Drown #3: teach me how to dance

* you’ll have to excuse the stingy lack of toddler pictures, for obvious reasons. I photoshopped one for this chapter, and just that one took me a couple of hours, so that's all you get! :p

** soundtrack: “Fireflies” by Owl City


February 2084. Stephanie Day is 24, Willow is 2. Justin Kim is 23, Lily is 15 months.


"We can't make it by today," Stephanie's parents would say on those rare days that neither of them could make the twenty-minute errand out to Lakeside Heights to make sure Stephanie was still alive. They acted like they'd left a small child at home and not a grown woman. "Do you have enough grocery money? Did you pay the electricity bill? Have you showered? Have you left the house this week at all?"

"I'm fine," Stephanie assured them.

"Maybe we'll send Aunt Sophie over to check on you."

"You don’t need to," Stephanie insisted. "I’m fine."

Although Stephanie had some doubts, they were mostly about color—buttercup or coral? She'd never decorated a room in her life, and she hadn't asked permission to decorate this one. Justin’s mother took the girls for the afternoon so that Stephanie wouldn’t have them crawling around the living room. It was cold outside, but she opened the windows and aired the room of paint fumes. She picked a brighter color. Her mother would probably hate it, but Stephanie wasn’t asking. It just felt like something that needed to be done, so she would do it. She would paint the living room yellow.



Then Stephanie realized that she was happy. She didn't know why and she didn't know when it started. She danced around her living room with the music cranked up loud, with yellow paint under her fingernails and in her hair, and she was just happy. She danced with her eyes closed, arms flailing, hair flying, toes tripping over toes, no artistic style whatsoever, and that was when her mother opened the front door.

"Oh, Stephanie, what did you do?"


Stephanie shrugged. "Because it was always so dismal in here. It’ll be nicer now."

Her mother stared at the walls. "Well, I’m glad you moved the piano, at least."

"Of course, I did."

"But it's so bright!"

"No, look over here though. It's not so bright when it dries."

Alice surveyed the room. "Where are the girls?"

"Justin’s mom took them for the day, so that I could paint."

"And then what?"

"We’ll go upstairs, I guess. Until it dries. I know about paint fumes, Mom. I thought I would cheer it up a little. And Justin's mom gave me some of his old toys for the kids. There’s a new family down the street. I was thinking in the spring, I might take on another child."

"I don't know, Stephanie. Two is enough to worry about already, isn't it? Three might be too much. Do you really think that's a good idea? If it's about the money, maybe you should make Justin pay you for watching Lily."

"It’s not about the money. I’m not asking Justin for money. I mean, he does bring us things sometimes, and he helps me with them after work. It's not like he doesn't contribute at all." Stephanie stopped and sighed. How little faith they had in her still. That was probably her own fault. "I guess now none of the furniture matches the room."


Stephanie's mother took a slow breath and then glanced at the room again. "But you know, it's probably time for something new. Those couches are so old. Do you think you'd feel up to picking something out? Since it seems you've caught the decorating bug?"

"Yeah, I could do that."

"Okay then, let us know what you find and where, and I'll send your father out to order it."


Alice smiled at the room. "You know, I think you're right about the yellow. It really does brighten things up. I think it might grow on me."

***

Almost anywhere in the universe was more lived than Justin's big empty house, a hollow shell with no memories. The down payment had been a graduation gift from Keri's parents. It was a beautiful home, in a clinical way. It was stately and modern, with clean lines, fine woods, tall panes of glass, and a view that reached all the way to Lake Michigan. You could sit in this white room, in these white chairs, and watch the sailboats coast along the shore all day.

He wished they'd never moved here. He missed their old college apartment that smelled like cheese and students burning things, where Lily was conceived and born. The rooms here were cold and empty, no matter how much new stuff he tried to buy. He hardly remembered Keri living here at all. The short time they did spend here together, he had gathered every ounce of bravery and selflessness and humility he had so that he could support her. It was the right thing to do, he thought. He wanted to be a good partner.

And now he had no wife, only this big, empty house with no life in it. He hated it here. He hated it to death.

So he made excuses to be anywhere else at all. He'd fall asleep on some welcome couch, wherever Lily happened to be, with his parents or with Stephanie. Stephanie's couch was small and warm. He craved the close confines of it. He craved the way she tiptoed down the stairs every night, trying not to wake him, but those old stairs creaked and groaned and gave her away. Every night she brought him a blanket, draped it over him, tucked him in. She reached out to touch his shoulder or his head, stroking his hair as she whispered, "Good night." She didn’t want anything in return. She never asked him for anything, even when she needed so much. He started to wonder what it meant to be loved by someone and whether he’d ever really known it before.

So Justin went to hang out wherever else he was welcome. He had lunch sometimes with Keri's parents at the Governor's Estate. He had always been favored by Bryson, and Madison, cold though she may be, never disliked him. But something was off now with his in-laws.

"Is there something the matter with the house?"

"No, it’s fine. Why?"

"We drove by the other night. We thought we might stop in to see Lily. But you’re never there."

"Work, I guess," Justin said. "I'm just trying to keep busy."

"You can change things there, you know. Make it feel your own. Maybe some paint or wallpaper?"

"Stephanie's been painting all this week," Justin said. "Maybe she could help me?"

Madison made a face at the mention of Stephanie. "Oh, no, I don't think so. We'd hire someone to do that." Madison had pushed her lunch plate aside. "About Stephanie, sweetheart—"

"Oh, Madison, don't," Bryson chided her.

But Bryson had no power over the women in his life. Madison lifted a finger at him and went on. "You've certainly been spending a lot of time over there."

"I have?" Justin didn't think he'd been over there more than usual. Although, being there felt usual to him, so maybe that was what Madison meant.

"You two aren’t in college anymore. It’s not a frat party. You have a lovely waterfront home that you bought with your wife. Do you really need to sleep on somebody else's couch? Do you really dislike the house that much?"

"No, it’s fine," Justin lied coolly.

Something stalled Madison then as she began to speak and then stopped, and the thought she didn’t say out loud looked like a sharp one. She considered her words and then spoke. "You see, Justin, I understand you’ve known Stephanie for a very long time. But it just doesn’t look right. You're both married to other people, spending time together, day in and day out, your car parked in her driveway every morning. Not everyone knows you like we do. People will talk."

"Oh," Justin said. The idea that he shouldn’t spend time with Stephanie felt absurd to him. He’d known Stephanie since he was a child. They did everything alongside each other throughout their entire lives, learning to ride their bikes, skinning their knees on the sidewalk, going to college, getting married, starting their families. Stephanie made up half the memories of Justin's life. And now she was coming back to him, the old Stephanie, the girl he grew up with, his best friend with a heart so deep and quiet and calm he could have drowned himself in it.

Maybe he did understand what Madison was getting at.

"But I know just the thing," Madison said then. "We'll liven up the house. Let me take you shopping. I bet you just don’t like all that white. It’s like a hospital in there. Let’s buy some bright throw pillows and clear out some of the cobwebs. Goodness, I wonder if some mice have moved in by now. Finish your lunch, dear. I'll go bring you some magazines to look at."

Keri’s parents had always been so good to him and Justin didn’t want to upset them. Madison looked suspicious and disappointed and Bryson was quiet and looked like he just didn’t want to believe that whatever they suspected of him was true. Justin felt like he was losing all of his allies in the world, and he wouldn’t lose Stephanie, too. As the two of them left the room, Justin heard whispers in another room about how pretty Stephanie was or wasn’t, how sisterly she was or wasn’t, and then, “Oh, Bryson, don’t be so naive.”

***

Stephanie had the floors redone, too. Justin's mom gave her some old toys to bring home, and the girls had already scattered them over the new living room. Stephanie didn't mind the way some people did if her living room looked like an exploded toy store.

Willow was almost a year older than Lily was, walking and talking much more than her younger playmate. The screaming nights were over now, and both of the girls slept soundly through the night. Stephanie didn't think they ever would.

Stephanie still had yellow paint underneath her fingernails, in her hair, probably other places she didn't even know about. "Mama, yey-yow," Willow said and giggled.

"Yes, Mama is yellow."

"Ma ma ma," Lily babbled.

Stephanie corrected the baby. "I'm Steffie, silly girl." The poor girl didn't know who her mother was. Which wasn't her fault, of course. Even Willow had been caught calling all sorts of men "dada" her grandfather, her cousins, Justin. Jeremiah had been gone for nearly a year now. It had been months since Stephanie even spoke to him. "It doesn't mean anything's wrong," he'd told her. Soon, he would be gone for longer than they'd been married. And then after that, he'd be gone for longer than she ever knew him at all.

But Willow was the striking image of her father in almost every way, with his dark hair and brown skin and pale crystal eyes. She was as charming as she was moody. She was both temperamental and fiercely affectionate.

Willow surprised Stephanie from behind, wrapping her little arms around her, and said, "Mama, wuv ooh."


Stephanie's heart split clean in two. Who taught her to say that? Her grampy, probably. Because Stephanie never really said that. Maybe she'd whisper it while Willow slept, but she hardly ever said it out loud, not to anyone, not her parents, not Justin, not even Jeremiah. "I love you," he said as he was leaving for war. "Good luck," she said back.

It had taken Stephanie two years to fall in love with her baby. That was so sad she couldn't even admit it out loud. But Stephanie had love in her heart. Now, she did. She had so much feeling in her heart that it was terrifying sometimes. "I love you, too, Willow," Stephanie said.

Then Lily had the pots and pans out in the kitchen. Willow sprinted off to join the musical noise.


And left alone among the explosion of toys, Stephanie sobbed.

***

Justin worked as late as he could most of the time. Stephanie knew why. If he came by as the girls were getting sleepy, they'd put them to bed and stay up to watch a movie or play a video game. Then he'd have an excuse not to wake them. The girls slept so nicely at this age, cuddled up in their shared bed like sisters, nobody wanted to disturb them.

But when he arrived, he took one look at her face and he was concerned. "Are you okay? Were the girls trouble?"


Her eyes were probably still red and puffy. "I'm fine. They were great." She needed to distract him because she didn't want to talk about why she'd been crying. She picked up a toy and shook it. "Look, your mom gave us your old toy robot."


He grinned with childlike glee. "I loved that robot!"

He was a goon in a business suit. She just wanted to kiss him all over his face. She didn't know how anyone took him seriously.

"Are you hungry?"

"Yeah, a little," he said.


Justin cooked the eggs and Stephanie made some ice cream. They only knew how to make the kind of food toddlers would eat, but that was fine by either of them.


"Keri's parents don't think I should be here," Justin told her.

"Where are you supposed to be?"

"Alone in my big, ugly house, I guess."

"Don't be silly," she said. "Be here if you want to be. And besides, nobody worried about it when we lived together in college."

"We had scrambled eggs and ice cream for dinner then too," he said.


There were toys all over the place and people sleeping on couches. It was exactly like freshman year of college. Justin left his shoes by the door and folded up his suit jacket, hung over a dining room chair, and untucked and unbuttoned his shirt. Just bring some pajamas over, she told him once. But he thought that would be too much. He wanted to pretend that he had intentions of going home, sometimes at least, and Stephanie wanted to let him pretend if that was what he needed.

She said, "This new couch I bought is nice, huh? I was looking at another one, but it wasn't as soft. This one is so soft. Now you'll never want to go home."


"Hey, that works for me," he said. "I can tell Keri's parents it's your fault then. You're brainwashing me into staying here. Then they'll get off my back about it."

"Are they really serious?"

"Yeah, I think so," he said. "They wouldn't stop about it until I told them that you had really hairy armpits and that wasn't really my thing."

Stephanie burst into hysterical laughter, then she slapped his arm. "I do not have hairy armpits!"

"I know you don't," he said. "Or, well, it's been a while since you wore short sleeves. Maybe now you do."

She should have encouraged him to go home, maybe, but she needed him here as much as he needed to be here. "Hey," she said instead. "Do you still remember the slap dance we learned in Three Lakes?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know."

"Do you wanna try it?" 

They tried, but neither of them remembered more than a couple of steps.

"Remember how Keri wouldn’t do it with us?" Stephanie said. "She just stood there with a stick up her butt."


Stephanie was still trying to remember the steps, but Justin had given up on the slap dance and just bounced around the room instead, trying not to knock her in the head with his arms.

"Keri always had a stick up her butt," he said. "I remember when I came home from Takemizu, I wanted to show her the “bow of reverence” and she was like, 'What are you even doing?'"

"Ha, you do a good Keri voice," Stephanie said. "What’s a bow of reverence?"


"It’s to show the utmost respect and humility to a person. Here, just stand like this." He straightened her arms and stood about a foot away from her with his arms to his sides, his face tilted to her feet, then he bowed from the hips in a slow, fluid motion, his head coming nearly to the level of her heart.

She was stunned by how revered it made her feel. "Oh," she said. "That is kind of nice."

"Right? That’s what I was saying."

"Can you maybe do it one more time?"

He smiled, then composed himself and bowed to her one more time.

"Oh, wow," she said, her voice weak with awe. She had been too honest, or too transparent, maybe. He had a conflicted smile on his face, one full of wonder and disappointment at the same time. He had wanted this reaction from Keri once and he never got it. It wasn't fair.

It also wasn't fair that this feeling still plagued her sometimes—the intense need to kiss him and not being allowed. She wanted to kiss his cheeks, his eyelids, his chin, like it was the most natural thing to do in the world, the most natural thing that wasn't allowed. It was her own doing now like it was her own doing then, this cycle of her life coming around and haunting her.

What was love supposed to feel like?

Four years ago, Justin told her that he wanted to marry Keri, and it broke Stephanie's heart in ways that weren't fair. She had set up her two closest friends, and this was all of her doing. She needed to get her mind off of the problem, and that was how she found Jeremiah. She and Jeremiah were crazy together. He distracted her from the situation and he was exactly what she needed to accomplish that job. The four of them could be happy like this, all of them, together. Maybe it could work?

Justin was there when she married Jeremiah, a quick ceremony performed by the notary public in some lodge in Three Lakes. She was twenty years old and she didn’t have a dress on. She and Jeremiah stood in front of a fireplace that smelled like baked beans and they said some words. “I do,” most significantly, and then they put gift shop rings on each other’s fingers. He would order her a real ring, he promised. It took him a few months to save up for it, but he got the real rings finally.

She didn’t forget about Justin that day, she had compartmentalized him. She could do that. She put Justin in this tidy little box in her heart and he would live there, and Jeremiah could have whatever was left of her. It had been too easy to do. All it took to commit a whole life to someone was a notary public and two words. They shouldn't let people do it so easily. It took her two years to fall in love with her daughter but less than a few hours to marry her husband. How was love supposed to work?

When all of the TV shows had been watched and the music had been turned off, she and Justin went to bed. But Stephanie couldn't sleep. There were untold secrets in Stephanie’s heart, secrets pushed to the deepest capillaries of her toes. So many secrets. This secret—she had not been fine. For a time, she had been anything but fine, but now she felt normal again. The numbness in her heart had opened. In that space, Stephanie found an overwhelming love for her baby girl. Maybe it had been there all along and she just couldn't find it. She loved her daughter and she needed to tell someone.


She crept down the stairs and knelt on the floor where Justin was sleeping. "I'm a terrible mom," she cried.

Justin opened his eyes and stirred himself awake. "What? Why? What are you talking about?"

"I never taught her to say 'I love you.' Somebody else taught her because I didn't. And then she said it to me today. She said, 'Mama, love you.' My toddler is better at love than I am."


"It's not true," Justin said. "You're great at love, Steph. You're really great at it."

She smiled, but she was crying too, the kind of glassy tears that filled her eyes but never spilled over, careful and contained. She shook her head. "But when she was a baby, I wasn't. I couldn't feel anything. Now, I'm fine. But all those times before, when I said I was fine, I was never fine. I was sad and I was scared and I didn't want to tell anyone."

He took her shaking fingers into his hands and pulled her up from the floor.


"It's okay," he said. "You didn't need to say it. I knew."

And she knew that. She had known that all along. Sometimes she wondered if it was the only thing keeping her alive.

"But you were always going to be fine," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Because if you weren't going to be fine, you would have found a way to tell me."


He was right. He was her best friend, her safe place, her homecoming, for the better half of her life. "Thank you," she said. "You should go back to sleep. I'm sorry I woke you up."

"Don't be sorry," he said.

She came back with a blanket for him, like she did every night. She unfolded it and tucked it around him. She reached out to his head, then his shoulder, and she whispered, "Good night."

But tonight, although she'd thought his eyes were closed, he wasn't quite asleep yet. "Good night," he whispered back. Then he took her outreached hand and he held it. He pressed it to his cheek, a cradle, a hug. He turned his lips to the center of her palm and he kissed her there. She giggled once, softly, overcome with the feeling. He held her hand to his lips and she didn't feel embarrassed, she didn't feel guilty, she didn't feel ashamed. It was a kiss of pure reverence and humility, so natural that it made her heart ache. She didn't move a muscle in her body until he let go.

—

footnotes: the making of a fake TS4 toddler