My father had told me to keep guinea hens around to eat ticks. Being out here surrounded by trees and deer, ticks are no joke; Lyme disease is a big deal. So we ordered six guinea hens from Ed Hackett. “Are you sure you want those things?” he asked me. “They’re pretty awful.”
I said, “Yeah. They’re gonna get the ticks.”
“All right, whatever you want, kid.” So we got six cute little spotted chicks, and very quickly, as they got older, I realized these things are the devil. They make the most god-awful noise—a warbly squawk that’s like a mix between a turkey call and the sound of something dying. They’re really dumb and are the ugliest, buzzardy-looking birds. As they get older, they lose all the feathers on their head and grow a horn on top of it, like a unicorn.
While the chickens were grazing in the front yard, I heaved a giant pumpkin down near the chicken houses, and just as I swung it into the air, a guinea hen ran out of nowhere screaming bloody murder. It frightened all the chickens, sending them running back toward their houses. As the pumpkin arced in midair, I saw Red in its path, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The pumpkin landed with a huge thud on top of Red.
I ran down that hill so fast and pulled that huge Cinderella pumpkin off of my chicken. She wasn’t dead, but given the size of the pumpkin, she must have been bleeding internally, and her leg and a wing looked kind of weird. In the back of my brain hope fluttered—Maybe she’ll pull through. The pumpkin was really soft. By this point all the other birds were feasting on the damn pumpkin as I held Red in my arms like an infant. She looked at me and her eyeballs were going crazy, and I just started crying and carried her over to Jeffrey saying, “I messed up. I messed up. I think I killed Red.” And in the midst of telling him this, her body convulsed and then fell limp. I had killed my favorite chicken.
We took Red down to the old tree where the Mischief graves are, and Jeff dug a hole and we buried her. He put a huge stone over her grave.
I left to pick up Gus from school, and when we got home Jeff wasn’t there. I brought Gus into the house and gave him a snack, and then Jeff came rolling back in his pickup truck with a flock of Reds—six of them. He had raced over to the feed store and told Ed what happened, which caused everyone in the store to crack up laughing. I get it, she was just a chicken, but I had named her, fed her, and kept her safe and warm. Still, every Halloween when we get our pumpkins, people tease, “Watch her. She’s gonna kill something with those things!”
13
I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.
—Flannery O’Connor, in The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor
I woke up one morning shortly after Thanksgiving with the tingling in my chest that signaled my hormones were in motion. The double stripe showed up on the pregnancy test almost as soon as I’d peed on it. I sat in the bathroom and thanked the universe. Every day after that felt like a gift.
I wanted to surprise Jeffrey with the news for Christmas, so for a month I kept the pregnancy secret from everyone. We went to Sinterklaas and I judged the Teddy Bear Beauty Pageant. We took Gus into the city to see Santa at Macy’s. All the pressure I had been putting on our relationship dissipated. The three of us just wandered around New York the way Jeffrey and I had done when I found out I was pregnant with Gus. I loved the press of people, the rush, the way Christmas blossomed out of every cement crevice—the wreaths and trees being sold on street corners, the Salvation Army bells ringing, the festive shop windows. I loved looking up and seeing the Christmas trees lit up in apartments all over the city. Jeff just thought I was being way more agreeable than usual. We planned on spending Christmas at Mischief Farm, just the three of us. I privately celebrated this, knowing that a new member of our family was on its way and wanting one last holiday to lavish all my attention on Gus, my magic baby.
On Christmas Eve, we went to the candle-lighting service at church, had dinner at our favorite Thai place in town—Aroi—left cookies for Santa, and nestled in. I had placed a joint gift for Jeff and Gus under the tree. The next morning, Gus tore through the wrapping paper. When it was time for the boys to open my gift, I said, “On the count of three. One. Two. Three.” And in good-spirited competition, they raced to see who would win. Jeff opened his box first and found Seattle Seahawk baby booties. I filmed his confused face until he looked over to see what Gus had unwrapped—a “Big Brother” T-shirt. Putting two and two together, big, tough Jeffrey Dean burst into tears. Off camera, you could hear me laughing and Gus saying, “A baby!”
I’d sent our families wrapped photos of the ultrasound with instructions not to open until after I texted them the go-ahead. Everyone was excited. Moms from school sent out the typical “Merry Christmas Ladies” messages in group threads. To which I responded, “I’m pregnant!” In a lovely bit of kismet, another mom friend, Sharagim, announced she was pregnant too. We were due a couple of weeks apart.
Later, when we were lying in bed, Jeff told me, “Hey. I’m sorry I was so . . . resistant to the whole thing. It was just taking so long and not going well. But I want you to know, now that this baby is on the way, I want it so bad. I’m so, so happy.” A wave of relief washed over me.
Jeff returned to work after the holiday and we continued to share the good news with everyone around us. I went to work at Samuel’s, and customers commented on my glow.
One winter morning in early February Jeffrey was working on The Good Wife in the city, and Gus and I were rushing through our morning routine. It was still dark when I let Bandit out and he charged into the inky morning barking at anything that might be out there. Decaf coffee for me, breakfast for Gus, fruit on the counter so we could graze as we wandered in and out. As I was herding Gus out the door, I remembered the new Kissing Booth banner that I needed to drop off at Samuel’s later.
By the time we were pulling away from the farm, the morning sun was sharp and bright off the snow. The sky was blue and clear. At a stoplight near school I looked at Gus in the rearview mirror and asked him, “What’s more important than being good looking?”
“Being smart,” he answered with a broad smile.
“What’s more important than being smart?”
“Being kind.”
I pulled into the school parking lot. “How do you become a good man like your dad?”
“Be a good kid.”
“You got it. Hey Bud, I’m going to go get a picture of the baby today. I’ll have it waiting for you when you get home.”
I had an early morning appointment with the tech, just a routine ultrasound; my doctor wasn’t even in. I got up on the table, and she smeared the cold gel over my belly and slid the wand across it. She didn’t say anything, and I thought, She’s not very outgoing, is she? She continued staring at the screen, searching for something. Then she tucked the wand away and said, “Could you please have a seat in the waiting room?”
My neck prickled and my hands felt cold.
My baby wasn’t alive anymore. I just knew.
I sat in the waiting room for forty minutes. I texted Jeff. He was on set. He couldn’t talk. He texted me to be calm and just see what the doctor had to say. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions.
But I knew. A few days earlier I’d been working in the old farmhouse, not doing anything strenuous, just sifting through boxes, when a sharp pain pierced my gut. That’s odd, I thought. It was unlike anything I’d felt before. But then again, pregnancy is weird—full of aches and pains and strange bodily reactions.
Now in the waiting room all I could think was, I did this. I should have sat still. I killed my baby. A nurse came out and told me my doctor was working at a different location that day and wouldn’t be in. So I was finally taken to an exam room and introduced to a woman who worked at the healthcare clinic. I didn’t know who she was, or what her specific job entailed. But that day she was the ceremonial bearer of bad news. Even in the moment, I felt sorry for her.
I hadn’t jumped to the wrong conclusion.
&nb
sp; She explained what my options were and then she looked at me and said, “You’re going to be okay. This happens to lots of people.”
I knew that, but I didn’t say anything to her. I didn’t stop at the front desk on my way out; I just pushed myself out toward the car. The color had been sapped from the sky and the air had turned to gauze. Even putting one leg in front of the other was impossibly hard.
I sat in the car in the parking lot for a while, afraid to drive. Afraid to move. My phone began ringing.
“What did the doctor say?” Jeff asked.
“She’s dead.” I’d heard the steady rhythm of our baby’s heart just ten days before. We had already chosen a name. What had I done?
I parked behind the candy store and texted John, asking whether he could meet me out back. I couldn’t face anyone. Poor John Traver smiled warmly and said, “Morning, Hilarie. How’re you feeling?”
“It’s dead. I lost it.” John hugged me and didn’t say much. In the coming weeks, when customers came in asking about me, he gently shared the news so I wouldn’t have to tell it over and over. He checked in on me continually, even though I rarely responded. I didn’t go back in the candy store for a long time after that. I knew that everyone there knew. The whole damn town knew I was pregnant, and now everyone would know that I’d lost the baby and they’d come in and check on me, and I just didn’t want to see them.
I drove back to the farm. I didn’t want to pick up Gus until I had figured out how to navigate this, and there was also still a part of me that was hoping the ultrasound was wrong. Maybe the tech had misread it. Maybe my phone would ring and my doctor would say, “I’m sorry, there was a mistake. Your baby is fine.”
But my phone didn’t ring.
I sat cross-legged on our couch looking out the window, all of the plants and flowers still and dead and barren under a blanket of snow. It was a Friday, which meant Gus’s school had a skiing lesson up at Catamount Mountain, and I needed to take him there. The idea of doing that just a few hours after getting this news seemed unbearable. When I told my mother that I had to take Gus to skiing, she said, “No, Hilarie, stay home.”
I called my childhood best friend, Sarah Barnes. An ER nurse, she gave me her earnest opinion. There was no mistake. It happens all the time. I could let it “pass naturally” or have a procedure called a D&C to remove everything. I didn’t want to make that decision. I told her about taking Gus to skiing, and she said, “No, Hilarie, stay home.”
Jeff called me again from set. I knew he was upset. I stared out at the snowy pasture behind the house where And Peggy and Alice were chewing hay. “I think I’m going to bring Gus home this afternoon,” I told him. “I just can’t talk to the other moms right now.”
“No, no. Honey, if you sit at home, you’re going to spin your wheels. Go. Be around other people.”
Self-loathing set in so quickly that I didn’t recognize it. I was a failure, but I couldn’t fail Gus now. So I took him skiing. Two of the women had also had children in Gus’s class at Ms. Patty’s, and they knew me well enough to see that I was coming apart. Quickly, they, and the other mothers, became a net that caught me.
Tara said, “Hi! You tired?” She was the mother I could be snarky with. My birthday twin, we were both Cancers who felt things deeply and covered that with sarcasm.
“I lost the baby.” The words fell out of my mouth. There was nothing else for me to say. I didn’t know how to make the announcement with social grace.
Tara is an expert in bereavement—she had literally created the website on what to do if you lose a child. She knew exactly what to do and what not to say. “Everyone figures it out their own way.”
Sharagim—my pregnancy buddy—is a very popular doctor in town, though she wasn’t my doctor at that time. She was good friends with my OB-GYN, and before the conversation got too deep, she sat me down at a back table in the lodge, asked whether I would be alright if she contacted my doctor, and said, “I’m going to take care of you.”
You know when it starts to rain, and the first drops hit at random places, drawing your attention from here to there as water splashes the ground? That was the effect as I sat in the back of that lodge and the news traveled from mother to mother.
Tara fed me. She handled Gus’s ski equipment. She mothered me. Sharagim said, “Your doctor is going to call you. I’ve taken Monday off. I’ll pick you up, okay?”
That afternoon, my doctor called and told me: “For the future of your having children, for your fertility, I recommend a D&C as quickly as possible. You can absolutely naturally pass the pregnancy, but we would still have to go in and make sure that nothing was left behind. We don’t want any scar tissue or anything.”
I had to be normal for Gus. So we went to bed early. Jeffrey took the train home after work and arrived late. That weekend was painful. We strategized what to say to Gus. Saturday afternoon we asked Gus to sit next to us in the big leather chair by the fireplace. “Hey, Gus, you know how I told you I was going to the doctor yesterday to check on the baby?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the baby . . .” I fought to keep my voice even and started over again. “Our baby was sick. Something wasn’t working right, so rather than putting the baby through some hardship, it got called back to God.”
I waited for Gus to cry or ask questions or falter in some way, but instead, he looked at me with his great brown eyes and said, “It’s okay. We’re going to have one.” I gave him a small smile; he had inherited his father’s optimism.
On Monday Jeff was back in New York shooting. He was upset that I didn’t wait for him to get a day off work to have the procedure. I was upset that he didn’t just skip work and stay home.
I put Gus on the school bus and waited for Sharagim. She had taken the day off from her medical practice. As she drove to the hospital, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. We had been friendly in a play-date, dinner-on-weekends kind of way. But this was next level, family-type help.
At the hospital she helped me fill out all the paperwork, and she settled me into my room. She got extra blankets and pillows to make me comfortable. She held my hand as they drew blood and put me under, and when I woke up, hers was the first face I saw. Sharagim bought food and stocked my fridge. She picked Gus up at school and brought him home. And between her and Tara, someone was always checking on me.
* * *
When you have a miscarriage, there’s no funeral. There’s no rite for your grief. You mourn alone, even when entirely surrounded by people. But then two weeks after losing the baby, a friend from high school was killed back home, and I was asked to give part of the eulogy. His family had been dear to me growing up. The world felt out of balance. The grief I’d felt for a life I’d loved for only a few months seemed nothing compared to the thirty-seven years of love my friend’s parents were now mourning. They had loved him and nurtured him and accepted him through all his successes and shortcomings.
That was when I began faking it. I lied my whole trip home. “I’m good.” “We lost the baby, but I’m okay.” “Don’t worry about me. I’m a tough girl.”
When Jeff got home, we came undone. He and I handle stress and grief very differently. He gets quiet and leaves the room, but I need interaction. I need to talk about it, to sort shit out.
Jeffrey retreated to his garage and chopped so many cords that winter we still have wood from that time in our shed. I bleached my hair. I didn’t want to be the same person anymore. I renovated the nursery bathroom, like I’d planned while pregnant. Bill from over at the candy store came and did all the hard stuff, like plumbing and ripping out the old tub/shower shell. I stuck to destroying the old tile. Demo hurt. My joints ached; shards of tile left deep cuts in my hands. It was punishment.
Not long after I had told Jeff I was pregnant, we started the work to add a third bedroom to the house. Now, I retreated into designing the addition that we were building for the baby that was gone. We had talked about whether to go forward with the ext
ension; the foundation hole was already being dug, and Jeffrey was stubbornly optimistic. “We’re going to get pregnant again. It’ll be fine.”
But every day we had a crew of people crawling all over the house, reminding me of what we had lost.
14
Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.
—attributed to Gabriel García Márquez
After the miscarriage I was surrounded by dead-baby flowers, dead-baby books, and lots of boxes of dead- baby tea. I felt like I was drowning in a dead-baby sea.
My mother didn’t know how to help but knew that I needed her. She sent me a soft bathrobe and a teapot, and I wept for hours on the phone with her. Mostly, she listened as I sorted through all my thoughts and feelings. If I’m angry or upset about something, or even if I’m happy about something, it isn’t real until I articulate it. I need a narrative. I guess that’s something Jeff and I share. We both need a story to fit into. The Burton ability to turn misfortune into narrative is something I’m grateful that I was taught. It helps me think, Well, okay, that’s just a funny story. You should hear my father talking about his mother and those damn forsythia bushes.
My sisters-in-law sent me lovely, heartfelt packages. Christina sent me teas and a journal and a letter I cherish. She included Cheryl Strayed’s book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. Christina is a mother. I felt like she understood the toll this sadness was taking on me, and she encouraged me to practice self-care. Jess gave me the book Reveal: A Sacred Manual for Getting Spiritually Naked by Meggan Watterson and some other books about the divine feminine. She knew that there was nothing she could say, but everything she wanted to articulate was in those books. Jess has always had an almost psychic ability to understand my inner voice. She is quiet and attuned to what people are really saying rather than what they present to the world. I knew her book choices were deliberate, but I couldn’t read them for a while because they were dead-baby books.
The Rural Diaries Page 15