What did his face say? Was he happy? Excited? Terrified?
He was, actually, completely confused.
“So . . . what?” he asked, looking at me with an empty expression, the kind you make when someone has just told you they found you the perfect gift, the one that is so you and you open it and realize, this person does not know me at all. It’s the kind of expression where your body forces your face to go blank, because your body knows that your brain is thinking “What the actual fuck?”
“What’s the other part?” he asked, as if just asking “what?” wasn’t a clear enough question.
“I’m . . . pregnant?” I asked him, smiling like a hostage.
The pieces clicked together in his brain. This was a baby pacifier. The second part of the gift was a baby, who would use that pacifier when it arrived in a few months. His face rearranged itself into something resembling disbelief.
“I thought you couldn’t get pregnant,” he said softly, not with anger, but with wonder.
“Me too,” I laughed. He smiled with his whole face, his hand rushing to my stomach, his mouth finding my own. That little storm cloud inside of me lightened up. We were happy.
My spirituality is something my father would not approve of. Primarily because even the word spirituality irked him. To Steve, you were either religious or you weren’t. To him, “spirituality” was a nothing word used by people with no solid beliefs. It’s the Diet Coke of theology: calorie free and probably a carcinogen. But I don’t know what else to call my little pastiche of hunches, beliefs, and feelings. God: yes, although God is not an old man in the sky. Saints? Maybe. Jesus? A cool guy, but most of his followers are the worst. I also believe that there are many paths to whatever the summit is, that there is something other than just the world we live in. I still wasn’t about to go to church but I did feel . . . spiritual? I don’t know what else to call it when you’re sitting next to a woman at a pop-up gift market, a woman with icy blue eyes that seem to stare into your soul, and she asks you if you’d like a reading, and all of a sudden she’s lighting Palo Santo and holding your hand and the din of hundreds of women on the hunt for the perfect locally made craft melts away and it’s just the two of you, holding hands, floating on a cloud. The stranger’s name is Rachel, and that ethereal feeling remains with me long after our few minutes together are over. I know that my dad would think of this all as total bullshit, but Rachel isn’t a psychic. She is an intuitive healer; it says so right on her business card. I remember everything she says and replay it in my head over and over and over.
She was quiet for a long time before she spoke. She says that I am emanating fear. I am afraid to fail. This is because I am a creator, and creating means offering up your gifts to the world. I am afraid that my two biggest creations to date are at odds with one another, that they could easily cannibalize each other, or invalidate each other. My face is hot, and my eyes are burning, and she continues. They are not at odds with one another, she tells me, but my creations both have their own purpose and destiny. They are two sparks that will help my own fire burn brighter. One is meant as a light for the world. The other is meant as a light for my family. My work is done. I just need to let them shine.
Chapter Twenty
Memorial Day
I gave Matthew the job of telling The Bigs about the baby. He took them out for dinner at a terrible restaurant they love, a cavernous space in a far-off suburb that bills itself as a Japanese steakhouse, and specializes in pouring teriyaki sauce on everything. Because the kids were allowed to pick the restaurant, and because of Matthew’s generally awkward demeanor, Ian and Sophie assumed that their dad wanted to announce the news of his terminal illness. Maybe that’s why they cheered when they learned there would be a new sibling arriving in November.
Ralph and I had had our own little meeting that same night, but I didn’t need to announce anything to Ralph. Just weeks after I took that pregnancy test, Ralph and I flew to New York City for a few days. In the cab from LaGuardia, he snuggled into me and gazed out the window, sucking his thumb.
“Mama,” he asked, “are you pregnant?”
The cabdriver’s eyes immediately darted to the rearview mirror, and locked with mine.
“What?” I asked trying to hide my panic behind a hearing issue.
“Are. You. Pregnant.” Ralph reiterated, less like a three-year-old toddler and more like Maury Povich trying to interrogate a particularly belligerent guest.
I said, “Yes,” and he nodded. But I had a follow-up.
“Ralphie,” I said, “do you know what pregnant means?”
“You’re pregnant.”
Okay then. I do believe that children are highly intuitive and know way more than we think they do. That part of me, yeah, kind of believes that maybe Aaron put the idea in his head. I also believe that they are constantly absorbing information from the world around them, and it’s more likely he heard that word at daycare or at the checkout line at Target than he did from me. Ralph never really asked about me being pregnant again, but the day Matthew told the Bigs, I gave Ralphie a book about a baby growing in a mom’s belly, and he rolled his eyes. “Can I have another present?” he asked.
The Bigs wanted to talk about baby names, and where the baby would sleep. Each made a case for putting the crib in their room—they’d happily wake up in the middle of the night to snuggle their little sibling so Matthew and I could sleep. They’d only wake us up in case of a dirty diaper.
Crisis had been avoided. Our family would not be broken. This baby would be a light for our family.
We told the kids over Memorial Day weekend, when we’d have three days to hang out together. It was beautiful weather. Minnesota decided to really have a spring, and our backyard was gorgeous and blooming. We set up our hammock and tilled the garden and made plans for our summer.
I was the first to wake up on Monday morning, and I snuck out the front door and into the car. The co-op is just a few blocks away, with doughnuts and good coffee. It was already warm out, a whisper of the coming summer in the air. I felt so smug. At home, three beautiful children and a handsome man were still sleeping in my sweet little house. I was at a co-op buying organic coffee and gluten-free doughnuts. I had plans to go to the nursery and buy flowers for my window boxes. Outside, my station wagon was parked in the very best spot in the parking lot. Inside, a little baby was growing who everyone was excited to meet. That little baby was also busy rearranging my organs, and I really, really needed to pee.
There was blood when I wiped. A lot of blood. There was blood in the toilet bowl and soaked into my underwear. The light was going out. At a fucking organic food co-op.
I shoved a handful of toilet paper into my panties and pulled up my jeans shorts and ran from the bathroom to the parking lot, drawing absolutely no attention to myself.
I’d done it again. I’d lost a baby. And now I would break Matthew’s heart and Ian’s heart and Sophie’s heart and Ralphie’s heart the way I’d broken Aaron’s. I had been so arrogant and stupid. So careless. I had gone to the midwife, but I hadn’t taken my vitamins regularly. I had told my family, and Matthew’s, but hardly any of my friends. I’d been ambivalent about this baby, and it had known. It had known it wasn’t truly wanted and had decided to cut its losses.
Matthew and the kids were snuggled on the couch reading the newspaper and watching cartoons. I snuck from the back door up to my bedroom and texted Matthew. Yes, a text. I texted the father of my dead baby to let him know what was going on.
I’m losing the baby. Stay downstairs with the kids and act natural.
Clearly, I am an expert in interpersonal communication.
I knew I had to go to the hospital, and so I called Moe. Moe was why Matthew and I met, and she had been thrilled by the news of this pregnancy. As someone who was done having babies, Moe considered this pregnancy to be spiritually hers, as well. “How’s our baby?” she’d text me, and I’d let her know what the app said was going on in my uterus.
Moe was in the car before I could even get the full sentence out, barreling across town to get me. And then I called the nurse line. The first time I’d called, a year and a half before, they’d assured me that nothing was wrong. A little blood was no big deal. But this time was a lot of blood. “Oh, honey,” the nurse whispered to me, “you need to go in. I’m so sorry.” I thanked her for her service to the women of the world, and I laid back down in bed. Matthew had texted me back.
Can I please come up?
My body said yes, please, come up here and lay with me. Put your warm, tan hands on my belly and make this stop. Make this not be happening. My brain told my thumbs to say something else.
No. Stay with the kids. Don’t freak them out.
I don’t know what my long-term plan was. I would have to see Matthew and the kids eventually. But until then, until I got to the hospital and knew for sure that the baby was gone, I could stay in this suspended version of reality, the one where morning light was streaming through our bedroom windows, where I could hear Matthew and the kids splitting doughnuts downstairs in the dining room. I heard Moe’s car bounce up our driveway. The slam of our front door, and her clogs clomping up the stairs.
I love you.
I’m sorry.
It was the same emergency room I’d been in the day that Aaron had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. The same one we’d come to on the day he’d entered hospice. I’d been there as his person, his caregiver. And now, I was here as the patient. I was the one in a backless gown, laying in a bed and waiting. I was the one who knew that something was desperately wrong inside of me, waiting for help. The emergency room was short-staffed because of the holiday weekend. It was a lot of blood, that’s for sure, they all agreed. They’d need to get an ultrasound of my belly, but they needed to find someone who could work the machine. An ultrasound would confirm my baby was dead. And then, I could decide what to do. But I already knew what I was going to do. I was going to cry and break things. I was going to hate myself for the rest of my life, because I had killed this baby with my own emotional confusion. I was going to have to tell Matthew and his stupidly beautiful blue eyes that the baby was gone because I hadn’t cared enough about it. I was also going to have my body to myself and go on a book tour without worrying about what anyone would think of me. I was going to get what I’d dreaded, and what I deserved. I was going to be broken, all over again. How do you mourn a baby you weren’t always sure you wanted, and hadn’t really told anyone about? I called my mom and choked my way through telling her that she had to tell my siblings.
It took six hours for an ultrasound tech to make her way into the hospital. They pushed my bed along the same hallways that Aaron had been pushed through. The ultrasound tech was quiet as she warmed up the goo and spread it gently across my stomach. I was twenty weeks along, and barely showing. I’d been proud of that with Ralph—how at six feet tall I could be nine months pregnant and look like a college freshman who had just discovered the soft serve machine in the cafeteria. “Oh,” the tech said, “your baby is right here.”
I rolled my eyes toward the monitor, waiting to see that familiar digital ghost, frozen on screen.
My baby was there. And alive. Wiggling, waving, kicking. Alive.
Moe screamed. I screamed. The tech screamed.
“Call Matthew!” I shouted, and Moe stepped into the hall.
“Our baby is alive!” Moe shouted, and the tech squeezed my hand.
“Say hello, Mama!” the tech whispered to my belly, and my baby kicked its little frog legs, completely oblivious to the many hearts that had almost broken that day.
“Hello, Baby,” I whispered.
Matthew and the kids were in the backyard when we arrived, and I snuck back upstairs and into bed, still unsure of what to say to any of them. The doctor who discharged me had basically told me it was “just one of those things.” But I was fine. The baby was fine. Moe headed to the yard to hang out with the kids, and I heard Matthew bang in through the back door and run up the stairs until he was next to me, mouth on my neck, warm hand on my belly, tears soaking into my hair.
We didn’t say anything. We just lay there, quietly, happy in the way you can only be when you’ve been on the edge of devastation, crying for all the ways your hearts could have broken, but haven’t. Not yet.
I’LL BE BETTER
I swore I would be different. While I was laying in that hospital bed I had promised God, The Universe, Yoda, and every other force that could possibly give a crap about my uterus that I would love and cherish this baby. That I would celebrate this pregnancy the way it deserved to be celebrated.
I started taking a multivitamin every day and going back to barre classes to strengthen something called my pelvic floor. I bought a few small onesies and made a list of baby names. And that’s basically it.
There was no ecstatic Instagram announcement, or baby shower. And I didn’t really tell anyone I hadn’t told before. Outside of a few friends and family, I just sort of wore a lot of shapeless clothes and pretended to the rest of the world that nothing was happening inside my body.
Around this same time, I saw an article about the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who had recently had a baby without making any sort of formal announcement. She was quoted as saying, “I just feel like we are living in an age when women are supposed to perform pregnancy,” and I felt instantly recognized. I didn’t want to perform pregnancy. I didn’t want to make a chalkboard sign or line up some sneakers for a photo shoot. I didn’t want to pose with the ultrasound over my belly, a look of false shock on my face.
Because performing this pregnancy would mean performing everything that came along with this pregnancy. It would mean showing people the depression and anxiety that grew along with this baby. Every twinge in my belly felt like an indication that things were going wrong. Did I feel the baby kick today? Why couldn’t I remember? A baby is supposed to make you happy. And I was happy. But I was also terrified and devastated. The happiness I felt didn’t replace my sadness, it just sort of mixed in with it. Everything good in my life had a sad aftertaste. Everything good in my life had come from loss. Everything sweet was just a little bitter.
If you’re thinking, “Hey, didn’t you mention depression earlier in this book? And therapy? What happened with that?”
What happened with that was that I went off my antidepressant, cold turkey, when I found out I was pregnant and didn’t bother to consult a medical professional beyond Google.com. That was . . . a bad idea.
It was also a bad idea to become overwhelmed with my schedule and decide that the fat that could be trimmed was therapy.
I told myself that I wasn’t performing my pregnancy, that I was keeping it close to me, and to my family, because it was just for us. I was telling the truth, but only part of it. Because the whole truth was that I was in the thick of antepartum depression, which is a medical way of saying that I was pregnant and depressed as heck. This pregnancy would overlap with the anniversary of my pregnancy loss, and the due date was just a week before Aaron’s deathaversary. How could I spend that day in remembrance of Aaron when I’d have a fresh human attached to me? The baby’s due date was right alongside another due date: I had pitched and sold a podcast idea to American Public Media, and its planned launch date was the same week I was supposed to be having a baby.
Terrible, Thanks for Asking was going to be a narrative podcast where I interviewed people about the way it really feels to go through life’s hardest moments. Preparing for that first season, I spoke to a woman who had still-birthed her full-term son, Henry; a man whose grandparents’ murderer was being released from prison; a rape survivor; a woman with a traumatic brain injury and severe memory loss . . . you get the picture. The podcast isn’t (all) depressing, but immersing myself in these stories while trying to manage my own complicated feelings was harder than I could admit to myself. But I couldn’t slow down, or push the launch date back. I couldn’t even admit to my colleagues that I was pregnant
. Okay, I could have. But I didn’t. Because slowing down would have meant truly sitting in all of these heavy, uncomfortable feelings, and because the world is still a sexist place, and I didn’t trust that the show would have the same support behind it if people knew that I was going to need time off to take care of a baby in just a few months.
I had chosen the name of the podcast because it was the exact opposite of what I’d told people after Aaron died. “How are you?” is not just a question we lob at one another as small talk, it’s a question that is asked more pointedly when your life is in turmoil. People asked me how I was, and I assured everyone around me that I was totally fine, that everything was as good as could be expected. I measured my worth by how much I could bear, and how much of it I could bear on my own. “Fine” by “fine” I had built myself a lonely little prison. I was desperate to be honest with people about how hard things were, but unable to say it aloud.
“Let’s all be honest!” was the ethos of my show, while I continued to lie and tell everyone who asked me how I was that I was “fine!”
My midwife wasn’t buying it. The baby’s heartbeat was strong. Everything was looking great. And how was I feeling?
Uh, fine?
She nodded in the way that can only mean “bullshit” and said nothing. The silence sat until I filled it myself.
“I’m actually . . .”
It felt like I explained myself for hours, but it couldn’t have taken more than five minutes. I was devastated by the sight of my son Ralph’s spine poking through his pale skin in the bathtub. I wept just describing it, how tender and human he was, how someday he would get old and die and would he be lonely? Some days it felt like I was watching the world from inside glass, like one of those paperweights you can buy at T.J. Maxx that has a scorpion suspended in acrylic. I couldn’t stop worrying about the baby—could she check its heart again?—I was afraid I wouldn’t love it once it arrived. That I would never love the baby like I loved Ralph, or Aaron, or Matthew, or the other kids. Why did I feel like that? Why was I so awful?
No Happy Endings Page 13