The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope

by Rhonda Riley

  “I did,” she beamed. “With Evelyn and Addie. They grow the best pickling cucumbers. That land is good for corn and peppers, too. Call me Lily Mae.”

  Adam spooned the relish onto his corn bread and took a big bite. “Mmm . . . this is really good!”

  “So, Adam. Horses? I wouldn’t think there would be much call for horses now with everybody in cars and filling stations on every corner.” Daddy searched his pants pocket and pulled out his pipe in preparation for his after-dinner smoke.

  “Rich people will always have horses. Keep them as pets and investments,” Adam replied.

  “Investments. I imagine that’s so.” Daddy tapped his pipe on the edge of his plate.

  “Some people just like them.” Momma nodded her head.

  The porch door slammed and Joe walked in. I introduced them. While they shook hands, Adam pointed to Joe’s newly purchased truck parked in the yard and asked, “How’s that one running for you?”

  Joe’s face lit up. He’d saved for months for that old Ford. He launched into a story about it as the men went out to the porch. I realized, with a shock, that Adam was courting my family. And succeeding.

  Momma and I cleaned the table. Over the noise of the running water and the dish-washing, all I could hear of the men were indistinct words, punctuated by occasional laughter.

  “Evelyn, honey, you haven’t heard anything from her?”

  I shook my head and turned away to slip a stack of dried plates into the pantry.

  “That is peculiar,” Momma said.

  I nodded, but did not offer anything.

  “She can take care of herself, Evelyn. Don’t worry about her.”

  I didn’t want to make Momma complicit in my lies. But I didn’t know what to say.

  “Adam seems like a nice fellow.” She stopped wiping the counter and looked at me quizzically.

  “He would be a big help, Momma. Now that Joe has a family. And Bertie never helps anymore, even Rita wants to stay in town with her friends. And Cole is full-time at the mill. Now with Addie gone . . .” I shrugged and tried to look convincingly sad and tired. “All he’s asked for is food. He can’t eat much more than Addie.”

  Momma smiled at my reference. Addie was known for her appetite at family dinners. “I know you miss her. And it looks like you’ve been eating less up there by yourself.” She pulled at the waist of my dress. “I don’t see how it could hurt for you to have some help. He’d eventually want to find a paying job, so don’t get too used to it.”

  Before I could think of anything to say, Daddy, Joe, and Adam came in from the porch. Momma squeezed my arm and asked them if they wanted coffee.

  “I can’t, Momma,” Joe said. “I gotta get back to the house soon. Mary’ll be looking for me.” He turned to Adam. “So what were you, army, navy? Not air corps. You haven’t said a thing about flying.”

  I felt a surge of panic.

  But Adam just sighed and said, “I didn’t serve, Joe, sorry to say. Maybe if the war had lasted a little longer . . .”

  “I didn’t quite make it either, buddy,” Joe commiserated. “Momma made me finish high school, and by the time I was ready to sign up, they were starting to turn ’em loose. Some say I’m lucky, but I don’t know.” He looked at both of us. “Can I give you a ride on my way home? It’s getting dark.”

  “You were lucky, son,” Momma said. Then she turned to Adam. “Now, about that room and board. We’ll need to decide where that room will be.”

  Adam glanced at me quickly. Neither of us had thought of that.

  A half hour later, Joe dropped me off at the farm. As they pulled away, Adam turned to wave at me through the truck’s back window. He would be staying at Joe’s and coming to help me during the day.

  Over the next few days, we worked together as Addie and I had. I made him leave before sunset each day and walk back down to Joe’s. I did not let him have me or come to me at night. I was not being coy. I wanted him, terribly, powerfully. I wanted that encompassing touch and the ring of that unique voice, but I was caught in the whiplash of change. Addie was now wholly different from me, and, in Adam, both absent and present. I needed those evenings alone to let what I’d seen of him during the day seep into my skin and muscle, to register on my nerves.

  In my struggle to make sense of Addie becoming Adam, I needed a way to think of them as the single being I knew them to be, a term that bridged their obvious differences. Without any conscious decision to do so, I began to think of them simply as A. From that point on, A. became the private name that, in my mind, encompassed both of them as well as the person I had pulled from the land, who was neither man nor woman. A. was their totality.

  While I was alone at night, my family slept down the hill, innocent and distant. Momma in her nightgown, her hair loose on the pillow, oblivious. Bertie and Rita dreamed in their beds. Freddie and Marge slept down the street from them. From my bedroom window, the streetlights of Clarion seemed smaller and farther away. Even the mill lights seemed dimmer now.

  I imagined myself squatting by Momma’s bed in the dark or bent over Rita’s sleeping face, whispering the truth to them, my words settling onto their shoulders and slipping into their ears. They would wake to carry into their days a few ounces of what I knew.

  To all of them, Adam was a large, well-mannered, good-looking person, clearly and solely a man. They would wonder, as Momma had, about Addie’s disappearance and my sudden bond with Adam, but in the end they would, I knew, accept what they saw before them. Still, I could not fully quell my fear that their credulity would be exhausted, that they would somehow recognize him as the violation of nature that he was. Of the two, Adam did seem the greater violation. He was not the innocent, earth-sprung being of Addie, but a consequence of will and desire.

  With Addie’s arrival, I had been in an adrenaline-soaked haze, amazed at what I had seen, certain I would be thought crazy if I told the truth, and, if I was believed, that she would be thought a freak. These things seemed equally true for Adam, perhaps more so. Lying about him seemed more calculated.

  I kept my own introductions of Adam to a minimum—he was simply a horseman from Kentucky looking for a job—and refused to embellish. The lack of detail would work itself out. Meanwhile, it may have lent him a greater air of mystery. The next Sunday, when he came into the church with Joe and Mary, Uncle Lester’s old suit tight across the shoulders, a brief pause of attention in the preservice whispers followed him. I’m sure the young women were taking his measure and, when I moved over on the pew to be closer to the three of them, calculating my relation to him.

  As we filed out of the church, I lost sight of Adam in the crush of Sunday suits and hats. I caught up with him as Momma introduced him to some of the church ladies. Adam, of course, had to act as if he had never met any of them. He graciously shook hands and repeated his name. Old Mrs. Bailey stood next to him, scrutinizing him from under her hat brim, then casually brushed a bit of lint from his shoulder.

  The ghost of Addie seemed to linger with us as we all filed out of the church. Everyone mentioned her absence as they welcomed Adam. After Grandma Lou surveyed Adam up and down, she patted me on the arm. “Blood will out. She ran off with some strange boy just like her momma.”

  I glanced around for Cole, then remembered that his Eloise was Methodist and he attended her church most Sundays now.

  As I fielded questions about Addie’s absence that afternoon, I realized how much I heard that was not questions but statements. Others were taking up the story, giving me the missing pieces. Cole had heard Addie’s name before she had one. Momma had come to her own conclusions about why Addie looked like me. Joe concluded that Adam must have, like him, been too young to serve during the war. And now it seemed that everyone would treat Addie’s flight as a continuation of her “mother’s” story. Addie had been right: we needed our stories. All of them had seen what they expected to see or hear. They had found what their stories told them would be there.

  Except
for me. What I had found was completely unexpected.

  Later that day, Adam and I stopped by Freddie and Marge’s. I introduced him. The circle of musicians welcomed him with little nods. Freddie shook Adam’s hand and offered him a seat. Marge nudged me after giving Adam a complete, swift look-over. I laughed and shook my head at her suggestion. But she didn’t believe me. She winked at me and nodded. The vague unhappiness of her childless marriage seemed to inspire in her a radiant enthusiasm for others’ romances.

  Adam walked me home afterward. We were quiet in the darkness. He kissed me chastely on the forehead and left me at the back door.

  Momma and Daddy came to help with the farm work the next Saturday and brought Rita. As they were saying their good-byes, Adam waved from the barn and continued brushing down Darling. Joe was coming by later, and Adam would get a ride back to town with him. Daddy and Rita waited in the truck, but Momma stopped on her way out the door.

  “See you later.” She waved to Adam, and then turned to me. “I’m proud of you, Evelyn. You’ve done good here.” She nodded her head toward the barn and fields and gave me a slight tilt of her head, her eyebrows raised, her don’t-screw-up gaze.

  “Momma, it’s all right. He’s just going to help me some.” I pretended to wipe something from my skirt. She squeezed my arm till I looked up and held her gaze. She could smell intention on her children. She did not need the sin itself to start sniffing around like an old hound dog.

  “I’m all right, Momma. I’ll be careful.” I saw it on her face, as she registered that there was need for care. Daddy honked the horn.

  “Do be careful,” she whispered and let me go.

  Adam waved again as they drove off, and then locked eyes with me across the backyard. My veiled admission to Momma was still fresh. Something in me gave, shifting into a new place. Before the truck disappeared down Clear Lake Road, Adam leapt onto the back steps as if I had called him.

  I motioned for him to follow and led him down the hall. He hesitated, and then stepped into the bedroom he had slept in the first night.

  “Take your clothes off,” I told him.

  He obliged. Everything came off, even his socks. I looked at him, taking in every part—toes, ankles, knees, the thighs I had last seen under Addie, the pale planes of his hip joint, genitals, belly, breastbone, hands, arms, neck, ears, eyelids, lips, teeth, cheekbones. I had never studied a man that way before. Silently, he let me. This was Addie, whom I had loved. I turned him around and looked at his backside. I traced his spine with my fingertip and was done. “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome.” He turned to face me again, not acknowledging or attempting to hide his erection. I glanced away. He moved as if to reach for me. I took his hand but placed it back down at his side.

  “Will it be like this from now on?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Tension leaked out of me. Suddenly, I felt exhausted. He took my hand and pressed it to his chest. I braced myself against the start-up of that gentle vibration, but there was only his heartbeat, warm bone, and muscle under my palm.

  “You wanted a husband, a family?” he asked.

  I nodded, my chest tight.

  “Would you rather have Addie back?” he asked.

  “You can do that? You could be Addie again?”

  “I don’t know if I can do it again, I’m not even sure how I do it. But I would try if you want me to. Then you could have a family with someone else. I could, too. Or I could stay as I am and father children with someone else.”

  Another thing I had not thought of.

  “We could,” he continued, “each find someone else. Is that what you want?”

  I thought again of Addie with Roy, and flushed with jealousy and confusion. “No, no, no. Not that.” I began to cry, and backed out the bedroom door. He grabbed my wrist. I stood there, covering my face with one hand, the other arm held awkwardly out toward him.

  “I don’t know what you are. What if our babies? What if they are? What if they are like mules and can’t . . . ? What if we can’t?”

  He waited until I caught my breath and said in a measured voice, “Do you know who you are, Evelyn? Who all of you are? Where do you come from? You don’t know any more than I do.”

  He dropped my hand and began to pace. His erection had fallen. “I listen in church, Evelyn. No one knows, no one truly knows. There is faith, but not true knowledge. All we know is how we are supposed to act to keep living and to get along.” He gripped the footboard of the bed and peered at me. “But I have to know? I have to be able to say who and what I am? Or you won’t accept me now?”

  He opened his arms and looked at me until I felt as naked as he was. “Here I am. This is all I can offer you.” He was exquisite, beautiful.

  Suddenly quiet, he sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. “I will not be alone because I cannot say what I am. I want children, too. I want them very much. And, no, I cannot tell you how normal they will be.” There were drops on the floor between his feet. I stared at them as if I had never seen tears. I had never seen him cry before.

  He shook his head. “I know it, as certain as I know that I have lungs though I do not see them. I know it, Evelyn. I can give you children.”

  He got up and slowly dressed. “Marry me, Evelyn.”

  I sat, still staring at the floor when Joe’s truck pulled up. Adam shut the door as he left.

  Heartsick with confusion, I saw myself in the mirror. I stayed in that room until Adam’s tears dried on the floor and the room darkened down. Something in the core of me went quiet. I listened and listened until I could hear no more, until I knew. There was really only one answer I was capable of giving him.

  I made an admission to myself then locked it away in my heart as if it were a treasure: he is not one of us. To have him and to bear his children was to depart from not only my family and my people, but from my kind, from my—the word rose up unbidden, startling—species.

  Early the next morning I heard Joe’s car in the driveway and then Adam thanking him for the ride. I walked around the table to see out the kitchen window. Clouds, orange-gold and clipped with silver, fanned out from dawn’s blood-red sun. Joe’s truck disappeared down the road.

  Adam walked in the back door behind me and stopped.

  “I missed her,” I said, keeping my eyes on the sky. “I missed her so much.”

  He came up close. “Ooh,” he said when he saw the sky. I leaned my head back against his chest. “I missed you.” He put his arms around me. We stayed like that a long time, watching the dawn diffuse into day, then I took him by the hand and led him to the bedroom.

  We began slowly, tentative as if we had never done it before. The weight and press of him was not like Addie. He was flat and hard and boney where she had been soft and curved. He had hair where she had been naked smoothness. But the odor of him was familiar, and Addie was in his touch. He moved over me like silken water, encompassing me, making a room of his body, as she had. That familiar hum rose in him. Our rhythm changed, quickening, and he arched. I jumped back from him. “Come out. I don’t want babies now.”

  He smiled down, amazed at the mess he’d made on my belly. “There’s so much,” he muttered apologetically. “I . . .”

  I laughed. “I had me a virgin.” I wiped my fingers across my belly, touched my lips and then his. He tasted the bitter saltiness of himself and laughed. A big, deep, beautiful belly laugh. We smeared ourselves, laughing the relief of sin after drought.

  We lay still for a long time in the echo of what we had just done. Then we turned toward each other again.

  “Yes,” I told him.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes. I will marry you.”

  We decided to wait a few weeks before telling anyone about our plans to marry. A nine-day courtship would be short by anyone’s standards.

  Soon, Adam had met everyone but Cole. Mr. Starnes had been sick lately. Also, with full-time work, and his girlfriend, I knew Col
e had little extra time. He’d been coming around less even before Addie left, but still I was surprised that I hadn’t seen him yet. Adam and I planned to go see him and Mr. Starnes the next Sunday.

  I stood in the kitchen Friday afternoon, dressed but still vague and soft from making love with Adam, when a sharp knock broke my reverie. Cole smiled at me through the door pane. His smile turned to concern as I smoothed my hair. I opened the door and let him in.

  “Evelyn,” he said. “Are you . . .”

  We both turned to the sound of footsteps in the hall. Adam appeared. Looking down as he zipped up his pants, he didn’t notice us. His boots were tucked under his arm, his hair messed up.

  Cole shot me a glance of surprised disappointment and turned to leave.

  “Cole!” Adam boomed, dropping his boots. “Good to see you!” He beamed, caught off guard, his arm out as if to hug Cole, who leapt back, knocking over one of the kitchen chairs.

  I held my hand out to slow his retreat. “Cole, this is Adam Hope.”

  Cole righted the chair. A short, awkward silence followed. Adam looked at me helplessly. Cole stared at the floor.

  “Is Addie back? You heard anything?” Cole directed the question at me with a quick glance.

  I shook my head. I wanted to say, “It is not what you think, Cole! I’ve known him for years. You know him.” Instead, I asked Cole, “Can you help me with something out by the barn? Can I show you?” Cole held his hand out stiffly. “Nice to meet you.” They shook hands briefly.

  “Sure. Let’s go.” He stepped aside and I led him outside.

  We squatted to inspect a split in one of the corral posts.

  “Cole, it’s not what you think.”

  “I think you hardly know this guy.”

  “And how well did I know you before?”

  “You knew stuff about me. I lived in the same town. Who is he?”

  “This is different from . . .” I admitted, then added, “And now you’re with Eloise. Right?”

  He examined the post, ignoring my question. “We can just bind this. Don’t have to pull it. With a two-by-four and a few long screws it should last a couple more years at least.” He stood up and brushed the dust off his hands and narrowed his eyes as he glanced toward the house.