Just Breathe. Susan Wiggs
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His cancer—that had been a surprise, too. They had made it through, she reminded herself every single day. But the disease had changed them both.
Chicago itself was a city of change. It had burned to the ground back in 1871. Families had been separated by the wind-driven firestorm that left nothing but charred timber and ash in its wake. People torn from their loved ones posted desperate letters and notices everywhere, determined to find their way back to each other.
Sarah pictured herself and Jack stepping gingerly through the smoldering ruins as they tried to make their way back to each other. They were refugees of another kind of disaster. Survivors of cancer.
Her front tire sank into a pothole. The jolt sent an eruption of mud-colored slush across the windshield, and she heard an ominous thud from the backseat. A glance in the mirror revealed that the fax machine had done a swan dive to the floor. “Lovely,” she muttered. “Just swell.” She pressed the wiper fluid wand, but the ducts sputtered out only an impotent trickle. The warning light blinked Empty.
Traffic crawled in a miserable stream northward. Stuck at a stoplight for the third cycle, Sarah thumped the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. “I don’t have to sit in traffic,” she said. “I’m self-employed. I might even be pregnant.”
She wondered what Shirl would do in this situation. Shirl was her alter ego in Sarah’s comic strip, Just Breathe. A sharper, more confident, thinner version of her creator, Shirl was audacious; she had a screw-you attitude and an impulsive nature.
“What would Shirl do?” Sarah asked aloud. The answer came to her in an instant: Get pizza.
The very thought brought on such a craving that she laughed. A craving. Maybe she was already showing signs of pregnancy.
She veered down a side street and punched in “pizza” on her GPS. A mere six blocks away was a place called Luigi’s. Sounded promising. And it looked promising, she saw when she pulled up in front of the place a few minutes later. There was a red neon sign that read, Open Till Midnight and another sign that promised Chicago’s Finest Deep Dish Pizza Since 1968.
As she pulled up the hood of her coat and made a dash for the entrance, Sarah had a brilliant idea. She would take the pizza to share with Jack. His meeting was probably over by now and he’d be starved.
She beamed at the young man behind the counter. The name Donnie was stitched on the pocket of his shirt. He looked like a nice kid. Polite, a little shy, well-groomed. “Pretty nasty out there,” Donnie commented.
“You said it,” she agreed. “Traffic was a nightmare, which is why I took a detour and ended up here.”
“What can I get you?”
“A thin-crust pizza to go,” she said. “Large. And a Coke with extra ice and…” She paused, thinking how good a nice cold, syrupy Coke would taste. Or a beer or margarita, for that matter. She resisted temptation, though. According to all the fertility advice books she’d read, she was supposed to keep her body a temple free of caffeine and alcohol. For many women, alcohol was often a key factor in conception, not a forbidden substance. Getting pregnant was a whole lot more fun for people who didn’t read advice books.
“Ma’am?” the kid prompted.
The “ma’am” made her feel old. “Just the one Coke,” she said. Right this very minute, a zygote might be forming itself into a clump of cells inside her. Giving it a shot of caffeine was a bad idea.
“Toppings?” the kid asked.
“Italian sausage,” she said automatically, “and peppers.” She glanced yearningly at the menu. Black olives, artichoke hearts, pesto. She adored those toppings, but Jack couldn’t stand them. “That’s all.”
“You got it.” The boy floured up his hands and went to work.
Sarah felt a faint tug of regret. She should at least get black olives on half the pizza. But no. Especially during his treatment, Jack had become an extremely picky eater, and just the sight of certain foods turned him off. A big part of cancer treatment was all about getting him to eat, so she had learned to cater to his appetite until she practically forgot her own preferences.
He’s not sick anymore, she reminded herself. Order the damned olives.
She didn’t, though. What no one told you about a loved one getting cancer was that the disease didn’t happen to just one person. It happened to everyone around him. It robbed his mother of sleep, sent his father to the neighborhood bar each night, brought his siblings jetting in from wherever they happened to be. And what it did to his wife…She never let herself dwell on that.
Jack’s illness had stopped everything for her. She’d put her career on hold, shoved aside her plans to paint the living room and plant bulbs in the garden, squelched her longing for a child. All of that had gone by the wayside and she had parked it there willingly. With Jack fighting for his life, she had bargained with God: I’ll be perfect. I’ll never get angry. I won’t miss our old sex life. I’ll never complain. I won’t wish for black olives on my pizza ever again, if only he’ll get better.
She had held up her end of the bargain. She’d been uncomplaining, even tempered, utterly dedicated. She hadn’t made a peep about their sex life or their lack of one. She hadn’t eaten a single olive. And presto—Jack’s treatments ended and his scans came back clean.
They had wept and laughed and celebrated, then woke up the next day not knowing how to be a couple anymore. When he was sick, they had been soldiers in battle, comrades in arms fighting their way to safety. Once the worst was behind them, they weren’t quite sure what to do next. After surviving cancer—and she didn’t kid herself; they had both survived the disease—how did you start being normal again?
A year and a half later, Sarah reflected, they still weren’t sure. She had painted the house and planted the bulbs. She’d rolled up her sleeves and plunged into her work. And they had resumed trying for the baby they’d promised each other long ago.
Still, it was a different world for them now. Maybe it was just her imagination, but Sarah sensed a new distance between them. While he was sick, Jack had days when he was almost entirely dependent on her. Now that he was well, it was probably natural for him to reassert his independence. It was her job to allow that, to bite her tongue instead of saying she was lonely for him, for his touch, for the affection and intimacy they once shared.
As the aroma of baking pizza filled the shop, she checked messages on her cell phone and found none. Then she tried Jack, but got his “out of service area” recording, which meant he was still at the work site. She put away the phone and browsed a well-thumbed copy of the Chicago Tribune that was lying on a table. Actually, she didn’t browse. She turned straight to the comic strip section to visit Just Breathe. There it was, in its customary spot on the lower third of the page.
And there was her signature, slanting across the bottom edge of the last panel: Sarah Moon.
I have the best job in the world, she thought. Today’s episode was another visit to the fertility clinic. Jack was hating the story line. He couldn’t stand it when she borrowed material from real life to feed the comic strip. Sarah couldn’t help herself. Shirl had a life of her own, and she inhabited a world that sometimes felt more real than Chicago itself. When Shirl had started pursuing artificial insemination, two of her papers had declared the story line too edgy, and they’d dropped her. But four more had signed on to run the strip.
“I can’t believe you think it’s funny,” Jack had complained.
“It’s not about being funny,” she’d explained. “It’s about being real. Some people might find that funny.” Besides, she assured him, she published under her maiden name. Most people didn’t know Sarah Moon was the wife of Jack Daly.
She tried dreaming up a story line he would love. Maybe she’d give Shirl’s husband, Richie, bigger pecs. A jackpot win in Vegas. A hot speedboat. An erection.
That