The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope (47 page)

The wedding ceremony was flawless. The girls were all beautiful, especially Gracie in a long, white, cotton lace dress. Rosie set aside her overalls and donned a long dress to be the maid of honor. Lil and Sarah sang. In his dark suit, Hans looked a fetching combination of shocked and proud. He was clearly a good and reliable man. Adam and I had no qualms about him, and Hans’s family seemed to adore Gracie, but we cried at the wedding all the same.

After the short outdoor ceremony, we all ate dinner on long tables set up in the pasture. Hans, normally a rather reserved person, got drunk enough to serenade us in Dutch, then hug and kiss us all, proclaiming his love for everyone. Sarah, the official wedding photographer, captured all our goofy, happy grins. But there were no other surprises. No tainted Kool-Aid. Though I did detect the smoke of marijuana on a few of the guests.

The music went on until early in the morning. We made strong coffee and breakfast for the motley gang of stragglers who had camped all night. Then the honeymooners left for a month in Utrecht.

When they returned, Gracie was almost four months along and beginning to show. They continued living in Gracie’s small apartment, where they would stay until the lease ran out or the baby was born, whichever came first, then live with us for a few months after the birth while Hans completed his degree. We counted down the weeks.

Several times I had bouts of anxiety about the baby, though no nightmares as I’d had when I was pregnant with Gracie. Once I asked Adam, “What should we tell her? Should we warn her that he might not look right at first?” I was asking only about the baby, but as the words came out of my mouth, I thought of all her questions that would naturally follow.

My question seemed to surprise Adam. “I don’t think there’s really anything to warn her about. What good would it do? It would just upset her, like you were before she was born. The girls were all fine and our grandchildren will be, too. And that’s all that matters.”

I recalled my anxious examinations of the girls when they were little. My question suddenly seemed disloyal and overly fearful. But Adam’s face, as he answered, was devoid of anxiety, open and free of judgment. Something in his eyes then reminded me of Addie’s response, years before, when I’d asked her if it bothered her to have no past, no explanations or stories for herself. “I am,” she’d simply asserted. Unlike me, A. had never needed explanations or stories. It also occurred to me then, as it had in those first moments of Gracie’s life, that whatever Adam saw in his children or grandchildren, however unusual to anyone else, might seem natural and familiar to him.

I soothed myself with lighthearted warnings to Gracie and Hans about the particularly intense “newborn” look of Hope babies, but did not share my anxieties. In those last months, when Gracie grabbed our hands and pressed them to her swollen belly and asked, “Did you feel that? You feel it?” the thrill of that firm thump against my palm vanquished any residual worry. The ripple of our first grandchild turning in his mother’s womb was mortality and continuity. Adam was right. Nothing else mattered.

We loved Baby Adam at first sight. I had expected to love my grandchild, but couldn’t imagine it possible to love any other child with the intensity that I felt for the children who came from my own body. Yet, from the first touch, my love for Gracie’s son was immediate, so visceral it startled me, and equal to my love for her.

His features lacked the flat, slightly unformed quality our daughters had when they were born, but his skin looked uneven as theirs had. Exhausted from labor, Gracie cried when she first saw him. Hans tilted his new son in his arms so we could take our first good look. Adam lifted the blanket. Swollen testicles propped up a little stiff pod. Definitely a boy.

“At last, another doolywhacker in the family,” Adam laughed. Within hours, Baby Adam’s features smoothed. There was no discussion of tests or problems.

Baby Adam was only twenty-four hours old when Adam and I returned to the hospital. The two of us sat on the bed, flanking Gracie, while Hans took a much-needed coffee break in the cafeteria. Adam cradled the baby, and the three of us watched in fascination, cooing each time he sucked his fist or blinked or wiggled in his blankets. Round face, blond fuzz. Eyes blue as the waters of a Florida spring. Perfect, beautiful.

Then a nurse walked in. All bustle and efficiency, she whisked Gracie’s food tray aside and checked something on the chart. She glanced at Adam, smiled, and said, “You should give the baby back to your wife.”

Adam slid off the bed and came around it toward me, holding our grandson. I opened my hands to take the child.

“No.” The nurse laughed. “Your wife. It’s feeding time and your wife is down for breast-feeding. Grandma can’t do that.”

Adam flushed, then wordlessly turned and handed the baby to Gracie, who took him hungrily. He gave me one quick, confused glance, muttered something about coffee, and left.

“Some daddies don’t like to watch, but he’ll get used to it, honey.” The nurse fluffed a pillow and slid it under Gracie’s arm.

“It’s his first grandchild,” Gracie volunteered.

This registered on the nurse’s face. “Well,” she said.

As the nurse left, Lil and Sarah popped their heads in the door of the room. “We saw Daddy in the hall,” Sarah said. “Everything okay?”

I nodded and motioned for them to join us.

They sat enraptured on the edge of the bed, watching little Adam grunt as he audibly sucked his mother’s breast, his eyes shut tight. Gracie leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes. I walked over and looked out the hospital window. I kept seeing the look on Adam’s face, its rapid change from reverent pride to an expression I could not define. Embarrassment? Surprise? Shame?

“Are you okay, Momma?” Sarah asked.

I nodded and joined them again at the bedside.

“Why have you two always lied about Daddy’s age?” Gracie asked, her eyes still shut, her face serene and tired.

Lil looked to me for an answer. Sarah leaned across the bed, cupped the baby’s head, and smoothed his hair down.

“He doesn’t know how old he is,” I said. “We had to make up something for the courthouse when we got married.”

“How can he not know?” Lil asked.

“There were no records of his birth, and he didn’t really know his mother,” I replied.

“Still, how can he not know how old he is? He should at least know what year he was born? Didn’t his mother . . . ?” Lil continued.

Sarah put her hand on Lil’s. “Daddy’s special.” She glanced from her sister to me with that expression on her face that always made me wonder how much she knew and how she knew it.

Gracie raised her head and looked at me. “However special Daddy may be you must have come pretty close to actually robbing the cradle. He was weaned when you met him, right?”

“Yes, young lady, but he could barely feed himself.” It was true. For a second, I pictured Addie’s hand wavering as she reached for her first biscuit and blackberry jam.

Gracie laughed and gazed down at Baby Adam, who made a loud puppy-grunt of satisfaction at her breast. “Momma,” she said and patted the bed beside her where she wanted me to sit. She shifted the baby from one breast to the other, and the newly exposed nipple continued to spurt, the stream of milk landing on her knee.

Sarah and Lil leapt back, squealing and giggling.

The baby startled, lost suction, and then sneezed at the second breast now spraying milk into his face.

“I didn’t know they could squirt like that!” Gracie laughed.

G
racie, Hans, and the baby moved out to the ranch. Their apartment lease had expired, but Hans still needed to finish up his doctoral work. Soon, they would leave for the Netherlands to introduce the baby to his Dutch relations. Then they would live in Washington, DC, for Gracie’s Foreign Service training. After that, she would receive her first international assignment.

That summer and through the fall, Adam and I spent as much time with our daughter and grandson as we could. Adam postponed his usual trip to the mountains.

He did not say so, but he missed his time of solitude. I sensed a restlessness in him that went beyond the normal energy and distraction that comes with having a newborn and a new mother in the house. His tautness relaxed only when he held his grandson.

Late one night, I found Adam asleep in the recliner. Baby Adam, exquisitely new and tender, slept slack-mouthed, drooling on his grandfather’s chest. I knelt next to them and studied Adam’s face. I didn’t want to wake him then, but longed to touch him, to assure myself of his substance.

He opened his eyes, in that abrupt way he sometimes woke, without movement or speech.

I pressed my palm to his jaw, and then cupped the baby’s head with my other hand. “You two remind me so much of all those long nights when Rosie had colic,” I whispered. “You look exactly like you did then. You haven’t changed at all.” I felt an intense longing for the past. He and I would never again be a young couple with children. Yet, I could see on his face, on the very surface of his skin, that he could have all those things again.

He stroked my cheek. “The first time I opened my eyes, I fell in love with you. Before I knew what love was or who you were. Then, at night, I lay beside you absorbing you as a child does the world. I fell into you. And you met me in everything I wanted or did. It was a sweet, complete immersion to take your form. I didn’t expect it, or try to make it happen.”

I nuzzled his hand as he continued.

“With Roy Hope, I had to literally push myself into him. I stole from him. And it took two weeks.” Adam took a deep, slow breath and gazed toward the dark rectangle of windows. Past the reflection of the three of us, moonlight shone on the yard. Beyond our yard and the faint line of the road lay the darker area of gentle slopes and the sky. I could make out one star. I wondered if he saw the same one.

“Evelyn, it’s been years since you had to explain anything about me. But that will change soon. I look at men in their fifties and sixties. Older men, men who . . .” He glanced at me and, mentally, I finished his sentence: “Are your age.”

“Adam, I can’t keep the inevitable from happening.” I felt impotent.

“I know. I don’t expect you to. But we need a solution.” He looked down at our grandson on his chest. “Before he knows me like this. Before more people here mistake me for his—” He hesitated and then recovered. “I’m not sure what to do or what I can do, but give me time.”

I pressed my finger to his lips. “He has a perfectly wonderful Grandpa. And you have all the time I can give.”

Baby Adam moaned and rocked his head. Adam rubbed the baby’s back and his tiny body relaxed immediately. Then he pulled me toward him for a kiss. A tender, sweet kiss. I closed my eyes. His mouth was the world. Hope was a hard, dark seed in my chest.

I reached up, turned off the lamp, and then wedged myself into the recliner next to him. With our arms around each other and our grandson nestled between us, we fell asleep.

During the night, Gracie retrieved the baby and covered us with a blanket. As I woke, dawn light pinked the sky outside the window. My hips ached from being cramped in the recliner.

“Good morning.” Adam planted a kiss on my cheek and, in a single fluid motion, pushed down the footrest and stood up.

F
or the last time before Gracie’s departure, the girls performed together in a coffeehouse near campus. They all sang. Gracie and Rosie on guitar, Lil played the fiddle.

When Adam and I, the official baby-sitters, arrived, the café tables were already crowded with the familiar faces. Many, whom I could barely see in the low lights, greeted me and Adam by name. They cleared a center table for us as the women cooed over the baby, who slept in my arms.

The lights above the small, open stage brightened and the room quieted. Hans joined us at our table. Carefully, I slipped Baby Adam into his father’s arms. The girls, far more poised than during their first performances years before, began with a pretty song about bringing a baby home.

Through the whole set, the baby slept against his father’s chest, oblivious to the music.

For their last song, they put their instruments down and stepped to the edge of the stage, in front of the mics. An expectant hush swept across the tables and through the bar in the back of the room. Sarah, in her sweet, full soprano, sang a short song that ended with the line: “Mother Earth will swallow you. Lay your body down.” She was the smallest, only eighteen, and still bone-slender. She started the two-line song again, and, one by one, her sisters joined her. They sang in rounds until Gracie’s single voice finished. The girls stepped down off the stage and sang the two lines once more in unison. Their voices mingled and swelled. Again, I had that strange sensation of hearing not four but five voices as they sang. I thought of Jennie as I watched Lil close her mouth on the final syllable of that strange, short song.

In the second of silence that followed their voices, Adam took my hand and squeezed it, a strange blend of sorrow and pride on his face. He brought my hand up to his lips and I felt a tear.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the audience burst into applause and shouts for an encore. Little Adam woke with a start and cried out. Gracie held up Adam’s fiddle and leaned over the mic. “We’d like to call our dad up to help us on this one.” They started on a song I’d never heard before. The audience began to sing along on the refrain. Hans slipped the baby into my arms, then he dashed off to crouch near the girls and take pictures.

They danced and hugged each other onstage. Their friends in the front of the audience rose to their feet and joined them. Baby Adam wiggled, threatening to fuss. So I stood up and swayed, rocking him back and forth. Despite the volume of music, the baby had calmed again. Gracie spotted us and pressed her arm across her chest to keep her milk from letting down. For a moment, I felt a stillness and quiet amid the music as I sniffed the sweet baby odor and warmth of him, my first grandchild. I thought of the sadness I’d just glimpsed in my husband’s eyes, and Time, that cruel, raucous queen of sorrow, passed a hand over my heart.