She laughed. "Well, that certainly sounds fine. But I'd like to meet you before you take him. You know that he doesn't drive. Sometimes he tries to, and you must understand that he is not to drive. He doesn't have a license. And I need to meet you, I think."

"Yes," said Step. "I'd be glad to meet you, and I won't let him drive." How old did she think her son was?

At nineteen, the poor kid still had his mother screening anybody who came to pick him up and take him anywhere. And she made such a point of his not driving.

Maybe he's an epileptic or something. Maybe he can't drive and it isn't just that she's being overprotective.

Give the woman the benefit of the doubt.

"Lee will be ready at seven-thirty," said Mrs. Weeks. "Do you think you can have him home by nine?"

"Between nine and nine-thirty," said Step. "We wouldn't be able to visit anybody later than that anyway."

"Well, I'll look forward to meeting you, then."

She gave him the directions and they said their good-byes.

Step went back to the tuna fish, feeling glum. "I was all set to really plunge into Hacker Snack tonight," he said. "This wasn't a night that I wanted to go home teaching."

"I'm sorry," said DeAnne. "I've been thinking through what I said, and I'm sure tha t all I said was that my husband, Stephen Fletcher, wanted to set up an appointment to go home teaching with Lee Weeks. She's the one who interpreted that to mean tonight."

"Fine," said Step. "I wasn't blaming you." DeAnne seemed really upset. Or worried, anyway. She still hadn't calmed down since the conversation about quitting. "She sounds nice."

"So you're going home teaching then?"

"Yes," said Step.

She seemed relieved. What, had she worried that he was somehow drifting away from the Church? Why would it relieve her when he went home teaching?

Never mind.

He turned the heat on the griddle. "If the salad's ready then I'll start toasting the sandwiches," he said.

"Yes, sure," said DeAnne. "I'll call the kids." She struggled to her feet and left the room.

Two months left, thought Step, and she's already so big she's got the pregnant-woman waddle. What's it going to be like for her by the end of July?

Lee Weeks lived in a simple ranch-style house out in the county, but there was a lot of yard around it and it was all meticulously landscaped and manicured. And the driveway was a turnaround. La-di-da, thought Step as he drove up and parked at the front door.

Mrs. Weeks answered the door. She was slim, and Step imagined that she probably thought of herself as tall, though of course she was much shorter than he was. She brought him into the living room and engaged him in conversation; he was aware that she was extracting information from him, but it wasn't really the information he expected her to be interested in. She did ask what he did for a living-the standard American status measurement--but then she went on to talk about an odd array of things, includ ing local politics.

Gradually it dawned on him that she was testing him. But for what? She found out that he thought the mixed-race city schools should be consolidated with the mostly-white county schools. That he opposed Jesse Helms and his racist attacks on Governor Hunt, his probable opponent in the next election. What could this possibly have to do with Lee? Yet it was only when Lee's mother was certain that Step was a staunch civil rights supporter that she finally called her little boy into the room.

Little boy! When he walked into the room, Step realized that the kid must be at least six- five, because Step, at six-two, found himself staring straight into Lee's chin. Nineteen years old, tall enough to be an NBA guard, and his mother still wouldn't let him drive or go out with strangers until she interviewed them. Strange indeed.

Especially since he was really a good- looking kid. Surely somewhere along the line he would have found out that he was attractive to women and got himself out from under her thumb.

Lee was cheerful enough, though, and when they finally got out into the car, Lee started laughing. "Mom's really something, isn't she!"

"A very interesting woman."

"She treats everybody like a patient." Lee seemed to be full of barely smothered mirth.

"A patient?"

"Oh, she's a shrink, didn't you know? Couldn't you feel yourself being analyzed?"

"I guess I could," said Step.

"She's nice, though," said Lee.

That was a weird thing to say about your own mother, thought Step. And he said it with such detachment that she could have been anybody. His teacher. His chauffeur.

Which, in fact, she was.

It was already well after eight o'clock, so Step had been right when he guessed that they'd probably only get to make one visit tonight. Step had decided on Sister Highsmith, an elderly widow, since she would presumably be glad to see them and wouldn't throw him any curves as he was introducing Lee to the idea of home teaching.

On the way to her house, he briefly told Lee what home teaching was all about.

"Oh, so we're not, like, giving a lesson," said Lee.

"A message is all. Very brief. And then drawing her out, letting her talk. She's been a widow for twenty years, and she's kind of a talker. Doesn't get much company, so whoever comes over is going to get an earful.

But that's fine-that's part of what we're coming for. To help her feel connected to the Church. To life."

"I thought you said this was your first time visiting these people."

"That's right. I've never met this sister, in fact. Or anyway, not that I remember."

"Then how do you know so much about her?" asked Lee.

"I don't know anything about her."

"She's a widow for twenty years, she's lonely, she's a talker..."

"Oh, well, that's just stuff that the elders quorum president knew about her. I mean, she's had home teachers before us."

"So we report on these people?"

"Man, you make it sound like we're spying," said Step, laughing.

Lee didn't laugh.

"Lee, it's not like that. We don't pry. People tell us what they want to tell us. Most of it's just like stuff you'd tell any friend. And we don't talk about it except if the Church needs to get involved. Like, for instance, this one family back in Vigor, Indiana, the dad was a trucker but he broke his leg playing touch football. They weren't even active in the Church, but I was their home teacher and I went to their house and the mom spilled her guts about how they didn't have any money and no insurance and they didn't know where to turn. She had a job, but as she said, she was getting paid like a woman, so they were not exactly going to make ends meet. They didn't have anything to eat till she got paid on Monday. So I invited them over to dinner at our house. And then I went and got her visiting teachers and we went to the store and did a week's worth of grocery shopping and dropped it off at their house."

"Oh," said Lee.

"We didn't tell anybody else in the ward except the bishop, and he got in touch with them about welfare assistance and it was all very discreet. You see what they need, and then you do it. If that's spying, I wish I had more spies in my life." Which was true enough-presumably someone had been assigned to home teach Step's family, but they had never shown up. Home teaching was a great idea, but it just didn't happen all that often, and when it did it usually wasn't much more than dropping by, taking up a half hour with empty conversation, and then saying, Well, let us know if you need anything, and then they were gone till the last day of the next month. No need to tell Lee that yet, though. Why not let him think that Mormons actually took home teaching seriously and watched out for each other faithfully? There'd be plenty of time to be disillusioned later, and in the meantime Lee might have got into the habit of doing it right.