Drown #6: homecoming, part 2

October 2084. Keri Riley is 23. Justin Kim and Stephanie Day are 24. Willow is 2, Lily is 18 months.


One morning that week, after Justin went to work, Keri went to Stephanie's house. She was unsure whether this would be a necessary conversation or just a very bad idea. But there were things that needed to be said.


Stephanie let Keri inside, but she kept her distance and took small steps back into the room. "You didn’t bring Lily?"

"This isn’t a playdate," Keri said. "I don’t think I’ll be here long. See, the thing is, I thought I should give you a chance to explain. I’m trying to make this seem fair in my head and it’s just not working out. So maybe you could help explain to me why I shouldn’t hate your stinking guts."

"Keri, Willow is right there."

"Oh, I’m not gonna start a fight. I just want some answers."


Stephanie went into the kitchen and Keri followed, scanning the room before she decided whether she should sit down or maybe just forget this all. The kitchen looked the same as it had when they were in high school. Even then, Stephanie kept her birth control pills with the multivitamins—she had them with her cereal every morning so that she wouldn't forget—and it didn't register right away that Stephanie's husband was somewhere near Jupiter and not coming home for years. Why was Stephanie on birth control? Because she and Justin didn't even fuck with condoms, that was why. And then Keri knew exactly why Justin wouldn't have angry sex with her and she wanted to reconsider whether she'd come here to fight.

She and Justin broke their vows to each other evenly, but Keri never betrayed or broke any promises to Stephanie, and so she felt it was unfair and uneven in a way she couldn't get over.


"Did I piss you off? Did I do something wrong to you? Because it feels like you must be trying to get revenge for something, since my daughter runs into your arms and she won’t even let me pick her up, and my husband won't fuck me anymore because he’s fucking you. Can you tell me what I did so wrong to you?"

Stephanie recoiled in her chair. "You said we weren’t gonna fight."

"Does this look like a fight to you? Do you see my hands around your neck?"


"Why isn’t he paying you to watch Lily? What, we don't have enough money?" Keri got her phone out and typed up a transaction.

"I'm not taking your money," Stephanie said. "We were friends."

"No, I want to compensate you for all you've done for my husband. You've been a big help, I'm sure. What's the going rate for thirteen months of whoring plus childcare?"

Stephanie's lips trembled and her eyes went glassy.

"You know what, Steph, you’re right. I thought we were friends, too. But man, you had me fooled, because we couldn’t have been friends. A friend wouldn’t fuck her friend’s husband. You could have slept with any man in the world if you were lonely. Why him?"

"I never would have done that with anyone but him," Stephanie said. 

Then Keri remembered the summer after Stephanie set them up. She was so jealous and weird about it all. "Right, I get it, you knew him first. It was so deep and stuff. Just tell me one thing, why did you even set us up if you only wanted him to yourself? What was the point?"

"It was a mistake. I set you guys up on one date—I didn’t know it would turn into all this. But then I couldn’t take it back."

"Oh, but you took him back, didn’t you?"


"You didn’t even want him." Stephanie glared at Keri and her eyes spilled over with tears. "I gave you the most precious person I’ve ever known, and you didn’t love him, you didn’t take care of him. So yes, I took him back."

"Does your husband know about this? Because everybody else on the planet and half of the moon seems to."

"Don’t tell him. Please, Keri. I don’t want him to find out like that."

"Jesus, quit being such a goddamn mouse! I’m not going to tell him. That’s your own mess to fix."


Keri knew that it didn't feel fair because it could never be fair, but she still ached with betrayal at the hand of her ex-best friend. There are things that girlfriends don’t to each other, like sleeping with a friend’s husband, even if the marriage was on its way out, even if she’d probably divorce him anyway, even if she didn’t want to be married at all. Keri’s daughter ran into Stephanie's arms like she didn’t know who her own mother was and Stephanie had to go and sleep with her husband too?

They were all young, they all made mistakes. Why did their mistakes have to hurt each other so much?

***

The big, white, empty house wasn’t so bad once you actually lived in it a little. Keri rearranged the living room because it was horrible and cold. It was her mother’s idea to buy a rug, some color to warm the room up a bit. "Justin would never let me take him shopping," Madison lamented to her. "He might have liked it here if he had."

"Mom, it was never about a goddamn rug," Keri said. "Just leave him alone."

Keri bought her daughter the biggest, most expensive doll house that was ever made. In any other home, it would have looked ridiculous, but in this giant, empty room, it fit right in. And now that Lily was finally getting used to her, she only had three weeks left before she had to leave again.


Justin came home in the evenings after work and Keri could smell Stephanie on him. He left for work early to see her before he clocked in at nine. He saw her after work, and came home after dark. He probably saw her on his lunch break, too. Then he came home smelling of her fruity shampoo and cookie dough and other things Keri didn't want to think about. He came home because he didn't want to be that bold about it, although they were all beyond politeness at this point and everyone knew everything. They had three guest rooms in this house, but they'd never bought any furniture for any of them. He slept on the couch the first night. He slept in the recliner in Lily's nursery the second night. The third night, she found him on the floor in front of Lily's bed, using a stuffed walrus as a pillow. Why did he even bother?

"Just go," Keri said to him. "Would you just go already? I know you want to be there. I don’t care. I want to spend some time with my daughter anyway."

He stood just outside of the room, watching her, deciding whether this was a trick or not. It wasn't a trick.

"Really, I don't care," Keri said.

"Can I say goodnight to Lily?"

"Fine," Keri said, then she moved across the room to let him sit next to Lily.


He played with her halfheartedly for a few minutes, looking forlorn and reluctant.

"I only have three more weeks with her," Keri said. "You have her all year. Don't get all upset like I'm taking your kid away."

"I know, I'm not upset," he said. "But can I maybe see her for a few hours over the weekend? Three weeks is a long time. You'll probably want a break."

"Sure, okay."

He kissed Lily on top of her head and got up to go.


"We're even now," Keri said to him. "I left you, then you left me. Now we're even."

"Then why are you mad at Stephanie?"

"Because she and I are not even."

"Be nice," he said. "She didn't want to hurt you."

Not directly, maybe, but she didn't think for a second about Keri's feelings and that hurt just as much.

"I have so much to deal with," Keri whined. "And I only have three weeks left to spend with my family. What about the house? What about all the paperwork?"


"We can wait until the conflict is over to do the paperwork," he said. "I’m not going to make you get a divorce in the middle of a war."

"You were always so nice to me," she said.

"If only that meant something to you."

"It does. It really does." Keri sighed. "Fine, as soon as this war is over, we’ll do it."


Then she snarled, a snotty, acquiescent kind of snarl. "I guess we can take the rings off now, if you want. That way you can do the nasty with Stephanie and not feel bad about it."

He smiled. "I think that’s the sweetest thing you ever said to me."

"Well, at least you can say I was nice to you once."

He shrugged. "What do we do? Hand them back to each other, like a marriage in reverse?"

She laughed a little. They each slipped off their wedding ring and handed them back to each other. It felt sadder to do than either of them expected.


"Okay, I want to be alone now," Keri said.

"I’ll see you on Saturday," Justin said.

—

Stephanie wasn't expecting him back that night, but just half an hour after he'd left, he was standing in her living room again. "You're back?"

"I got kicked out of my house," he said, laughing.

"Oh no, was it bad?"

"No, it was okay. We didn't even fight about it. Lily was just sitting there playing with her dollhouse and we said it like we both knew it was what needed to happen. That’s it then, it’s done. I'm getting divorced." He held up his hand and showed her where his wedding ring was gone.


Then the humor fell from his face and he squeezed his eyes tight. All of that certainty and valiance and strength crumbled.

"Oh, Justin. It’s okay," she said, taking him into her arms. "You can be sad if you need to."

"Maybe just for a minute," he said.

She pulled him across the room and they fell onto the couch together. They cuddled for a moment, but he didn’t cry any more. He just closed his eyes and held her close as he slipped into the exhaustion of days of emotional turmoil and nights of restless sleep. "I feel like I haven’t slept for a week," he said. Then he was asleep, just that fast.


Stephanie was pinned between his arm and the couch, but she didn’t want to be anywhere else. She loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt. She tried to slip his jacket off, but he slept like a stone. She touched his face and felt all of the mysterious rooms in her heart swell with immense love, the kind of love that took seventeen years to grow and could never die. Someday, I will do this for you, too, she thought.

Then she quickly became terrified. If it was this hard to do when you both wanted it, how hard would it be when one of you didn’t? How messy would it be if one of you didn’t believe it was the right thing? If one of you didn’t want it to happen at all, if he thought you were all his, forever and ever, how difficult would that be?

Stephanie wished for this war to never end so that she would never have to find out.

—