The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope (45 page)

“Yes, of course.” I frowned at her obvious attempt to change the subject.

“Well, you told us we could ask you anything about sex. I want you to know that I’ve always appreciated that. I know girls whose mothers never told them anything.” She paused to fold another towel. “But you also said that we all have a right to privacy and some things should remain private. We could ask you anything about sex as long as it wasn’t about what you had done, personally. And you promised not to ask us the same sort of questions, right?”

I nodded, curious.

She continued only after she saw me agree. “You said it was your duty to make sure we were using protection and you had a right to ask us about that, but the rest was our private lives. You also said you wanted us to tell you if any man ever hurt us.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I said. You called it ‘limited disclosure.’ ”

She smiled when I quoted her. “That was the deal.” She studied my face as she closed the dryer. “So the night you and Daddy drank the Kool-Aid, I was well protected and nobody was hurting me. But, like you with Daddy, I probably wasn’t as quiet as I should have been.” She glanced away and I heard the slight challenge in her tone.

“Oh.” I recalled the perfect, long-resonating sound of her father’s climax with me the night before and understood why she’d blushed when Adam confronted her. I also realized, with relief, that I had been wrong. Her denial had nothing to do with me or what happened after Jennie’s funeral.

Gracie ignored my red face and squeezed past me with her basket of folded laundry. “Mom, I’m going to be a junior next year. I really need my own apartment. I think I’ve found a good place, cheap. Close to campus.”

That night, Adam came in late from the stables. He’d been checking on a mare who would foal soon. He undressed in the dark, and spooned up close behind me.

I repeated everything Gracie had said earlier.

He laughed, flipped on the bedside lamp, and sat up. “Of course, that’s why she lied! Sex is the one time it’s so difficult not to . . . Evelyn, I heard a burst of pure joy from her. As if something enormous swam past me in a flash. Something powerful and beautiful whipping by. Then a long bubbling wake of warmth. I could almost see it.” He shivered and wiped his eyes. “What’s his name?”

“You really think I’d ask for details at the end of that conversation?”

“Well, no, but that’s okay. We’ll hear more about him, I’m sure. He made her very happy.”

I’d expected at least a little paternal bluster about his daughter having sex. He was, after all, a man. Instead, he placed my hand on his chest and drew me into his arms.

“You’re not surprised, are you?” I asked.

“Oh, she surprised the hell out of me that night.” He turned his face sideways to look down into my face, smiling at the memory of her voice. “But I’ve always felt it was a possibility.”

I nodded against his chest.

“I’ve heard other things,” he said. “Once in the middle of the night when she was dreaming, Sarah muttered something—funny, almost like a warble of surprise, but she wasn’t speaking, her mouth was shut. And Rosie with the horses—there’s something going on with her since we moved to Florida. She uses a voice with them. But I’ve never heard anything close to what I heard the other night.”

All these years, I’d been listening and heard nothing. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He didn’t answer, but I saw the response on his face, the memory of Jennie’s funeral. Again, I felt the crushing weight of that day and what I had asked of him.

Regret choked me.

“Evelyn, it’s okay. You were right. It is a powerful thing. For a long time I thought they were not vocal like me. But I decided to let them discover it in their own way if they were—
I
have to respect the vessel they are in. I’m happy to let them come to it in their own way. And they will. We don’t have to push anything. We can leave Gracie with her privacy.” He searched my face. “You’ve never heard anything from Rosie?”

I shook my head dumbly.

“Hers may be too high-pitched for you to hear. It’s like a whistle. But if you watch closely, you’ll know. The dogs and horses turn to her a split second before she speaks and sometimes they respond when she’s given no obvious signal.”

“This has been going on and I didn’t know?”

“No one’s been keeping anything from you, Evelyn. I think there are times Rosie’s not even aware of what she’s doing.”

All this time I’d spent with him and I still did not know him. One thing I was certain of: he was without guile and incapable of deception.

It saddened me to think of how he must long for company in his unique gifts. I understood that desire and its insidious burdens, for I had so often craved company in my longing to share what I knew of him. I wondered how much a similar desire had motivated him to take on my form so many years ago.

T
he world of my daughters seemed so different. Or rather, I had begun to feel my difference from them more keenly. All mothers feel that way to some degree as their children become adults, but I harbored those other questions about who they were and what they were capable of. But I began to realize Adam was right. The answers to those questions would be
theirs,
not mine, and they might carry the gifts of their father privately.

For the rest of that summer, all the girls spent more time at home. They sang together in the evenings. Their voices, carrying through the house or across the back porch to the garden, always filled me with a calm tenderness.

In the fall, Gracie moved into her own apartment, a large wood-frame house near downtown that she shared with a menagerie of hippies. Within months, Rosie was accepted at the University of Florida, in pre-vet studies. She followed Gracie, the center of her world shifting away from the ranch.

Sarah painted and Lil read her fantasy novels. Soon enough, they also had parties with their friends in the pasture. They both decided not to wear bras or shave their legs. But they were there for supper every weeknight. Their grades were good, their eyes clear, and their friends respectful.

Lil turned fifteen the following spring. Her birthday seemed to incite a restlessness in her. A new name began to pop out any time she discussed school: Bryce. I recognized the cadences of infatuation in her voice, but there was something else, something not said. I asked Sarah about the boy, but she’d never met him. He was a new kid at school.

Sarah and I were in the living room when Lil and the boy pulled into the driveway. She peered out the side of the window. “Incest,” she hissed just as the front door opened and they strolled in.

Not exactly identical, Lil and the boy were certainly strikingly similar. The same shade of red curly hair, Lil’s shorter by only an inch or two. The same green eyes, the same tall lankness. His nose was larger, his eyes closer together. Adam, who had joined us, recovered first and offered his hand. The boy’s gaze darted past our surprised faces, and then swept the room as Lil introduced him.

Moments later, Adam and I stood in the kitchen and watched the two of them saunter to the stable to meet Rosie and the horses. Adam leaned against the sink, hunched forward for a better view. “I don’t like him,” he said. “He looked away every time I spoke to him.”

Lil laughed and leaned toward the boy, letting her hair sweep toward him.

“There’s nothing we can do,” I said.

“Sarah’s right. It looks incestuous.”

“She lost her twin. She likes him because he looks like Jennie and a lot of the people on my momma’s side of the family. Every red-headed, freckled one of us,” I said.

“He reminds me of Roy Hope. He wants her, but he doesn’t see who she is.”

“You got your skin and face off of Roy Hope. And other parts.” I patted his crotch.

“Your point?”

“She’s getting something off of this boy that she needs now. That’s all she sees—what she needs. I’ll bet she’s not seeing him any more than he sees her,” I said.

Adam glanced quickly at me, as if to speak, but said nothing, then turned his attention back to Lil and the boy.

I continued. “I know she’s vulnerable, but I trust her heart—her eventual heart. If we take the offense now, she’ll take the defense.” I realized that this was exactly the argument he had made after we drank the LSD Kool-Aid. “She’s infatuated and working through something. Let’s just keep our eye on it—on her. We can do that. She still lives here.”

“Okay. But I don’t want him hurting her.”

Before they reached the stable door, Lil took the boy by the shoulders, turned him to face her, and kissed him. I recognized that certainty and directness.

“Shit,” I said. “She’s in love.”

Adam nodded and turned away from the window.

Within a few months, Bryce took up with another girl and avoided all contact with Lil. She sequestered herself in her room to write poetry, refusing to come out even for meals. With only two daughters at home, her withdrawal shifted the balance of the house.

“Let her be,” Adam told me when I insisted she come to the supper table.

But he stopped by her room each night on his way to the table.

“I’m not hungry, Daddy,” she told him.

After days of this, Sarah arrived home from visiting one of her middle-school pals and announced, “I have had enough of Lil’s broken-hearted moping. Time for a cure.” Ceremoniously, she set a large, obviously heavy box on the floor. Gleaming gold satin with geometric designs covered the box and lid. “A surprise for later. Don’t ask.”

Gracie and Rosie showed up for dinner that night. Still, with all five of us at the table, Lil declined to come out of her room.

With a nod to Sarah, Adam said, “Let’s go.” He scooped up the pot of chili and tilted his head in the direction of Lil’s bedroom. Rosie, Gracie, and I loaded up, taking the rest of dinner with us. Sarah followed with the mysterious box.

Lil remained sullen and quiet as we set up the meal on the floor of her bedroom. No protest, no acknowledgment. But she couldn’t resist all three sisters. By the end of the meal, she joined in the conversation, asking Rosie about vet school, telling us about her new math teacher.

After we’d eaten, we pushed the dishes out of the way and Sarah sat the box in the middle of our circle. She took out three objects, each nestled inside a larger one, and carefully unwrapped them.

“Singing bowls!” she announced with a flourish of her hand. But they were not like bowls for serving food. They were cylindrical, their sides straight and high, the largest about eighteen inches in diameter. They were made from opaque glass, each one a slightly different creamy shade. Light from the hall shone through them, leaving one side shadowed. Carefully, she arranged them in a triangle on the floor.

Gracie smiled up at Lil. “You have to be near them.” She patted the floor next to her. Lil shrugged and obliged.

Sarah took out two mallets. She held on against the rim of the largest bowl and moved it slowly around the inside edge. A tone reverberated, vibrant and soothing, through the room. I almost jumped from the shock; I’d never heard anything so similar to Adam’s voice. I glanced quickly at Adam, who sat across from me, between Rosie and Sarah. But his eyes were closed, his head rolled back. The girls leaned in closer as Sarah picked up a second mallet and swirled it gently in the smallest bowl. The timbre and volume changed. Adam’s hand moved up his chest. Lil smiled, open-mouthed in surprise. The first interest I’d seen on her face in days.

Adam sighed and shivered, his eyes still closed. The girls inched closer to the bowls. Sarah concentrated. Her breathing was deep and measured as she pressed the mallets slowly, around and around, deeper then higher in the bowl, varying the tone and resonance. Without looking up, she motioned to a third mallet sitting next to her and said, “Gracie, yours.”

When the third mallet touched the middle bowl, I heard the sharp intake of breath around me. I felt the harmony in my solar plexus, a sweetness that made me smile. The tone of the three bowls seemed to mingle into a peak, then separate in a broad pattern. As it changed, rising and falling, my family moaned around me. Lil had slumped back against the footboard of her bed. Rosie stared, unfocused, at the bowls, her hand on her belly. Lil blinked, and her eyes rolled back in her head as her back arched slightly, then dropped again. Her face softened. Adam exhaled sharply. Gracie lurched forward in a small spasm and clutched her chest with her free hand. Something I could not see or feel moved through them like a wave, orgasmic.

Sarah moved the mallets lower in the bowl, Gracie followed, and the sound sobered, changed rhythm. She looked around at us. “More?”

“Yes,” Adam whispered.

I nodded.

Sarah looked at Lil, who mumbled, “Please. Yes, more.”

Sarah picked up the tempo again. “Stay there and a little faster,” she said to Gracie. And the sound moved from somber to ticklishly pleasing. Then the room exploded. Adam, Lil, and then Rosie burst into guffaws and rolled on the floor. Sarah bit her lip in concentration. I went limp and happy, leaning back against Lil’s closet door, my head warm. But Adam and each of the girls suddenly sucked in their breath, then exhaled explosively, wiggling as if being violently tickled. Tears streaked their faces. Lil pounded the floor and clutched her father’s arm. Rosie tried to stand to do God knows what, but couldn’t make it up off the floor. Gracie kept her mallet moving, but held one hand over her mouth as if to stifle her laughter. A tear slid down her face and into her bowl. Sarah stared down, mouth open, eyes big, and her pupils dilated.

The sound filled the room, and the strange St. Vitus dance of giggles, guffaws, and snorts continued around me. My head and chest hummed with a tender, amazing joy. But what I felt was clearly not the fantastic joke they all seemed to hear.

Then, abruptly, part of it cut out. I opened my eyes. Gracie, a wide, foolish grin on her face, held both hands up in the air.

The sound dropped and stopped. Sarah put the mallets down gently and rubbed her arms. Their laughter bubbled down to whimpers, then exhausted sighs.

“Wow,” one of them moaned thickly.