Just Breathe

“What’s boring about netting a cool million on a tract home?” he had countered.

He liked making money. He was good at it. And she was lucky, because so far, she was terrible at it. Each year when they filed their income tax return, he would look at the revenues from her comic strip, offer her a generous smile and joke, “I always wanted to be a patron of the arts.”

At the top of the stairs, she turned toward the sound of the radio, her raincoat brushing against the machine-turned banister. “Achy Breaky Heart” was playing, and she winced. Jack had terrible taste in music. So bad, in fact, it was actually endearing.

The door to the master suite was ajar, and the friendly glow of the fire glimmered across the freshly carpeted floors. She hesitated, sensing…something.

A warning, beating like an extra pulse in her ears.

She stepped into the room, her feet sinking into the deep pile of the carpet as her eyes adjusted to the soft, golden light. The diffuse, kindly glow of the lifetime-guaranteed Briarwood gas logs flickered over two naked bodies entwined on a bed of thick woolen blankets spread in front of the hearth.

Sarah experienced a moment of complete and utter confusion. Her vision clouded and she felt light-headed and nauseous. There was some mistake here. She had walked into the wrong house. Into the wrong life. She fought against the panicky random thoughts playing Ping-Pong in her head. For a second or two she simply stood immobile, assaulted by shock, forgetting to breathe.

After endless seconds, they noticed her and sat up, gathering blankets to cover themselves. The song on the radio switched to something equally appalling—“Butterfly Kisses.”

Mimi Lightfoot, Sarah realized, was exactly as Jack had described her: the horsy type—dry skin and no makeup, hair in a ponytail. But with bigger boobs.

Finally, Sarah found her voice and spoke the only coherent thought in her head: “I brought you a pizza. And a Coke. Extra ice, the way you like it.”

She didn’t throw the pizza or spill the drink. She set everything carefully on the built-in media console next to the radio. She was as discreet and efficient as a room service waiter.

Then she turned and left.

“Sarah, wait!”

She heard Jack calling her name as she skimmed down the stairs with the speed and grace of Cinderella at the stroke of midnight. Shoving her feet into her boots barely slowed her down. In seconds, she was outside with her broken umbrella, heading for the car.

She started the engine just as Jack burst outside. He wore his good pants—the ones with the creases she had admired this morning—and nothing else. She could see his mouth working, forming her name: Sarah. She put the headlamps on bright and turned the car, feeling a satisfying crunch as the rear bumper of the Lexus toppled the custom river rock mailbox. Her high beams washed across the front of the house, illuminating the porch timbers and fine wooden window casements, the Andersen glass and the grand front entranceway.

For a moment, Jack appeared pinned by the glare, a prize buck frozen in the headlights.

What would Shirl do? Sarah asked herself. She gripped the steering wheel, threw the car into gear and floored the accelerator.

Part Two

Chapter Two

After creaming the newly constructed mailbox and mowing down the “Street of Dreams” lamppost, Sarah actually contemplated nailing Jack, too. Just for an insane moment, she allied herself with the crazed women you saw on TV being interviewed behind bars: “I didn’t think. My foot just pressed down and he hit the pavement…”

Somehow, she managed to aim the SUV away from him and toward the highway. She didn’t know what else to do and couldn’t think straight, so she headed home, exceeding the speed limit, like a horse sensing the barn after a long trek.

Predictably, her mobile phone rang right away. Jack was probably still half-naked. He probably still stank of Mimi Lightfoot’s scent of sex. Sarah killed the power on the phone and pressed the accelerator harder. She needed to get home, give herself some breathing space and figure out what to do next.

As she pulled into the landscaped, circular driveway, it struck her that this had never felt like her home; it just happened to be where she lived. This was the House that Jack Built, she thought, hearing the singsong rhythm of the old children’s story in her head. And this was the wife who lived in the house that Jack built. And there was the mistress that screwed the husband that ignored the wife who lived in the house that Jack built…

It was nestled amid similar houses in the exclusive lakeside subdivision. The trees that shaded the lane were spaced perfectly apart, the mailboxes all matched and every home’s entryway lay a uniform distance from the curb. The neighborhood had been planned by a designer who worked for Daly Construction.

She wheeled into the spacious garage, nearly grazing Jack’s work truck—a custom F-350 Ford pickup—and hurried inside. Then she stopped cold. Now what? She felt so strange, almost traumatized, as though she’d been the victim of a violent assault.

She looked at the wall phone in the kitchen. The message light was blinking. Maybe she ought to call…who? Her mother had died years ago. Her friends…she’d allowed herself to drift away from people back home, and her Chicago friends belonged more to Jack than to Sarah.

What would Shirl do? she wondered, plucking the thought from the panic swirling through her head. Shirl was smart. Tough-minded. Shirl would remind Sarah to focus on practical matters, like the fact that she had a separate bank account. This was something they had set up during Jack’s illness, so she’d have access to funds if the unthinkable happened.

Well, the unthinkable had happened. Not in the way she had feared, though.

Her stomach cramped, a sensation she would ordinarily welcome after the procedure, as it meant that biology was at work. Now the discomfort meant something altogether different.

The phone rang. Seeing Jack’s number on the caller ID, she let it kick over to voice mail.

She sat in the dark house for a while, her sodden coat and boots still on. It was such a strange puzzle. Husbands cheated on their wives all the time; daytime TV was filled with dewy-eyed betrayed women seeking solace on national talk shows. The problem was as familiar to anyone as ring around the collar. Yet the issue had always brushed past Sarah like a wind pattern on a weather map from another part of the country. She could recognize it, imagine what it was like. She thought she understood.

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.