Lost Boys: A Novel Read online

  “She said . . .” He started crying in earnest now, so it was hard 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 Amnion,” 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 you 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 move 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 Elizabeth 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-and-bees 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 yo
u 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 will 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 that 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. . . . Thanks so much, and tell her I hope she gets well soon and lives a long and happy life. . . . Oh, thank you! Bye!”

  Step looked up at DeAnne and grinned. “He said he liked my lesson a lot.”

  “I can’t believe you said that to her own husband!” said DeAnne.

  “Yes, well, I said it because I wanted to make it clear to her that this was the last time she ever pulls a stunt like this.”

  “She really is an awful woman,” said DeAnne. “Jenny tried to warn me, but I never thought anyone would be so low as to try to get to the parents by poisoning the hearts of their children against them.”

  “Oh, heavens,” said Step, “people have been doing that for years. The Nazis did it, and the Communists, and a lot of divorced parents do it, too.”

  “All right then,” said DeAnne, “I guess a lot of people are just that low. But she’s certainly one of them.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Step. “She definitely crawled out from under a rock.”

  “How can you be so calm about this? Aren’t you angry?”

  Step only smiled—a tight little smile. “Hey, Fish Lady. I just got a man to deliver to his wife a message that if she messes with my family again, I’ll feel perfectly justified in killing her. You think I’m not mad?”

  “But you wouldn’t really do it,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t it be sad if Sister LeSueur thought the same thing,” said Step.

  “You aren’t a violent person.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Step. “And I think that maybe I’m only pretending not to be a violent person. Because the need for violence simply hasn’t come up till now.”

  “Well, I really don’t think violence is the answer against her.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Step. “The real answer is to keep our children away from her and then teach people the truth every chance we get. That’s the thing we have going for us—she really is wrong, and we really are right, and so good and wise people will eventually see through her and recognize what she really is.”

  She walked over to him and sat beside him on the bed and then laid her head in his lap. “I liked it when you talked on the phone about killing people,” she said. “I must be the most terrible person in the world, but it just made me feel so—delicious.”

  “Me, too,” said Step.

  “Aren’t we awful?” said DeAnne.

  “Personally,” said Step, “I think we’re terrific.”

  Late that night, she awoke suddenly from a dream, but the dream slipped away even as she tried to cling to it. She rolled over and saw that Step’s bedside lamp was on, and he was reading.

  “Can’t sleep?” she murmured.

  “That was some dream you were having,” said Step. “Didn’t understand a word you were saying, but you sounded very firm.”

  “Don’t remember,” said DeAnne.

  Then she did remember. Not the dream, but something else that she had wanted to talk to Step about, and she hadn’t done it. She confessed to Step how she had as much as told their oldest son that he should trust his own judgment more than his parents’ instructions.

  “Well,” said Step. “Well.”

  “That’s it? Just ‘well’?”

  “No, not just ‘well.’ I distinctly remember that I said, ‘Well. Well.’ Two wells.”

  “I’m serious, Step.”

  “DeAnne, it’s like you told me. It was just something that you had to say, right up till the moment it was said, and then you suddenly couldn’t understand why you had to say it.”

  She was still half asleep, that must be why she didn’t get the point of what he was saying.

  “Fish Lady,” he said patiently, “you were following your own advice. You did the thing that you knew, in that moment, was the right thing to do. You told Stevie something that you would never have dreamed of saying if you were in your normal mind.”

  “So I’m going crazy?”

  He sighed.

  “Do you really think I might have been inspired to say that?”

  “How should I know?” asked Step. “We believe it’s possible, don’t we? And in the meantime, I’m certainly not going to say anything to Stevie to get him to doubt what you said. Because the fact is that what you said is true. In the long run, every human being is accountable for what he chooses to do. Stevie won’t be able to hide behind us and say, But I did what they said! He’ll have to stand before the judgment bar of God and say, This is what I did, and this is why 1 chose to do it.”

  “But he’s only seven.”

  “He’s not just a seven-year-old,” said Step. “You know that. It’s something my mother once said to me. That there were moments that she thought, Maybe, before we were all born, when we lived with God in the pre-existence, maybe her children were older than her. Maybe they were very old and very wise, and God simply saved them till now because he needed to have some of his very best children on
the earth during the last days. Maybe Mom was right. Not about her children. About ours.”

  “He’s seven, Step, even if his spirit is very old.”

  “You said what you said, and Sister LeSueur said what she said. And you know what, Fish Lady? I like what you said a lot better. She said to him, Depend on me, lean on me, do what I tell you to do, and I’ll make you a great man. You said to him, Stand on your own, make up your own mind, you already are a man, and maybe you’ll make yourself into a great man by and by. What’s so wrong about that?”

  “You make me feel so good, Junk Man,” she said.

  “It’s my job,” he said. “It was written into the marriage contract. When wife wakes up in the middle of the night and needs some reassurance, husband must provide it or go without hot meals for a week.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, then, you’re living up to the contract.”

  “I do my best,” he said. “But I still miss most of the hot meals.”

  “Not because I don’t prepare them,” said DeAnne.

  “Maybe the contract will come from Agamemnon. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Even if it doesn’t come, Step, even if Mr. Agamemnon or Akabakka or whatever—”

  “Arkasian.”

  “Even if he changed his mind or couldn’t do it or whatever. Even if that comes to nothing, things will still work out.”

  “I hope you’re right, Fish Lady.”

  “I am. You can count on it. Because I get inspiration, don’t I?”

  “Sometimes you just give it,” he said. “To me.”

  She nestled closer to him in bed and closed her eyes, feeling comforted now, feeling ready for sleep. “You make me feel so good, Junk Man.”

  He leaned down and kissed her forehead. Then she must have fallen asleep, because she remembered nothing else till morning.

  7

  CRICKETS

  This is what happened with Stevie’s second-grade project: He brought home a one-page ditto that listed the requirements, which were not very specific. The end-of-year project had to show “an environment” and the creatures that lived in it. It was due on April 22nd, and it had to include a written report and a “visual depiction.”