Conundrum Read online

  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.

  Chapter 3

  When I was five and Neal only two, my mother, busy unpacking boxes, told me to canvass the neighborhood and find a friend for my little brother. What was she thinking? Granted, my father had just died, and my mother was distraught, relocating from Los Angeles to a new town, burdened with three small children. And I was a hyper bundle of energy, always needy, always underfoot.

  We had moved to Mill Valley only days earlier, halfway up a steep road that ended at the base of Mount Tamalpais—or Mount Tam, as the locals called it. Just north of San Francisco Bay, the sleepy community of Mill Valley featured a tiny downtown neighborhood of dark wood-sided shops surrounded by towering redwood trees and punctuated by wisps of fog that drifted like ghosts through the streets. Aside from the main flat thoroughfare, most of the residential areas spread up into the hills by way of single-lane potholed roads, replete with blind curves. Cars whipped around the sharp bends, their drivers always in a hurry, and the houses all sat at the base of rutted narrow driveways, buried in trees and giant shrubs that proliferated in the abundant rainfall.

  Not that I noticed. I was on a mission to find Neal a playmate.

  Dutifully, I made myself scarce, and taking Neal’s chubby hand in mine, went door-to-door, knocking until some stunned neighbor opened up and listened to my cheerful inquiry. Did they have any little kids that Neal could play with?

  Fortunately, I hadn’t had to dodge traffic for long. For less than a block away, Anne’s mother, Sarah—no doubt horrified by the thought of two small unaccompanied children gallivanting around the neighborhood—ushered us into her plushly carpeted living room. I don’t remember the scolding she gave to my mother over the phone, but when I brought it up that Wednesday, Anne seemed to remember every word.

  “Oh yeah,” she said, munching on an apple as she got her shoes out of her car. “I remember Mom clenching her fists while asking you to recite your new phone number. She did a great job keeping her cool. I think she was ready to hand you and Neal over to child protective services right then and there. You looked like two little waifs, to her. But I was glad you showed up. It was meant to be.”

  Anne and I had a standing date each Wednesday at noon, there in that parking lot on the south end of Mill Valley. Although jogging was still the big craze, Anne would not deign to humiliate herself by wearing coordinated jogging outfits and expensive Adidas sneakers. A few inches shorter than me and at least fifty pounds heavier, Anne’s exercise regiment excluded anything that worked up too much of a sweat. Unless it involved chasing after deadbeat dads or pedophiles. Then watch Anne run.

  Anne slipped out of her heels and into her walking shoes. The paved road we pounded each week to the beach was part of the Golden Gate Recreation Area—and cars filled every space in the lot. The trail was a one-mile walk each way. Physically, I felt much better that day. The nausea had vanished along with my budding new life. Hormones were returning to normal not even a week later, even if the rest of my life wasn’t. Every muscle in my body felt stiff, as if I had been beat up in my sleep. Emotionally, I was in denial—about everything.

  The air was cool and moist, with a hint of salt spray. It tingled my face as I waited next to the car. The coastal range wrapped around us, and the blue sky shimmered. Rolls of clouds oozed over the tops of hills and spilled in slow motion to pool in the fields hugging the hills. The fog that frequented Marin seemed to have personality, reminding me of T. S. Eliot’s fog that rubbed its back and muzzle on windowpanes and curled up around houses and fell asleep. I drew in a long breath. I would make myself enjoy the beautiful Marin County summer day.

  Anne set the pace, determined and focused—as she was in all aspects of her life. She looked straight ahead at her goal and never wavered. I valued her clear head, her analytical mind. She often supplied the voice of reason my own brain so sadly lacked. I had come to depend on her over this lifetime of friendship to be honest and forthcoming with me. Although today, that was the last thing I wanted.

  Anne’s birthday was exactly a month before mine, but she always seemed years older and wiser. I didn’t find a playmate for Neal that day her mother invited us in, but I’d made a fast friend. And Raff ended up best friends with Anne’s brother, Kyle—another serious intellectual. Nerds, the both of them—before nerds were ever cool or respected. While Anne and I whiled away hours pl
aying jacks in the smooth linoleum hallway, Raff and Kyle were writing some satire of Dante’s Inferno or coming up with trick questions for their next car rally. The door to Kyle’s room stayed shut, and we girls were threatened on penalty of hamstringing not to enter—ever. We did spend some giggling hours peeking through the window slats at their antics, hidden in the bushes outside, but after a while we invariably grew bored.

  Anne panted as she walked. Joggers passed us on both sides, going to and from the beach. Bicyclists pedaled, weaving through the current of bodies. Anne breathed hard, pushing herself, but I knew she wouldn’t slow down. I had a hard time keeping up with her.

  “So, what’s the latest with Rafferty?” Her voice oozed compassion. She had watched the gradual descent of my brother’s sanity into madness in stages at her very own house. “He still in the hospital?”

  “I think he plans to stay there until they get his meds right. His psychiatrist wants him to go home. Kendra wants him home. No doubt my mother has put in her two cents.”

  “Ha, no wonder he wants to stay put. A lot safer in there—on all fronts.” She slowed to a less frantic walk. “And Jeremy?” She turned to meet my eyes, knowing my tendency to hedge.

  “He’s moved out. Temporarily, he says. To clear his head.”

  “Hmm.”

  I knew that look of hers. The professional assessment of a social worker. Weighing what to say, what advice to give, knowing most of it would be ignored. But gearing up to say it, anyway.