The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope (31 page)

“We walked down past the grinding mill to the bridge—our usual evening stroll. I was trying not to cry and he kept asking me what was wrong. I told him about Ben and me. His face was awful—shocked, disappointed, hurt. ‘I’ll find the bastard!’ he said. ‘Find him and kill him!’ Then I really started wailing, crying about how my daddy would kill me. Bastard kids just did not happen then. Women in that kind of trouble married the daddy or they got out of town.” Momma stopped, smoothed the covers. When her eyes met mine, I realized with a start that she was waiting for me to say something. She wanted forgiveness.

“Momma, did you get rid of the baby?” I whispered.

“Good Lord, no! I didn’t even know that was possible then. This was nineteen twenty-five, Evelyn. That was you on the way! What I’m trying to tell you is that Ben Mullins is your father, not Robert Roe.”

I stared at the bedspread, feeling what she said flush through me. I couldn’t move.

“Your daddy is your daddy, Evelyn. He raised you. He was back the next day asking me to marry him. I didn’t have to run off like Addie’s momma. You were able to grow up here and know my people. Robert never again mentioned Ben to me or to anyone else that I know of and he claimed you as his own, never treating you any different from your brother and sisters.”

She took my hand in both of hers, pulling me out of my daze. “I’m so sorry, Evelyn. For years I was so ashamed, so grateful to your father.” She cried, her fragile shoulders shaking, her face pale. I held her and we rocked gently.

Then she wiped her eyes. “I took your daddy for a husband though I didn’t love him, not at first. But by the time you were born, I was crazy for Robert Roe. It was a fuller love, a woman’s instead of a girl’s love. That’s why Joe came so soon after you.” She stroked my hair. “Good thing you looked like me and had the McMurrough’s red hair.” Her hand stopped at my temple. “Evelyn? You understand what I am telling you?”

Her hair, dimmed lately to the color of pale straw, framed her face. Suddenly, I saw her face as a young woman’s again, her hair a brilliant copper as when she’d once swept me up out of the creek and held me, dripping wet, in her extended arms. She’d looked at me then as if I was a stranger, unknown to her. Then the awful wailing as she held me close. For decades, I’d thought that moment was about me, but it was about
him
. I thought I was the stranger, but he was the one she did not know. She’d been looking for him in me! All my life, she’d seen the shadow of another person on me. And she’d never spoken his name to me. At that moment, I did not know her. She seemed smaller now, a frailer version of her old self, as if the surgeons had taken more than her womb and ovaries. Her skin glowed soft and translucent.

I lied: “It’s okay, Momma. It doesn’t change anything.”

Relief brightened her eyes.

I held her face in my hands and looked straight into her eyes. “I have a good daddy. You gave me a good daddy.” She relaxed back against the pillows, her face calmer.

The picture of me and Addie still rested on the pile of photos. Stunned, I put my head in Momma’s lap and wept for her, for my two fathers, and for all the things that never get said or known.

Seven

Flood

W
ithin a few weeks, Momma returned to her shift at the mill. We urged her to retire, but she insisted she wanted to go back to work. She looked smaller and older. The dark circles remained under her eyes. The differences in her appearance seemed to me to be indications, not only of the change in her health, but signs of a new momma sprung from her revelation about my father.

With self-conscious discretion, I observed the faces of my brother and sisters for similarities to Momma and Daddy. Joe looked the most like Daddy, same dark hair, brown eyes, and receding hairline. The same lumbering gait. Bertie was stocky, like Daddy and Joe, but had Momma’s height and complexion. Rita was the most slender and graceful, with straight red hair and fair skin. With a hand mirror, I studied my own profile. I looked like my mother. The planes of my face from cheek to jaw might have been slightly different from hers, my face maybe longer, more oval. I had fewer freckles and my hands were bigger. Those things had always been true. Nothing had changed except what I now knew. My inspections always left me with emotional vertigo.

With the farm, four kids, and the bookkeeping for our horse business, I spent little time in Clarion, and always combined errands with visits to Momma’s. Since the funeral, I was less comfortable in town. I wanted to avoid every set of eyes there. And it seemed especially important to be home each day when the girls returned from school. But after Momma’s revelation, I made more frequent trips to town during the school day, looking for every opportunity to be alone with her. Always someone else seemed to be within earshot—Daddy, my brother, or one of sisters. My aunts and uncles came by more often, too.

One weekday evening, I drove into town to bring Momma some of my peach jam, her favorite. I found her alone in the kitchen washing the supper dishes. Daddy and Joe were in the yard, deep under the hood of Joe’s truck.

Her back looked more delicate than I was accustomed to, and it wasn’t like her to not notice when someone came into the room. She jumped in surprise, then smiled when I pulled a dish towel out of the kitchen drawer. “Sneaking up on me, huh?”

I began drying the dishes stacked in the drainer.

Before I could speak, she said, “If anything ever happens to me and your daddy, I want your sisters and Joe to have the furniture and the cars.” Her voice was soft and thoughtful. I’d obviously interrupted her reverie about these things.

“What?” I didn’t want our conversation to go there. I didn’t want to think about anything more happening to her.

“We gave you and Adam the farm. We don’t have anything comparable for them. It would only be fair.”

“And we’re very, very grateful for the farm, Momma. Because of the farm, we don’t need another car or more furniture.” To my own ears, my voice sounded stilted and thick.

She heard the change of direction in my tone. The platter she was handing me stopped above my hand.

I took the platter and continued, “Why didn’t you ever tell me before?”

Momma’s hands dropped into the soapy water. She shook her head. “I know I should have told you sooner. First, you were just too young. And there were times when you were a little girl, you already seemed to know. You were always wandering off by yourself as if you were looking for something or somebody. For years, I convinced myself you already did, somehow, know. Your daddy didn’t think it would do any good to tell you.”

“Daddy didn’t want me to know?” I fought the impulse to take her by the shoulders and shout, “How could you have kept it from me for so many years? How?” But something in her posture stopped me.

“Evelyn, I didn’t want you to feel you were different from Joe, Bertie, and Rita. I wanted you to feel you belonged to both of us—I owed that to him, if he was willing to take on the responsibility of raising you. Then you got older, I was afraid of what you would think of me.” I heard both a mild challenge and a plea in the firmness of her voice.

As I held her gaze, I heard Daddy and Joe laughing as their footsteps approached.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” Momma whispered. As they walked into the kitchen, she turned back to the dishes, tears in her eyes.

D
ays later, I went into town with Adam one day and asked him to drive by Momma’s house on the way to the feed store. I knew Momma would be home from the mill by then and when I saw that Daddy’s car was gone and the back door open, I had Adam drop me off. I gave him the grocery list. “After the feed store, pick up these things, then come back for me,” I said as I slipped out of the truck.

I usually did the grocery shopping, but Adam took the list and nodded without comment.

I hoped to find Momma alone. The house was so quiet and still, for a moment I thought no one was home. Then I saw Bertie sitting at the kitchen table sipping coffee. She’d recently dyed her auburn hair blond and the new color unsettled me. A magazine lay open in front of her, and her daughter, Susie, slept sprawled in her lap, legs and arms dangling.

Nothing in the house moved except her hand flipping the magazine pages and then stopping to bring the cup up to her lips.

Her head jerked up when I stepped from the back porch into the kitchen. I saw the pinched look on her face as she took in the surprise of me being there.

“What is it?” I asked. “Where’s Momma?”

Bertie nodded her head in the direction of the bedroom. “I checked on her a few minutes ago. She was still sleeping.” She went back to her magazine. The pages made a soft, rasping sound as she flicked through them. Otherwise, the room was so quiet I could hear myself swallow. The afternoon air brimmed, still and humid.

I tiptoed into Momma’s room. She lay on her side of the bed, facing the window. I walked around the bed. Her face hung slack and gray. A bucket sat on the floor next to her. I touched her forehead; it was cool and moist. I went back to the kitchen.

“How long has this been going on? I thought she was getting better.” I stood behind Bertie as I poured myself a cup of coffee.

She twisted around in her chair, scowling. Susie stirred on her lap. Despite the pleasure Bertie took in delivering news, she always seemed annoyed at others’ complementary ignorance. “At least a week. If you were around more, you’d know. Daddy says she didn’t want to worry us. I’ve been coming by every day this week and checking on her after her shift is over. She’s always lying down. She must come straight home from work and go to bed. Every day. Daddy’s been getting supper for them at Bun’s Café.”

I went back in and checked on Momma again. Her skin didn’t look right. Adam’s truck pulled up, and then the screen door squeaked.

“She’s in there,” I heard Bertie say. She’d hardly said a word to him since the funeral.

He appeared beside me, studied Momma’s face, and glanced at the bucket. Then he touched her forehead just as I had. Momma had always been a light sleeper, but she did not stir.

Adam looked at me then, ran his eyes over my features the way he used to, but his face was sad. “I’m sorry, Evelyn,” he whispered.

We walked arm in arm back into the kitchen. Susie was awake now, her head still hanging over her momma’s arm, and she grinned upside down at Adam and waved. “Hey, Uncle Adam.” She hadn’t been at the funeral.

Bertie pulled out a pack of Pall Malls and lit one. “I’ll bring a meat loaf and some potatoes over tonight and some of the field peas you canned for us.”

She looked at me expectantly while Susie climbed down from her lap. But I just stood there stupidly. I shivered with the sudden understanding that I’d been so wrapped up in my own problems that I hadn’t seen the obvious: the surgeons hadn’t gotten all the cancer.

Bertie got up, tapped her cigarette ash into the sink, and stared at me.

Adam rubbed Susie’s back as she hugged his leg. “We’ll bring something by tomorrow for their dinner. Anything in particular bothering her stomach?” he asked.

Bertie directed her answer at me as she beckoned Susie. “Not that I’ve heard. Maybe if she has some decent food, she’ll be able to keep it down. She needed more time to rest after the surgery. Y’all can go on. I’ll stay with her till Daddy gets back.” Her voice was thick and soft as she began braiding her daughter’s hair.

Somehow, I got out to the car. We rode home in silence.

It had begun.

Momma seemed to give up once we started taking care of her every day. A few days later, Daddy rushed her to the emergency room. The word “cancer” invaded our vocabulary. “Inoperable” remained the whispered obscenity. Each day, one of us went by to stay with her and make dinner for them.

I went to Momma’s almost every day. But we were never alone. Once the neighbors heard she was sick again, they began bringing dishes of food.

Finally, one sunny afternoon, she and I were alone. Daddy was at work. I didn’t expect Adam to pick me up for another hour. Rita would be by then to bathe Momma and make dinner.

Rail-thin now, Momma chilled easily and preferred hot tea instead of iced tea. I heard her restless moans as I waited in the kitchen for her tea to steep. I set a glass and fresh pitcher of water on the tray with her cup of tea and carried it to her room. The doctors had recently upped the dosage on her pain medication and she asked for it every four hours on the dot.

Swallowing pills had become difficult for her; she was on liquid morphine. She opened her mouth like a child as I held the full tablespoon out and she took it hungrily. She scowled patiently, waiting for the morphine’s effects. The unhealthy prominence of her cheekbones seemed like a rebuke to my list of questions about my father.

I waited for the drug’s effects. Lately, it seemed to make her less drowsy, as if the pain now sopped up the morphine’s peripheral effects. After a few moments, her body relaxed, but her eyes retained a vigilant brightness, as if she anticipated the pain’s immediate return.

For weeks, I had questions ready for her, polished and clear, but suddenly they seemed a jumble caught between two simple sentiments: How could she have kept my father’s name from me for so long? What else had she not told me?

I settled the blanket up around her chest and startled at the sound of footsteps on the back porch.

Momma turned her head slowly and smiled weakly at Adam as he paused in the bedroom doorway. I stifled a disappointed moan. My opportunity was gone. I had not told Adam Momma’s news.

“I’m early, but I thought I’d . . .” he apologized.

Momma patted the bedspread beside her and Adam sat on Daddy’s side of the bed.

My thwarted questions filled my throat. Everything I did not understand about both Momma and Adam seemed to congeal into one spot in my chest.

I fought my tears and swallowed. Then my frustration gave way, surrendering to his presence. “Adam, go back out and check to make sure no one else is in the house. Check the driveway. The front door, too. Make sure there’s no one on the way.”