Just Breathe

by Susan Wiggs

  Sarah decided to sleep some more. But she knew when she woke up again that her comic strip was about to take a turn in a direction she had not planned. After splitting up with Richie, Shirl was going to move in with her mother.

  “At least that means I haven’t gone completely bonkers,” she told her editor on the phone, when Karen Tobias called her later that week.

  “How so?” Karen asked. She was the comics page editor for the Chicago Tribune, which carried Just Breathe, and she’d given Sarah her biggest break to date.

  “Well, a lot of the story line was starting to look like my life, maybe too much so. But with Shirl moving in with her mother, well, that’s completely different. My mother’s been gone for several years, so if I were to move in with her, that would be sort of tragic, you know?”

  “Not to mention gross.”

  Sarah yawned, wondering how she could feel so exhausted after a nap. “Anyway, I’m happy about this new development. It proves Shirl and I are completely separate entities.”

  “Because she’s going to live with her mother.”

  “Right.”

  “And at the moment, you are living where?”

  “Glenmuir, California, remember? I told you, I came back home and moved in with my father.”

  “And this is different from Shirl...how?”

  “Now you’re being sarcastic. You’re not my therapist.”

  “True. If I was that, I’d actually know what advice to give you.”

  “I don’t want any advice. Didn’t Virginia Woolf say, if I quiet the voices in my head, I would face the day with nothing to write.”

  “Did Virginia Woolf say that?”

  “Maybe it was van Gogh.”

  “And things worked out so well for them.” Karen cleared her throat. Then Sarah heard a pause and an inhale, and she pictured her editor lighting a cigarette. This was not good. Karen only smoked in times of extreme stress. Sarah braced herself.

  There was another inhale, followed by a lengthy exhale. “Sarah, listen. We’re doing some reorganizing of the page.”

  Sarah wasn’t naive. She’d been in the business long enough to know what that meant. “Ah,” she said, yawning again. “You’re cutting the strip.”

  “If it was up to me, I’d keep you on. I love Lulu and Shirl. But I’ve got a budget to make.”

  “And some syndicate is offering you two cheesy, factory-drawn, brain-dead strips for the price of one.”

  “We’ve had some complaints. You know that. Your stuff is edgy and controversial. That sort of thing belongs in editorials, not the funny pages.”

  “Which, by the way, are not exactly funny if you fill them with bland, inoffensive tripe,” Sarah pointed out.

  Karen exhaled again into the receiver. “You know what’s sad?”

  “Getting divorced and fired in the same month,” Sarah said. “Believe me, that’s way sad.”

  “What’s sad,” Karen said as if Sarah hadn’t spoken, “is that I don’t have the budget to keep a strip I love. Sarah, you should consider going with a syndicate. That way, you don’t live or die by one paper.”

  “And I don’t have to be fired to my face.”

  “Well, there is that.”

  “How long?” Sarah asked.

  “I didn’t make this decision lightly. I was forced into it.”

  “How long?” Sarah asked again.

  “Six weeks. It’s the best I can do.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “Hey, I’m under a lot of pressure here.”

  “And I’m tired. I need to sleep.” Sarah hung up the phone and drew the covers over her head.

  Eleven

  “What’s with all the parental controls on your computer, Aurora?” asked Glynnis Ross, who was in a three-way best friendship with her this year. The third leg of the triangle was Edie Armengast, who sat on Aurora’s other side as the girls studied the computer screen.

  “My dad has it rigged that way,” Aurora said. “Keeps me from checking out porn and gambling sites.”

  “Keeps you from downloading songs, too,” Edie said, glaring at the screen in frustration.

  “How are we going to hear the new Sleater-Kinney?” Glynnis asked, twisting a bright yellow LiveStrong bracelet around and around her wrist.

  “We’ll do it at my house tonight,” Edie said. “You’re still planning on sleeping over, right?”

  Reaching across Aurora, they gave each other a high five. She slumped back in her chair. A three-way friendship had its drawbacks. Sometimes two could band together to make the third member feel left out. They didn’t do it on purpose. In this case, simple geography was the culprit. Glynnis and Edie lived in San Julio, across the bay from Glenmuir, and their houses were walking distance apart. They slept over at each other’s practically every Friday and Saturday night. Aurora couldn’t wait until she was good enough at sailing to make the crossing by herself in the catboat. Then she’d join in the sleepovers anytime she wanted.

  “We’re supposed to be picking topics for our social studies reports,” Aurora said. The assignment was to interview somebody in the community about their job. “Have you done that?”

  “I figure I’ll talk to my uncle, the DJ,” Glynnis said.

  “Can’t,” Edie told her. “Didn’t you read the assignment? It can’t be anybody you’re related to.”

  “Then Aurora could do her dad,” Glynnis said with a snicker.

  Aurora felt a chill, as if she’d swallowed a scoop of ice cream too fast. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  “I was only joking.”

  “It’s not funny,” she said. Glynnis had a nasty streak sometimes.

  “It’s really not funny,” Edie said, siding with Aurora. “It’s totally mean.”

  Glynnis sniffed. “You have to admit, it’s kind of weird that you live with your stepfather, Aurora.”

  She hated when people commented on the situation. When pressed, she did her best to make her biological father sound special. He was a political prisoner. A government agent. A humanitarian dissident in hiding.

  She couldn’t do much about her mother’s story, not here in Glenmuir, anyway. Most people in town knew the situation. A lot of them probably knew more than Aurora herself.

  “You and I both have single moms, Glynnis,” Edie said.

  “So do lots of kids, but they usually live with their mother or sometimes their father. A stepfather is definitely considered weird,” Glynnis maintained.

  Glynnis tried hard to be cool about the fact that her mother was gay, even though she was obviously skeezed out about it. At least Glynnis had a mother.

  Aurora figured that to outsiders, it must look as though she didn’t have even one real parent who wanted her. It looked that way to Aurora, too, when it came down to it. By now, she’d heard every nosy question in the book. What happened to your real parents? Don’t you have any blood relatives? Or the kicker, How come your stepfather is only fourteen years older than you?

  So is my mother, Aurora would think when someone asked her that, but she never said so aloud. She tried not to dwell on the fact that she was now the same age her mother had been when she got pregnant with Aurora.

  Long ago, Aurora had stopped asking her father why her mother had left. But she’d never stopped wondering. Mama had worked at a demanding job. She kept house for Gwendolyn Dundee, whose giant barge of a Victorian mansion sat up on a hillside overlooking the bay. Heiress to a timber fortune, Mrs. Dundee employed a small staff to keep her estate running smoothly. And she worked them hard. Mama often came home cranky and exhausted, filled with complaints about Mrs. Dundee’s fussiness over her Erté crystal collection or her annoyingly perky cockapoo.

  “You might be getting a stepmom of your own one of the
se days.” Edie nudged Glynnis in the ribs.

  Glynnis shuddered. “Don’t get me started.” As if eager to change the subject, she clicked another link on the computer. “Maybe one of us could interview Dickie Romanov. He’s supposedly related to the Czar of Russia.”

  “There is no Czar of Russia,” Aurora said.

  “Not anymore,” Glynnis agreed, scrolling through the high school alumni list. “Some of the Romanovs escaped and came to America and went into the fur trade.”

  “My mother says Dickie has a head shop,” Edie said. “Last I checked, they didn’t sell fur at head shops. Just roach clips and bongs and stuff.” She acted as if she knew what she was talking about.

  “One of us could talk to that woman who owns the art supply and paint store,” Aurora said. “Judy deWitt. She did those metal sculptures in the town park.” The idea of interviewing an artist appealed to her, since art was her favorite subject.

  “We could ask her where she got her tongue pierced,” Edie said with an exaggerated shudder.

  “What’s wrong with getting your tongue pierced?” Aurora asked.

  “It’s a sign of brain damage,” said her dad, coming into the room. “At least, that’s what I’ve heard.” He tossed Aurora a sack of Cheetos and handed out cans of root beer. “Hey, rugrats.”

  Aurora flushed. He’d been calling her friends rugrats for about a hundred years and they were probably as sick of it as she was. “You’ve got a tattoo,” she pointed out. “What’s that a sign of?”

  He absently rubbed his arm. His shirt concealed the long-tailed dragon etched into his flesh. “Of being young and stupid.”

  “Why not get it removed?”

  “It’s a reminder not to be stupid,” he said.

  “Hey, Mr. Bonner,” Glynnis said in her teacher’s-pet voice. “We have to interview someone from our community for social studies. Can I interview you?”

  “My life’s an open book.”

  Uh-huh, thought Aurora, remembering all the times she’d asked about her mother. There was some secret about her, something her dad didn’t like to discuss, about Tijuana, where Aurora and her mother came from, and what their life had been like before he came along. He always acted as though there was nothing to tell. “Bringing you to the States gave you a chance for a better life,” was his favorite explanation. When she wanted to know what was wrong with their old life in Mexico, he just said, “It wasn’t healthy. Too much poverty and disease.”

  “When’s a good time for you?” Glynnis asked.

  “What about now?”

  She looked startled for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll get my notebook.”

  * * *

  Glynnis and Edie hung on every word Aurora’s dad spoke as he talked about growing up in Glenmuir, and how when he was in high school he’d been one of the volunteers who fought the Mount Vision fire, and how maybe that experience led to his later becoming the youngest fire captain in the district.

  Aurora knew that lots of other kids had volunteered when the Mount Vision fire broke out, but none of them became firefighters. Something else drove him, though he’d never explained just what that was.

  She took out her sketchbook and worked on her drawing of Icarus, who was so exhilarated with flying that he ignored his father’s warning and flew too close to the sun, causing his wings to disintegrate. She was drawing him in the moments before that, when he had no clue he was about to plunge into the sea and drown. She kept wanting to have him remember his father’s warning at the last second, and swoop to safety, but you couldn’t mess with ancient myths. Things happened the way they happened, and no amount of wishful thinking could change anything.

  In English class, they were studying the Greeks and the archetypes that came from mythology. She knew exactly who her dad was. When Achilles was born, he was prophesied to be a perfect warrior. His goddess mother held her baby by the heel and dipped him in the River Styx, knowing this would protect him from injury. He grew up shielded from all danger, just like her dad on Bonner Flower Farm. Great things were expected of him. He didn’t even know about that one tiny spot on his heel where he hadn’t been dipped in the magical river. He had no idea he was vulnerable there. The powers that be didn’t tell him. If he knew he had a weak spot, the knowledge would undermine his courage and keep him from taking the risks a warrior had to take.

  The whole point of the myth was that everyone was vulnerable, no matter how strong they appeared. In the case of her father, Aurora knew what his Achilles’ heel was. It was her. He never said so. He didn’t have to. In a small town, where everyone knew everyone else, she’d heard several versions of the story. Her dad was all set to go to college on a scholarship or play for some baseball team and become rich and famous, maybe marry a starlet or heiress. Instead, he ended up with Aurora and her mom, a dangerous job and a bunch of bills to pay.

  In junior high, Aurora had met several teachers and coaches who had helped her dad get all the scholarships and stuff, and were obviously disappointed when he didn’t follow the prescribed path. The way they said, “He went to Mexico and came back with a wife and child,” you’d think Aurora and her mother were cheap souvenirs or stray cats.

  “What’s the hardest part of your job?” Glynnis asked him.

  “Being away from my daughter,” he said without hesitation.

  “I mean about fighting fires.”

  “We’ve had some arson incidents this year. Those can be pretty tough to figure out sometimes.”

  She leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “Arson?”

  “Yes. Deliberately setting a fire. Sometimes for insurance purposes, sometimes for the thrill.”

  “You mean somebody just lights a match, and up it goes?”

  “Sometimes there’s a delay device. And usually there’s an accelerant.”

  “Like what?”

  “A delay device can be something as simple as a cigarette with matches rubberbanded to it. When the cigarette burns down to the match heads, they ignite. Accelerants are things like gas, kerosene, paint solvents. Marine resins and varnishes—plenty of that around here. We can detect them by using a trained dog. In our district, we have Rosie, a Lab who can sniff out residue down to one part per trillion. We also have a photoionization detector.” He paused and spelled it out for her. “It’s known as a broad-spectrum monitor. The investigator uses the probe to sniff around places where accelerant might be present.” Ten minutes later, her dad finished the interview and half the bag of Cheetos. “How’d I do?”

  “I’ll let you know when I get my grade,” Glynnis said, finishing up her notes with a flourish. “Thanks, Mr. Bonner.”

  “No problem. I’ll be out in the garage, Aurora.”

  After he left the room, Glynnis closed her steno pad. “Your dad is so hot.”

  “Don’t even go there,” Aurora warned her. It wasn’t the first time one of her friends had pointed this out. Her dad? Hot? Ew.

  To change the subject, she said, “I still have to find someone to interview.”

  Edie clicked to a comic strip Web site Aurora had never seen before. “Check it out. This is one of my mom’s former students.” Edie’s mother was head of the English department at the high school, and Edie was always the first to know school gossip.

  Aurora felt a quick burn of envy for Edie—for anyone—who had a mother to gossip with.

  “A cartoonist,” Glynnis said with a bored sigh. “What’s so big about that?”

  “Nothing,” Edie said, “but in a town full of nobodys, she’s practically somebody.”

  “Sarah Moon,” Aurora said, scanning the page. There was an artsy black-and-white photo of some woman, her face half-hidden in shadow, a fall of light hair obscuring her features. The photograph was frustrating, designed to obscure her features like a shot from a film noir. �
�I bet she’s related to the Moon Bay Oyster Company guys.” The drawings were boldly sketched, with the main character saying things like “In my world, chocolate is a vegetable.”

  The comic strip was called Just Breathe. A sample episode showed the main character, Shirl, getting her belly button pierced.

  Aurora’s interest was piqued. Mr. Chopin, the art teacher, said she had a real talent for drawing. It might be interesting to meet someone who made a living doing art.

  “‘About the artist,’” Edie read aloud. “‘Sarah Moon is a native of West Marin County, California. A graduate of the University of Chicago, she now lives with her husband in Chicago.’”

  “So how am I supposed to interview her? It says she lives in Chicago.”

  “According to my mom, that’s changed,” Edie informed them. “She lives here now. She’s your aunt’s client, you know.”

  Aurora’s aunt Birdie practiced family law, and divorce was a huge part of that. She never, ever talked about her cases, but if a woman became her client, chances were she was getting a divorce. Aurora didn’t have to ask why Sarah Moon had come back to Glenmuir, because she knew the answer. A woman moved away when her marriage ended. That was the law.

  * * *

  After her friends left, Aurora found her father in the garage, working on the catboat. It was the same boat he and Aunt Birdie used to race in regattas on the bay when they were kids, so it was like this family heirloom thing. The boat was about fourteen feet long, and had been brought all the way from Cape Cod by her grandpa Angus.

  “What are you doing, Dad?” she asked.

  He didn’t look up, but kept messing with a clamp, the glow of the sunset through the dusty window illuminating his broad shoulders. She remembered hanging on to those shoulders when she was little, going along for the ride as he did his daily set of chin-ups. He was able to raise and lower them both as though her weight added nothing. Feeling lonely, she waited for him to pause in his work, but he didn’t.