The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope (29 page)

I pulled up near the back door and unloaded the groceries. A horse whinnied inquisitively from the stable. I heard Adam’s faint, muttered response. The mingled sounds of the girls—a guitar, the radio, and Sarah’s call to her cat—filtered down the hall as I put away the groceries.

When I’d finished, I took a small empty jar out of the pantry and a hand trowel from the barn. I knelt on the spot where I had found A. and, breaking up the packed clay, scooped a handful of it into the jar. His origin. The only certainty I had. The thing that set me apart from him and bound me to him.

I put the jar on our bedroom bureau among our combs, nail files, and pocket change, next to my bobby-pin box. At night, it was one of the last things I saw before I turned out the light.

Supper the next Sunday was just Momma, Daddy, and the six of us at our house. The meal was cordial, almost formal. No one mentioned Jennie or the funeral. The girls did not ask where their cousins, aunts, and uncles were.

G
rief is a powerful river in flood. It cannot be argued or reasoned or wrestled down to an insignificant trickle. You must let it take you where it is going. When it pulls you under, all you can do is keep your eyes open for rocks and fallen trees, try not to panic, and stay faceup so you will know where the sky is. You will need that information later. Eventually, its waters calm and you will be on a shore far from where you began, raw and sore, but clean and as close to whole as you will ever be again.

Adam in his grief neither struggled nor floated. He took on weight and sank like a stone. His surrender was nearly total and his eyes went dead, the brightness of his gaze extinguished. At times, though, he would suddenly flash open, struggling as if grief could be gulped down entire in a single swallow. A puzzled, naked terror would streak across his face then, far beyond any consolation I could offer; he would stop where he was and weep.

I felt myself far downstream, tumbling along trying to keep the girls in sight. I could not reach him. For the first time since I found A. lying on his side in the mud, I felt alone. I did not know what to do.

I wanted him to hold fast to what was left—our four daughters and me—and not let go. I wanted us to stay afloat together. I saw his vacancy as a kind of desertion, as a deep disregard, not just for us, not just for the love that remained, but for life itself. I was afraid for him. I didn’t know what he was capable of or how we would return to each other.

During the day, I was stunned into numbness. Lying in bed at night, I thought of how I could have prevented Jennie’s death, imagining what might have been if I had called her to me instead of returning to that last sheet, stretching it out on the line, smoothing those inconsequential wrinkles while she climbed up on the tractor to join her drunken cousin. Helplessly, I replayed that day. Did she smell the whiskey and his sweat in that last breath she took before she fell and the disk swept across her body? Or did she smell the spring air, the sweet, clean odors of fresh-turned earth?

I allowed myself to consider the infinity of details that might have left Jennie alive. A change of weather the day she died, rain keeping the girls inside. One of us taking longer in the bathroom that morning and delaying Jennie’s walk to the field. A broken washing machine and all the girls pitching in to help do laundry by hand. Sometimes my tracing of consequence and connection went back as far as the war. If Frank had not survived, Jennie would have. The possibilities were endless. I let myself comb through them in small increments. Such thoughts were madness and futility, but they vaulted me into anger and provided a respite from the daily numbness. Sometimes, those were the only thoughts that could engage me.

I did not share these musings with Adam. To speak would have unleashed an endless wail in me as well as him, I was sure. So I shut my mouth on what my heart needed to say. Adam and I learned a new vocabulary of silence.

The girls, in their raw youth, sustained me. They carried the absence of their sister, but they glowed, vibrating with life and health, even as they grieved. I had only to touch them or look at them to be given that. They did not cease being themselves.

Lil, of course, missed Jennie the most directly and actively. Her face often had the same emptied-out look that Adam had. Frequently, I found myself, out of habit, looking past her for Jennie. At times, I could hardly bear to look at her. She was a constant reminder then, as she would be for the rest of her life, of what Jennie would have been.

The twins’ names had always been a single unit: Jennie-and-Lil; Lil-and-Jennie. Now we all stumbled on the lone syllable of Lil’s name. It seemed too abrupt, a fresh wound each time we called her. And every time we stuttered there or paused before her name, Lil flinched.

Soon, the other girls and I began, spontaneously, to call her Lillian, a mouthful that had always seemed too much for a small child. Sarah, particularly, seemed to savor drawing out the full three syllables. Only Adam continued, without any change of inflection or timing, to call her Lil.

I found her once looking at herself in the bedroom mirror, chirping in the secret language she and Jennie had shared. She spoke back and forth in conspiratorial whispers as herself and then as Jennie. After several exchanges, her tone changed to tearful exasperation. When I moved, she caught sight of me in the mirror, froze in embarrassment, then collapsed in tears. “Momma, Momma!” I held her for a long time.

For a while, Lil adopted Sarah as her new twin. They frequently wore identical clothes, something she and Jennie had done only for special occasions. The matched clothes hung loosely on Sarah and stretched tight on Lil, who had grown since Jennie’s death. She even let Sarah into the twins’ “house.”

But then one day at the breakfast table Sarah answered Lil in the twins’ patois and Lil flew into a rage, screaming, “Don’t say that, don’t say that.” It took me and Rosie both to pull her off her sister. That was the end of Sarah as a twin.

During the day, Sarah seemed the least affected by her sister’s death, but she soon began to have nightmares, so frightened of the dark that she stood in the middle of her bed paralyzed, crying and refusing to leave her room. Often her cries woke me and Adam, and we brought her into our room. She crawled into the middle of our bed and clung to us. After a few minutes, her small, bony grip would loosen in sleep.

After Lil beat her away, Sarah began to spend more time with Gracie. They talked about what Jennie was doing in heaven, debating the merits of celestial activities as they collected things to take to the grave—a pretty ribbon, a dead butterfly, stale cookies.

Gracie, more womanly each day, bounced back and forth between a brooding darkness that cut her off from us and a tender solicitousness toward all her sisters. Every time she was alone with me, she told me of her dreams of Jennie.

Rosie, still a stick of a tomboy at thirteen, threw herself into school and the horses. Seldom mentioning Jennie directly, she talked constantly of college, never able to make up her mind if she should become a doctor or veterinarian. In spite of her efforts and interests, her grades flagged. Lack of concentration, her teachers said.

One afternoon, as I carried a basket of folded laundry down the hall, I passed Gracie and Rosie’s room and heard Gracie say, “It’ll be okay. They’ll never know. I can fix it. See?”

Rosie answered her, “I don’t want to. I bet nobody’s asking him to put makeup on.”

“You want Momma and Daddy to know?”

There was a pause.

“Okay, okay. Go ahead.” Rosie sighed.

I made certain to be nearby when they came out of the room. Rosie had a thick swatch of makeup above her left eye, awkwardly blended into her hairline. I pretended I hadn’t seen it.

We made it through supper without comment. Adam didn’t notice. The scrape across her hand wasn’t worth a comment. Minor injuries were part of the stables for her.

Later that evening, when I heard Rosie get out of the shower, I went into the bathroom. She tried to turn her face away, feigning sudden interest in drying her feet. But I waited until she sighed and turned to face me. The bruise on her face was bright blue, an ugly shiner, but there wasn’t much swelling, and her eyes were clear. Another bruise darkened her shoulder.

“Gracie made me put the makeup on,” she said.

“Put ice on it when you go to bed. It’ll keep it from swelling.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And no more fights. Ignore what people say.”

“I couldn’t just stand there and let him say things about Daddy.”

“What did he say?”

Her eyes darted around the bathroom.

“Tell me, Rosie.”

“He said that Daddy hurt his momma. He claimed Daddy had to be ‘of the devil’ to hurt people while they were in church. He wouldn’t shut up.” Tears filled her eyes.

I put my arms around her and discovered that she had to bend slightly to lay her head on my shoulder. I remembered John Thompson’s car veering toward the telephone pole after Addie spoke to him. “Be careful, Rosie. We don’t need anything else to deal with right now.”

She stiffened in my arms, broke our embrace. “I don’t like people looking at us like that.” Her voice hardened.

I touched her forehead, under the bruise. I felt as lacking in explanations as A. had been when he first arrived. A tender shame filled me; I had nothing to offer her. I could see no way to translate what I knew of her father into something her young hands could hold. Solemnly, she watched me as I lifted her hand to kiss her scraped knuckles.

“And the boy, how does he look?” I asked.

“Worse.” She smiled.

I couldn’t help myself. I smiled back.

I heard Rosie and Gracie in the bathroom later. Every morning, until the bruise dimmed to a barely visible yellow, Gracie covered it up, saving face.

After her bruises were gone, Rosie stayed constantly by Adam’s side in the stable or on horseback. I wondered how Adam’s dark grief might alter her affection for him. Part of her, I’m sure, yearned to ride away from the weight of familial grief and love.

Adam, I left to himself. I had little choice. Jennie’s death had sharpened something in him and, to be honest, in me, too. We did not argue or have any direct conflicts, but contact seemed to involve small, invisible cuts. Each was not too painful, but the accumulation stung.

And so we all continued. We did our work. The girls finished the school year. The alfalfa and the garden came in well.

S
everal times after the funeral, Marge had called to see how we were doing and tell me little bits of Clarion gossip. Her voice had the slightly hushed tones of taboo violation and genuine concern, but she never mentioned the Sunday night gathering of musicians at her and Freddie’s house. And she never referred directly to Adam.

He hadn’t played his fiddle or his guitar since the funeral. One day Gracie brought Adam’s fiddle to me and laid the battered case in my hands. She tucked her hair behind her ears, a gesture that often preceded an important announcement on her part. “I talked to Marge. They’re still having their regular Sunday picking party. She said Freddie would like to see Daddy there. And Grandma says it would be nice to see us one Sunday evening before we head over to Freddie’s.” Gracie, the diplomat. She didn’t ask and she didn’t say I’d fallen down on the job. She just tried to fix things.

The next Sunday, after dinner, I slipped Adam’s fiddle into the trunk when we all piled into the car for an afternoon visit with Momma. Later, as we were saying good-bye to Momma, I shooed Lil and Sarah off down the road toward Marge and Freddie’s. I got the fiddle out of the trunk and strolled toward Freddie’s with it under my arm, Rosie by my side. I looked back over my shoulder to see Gracie tentatively grinning up at her daddy, her arm looped through his.

Sarah and Lil raced ahead of us and clambered up the steps and into the house. Marge’s voice carried past the music, “Well, look who’s here!” She held the screen door open and nodded at Adam as he passed by, her familiar smile forced wider than usual.

The pickers crowding the kitchen watched as Adam entered. No one moved to offer him space. I felt a shriveling heat in my chest. Then Freddie stood. With a grave smile, he extended his hand to Adam. “Glad to see y’all back.” He stepped aside, offering his chair. I was almost faint with gratitude for his simple gesture.

Adam sat, pulled his fiddle out of the case, and began tuning up. The other musicians shifted in their seats and plucked at strings.

The next tune began, a waltz. Adam paused, his bow above the strings a beat past everyone else, a distant look of concentration on his face. Then he plunged in. The tightness in my chest uncoiled a little.

Sarah grabbed Lil’s hand to pull her into the living room to dance, but Lil pressed against my leg and swatted her away. Marge led Gracie into the small space left in the center of the kitchen. They waltzed through the living room, out to the front porch and back, with Rose and Sarah following in exaggerated dips and swirls. Gracie stood taller than Marge now. Her small breasts pressed above the full shelf of Marge’s.

Soon Rosie would be budding, too. My girls’ bodies would ferry them away from this time. An awful joy swelled in my throat and I had no skin, no bone between world and heart.

I wiped my face and picked up Lil, a barely manageable weight for me, and waltzed her across the room.

Gripping his fiddle, Adam played with his eyes closed. The waltz ended and we clapped.

As the next tune, “Pretty Polly,” began, the girls, Marge, and I wandered off to the porch. The girls immediately vanished into the darkness, headed toward the mill. Their voices carried back to us. Marge and I sat in matching rockers.

“It’s good to have y’all here. To see the girls dancing,” Marge said after a moment. “How are you holding up, Evelyn? All of you?” The music wafted down the hall. I strained to keep one ear on the girls and listen for any falter in Adam’s playing. But in Marge’s question, I heard the now-familiar lilt that was more than simple condolences. Few people spoke to me those days. Those who did always asked the same question: “How are y’all doing?” But the questions not asked seemed to resonate in their voice: “What did he do? Will he do it again?”