––––––––
“It’s just for a while—to give me time to clear my head,” Jeremy said. I noticed the tremble in his throat. Shreds of cloud skittered overhead and threw strange patterns on his freckled face as he searched my eyes. “I’ll only be down the way, at Daniel’s place.”
His store manager’s house. Daniel was in his early twenties, single. I pictured a small spare bed in a cluttered den. A couch with some blankets and a lumpy foam pillow thrown over ratty upholstery. Jeremy, six foot six and hefty, could barely sleep comfortably in our California King. An expensive bed he had picked out and paid for.
“Don’t do this, Jer, please.” Even though I meant the words, part of me hoped he would get into his truck and drive away. For now. I was too exhausted to go another round. But maybe Jeremy felt the same way. Our marriage was like a gracefully spinning gyroscope, so steady and almost perfect in its spin until decay set in, and with friction threw our shining relationship off balance into a wobble and decline. Toppling was inevitable.
He offered his hand to me in a conciliatory manner, and I took it as the breeze blew through my hair and cooled my face. His skin was warm and soft, his grip meant to be reassuring.
“I can’t take any more fighting. It’s making me sick. I can’t concentrate at work.” The edge had left his voice.
I nodded. My queasiness subsided as he spoke. Buster, a chunky yellow Lab with some Chow in him, licked my hand, demanding attention. I mindlessly scratched the top of his head until he had his fill and trotted over to the front stoop to plop down beside Angel, a border collie mix that couldn’t resist herding all the goats in the pasture at every opportunity.
“And I can’t take your mother’s ranting. Coming over here and running our lives.” His voice sounded more tired than angry. He squeezed my hand, then let it drop. “I mean it, Lis.”
I had no answer for him. We’d been over this a thousand times. I understood how frustrated he was. We had spent the last ten years building this house, putting in gardens, and adding a deck, Keystone fencing around the pasture, split-rail fencing along the drive, a complex water system with two one-thousand-gallon tanks, over a hundred old roses. We had reclaimed an orchard back from brambles of blackberry bushes, had even dug a huge pond, landscaped like something out of Sunset magazine. W had invested all our savings, untold hours of manual labor, all our disposable income, but we owned none of it.
My mother had bought this property for us when we first married. Just as she had supplied the down payment on Raff’s fancy home overlooking the bay before he got his promotion at the bank. She had only wanted to help us get started, get on our feet, when the feed store first opened and we didn’t have any savings. I saw it as an act of love, but Jeremy read it as a noose. Something she could use to lead him around with, make him do her bidding, make him beholden to her. His upbringing in rural Montana—coming from a traditional two-parent home—dictated that men provided for their families. It irked him that I had gone to my mother and asked for help. She even offered to loan us money as starting capital for the store, but that’s where Jeremy drew the line. He buckled, though, when I found this five-acre parcel for sale, reduced in price, the property of my dreams, complete with a babbling creek hugging the foothills. Now Jeremy cursed the day he said yes, letting my mother buy it for us. Keeping the title in her name.
Jeremy slammed his cab door shut and nodded to the house. “I still have a few more things inside to . . . put in the truck.”
I couldn’t help myself. A sob tore out of my chest without warning, and tears flooded down my cheeks. Jeremy only hesitated for a second before coming over and gathering me up in his comforting arms. Arms that only last night longed to lash out and smash something.
Rafferty’s voice poked the back of my mind. “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Which poem was that from?
“Hey, shh, now. It’ll be okay.” He let me cry for a minute, then lifted my chin and wiped my face with his cuff sleeve. He was wearing the green plaid flannel shirt I bought him for Christmas. The colors made his rusty hair look redder than usual. With his jaw clenched, his smoky eyes caught mine, and I saw my pain reflected back.
Everything felt skewed, even the way he held me. So right and so wrong at the same time. I ached for his comfort, but I had to resist the urge to push him away and wiggle out of his arms.
I let him hold me like that for what I deemed the proper length of time, swatting away the memories of his acerbic attack of last night. The screaming, fist-pounding fury he had unleashed at me made me roil with anger. Why did I find those arguments so hard to let go of? Did I suffer some sick addiction, needing to mull over each hurtful word, relive the sharp barbs until bleeding began again—like pushing Rewind on a tape recorder? More like picking at scabs and poking at wounds. Maybe I thought if I replayed those words over and over, they’d come out differently.
“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”
Yeats. How could I forget—the famous “Second Coming”? I could hear every word in Raff’s dramatic Shakespearean actor lilt. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” In Raff’s estimation, the former disdained group Yeat’s referred to included most everyone in the world. The latter—most notably himself, and maybe a handful of others. Pitiful, intense, hopeless romantics. The world needed more like him, or so he protested in defiance of Yeats’s declaration.
“Come, I’ll make you some tea before I head out.” Jeremy started for the front door, when I heard a screeching cry from the barn. “What in blazes is that?” he asked.
My heart skipped a beat. “Sassy. Maybe she’s kidding.” I did a quick review in my mind. She wasn’t due for another week—at least by my estimation. But goats never kept to a tight schedule when it came to giving birth. At least I had her in the kidding pen with fresh straw and plenty of water—away from the motley menagerie of rescued animals fenced in the pasture.
“I’ll come with you,” Jeremy said.
He mostly left tending the animals to me. It was my passion—rescuing farm animals that were abused and abandoned. Over the years I’d gained a reputation. The vets and animal shelter directed people to me who called all hours of the night, or sometimes just dropped lost ducks or sheep on my doorstep. Right now I had sixteen assorted animals, some in bad shape, some pregnant, like Sassy. Jeremy was raised on a ranch—horses and cattle—and with his knowledge of feed and medicines, he never got squeamish when I asked him to hold a struggling animal that needed wounds cleaned and bound, horns disbudded with a hot iron, even castrating with a sharp razor. I sighed and a lump of melancholy sat heavy in my gut. We made a great team—or used to.
My eyes adjusted to the dim light in the barn as I made for the back stall. Sassy bellowed again, clearly in distress. Goats rarely made that kind of clamor when delivering their kids. Usually, they just popped them out with ease. But Sassy was a pygmy goat with a narrow pelvis, and by her massive girth, no doubt carried triplets. I had plenty of experience pulling out kids. The vets, with their big hands, went for the C-section every time. Until they learned I was willing to go out on calls and try to extricate the stuck kids. They gave out my phone number, and I became known as the “goat lady.” I never accepted money for my house calls, for I had reward enough in seeing a doe relieved of her stress and delighting in her kids.
I found Sassy rolling on her side, her head pointing at the barn roof and her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. Great.
“Jer, fill that bucket with hot water,” I said, pointing at the sink. “I need the iodine, some towels from that shelf.” I stroked Sassy and spoke to her in a soothing voice as I repositioned her so I could get a good look. Sunlight streamed through a small dirt-encrusted, cobwebbed window, giving me enough illumination to see a dark nose encased in membrane protruding out the goat’s backside. A strong scent of ammonia and straw wafted around me.
“First one’s coming out,” I said.
Jeremy hurried back and set down the basin and towels. He leaned close enough to see but didn’t get in my way. I fished around with my finger until I felt the tip of a hoof in the canal. “Found a leg,” I said.
We both grew quiet as I concentrated. Sassy’s heavy panting sounded like a small tractor revving. Every once in a while she let out a little bleat of discomfort, but I talked softly and kept her calm. I managed to cup my hand over the small emerging head and loop a finger around the hoof. I tugged firmly and felt the small body move an inch. Then it hitched up. I muttered under my breath.
“What?” Jeremy asked. “Can I help?” I repositioned both my arm and the goat, which caused Sassy to wail again.
“Help me get her to standing.”
My leg was cramping under me, and my stomach knotted up. The rancid smell of the barn and the amniotic fluids from the goat made bile rise to my throat. I fought another urge to throw up. Maybe the combination of stress, lack of sleep, Raff’s urge to die, and the sting of my failing marriage was stewing inside me, merging into one sickening putrefying mass in my gut. I took deep breaths, caught Jeremy studying me in puzzlement. I avoided his eyes.
I hefted Sassy to all fours and tried with my left hand for better positioning in the birth canal. That proved to be a better stance. I withdrew my hand from the slippery space and yanked off my wedding ring. I handed the simple gold band covered in slime to Jeremy, who looked at it and flinched. The significance hit me, although I didn’t have time to ponder it.
“I’ll lose it in there. Please, just keep it for me—for a few minutes.”
My words seemed to shake Jeremy out of his reverie. I never took off my wedding ring—ever.
“I got the document from the lawyer. The devise.” Jeremy’s tone was hard. Like he’d practiced saying that in the mirror.
When I didn’t respond, he added, not masking his anger, “I’m going to insist she sign it. If she won’t put the property in our name now, she’s going to have to make good her promise that this house, this property, will be left for us in her will.”
I spun to face him. “Look, she already has it for us in her trust. You know this!”
“And she can remove it anytime she damn well pleases. This way she has to put her money where her mouth is. Sign something to prove she means it.”
“Jer, she’s my mother, for God’s sake! Family means everything to her. Please, let’s not do this. Not now.” I gestured at the distressed goat that stood panting hard and shaking from head to hoof. I exhaled hard, wanting to be done with this argument already—the argument that had gone on for hours the night before.
“Fine!” I added. “Give her the paper and let her sign it. Then you’ll see. All this fuss over nothing. You know it has something to do with her taxes—”
“A flimsy excuse. She owns your older brother too. Her name’s on his deed. And Neal—she made him sell his house so she could have more ready cash. Dammit, Lisa, why can’t you see this?”
I pinched my lips together in frustration. “She’s my mother. Don’t I know her better than you? You’re just talking out of your paranoia.” I turned my back on Jeremy and concentrated on Sassy. I closed my ears to everything but her labored breathing.
Time moved slowly, and I hated seeing Sassy in such distress. Her groans and grunts tore at my heart, so I worked as quickly as I could, getting my hand around the head again.
“Why won’t she push it out?” Jeremy asked.
‘Because . . .” I grunted, “that leg goes to a different kid.” I closed my eyes and with my mind followed my hand along as I traced the front hoof up to the stifle in that confining space, feeling the first bend forward, the second, backward at the hock. Hind leg, not front. I pushed that leg back into the uterus as far as I could and fished around for a front leg. I only needed one front leg that corresponded with the appropriate head and I would be in the clear.
Finally, I found one that connected to the neck of the goat sticking partway out of the birth canal.
“Got it!”
Sassy screamed as I pulled gently, foot and head, then waited until she got back to pushing. Along with her efforts, I cleared the shoulder over the cervix, the head and legs sliding out with the rest of the small wet body following. Jeremy handed me a towel, and I placed the small doe baby on it, under Sassy’s nose, so she could sniff and lick it. I heard Jeremy chuckle, and a warm feeling rose to my heart, followed by a pang of despair that I hid in my attending to the next new arrival plopping out onto straw.
How simple it seemed to give birth to new life, and how very impossible. Something right here in my grasp was completely out of my grasp, denied me.
I choked up over all the years of frustration, heartache, and disappointment and dried off the next kid, a little gray buck with a white blaze on his forehead. Both kids were already standing on wobbly legs and baaing in cute warbly voices. Sassy spoke back to her babies between frantic licks. I always found it humorous watching does attend to their newborns. A third kid came with one more Sassy squawk—another buck, this one a runt. He fit in the palm of my hand. While Jeremy petted the other two, I rubbed that tiny guy with a towel, but got little response. Once I iodined the umbilical areas and made sure Sassy was done, had food and water, and passed her placenta, I stood. My legs shook from squatting so long, and my head spun hard until I got my balance.
I picked up the runt, still wrapped in a towel. “This one needs warming.” I unlatched the gate, where Buster and Angel stood, alert, sniffing at my little bundle.
“Do you need me to stay here and keep on eye on these guys?” Jeremy asked.
“Only if you want to. But, they’re doing fine.” Better than I was. I just wanted to get in the bathtub and soak, lock the door, wallow in my misery. Instead of lifting my spirits, these three new lives only sank me deeper. I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw began to ache.
One child. That’s all I wanted. Was that too damn much to ask for?
Jeremy closed the pen gate behind him and followed me back into the house. Two boxes sat on the counter, partway full of kitchen items. I heard Jeremy suck in a breath as the reality of our situation came careening at him. He stood by the counter while I filled two empty plastic soda bottles full of hot water and laid them against the flanks of the baby buck. I wrapped the towel back around the kid and, within seconds, the heat brought his attention around. His eyes lost their glaze, and his face grew alert and animated. Within two minutes, he began mewling for milk, sniffing my hand for a teat.
“That’s amazing,” Jeremy said. “The way he perked up so fast. No oven this time?” He’d seen me put babies in towels on the open oven door, with the heat blasting out at them, like a mini sauna. It disconcerted the dogs to see the kids placed in the same contraption that produced tasty food. They’d give me distressed glances, wondering if I really intended to cook the kids for dinner, lingering close by and giving the bundles a face-washing from time to time.
“He seems to be coming around just fine. I need to take him back to the barn so he can nurse.” I gave his little dark head a scratch, and he pushed up against it in pleasure. I looked into his eager eyes, and my own longing grew unbearable. I turned to Jeremy.
“Why don’t you finish what you were doing here?” My voice sounded flat and unemotional to me. Jeremy seemed to flounder for words. Before he had the chance to say anything else, anything that might make me beg him to stay and not throw away ten shared years, I hurried out the door with my charge in my arms. I cradled the little bundle and let the tears stream down my face as I hurried to the barn. Maybe Yeats was right. Maybe once things fell apart, the center couldn’t hold, no matter how tightly you hung onto it.
In the soft light, I placed the buck on the straw, still wrapped in his towel and flanked with his hot water bottles. Sassy sniffed him, then started with her licking and baaing. His little voice responded back each time she spoke to him, a staccato duet. Eventually, he wriggled free of his swaddling and got to his feet. He pushed over to where his brother and sister were sucking noisily, and I pulled his sister off to get him situated on a teat. He nosed around for a moment until he got the warm nipple in his mouth and sucked. Sassy stood content, chewing her cud, and making sporadic little throat noises at her triplets.
I picked up the placenta that lay on the straw and threw it away in a plastic bag. Already the babies had fluffed up, their coats damp and steaming in the air. The barn was warm, so I decided not to run the propane heater. I slid to the straw and tucked my knees under my chin, willing my stomach to stop cramping. Only then did I see a stain of blood seeping through the crotch of my jeans.
I heard Jeremy’s truck engine start up, then heard tires crunching the gravel road and down the driveway. I listened until the noise faded, leaving me to the quiet of the barn and the sounds of a new family luxuriating in their joy and contentment.
Jeremy didn’t know I was three months pregnant. I had hoped beyond hope that this time would be different. That maybe our luck had changed, that we could put all the pain and sorrow behind us, a chance to start again. I emptied my mind by sheer will and let a calm detachment grow as I stumbled back into the house, doubled-over, heading to the bathroom.
On the small table against the wall, I spotted the application forms from the adoption agency. The forms Jeremy had brought home last week. Which triggered last night’s argument. Among other things.
I clenched my teeth and forced it all out of my mind—every bitter memory that begged for acknowledgment. Every thread of hope, every hollow reassurance. Everything. A bitter laugh burst out of my mouth. Who was I kidding, thinking I could save Raff? Help him recover, heal, bounce back to a normal life. Really.
But if I didn’t try, who would? What did I have to lose?
I’d already lost so much. And, it was clear at that moment, as my stomach cramps turned into serious pains, as blood dripped from my body like spirit leaking from my soul, that I was about to lose this baby as well. My third miscarriage in three years.
“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”
I looked at my ring finger as I sat on the toilet. It felt naked and stripped bare without the gold band, the way my life felt when I thought about Jeremy sleeping on some neighbor’s couch. Jeremy had forgotten to give the ring back. Or maybe not.