"Ah, a father-and-son moment."
"I've never seen him like this, Step."
"I'll be home."
She took the kids to the Cowpers' and it was a circus. The Cowper kids were so undisciplined, running around and screaming, that Robbie soon joined in, and Elizabeth only refrained because DeAnne kept a firm grip on her. Stevie, however, sat at his place and quietly, dutifully ate whatever was put before him. He answered questions in a low voice and volunteered nothing. DeAnne had a sneaking suspicion that whatever had made Stevie upset at school was no longer the reason for his behavior. That what she was seeing now was sullenness, spite. Anger, passively expressed. Stevie was hurt at school somehow, but now he was just mad.
The Cowpers, however, had no notion that anything was wrong. Because they seemed not to care at all what their kids did, they were able to stay at the table and converse for a while after supper. But DeAnne could not bring herself to adopt their attitude toward child care. She felt an unceasing need to know what Robbie was doing and whether he was safe. Who knew what kind of insane games the Cowper children might decide to play? Hadn't she seen them climbing on the car this afternoon? All through the after-supper visiting she got more and more anxious until finally, using Elizabeth's bedtime and the possibility that Step had come home as an excuse, she headed home at seven-thirty.
It was dark outside, and all the way home Robbie told Stevie about the adventures of the walk earlier that day. Robbie took a wide berth around the yucky hole and begged the others to be just as careful. But Stevie just plowed straight ahead, walking as close to the hole as he could, which drove Robbie to fits of anxiety.
"Stevie," said DeAnne. "You may be angry at me, but Robbie hasn't done anything to you."
After a moment, Stevie said, "I'm sorry, Robbie. I'll be more careful next time."
It mollified Robbie-in truth, Stevie could do no wrong, as far as Robbie was concerned. Robbie seemed to have been born with the gift-or perhaps the curse-of empathy. If Stevie or Elizabeth or Step or DeAnne was hurt, Robbie got almost frantic in his sense of urgent helplessness. He had to do something to help, and yet at the age of four had no notion of what that might be. His life was almost entirely focused on others. And it made DeAnne wonder if a compassionate, Christlike character might be something you were born with, rather than something you acquired. Maybe all of Christianity was devoted to making normal people believe that they should live and feel and think the way that a few, special people just naturally did. In which case most believers would end up either frustrated at their failure to measure up, or frustrated because they did measure up but got no joy from suppressing all their natural instincts.
Nonsense, she decided. We are what we choose to be. Robbie is so profoundly compassionate because his spirit is that way, and always was that way, long before he was born. And if I'm not as good a person as he is, that doesn't mean that I can't learn to be. To believe anything else would be to despair.
To believe anything else would mean rejecting every other choice she had made in her life.
Step didn't get home by eight o'clock. DeAnne put Elizabeth and Robbie to bed, but she let Stevie stay up a little while longer, waiting for Step. "Here, sit and read a book to me."
He sat next to her, but then he said, "I don't feel like reading."
"Then let's see what's on TV."
But with the cable not yet hooked up, there wasn't anything watchable-too much fuzz, and only three VHF
channels, with a maybe on a fourth one. And two channels on UHF, one with a dingy- looking old western, and one with a screaming used-car salesman. She should have let the old man hook up the cable. Baptize. Bappy.
What a name. Of course she would have to tell Step about what she did today. Leaving the door open like that.
Or maybe she shouldn't, so he wouldn't worry. But no, she had to tell him, because they didn't hide things from each other, especially things that made them look stupid. Only this wasn't about whether DeAnne looked stupid, this was about whether the children would be safe. Step couldn't be worrying all the time about whether she was keeping them safe, he had to concentrate on work. Besides, if she told him he wouldn't blame her, he'd blame himself for not being home, for not having been a good enough provider so that now he had to go away all day and leave her alone to take care of everything. No, that would not be a good story to tell him. But she couldn't leave it unconfessed, either. She wo uld write it in the family journal, and tell him later, much later, when she had gone for several weeks-no, months-without leaving the door open like that.
"I want to play Kaboom," said Stevie.
She sighed inwardly. He'd rather play a videogame than sit with her. A game that he could not win, a game that always made him so frustrated that he used to hit the computer or throw down the joystick until Step had to ban him from the computer several times, to help him learn to control his anger.
Anger was the mode he preferred tonight, apparently. "Go ahead," she said. "I don't know where the cartridges are."
"Right here," he said, going straight to a cardboard box and pulling out a plastic case with slots for all the Atari cartridges. Step had set up the computers the moment all the beds were together, and of course Stevie knew right where everything was.
It was nearly nine and DeAnne was about to send Stevie to bed when Step finally got home. He knew he had let them down and felt terrible about it. "I'm so sorry. Is he still up?"
"Playing Kaboom," she said.
He went to the family room and knelt down beside Stevie. "Son, fm so sorry I was late. It wasn't my car, and we kept finding new bugs in the program, and I kept saying I had to get home, but he'd say, 'Let's just fix this one thing and try it,' over and over again, and it was his car, what can I say? Even as it is he's mad at me for leaving the thing unfinished."
Stevie said nothing, just kept swinging the paddle left and right to catch the little bombs as they dropped from various points along the top of the screen. Then he missed one, and all the bombs on the screen at that moment exploded.
"Stevie, your mom said you were upset when you came home from school today. Do you want to tell me what happened?"
Stevie just stared at the screen, until finally he said, "I don't want to talk to you about it."
That slapped Step hard, DeAnne could see it. "Well, then, who are you going to talk to?"
"Mom," said Stevie.
DeAnne could not believe what she was hearing.
Step stood up. "He's punishing me for not getting home soon enough," he said. "And probably for not taking him to school this morning." Step did that-stating out loud how he interpreted the kids' actions, so that they would see that he wasn't fooled, or correct him if he was wrong.
Stevie didn't correct him, so Step went on. "As long as you'll talk to one of us, that's all right. And if you were trying to hurt my feelings, then you've succeeded. I really am sorry that I wasn't here when you needed me, but we explained to you that this is the way it's got to be for a while. Most fathers have to go to work, and when you go to work, you can't always be home when your kids need you. That's the way it is, if we're going to have food on the table and a roof over our heads."
Stevie said nothing. DeAnne had never seen him so unforgiving. In fact, she had never seen him act unforgiving at all. Maybe what happened at school today really was awful, so awful that Stevie couldn't forgive his father for not being there to protect him.
Well, she'd find out soon enough now. "Come on, Stevie," she said. "Let's go to your room and you can tell me what happened."
"Not in front of Robbie," he said.
"OK, we'll go to my room," she said. "Step, if you can't wait for supper, fix yourself something, but if you wait I'll poach some eggs or something."