Susan Wiggs - Just Breathe

What the talk shows never explained—what no one ever explained—was what, precisely, you were supposed to do the exact moment you made the dread discovery. Probably you didn’t leave them a pizza.

She was familiar with the stages of grief: shock, denial, anger, bargaining…She had experienced them all when she’d lost her mother, and when her husband was diagnosed with cancer. This was different. At least in those instances, she had known how she was supposed to feel. It was horrible, but at least she knew. Now she saw a world turned upside down. She was supposed to be moving from the shock to the denial phase, but it wasn’t working. This was all too real.

Late into the night she sat mulling over her options—drinking, hysterics, revenge—but nothing felt quite right. Finally, exhaustion claimed her and she went to bed. She lay still, bracing herself for a storm of inconsolable tears. Instead, she stared dry-eyed at the shadows on the wall, and eventually fell asleep.

Sarah was awakened from a fitful sleep by the sound of running water. She turned over in bed, seeing that Jack’s half was a vast, deserted wasteland. He had come home, but not to her bed. The events of the day before crashed down on her and drove away all possibility of going back to sleep.

In the past year, she had gone to bed alone nearly every night while Jack worked late. How many marriages crashed and burned on the altar of “working late”?

I’m an idiot, she thought. She got up and brushed her teeth, pulled on her robe. On the bathroom counter was the bottle of prenatal vitamins she’d been taking. Normally, the morning after artificial insemination, she would cheerfully gulp down the pills, filled with hope and possibility. She wondered when she had begun to think of artificial insemination as normal.

Now she stared at the bottle in dull horror. “I’d better not be pregnant,” she whispered.

Just like that, the dream of having a baby evaporated like a snowflake hitting a skillet. Ssst.

The good news was, she thought, combing her fingers through her hair, they had failed to make a child no matter how many times she made the trek to Fertility Solutions, so she was in little danger of being pregnant now. A small blessing, but probably a blessing all the same.

She phoned the clinic and left a voice mail: she would not be coming in for the second part of the procedure today. With a determined air, she unscrewed the top of the bottle and shook the vitamin pills into the toilet. Then, as though of its own accord, her hand snatched the bottle upright. She clutched it hard, saw that there were a few pills left. Slowly, deliberately, she put the cap back on the bottle. She should probably keep a small supply. Just in case.

She stuck her feet into scuffs and followed the sound of running water to the guest suite. Jack had come home late. She’d felt him looking in on her, but she’d lain still, feigning sleep, aware that he knew she was faking. There was much to discuss with him, but she hadn’t wanted to engage at 2:00 a.m. Now, in the light of day, she felt…not stronger. But the shock and denial had worn off, giving way to a cold rage she’d never felt before, a sensation of such violence it frightened her.

She stepped inside to find Jack freshly showered, a towel slung around his slim hips. Under normal circumstances, she would find him sexy. She might even try some seductive moves on him, not that those moves had done her any good in a long time. Now that she was beginning to understand the real reason behind his lack of desire, she saw him through new eyes. And he didn’t look sexy at all.

“So,” she said. “Who wants to start?” When he said nothing, she asked, “How long has this been going on? How many times a week?” A dozen more questions pushed to the fore, but Sarah realized her main question was for herself. Why hadn’t she seen or known?

He hung his head. Ah, shame, she thought. That might be promising. But if she was honest with herself, she had to admit that she didn’t want him to grovel and beg her forgiveness. She wanted…she wasn’t sure what she wanted.

When he looked up, she didn’t see disgrace, but hostility in his eyes. All right, she thought, so he’s not ashamed.

“Just a sec,” he said, and ducked into the bathroom. He emerged a moment later wearing a white terry cloth robe, one they kept in the guest bath for company. His arms protruded from the too-short sleeves, and his legs were bare from the thighs down.

There was probably no dress code for the breakup of a marriage. Robes would have to do. At the very least, it would prevent them from running out of the house in a screaming rage. Or maybe not. At the moment, she would rather be anywhere but here.

“We’ve both been unhappy,” he told her abruptly. “You can’t deny it.”

Oh, she wanted to. She wanted to swear her life had been perfect. That would make him responsible for causing it to collapse in an instant. Instead, she realized she’d been battling a pervasive disappointment, little sinking steps downward, so incremental they were easy enough to ignore until failure, wearing a ponytail and nothing else, held up a mirror.

“I won’t deny it,” she said, “as long as you won’t deny you chose pretty much the worst possible way to express your unhappiness.”

He didn’t. He acted as though she hadn’t even spoken. “I didn’t ask to get sick. You didn’t ask for a husband with cancer. But it happened, Sarah, and it screwed up everything.”

“No, you screwed up everything.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, coldly handsome. “When I was sick, when things were at their worst, it changed us. We weren’t like man and wife anymore. We were like…parent and child. I couldn’t get past that. When I’m with you, I see myself as a guy with cancer.”

Her stomach tightened, and for a moment, she focused all her bitterness on the disease. It was true, the cancer and its treatment had taken away his dignity, rendering him helpless. He wasn’t helpless now, though, she reminded herself. “That’s over,” she stated. “We’re supposed to learn to be man and wife again. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been working on exactly that. Apparently, you’ve been working on being a man again, only without the wife.”

He flung her a look of unexpected venom. “You’ve spent the past year trying to get pregnant,” he retorted, “with or without my help.”

“You’ve been telling me since we got engaged how much you want kids,” she reminded him.

“I never let it turn into an obsession,” he said.

“And I did?”

He gave an angry laugh. “Let’s see. Let’s just see.” Striding past her, he left the room and went to the master suite, barging into her mirrored dressing room. Feeling queasy, she followed him. He ripped a calendar off the wall and dropped it to the floor. “Your ovulation calendar.” He moved on to another wall hanging. “Temperature chart.” He ripped it down and threw it on the floor, then moved to the dressing table. “Here we’ve got your thermometers—looks like you’ve got one for every orifice—and fertility drugs. I figure your next step was to install a Web camera in the bedroom so you can record the exact moment it’s time for me to do my part. Isn’t that what they do at stud farms?”

“Now you’re being absurd,” she told him. Her cheeks felt hot with humiliation. Defend yourself, she thought. Then she realized that wasn’t her job.

“What’s absurd,” he said, “is trying to be married to you when you’re so focused on having a baby that you forget you have a husband.”

“I changed my whole life for you,” she said. “How can you say I forgot I have a husband?”

“You’re right. You didn’t forget. When it’s time to fertilize the egg, you demand a performance, and failure is not an option. Can’t you see how that might lead to a little anxiety on my part, every time you came after me?” “Came after you? Is that how you see it?” “Christ, no wonder I couldn’t get it up for you. But I have to hand it to you, Sarah. You didn’t let that stop you. Why bother with a husband when you’ve got a lifetime supply of viable sperm samples available?”