Entry 19911109-1 - Stephanie Ann Adams

_November 9, 1991, Milford, Ohio_


Doctor Fran Mercer was sitting at her desk on Saturday afternoon, waiting for Ed and Stephanie to arrive. She'd spoken to Stephanie by telephone after the revelation from Steve about the conversation through the car window, and was very concerned. Distance made things difficult, as more intensive counseling was indicated, but given the circumstances, there wasn't much Fran could do other than work with what she had. And what she had was, to put it in non-clinical terms, a complete and utter mess, at least with regard to Stephanie. Her talks with Steve had been fruitful, as they always had been, even if at times Fran didn't agree with the solutions or outcome.

"Doctor Mercer, Mr. and Mrs. Krajick are here," Cecilia said over the intercom.

"Show them in, please."

Cecilia brought Ed and Stephanie into the office, then closed the door behind her as she left.

"Have a seat, please," Fran said.

Stephanie and Ed sat on the couch and Doctor Mercer sat in her counseling chair which faced the couch at an angle.

"Ed, I just have a few things to say, and a few questions, then I'll ask you to go get a cup of coffee."

"OK," he said.

"First, are you both eating right, getting enough sleep, and working?"

"Yes," Ed said.

"Yes," Stephanie agreed.

"Where are you employed?"

"I work for the City of Chicago in the Planning Division," Ed said.

"I work for Arthur Andersen as an auditor," Stephanie added.

"Do you travel?"

"When necessary for the client, yes."

"How often is that?"

"So far I've had two out-of-town assignments. When that happens, I'm away during the week, usually traveling Sunday evening and Friday evening."

"What do you do when you're traveling? I mean in your free time?"

"Read, watch TV, exercise, and sometimes hang out with my co-workers."

"And Ed, what do you do when she's away?"

"Hang out with Steve, Pete, Terry, or one of the other guys, or watch TV."

"Are you sexually active?"

"Yes," Ed replied. "Nothing has changed in that regard, really. As I told you on the phone, I knew about Steve and Stephanie when we were teenagers."

"I'll want to talk to you about that at some point, but for now, if you don't mind, I'd like to spend the rest of the session with Stephanie."

"I'll go get some coffee at Frisch's," Ed replied.

He kissed Stephanie on the cheek and left the office, closing the door behind him.

"Let's start with some questions I'm going to ask you every single time. Please don't be upset, because they're important."

"OK," Stephanie answered warily.

"Have you been alone with your brother in any context since we spoke on the phone a week ago?"

"No."

"Are you feeling depressed or angry?"

"Both, I guess."

"Have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself or others?"

"No."

"Have you fantasized about being intimate with your brother?"

Stephanie nodded, "Yes, in the way you mean."

"Let's assume, for our purposes, that 'being intimate' means having any kind of sexual contact. Last question, do you commit to not acting on those fantasies and to not having any intimate contact with your brother before I see you again in two weeks?"

Stephanie cracked a slight smile, "Interesting way of putting it."

"It's like with recovery programs - commit to not doing whatever it is you're recovering from for one day. Then make the same promise the next day, and so on. I get the sense that your mind works like your brother's, so I can tell you the point - it's fairly easy to stay sober for one day; it's fairly difficult to stay sober for the rest of your life. BUT, one day, day after day, IS the rest of your life. It's about setting a simple, achievable goal. And I can share this, because Steve gave permission - I'm asking him every time we speak about any kind of incestuous thoughts about his daughters."

"Oh, come on!" Stephanie protested. "That's NOT him, and it never will be!"

"Clinical evidence says that a teen or young adult who engages in an incestuous relationship is significantly more likely to abuse his children. I _have_ to ask those questions. And he responded as I expected - with outrage. You'll likely be outraged by questions I ask you as well. It's the nature of this kind of counseling."

"I was the predator, Doctor Mercer," Stephanie said firmly. "He never had a chance. My mom made sure of that."

"Let's begin there - with your mother."

"The Queen Bitch," Stephanie growled angrily. "She made his life a living hell!"

"What's your first memory of your mother?"

"I guess I was four or five and she was screaming at Steve for something. I don't know what it was, but she was in a full-on rage about something he said or did, but I'm not sure what it was."

"Where were you living at the time?"

"We had just moved to Ohio from Arizona and had a house in Glendale. We didn't live there very long before we moved to Anderson Township, and then finally, Milford."

"Steve told me that you moved a lot."

"Which is why I think he'll never, ever move from the house in Kenwood."

"What else do you remember from when you were four or five?"

"That my mom obviously loved Jeff more than Steve. At that point, she was OK with me, I guess. I mean, I don't remember her treating me badly until Steve and I became close."

"Which was when?"

"Around the time he met Birgit Andersson."

"How old were you then?"

"It was the Fall of 1976, so I would have been nine."

"What happened between ages seven and nine?"

"You mean from deciding I wanted him?"

"Yes."

"He was involved in Cub Scouts and baseball, and we didn't spend a lot of time together."

"Who took him to his den meetings and his baseball games, if you know."

"Mom was the Den Mother. I know now it was so she could control everything. Dad took him to baseball practice and games, and I went to his games."

"Did your mom go?"

"Mostly she didn't. She would stay home with Jeff."

Doctor Mercer made some notes, and not for the first time, wondered what it was that had caused Judy Adams to fixate on her middle child, abuse her eldest child, and neglect her youngest child. Unfortunately, without lengthy interviews with Ray and Judy Adams, she was unlikely to uncover the source, though she had a strong suspicion that Judy was suffering from some form of mental illness.

"So Steve and your dad got along?"

"I suppose. They would go to hockey games when they still had them before the team folded. But Mom basically wouldn't support him being in Boy Scouts and he wasn't good enough to keep playing baseball."

"Did he not make the team?"

"He didn't try. Later on he told me he knew he was only so-so, and once he discovered computers and chess, he didn't care about playing baseball."

"What position, if you know?"

"Pitcher and sometimes other positions if they needed a sub."

"OK. Let's talk about how you felt when you read the books."

"Curious more than anything. I mean, I had an idea of what had to happen because I knew boys and girls were different, but I hadn't quite figured it out."

"Did your mom give you the books?"

"No. She got them for Steve, but they went onto shelves in the hallway closet that served as the library. If Mom bought something, it HAD to be someplace public. She tried that BS with the computer, too. Did my brother tell you about that?"

"Yes, but let's not skip ahead, please. Why did you read them?"

"Like I said, I was curious. I read the 'girl' book first, and it made a whole lot of stuff clear that I had only guessed about. Them I read the 'boy' book and more stuff made sense. Then I read the 'sex' book. And finally the last book about pregnancy and childbirth."

"Tell me about how you felt when you read the 'sex' book."

"It was an 'Aha!' moment, when suddenly everything made sense - you know, anatomy, sex, and babies. Of course, Jesse, Matthew, and Birgit already know all of that, at least at a level they can understand."

"Birgit is three, right?"

"Yes. But she knows how babies are made. I mean, once you see a boy, even a baby, it kind of dawns on you that things go together."

"Back to you and the 'Aha!' moment - is that when you decided you wanted to be with your brother?"

"It was a long time ago, but I'm pretty sure the idea just popped into my head fully formed - if I was going to do that, then I was going to do it with Steve. And it would be to most perfect thing that ever happened."

"What did you do?"

"Well, I'd discovered from riding my bike that rubbing myself felt good, though I don't think I managed to give myself an orgasm until I was around nine or ten. Once I'd read the book, I thought about Steve when I did that."

"How often?"

"Not very, really. I was always afraid my mom would find out and I'd be in huge trouble."

"Your family is Roman Catholic, right?"

"Well, Mom and Jeff are. Dad is an atheist. Steve and I are agnostic, though I lean more towards atheism than Steve does."

"Did you go to parochial school?"

"No. Only Steve did. I never quite understood that, and neither of us asked."

"So what happened when you were nine?"

"My mom became even bitchier than she had been, and I felt bad for Steve, so I started doing things to help him stay out of trouble with my mom. I loved him and I just couldn't stand how badly she was treating him. Of course, once she noticed we were getting close, she started in on me, too. It wasn't too bad at first, but it made me even more determined to protect Steve and love him, and to show him how much I loved him. But I knew he wasn't ready."

"But you were?"

"Yes, though I knew I needed to be at least twelve or thirteen so I had developed and looked like a woman. The problem was, there was a four-year difference, and that kind of ruined my plan."

"Which was?"

"That Steve and I would be each other's firsts, and that as soon as I was eighteen, we'd run away from my mom, pretend to be married, have kids, and live happily ever after. If we moved away from Milford, nobody would ever know, and my ID would always say 'Stephanie Adams'."

"You don't think your parents would have tried to find you?"

"Probably, but it would have been pretty easy to disappear, perhaps even overseas. Steve was really good with computers even before he went to IIT and could have landed a job easily."

"And if you were found out?"

"I didn't think that far ahead; I was nine!"

Doctor Mercer nodded in acknowledgement. "When you became close, what did you do?"

"Just stuff together, really. Talked, watched TV, and played with our friends."

"Did you hug? Cuddle? Kiss?"

Stephanie shook her head, "No. I mean, there were occasional hugs, but we weren't really a huggy family. Dad pretty much never hugged any of us, and Mom, well, only Jeff once the teams formed."

Another clue that there might be something seriously amiss with the relationship between Judy Adams and Jeff; Doctor Mercer made some additional notes in her notebook.

"What was the first thing you remember doing to flirt or let Steve know how you felt?"

"The funny thing is, he did it by complete mistake."

"You made it fairly clear you started it."

"I did, by snooping on him. This was after Birgit went home and he was fooling around with a bunch of girls. I discovered rubbers missing from the box in his drawer and said something to him."

"When did you start snooping on him?"

"About the time he was with Je...uhm, his first; the older woman."

"What happened?"

"I confronted him about kissing Jennifer. He said she was a friend and that's when I asked him why three rubbers were missing."

"How much did you know about what was going on?"

"I figured out about Birgit Andersson when I found a blonde hair on a towel in the bathroom. And I knew about his 'appointments' with Melanie. There were other girls, but I don't remember exactly when I knew who, though later I knew them all."

"So, you confronted him, and then what?"

"He told me I shouldn't snoop, I told him he shouldn't leave his rubbers in the closet where I could find them, implying Mom could find them, and then I stuck my tongue out at him. I'd seen other girls do it, and he reflexively said what he said to them - 'Don't stick it out unless you plan to use it!'. I knew he was trying to be gross, so I went 'Eww' but that wasn't how I really felt about it. Later on I found out he'd used them with, uhm, MH, but by then he'd been with Jennifer, Melanie, Birgit, his first, and I guess two of Melanie's cousins."

"When did you find out? I mean, for sure?"

"When I read his journals. I made sure Mom couldn't find the box he locked them in when she went snooping, which is how I knew about them."

"I've read some of the entries, but not by any means all, or even most. Were they explicit?"

"VERY," Stephanie said. "Written like erotica."

"And you were reading this at age nine?"

"No, it was later. But I'd already decided what I wanted to do long before then. It just gave me some ideas that weren't in the books my mom had bought."

"So then what?"

"I put my plan into action. I decided I'd ask him stuff about puberty and sex and get his advice. We were talking about all the problems he was having with girls between the time Birgit left to go home and she died, and I tried to bring up masturbation and he freaked out and told me he didn't want to hear it. I told him he was the only one I could safely go to for advice about sex and boys. He objected, saying I was only eleven, but relented when I pointed out I didn't have anyone else to talk to, and that I could ask a boy who I knew, but said that boy would likely want to show me. He actually got a girl pregnant, so I'm totally glad I avoided him,"

"What did you think about your brother being with other girls?"

"I actually encouraged him to have sex with lots of girls at that point."

"Why?"

"Because I didn't want him to have a steady girlfriend so that after we were together, he wouldn't have to break up with anyone. Well, if he'd been with Jennifer, it would have been OK, but she moved right after he got back from Sweden."

"When did you realize you were attracted to Jennifer?"

"About the time she and Steve first had sex."

"And by then your original plan, if you will, wasn't possible."

"That's right."

"So you continued talking about sex. Did you flirt or hint?"

"Massively, but Steve didn't see it, or couldn't, I guess, because I was his little sister. It was Melanie and Jennifer who clued him in. He freaked out at first, but basically I wore him down and he agreed he would, but only after I had my period. That happened right before he left for Sweden and I tried to get him to have sex with me, but he said he would only do it after I looked like a woman. He was delaying, hoping I'd change my mind, but I didn't."

"When did he first see you naked?"

"Right before we made love. I'd seen him before that, though."

"Where?"

"I snuck into his bathroom when he was showering, and I watched him have sex with, uhm, VP."

"Did he know about it?"

"Not until afterwards when I told him. I had actually tried to spy on him with MH, but I couldn't really see anything."

"Tell me about VP."

Stephanie laughed softly, "It wasn't like I had to do anything, really. I think you know the house had an indoor swimming pool, and there were windows facing out to it, as if it had been an outdoor pool - from the den, the hallways, and my parents' room. Well, my brother didn't remember and didn't close those blinds, so I just stood carefully and watched the entire thing."

"What did you think?"

"That it was totally hot and I was totally jealous and I REALLY wanted to do it."

"That was when you were eleven?"

"Yes."

"When you say you watched the entire thing, you mean everything they did?"

"Yes. Because of the location of the window, I had a full view of both their bodies and watched while they had sex."

"Without too many details..."

"Oral, both ways, and vaginal."

"And you weren't upset or bothered?"

"No. Steve was, when I told him that he'd left the blinds open, but it made me excited."

"Did you masturbate?"

"Yes. I think that was the very first time I gave myself an orgasm."

"And you said you saw him naked other times?"

"Yes. He tried to get me to stop, but I was persistent and eventually he just gave up. But when I tried to show him myself naked, he was insistent and stopped me. Like I said, he didn't see me until two days after my fourteenth birthday, when we made love."

"Did you start hugging?"

"Yes, but basically that was all. It was when he came home from Sweden and told me that I was a 'stone cold fox' that the hugs became sexy, and we had a few kisses. But he wouldn't do anything more."

"Why your fourteenth birthday?"

"Because my parents were going to be out of town starting the day after my birthday and the Perv was going with them, so Steve and I had the house to ourselves."

"Remember, please use his name. Was there any hesitation or reluctance on either of your parts?"

"There was a big blow-up over Becky when Steve cheated on Kara with her, but we eventually got past it."

"Big blowup?" Doctor Mercer asked.

"I slapped Steve across the face. He didn't tell you?"

"He probably did. I didn't read any of my notes about that period because I wanted to have a relatively clear mind for this session."

"Refresh my memory, please, did this blowup happen before or after you were intimate?"

"Before," Stephanie answered. "As I said, we got past it."

"Your parents never had a clue how you felt about Steve? And what you intended to do?"

"No. I was careful not to do anything around them that might give it away, and Steve basically let me set the tone and flow. We had plenty of time together when our parents weren't around to talk and stuff. They didn't even think twice of leaving us home when they went to Myrtle Beach. I'm pretty sure my mom was happy not to have us along, and Dad was always pretty aloof."

"So what happened once they left?"

"We went shopping to buy food so we could cook together. That evening we had a romantic dinner and both went to our own beds. The next day," Stephanie said dreamily, "was the best day of my life."