Just Breathe

“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?”

“Going to the clinic was your idea. You sat there and held my hand, month after month.”

“Because I thought it would get you off my back.” Oh, God. She’d tried to be sexy for him. Desirable. Understanding. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference, and you know it. Listen, Sarah,” he said, anger flashing in his voice. “Maybe I was the one who strayed—”

“I would say definitely, not maybe.”

“These things don’t happen in a vacuum.”

“No, they happen in half-finished houses.” She felt as though she was being smacked around by both of them and there was no stopping it, no laws to protect her from the agony, the humiliation, the sense of complete violation. She emitted a bitter sound, not quite a laugh. “I guess now I know where all your erections went. I was wondering. And does it bother your clients? To know their house had been christened by you fucking the stable girl?”

“Mimi’s not—”

“Don’t even.” She held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t tell me she’s not a stable girl, a slut, a home wrecker. Don’t tell me she’s the Robert Trent Jones of arena design. Don’t tell me how warmhearted and understanding she is.”

“Why, because you’re going to tell me you’ve been understanding? News flash—playing stud to your mare was not exactly a turn-on. Maybe if you’d been there for me outside the window of conception—”

“Oh, ‘you weren’t there for me,’” she said. “That’s a classic. At any point, you could have come to me, talked about this. But I guess it’s just easier to blame me for your choices.”

“Okay, I can see you’re not ready to acknowledge your part in this yet.”

“My part? I have a part? Oh, goody. Well, guess what? I’m on center stage now.”

He tilted his head to one side. “Fine. Go for it. Let me have it. Don’t stop at backing the Lexus over a mailbox. Do your worst.”

“That’s your specialty,” she shot back, wickedly pleased that he’d mentioned the Lexus. “What could be worse than what I walked in on yesterday?”

Jack fell silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”

Here it comes, she thought, ready to go limp with relief. Finally, a little show of remorse.

Stepping over the discarded things on the floor, he walked into the main room, his hands shoved into the pockets of the robe. “I mean that, Sarah,” he went on. “I’m sorry you had to find out like that. I wish I’d told you sooner.”

Find out…told you…Wait a minute, she thought. This was supposed to be the apology segment of the crisis. The we-can-work-it-out phase. Instead, he was telling her that this was not an anomaly, a one-time slipup. It had been going on for a while. Sarah’s stomach lurched. “Told me what?”

He turned around, looked her in the eye. “I want a divorce.”

Congratulations, she thought, forcing herself to hold his gaze. You just scored a technical knockout. But somehow, she was still standing. Still calm. “That’s supposed to be my line,” she said.

“I’m sorry this hurt you.”

“This is still not remorse, Jack. You’re sorry you got caught. You’re sorry my feelings got hurt. How about being sorry you destroyed us? Oh, and here’s a concept. How about letting me in on your little secret before I suffer through a year of fertility treatment, huh? Or were you going to change your mind if I got lucky and turned up pregnant?”

“God, I didn’t think.” He splayed his hand through his hair.

“You didn’t think? You dragged me into Fertility Solutions month after month and it never occurred to you to think about whether or not this was what you wanted?”

“You wanted it so badly, I didn’t know how to tell you I was having second thoughts. Listen. I’ll go someplace else for a while,” he said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. This is your house.” She gestured around the pristine home, indicating the warm, quiet elegance of the decor. Jack had once called it her dream house, but it had never been that. It came preplanned, prepackaged, like a magazine layout. She had simply moved in and unpacked her things like a temporary resident. It was filled with expensive things she had not picked out and had never wanted—tasteful artwork and collectibles, luxurious furniture. Deep down, she knew this was a place she had never belonged. She could picture herself leaving it behind like a hotel guest checking out of a luxury suite.

Leaving. The idea was there. It was not a decision she had worked herself up to. It just appeared fully conceived in her mind. The betrayal had occurred; now the next step was to leave, simple as that.

Or, Sarah thought, she could stay and fight for him. Insist on getting help, exploring their issues together, healing together. Couples did that, didn’t they? It all sounded terribly exhausting to Sarah, though. And the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach seemed to contain a terrible truth. He might be the one asking for a divorce, but she was the one who wanted to leave. When had everything gone off track for them? She couldn’t pinpoint the moment. She used to feel so lucky, wanting for nothing. Now she wondered where her luck had gone. Maybe she and Jack had used up all their cosmic Brownie points on the cancer.

“This is your life,” she said to him. “You can’t walk away from your own life, Jack.”

“I just meant—”

“But I can.” There. She’d said it. The words were out, a gauntlet flung to the ground between them.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked. “Where will you go? You don’t know anybody. I mean…”

“I know what you meant, Jack. There really isn’t any point in being diplomatic now, is there? This whole marriage has always been about your life, your hometown, your job.”

“This job made it possible for you to stay home all day and draw pictures.”

“Well, gosh, I guess I should be grateful for that. Maybe it was a way to deal with the fact that you were never home.”

“I never knew you felt put out by the fact that my job kept me busy.”