"Well, we can't eat that," said DeAnne.
"We can cook it now, can't we? Mary Anne can serve it to the kids when it comes out."
"No, Step," said DeAnne. "You can't serve meatloaf that's been sitting around this long at room temperature."
"You can't tell me the meat would go bad this fast."
"Not the meat," said DeAnne. "The eggs."
"I forgot the eggs," said Step.
"If I weren't here, Step, the kids would have salmonella all the time."
"Probably. So what about supper?"
"Throw some bowls and cold cereal on the table and call the kids in to eat," said DeAnne. "It's the last resort of the mother in a hurry but hey, that's me."
Robbie and Betsy came right in. "Stevie!" Step called again. "Come on in to supper now!" Knowing he would be obeyed, Step headed outside to open the car door for DeAnne. Just as DeAnne was settling in with Zap in her arms, Mary Anne pulled up into the driveway behind the Renault. Step waved her back, and she put her hands to the sides of her face to show her embarrassment. Then she put her car in reverse and parked out on the street just ahead of Bappy's pickup truck. It was getting dark, and it occurred to Step that if Bappy wasn't done with the lights, he probably ought to quit for the night. It wasn't safe to be wandering around on the roof in the dark.
Mary Anne came running up the driveway. "How's little Zap doing?" she asked.
"He's probably not even that sick," said DeAnne. "But we just have to be sure."
"If the doctor calls wondering where we are, tell him we're on the way" said Step. "The kids are in the middle of coating the inside of the kitchen with a layer of cornflakes, so enter at your own risk." As Mary Anne jogged up the two steps and into the house, Step called after her, "And lock the deadbolts!"
"I always do!" she called back.
Dr. Greenwald didn't seem to mind that they had taken so long getting to his office, and after poking and probing and listening, he reassured them that it was nothing all that serious. They apolo gized for wasting his time, but he assured them that they had been right to be concerned. "With a baby this fragile," he said,
"everything is serious."
When they got back home, the house was completely rimmed with white lights. "It looks like gingerbread," said DeAnne.
"For an impressively ugly ho use, it lights up real nice," said Step.
When they got inside, however, chaos reigned. Betsy and Bobbie were standing on chairs in the kitchen, and the second DeAnne and Step got in the door they started screaming, "Spiders! Daddy longlegs!"
There weren't any spiders in the kitchen that Step could see. He held the baby while DeAnne took off her coat. "Where's Mary Anne?" asked DeAnne.
"Is that you at the door!" shouted Mary Anne from back somewhere deep in the house.
"Yes it is!" called DeAnne. "Where are you?"
"In the land of the monster spiders!" shouted Mary Anne. "I could sure use some help and another roll of paper towels!"
"You take care of Zap and the kids," said Step to DeAnne, "and I'll see what's going on in the bathroom."
He ducked into the laundry room to get another roll of paper towels.
"You don't suppose we're having another invasion of insects, do you?" asked DeAnne.
"Nope," said Step. "Spiders are arachnids."
In the bathroom, it looked as though someone had tried to resurface the entire room in wet paper towels, and then reconsidered and spattered ink on it. But the ink turned out to be daddy longlegs spiders, and the wet paper towels were Mary Anne's strategy for immobilizing as many spiders as possible while stomping the ones that weren't pinned down under the wet towels.
Apparently Mary Anne had kept her cool quite well while she was the only adult present. But as soon as Step came into the room and she tried to explain what was happening, she began to shudder and shiver, then screeched as a daddy longlegs crawled up onto her ankle. She stamped and stamped until it fell off; Step gripped her by the shoulders and guided her out the door into the hall. "You stand there and keep watch to make sure none of them get out. Remember to look up and check the ceilings."
Outside the bathroom, she was able to calm down as Step methodically slaughtered spiders. "They were coming up out of the drain in the bathtub," said Mary Anne. Step glanced into the tub and sure enough, it had been plugged with wet paper towels. "Betsy was on her little potty when she started yelling 'pido, pido,' and I finally realized that it wasn't some cute bathroom word like peepee, she was saying spider."
"You did great," said Step. "You kept it under control. You won't believe it, but this happens like about once a season. First crickets, then june bugs, then gnats on the night that Zap was born. I think we're going through the ten plagues of Egypt."
"Spiders are the horriblest things. I can't stand the way their little legs go up and down so delicately, like monster ballet dancers."
"Oh, keep talking, I can't wait to see what inhabits my dreams tonight."
"You're looking at them, my talking can hardly be any worse than that," said Mary Anne.
"Yeah, but now I'm not looking at spiders, I'm looking at monster ballet dancers. Disney missed a bet with Fantasia."
Finally the spiders were cleaned up and all the paper towels were clotted in the bottom of a garbage bag.
When Step came back into the kitchen from taking the bag outside, Mary Anne was standing by the table talking to DeAnne.
"Well, you're a hero, Mary Anne."
"Any time," said Mary Anne. "Only next time we can skip the spider part." She started for the door into the laundry room, then stopped. "Oh, your mom called, DeAnne. Nothing's wrong, don't worry, she just wanted your pie crust recipe."
"My mother wants to make pies?"
"Oh, doesn't she ever?"
"My dad's the piemaker in my family," said DeAnne. "But miracles happen every day, right?" Step dialed the wall phone for her, then handed her the receiver so she didn't have to get up while nursing Zap.
They said their good-byes to Mary Anne. Then came the mess of getting Robbie and Betsy to bed. Stevie was already lying in his bed, and Step made Robbie get under the covers quietly so as not to waken his big brother.
Only after Step was already in bed beside DeAnne did he realize that the Christmas lights were still on outside.
"Oh, just leave them," said DeAnne.
"Just as you wouldn't allow your family to eat that meat loaf, I will not permit my family to sleep in a house that has some weird extension cord arrangement connected up outside."
He put on a bathrobe, and then, remembering how cold it was outside, a coat over that. Out back Step found the plug and pulled it, then walked around front to make sure the lights were off. By now he was quite cold, and he rushed back into the house, locked up, took off his coat, and then moved through the house checking that all the doors were locked and glancing in to make sure the kids were covered.
The routine was so set that it wasn't till he was already walk ing into his and DeAnne's room that he realized that he hadn't seen Stevie in his bed. Robbie was there, but Stevie's sheets were pulled back and the bed was empty. Was he up going to the bathroom? He hadn't been in the kids' bathroom or anywhere else in the house-could he, for some reason, be in the master bathroom?
Step walked around the bed and checked in the bathroom. No Stevie. This was impossible. Unless Stevie was playing a trick, hiding in the closet or something, there was nowhere that he could be. Step headed back to the boys' room to check the closet before he pushed the panic button, but then he had to stop cold in the doorway. There was Stevie. Right there on the top bunk. The covers were all the way down, as Step remembered, but Stevie was there. He was curled up and looked like he was completely asleep.
I am way too tired, thought Step. When I actually looked into the room I didn't see anything wrong, did I?
It was only afterward that I thought I hadn't seen him, but of course he was there all along.
Step went back to bed, where DeAnne was already
snoring, and soon he was asleep, too. If he had any spider dreams, he didn't remember in the morning.
The next couple of days were a flurry of activity, but that was to be expected. Everybody got up at different times and it seemed like half the ward was either coming by or calling up and insisting that DeAnne or Step or both needed to do this or that in preparation for Christmas. In the afternoon of Christmas Eve, as DeAnne was helping Elizabeth wrap a present in the living room, she thought of something and called out to Step, who was in the kitchen putting away the groceries. "It just occurred to me that I honestly can't remember seeing Stevie eat anything for the past few days."
"I haven't seen anybody eat anything for the past few days," Step called back. "I don't think anybody has eaten in the presence of anybody else since school let out for the holidays."
"No, I'm serious," said DeAnne. "And he hasn't been playing computer games or anything, he's mostly been in his room. Do you think he might be sick?"
"I'll check on him when I'm done with the groceries," said Step.
That took only a few more minutes, and then Step headed on down the hall and turned left into the boys'
room. Robbie was on the floor, wrapping a present. "Get out get out!" he screamed at Step.
"Sorry," said Step. He immediately turned and stepped back into the hall, drawing the door almost closed behind him.
"You ruined the surprise!" Robbie shouted.
"No, I didn't," answered Step. "I didn't see anything. I was just coming back to see if Stevie was all right."
"I'm fine," answered Stevie.
"He's fine!" shouted Robbie.
"I can hear your brother quite well without your relay service, thanks just the same, Robbie," said Step.
"Stevie, your mother's worried that you haven't been eating much lately."
"I'm not hungry"
"You've got to eat something."
"Yes," said Stevie.
"Will you come to supper tonight?"
Stevie didn't say anything for a moment. "I guess," he said.
"Stevie, is something wrong?"
Another pause. "Nope."
Step went back to the living room, where DeAnne was still wrapping presents with Betsy, who periodically inserted a hand or a finger or, sometimes, her face into whatever DeAnne was doing. As a result, DeAnne had stuck about a dozen small pieces of tape all over Betsy's face, and they were protruding everywhere like a peeling sunburn. "Ooh, Betsy, you look so pretty."
"I heard you calling to Stevie," said DeAnne.
"Robbie wouldn't let me in the room. He was wrapping presents."
"He already wrapped yours."
"He's wrapping Zap's. But he didn't want to ruin the surprise."
"Didn't he buy it with you standing right there?"
"You know Robbie," said Step. "If you wreck one of his surprises, you might as well cut off your own head and save yourself a lot of suffering."
Step finally had a break about four o'clock and slipped into his office to catch a few minutes' work on the program. He was this close to finishing it, and if he could have it done, ready to fedex it to Agamemnon, then he- would have so much more relaxed a Christmas. It was just ticky stuff now anyway, but it meant changing a line or two, then compiling it, then running it and seeing what it looked like, then tweaking it again and compiling it again ... It ate up the clock without making that much visible progress.
"Step, can't you come to supper on Christmas Eve?"
Step turned around to see DeAnne standing in the doorway of his office.
"And Stevie won't come either. I didn't prepare a banquet but even self-employed people are allowed to have Christmas Eve off."
"I'm so close, DeAnne."
"All right, suit yourself," she said, and she closed the door.
Step sighed and got up from the chair. When he reached the hall he heard her saying to Stevie, "Go ahead, apparently males in this family don't eat anymore."
"DeAnne," said Step. "It's bad enough when you sound like your mother, but now you're sounding like mine."
She looked annoyed for a moment, but then decided to take it as a joke. "That's fine with me," she said. "I like your mother. And she likes me. In fact, she likes me better than you."
"Better than I like you? Or better than she likes me?"
"Both," she said.
"Impossible." He was now at the end of the hall and he nuzzled her and held her close and whispered in her ear, "Let's forget these kids and go make us another baby."
"It's too soon," she said. "I haven't forgotten how much it hurts."
They both remembered Zap's troubles and her words took on a second meaning, and now when he kissed her it wasn't romantic, it was tender, consoling.
Then he opened the door to the boys' room. Stevie was lying on his back in bed, staring up at the ceiling.
"Come on in to dinner, Stevie."
"I'm not hungry, Dad," he said.
"I didn't ask if you wanted to eat," said Step. "It's Christmas Eve and we need to be together."
"I think he's sick," said DeAnne. "Maybe he's got whatever Zap had a couple of days ago." She pushed past Step into the room, heading for Stevie. And then, to Step's amazement-and DeAnne's too, of course-Stevie sat bolt upright and shied away from the edge of the bunk, looking fearful. "Don't touch me!" he said.
"Well, I've got to touch you," said DeAnne. "I've got to see if you have a fever."
"I just want to be alone in here for another little while," he said.
"Stevie," said DeAnne. "Just let me see if your forehead's warm."
"I'm fine," he said.
"DeAnne," said Step. "Please, let's not make a quarrel of it on Christmas Eve."
"But if he's not well I can't just leave him in here ..."
"He looks fine," said Step, ushering her out of the room.
"Suddenly you're the miracle doctor who can diagnose people across a room?"
As soon as they were out the door, Step pulled it shut and said, "DeAnne, didn't you see the look on his face? He was absolutely terrified."
"I know, Step. That's all the more reason to think he might have a fever. He didn't seem rational."
"His face wasn't white or flushed, and he always gets one or the other when he's sick. He's really upset, but listen to what he said. He wants to be alone."
"On Christmas Eve, and that's sad." Then she realized what Step was thinking. "You mean-without his imaginary friends."
"Have you seen him playing with the Atari in the last couple of days? At all?"
"You mean he might be going through some kind of withdrawal?"
"I don't know, but it's a sure thing he's really edgy right now, so let's go in and eat and then I'll come back in and talk to him, or you can, and we'll see if we can calm him down. He's not going to want to miss the ceremonies, right? He's the one who remembers things best, he always likes to tell the stories. He'll come around, if we don't make an issue of it right now."
DeAnne sighed. "Whenever you get so patient and understand ing with the children it makes me feel like I must usually be a shrew."
"So what do you feel like when I yell at them?" asked Step.
"Vindicated."
After supper, Step brushed his teeth and then went to Stevie's room to try to persuade him to eat something.
Stevie wasn't in his bed; DeAnne must have talked him into the kitchen.
Step meant to join the rest of the family, but he paused by his office door and thought, If Stevie's eating that'll take a while and so I've got a few minutes and that might be time enough to finish. He resumed where he had left off.
He didn't know how long he had been working when there came a knock on his door. He turned around.
DeAnne was standing there, leaning on the doorknob. She looked a little wobbly, as if she might need to sit down. "What is it?" he asked, concerned.
"Step, Stevie has his friends at the door. He wants to invite them in for Christmas Eve."
Step's heart sank.
Stevie wasn't coming out of it after all. He'd tried but then he couldn't let go of this fantasy world. Maybe because the evil hadn't gone out of Steuben yet. Maybe he couldn't let go until they caught the serial killer. Or until the family moved again.
"Maybe when I finish this program we should move," he said. "Get Stevie away from here for good."
"No, Step," DeAnne answered. "I mean his friends are at the door."
Now it sank in. Why she looked so weak.
Had the power of Stevie's imagination finally overpowered DeAnne? No, that couldn't be, she was far too strong.
He stood up, meaning to put an arm around her, steady her. But the moment she saw he was standing up, she moved away from the door, and when she walked he could see that she was steadier than he had thought.
He followed her. It wasn't the front door, apparently, because she didn't go to the living room, she went into the family room. The back door was standing half open, even though the air was bitterly cold and the room was getting very badly chilled. She stood well back from the door, looking through it. Step walked straight to the door and opened it wider.
There in the back yard stood Stevie. Grouped behind him were seven boys, ranging in age from perhaps five to ten or so. A couple of them were dressed for the cold, but the others were in t-shirts and shorts, and one of them was wearing a tank top.
"Dad," said Stevie. "Can they come in? I told them you'd let them have Christmas Eve with us. That's what they miss the most."
Step could feel DeAnne put her arm through his and take hold of his hand.
"Of course they can come in," said Step. "We've been wanting to meet them."
It was one thing to say it, another thing to watch them walk up the stairs, one by one, and come on into the house. DeAnne, who had a better memory for names and faces, was picking them out from the newspaper photos. "Van," she said.
One of the boys smiled at her.
"Roddy. Peter? David. Jack. Scotty."
One by one they grinned at her and then looked at each other as if to say Hey, she knows us, she knows us.
"Sandy," she said.
Step closed the door.
"I wish," said Step. "I wish I could have seen you before."
"We tried, Dad," said Stevie. "I knew they could do it, I knew they had to show themselves to people or nobody'd ever believe me, but they just couldn't figure it out till I showed them how."
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