to them anymore as she is now. Do yo u understand that?"
"Yes," said Stevie.
"So she wants me to stop saying things like that," said DeAnne.
"Me too," said Step. "I gave a lesson that said things like that, too."
"So she went to you to try to get you to think that she was having visions about you," said DeAnne, "so that instead of learning from your parents, you'd always come to her to find out what you should do with your life."
"Why would she tell a lie like that?" asked Stevie.
"She's trying to steal you from us," said Step.
"Like a bad guy!" said Robbie.
"Just like a bad guy," said Step. "Only bit by bit, and slowly, starting with your heart. Starting by making you doubt us. Making you wonder if maybe we aren't righteous, and if maybe you need to learn righteousness from somewhere else and then teach it to us. And where do you think that somewhere else would be?"
"From her," said Stevie. "That's what she said-that she knew that the Lord would tell her more about my g-glorious future."
"Such poison," said DeAnne.
"That's called flattery Stevie," said Step. "The truth is that anybody who knows anything about you knows that you'll have a glorious future. You're so bright and good, how could it be otherwise? So it doesn't take a vision from the Lord to tell her that. But she hopes that by telling you wonderful things about your future, she'll get you to put all your hope in the things she tells you and not in what we tell you."
"It's just what phony fortune-tellers all do," said DeAnne. "They tell you wonderful things that you really hope are true. You believe them because you want them to happen. And so you convince yourself that the fortune-teller isn't a fake, that maybe somehow she really knows, but in fact she's really a phony all along."
Stevie chewed on this for a minute. Step pulled out of the parking place and then headed back into the street, driving home.
"But what if she really had a vision," asked Stevie.
DeAnne wanted to scream. She had no vision! She has poured poison into your ear, just like Hamlet's father! But she held her tongue, trusting Step to be calmer than she was, because he hadn't already had a run- in with Sister LeSueur today.
"Stevie," said Step, "if she really had a vision, and it really was from the Lord, she had plenty of chances to tell your mother and me about it today. But she didn't, did she?"
"Because the vision said you were unrighteous ," said Stevie. But DeAnne could hear a bit of sarcasm in his voice now. A bit more stress on the word said. She said you were unrighteous. He's beginning to mo ve over and stand with us against her. She isn't going to win this round.
"If it was a true vision," said Step, "she wouldn't be afraid to tell us right to our faces that we were unrighteous. The Lord's prophets are always brave about that sort of thing. They always tell wicked people about their wickedness, right to their faces. I mean, haven't we told you stories about that? Like Samuel the Lamanite?"
"They almost killed him!" cried Robbie. "He stood on the wall!"
"So you were listening on Christmas Eve," said Step.
"That's right," said Stevie. And now there was certainty in his voice. He had put the pattern together. "If it was true, she would have said it right to you, instead of sneaking around."
"Like Abinadi," said DeAnne.
"He got burned!" Robbie yelled.
"Bird!" Elizabeth screeched, looking around to see where Robbie might have seen one.
"Not bird, Betsy Wetsy," said Robbie. He explained to her the concept of fire, none of which she understood, but that was fine with Robbie, he didn't actually need other people to understand what he was saying as long as they'd sit still and listen. And with Elizabeth belted into her carseat, she was the perfect audience.
DeAnne could see that Step wanted to say more to Stevie-she understood, because she wanted to, too. But instead they both held their peace. Stevie understands. He sees how this woman has tried to manipulate him. So there's no need to say any more.
And yet when they got home, while Step was carrying Eliza beth in from the car, DeAnne couldn't resist adding one more bit of teaching. "Stevie," she said, "I want you to know something."
"What's that?" he asked.
She had the door unlocked and Robbie assigned himself to hold it open for Step and Elizabeth. She carried her lesson materials and the diaper bag into the kitchen and set it all on the table. Stevie was right behind her.
"What I want you to know is this." She got down on one knee, so she could look him in the eye. "You really are a special boy, with a wonderful future. I've known it from the start. I even knew it, I think, when you were still inside my tummy."
"Uterus," said Stevie. Step had given him the first birds-andbees lesson back last fall, and now he insisted on not using childish language.
"Yes, my uterus," said DeAnne. "But certainly when you were a baby, and ever since. You have a sensitive spirit. You know things. You know when things are right. It's like what you felt when she was talking to you.
Even though she was flattering you, you still didn't like her, right?"
"Yeah," said Stevie.
"That's because there's something inside you that knows, just knows when someone is good and when someone is not good. Or maybe you just know when you need to do something because it's right. And believing in Sister LeSueur's story just wasn't the right thing for you to do, and so you knew it. Do you understand what I mean?"
"Yeah."
"Stevie, trust in that place inside your heart that knows the right thing to do. Trust in it, and do what it tells you."
"Even if it tells me to disobey you and Dad?"
"It wi
ll never tell you to do something wrong, Stevie. I promise you that."
He nodded soberly. "OK," he said. Then he turned and headed out of the room.
She felt weak, shaky. What had she just said to her son? To trust in some feeling inside himself, in preference even to the things that she and Step told him! How could she have said something so irresponsible, so insane! Yet at the moment she had felt as if it could not go unsaid. Only how could they possibly counter this LeSueur woman, this Queen B, if DeAnne was giving Stevie permission to ignore them? No, not giving him permission. Insisting on it.
She headed for the kitchen to tell Step what she had just done and get him to help her clarify it with Stevie, but Elizabeth was alone there, rooting through the Cheerios that still survived inside the Tupperware box DeAnne always took to church in the diaper bag.
DeAnne went down the hall, looking into Step's office on the way. Not there. Not in Elizabeth's room. Not in the boys' room, where Stevie was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Poor kid, so much confusion, so many strange things in his life! How could he make sense of it all?
She expected tha t Step would be in their bathroom, but he wasn't. He was sitting on the bed, talking on the phone.
"I'm so sorry that she isn't feeling well," said Step. "But I can certainly understand it, Brother LeSueur, she had a very busy day in church. Listen, if she can't come to the phone, Brother LeSueur, perhaps you can simply relay a message to her for me. Can you do that?"
DeAnne waited, holding her breath, to hear what Step would say, especially since poor Brother LeSueur probably hadn't a clue about what his wife had been doing today. DeAnne rather imagined that he hadn't a clue about anything his wife did, ever.
"OK, here's the message. She raised a doctrinal question with me today-about what a father should do if someone tried to steal away his children." Brother LeSueur must have said something, because Step paused a moment and then answered. "No, it wasn't in class, it was after the meeting. Anyway, here's the best answer I could come up with. I truly believe that if someone tried to steal away a man's children, that man would be completely justified in anything he might do to protect his family . ... Yes, that's right, anything at all ... even killing, yes. I don't think it would be murder, I think it would be defense of the helpless. Don't you think so, Brother LeSueur? ... Yes, I thought you'd agree with me. Why don't you tell her that, then-that you agree with me, too, that a man would be perfectly justified in killing someone who tried to steal away his children? I think she'll be quite satisfied with that answer . ... Yes, I think that particular question will never come up again . ...
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