The Rural Diaries

by Hilarie Burton

I’m watching Titanic with Gus for the first time and he’s fucking obsessed. You’re the coolest person in his book right now.

  Gus watched the movie every day from then on. We fast-forwarded through the sexy parts; then he wanted to watch it three times a day forever, so at some point I thought, dammit, if Jack and Rose are his first window into romance, that’s fine. I hope he lives up to that standard; he’ll like brassy chicks.

  A week later when we got back to Jeff’s house in Georgia, a package was waiting for us from Bill. While he had prepared for the role, he had gone down in a submarine to tour the Titanic wreck. He had kept a journal and written entries and drawn beautiful, intricate pictures; and when he came back, he printed up a few copies for his dear friends. He sent one to Gus, and the kid walked around telling everyone, “I’m friends with the guy who found the Titanic.”

  It was the end of summer, and school beckoned. Jeff had to continue working in Georgia, so I loaded up Gus and the dogs (we’d picked up a puppy—Honey—in a Waffle House parking lot) and made a pit stop at my folks’ house on the way back to New York. My dad offered to make the drive with me so we could take up a trailer of furniture for the addition, which was supposed to be near completion.

  Dad and I drove all day, and I taught him how to cyber-stalk people on Facebook, which led to hours of fun looking up all his buddies from childhood and the army. At the end of a twelve-hour drive, we rolled up to our home—to see house wrap flapping around in the dark. Making our way up to the front porch, there were no lights, and a path of plywood is all that covered the exposed beams of the porch. Inside, a dirty paint roller was dried to my kitchen sink, and there was no toilet paper to be found anywhere in the house.

  “What the hell is going on here?” my dad asked—the same question in my mind. We were so exhausted that I just wanted to put Gus to bed.

  The next morning, my dad got to work. He’d been a quality-assurance inspector for years, so his job was to go to work sites and assess what was being done wrong. Not only was our addition not finished, but some of what had been built was done so incorrectly it required demo before it could be fixed. I was devastated. The physical expression of our plan to grow our family had totally gone to shit.

  My dad started making calls to builders. I may have been a grown-ass woman with a child, but it was still reassuring that my father jumped in to help me set things right, or at least fire off a warning shot to scare off the coyotes. When I was working on One Tree Hill my dad came to work with his bullwhip on a day I was shooting a scene with a shitty, pervy boss. When we broke for lunch, I found Dad showing off his bullwhip tricks in the parking lot with our sound mixer, Mike, who had once worked for the circus. They were hooting and hollering while cracking the leather hard enough that the creep could hear it in his office.

  Dad found someone to give us a second opinion on the work that had been done. Mark McEathron was a builder whose kids went to school with Gus. Through mutual friends I had heard he was a stand-up guy—and he passed my father’s knowledge test, so things were looking up. Our candy store electricians, the Stanhopes, showed up. Ed recommended a few guys to help with odd jobs. The list of things that needed to be accomplished was endless. Jeff was frustrated that he wasn’t there, but we’d been working hard at communicating and learning to be at ease together again, so I wanted to fix this house to prove to him that we could fix anything. Thankfully, the new team my dad assembled turned the whole thing around.

  I did any job I had the skill set to do, which meant that I painted everything—the blades of the ceiling fan, the shiplap for the bedroom and bathroom. The biggest bear was the garage. We wanted to paint it the same color as the house, so in the late heat of September, my dad and I rolled and painted the entirety of the huge building with primer and then three coats of paint. (Fun fact: When you live on a hill where the wind is blowing all day long, you don’t get to take advantage of the ease of a spray gun. No one tells you that when you buy the house on a hill.)

  As we painted, I bounced ideas off my dad for the Astor Ghost Stories event, which I’d foolishly imagined I’d be quietly working on while sitting in our new addition. It was slated for October at the Fisher Center at Bard College; Jeffrey and I would read ghost stories, along with our friends Griffin Dunne and Mary Stuart Masterson, who I was quickly learning is a force of nature up here. Kate and Lawrie and Sonia and Tara and all the other folks involved with Astor had done a wonderful job of getting the technical stuff together, but it was my job to bring the show. It had to be good. This was the first time anyone in town was really talking about Astor. We were introducing this institution to our community even though it had been there for sixty years.

  Jeff wanted to visit Astor and spend time with the kids before the event. He can be awkward around adults, but kids are his wheelhouse, and he went to hang out with them in their English class.

  I had been pulling stories for Jeff, Mary, and Griffin to read—Ray Bradbury, Edward Gorey, Edgar Allan Poe. A literature junkie, I was excited about bringing stories alive that I’d loved my whole life. But Jeffrey wasn’t as enthusiastic. That idea lacked originality to him, and if he’s anything, he’s original. So, after holding court with a group of kids, he said out of the blue, “Hey, I want each of you to write a ghost story, and I’m going to read your stories at this performance.” Needless to say, they freaked out. Negan from The Walking Dead was gonna read their stories in front of hundreds of people?! Their teacher was such a good sport.

  We had no idea whether his idea would work. What if the stories were scattered or confusing or too sad? There were so many variables when working with these very special students. But Jeffrey never doubted his plan. “It’s gonna be awesome,” he assured me.

  The day of the performance I had been at the theater all day doing sound check, programming the lighting cues and the sound cues and other last-minute stuff. The venue is used largely for symphonies or operas or very meticulous productions. I hadn’t done a cue sheet for anything since my theater days in high school! I just kept telling the lighting designer, “Jeff will probably walk around a lot, so just keep a light on him.”

  “But will he be standing or sitting?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Will you guys share a mic or need your own?”

  The Fisher Center was lovely about dealing with my brand of crazy, but I was completely overwhelmed. An hour before the show Jeffrey showed up, decked out in a brand-new suit. This is not a man who likes to dress up. I think the last time he’d put a suit on was during our courtship in New Mexico when he’d donned a black suit and black shirt, turning himself into my own personal Johnny Cash. And here he was seven years later, looking beautiful in a soft, light-gray suit with a turtleneck. It was so un-farmy. He had gotten all cleaned up and came out guns blazing. I’d been killing myself on this event. And with that simple romantic effort, he showed me he was really there for me.

  The kids from Astor sat in the back of the auditorium and watched Negan perform their stories and get huge laughs from the audience. Seven hundred people were clapping for them. After, I received letters from their mothers that told me how that tiny thing had transformed their kids.

  Jeff started doing a lot of press with me to promote Astor. When he’s on set or at a convention, he’s around big groups of people, and everybody wants a piece of him. He’s incredibly generous with himself. So when he’s home, that’s his time to recuperate. Watching him use his reserves to promote Astor made me fall in love with him all over. He knew it was important to me, so it became important to him.

  Jeffrey had shown up, and I knew that meant we were going to push through the shitty stuff together and keep going. From that moment on, we were stronger than we’d ever been. In working for others, we found ourselves again.

  15

  I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now, let me feel tired. I mustn’t forget, I’m alive, I know I’m alive, I mustn’t forget it tonight or tomorr
ow or the day after that.

  —Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

  After Ghost Stories in October, I let my guard down. I had given up on getting pregnant. Or that’s what I said. It always existed as a nagging desire in the back of my mind. We were missing a family member. I felt it in my bones.

  In December, Jeff got a job that would take him to New Zealand, and Gus and I were going along. Before we left, I had a feeling that I was pregnant. I’ve always had really low levels of hormones, so any time my body starts doing something, I know right away. My boobs hurt, and I was nauseated. I tried to keep my heart in lockdown. Having lost one pregnancy, I was gun-shy about making declarations ever again. I didn’t celebrate. I didn’t go to the doctor. I didn’t tell anyone other than Jeff, and he also was very hesitant to get excited.

  Jeff was playing King Arthur for a commercial, so he was off wearing armor all day while Gus and I toured New Zealand. The place stole our hearts. The people were so kind, and the whole country felt like Mischief Farm—rolling green hills and ponds. Highland cattle and sheep. Maybe we could just move there and do Peter Jackson movies.

  Then, one afternoon Gus and I took a walk, and I felt a sharp pain. I thought, Oh, I know what’s going on here. I’ve been down this road before. I could feel my hormones doing all sorts of weird shit. It was another miscarriage. But it had been so early in the pregnancy, and I’d tried so hard to tame my emotions, keep myself from feeling joy or relief, that the loss didn’t cut me in the same way that the first one had. And we were having wonderful family time, and that helped to ease the loss. I thought to myself, I’m well-practiced now. How many times can this happen to me? Am I going to get better with this each time? That was a shitty concept.

  Jeff said, “We’re just going to keep trying, Hil.”

  We did keep trying, and about six weeks later, in January, I got pregnant again. This time I went to the doctor and got ultrasounds. There was a heartbeat.

  I had been working on Lethal Weapon, and while we were in New Zealand the producers asked me to come back. The executive producer and creator of the show, Matt Miller, had been my boss on Forever, and I liked working with him. He had always been fair with me and very kind. When I had trouble finding child care, he found a babysitter in the city. For this new show, he had created the role and flat out offered it to me. But, as much as I loved to work, the offer was the standard base rate—the kind of money you make as a first-time actor.

  “You guys aren’t even paying me enough to cover child care and expenses,” I told him, “and I’m doing all the work the boys are doing, but not making near as much money. I want to do it, but I can’t afford to do it.” Matt personally went to bat with Warner Bros. and got me more money than I’d asked for. I respect the hell out of him.

  I didn’t want to tell anyone about the pregnancy and jinx myself the way I’d done before, but it would have been irresponsible to not tell Matt. I felt awful throwing him a curveball—“Hey, I’m pregnant. I’m really sorry, but I can’t do stunts.” Then, I had to tell the stunt coordinator, “Hey, I’m pregnant, so let’s be careful.” They graciously hired a stunt double for me so I wouldn’t have to do anything compromising, and they scheduled me so that I’d have ample rest between my scenes. That production couldn’t have been sweeter.

  Early in pregnancy, doctors test your hormone levels to see whether they have doubled. My levels were very low, but they had doubled. So I was optimistic but also cautious. With Gus back in New York with Jeffrey, I sat around in my hotel room, not moving a muscle, and finally reading the books my sister-in-law Jess had given me when I had lost the first baby. Learning about the divine feminine and the life of Mary Magdalene blew my mind. I read about the Black Madonna statues in Europe, which are said to possess great power. I was gonna read and read until I was a wise earth mama, a witchy woman in caftans who cured ailments with herbs and faith.

  Then I woke up in the hotel early one morning, and everything was gone.

  I called Jeff. The distance between who we had been the first time we miscarried versus who we were now helped tremendously. I had my partner back. He said the things I needed to hear. We’d lost again. But we’d also won somehow in the midst of that.

  I went to my brother Billy’s house and spent the day with him, which was a good distraction. And my best friend from sixth grade, Erica, happened to be in Los Angeles for work, so we had a slumber party and I pretended that I was eleven again.

  The next day I had to go to work and tell everyone who had been so lovely and so accommodating that I had lost the baby. They were kind. Members of the crew had just heard the trickle-down good news that I was expecting, and as they congratulated me, I had to admit that I had just miscarried. Clayne Crawford, the male lead of the show, was between setups. We had a short scene outside with a car stunt—my character was casually supposed to hit a bad guy who was trying to escape. Clayne walked up to me and asked, “How we feeling mama?” He’s a dad. His wife Kiki and I had become good friends. I just shook my head, and he knew. He pulled me into a hug. “I’m so sorry.”

  I had to tell Matt. That sweet man had bent over backwards tailoring this role to fit to Gus’s school schedule and my availability and then my pregnancy and now this. “Okay,” Matt said. “Will you come back next year and work?” My character had essentially been written off the show out of respect to my and the baby’s well-being.

  “Yes, absolutely.” He gave me a light at the end of the tunnel.

  * * *

  When I got home, I promised myself to be more present and to focus on what I had, rather than on what I felt I was lacking. Sharagim had given birth to a gorgeous baby girl in August, so I’d made a habit of taking her older boys, who were Gus’s best friends, so she could get a night off here and there. One night, when the crowd of boys were over, making bed forts and whooping it up, I checked my phone.

  Bill Paxton had died unexpectedly from complications after surgery.

  Jeffrey was away at a convention. I knew he’d hear the news, and I didn’t want a bunch of people watching him when he found out. I texted him.

  Call me please. It’s important.

  Bill was a guy who lived life right. He adored his wife. He delighted in his children. He loved his industry. He spread joy with such ease. It all felt like so much to endure in so short a span of time: Ira’s death, Bisou, the miscarriages, and now Bill. This had been a period of incredible loss for our family, and as I heard Jeff choke back tears, I just wanted to find a way to stop it. It was especially difficult for him. A number of his friends had passed in the previous year, and he realized that he had hit that age when people aren’t getting married anymore, people aren’t having babies anymore—people are having funerals. He made it home after the convention and we sat in our room. “I’m sad, ma,” he said.

  “I know babe. Me too.” Sometimes there’s nothing to do but let the tidal wave of grief hit you and wait for the next break in the waves.

  * * *

  There had been so much sorrow in the previous few years, but Jeffrey and I had made it through together. That spring was filled with celebration. In March we went to Barcelona where Jeffrey and his best friend, Norman Reedus, were filming an episode of Norman’s show Ride. Jeffrey was clinging very tightly to his friendships.

  While the boys filmed, Gus and I wandered the cobblestone streets of Barcelona, exploring markets and the zoo and wax museums and all the curiosities the city had to offer. I fell in love with Barcelona and was excited for Jeffrey’s day off so we could all roam around together. Hand in hand in hand, we walked aimlessly, stopping to watch street performers do magic or blow huge bubbles for the kids. We stopped in every beautiful deli, jambon sandwiches calling to us from their glass cases. Turning down a windy street, we found ourselves entering a large square. Little café tables lined the block, and people casually milled about. At the end of this square was a building so remarkable, I stopped and stared. I didn’t have to say anything. Jeff just knew. Befo
re us was the Barcelona Cathedral. He’d seen that look on my face before at the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, a mix of awe and elation. “Come on buddy. Your mom wants to see this.”

  A gothic masterpiece, the church was exquisite, all ancient stonework and elaborate carvings, and the air was cool and smelled of incense. I breathed it in as Jeff, Gus, and I stood in a long line of pilgrims. When we were ushered in, we moved to the left, exploring the statues of the saints that lined the cathedral. It quickly became apparent that I was moving at a much slower pace than Jeff and Gus, so they peeled off. “Let’s give Mama some space.”

  I wandered across the stone floors worn from hundreds of years of worship. Not growing up Catholic, I had no idea of the protocol. Do I cross myself? Kneel? I walked and walked until I reached a smiling statue. This one beamed, far different from her stoic neighbors. Mary Magdalene. Of course. Those books Jess had given me had provided a framework for how I felt about this woman. I’d been raised to believe that she was a woman of ill repute. But religious research disputed that, and even the Catholic Church had just given her a feast day, essentially apologizing and announcing that the Magdalene had never been a prostitute. For the first time in my life I lit a votive candle. Not for a baby necessarily. It wasn’t a wishing well. I asked for the strength to be a better woman, however that manifested. I don’t know how much time I spent there, but I felt moved. I cried.

  Continuing along my path, I descended a small flight of stairs. A few people were milling about, looking through intricate metalwork at something in a shrine. A Black Madonna. I couldn’t believe it. I knew there was one at Montserrat, an hour outside of the city. But to see one here, so unexpectedly, caught me off guard. Finally, when I got to the virgin, I was overwhelmed by the kindness of her face and the joy of her son. More than a reverent depiction, she felt like a real mother. It felt like a sign.

  Years before, during the filming of The Secret Life of Bees, the head of the art department brought me a present. “I thought you might like this,” he had said, handing me a prop jar of honey with a Black Madonna label on it. The story of the Black Madonna had been a plot point in the book and movie—female empowerment and belief in the divine feminine. I still had that jar of honey on my special shelf of first-edition books. I treasured it as a memory of my favorite work experience, surrounded by women. And here it was, manifesting in my real life so many years later. For the second time in my life, I lit a candle, sending up a prayer for grace.