The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope

by Rhonda Riley

  For one second, I hoped he might still be with me. I began to sweat. “Yes, that’s what I am telling you, Cole.” The timbre of a plea clung to my words.

  A grimace flickered across his face, followed by a small, uncomfortable smile.

  “Evelyn, honey, I know Addie had a gift with horses, a special way of talking to them that was . . . was . . .” he waved his hands as if trying to scoop the words out of the air. “Unusual. Lord knows it was amazing that Adam had the same gift and showed up when he did. But he came to Clarion because he’d heard of how good she was with the horses. You said so yourself then. He may have replaced her in your heart, but . . .”

  He looked down at my hands pressed together as if in prayer and shook his head rapidly. “That doesn’t make Addie and Adam the same person. A woman can’t turn herself into a man.” He wrapped his hands around mine and I felt myself shrivel. “Listen to me, Evelyn. You’re still in shock. You can’t let the grief get to you. I know when Eloise passed, I thought I would go crazy.”

  We stared at each other for a long moment.

  Shame flooded me. The impotence of not being believed crushed me. I had no recourse. No proof.

  He leaned closer, trying to catch my eye. “Evelyn, do your girls know you’re here? Do they know you drove up here by yourself?”

  I withdrew my hands from his and drove him back to the pizzeria. Then I returned to Florida, my shoulders and neck aching from hours of driving, stunned by the dual loss, by the final glance of pity on Cole’s face. My throat closed.

  He was the only person I ever tried to tell this story to.

  By the time I was in Florida, I had decided that, if cowardice once again prevented me from attempting the truth, I could, at least, offer my daughters closure. A memorial for their father required no validation beyond what they already believed.

  I called Sarah first. “I want you to make something for me, for your father.” I described the simple fired-clay plaque I wanted.

  “Good. I’ve been waiting for you to ask,” she said gently.

  Then I had to go swimming. I needed to cleanse myself of the memory of doubt and pity I’d seen in Cole’s eyes. I wanted to wash away my mother’s shame and the weakness and fear that made me like her. In the water, I would be with Adam and I would be like him—no past, free of explanations.

  Families and small children filled the park surrounding Devil’s Spring. The smells of grilling meat and sunscreen hung heavy in the air. In the cold water, families shouted and splashed around me. Bright, inflated toys bounced against me as I waded into the shallows. I put on my mask, snorkel, and fins, glad to have children nearby as counterbalance to the blue void below the surface.

  I swam past them and circled the mouth of the spring, peering down on the place where he had taken me. The place that had taken him. Bubbles of air escaped from the azure hole and a guide rope disappeared into it. As I dove lower, underwater silence overcame the sounds of playing children. The spring mouth loomed, a vivid, continuously deepening blue. I understood Adam’s attraction. The spring seemed placid, not the menace I had imagined there for months.

  Then I surfaced.

  Months later, I stood near the same spot surrounded by my daughters, our hearts on the same shore again. Holding hands, we waded knee-deep into the water. The girls’ long skirts floated around them, except for Rosie, who was in full dive gear. Lil carried her father’s fiddle. Little Adam bounced and burbled on his mother’s hip as we passed the memorial plaque hand-to-hand, admiring the terra cotta, the color of the Carolina clay, and the pale, crackled blue glaze. Clearly carved into the surface in Sarah’s square, neat calligraphy were the words from Lil’s and Adam’s favorite Whitman poem: “Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery . . . In memory of A. Hope.”

  Gracie, Lil, Sarah, and I watched Rosie and one of the springs dive crew disappear down into the spring, to place the plaque in the cave, just outside the grate that now barred divers from the vein that led to the collapsed chamber. Lil raised the fiddle and began to play “Amazing Grace.”

  I remembered the silt glittering around me and Adam when we had been in the cave together, the water vibrant between us as his hand marked a rhythm I could not hear. For the first time, I allowed myself to imagine him there alone underwater, his feral howl radiating, restless and joyful, through the land he loved. And, for the first time, I considered that the land had once again answered him, not with rhythm but with a terrible embrace, their duet now airless and unending.

  I kept my eyes on the guide rope, not completely at ease with the thought of Rosie so deep in the earth. I studied the serious, expectant faces of my daughters. For a moment, I had the notion that he was calling to them from underground and they were listening, able to hear him as I never had.

  After what seemed far too long, Rosie broke through the water, her thumb up and her short hair clinging to her head. “It is done.”

  We returned to the ranch for the official memorial. A small stage was set up in the backyard. Beside it stood Sarah’s latest painting. Adam filled the large canvas. Pictured from the waist up and nude, his arms stretched out, his fingers spread. He looked directly at all of us. A familiar expression filled his face, relaxed and curious, as if he waited for a reply from someone he knew well. A plate-size asterisk radiated from his chest, white at its edge, cobalt in the center. The likeness was strikingly realistic in all respects but his hair. She had given him auburn hair.

  When the girls sang, I found I could no longer pull their individual voices loose from the braid of their harmonies. Only when one of them took the lead could I tell who or how many were singing. There might have been five voices, there could have been six.

  One by one, neighbors, cowboys, musicians, divers, hippies, and horsemen stepped up to the microphone with some story or song for Adam. People whom Adam had touched surrounded me. Their voices buoyed me. Neither Ray the veterinarian, nor Manny had ever again mentioned what they’d heard from Adam the day the stallion attacked the mare, but Ray paused during his praise of Adam’s horsemanship and his eyes sought mine in the crowd. Then, with a nod, he seemed to find the word he was seeking: uncanny.

  I did not speak. The single, unique story I could have told was a weight in my chest. A star of dark matter, a thing that held its own gravity, enthralling my heart.

  Things were not good after that, but they were better. Grief’s gutting blade was preferable to obsession. The questions of what I might have done to prevent or foresee what had happened still seduced me at times, but they never dominated me as they once had.

  From that point on, to be reminded of my husband, I could look at any stranger’s face. To honor him, I had only to treat every stranger as if he or she might have been my lover and the parent of my children. I hung Sarah’s portrait of him in the living room. I gave his clothes away. I sold all our horses except for Rosie’s favorite and Jericho.

  Not long after the memorial, I sold the ranch and moved into town. I became, at last, a herd animal, at home in the casual company of a neighborhood, pleased by the crowds at the markets and art fairs downtown. My home is now a short walk to a creek, a park, the public library, a supermarket, a funeral home, a birthing center, a theater, and the courthouse. You can do anything here. And there are plenty of folks to do it among—lots of families, a few oldies like me, a drunk guy, and one friendly transvestite laundress who strolls by every day after the local dry cleaner closes. There are also possum, armadillo, raccoons, a few snakes, and some ducks. A curious otter, a wild turkey, and a black bear have wandered into the neighborhood—not all at the same time. The only thing missing is the sky. Aged water oaks tower over the houses, shading the yards.

  It seems I will not be wandering off into the woods, as I did as a girl, but will take my leave here among my own kind.

  I lived alone until a couple of years ago. Then Lil discovered that Alphonso, her college sweetheart and husband for almost twenty years, was not what s
he thought him to be. After the divorce, she came home to Florida and decided to live with me. I’m old enough now that all the girls thought it was a good idea that one of them be around to keep an eye on me.

  They are not so young themselves. Gracie will turn fifty within days. But, like their father, they all seem to be aging at their own special rates. The curve of their earlobes, how they lift their faces when their own children speak to them, how their hips and breasts have filled and shrunk with the changes of maturity and childbirth, continue to fascinate me—not as frequently, but no less intensely than their perfect bodies did when they were new and fresh. I still feel flashes of tenderness toward them, amazed that they are here in the world and are mine. They are profoundly, cellularly familiar to me, and they are, in the distances and privacies of their adult lives, a series of mysteries.

  Adam may be responsible for the youthfulness of their faces, but I claim responsibility for the gene that sent them to the edge of their tribes for a mate. The same gene that sang in me as I dragged A. in out of the cold rain. Our daughters are now scattered across four continents. Mayan, Chinese, Dutch, and African blood runs through the veins of my grandchildren. In their careers and their choice of husbands, they’ve covered the globe. Gracie lives in the Netherlands. Still married to Hans, she now has a diplomatic appointment at The Hague. Their sons are mild, witty Dutchmen like their father. Vet school led Rosie to research in genetics and species-hopping viruses. She married Mussa, a fellow geneticist, and they commute between California and Africa on a seasonal basis. Her boys all have their daddy’s beautiful tropical skin and big hands. Sarah lives and paints in China with her husband, Jian, and their son. She has just been authorized to return to the United States. Lil lives down the hall. The mother of two grown sons, she left the Library of Congress last year and took a position at the UF library as a digital preservation specialist. Eventually, she ceased being the twin left behind, one half of a whole, and became her singular self. Seeing her become a mother separated her, at last, in my heart, from Jennie, who remains nine years old.

  About a month ago, I woke from a deep sleep to a sound I had not heard in twenty years: the reverberations of Adam’s sexual climax. Instinctively, I reached across my empty bed for him. Still half-asleep, I got out of bed and followed the rising voice, then realized I was outside Lil’s bedroom door. Gently, I pressed my palm flat on the door as the cry peaked then vanished.

  A man’s voice boomed, “Wow!” Lil’s new lover.

  Lil’s laughter followed—surprised, joyful laughter.

  Only then did I realize who I’d been listening to. I stepped back into my bedroom and quietly shut the door. I wanted Adam. I wanted the beautiful harmonic of him, wanted to pour myself over him.

  Down the hall, their voices continued, indistinct, muffled.

  Eventually, the house became quiet again. Then I heard Lil’s footsteps in the hall. I found her sitting at the kitchen table, just outside the pool of light from the stove hood, her features relaxed and soft. She shook her head when I sat down at the table across from her. “Momma, just when I think I’m on an even keel and I understand how things are and what I’m capable of . . .” She sighed.

  “I know. I heard.”

  “Yes, I guess you would’ve.” The corner of her mouth lifted in an apologetic half-smile. “We always knew with you and Daddy. There would be the click of your bedroom door closing, then after a while . . .” She paused and glanced at me a little sheepishly.

  “Yes?”

  “Then you’d make that sound you always made. The walls hummed, then Daddy laughed.”

  “The sound I made?”

  Her face reflected my surprise.

  I touched her hand. “Lil, that was your daddy you heard, not me. It was never me.”

  “Daddy? Really?” Her mouth hung open and she stared at me.

  I nodded.

  She snapped her mouth shut. “Wow . . . I thought it was something only women did. Sarah does it when she’s with Jian. Remember, I stayed about a week with them when they lived in Chicago. The walls were so thin. And I’ve heard Rosie . . . So that was Daddy?” She rubbed her chest. “And that time after Jennie’s funeral when you stopped Daddy, I thought it was because he was doing something only women did. I thought you were upset because he was acting like a woman.”

  I wiped my eyes and tried to smile at her. “Do you remember the time in the mountains with all of us?”

  She squinted in the effort to remember, then her expression changed. “Oh, when the rocks sang? That was amazing. You were right there when I opened my eyes. Are you saying that was Daddy, too?”

  I nodded.

  After a moment, her face slowly broke into a wide smile. “Momma, a while ago in bed, when I . . . it was like my chest opened up in a new way. Wonderful and scary.” She paused and sighed. “So, you are telling me that, at forty-four, my body has learned a new trick and it’s unique to us?”

  Not to “us,” I thought—to you, the daughters of Adam. But I just nodded.

  Lil’s revelation stunned me. It had never crossed my mind that the girls would attribute his voice to me or their unique voice as a gift from me.

  But I know how secrets and assumptions grow larger over the years, fed by the tensions and yearnings of their keepers. They also diffuse as they settle, like a strange pollen, spreading invisibly over the fields of our daily lives. Simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. What we do not say never ceases being. It waits. Robust. Elemental.

  The day after my conversation with Lil, I received a brief letter from Sarah:

  Momma, I’m including this picture to prepare you—all of you. It’s the latest picture of me. I haven’t done anything to myself or the photograph, I swear. I probably should be alarmed, but I’m not. It feels natural. I’m okay. I’m happy. And I am pregnant again! Three months by the time I see you! A daughter is coming, I’m sure. Oh, and there’s a canyon here that reminds me so much of Daddy. Looking forward to seeing all of you soon.

  Love, S.

  In the photograph, Sarah squats beside her young son, Michael. He grins up at the camera, a happy little Chinese boy sporting the cheekbones of the McMurrough clan and a purple shirt. Sarah looks directly at the camera, her face is serious, her chin thrust out as if offering her features to the world. She is still quite distinctly Sarah. Same chin, same forehead. But her once-curly auburn hair is black and straight, her pale irises are now dark brown. Her eyelids are Asian. She has become a Chinese woman. The daughter of A.

  I stared at the photo until my eyes burned, then teared. I had it finally: proof.

  I began to write.

  Recently, I found out that the “magical sea monkeys” we purchased for the girls when we first moved to Florida are a species of tiny shrimp-like animals, triops, which survive in the hidden pools that are the carved afterthoughts of desert flash-floods. When the pool dries completely, the dehydrated creatures, lifeless by all human measures, can wait decades for the next flood, when they will once again spring into life and swim.

  I find a humbling, comic comfort in triops. In their company, Adam seems normal, or at least natural. In the last decade, I have gotten tired of questions and of questioning.

  What is simply is.

  My hope is that my daughters will forgive me my innocence, my ignorance, and my fears. All I know is this: A. was and is. He walks this earth, whole and unrecognizable. He is here among us, somewhere. Beside you, perhaps. And on this December day in the year 2000, I know that the Florida air is warm, the windows are open. My grandsons run down the hall. Gracie’s plane is touching down. Sarah and her family are flying over the Pacific. The odors of baking bread fill my home. In the kitchen, Lil and Rosie sling Christmas carols around like cabaret songs. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” indeed.

  Within hours, my youngest daughter will come through the door bearing in her body her second child and undeniable proof of A.

  I will hand my daughters all that I have written her
e.

  I will, at last, be true.

  I have often found myself thinking of that day long ago at the springs when I lay on my back under A., looking past his shoulder into that one-bird-filled sky, lying like a girl, naked under my husband in the woods. I felt the shadow of his disappearance then. Faint in that spring brightness, but not undetectable. I chose not to look at it then, not to pull the thread of that individual loss and sorrow out of the tapestry, but I knew it was there. I’ve wondered if he intentionally brought me to the place where he would take his leave, the deep blue mouth of the earth that would be his door out of this life. Probably not. I don’t think he knew any more than I did at the time. He was simply and eventually true to his own nature. He left my life as he entered it, through elegant and elemental forces. He left me to listen after him to this new land.

  Now he is of this land and this water. The water here, like him, is of no discernible origin. Pulled by the sun’s endless energy, it rises from far-off shores to fall on Florida soil. It makes its way through the dense, fragrant darkness of mulch, tannin-drenched sand, and the limestone. In dark, underground silence, droplets form trickles then brooks. Brooks join to become small rivers beneath this thin skin of earth. Small rivers join to make larger rivers, increasing exponentially in force, power, and volume until millions of gallons spring from the earth into the lazy flow of the Suwannee, the Withlacoochee, the Itchetucknee, the Santa Fe. From there, the water flows to the sea, or it makes its way into the bellies of alligators and snakes, or inches up through dense cellulose of cypress. Or it rises as singular molecules again toward the sun to fall once more on other faraway forests.

  Countless times, I have imagined A. rising through the rivers of this land, to the surface of Florida to be found again, pulled into the air by new hands. The possibilities are endless, but most often I imagine him found by children. Above him, the sky shimmers and undulates blue through transparent springwater. Then four small brown hands break the surface and pull him into the air and into their excited and frightened vocabularies. The delicate bones of their arms and ribs absorb his voice, shattering their knowledge of what is possible.