The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope (16 page)

I crept backward down the hall as quietly as I could, crawled into bed, and curled up under the covers.

A few minutes later, Roy began to snore and I felt Addie slipping into the bed behind me. I pretended to be asleep, but Addie snuggled up and laid her arm across my waist. “I know you’re awake,” she said.

She smelled of his sweat, of whiskey, and of sex.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because I never had. It’s good. It’s different, too. Is it something you thought I would never do?”

“I just never thought of you with a man.”

“You just thought of yourself with a man? I saw how you watched him. He’s not as nice—not as good a person—as you.”

“He smells like whiskey.”

“I know.” She pulled me closer. “You want to marry and have children, right?”

“Yes, but not with someone like him.”

“I know.” She kissed me until the tightness in my belly eased, then reached around my waist, touching the sweet center of me until I climaxed and slept, dreaming she was in and around me, her voice humming through my bones.

I
woke before dawn to find the bed empty again. The first thing one of us usually did when we woke was light a lantern. But I didn’t stop for that. I searched the house. Moonlight through windows was enough to tell me: Roy, his suitcase, his hat, jacket, and shoes were gone. Barefoot and still in my nightgown, I lit a lantern and ran to the outhouse, then the barn. Nothing but surprised livestock. Becky and Darling neighed when I climbed up to the hay loft.

Outside, I scanned the horizon, hoping for any sign of them. I called Addie’s name into the cold predawn air.

They were gone.

Mechanically, I dressed and forced myself to eat. I listened for their return as I finished the morning feeding and milking. Mid-morning, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table, hollow and stupid as I waited for them to return. Then I saw that the big peach-shaped cookie jar where we kept our egg-and-butter money had been moved. The money was gone, all fifty-three dollars.

I threw the jar against the kitchen wall, shattering it into a spray of pink and green shards. I regretted it immediately. The jar had been Aunt Eva’s. I cried as I picked up the pieces. Twice, I cut myself.

I checked the closet and the bureau drawers. Some of our clothes were missing, too. I flung everything off the bureau, stripped the closet, and emptied every drawer. I collapsed on the heap of clothes and wept. I kept going over everything that happened since Roy Hope had walked up and asked for a drink of water, but I couldn’t imagine why she’d gone with him.

Eventually, I unfolded myself from the mess of clothes and got up to finish my work for the day. Stunned and puzzled, I tried to think of anything I’d ever seen in her that would lead her to disappear, abandoning me. That was what her fictional mother had done, just disappeared after a boy. That was all I could think of. Was she doing what her “mother” had done, following a fictional lead? Why had I lied? I banged my head against the barn wall.

The house and barn seemed too quiet without her. I consoled myself by giving Darling a long combing. Then I moved on to Becky and the cows. Numb, I watched my hands move over their haunches and withers. Hands identical to hers.

No, hers were identical to mine.

I went outside to the place past the apple tree where I had found her, knelt there, and pressed my hands to the ground. Nothing. No depression, no puddle, no warmth. The red earth was its simple mysterious self, fertile and relentlessly dumb. My innocence shamed me.

That evening, as I picked up the clothes I had hurled around the bedroom earlier, I felt the crumple of paper. On a small brown bag torn open and flat was a note in Addie’s handwriting, sloppily written, but clear: “Back as soon as I can. 2 weeks? I love you. —Addie.”

I headed straight back outside and lay down on the same spot. The sky stretched endless and blue above me. Peripherally, I saw the fields, the apple tree, and the barn. This had been Addie’s view when I pulled her out of the ground. She was coming back! But what was she doing? Why leave me for two weeks? How was that love? Still, she was coming back. I spread my arms and moved my legs, making an angel in the dirt.

Kept busy with chores, both hers and mine, I managed to pass the rest of the week. I checked the road and the tracks every chance I got, hoping Addie would appear. Her absence loomed everywhere. I’d lost my talent for being alone. I was unmoored, awash in recollections of Addie’s first days with me. In her absence, her extraordinary qualities seemed even more present.

That time of year my family did not come up to help unless they heard from me. But Addie and I often went into town to run errands on Saturday. On Sundays we met them for church. They would be expecting us. Saturday morning, I walked down to Mildred’s to call Momma. Rita answered and I told her that I wasn’t feeling well, and we wouldn’t be coming to town. No, we weren’t that sick, just that time of the month. We’d be okay. We had everything we needed.

Sunday evening I heard steps on the back porch and ran to the door, flinging it open. Cole, his hand raised to knock, laughed in surprise. Then, quickly, his face dropped, mirroring my disappointment. I stood speechless in the open door, trying to recover.

“I’m sorry . . .” Cole stuttered. “You and Addie . . . your momma said you weren’t at church.”

“Everything’s okay. I’m not feeling well . . . Can you come back later?” I pulled the door nearly shut.

“You don’t look so good. Is there anything I can do? Where’s Addie?”

“She went away on a trip, Cole.”

“A trip? Where?” He stepped up closer to the door.

“I can’t talk now. You need to go. Please.” I didn’t want him to see me cry.

“Wait, Evelyn.” He slipped his hand around the door frame. “Is Addie okay?”

“There was this boy. She left with him. There was a note. That’s all I know.”

He shook his head in disbelief, his face screwed up in concern. “Evelyn, let me . . .”

I waved him away and bit my lip to keep from crying. “It’ll be okay, Cole. She said she would be back. I know she will. I’ll let you know if I need anything. Okay?”

He nodded and took a step back, but didn’t seem convinced.

“Thanks for coming by.”

He nodded again and walked away, his shoulders hunched and his hands jammed down in his pockets.

The next weekend, I didn’t bother calling Momma’s. Suppertime Saturday, Momma showed up. She held a plate of scones wrapped in wax paper when she got out of the truck. Immediately, she knew something was wrong. “Evelyn?” she called as she came into the kitchen.

I had prepared answers to the questions about Addie if anyone else came by. Addie was on another mountain trip. Or she was out on a long horseback ride. But as soon as Momma set the scones down on the kitchen table and turned to me, I started to cry.

Weeping into her shoulder, I told her everything about Roy, except, of course, how he had touched me, what I had seen through the parlor door, and the missing money. She held me and did not scold or tell me that we should not have let a strange man stay in the house.

She took my face in her hands and made me look at her. “If she said she will come back, then she will, Evelyn.” She wiped my tears. “Now, you quit this crying.”

She stayed the afternoon, helping me press butter and cheese.

Her conviction reassured me. Still, I kept seeing Addie on top of him. I gagged on my own confusion and sickening jealousy. I wanted each of them and wanted to be each of them.

What had felt like blessed solitude and privacy before Addie came into my life now felt jagged and harsh. Admitting her absence to Cole and then to Momma made it more real. Equally real was the fact that if she did not come back, I would never know who or what she was. With each day that passed, those unanswered questions seemed a greater and greater injury. It seemed incomprehensible that I could have held her so intimately and not known. Inwardly, I railed against my imposed innocence. I grew lighter and more delicate, frayed by the air I leaned into as I listened for her return. I stayed close to the house and hung on every little sound.

Exactly two weeks from the day Addie and Roy left, when I had lost almost all hope, I heard footsteps coming up the drive.

I ran toward the back door, hoping for Addie, but Roy stepped into the kitchen. He stood there alone, expectant, wider and taller than I remembered him.

“Where’s Addie?” I craned my neck, peering past him for Addie.

He said nothing and opened his arms as if I would step into them.

I tried to shove him out of the way to see if she was outside. “Where’s Addie? Is she okay? Did you do something to her?”

He refused to move. “I am Addie.”

“No. Where’s Addie? Tell me!” I screamed in his face.

He held his hands out, calmly offering himself. I stared up at him, at Roy’s brown eyes, at Roy’s face and lips, his neck, shoulders, waist and hips, at his feet planted on the floor.

I backed up into the kitchen. “No. Where is she?” I went cool and hard.

“I am Addie.” He stepped toward me. There was something familiar in how he looked at me, nothing like the swaggering Roy.

“No!” I shook my head. “No!” My voice thin as a whip.

“You said that he was a fine example of a man, one a woman could get healthy children off of. And you want children,” he said.

I stared at him. Addie must have told him what I’d said.

“I did this for you, Evelyn.”

His voice did not fit. It was still Roy’s voice, but the phrasing was different. And it was deeper, more resonant. He stepped closer and reached out as if to catch me. I smelled the familiar chlorophyll odor of Addie as I collapsed onto the chair he held for me.

The room dimmed and turned grainy. I grabbed his arm instead of the hand he offered, and dug my fingers in. “Don’t do this to me,” I snapped. “I want Addie back. I want you to look like . . . like me?” My words faded to a whimper and I sat down.

He touched my face gently. “Evelyn, it will be all right.”

I leapt up. “Who are you? Not my skin, not his skin, but
you
! I have to know! What are you! Show me what you look like! Let me hear your voice! Yours.”

He gave me a long, intent look that made me step back and sit again.

“Okay,” he said.

He planted his feet. His opened his mouth slightly and sighed. His fingertips spread across his chest. Had Roy ever seen Addie do that? Then a sweet chime rang out from him, followed by a slow deep chime that settled into a steady drone. Then the sweetness segued to raw sound. Pure harmonics. A hard wail. He was aiming at me! Wave followed wave, higher, larger. His pupils dilated. The floor resonated. The arms of the chair hummed. My head filled. Louder and brighter, filling me, pulling me out of myself. Overwhelming. I wanted to cover my ears, my chest, my belly, but I didn’t move. Then something in me rose to meet that sound that was now no longer sound. Beautiful and horrible. Not color, not light, nor odor, taste, or touch, but some distillation of all. Buoying me, holding me, pressing. Beyond him, I sensed other harmonics. And it seemed to me I heard the voices of children—our children, I was sure.

Blindly, I put my hand out and touched his chest, and his voice receded, pulling back into him, rippling into questions as it withdrew. We breathed hard. Outside, a bird called. A train whistled far away. The 10:10. The world continued to turn. Morning light shone in across his shoe and up his leg. His hand at his side was large, a meaty man’s hand. The hair on his arm, dark. His face red from effort. Sweat, beading at his temple, ran down past his ear and onto his throat. His hair a deep brown. His eyes the golden brown of burnished oak.

Keeping his eyes on mine, he took my hand from his chest and cupped it in his hand, then moved it down between his legs.

I felt him growing in my hand, pushing against the fabric of his pants. I closed my eyes as he led me down the hall to the bedroom.

He lay down on the bed and opened his arms. I lay down beside him and pressed my face into his neck. I wept.

He held me tightly, his voice emanating sweet and light from his chest. But, for once, it had no effect on me. The tidal wave heaved itself up from the distance and hurtled toward my shore, its beautiful, obscene curve come at last to wash me, to drown me. I cried, trembling and clutching him to me, then beating him away.

Eventually, I sobbed myself to sleep inside his arms and the purr of his voice. I woke alone in the slant-light of late afternoon, the ends of all of my nerve cells swept clean. I heard him humming down the hall—a normal man humming a hymn. The sound of frying eggs interrupted a deep male voice singing Addie’s odd, jazzy version of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Wobbly on my legs, I walked down the hall and stopped in the kitchen doorway to watch him. He turned from the stove with a question on his face.

“I’m okay,” I told him and eased myself into a chair.

He pulled some perfect biscuits out of the oven. God, he was beautiful.

I motioned toward the bedroom. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I should have realized what a shock it would be for you. Should have planned it with you. But I saw the opportunity.” He set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me. A slice of ham beside it. Addie and I had done that—made breakfast for supper, when we were tired or hadn’t gotten around to making anything else.

“Tell me,” I said. “How did Roy like having a twin?”

He filled his plate and sat down across the table from me.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t ask and he didn’t say. He’ll drink as much as you give him. I kept him drunk, very drunk, and the shades drawn. Not long after you fell asleep that night, I heard him creeping around in the kitchen. Then the back door squeaked. I checked the cookie jar and figured out what he was up to. My first thought was to get the money back, then I realized what else I could do. Or at least try. I wrote you the note and ran after him. He hadn’t gotten far. We hopped the midnight freight out of the mill and got as far as a Forest City motel. I was sure I needed to be isolated with him, like I was with you.”