The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope (44 page)

I touched her warm shoulder. “No, wait here with me. He’s coming back.”

She leaned closer again. “Okay, Momma. We’re both here with you. Now, how much of it did you drink?”

“I drank this much.” I laughed and spread my arms. But the sentinels did not laugh. Gradually, I stopped giggling, cowed by their solemnity.

“Jennie,” I said. “She was a knife.”

“Oh, Momma!” Gracie choked.

“She’s okay now, Momma. We’re all okay,” Rosie took my hand.

Gracie began to cry, softly. I reached over and rubbed her back until she stopped. Then she slept, slumped against my shoulder. Rosie fell asleep, too.

Gradually, something like sleep moved through me. I dozed in waves of bright, dense dreams, surfacing long enough to awaken the girls and send them to their rooms. Several times, I had to assure them that I was okay. They murmured apologetically as they stumbled in the darkness toward the door.

Then I slept, a true, deep sleep.

When I next awoke, the brilliance of noon light washed through the bedroom and Adam lay next to me, propped up on his elbow. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, though I had no idea how okay I was. “And you?”

“Oh, I’m fine. But I’m sorry I didn’t get back before you fell asleep.”

I shook my head. “It’s all right. I sent you out to . . .” I had a sudden vivid recollection of his face changing. I rubbed my eyes and pulled my head back a little to focus. His features held. In fact, his face seemed a little sharper, more distinct than normal. His eyes glowed. His skin was clear and ageless. I caught my breath.

He placed his hand gently on my diaphragm. “It was LSD.” He studied my face. “You look a little rough.”

“Adam, it felt a thousand times stronger than the marijuana we smoked.” Slowly, in lumpy, halting sentences, I told him what it had been like for me. He listened intently, not once interrupting with questions. His eyebrows shot up at my recitation of his strange metamorphoses.

When I got to the part about Jennie, he closed his eyes, turned his head away, and moaned. “I’m glad the girls were with you after that. I should have come right back after I found out what was in the Kool-Aid instead of trying to find them. I searched everywhere. All those cars and vans. Even the stables. Then I came back here and found all three of you sleeping peacefully. Are you sure you’re all right?” He slipped his hand around mine.

I managed to nod convincingly.

He kissed my forehead. “I wanted to find the girls so badly because I heard something.”

I felt myself smile, my face involuntarily reflecting his. “What? Why are you so happy? What did you hear?”

“I heard one of the girls, Evelyn.”

“What do you mean? Heard?”

“My voice from one of them.” He pressed my hand to his breastbone. “I was on my way out to the fire circle with the Kool-Aid when suddenly I felt it.” He opened his arm and his hand swept a graceful curve above me. “So beautiful!” He laughed.

I sat up. “What?”

“Evelyn, I’ve never heard that except when the sound was coming out of me!” His face shone.

I blinked.

“It had to be one of the girls. I know what I heard. I felt it here.” He beat his chest softly.

“Gracie? Rosie?”

“I don’t know, but I wanted to find out. I dropped the pitcher and ran. There must have been a hundred kids around the fire. Faces, light, music. I couldn’t find Gracie or Rosie. But it had to be one of them.” He slipped off the bed. “I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been up all night. We need to talk to them about all of this, now. I called Pauline and asked her to keep Lil and Sarah at her place for the rest of the afternoon. But first let me make you some breakfast. You’ll feel better when you’ve eaten.”

I pulled on my robe and followed him into the kitchen.

I distinctly remembered him drinking his first glass of Kool-Aid, then at least one other after that. How could he be so normal?

He pulled out a chair for me and set a cup of coffee on the table.

I sat down and rubbed my eyes. The sun glared through the windows. My brain felt like the transparent, crispy edges of the fried eggs he sat before me a few minutes later. I pushed the plate away and asked for dry toast and water.

“I’ll wake up Gracie and Rosie,” Adam said as soon as I’d finished eating.

While he went to wake the girls, I watched the salt and pepper shakers on the table and stroked the scratchy leaves of the now well-behaved zinnias. I tried to muster some idea of how we should deal with Gracie and Rosie. Adam had drunk as much of the Kool-Aid as me, maybe more. Had he been hallucinating, hearing what he wanted to hear? Suddenly, the effect of the LSD seemed to return. For a moment, I saw Adam not as a man but as a raw bundle of intentions that could shimmer off into any direction at any moment.

“Momma? You okay?” Rosie and Gracie stood in the doorway, their faces and pajamas rumpled.

I nodded and pointed at the chairs across the table from me.

“Sit.” Adam glared sternly at them. “We need to talk.”

They wilted under his gaze. Gracie hunched at the table. Rosie poked at some crumbs left on a saucer.

Adam paced behind them, shaking his head. “Leaving that Kool-Aid in the fridge was a stupid, stupid thing to do. Do you know what you put your mother through? Were we the only ones who didn’t know what was in the Kool-Aid?” With each pass back and forth behind them, Adam seemed larger. For a few crazed seconds, I thought he might actually be growing.

Gracie twisted around in her chair to look up at Adam, a bare apology on her face. “It was a mistake, Daddy. Everybody else knew! A friend brought all the Kool-Aid. Someone was supposed to bring the last pitchers out to the pasture.”

Gracie turned to me. “I’m so sorry, Momma. We didn’t mean to . . .”

“Your face, Momma.” Rosie held her hands up to her face and then swept them back from her cheekbones. “You didn’t look like yourself.” She reached across the table for my hand. “Are you okay, now?”

Adam paused for my reply.

“I’ll be okay. But it was really rough at one point.”

Adam leaned down between the two of them. “If you ever think your mother is in trouble, come get me.” His voice was low and dark. “After we realized there was something in the Kool-Aid, I left your mother alone while I went out to the fire to find out what we’d drunk. Then I stayed out there trying to track down the two of you.”

Both their heads jerked up.

“You had some, too?” Rosie said.

“Yes, we both had a couple glasses. Not much happened to me, but it was very different for your mother.”

They exchanged quick glances then stared up at Adam.

“Your mother and I will discuss this and decide what to do.” He began to pace again. The only sound in the room was the rhythm of his footsteps.

Speechless, I just shook my head. I was still stuck at his claim that “not much” had happened to him.

For a long, withering moment, the girls sat, frozen, staring at the table.

He came to a stop and exhaled loudly. “I have one more question.” His voice was brighter, his face softer.

The girls’ posture relaxed a fraction.

He tapped them each high on their breastbones. “Now tell me which of you did I hear last night at the fire?” He turned an expectant, almost tender smile from one to the other. I understood how badly he wanted them to be like him.

They glanced quickly at each other.

Rosie swallowed. “What are you talking about? We weren’t out there at the fire when you and Momma . . . I was on the front porch. That’s where I was when I heard Momma laughing and Jerrod came running out.”

Adam turned a confident face to Gracie and touched her back. She looked over her shoulder, her eyes darting up toward him. Her gaze held his for a second, then she returned her attention to the table, scanning its surface. “I wasn’t at the fire then, either.”

“She was with me,” Rosie said.

Adam stood motionless, squinting at the top of Gracie’s head. He rubbed his chest. A quick smile crossed his lips and I thought he might laugh as he usually did when he caught one of them in a lie. Instead, his eyes narrowed. He slapped his hand on the table. “The Kool-Aid was a stupid thing to do. You didn’t tell us what was in it. Now one of you is not telling us where you were and what you did last night. I was not hallucinating. One of you is lying!”

Gracie opened her mouth. Before she could speak, Rosie touched her arm. She flushed and pressed her lips together. I tried to recall when I’d seen that odd spasm of confusion and guilt that crossed her face.

“Go!” I waved them away. “Now. Go get dressed.”

I could almost smell their relief as they scrambled out of the chairs and down the hall.

Adam came around the table and knelt beside my chair. “I know I heard her.” The certainty in his words belied his puzzled frown.

I held his face in my hands. “It’s not like Gracie to lie, especially to you. You drank the Kool-Aid, too. Maybe you imagined it.”

He shook his head. “Time sped up. Things were a little brighter and funnier, the volume turned up. But I didn’t see or hear anything that wasn’t there. I know what I heard, Evelyn! I don’t understand why she won’t admit it.” He pulled me closer. His face looked no older than it had when we’d married.

“Don’t cry, Evelyn. Everything will be okay.”

“I’m not crying,” I muttered into his collar.

He laughed at my lie.

We kissed. He tasted different. Like water. But what resonated softly from his mouth and chest, pouring into me, felt ancient. Older than Addie.

Overwhelmed, I spent the rest of the day in a stupor, napping while the girls moved softly up and down the hall, taking care of the day’s chores. Adam brought me soup and crackers for supper.

After I’d eaten a second time, I finally felt coherent enough to discuss what we should do about the girls and the drugs. The power of the LSD awed me, and our daughters were so young and so delicate. I wanted to ban everything like it from the property.

But Adam disagreed. “If it is happening, we should know what’s going on. For me it wasn’t any stronger than marijuana, Evelyn.”

That shocked me into a momentary silence. The drug had hit me like a sledgehammer.

“No. No, Adam, we have to do something! We can’t just let them take these drugs. And they did something careless and stupid.” I felt my panic rise higher each time I said no.

“Evelyn, did you see their faces when I said the drug had little effect on me? I think it’s the same for them. I don’t think we can assume that any drug will affect them like it does their friends. Or you.”

I remembered what the doctor had said about the uniqueness of Adam’s brain and hoped they were like him in this. “Yes, Adam, they may be like you but their friends are not. And even if you think it’s fine for all of them to experiment, they should not have disguised drugs lying around. Plus, it’s against the law!”

He nodded his concession and sighed. “We need some rules. Still, we can’t control what our daughters do every minute of every day. And we’ve never tried to. We’ve always trusted them. Gracie is twenty and Rosie is seventeen. If we jerk the reins, especially now, Gracie will pull away and Rosie will run in the opposite direction. And Lil and Sarah will see them do it.”

“They are not horses, Adam.”

“They are horses. You’re a horse and I am a horse. We need to lead them, not take the responsibility from them.” Then, with a tender exasperation, he added, “Evelyn, trust me. I once trusted you with what the girls should do. Trust me now.”

A nauseating wave swept through me. I suddenly understood what I’d seen on Gracie’s face earlier that day—the same dissonance of shame and confusion I’d seen there after Jennie’s funeral, when I’d stilled her father’s voice.

My resistance collapsed. “Okay,” I whispered. “We won’t jerk the reins.”

T
he next night at dinner, Adam rapped his knife on his glass of iced tea. All four girls were immediately silent. Adam looked around the table at each of them, his gaze stopping at Gracie. “Girls, your mother and I trust you. We know you trust us to take care of you. We all have to take the responsibility for ourselves and for others. This is what your mother and I want from you.” He glanced at me and his voice grew firmer. “You will never have anything in this house again that does not look like what it is. No disguises. No more Kool-Aid and no funny brownies. Hallucinogens can be very powerful. If you are going to take them, you must do it at home and only rarely. Nowhere else. You must tell us if you or one of your friends is tripping. And if you get caught with anything illegal, we will not mortgage our home and livelihood to bail you out and pay a lawyer’s fees. Is that clear?”

There was a round of nods and “Yes, sir.”

“Gracie and Rosie, we have more to say to you after dinner.” Then Adam raised his glass as if for a toast. “Daughters, you have to know what a thing is and respect its power. You don’t fly the
Apollo
spacecraft to the corner store. That is waste, ignorance, disrespect. Respect the vessel you are in. And we will respect you. Evelyn?”

The tension in the girls’ faces had already softened to gratitude as they turned to me for my response. I had nothing more to add, but I vowed to myself that I would keep a much closer eye on all of the girls.

After dinner, Gracie and Rosie were contrite. Without complaint, they accepted our list of extra chores and restrictions.

A
couple of days later, while Adam was out on horseback, I approached Gracie as she folded clothes in the laundry room. All the girls had been more attentive to the housework since my accidental trip.

“Almost everybody else had some of the Kool-Aid that night,” she confirmed. “But I didn’t. Rosie either. We didn’t bother.” She shrugged. “I’ve tripped before. But I just felt good. The world was very pretty. And louder. That was all. It’s overrated if you ask me. I agree with Daddy.”

“Obviously it doesn’t affect everyone the same way. Your father wasn’t hallucinating. So what did he hear the night of the party?”

Gracie slowly picked up a big towel and folded it. For a long moment, she did not reply. Since the LSD, she and Rosie had treated me with an unnerving self-consciousness, as if they thought I might burst into flame at any moment. She squatted to retrieve more clothes from the dryer. “Momma, you remember when you told us the facts of life?”