42

Shirley was pulling up a chair. “Well, let's both play, okay?”
Hesitation. “Well, okay.” She had her fingertips positioned on the white planchette and as Shirley reached out to position hers, the planchette made a swift, sudden move to the position on the board marked NO.
Shirley smiled at her slyly. “You'd rather do it yourself? Is that it? You don't want me to play?”
“No, I do! Captain Stevey said ‘no.’ ”
“Captain who?”
“Captain Stevey.”
“Honey, who’s Captain Stevey?”
“Oh, ya know. I make questions and he does the answers.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, he’s nice.”
Shirley tried not to frown as she felt a dim and sudden concern. The child had loved her father deeply, yet never had reacted visibly to her parents’ divorce. And Shirley didn’t like it. Maybe she cried in her room; she didn’t know. But Shirley was fearful she was repressing and that her emotions might one day erupt in some harmful form. A fantasy playmate. It didn’t sound healthy. Why ‘Stevey’? For Steve? Her father? Pretty close.
“So how come you couldn’t come up with a name for a dum-dum bird, and then you hit me with something like ‘Captain Stevey'? Why do you call him Captain ‘Stevey’’?”
“ ‘Cause that’s his name of course,” Stephanie snickered.
“Says who?”
“Well, him.”
“Of course.”