In the meantime, the movers had piled the living room six feet high with more boxes than they could ever unpack and put away in a place this size, and they had a single weekend to get settled before work started for Step and school started for Stevie. Monday, the deadline, the drop-dead day. Nobody was looking forward to it with much joy, least of all Stevie.
DeAnne was aware of Stevie's anxiety all through the weekend of moving in and unpacking. Stevie mostly tended Robbie and Elizabeth, except when Step or DeAnne called for him to run some errand from one end of the house to the other. As always, Stevie was quiet and helpful- he took his responsibilities as the eldest child very seriously.
Or maybe he just seemed serious, because he kept his feelings to himself until he had sorted them out, or until they had built up to a point where he couldn't contain them. So DeAnne knew that it was a real worry for him when he came into the kitchen and stood there silently for a long time until she said, "Want to tell me something or am I just too pretty for words?" which was what she always said, only he didn't smile, he just stood there a moment more and then he said, "Mom, can't I just stay home for another couple of days?"
"Stevie, I know it's scary, but you just need to plunge right in. You'll make friends right away and everything'll be fine."
"I didn't make friends right away at my old school."
That was true enough-DeAnne remembered the consultations with Stevie's kindergarten teacher. Stevie didn't really play with anybody until November of that year, and he didn't have any actual friends until first grade. If it weren't for his friends at church, DeAnne would have worried that Stevie was too socially immature for school. But with the kids at church he was almost wild sometimes, running around the meeting- house like a movie-western Indian until Step intervened and gathered him up and brought him to the car. No, Stevie knew how to play, and he knew ho w to make friends. He just didn't make friends easily. He wasn't like Robbie, who would walk up and talk to anybody, kid or adult. Of course Stevie was worried about school. DeAnne was worried for him, too.
"But that was your first school ever," she said. "You know the routine now."
"When Barry Wimmer moved in after Thanksgiving," he said, "everybody was really rotten to him."
"Were you?"
"No."
"So not everybody"
"They made fun of everything he did," said Stevie.
"Kids can be like that sometimes."
"They're going to do that to me now," said Stevie.
This was excruciating. She wanted to say, You're right, they're going to be a bunch of little jerks, because that's the way kids are at that age, except you, because you were born not knowing how to hurt anybody else, you were born with compassion, only that also means that when people are cruel to you it cuts you deep. You won't understand that you have to walk right up to the ones who are being hateful and laugh in their faces and earn their respect. Instead you'll try to figure out what you did to make them mad at you.
For a moment she toyed with putting it to him in exactly those terms. But it would hardly help him if she confirmed all his worst fears. He'd never get to sleep if she did that.
"What if they were unkind to you, Stevie? What would you do?"
He thought about that for a while. "Barry cried," he said.
"Did that make it better?"
"No," said Stevie. "They made fun of him crying. Ricky followed him around saying 'boo hoo hoo' all the time from then on. He was still doing it on my last day there."
"So," said DeAnne, partly to get him to talk, partly because she had no idea what to say.
"I don't think I'll cry," said Stevie.
"I'm glad," said DeAnne.
"I'll just make them go away."
"I don't think that'll work, Stevie. The more you try to make them leave, the more they'll stick around."
"No, I don't mean make them go away. I mean make them go away. "
"Do you want to hand me that roll of paper towels?"
He did.
"I'm not sure I'm clear on the difference between making them go away and making them go away."
"You know. Like when Dad's programming. He makes everything go away."
So he understood that about his father, and tho ught it might be useful. "You'll just concentrate on your schoolwork?"
"Or whatever," said Stevie. "It's hard to concentrate on schoolwork because it's so dumb."
"Maybe it won't be so dumb at this school."
"Maybe."
"I wish I could promise you that everything will be perfect, but I really don't think they'll treat you the way that Barry Wimmer got treated." DeAnne thought back to the couple of times she'd seen the boy when she brought treats or some project or a forgotten lunch to school. "Barry's the kind of kid who ... how can I put it?
He's a walking victim."
"Am 1 a victim?" asked Stevie.
"Not a chance," said DeAnne. "You're too strong."
"Not really" he said, looked at his hands.
"I don't mean your body, Stevie. I mean your spirit is too strong. You kno w what you're doing. You know what you're about. You aren't looking to these kids to tell you who you are. You know who you are."
"I guess."
"Come on, who are you?" It was an old game, but he still enjoyed playing along, even though the original purpose of it -- preparing him to identify himself in case he got lost-was long since accomplished.
"Stephen Bolivar Fletcher."
"And who is that?"
"Firstborn child and first son of the Junk Man and the Fish Lady."
Of all his regular answers, that was her favorite, partly because the first time he ever said that, he had this sly little smile as if he knew he was intruding into grownup territory, as if he knew that his parents' pet names for each other were older than he was and in some sense had caused him to exist. As if he had some unconscious awareness that those names, even spoken in jest, had sexual undertones that he couldn't possibly understand but nevertheless knew all about.
"And don't you forget it," she said cheerfully.
"I won't," he said.
"Mom," he said.
"Yes?"
"Please can't I stay home just a couple more days?"
She sighed. "I really don't think so, Stevie. But I'll talk to your dad."
"He'll just say the same thing."
"Probably. We parents are like that."
The worst moment was at breakfast on Monday. The kids were eating their hot cereal while Step was downing his Rice Krispies, looking over the newspaper as he ate. "This is almost as bad a newspaper as the one in Vigor," he said.
"You aren't going to get the Washington Post unless you live in Washington," said DeAnne.
"I don't want the Washington Post. I'd settle for the Salt Lake Tribune. Salt Lake is still a two-newspaper town, and here Steuben can't even support a paper that puts the international news on the front page."
"Does it have Cathy? Does it have Miss Manners? Does it have Ann Landers?"
"OK, so it has everything we need to make us happy."
There was a honk outside.
"They're early," said Step. "Do you think I have time to brush my teeth?"
"Do you think you could stand to get through the day if you didn't?"