the damage, part 2

November 2, 2086. Justin Kim and Stephanie Nova are 26. Willow is 5, Lily is 4, Benji is three months old.



Justin had been out of work now for over two months, and the most riveting part of his day was being judge and jury to sibling rivalries. They couldn't be sure whether it was because of the new baby or everything else the family had been through, but both girls had been acting out in different ways. Willow had become bombastic and sometimes prickly, challenging rules and boundaries with great ambition. She would dart out of the house without telling anyone, or run the hot water without being supervised, or open up the chat box on the computer and talk to strangers. Then Lily became ornery and ruthless about catching her sister's bad behavior. She followed Willow around, waiting to tattle on anything she did wrong.





"But she ran on the rocks and she's not allowed! She could fall in the water and go down the waterfall."

"Willow, no running on the rocks," Justin called out to her.

Lily pouted when that was all he had to say about it.

"But isn't she gonna get a time out?"

He could never tell with Lily whether her tattle-telling was due to genuine concern for her sister, or an attempt to win vindication and righteousness. Justin wasn't a fan of it. But he knew they were both looking for attention and favor now that so much had changed. After everything they'd all been through, if that was the worst of the fall out, then he could deal with it.


Justin was out of work still by default, not by choice. They moved here because Stephanie found this cottage and she fell in love with it. Justin had been lucky enough to find work here one time, and now he knew better than ever exactly how lucky he'd been. His disability payments would end in three weeks, but he couldn't find anything comparable to do here.

He took Willow fishing, thinking maybe he’d sell some fish to the market. Could he be a fisherman? The lakes and rivers were full of fish, but he couldn’t catch anything.


Then the bright sunshine and mold spores from decaying leaves only gave him a headache, and Willow caught an actual weed and declared that all the fish were dead, and Lily refused to pick up a pole because the fish smelled bad. So the three of them went home defeated.

What else could one do in the countryside with an economics degree and a broken brain? Stephanie loved this place so much. But what if her perfect place on earth was the place where everything ended for him?

"Let me take care of you," she said. "You took care of me for so long. The kids grow up so fast. You can relax and enjoy this special time. It'll be like an extended vacation."

But Justin was never the type to enjoy extended vacations before he was itching to get back to work again.


He loved his kids to the moon. He really truly did, but for the past ten years, throughout school and scholarships and college and work, he’d always felt himself on a path. And now he felt utterly adrift. He was headed absolutely nowhere. He was on an extended vacation, indefinitely. He didn't want to discount everything Stephanie did for their children for so many years, yet he couldn't help but feel like he would toss all of that hard work into the trash with the baby's dirty diapers. Would he be able to get it all back when the time was right? Would the time ever be right? Would the opportunity ever come? He never expected to end up a stay-at-home dad. Even if it was fun sometimes, even if it was important work for someone to do. He didn't know how to express that disappointment without sounding ungrateful or miserable or snobbish.


He tried to talk to Stephanie about it once, but she got upset and cried, "I ruined your life."

"No, no," he tried to explain. "My life isn't ruined. No, that wasn't what I meant. It's just that I always thought I knew what I was doing, and now I don't know."

It wasn't enough to soothe her, and then she was scared that he was unhappy. She was scared that their family wasn't enough for him. But it was different than unhappiness. He just never planned on becoming a full time stay-at-home dad. He never planned on being forced to quit his work. He never planned on being knocked out by her shitty ex-husband. Jeremiah ruined his life, maybe. And hers. Or maybe their lives weren't ruined, they were just lost a little. A little off-course.

—

Stephanie came home well after midnight most nights, too tired to eat. Then she woke up early in the mornings, too hungry to sleep any later. Her work load would lighten up after January, she promised.

She didn’t want to eat the food at work. It was too rich. That's why it tasted so good, and why she gained forty-eight pounds with her last pregnancy. She never gained that much with Willow. She never had a hard time losing the weight with Willow, either.

Justin told her he didn't even notice it, but she figured he would say that anyway, even if it wasn't true.

"But you have to eat," he told her. "Promise me, Steph. You can't work a ten-hour shift and not eat."


She didn't know what she should have done, having a newborn baby and incapacitated fiancé, but she felt like she'd made a mistake. It wasn't that she disliked her work—she truly still enjoyed it—but she never anticipated how much of it there could be, or how tiring it could be. They even hired a new kid to help bus tables and wash dishes, and that was the only reason she sometimes got home around midnight instead of nearly two. Cooking for a festival, the supper club, the hotel guests, and two catering contracts kept her on her feet for the whole shift. Now she'd promised Sharon that she'd carry them through the new year.

Then at home, her family got simple scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast because she just couldn't muster the energy for a spinach quiche or buttermilk pancakes from scratch. That felt so unfair that strangers should get her best efforts and her loved ones got leftovers.


Lily noticed the difference. "Can’t we have the gummy bear pancakes like you used to make? Daddy can’t even make pancakes at all. You’re the only one in the whole wide world who knows how."

Possibly so, but Stephanie was too tired for gummy bear pancakes. "Maybe on my day off," she promised.

She felt like she was dishing out promises like they were her prized almond macarons. She had promises for everybody.


Then she dressed for work so they could do it all over again.

—

Justin's parents wanted to come help with the kids more often than they could. They were still living in Lakeside Heights, a full day's drive away. But they drove up on the weekends and entertained the girls for a little while so Justin could grab a few moments of peace.

His parents were younger than Stephanie's parents, and his father wasn't ready to retire yet, which put him in the same position Justin was in—there wasn't much work to be found out here. Without finding work first, they couldn't risk the move.

Justin suggested semi-retirement. "I can pass your resume on to Adam at the HPS, I know he needs plenty of retail work." If nothing else, there was always retail here. Gift shops and cafés and boutiques. "In your free time, you can build your model trains and sell them at the local shops. Tourists would love them."

Robert liked the idea, and Justin felt some relief that they might be closer soon.

And how ironic that Justin could find his father a job but found nothing for himself.


While his parents entertained the kids, he spent his few moments on the computer, scouring websites for local businesses. He found nothing but retail, retail, custodial, retail, retail, food service, ferry boat captain. Justin recalled the time he was in the islands with Keri, the only time in his life that he'd ever been in command of a boat, and it sank into the seaweed. He knew that he should absolutely never try to be a ferry boat captain.

He felt snobbish for thinking the retail work wouldn't be good enough. But maybe he was entitled to a little snobbery. He studied at Takemizu Academy, for crying out loud. He didn't want to stock boutique shelves.

He looked and looked and he finally found a lead on something. Regional IRS auditor. The starting pay was not stellar, but at least he could use his degree. He had the qualifications, although his experience was more in sales and management than bookkeeping. In fact, he quite hated bookkeeping.

Then Cooper Riddle flashed to mind, the first day he ever met the jerk, “Oh, look! They're hiring accountants! Oh, wait, or are you IRS? You're the building inspector? Wanna arm wrestle?"

To think Justin might end up a tax man after all. Or a grocery clerk or a stay-at-home dad. What would Cooper Riddle think of that?

Who gave a flying shit about Cooper Riddle? Justin could be a tax man. It was honest, reliable work that he could do.

But after exploring the depths of the mines, after dissecting all of that history, after constructing entire mazes of underground adventures with his own two hands, taxes just seemed so… boring.

He'd keep it in mind, at least, unless someone else snapped it up first.

—

The week after Halloween, Stephanie helped close up the Fall Festival. It had been a success, but they were glad to be finished. Stephanie would even have three days off before she had to cook for Sharon's Election Day Gala—assuming Sharon would win, and everyone assumed that she would.

"You have to look at this," Stephanie squealed, bounding through the door. She looked exhausted, yet somehow she beamed. "Don’t even worry about money. We are set."

She had her paycheck notification loaded on the screen.

"Sharon gave me a raise and a huge bonus!"


"Wow," he said. It had been a long time since he saw so many digits in their bank account.

"I've never earned that much money before in my life."

"Good job, Steph. I'm so proud of you."

"Sharon said she's so grateful to have us. She said she couldn't do any of this without us. She’s so happy with our work the past few weeks. We all got a little bit of a raise, but mine was a little bigger—I didn’t tell Maria that."

She took a few breaths and calmed herself down, looking dazed and happy.

"I hope the kids weren’t bad," she said.

"They were kids," he said. "Lily won’t eat fish anymore. She says what if it starts to swim again in her mouth? Even though it’s cooked and cut up."

"But she eats hamburger?"

"Don’t tell her it comes from an animal. I won’t have anything left to feed her."

Justin didn't want to hijack her celebration, but he wanted to know what she thought about the IRS job, so he told her about it.

Her expression morphed slowly from excited to unsure to doubtful to disappointed to worried.

"You’re already looking? You only let me take care of you for six weeks. You’ve taken care of me basically forever. But, we're fine for money now. You don’t have to rush. And besides, you hated bookkeeping. That’s like taking your least favorite part about every job you ever had and making it the only thing you do. And, well, I can’t let Sharon down right now. So what about the kids? Who will stay with Benji? He's so little, I didn't want to put him with a stranger. How will our schedules line up? I guess you won’t work weekends, and I mostly work weekends. We’ll just never see each other in between."

She frowned.

"It was just an idea," he said. A bad one, apparently. "I'm not applying for it. I was just kidding. I mean, geez, taxes?"


She kissed his cheek. "Good, you'll find something better anyway."

She had too much faith in him.

"Let's just get through January. Okay? I'm going to get cleaned up for bed."


He waited for her in the bedroom, but when she didn't come out, he found her asleep in the bath.

He wanted to lift her out of the water and carry her to bed. But his ribs had only just healed, and he still wasn't allowed to lift weight. Baby weight or not. The best he could do was nudge her cheek and wrap her in a towel and guide her way to bed, eyes still closed.

—

footnotes: the damage, part 1 // are you IRS? 

notes: perhaps it may seem like Steph doesn't want to be doing this, but she really does. She wouldn't want to quit, although she may like to scale back. She still likes her work and she has a few easy promotions ahead of her, so she’ll be swimming in bonuses for a while. I think she kind of likes taking care of their family for once, although it’s a lot harder than she anticipated and not something she can sustain for very long. But the next promotion will be a nice change for her because it bumps her down from 5 to 4 days a week, which is more in line with what she wants. Then her evenings and weekends hours will fit nicely with his when he finds something, except that they’ll work completely opposite shifts and see each other a lot less. 😢

My jobs rule has been brutal for Justin in this area. If he wants to work, he needs to find someone to hire him, and there's just not much going on here besides low-paying retail work, or else very niche skilled jobs that require a degree he doesn’t have. Maybe when Sharon wins the election, he can complain to his representative about the poor jobs economy in Copper County, lol!