The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope (30 page)

“Fine. Fine,” I usually answered. I’d hardly done more than exchange greetings with anyone outside of family since the funeral.

I looked at Marge’s plump, sweet profile and wanted to bury my face in her neck and tell her that my husband seemed to be gone, that I saw how others looked at him now, a small, hard glance before their eyes slid over and away from him. I wanted to ask her how it could be that grief gutted me every day, yet my body remained whole and normal, unbloodied. Instead, I said, “It’s not easy, but we’re all doing as well as can be expected.”

She rubbed my hand and I saw in her face that same small surge of relief that I’d seen on others, curiosity followed by relief that I was not going to weep, not utter something terrible.

I wiped my eyes, took a deep breath, then I called the girls onto the porch.

When we got back to the kitchen, everyone sat with their instruments in their laps, their eyes on Adam. He stood at the edge of their circle, bow poised. My pulse quickened. He gave me a glance I could not read. As his eyes skipped across the girls’ faces, he played the first notes of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” at a dirge-like tempo. The other musicians picked up.

Rosie was the first to begin singing. Soon Gracie joined her singing, then Sarah and Lil. They faced their father as they sang. He bent slightly at the waist, swaying. The natural harmony of the girls’ voices and the mournful tempo filled the room. “Hurrah. Hurrah.”

After the first verse, only Freddie continued playing with Adam; the others lowered their instruments. When the last note ended, no one moved. Adam bowed to the girls. Marge cleared her throat and said, “That was pretty, real pretty, girls. Adam.”

Then someone announced “Haste to the Wedding.” The lively jig sprang up and the room returned to itself. Adam nodded good-bye to Freddie and put his fiddle away. I waved to Marge and corralled the girls toward the door.

Marge followed and stopped us on the steps, her eyes shining. “That was some of the prettiest singing I’ve heard in a long time. Where’ve you been keeping those voices? Come sing something at Sunday school next week.”

On the way home, the girls debated Marge’s proposal. Neither Gracie nor Rosie wanted to give up their new freedom from church. Lil thought it was a good idea, but wanted to sing her favorites from
West Side Story
. Sarah, who’d been silent during her sisters’ discussion, ended the debate with a single pronouncement: “If they’re going to stare at us anyway, let’s give ’em a good reason.” She looked up at Adam. “If we’re singing in church, you’ll come listen to us?”

He cupped her head, smoothing her hair. “I’ll always be there when y’all are singing.”

The girls sang first at Sunday school services, visiting a different class in the children’s group each week. Depending on what part of the church they were in, I heard them as I sat in my adult class, their close sister harmony resonating down the church halls. My heart beat faster when I heard them, even at home when they practiced.

A
t least superficially, my family ignored what they now knew about Adam, as they had ignored the obvious fact that Addie’s father was not who she and I claimed him to be. Her situation had been beyond her control, an old story with easily traceable motives. She was clearly a relative and treated as such. Adam, on the other hand, had transgressed in an inexplicable, willful, and literally painful way. No one confronted him, but there was a short pause, an intake of breath, when he walked into a room.

Momma continued to welcome us with unaltered enthusiasm. On the rare occasions now when we were all at her house with my brother and sisters, Momma’s presence tempered Bertie’s judgmental chill. Joe retreated into a kind of jovial formality. Rita never quite lost that startled look around Adam, actually flinching if he spoke with any suddenness or volume. Only Daddy seemed completely unaffected, his smoking and rocking habits uninterrupted.

Momma was the only one to ever ask me outright about what happened at Jennie’s funeral. We were on the front porch, shelling the first of the white acre peas. All of the girls were out of earshot. Momma leaned over and looked straight into my face. “Evelyn, do you understand what happened at the funeral? Has Adam ever done anything like that before?” Her hands were still as she waited for my response.

For the first time in years, I felt the urge to tell Momma the truth about Addie and Adam. But I couldn’t face the possibility that she would not believe me, that she would think I was crazy. The truth seemed too fantastic for the porch we sat on, for the peas we shelled. I pushed away the urge to confide and wiped my tears. “No, Momma, I don’t know what happened. Adam didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

“I know that. That should be clear to anybody. He was just hurting so much himself. I swear, though, I’ve never felt anything like that in my life and I hope never to again. Hurt so bad I thought my chest would burst. If it had been anyone but Adam, I’d’ve run out of the church and never come back. I’ve heard of people speaking in tongues, but I’ve never heard of anything like that—and how it hurt! It was a peculiar thing.” She pressed one hand against her ear.

I nodded my agreement.

Then she told me her news: “A doctor’s appointment.”

I should have paid attention to that phrase. Momma, like most in her generation, rarely went to see a doctor, only if she was very sick. But when I asked her what was wrong, she waved her hand, dismissing my concern. “I’m bleeding like it’s my monthly. It doesn’t come regular. You know I went through the change years ago, before Sarah was born. Now it’s back. I feel fine. I just want to know if I should be keeping your father on his side of the bed.”

We laughed.

Jennie’s death overshadowed everything then. Grief gutted me, and I relied on Momma.

I was erratic, hugging the girls, afraid to let them out of the house one minute and oblivious to their presence the next. Adam was the same. Momma became our anchor, our consistency. She spent as much time as she could on the farm, and, when she was not there, I knew I could call her. The girls were reluctant to go home when we were at her house and to see her leave when she visited the farm.

So, that day, months after Jennie’s funeral, when we sat on the porch shelling peas and Momma announced that she’d decided to see the doctor, I took little notice and felt no alarm. She’d always been there. My fears were centered on the girls and Adam and what I could not say about or to them. I didn’t look further for more to fear or grieve.

I heard nothing else about her doctor’s visit until the evening Daddy called to tell me that the doctor had sent Momma straight to the hospital. “Female troubles,” he said. “A tumor. They’re taking everything out.”

During the week after her surgery, Momma spent most days in a painful stupor on the couch in front of the TV. But after her bath one day, she asked me to help her into her newly made bed.

Rita had stopped by earlier with clean bed linens and a pot roast for Momma and Daddy’s dinner. Daddy’s shift at the mill would not end for hours. Momma and I were alone. To pass the time and distract her from her pain, she wanted to organize an old shoe box of photos.

She studied a black-and-white photo of me and Addie, taken not long before Addie left with Roy and came back to be my husband. Joe had been the first to arrive one morning to help pull a field of corn. He’d shot the photo to finish off a roll of film he wanted to get developed. In the snapshot, Addie and I stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling into the early morning sun and leaning back against the garden fence by the barn. Addie’s hat threw a shadow across her right eye. My hair hung down past my shoulders.

I’d not seen the picture in years. I remembered Joe corralling us out of the barn, the morning dew still a web of diamonds on the grass, and the press of Addie’s warm arm at my side. Longing streaked through me, not so much for Addie but for that time of simplicity and innocence, a time when there was just the land, the seasons, and inexplicable Addie to reckon with—no babies, no death. Behind us in the photograph, between our two heads, the old apple tree and the place where I found her were visible.

Momma handed the picture to me. “You were like two peas in a pod. It was uncanny. I wonder if she ever found out who her daddy was. I sure couldn’t figure which of my brothers or cousins your aunt Doris had been with. Never a peep out of the men. That poor Hardin boy must have been surprised when Addie popped out with all that red hair.” She gave me a wry smile. “The women on both sides of the family were a little too inclined to follow their hearts instead of using common sense . . . or maybe they—we—were following some other organ.” She laughed at her insinuation and patted my hand. “I’m glad I never saw any of that in you. You were always sensible. You did the right thing.”

“Momma, I never wanted lying . . .” I heard the words come out of my own mouth and didn’t know what I would say next. I wanted so much to tell her about Addie, to have her with me in that secret.

She grimaced in what I took to be pain but then realized was shame, a thing I’d never seen on her face. “I wanted to tell you years ago. Many a time I came near. But I didn’t have the courage, Evelyn.”

Apprehension blossomed in my chest. “Momma what do you know? Tell me.” I took her hand.

“Forgive me, Evelyn. I would have told you, but Robert always said we should let sleeping dogs lie. So the dog just lay and the years passed.” Her face twisted in genuine pain. She pointed to the bottle on her bureau. “Give me another one of those morphine pills.”

After she swallowed, she eased back onto her pillows again and looked out the window. I waited, my throat tight, my heart clattering.

She slapped her palms down on the covers so hard I jumped. “There was this boy . . . a man really, but he couldn’t have been much older than me—twenty-one, twenty-two at the most. They were putting in the new sidewalks and parks downtown. Building the new Piedmont Hotel. Things were hopping around here before the Crash and the Depression.

“Your daddy was courting me then. Growing up in the same town, he’d always been around. But he’d begun to be around more. Making eyes at me. Walking me home from work. Not serious courting. The Starnes boy was doing the same. But I liked your daddy best. He was sweet on me. I could see it in his eyes. I’d never seen him around any other girls, and I knew that whatever was going to happen would be slow in coming. Things weren’t like they are today, but even for those times your daddy was a slow mover, a shy one.

“I was only seventeen, but I’d been a spinner at the mill since we left the farm. I earned more than my brothers and had to work, we needed the money. But I thought a hotel might be better work. So one day, I ran over to the Piedmont right after work to see if they would be hiring women help. Outside, the hotel looked finished, but inside the walls were bare, no mantels, no trim, no lights. A man stood inside the front door, holding some blueprints up to the dying sunlight. A fine-looking man. Dark hair, smoothest skin. And tall—six three, maybe six four. He looked up from those blueprints, and I felt like somebody had slapped me awake.

“I didn’t get a job. But a few days later, when I walked past the Piedmont on my way to the drugstore to get headache powders for Momma, he walked partway with me and introduced himself. Ben Mullins. He talked about places I’d never been. He seemed more of a man than the teenage boys hanging around. He was a carpenter from Raleigh. After the Piedmont job, he was going to work on a big hotel in Atlanta.”

She paused and took a deep breath. Fatigue filled her face, but her voice rang stronger, more determined.

“Well, Evelyn, the upshot of what you really need to know is that I slept with him.” She stopped again to register my surprise.

Why, I wondered, was she telling me this? What did any of this have to do with Addie or Adam?

“We snuck into his room—the first room finished in the hotel. If you went up the back stairs his room was the first door on the second floor. Fancy pink wallpaper on the walls, a nice room.

“He smoked and talked, asking me questions and laughing at some of my answers—but not in a way that put me down. There were books in the room, some open on the bed. He didn’t touch me. When I left, he kissed me on the cheek, gentlemanly. ‘Come back whenever you want. It’s lonely here.’

“I went back as soon as I could get away. One thing led to another and we were on his bed. Afterward, he was all apologetic. He went out and brought pie back to the room for me. I came to his room only one other time.” She’d been looking out the window as if something outside drew her words out of her. But now she turned back to me with renewed urgency.

“He was not a bad man, Evelyn. He was just being a man. He was gentle with me. And I was willing though I knew he’d be moving on to another job when the hotel was finished. But I thought we had more time. Then one day, the hotel was done and he was gone. The place looked like a palace. When I went in and asked about him, a woman at the counter sneered down at my old dress and the cotton stuck to my sleeves, opened a big ledger, and said, ‘There is no Mr. Mullins here.’ ”

I leaned back in my chair, wondering if Momma’s mind was going. Why would she want me to know about her sex life? She’d already told me she was not a virgin when she married. I glanced at the photo of me and Addie.

She continued without pause. “I cried and cried. I mended my little broken heart as best I could and accepted your daddy’s invitation to his family reunion. Ben and I’d been discreet. The hotel had been empty. I’m sure no one saw me coming or going when I went to his room. But someone must have seen us when he walked me to the store. Your daddy was suddenly a lot less shy. Even before Ben left town, Robert had started coming by almost every day.

“Pretty soon—just a week or two after Ben left, your daddy was already hinting about us getting serious. I didn’t encourage him but I didn’t discourage him either.

“One evening, he strolled up the street with a handful of flowers he’d picked. While I waited for him on the porch, it suddenly hit me that I had not had my monthly since Ben Mullins left town.