Drown #9: the best laid plans, part 5.5

December 2085. Stephanie Nova is 26, Jeremiah Day is 28, Justin Kim is 25, Willow and Lily are 3. Cynthia Kim is 49, Robert is 52.  

* sensitive content advisory for Drown #9: the best laid plans, parts 1-5

A couple of days after Christmas, Jeremiah stopped by the house.

"I saw your car in the driveway," Jeremiah said. "Stephanie, I feel like we got off to a bad start. We're going to be co-parents now, right? That's what they call it? It's not what I wanted, but we'll just have to put aside our grievances and make the best of it."

Stephanie had the girls corralled behind her, her elderly father in front of her, and she didn't know what to do. Jeremiah wasn't supposed to show up like this, but she didn't want to tell him that there were rules now. Not like this, not today. He'd get the paperwork in days, but he didn't have it yet and she didn't want to be the one to break it to him.

"So, do you think I could chat with my daughter for a couple of hours?"

"If you stay here with her," Stephanie said.

"Great, we'll watch some cartoons or something."

"Steffie, play, let's play," Lily begged, shoving a doll into Stephanie's hands. 

Jeremiah wasn't here to cause any trouble, he said. He just wanted to visit with his daughter, if that wasn't too much trouble. He said, "Don't be so dramatic, Stephanie. We need to try our hardest to put Willow's best interests first."

But maybe this was for the better, because Stephanie had questions, too. She had to see how they were together. Was it possible he could be a really shitty husband but a really great dad? Or was this all just an act?

Lily walked her doll across the plastic island shore. "Do the funny voice, please do it."

Even Willow looked skeptical of her father. She wouldn't say much, she just sat there watching Jeremiah's face.

"Steffie, you be the hurricane. Shhhh!"

Stephanie couldn't be the hurricane right now because she was trying to hear each and every word. Some of them were too soft to make out. She couldn't play because she was trying to think. There must have been something good about him, or else how did they ever end up together? She had to tell her lawyer every last detail of everything horrible he'd ever done, but now she wanted to remember what was ever good.

He didn't used to be this way, she thought, and then she wondered if that wasn't true. Maybe the war changed him, or knowing about the affair changed him. She tried to think back years and years, their cabin in the woods, their early courtship. Now Stephanie wished she could talk to Bella more than anyone. Was he like this with you? Am I overreacting? Am I being paranoid? Was I the one who broke him? 

Stephanie remembered her first date with Jeremiah, how he wanted to get her into his bedroom so badly. She had to ask him to take her out on a date, in public, because she hadn't known him for more than an hour yet and she felt uncomfortable in his house. She remembered how he felt so charming but also so overwhelming. She folded her arms around herself and tried to keep her personal space. But he did such sweet things. He kissed her hand and told her how pretty she was when nobody else was doing that.

Stephanie remembered how annoyed he was that she made him wait four months to have sex. "You're not like other college girls," he told her, and it made her feel so strange and awkward. Maybe he was right though, because Keri took Justin's virginity only two weeks after they started dating, so maybe she wasn't like other college girls. But when she felt like something was grotesquely wrong with her, he explained, "You're just so beautiful, I just can't help myself."

Stephanie remembered how he took her to this party once and wanted to have sex in someone's bed. It was only afterward that he told her that it had actually been Bella's bed, and he laughed about it and she first saw how cold his eyes could be. But then he held her close on Bella's bed sheets and said such nice things, "You're so much better, so much nicer, so much prettier, so much sexier than Bella Bradshaw."

Stephanie remembered how fast spring break turned into that icy fortress of marriage. She didn't go there expecting to end up married, or even engaged. It was just spring break. She was just a shy and awkward twenty year-old trying to go on spring break with her friends and it changed her whole life.

Maybe he didn't even hide it that well, but just made her believe it wasn't true. Nothing was ever true about him, but we want so badly to believe the things we believe until we cannot believe them anymore.

You already know, she told herself. You're not being paranoid. You're not being dramatic.

"Steffie, play this one," Lily said. "Steffie, play."


"I'm sorry, girlie, let's play. I'll be the hurricane. Shhhh!"

She would let her father listen to Jeremiah's conversation for a while. She knew everything she needed to know.

Jeremiah was gone before Justin got home from work that evening. He left without any trouble.

Justin still had a job, miraculously, since a lot of companies went bust during the war and never got started again yet. Lots of people didn’t have jobs and anyone who did had to go to work. He’s used up all of his vacation allowance staying home with her the past couple of weeks. He couldn't miss a single hour more unless he wanted to file for emergency family leave or quit. And he couldn't quit, because he needed to buy them a house. He couldn’t stay with her every minute of every day forever. He couldn’t hide her under his desk at work, either.

Again, even at twenty-six years old, Stephanie still couldn't manage to take care of herself properly without fucking it all up.

"I don’t want to be here," she begged him. "I don't want him to just drop into my life whenever he wants to. We can't stay here. We have to go. I don't care where. We can go to a hotel even, but we're not staying here." 

So Justin took them back to his parents house again. The girls woke them up every morning with their cartoons. It annoyed Justin more than it bothered Stephanie. He wanted to find them a place of their own.

Stephanie didn’t mind sleeping on Justin’s parents’ couch. She felt safe there because Jeremiah didn’t know where Justin’s parents lived and he’d have to drive every street in every neighborhood in all of Lakeside Heights to ever find them. The couch was on the firm side of comfortable, and the mattress didn't smell too stale. She slept peacefully to the sound of cartoons and voices because that meant there were people around her and she was safe. They tried to tiptoe and whisper around her, but she said, "Just go ahead and turn your show on. It's okay, I just need to close my eyes a little."

She could hardly stay awake past eight o'clock. The girls hadn't even gone to bed yet. 

Then when everyone else had finally settled down, she felt wide awake, both starving and nauseous at the same time.

She got a glass of milk, warmed it in the microwave, and added a tiny dash of vanilla. She drank her warm milk and worried about everything, wondering when it would all come undone.

"Come back to bed, Steph." 

"In a minute," she said. 

But she couldn't fall back asleep, so he got up with her instead.

"Are you worried about Jeremiah? I know what you need. How about I tell you a story scarier than Jeremiah?"

It was a supposedly true story about how one of the little shits crashed into a nuclear reactor in Ohio. The alien inside of it crawled out, mutated, and escaped into the depths of Lake Erie. There it bred with a sea lamprey, but it was half alien, too, with legs like a centipede, gills and lungs. It could breathe on water and on land, but it still had the mouth of a lamprey. Only instead of blood, it attached itself to your ear and sucked brains! Now there were five thousand of them slithering up the shores of Lake Erie. 

He laughed. "But that's probably not true." 

"You made it sound so true," she said.

"Steph, how can that be true?"

"But what if it is true!?!"

That was scary, but not quite scarier than Jeremiah. She was a little mad at him now.

But only for a minute. Then they laughed about it, because really, radioactive brain-sucking alien sea lamprey in Lake Erie?

"Come on," he said. "Let's look up a picture of one. I bet they look so fake."

Cynthia came downstairs at midnight. "I thought you two went to bed? This reminds me of when you were in high school. Don’t stay up all night."

Stephanie showed her the pictures they found. "Did you see somebody on the internet photoshopped a radioactive brain-sucking alien sea lamprey? Look, it's funny. It looks so fake."

Cynthia meant to say goodnight, but instead, Robert came down and she ended up telling a story about the time Justin was in fourth grade and he had this giant stuffed bear he called Mr. Fuzzybutt. And then Justin told them that it was actually Stephanie who named the bear Mr. Fuzzybutt, not him. And Stephanie said, "You promised you would never tell anybody that!"

They all stayed up chatting until two in the morning. Stephanie was so tired and so surrounded with love and laughter that she slept perfectly on that fold out couch. She didn't even have nightmares about radioactive alien sea lamprey. Or Jeremiah. 

—

Tomorrow would be New Year's Eve. Everyone else would be looking forward to the blank new year and a fresh start, but Stephanie knew better than to be that hopeful. She had very modest hopes. She hoped that they could find a nice place to live, something that they could afford and that Jeremiah couldn't find very easily. That was all she wanted. 

"Keri's going to be mad now that we can't take Willow out of the state," Justin said. "But hey, I can blame your court order. I didn't really want to go anyway. Look at these prices! How did she ever think we'd be able to afford DC?"

"Have you ever been to Wisconsin?

"But you can’t take Willow out of the state."

"I know, but what if it wasn't out of the state?" Stephanie bounced. "Oh, look! This one has a waterfall behind it!"

"What did you find?"

Stephanie pointed to a tiny picture on her phone screen. "Look at this address. It’s just over the border in Michigan. It’s not out of the state. Do you think we'd be allowed to do that?"

"That’s a lot cheaper than what I was looking at. Oh, because of where it is. Steph, it’s an hour away from the city and a half hour from the shore. It's in the middle of nowhere."

"I know," she said. 

"What kind of work could I even do out there? And I bet there’s no air filter."

"We can install one."

"It’ll need a lot of work. I bet the vents and windows aren’t air tight."

"We can fix them."

"You like the big yard, don’t you?"

"And the river. And there’s a school nearby." She liked a lot about it. She liked that it was really far away from here, somewhere Jeremiah would never think to find them. It could be the perfect plan. They would still need to bring Willow back for his visitation weekends, but he wouldn't be able to drop into their life whenever he wanted. They needed it now more than ever.

"Can we talk about it more in the morning, maybe?" she said. "Can we go to bed now? I have to tell you something."

"Are you ready?"

"Hang on." He was already grinning, but only because she was already grinning, so he knew that this would be good news. "Okay. Yeah. Now I'm ready."

"It's already too late," she said. "Way too late."

"Really? You're sure?"

"Yup, I took a test this morning. Didn't even need to wait three minutes. It lit up right away."

"I knew it," he said. "We had so much sex that night before you missed six pills. And you know I have super sperm, right? True story."

"Is this okay?" she asked him. "Because I know we’re kind of homeless and not divorced yet and Jeremiah wants to kill us. Maybe it’s crazy, but I just don’t feel scared about it. I mean, I’m scared about a lot of things, but not this. It doesn’t feel wrong or overwhelming or scary or reckless. I just feel happy. Really happy. Although I guess we probably need a house."

"I’m gonna get you that cottage with the waterfall," he said. "If that’s the one you want, we’re going to get it."

"And this is okay?"

"It's more than okay. It’s great, Steffie. It’s so great."

—

footnotes: super sperm, true story // but really, these are the things of nightmares // the perfect cottage by the waterfall // oops, but sort of not oops