I can understand that, thought Step, if you talk very much about becoming a god. To a psychologist, no less!
"I can feel it inside me, you know," said Lee. "All the time. Sometimes even a voice. And I know that it's the voice of God, it's the presence of God, just like Sister LeSueur told me. She said she had a vision about me, that I had the seeds of godhood inside me and I was just waiting for the gospel to bring it out of me. Some times I think that if I could just strip away all the weakness of this body that just ties me down to earth I could fly.
And I don't mean just flapping around like a sparrow or something, I mean soar up to the stars, go from planet to planet. I feel like that sometimes. I mean, sometimes I think that I really have done it, that yesterday I was on another planet just like this one, only the old one wasn't as real, this one is the real one, the other one was just an imitation and now, for the first time, I can see what reality is, what it means to be alive, and I think, No one else can see this, I'm the only one who can see this, because the god inside me has opened my eyes. Everybody else sees it, I mean, but they don't really see it. They see but they don't-they can see but-"
He was beginning to sound almost frantic, as if the right word were just out of reach and he couldn't quite find it. So Step offered a finish for this impossible thought. "You're saying that they apprehend it with their eyes, but you comprehend it."
"With my soul," said Lee, "yes, just like that! That's got to be the Spirit of God, making the connection between us so you know what I'm saying even before I say it!"
Brother Freebody might have warned Step a little better about what he meant by Lee Weeks having some weird ideas about doctrine. Or maybe Lee hadn't been this extreme about it when Freebody talked to him. Or maybe Freebody hadn't believed that he was hearing what he was actually hearing when Lee said it.
"And sometimes I know that I'm the only real person in the world. No offense," Lee added quickly.
"No, that's not an uncommon feeling," said Step. "It's called solipsism. The idea that nothing is real except the self."
"No, I don't just mean a feeling, like anybody can get. I mean I know that God sees me and recognizes me as his kindred spirit, like a lost twin. Nobody but me ever feels like that. Only I can't tell that to anybody but the Mormons, because you understand! You've known about it all along."
Patiently Step tried to explain the fact that the gospel of Jesus Christ was mostly about how we treat other people, and not at all about becoming the most powerful being in the universe and getting into a first-name relationship with God. That was for the bozos on TV who talked about Jeeee-zuz as if he was their old high-school chum or something. Lee listened to everything that Step was saying, nodding wisely and agreeing to all of it. But Step was sure that Lee was missing the whole point of everything.
When they got to Lee's house, his mother was waiting at the door. She seemed to size them up as they came from the car, and by the time Step got up to the house, she was beaming. Only on the porch did it occur to Step that there was no reason for him to have walked Lee to the door. That was what Step did with thir teen-year-old babysitters, to make sure they got in safely. Home teaching companions over the age of eighteen you could just let out of the car. But for some reason Step had just expected himself to come to the door.
"Please come in," she said warmly. Her whole demeanor was different. This was the woman on the telephone. What had happened since eight o'clock?
"I can't stay," said Step. "Got to get home. I don't see my family half enough as it is."
"Oh," she said, looking disappointed. "Perhaps some other time."
"Well, in fact you'll probably see me a couple of times a month. We home teach four families, and we do it every month."
She raised her eyebrows, but she seemed to be pleased all the same. "How nice," she said. "What a very social church you have."
"I suppose so," said Step, thinking how wearing that sociability could sometimes be.
"And how was Lee?" she asked.
Lee was standing right there. It was so outrageous, to ask about him as if he were a small child in another room, and not an adult, a man, standing right beside her. Yet Lee beamed. He seemed to expect a good report card, and so Step delivered one. "Lee was great," he said. "He spoke right up and we had a good visit."
No need to tell Mommy that Lee got a bit weird about doctrine. To explain that, he'd have to explain the doctrine, and it always sounded deeply weird to nonmembers. Or it should, anyway- it wasn't quite natural, the way Lee had taken right to it, and all the wrong way. You had to build up to understanding it, and it was a sure thing that Lee had neither the buildup nor the understanding.
But there was plenty of time, if he stayed in the Church. A lot of people came into the Church with serious misconceptions about the gospel- no matter how clear the missionaries were, people were going to filter ideas through their own preconceptions and come out with something skewed at least a little bit off plumb, and sometimes a lot more than a little bit. If they stuck with it, though, and realized that correct opinions about doctrine weren't anywhere near as important as learning to serve other people, to accept and fulfill responsibility, then eve ntually they'd loosen up enough to come around and change their beliefs, too, or at least not be upset that most Mormons didn't see things the same way.
Outsiders usually seemed to think of Mormons as automatons, obeying a charismatic prophet the way Jim Jones's followers obeyed him in Guyana. The reality was almost the opposite-stubborn, self- willed people going off every which way, with bishops and other ward leaders barely able to hold them all together, all the while tolerating a wide range of doctrinal diversity as long as people would just accept their callings and then be dependable. There was room even for Lee Weeks, who seemed to be obsessed with a rather inflated view of his own divine potential; given that the 1st Ward already had Dolores LeSueur, Lee's ambitions could certainly be taken in stride.
"I'm so glad," she said. Step was relieved to see Mrs. Weeks smile.
But no, it was Dr. Weeks, wasn't it? "Lee says you're a psychologist," said Step. The idea of her being a psychologist seemed somehow very important. Then he realized why-Stevie. Stevie and DeAnne's idea of what they ought to do for him. Suddenly Step looked at Dr. Weeks in a different light.
"Not a psychologist," she was saying. "A psychiatrist. The M.D. isn't much-just years of medical school and internship and residency." She chuckled.
"I'm sorry," said Step. He almost added, What Lee actually said was, She's a shrink. But he decided that he shouldn't get on her bad side because maybe she was the one who could bring Stevie back from the company of Scotty and Jack.
"Oh, I'm used to people getting the different branches of our profession confused," said Dr. Weeks. "I'm called a psychoanalyst just as often, and of course that's wrong, too. That's more of a priesthood than a profession, anyway."
She spoke with a light, amused tone, but Step took the words as a very good sign. He liked this woman, this shrink.
"Well," Step said. "Till next time, OK?"
"Right!" said Lee.
When Step got home, DeAnne was in the kitchen, waiting for him. Everything was cleaned up, and she was reading a book. It was the Anne Tyler novel he had bought her more than a month ago. "You just getting around to that?" he asked.
"No, I started it back when you first gave it to me," she said. "But then I didn't like her for a little while."
"Oh," said Step. "And now you've kissed and made up?"
She made a face at him. "It was just something that the character said in the beginning. This old woman is in bed, probably dying, and she thinks how her children ought to have had an extra parent instead of just her.
The husband ran off."