The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope (53 page)

For the first time in months, I laughed out loud.

Everything in the recently remodeled kitchen shone new and modern. In the brightly tiled bathroom, I washed my hands and face. The iron-red clay swirled away from my dirty hands in the white porcelain sink.

After they fed me a hearty supper, I walked through the stable. The barn had been taken down the year before. Old furniture cluttered one of the far stalls. Dismembered motorcycles, Bud’s hobby, filled the stalls closest to the house. The air smelled of engine oil and dust.

When I pushed open the broad door at the far end of the stable, the air moved behind me. Something fluttered at the corner of my eye, and I turned just in time to see an owl, pale against the darkness of the trees, bank off to the left and disappear into the large oak that had been the base of the twins’ playhouse. I followed him and listened for a long time. In the last of the light, I heard only the traffic of the highway, distant and oceanic.

Something seemed to release in me, not a wild widow’s grief but a sharper, more specific need. All the things I’d never said about A., all my silent months since he’d been gone, everything I might have said at a funeral, beat inside me. I wanted to speak. I lusted for the truth. I wanted to, as Adam had always urged his riders, “true myself.”

I went inside to call Cole, the first person I had lied to.

We hadn’t seen each other in years, but he readily agreed to meet me the next day at the little pizzeria that had replaced Bun’s Café.

I arrived early and kept my eyes on the door. I let myself relish how right it felt to be telling Cole. Like me, he had known both of them. Many times he had sat across the supper table from Addie and then Adam. Now, finally, he would know who they were. He would also understand why I had left him so many years ago.

When I’d finished telling him, I would go straight back to Florida, round up my girls, and tell them. They would understand, I knew, and that rift I’d felt between us since their father went into the cave would be healed.

I felt light-headed, filled with a giddy anticipation. What I wanted to tell Cole felt enormous, but like a great weight poised on the summit of a hill, I had only to give it a gentle push and everything I knew about Adam would roll away from me, no longer mine alone. I squirmed restlessly on the bench seat while I waited. Was this how Adam had felt on the way to his mountain trips, the release of his feral howl waiting in his chest?

As Cole climbed out of his truck and strolled to the restaurant, the slight limp from the bad break so many years ago was barely noticeable. The lines around his mouth and across his forehead had deepened, but something of the boy remained in his smile. His brown hair had thinned. His sixty-plus years of life showed. In his thirties, he’d quit horse-breeding and gone to the mill. One of his sons had died of a drug overdose, and his wife, Eloise, of cancer.

While we ate our pizza, I told him what had happened to Adam, knowing he’d surely already heard. He told me about his wife and son as if I might not have heard. Then he spotted the bouquet of flowers I’d brought lying on the seat next to me. I held the bundled blossoms up for his inspection. “They’re for Jennie and Momma. Come with me to visit their graves. Please?” For a second, I was afraid he might refuse and I would have to tell him about A. in a crowded restaurant.

He smiled. A good, ordinary man. I wondered, as I had many times before, what my life would have been like with him. He saw how I studied his face; he touched my hand. “Of course, I’d be honored.”

I drove us to the cemetery. Cole chatted about his family’s land and the changes at the mill. The cadences of my birthplace ran through his voice. He stretched out his legs beside me and lapsed into a respectful quiet as we pulled into the graveyard. He waved his assent as I motioned that I would be back in a moment.

At their graves, I steeled myself against the weight of sorrow and all I had not said to them. Thankful that they had both heard Adam’s voice, I hoped they forgave me my silence. “Listen now if you can to my voice and help me find the right words,” I whispered over their graves.

Then I turned my attention to Cole. A relaxed concern filled his face as I returned to the car.

“I have something I need to tell you.” My heart pounded as I began to speak. He patted my hand. I started at the beginning, with Aunt Eva’s death and my move to the farm.

When I spoke of his first visit and our inexperienced sex, he smiled shyly, as he had then. “I imagine we’ve both learned a bit since, over the decades.”

I understood again my original attraction to him. When I mentioned finding Addie, his face brightened with interest. He listened intently to my brief recitation of her transformation, his head tilted to one side, his gaze resting on the tombstones in front of us, an odd quizzical expression on his face. I wondered for a second if he had a hearing problem. Then he said, “Buried, covered in mud in that storm.” His tone was level, a simple summary of what I’d said.

I nodded, encouraged, then stumbled on, uncertain that I could explain the depths of her change. He said nothing, but sat very still, listening, and did not interrupt.

He gave me a wry, sideways smile when I mentioned his broken leg. He adjusted his feet under the dashboard. “I still regret that.”

What could he have to regret, I wondered.

“That horse in that storm. I still feel it every winter.” He rubbed his leg. “But that’s nothing compared to what poor Addie must have been through before you found her.”

I couldn’t read his head shake—indulgence or dismissal? The inside of the car seemed too dark, too close. I wished we were outside in the full light, where I could see his face better.

I took a deep breath and plunged on. “She’s the reason I couldn’t be with you. She and I were very close . . . we were . . .” I tripped before the word “lovers.”

“Well, that does explain things.” For the first time since I’d mentioned Addie, he looked directly at me. “I’m not that surprised. But that was a long time ago. You went on to have a good marriage and all those pretty girls. You did fine. Me, too.”

“Cole, Addie wasn’t like us. She had an unusual voice. That’s why she was so good with the horses.”

He pointed his finger in agreement. “You’re right about that, she did have an amazing way with them. And a good singing voice, too.”

“No. No, I’m not talking about her singing voice.” Despite my prayer, I had no words to explain. “She had another way of . . . At night, with me . . .” I felt my face redden. “When she—”

He reached out and took one of my hands, lowering it to the console between us. “This is getting interesting—very interesting. But, Evelyn, you don’t owe me any explanations.”

“Cole, I want you to know. You have to know. You have to understand.” I wiped my face, sat up straighter, and began again.

He leaned back in his seat and listened to me through my description of Roy Hope. He nodded when I told him about finding the note from Addie and waiting for her to reappear. “Some people just take off and don’t look back.” He shook his head.

“But she did come back. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

He was still smiling, as I began to explain Addie’s transformation into Adam. His face registered greater surprise. His smile vanished. A muscle flinched in his jaw. “Look, I know Adam did something crazy at Jennie’s funeral. God knows, people talked about that for years. But this is even crazier. You’re trying to tell me they were the same person?”

I floundered and my heart pounded. I realized I’d been unconsciously counting on that one time everyone had heard Adam. He had been exposed then; everyone who’d heard him would know in their bones how extraordinary he was, and would be able to understand everything else about him. But I’d forgotten Cole had left the funeral early.

For one second, I hoped he might still be with me. I began to sweat. “Yes, that’s what I am telling you, Cole.” The timbre of a plea clung to my words.

A grimace flickered across his face, followed by a small, uncomfortable smile.

“Evelyn, honey, I know Addie had a gift with horses, a special way of talking to them that was . . . was . . .” he waved his hands as if trying to scoop the words out of the air. “Unusual. Lord knows it was amazing that Adam had the same gift and showed up when he did. But he came to Clarion because he’d heard of how good she was with the horses. You said so yourself then. He may have replaced her in your heart, but . . .”

He looked down at my hands pressed together as if in prayer and shook his head rapidly. “That doesn’t make Addie and Adam the same person. A woman can’t turn herself into a man.” He wrapped his hands around mine and I felt myself shrivel. “Listen to me, Evelyn. You’re still in shock. You can’t let the grief get to you. I know when Eloise passed, I thought I would go crazy.”

We stared at each other for a long moment.

Shame flooded me. The impotence of not being believed crushed me. I had no recourse. No proof.

He leaned closer, trying to catch my eye. “Evelyn, do your girls know you’re here? Do they know you drove up here by yourself?”

I withdrew my hands from his and drove him back to the pizzeria. Then I returned to Florida, my shoulders and neck aching from hours of driving, stunned by the dual loss, by the final glance of pity on Cole’s face. My throat closed.

He was the only person I ever tried to tell this story to.

B
y the time I was in Florida, I had decided that, if cowardice once again prevented me from attempting the truth, I could, at least, offer my daughters closure. A memorial for their father required no validation beyond what they already believed.

I called Sarah first. “I want you to make something for me, for your father.” I described the simple fired-clay plaque I wanted.

“Good. I’ve been waiting for you to ask,” she said gently.

Then I had to go swimming. I needed to cleanse myself of the memory of doubt and pity I’d seen in Cole’s eyes. I wanted to wash away my mother’s shame and the weakness and fear that made me like her. In the water, I would be with Adam and I would be like him—no past, free of explanations.

Families and small children filled the park surrounding Devil’s Spring. The smells of grilling meat and sunscreen hung heavy in the air. In the cold water, families shouted and splashed around me. Bright, inflated toys bounced against me as I waded into the shallows. I put on my mask, snorkel, and fins, glad to have children nearby as counterbalance to the blue void below the surface.

I swam past them and circled the mouth of the spring, peering down on the place where he had taken me. The place that had taken
him
. Bubbles of air escaped from the azure hole and a guide rope disappeared into it. As I dove lower, underwater silence overcame the sounds of playing children. The spring mouth loomed, a vivid, continuously deepening blue. I understood Adam’s attraction. The spring seemed placid, not the menace I had imagined there for months.

Then I surfaced.

M
onths later, I stood near the same spot surrounded by my daughters, our hearts on the same shore again. Holding hands, we waded knee-deep into the water. The girls’ long skirts floated around them, except for Rosie, who was in full dive gear. Lil carried her father’s fiddle. Little Adam bounced and burbled on his mother’s hip as we passed the memorial plaque hand-to-hand, admiring the terra cotta, the color of the Carolina clay, and the pale, crackled blue glaze. Clearly carved into the surface in Sarah’s square, neat calligraphy were the words from Lil’s and Adam’s favorite Whitman poem: “Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery . . . In memory of A. Hope.”

Gracie, Lil, Sarah, and I watched Rosie and one of the springs dive crew disappear down into the spring, to place the plaque in the cave, just outside the grate that now barred divers from the vein that led to the collapsed chamber. Lil raised the fiddle and began to play “Amazing Grace.”

I remembered the silt glittering around me and Adam when we had been in the cave together, the water vibrant between us as his hand marked a rhythm I could not hear. For the first time, I allowed myself to imagine him there alone underwater, his feral howl radiating, restless and joyful, through the land he loved. And, for the first time, I considered that the land had once again answered him, not with rhythm but with a terrible embrace, their duet now airless and unending.

I kept my eyes on the guide rope, not completely at ease with the thought of Rosie so deep in the earth. I studied the serious, expectant faces of my daughters. For a moment, I had the notion that he was calling to them from underground and they were listening, able to hear him as I never had.

After what seemed far too long, Rosie broke through the water, her thumb up and her short hair clinging to her head. “It is done.”

We returned to the ranch for the official memorial. A small stage was set up in the backyard. Beside it stood Sarah’s latest painting. Adam filled the large canvas. Pictured from the waist up and nude, his arms stretched out, his fingers spread. He looked directly at all of us. A familiar expression filled his face, relaxed and curious, as if he waited for a reply from someone he knew well. A plate-size asterisk radiated from his chest, white at its edge, cobalt in the center. The likeness was strikingly realistic in all respects but his hair. She had given him auburn hair.

When the girls sang, I found I could no longer pull their individual voices loose from the braid of their harmonies. Only when one of them took the lead could I tell who or how many were singing. There might have been five voices, there could have been six.

One by one, neighbors, cowboys, musicians, divers, hippies, and horsemen stepped up to the microphone with some story or song for Adam. People whom Adam had touched surrounded me. Their voices buoyed me. Neither Ray the veterinarian, nor Manny had ever again mentioned what they’d heard from Adam the day the stallion attacked the mare, but Ray paused during his praise of Adam’s horsemanship and his eyes sought mine in the crowd. Then, with a nod, he seemed to find the word he was seeking: uncanny.