Four
Adam
The morning sun shone bright and unseasonably warm, though it was still winter, with no sign of buds on the trees yet. Addie and I had just come from Sunday dinner at Momma’s. Logy from overeating, I chose an easy but prickly task for the afternoon—pruning dead stems off the blackberries. I perched high up on the bank where it began its drop from the road to the railroad track, my clippers in hand, when I heard whistling and then the crunch of shoes on the gravel skirting of the tracks below.
A man’s voice called out, “Hello! There a place around here I could get a drink of water?”
I glanced down, expecting to see one of the local boys, but a stranger peered up at me. The brim of his hat shaded his eyes. Too nicely dressed to be a hobo, he held a small, battered suitcase and a wrinkled, grease-stained brown paper sack in one hand. He needed a shave. His jacket was slung over one shoulder and his sleeves rolled up.
“Ma’am, is there a place nearby where I could get a drink of water?” he repeated. “That’s all I want is a drink of water.”
He pushed his hat back farther on his forehead, exposing his face. He was not much older than I. A lock of dark hair fell forward over his brown eyes.
“If you go down the track about another fifty feet there’s a path up the bank. Be careful you don’t get scratched by the blackberry briars. There’s a pump in the back of the house.” I pivoted and swept my hand toward the house.
“Thank you very much.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him climb the bank. His shoulders and head were visible above the brambles. I judged him to be six foot two, maybe three. He reached the crest and paused. Silently, I pointed toward the house. He grinned, the grin of a man used to smiling at women, and continued. I followed, watching his shoulders move under his cotton shirt.
He set his suitcase down immediately and took a long drink from the ladle at the pump. After a second deep drink, he bent lower, scooping up the cold water with his hands, and rubbed it on his face and into his hair. Addie leaned out the back door, her arms folded across her chest.
The stranger pulled a white handkerchief out of his pocket and slowly dried his face, letting us watch him. He carefully folded his handkerchief and put it back in his pocket before regarding us.
“You two must be twins?” he said after he had taken us both in.
I shook my head.
“Sisters then?”
We both shook our heads. “Cousins.” I said.
He glanced quickly from me to her. Addie nodded.
“Must surely be more to it than that,” he said, grinning again and combing his wet fingers through his hair. A current went through me; I wanted to have my hand in his hair. Then he held out his hand and announced, “Roy Hope from Kentucky. On my way home from Jacksonville, Florida.”
Addie and I introduced ourselves.
He leaned back against the watering trough, resting his hips on the lip of it. “I should be sitting in a train on my way to Kentucky instead of walking the tracks. But some lucky bum is sitting in my place.”
We nodded our interest and he launched into his story. “I’m not a mining man and where my people come from in Kentucky is nothing but mining. I was gonna make something of myself. Jacksonville, Florida, seemed to be the place for that, but it didn’t work out that way. So I’m heading back home for a while. Then I think I’ll go out West.”
I studied him—the width of his wrists, the span of his neck where it joined his shoulder. He turned his hat in his hands, smoothing the brim as he told us about his brother in Jacksonville, who fought with his wife, and their baby, who woke up at all hours of the night. His opportunities and savings that had dwindled.
“The Florida beaches, though.” He whistled his amazement. “Clean white sand, fine as powder.” He rubbed his fingers and thumb together and laughed. “And on Saturday afternoons, girls. Girls everywhere in bathing suits.”
He was even younger than I had first thought—early twenties, maybe his late teens. He had not been in the war.
I watched his beautiful mouth and straight white teeth while he relayed the details of being robbed of a suitcase and train ticket when he napped in the Charlotte depot. “So, I’m broke now, with nothing left but this.” His foot nudged the little suitcase at his side. “Nothing to do but hoof it home.” He glanced at the chopping block. “If you ladies could use some help around here, I’d be happy to split some wood for my supper . . .” He paused and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket.
Addie looked at me and raised an eyebrow as he bent his head to light his cigarette. I smiled at her and she offered him some supper. I handed him the splitting maul and a wedge.
While Addie cooked, I stood at the kitchen door watching Roy split wood. She came and stood behind me. “You just gonna stand around and watch him?”
“There are worse things a girl could do,” I said.
“And I imagine you are thinking of at least one of them.”
“I don’t think he’s real smart,” I answered, then pitched my voice up into that high scratchiness of Granny Lou’s and quoted what she had said that day at church when she saw the Clemson boy making eyes at me and Addie. “He’s a fine example of a man. A woman could get good, healthy children off of him.” I giggled.
Addie snorted back at me and I repeated the phrase, pointing at him. I pulled her closer so she could get a better view. He put the maul down and headed toward the outhouse.
“Look at him, Addie. He is well-built: good shoulders, strong arms. Good-looking, too. For once, Granny would be right.”
Addie watched him till he disappeared behind the outhouse door. “Yep, she would be right about this one.”
Later, when we sat down to dinner, he ate quietly, all of his attention on his food. The lamplight made the slight cleft in his chin more apparent. He wiped his plate clean with the last of the corn bread as Addie and I cleared the serving bowls off the table.
Roy pulled a flask out of his back pocket. “You ladies mind?”
We shook our heads. He unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow, tilting his head back, exposing the movements of his throat.
When I came near the table where he sat smoking and drinking, I could smell the warm liquor on his breath and feel the heat of him. His situation grew darker and more dramatic the more he drank. By the time he finished the whiskey, he was railing against the mines, the unfriendliness of Jacksonville, and his sister-in-law. Even through my stupor of attraction, I could hear the bitterness in his voice. He caught my eye, tilted his shoulder my way when I passed by.
We let Roy sleep on the couch in the parlor. In the morning, he did not seem to be in much of a rush to leave. Addie and I discussed things and decided to offer him some money for his labor—not much, just two dollars, but it would have taken him pretty far back then. We worked him hard, dragging in some fresh-fall logs for firewood and replacing some boards on the back porch. In the afternoon, the three of us mucked the barn. All day I was aware of where he was and what he was doing.
After supper, when I returned from the outhouse, he stood on the back porch, his cigarette glowing in the dark. I passed him as I went up the steps and he pulled me toward him. His breath smelled of moonshine.
“Evelyn is a pretty name,” he said. “I’ve never known a girl named Evelyn.” He traced the line of my lower lip with his index finger, and I felt it all the way down my body. My hips curled involuntarily up and toward him.
“I can see it’s just the two of you out here all alone,” he whispered close to my face. Then he took my lower lip between his teeth and bit very gently, pressing his hips tight against me. I shuddered, and then pushed him away. It was too much, too fast.
Roy stumbled backward a step. “Go on then,” he said and patted me on the rear as I walked away from him. “I don’t need it no how.”
I rushed inside, trembling. Not from fear or anger, but from what I wanted to do.
“You all right?” Addie asked and took me by the wrist.
“I’m all right, but he’s getting pretty drunk. Did you show him where the whiskey was, the pints of shine Uncle Otis left us?”
“No, he must have found that on his own. I guess he figured we weren’t paying him enough. I’ll make sure he doesn’t get more than one.”
“Good. I’m going to bed,” I told her.
From where I lay trying to calm myself and sleep, I heard them—at first very faintly, then louder when they came inside into the parlor. The trace of his touch lingered on my lips.
I must have fallen asleep. I woke sometime later and reached across Addie’s side of the bed. My hand slid over cool, empty sheets. I heard some noises, faint voices, but no recognizable words. I tiptoed softly down the hall. The noises from the parlor became rhythmic as Addie’s voice rose in excitement. My heart jolted, then clattered in my chest till I could hardly hear. Numbly, I took the last steps up to the parlor door. Through a crack of the door, I saw the middle of Addie’s bare back, the curve of her behind, and, below her, the tops of Roy’s thick, open thighs. She moved up and down on him. I watched, my fist jammed into my mouth, the burn from my belly to my crotch doubling me over. Then they slid from the couch to the floor. He shifted to the top. I could see only his feet sticking out past the couch. Their rhythm increased until he sputtered and groaned to a stop.
I crept backward down the hall as quietly as I could, crawled into bed, and curled up under the covers.
A few minutes later, Roy began to snore and I felt Addie slipping into the bed behind me. I pretended to be asleep, but Addie snuggled up and laid her arm across my waist. “I know you’re awake,” she said.
She smelled of his sweat, of whiskey, and of sex.
“Why did you do it?”
“Because I never had. It’s good. It’s different, too. Is it something you thought I would never do?”
“I just never thought of you with a man.”
“You just thought of yourself with a man? I saw how you watched him. He’s not as nice—not as good a person—as you.”
“He smells like whiskey.”
“I know.” She pulled me closer. “You want to marry and have children, right?”
“Yes, but not with someone like him.”
“I know.” She kissed me until the tightness in my belly eased, then reached around my waist, touching the sweet center of me until I climaxed and slept, dreaming she was in and around me, her voice humming through my bones.
I woke before dawn to find the bed empty again. The first thing one of us usually did when we woke was light a lantern. But I didn’t stop for that. I searched the house. Moonlight through windows was enough to tell me: Roy, his suitcase, his hat, jacket, and shoes were gone. Barefoot and still in my nightgown, I lit a lantern and ran to the outhouse, then the barn. Nothing but surprised livestock. Becky and Darling neighed when I climbed up to the hay loft.
Outside, I scanned the horizon, hoping for any sign of them. I called Addie’s name into the cold predawn air.
They were gone.
Mechanically, I dressed and forced myself to eat. I listened for their return as I finished the morning feeding and milking. Mid-morning, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table, hollow and stupid as I waited for them to return. Then I saw that the big peach-shaped cookie jar where we kept our egg-and-butter money had been moved. The money was gone, all fifty-three dollars.
I threw the jar against the kitchen wall, shattering it into a spray of pink and green shards. I regretted it immediately. The jar had been Aunt Eva’s. I cried as I picked up the pieces. Twice, I cut myself.
I checked the closet and the bureau drawers. Some of our clothes were missing, too. I flung everything off the bureau, stripped the closet, and emptied every drawer. I collapsed on the heap of clothes and wept. I kept going over everything that happened since Roy Hope had walked up and asked for a drink of water, but I couldn’t imagine why she’d gone with him.
Eventually, I unfolded myself from the mess of clothes and got up to finish my work for the day. Stunned and puzzled, I tried to think of anything I’d ever seen in her that would lead her to disappear, abandoning me. That was what her fictional mother had done, just disappeared after a boy. That was all I could think of. Was she doing what her “mother” had done, following a fictional lead? Why had I lied? I banged my head against the barn wall.
The house and barn seemed too quiet without her. I consoled myself by giving Darling a long combing. Then I moved on to Becky and the cows. Numb, I watched my hands move over their haunches and withers. Hands identical to hers.
No, hers were identical to mine.
I went outside to the place past the apple tree where I had found her, knelt there, and pressed my hands to the ground. Nothing. No depression, no puddle, no warmth. The red earth was its simple mysterious self, fertile and relentlessly dumb. My innocence shamed me.
That evening, as I picked up the clothes I had hurled around the bedroom earlier, I felt the crumple of paper. On a small brown bag torn open and flat was a note in Addie’s handwriting, sloppily written, but clear: “Back as soon as I can. 2 weeks? I love you. —Addie.”
I headed straight back outside and lay down on the same spot. The sky stretched endless and blue above me. Peripherally, I saw the fields, the apple tree, and the barn. This had been Addie’s view when I pulled her out of the ground. She was coming back! But what was she doing? Why leave me for two weeks? How was that love? Still, she was coming back. I spread my arms and moved my legs, making an angel in the dirt.
Kept busy with chores, both hers and mine, I managed to pass the rest of the week. I checked the road and the tracks every chance I got, hoping Addie would appear. Her absence loomed everywhere. I’d lost my talent for being alone. I was unmoored, awash in recollections of Addie’s first days with me. In her absence, her extraordinary qualities seemed even more present.
That time of year my family did not come up to help unless they heard from me. But Addie and I often went into town to run errands on Saturday. On Sundays we met them for church. They would be expecting us. Saturday morning, I walked down to Mildred’s to call Momma. Rita answered and I told her that I wasn’t feeling well, and we wouldn’t be coming to town. No, we weren’t that sick, just that time of the month. We’d be okay. We had everything we needed.
Sunday evening I heard steps on the back porch and ran to the door, flinging it open. Cole, his hand raised to knock, laughed in surprise. Then, quickly, his face dropped, mirroring my disappointment. I stood speechless in the open door, trying to recover.
“I’m sorry . . .” Cole stuttered. “You and Addie . . . your momma said you weren’t at church.”
“Everything’s okay. I’m not feeling well . . . Can you come back later?” I pulled the door nearly shut.
“You don’t look so good. Is there anything I can do? Where’s Addie?”
“She went away on a trip, Cole.”
“A trip? Where?” He stepped up closer to the door.
“I can’t talk now. You need to go. Please.” I didn’t want him to see me cry.
“Wait, Evelyn.” He slipped his hand around the door frame. “Is Addie okay?”
“There was this boy. She left with him. There was a note. That’s all I know.”
He shook his head in disbelief, his face screwed up in concern. “Evelyn, let me . . .”
I waved him away and bit my lip to keep from crying. “It’ll be okay, Cole. She said she would be back. I know she will. I’ll let you know if I need anything. Okay?”
He nodded and took a step back, but didn’t seem convinced.
“Thanks for coming by.”
He nodded again and walked away, his shoulders hunched and his hands jammed down in his pockets.
The next weekend, I didn’t bother calling Momma’s. Suppertime Saturday, Momma showed up. She held a plate of scones wrapped in wax paper when she got out of the truck. Immediately, she knew something was wrong. “Evelyn?” she called as she came into the kitchen.
I had prepared answers to the questions about Addie if anyone else came by. Addie was on another mountain trip. Or she was out on a long horseback ride. But as soon as Momma set the scones down on the kitchen table and turned to me, I started to cry.
Weeping into her shoulder, I told her everything about Roy, except, of course, how he had touched me, what I had seen through the parlor door, and the missing money. She held me and did not scold or tell me that we should not have let a strange man stay in the house.
She took my face in her hands and made me look at her. “If she said she will come back, then she will, Evelyn.” She wiped my tears. “Now, you quit this crying.”
She stayed the afternoon, helping me press butter and cheese.
Her conviction reassured me. Still, I kept seeing Addie on top of him. I gagged on my own confusion and sickening jealousy. I wanted each of them and wanted to be each of them.
What had felt like blessed solitude and privacy before Addie came into my life now felt jagged and harsh. Admitting her absence to Cole and then to Momma made it more real. Equally real was the fact that if she did not come back, I would never know who or what she was. With each day that passed, those unanswered questions seemed a greater and greater injury. It seemed incomprehensible that I could have held her so intimately and not known. Inwardly, I railed against my imposed innocence. I grew lighter and more delicate, frayed by the air I leaned into as I listened for her return. I stayed close to the house and hung on every little sound.
Exactly two weeks from the day Addie and Roy left, when I had lost almost all hope, I heard footsteps coming up the drive.
I ran toward the back door, hoping for Addie, but Roy stepped into the kitchen. He stood there alone, expectant, wider and taller than I remembered him.
“Where’s Addie?” I craned my neck, peering past him for Addie.
He said nothing and opened his arms as if I would step into them.
I tried to shove him out of the way to see if she was outside. “Where’s Addie? Is she okay? Did you do something to her?”
He refused to move. “I am Addie.”
“No. Where’s Addie? Tell me!” I screamed in his face.
He held his hands out, calmly offering himself. I stared up at him, at Roy’s brown eyes, at Roy’s face and lips, his neck, shoulders, waist and hips, at his feet planted on the floor.
I backed up into the kitchen. “No. Where is she?” I went cool and hard.
“I am Addie.” He stepped toward me. There was something familiar in how he looked at me, nothing like the swaggering Roy.
“No!” I shook my head. “No!” My voice thin as a whip.
“You said that he was a fine example of a man, one a woman could get healthy children off of. And you want children,” he said.
I stared at him. Addie must have told him what I’d said.
“I did this for you, Evelyn.”
His voice did not fit. It was still Roy’s voice, but the phrasing was different. And it was deeper, more resonant. He stepped closer and reached out as if to catch me. I smelled the familiar chlorophyll odor of Addie as I collapsed onto the chair he held for me.
The room dimmed and turned grainy. I grabbed his arm instead of the hand he offered, and dug my fingers in. “Don’t do this to me,” I snapped. “I want Addie back. I want you to look like . . . like me?” My words faded to a whimper and I sat down.
He touched my face gently. “Evelyn, it will be all right.”
I leapt up. “Who are you? Not my skin, not his skin, but you! I have to know! What are you! Show me what you look like! Let me hear your voice! Yours.”
He gave me a long, intent look that made me step back and sit again.
“Okay,” he said.
He planted his feet. His opened his mouth slightly and sighed. His fingertips spread across his chest. Had Roy ever seen Addie do that? Then a sweet chime rang out from him, followed by a slow deep chime that settled into a steady drone. Then the sweetness segued to raw sound. Pure harmonics. A hard wail. He was aiming at me! Wave followed wave, higher, larger. His pupils dilated. The floor resonated. The arms of the chair hummed. My head filled. Louder and brighter, filling me, pulling me out of myself. Overwhelming. I wanted to cover my ears, my chest, my belly, but I didn’t move. Then something in me rose to meet that sound that was now no longer sound. Beautiful and horrible. Not color, not light, nor odor, taste, or touch, but some distillation of all. Buoying me, holding me, pressing. Beyond him, I sensed other harmonics. And it seemed to me I heard the voices of children—our children, I was sure.
Blindly, I put my hand out and touched his chest, and his voice receded, pulling back into him, rippling into questions as it withdrew. We breathed hard. Outside, a bird called. A train whistled far away. The 10:10. The world continued to turn. Morning light shone in across his shoe and up his leg. His hand at his side was large, a meaty man’s hand. The hair on his arm, dark. His face red from effort. Sweat, beading at his temple, ran down past his ear and onto his throat. His hair a deep brown. His eyes the golden brown of burnished oak.
Keeping his eyes on mine, he took my hand from his chest and cupped it in his hand, then moved it down between his legs.
I felt him growing in my hand, pushing against the fabric of his pants. I closed my eyes as he led me down the hall to the bedroom.
He lay down on the bed and opened his arms. I lay down beside him and pressed my face into his neck. I wept.
He held me tightly, his voice emanating sweet and light from his chest. But, for once, it had no effect on me. The tidal wave heaved itself up from the distance and hurtled toward my shore, its beautiful, obscene curve come at last to wash me, to drown me. I cried, trembling and clutching him to me, then beating him away.
Eventually, I sobbed myself to sleep inside his arms and the purr of his voice. I woke alone in the slant-light of late afternoon, the ends of all of my nerve cells swept clean. I heard him humming down the hall—a normal man humming a hymn. The sound of frying eggs interrupted a deep male voice singing Addie’s odd, jazzy version of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
Wobbly on my legs, I walked down the hall and stopped in the kitchen doorway to watch him. He turned from the stove with a question on his face.
“I’m okay,” I told him and eased myself into a chair.
He pulled some perfect biscuits out of the oven. God, he was beautiful.
I motioned toward the bedroom. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I should have realized what a shock it would be for you. Should have planned it with you. But I saw the opportunity.” He set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me. A slice of ham beside it. Addie and I had done that—made breakfast for supper, when we were tired or hadn’t gotten around to making anything else.
“Tell me,” I said. “How did Roy like having a twin?”
He filled his plate and sat down across the table from me.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t ask and he didn’t say. He’ll drink as much as you give him. I kept him drunk, very drunk, and the shades drawn. Not long after you fell asleep that night, I heard him creeping around in the kitchen. Then the back door squeaked. I checked the cookie jar and figured out what he was up to. My first thought was to get the money back, then I realized what else I could do. Or at least try. I wrote you the note and ran after him. He hadn’t gotten far. We hopped the midnight freight out of the mill and got as far as a Forest City motel. I was sure I needed to be isolated with him, like I was with you.”
The two of us ate hungrily, me looking at him and him gazing back at me. Incomprehensible. Yet he sat like any man, eating eggs, chewing, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. I could hardly breathe. But I, too, sat like any woman and ate my supper.
He ate with the same concentration and gusto as Addie. When he had sopped the last smear of egg yellow with his biscuit, he wiped his hands, then took a small wad of money out of his pocket. He laid it on the table and pushed it toward me. “That’s what’s left. I wish it was more. But there was food, the motel, and the booze. I had to buy some clothes, too. I left him enough money for the train back to Kentucky. He looked up at me early one morning before I handed him the bottle and said, ‘I never knew you were such an ugly, goddamned ugly woman. How’d you get here?’ I was starting to get a beard by then.”
He tipped forward, slurring and jerking his shoulders the way Roy had when he was drunk. I laughed then and Addie laughed, too. “Ugly, goddamned ugly woman,” he repeated and we could not stop laughing. Every time we glanced at each other, we giggled and he mimicked Roy again. My face locked into a laugh, I felt hysteria rising.
Finally, I choked on some biscuit and had to stop myself.
“Do you like this?” I asked when I had calmed down. “Being a man?”
The question sobered him. He sighed and answered, “Yes, I do. But I don’t like it more than being you.” My skin prickled when he said “being you.”
“I wasn’t sure if I could even make it happen. It took longer than I thought it would. I had to concentrate everything I had on him. With you, it just happened. I went out only for food, booze, and clothes—and a haircut. When I saw I was finished, I came straight back here.”
“Did it hurt? Will you stay like this? Will you need to be around him?”
He sat very still for a moment, rubbing his chest. “No, it didn’t hurt. But I could feel things coming apart and reassembling.” His hands rocked up and down over our empty plates. I felt my own wrenching internal realignment.
He smiled and shrugged. “I feel okay. I feel . . . stable. Fixed again.”
He put his hand over mine. “And you?”
“I am not stable yet,” I whispered and began clearing the table.
We washed the dishes, side by side, not touching, though I felt his warmth next to me, waiting, available.
Near sunset, he went out into the barn. Quietly, I followed to watch. Hobo stood alert at the barn door, barked once, then wagged his tail. Addie stopped and knelt. Hobo approached her with familiarity but no affection. Addie took Hobo’s muzzle in her hands—in his hands. Suddenly, Hobo leapt up, licking Addie and running excitedly around him, barking.
In the barn, the livestock rustled—a muted snort, a whinny of interest. I walked down the porch steps to get a better view. Addie went first to Darling’s stall. I heard that faint hum. Darling nosed him and nickered in recognition. He ran his hand down her neck, Addie’s touch. But a man’s deep, full laugh accompanied it. When he opened the stall gate, she pressed into him. Hobo circled them, yapping. The cows bellowed at the excitement, the chickens clattered in the coop.
Addie bridled Darling, mounted bareback. With a wave, he cantered off, disappearing into the pasture. I could see them for a long time, then, at the far end of the pasture, dusk snuffed them out of sight.
By the time I heard him shutting up the barn for the night, I’d made his bed—the same bed I tried to get him to sleep in after I found him in the mud. I laid out some of Lester’s clothes for him, certain this time they would fit, at least in length. The shoulders might be too narrow.
That was all I could do. To do more, to have him in my bed then, on that first night, felt like it would be the undoing of me. Too much for one day. I was numb.
He did not comment when he saw the bedroom door open and the bed turned down, but stopped and, taking my head in his hands, kissed me gently, squarely on the forehead and said good night.
“Good night, Addie,” I replied. But I could not walk away from him. “You need a man’s name. I can’t call you Addie. And I can’t call you Roy. He knows where we live. What if he shows up again? You need a name, one that sounds like Addie.” Then I said the first name I could think of, “Adam. You can be Adam.”
“Adam? Yeah, I like that. Adam.” He sat on the bed and took his shoes off. “I don’t think Roy will be back this way to raise questions. But I might run into someone who sees a resemblance. It would make sense for us to be from the same clan. And I owe him for this.” He swept his hand across his lap. “My last name should be Hope. Roy can be a middle name.”
“You need a story, too. Where do you come from? And why are you here?”
My questions filled the room for a minute.
Adam took a deep breath. “From here. For you. As always. Though I forgot to think up a name, on the way back, I decided that I’m from Kentucky, like Roy. The other side of the mountains. I came here because I heard about how good Addie was with horses. I’m good with horses, too. So I came to see if you two could give me a job. And now it looks like you will really need a new hand. So do I get the job?” He smiled an invitation.
I let it pass. “Adam Roy Hope,” I pronounced him. He gave me Addie’s smile, her gaze through his new face.
We went to our separate beds.
I could sense him through the walls. Then the fatigue of my confusion and desire came down like a hammer and knocked me into a sleep in which there was no skin, no voice, no entangled limbs.
The next morning, I woke to the sound of footsteps in the hall, the floorboards telegraphing the new weight of Addie—of Adam. Everything else remained the same, the squeak of the oven door as he opened it, the groan and sputter of the pump as he drew water for coffee.
I dressed slowly and went into the kitchen, into the welcome of his wide grin, into a normal day. We did the same chores in the same order. Same cows to milk, same chickens to feed, same pitchfork for the manure. Same red dirt underfoot. But she was now he. The world seemed surreal in its placid continuity while, in me, tectonic, dizzying shifts took place.
I could almost taste the strange irony of my desire. For her. For him.
After the morning milking, we finished sawing the fall logs, a job that we had started with Roy. Sawing the thicker log was a two-person job. We didn’t talk much. All I had were questions. The same questions I had had all along. There were, I was sure, no more answers now than there had been when I found him. I felt drained, stunned, my skin stretched over nerves held together only by routine. The noise and effort of sawing offered a small antidote.
He took over the splitting and stacking when we finished the sawing. Through the open barn doors, I watched him while I cleared the manure and lay down fresh hay. He circled the stump we used as a chopping block, then swung the maul in a practice swing. He shook his head, then stepped back farther from the stump and swung again. Rocking back on his heels slightly, then forward, just as Addie used to do, he swung again. The maul landed dead-center and he laughed.
In the afternoon we stopped for lunch. Adam noticed the healed cut, a thin red line at the base of my thumb as I handed him a sandwich. He touched my wrist. “What happened?”
I pointed to the shelf, “The cookie jar, I smashed it against the wall when I found it empty. I hadn’t found your note yet. I cut myself cleaning it up.”
I smelled the grassy, fresh-mown odor of his sweat. The warmth of his touch lingered on my hand. “I need to take you down to meet Momma and Daddy. I want to let them know you’re here. The sooner they meet the new hired help, the better, I think.”
We walked to the mill-village, cutting through the woods where I had played as a child. To cross the creek, we walked single-file over a narrow fallen tree. Halfway across, I heard, above the soft burble of the creek, a single, crisp chime, clear as the water behind me. I turned to look, almost slipping on the slick log. Adam grabbed my elbow, to steady me, and grinned sheepishly at me.
“I know it’s you.” I continued across the creek and down the path.
Otherwise, we were quiet. The sun shone through the sparse canopy of late winter. With him behind me on the narrow path, I could imagine that nothing had changed, that I would see Addie if I glanced over my shoulder.
We reached the edge of the mill-village and my self-consciousness immediately returned. I felt naked, aware of him by my side. We waved to the old lady who lived in the first house. Her little granddaughter, sitting in the porch swing, waved back, but the old woman continued her sweeping without noticing us.
Momma and Daddy were alone at the table when we arrived, a pot of pinto beans and a plate of corn bread between them. They stood when they saw Adam.
“Momma, Daddy, this is . . .”
“Adam. I’m Adam Hope. Pleased to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Roe.” He held his hand out. Daddy shook his hand and nodded.
Momma’s eyes were wide with surprise. “My, it is nice to meet you, Adam. Sorry, y’all are missing Evelyn’s sister, Rita, she’s off with some friends,” she said as she took Adam’s hand. She motioned for me to get more plates and forks and returned her attention to Adam.
“Y’all are just in time for supper! Sit down.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Sorry to barge in like this. I’m from Kentucky. I came to Clarion looking for work.”
“Are you a good mechanic?” Daddy asked. “One of our machine boys left for the Radley mill about a week ago.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll keep that in mind, but I’m not much of a mechanic. I’m a trained groom and stable hand. Too many of us already in Kentucky. I came here because I heard about Addie Hardin and Cole Starnes’s work with horses, so I—”
I interrupted, “I’m pretty sure the Starneses aren’t looking for any help. But I have really been missing Addie’s help. If she doesn’t come back . . .”
Daddy’s interest had lagged as soon as he saw Adam wasn’t looking for a mill job, but now he pulled out a chair for Adam and sat down opposite him. “That’s something to consider. Her momma never came back.”
Momma touched my arm and sighed sympathetically. She ladled ham and beans onto our plates and pushed the skillet of corn bread closer to Adam.
I shook my head. “I could use the help.”
Adam took a piece of the corn bread. “It’s a small place, but more than one person can do. I’d be happy to work for room and board for the time being. Until you know what the situation is. I’ve done farming, too.”
There was a beat of silence, then Daddy turned to Momma. “Lily Mae, why don’t you offer the boy some of your sweet pickles?”
Momma got the pickles and some of her corn relish, opening a fresh jar of each and presenting them on the little flowered dish she reserved for company.
Adam added a generous portion of each to his plate and moaned appreciatively when he had a mouthful of pickles. “These are great, Mrs. Roe. Did you can them yourself?”
“I did,” she beamed. “With Evelyn and Addie. They grow the best pickling cucumbers. That land is good for corn and peppers, too. Call me Lily Mae.”
Adam spooned the relish onto his corn bread and took a big bite. “Mmm . . . this is really good!”
“So, Adam. Horses? I wouldn’t think there would be much call for horses now with everybody in cars and filling stations on every corner.” Daddy searched his pants pocket and pulled out his pipe in preparation for his after-dinner smoke.
“Rich people will always have horses. Keep them as pets and investments,” Adam replied.
“Investments. I imagine that’s so.” Daddy tapped his pipe on the edge of his plate.
“Some people just like them.” Momma nodded her head.
The porch door slammed and Joe walked in. I introduced them. While they shook hands, Adam pointed to Joe’s newly purchased truck parked in the yard and asked, “How’s that one running for you?”
Joe’s face lit up. He’d saved for months for that old Ford. He launched into a story about it as the men went out to the porch. I realized, with a shock, that Adam was courting my family. And succeeding.
Momma and I cleaned the table. Over the noise of the running water and the dish-washing, all I could hear of the men were indistinct words, punctuated by occasional laughter.
“Evelyn, honey, you haven’t heard anything from her?”
I shook my head and turned away to slip a stack of dried plates into the pantry.
“That is peculiar,” Momma said.
I nodded, but did not offer anything.
“She can take care of herself, Evelyn. Don’t worry about her.”
I didn’t want to make Momma complicit in my lies. But I didn’t know what to say.
“Adam seems like a nice fellow.” She stopped wiping the counter and looked at me quizzically.
“He would be a big help, Momma. Now that Joe has a family. And Bertie never helps anymore, even Rita wants to stay in town with her friends. And Cole is full-time at the mill. Now with Addie gone . . .” I shrugged and tried to look convincingly sad and tired. “All he’s asked for is food. He can’t eat much more than Addie.”
Momma smiled at my reference. Addie was known for her appetite at family dinners. “I know you miss her. And it looks like you’ve been eating less up there by yourself.” She pulled at the waist of my dress. “I don’t see how it could hurt for you to have some help. He’d eventually want to find a paying job, so don’t get too used to it.”
Before I could think of anything to say, Daddy, Joe, and Adam came in from the porch. Momma squeezed my arm and asked them if they wanted coffee.
“I can’t, Momma,” Joe said. “I gotta get back to the house soon. Mary’ll be looking for me.” He turned to Adam. “So what were you, army, navy? Not air corps. You haven’t said a thing about flying.”
I felt a surge of panic.
But Adam just sighed and said, “I didn’t serve, Joe, sorry to say. Maybe if the war had lasted a little longer . . .”
“I didn’t quite make it either, buddy,” Joe commiserated. “Momma made me finish high school, and by the time I was ready to sign up, they were starting to turn ’em loose. Some say I’m lucky, but I don’t know.” He looked at both of us. “Can I give you a ride on my way home? It’s getting dark.”
“You were lucky, son,” Momma said. Then she turned to Adam. “Now, about that room and board. We’ll need to decide where that room will be.”
Adam glanced at me quickly. Neither of us had thought of that.
A half hour later, Joe dropped me off at the farm. As they pulled away, Adam turned to wave at me through the truck’s back window. He would be staying at Joe’s and coming to help me during the day.
Over the next few days, we worked together as Addie and I had. I made him leave before sunset each day and walk back down to Joe’s. I did not let him have me or come to me at night. I was not being coy. I wanted him, terribly, powerfully. I wanted that encompassing touch and the ring of that unique voice, but I was caught in the whiplash of change. Addie was now wholly different from me, and, in Adam, both absent and present. I needed those evenings alone to let what I’d seen of him during the day seep into my skin and muscle, to register on my nerves.
In my struggle to make sense of Addie becoming Adam, I needed a way to think of them as the single being I knew them to be, a term that bridged their obvious differences. Without any conscious decision to do so, I began to think of them simply as A. From that point on, A. became the private name that, in my mind, encompassed both of them as well as the person I had pulled from the land, who was neither man nor woman. A. was their totality.
While I was alone at night, my family slept down the hill, innocent and distant. Momma in her nightgown, her hair loose on the pillow, oblivious. Bertie and Rita dreamed in their beds. Freddie and Marge slept down the street from them. From my bedroom window, the streetlights of Clarion seemed smaller and farther away. Even the mill lights seemed dimmer now.
I imagined myself squatting by Momma’s bed in the dark or bent over Rita’s sleeping face, whispering the truth to them, my words settling onto their shoulders and slipping into their ears. They would wake to carry into their days a few ounces of what I knew.
To all of them, Adam was a large, well-mannered, good-looking person, clearly and solely a man. They would wonder, as Momma had, about Addie’s disappearance and my sudden bond with Adam, but in the end they would, I knew, accept what they saw before them. Still, I could not fully quell my fear that their credulity would be exhausted, that they would somehow recognize him as the violation of nature that he was. Of the two, Adam did seem the greater violation. He was not the innocent, earth-sprung being of Addie, but a consequence of will and desire.
With Addie’s arrival, I had been in an adrenaline-soaked haze, amazed at what I had seen, certain I would be thought crazy if I told the truth, and, if I was believed, that she would be thought a freak. These things seemed equally true for Adam, perhaps more so. Lying about him seemed more calculated.
I kept my own introductions of Adam to a minimum—he was simply a horseman from Kentucky looking for a job—and refused to embellish. The lack of detail would work itself out. Meanwhile, it may have lent him a greater air of mystery. The next Sunday, when he came into the church with Joe and Mary, Uncle Lester’s old suit tight across the shoulders, a brief pause of attention in the preservice whispers followed him. I’m sure the young women were taking his measure and, when I moved over on the pew to be closer to the three of them, calculating my relation to him.
As we filed out of the church, I lost sight of Adam in the crush of Sunday suits and hats. I caught up with him as Momma introduced him to some of the church ladies. Adam, of course, had to act as if he had never met any of them. He graciously shook hands and repeated his name. Old Mrs. Bailey stood next to him, scrutinizing him from under her hat brim, then casually brushed a bit of lint from his shoulder.
The ghost of Addie seemed to linger with us as we all filed out of the church. Everyone mentioned her absence as they welcomed Adam. After Grandma Lou surveyed Adam up and down, she patted me on the arm. “Blood will out. She ran off with some strange boy just like her momma.”
I glanced around for Cole, then remembered that his Eloise was Methodist and he attended her church most Sundays now.
As I fielded questions about Addie’s absence that afternoon, I realized how much I heard that was not questions but statements. Others were taking up the story, giving me the missing pieces. Cole had heard Addie’s name before she had one. Momma had come to her own conclusions about why Addie looked like me. Joe concluded that Adam must have, like him, been too young to serve during the war. And now it seemed that everyone would treat Addie’s flight as a continuation of her “mother’s” story. Addie had been right: we needed our stories. All of them had seen what they expected to see or hear. They had found what their stories told them would be there.
Except for me. What I had found was completely unexpected.
Later that day, Adam and I stopped by Freddie and Marge’s. I introduced him. The circle of musicians welcomed him with little nods. Freddie shook Adam’s hand and offered him a seat. Marge nudged me after giving Adam a complete, swift look-over. I laughed and shook my head at her suggestion. But she didn’t believe me. She winked at me and nodded. The vague unhappiness of her childless marriage seemed to inspire in her a radiant enthusiasm for others’ romances.
Adam walked me home afterward. We were quiet in the darkness. He kissed me chastely on the forehead and left me at the back door.
Momma and Daddy came to help with the farm work the next Saturday and brought Rita. As they were saying their good-byes, Adam waved from the barn and continued brushing down Darling. Joe was coming by later, and Adam would get a ride back to town with him. Daddy and Rita waited in the truck, but Momma stopped on her way out the door.
“See you later.” She waved to Adam, and then turned to me. “I’m proud of you, Evelyn. You’ve done good here.” She nodded her head toward the barn and fields and gave me a slight tilt of her head, her eyebrows raised, her don’t-screw-up gaze.
“Momma, it’s all right. He’s just going to help me some.” I pretended to wipe something from my skirt. She squeezed my arm till I looked up and held her gaze. She could smell intention on her children. She did not need the sin itself to start sniffing around like an old hound dog.
“I’m all right, Momma. I’ll be careful.” I saw it on her face, as she registered that there was need for care. Daddy honked the horn.
“Do be careful,” she whispered and let me go.
Adam waved again as they drove off, and then locked eyes with me across the backyard. My veiled admission to Momma was still fresh. Something in me gave, shifting into a new place. Before the truck disappeared down Clear Lake Road, Adam leapt onto the back steps as if I had called him.
I motioned for him to follow and led him down the hall. He hesitated, and then stepped into the bedroom he had slept in the first night.
“Take your clothes off,” I told him.
He obliged. Everything came off, even his socks. I looked at him, taking in every part—toes, ankles, knees, the thighs I had last seen under Addie, the pale planes of his hip joint, genitals, belly, breastbone, hands, arms, neck, ears, eyelids, lips, teeth, cheekbones. I had never studied a man that way before. Silently, he let me. This was Addie, whom I had loved. I turned him around and looked at his backside. I traced his spine with my fingertip and was done. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome.” He turned to face me again, not acknowledging or attempting to hide his erection. I glanced away. He moved as if to reach for me. I took his hand but placed it back down at his side.
“Will it be like this from now on?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Tension leaked out of me. Suddenly, I felt exhausted. He took my hand and pressed it to his chest. I braced myself against the start-up of that gentle vibration, but there was only his heartbeat, warm bone, and muscle under my palm.
“You wanted a husband, a family?” he asked.
I nodded, my chest tight.
“Would you rather have Addie back?” he asked.
“You can do that? You could be Addie again?”
“I don’t know if I can do it again, I’m not even sure how I do it. But I would try if you want me to. Then you could have a family with someone else. I could, too. Or I could stay as I am and father children with someone else.”
Another thing I had not thought of.
“We could,” he continued, “each find someone else. Is that what you want?”
I thought again of Addie with Roy, and flushed with jealousy and confusion. “No, no, no. Not that.” I began to cry, and backed out the bedroom door. He grabbed my wrist. I stood there, covering my face with one hand, the other arm held awkwardly out toward him.
“I don’t know what you are. What if our babies? What if they are? What if they are like mules and can’t . . . ? What if we can’t?”
He waited until I caught my breath and said in a measured voice, “Do you know who you are, Evelyn? Who all of you are? Where do you come from? You don’t know any more than I do.”
He dropped my hand and began to pace. His erection had fallen. “I listen in church, Evelyn. No one knows, no one truly knows. There is faith, but not true knowledge. All we know is how we are supposed to act to keep living and to get along.” He gripped the footboard of the bed and peered at me. “But I have to know? I have to be able to say who and what I am? Or you won’t accept me now?”
He opened his arms and looked at me until I felt as naked as he was. “Here I am. This is all I can offer you.” He was exquisite, beautiful.
Suddenly quiet, he sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. “I will not be alone because I cannot say what I am. I want children, too. I want them very much. And, no, I cannot tell you how normal they will be.” There were drops on the floor between his feet. I stared at them as if I had never seen tears. I had never seen him cry before.
He shook his head. “I know it, as certain as I know that I have lungs though I do not see them. I know it, Evelyn. I can give you children.”
He got up and slowly dressed. “Marry me, Evelyn.”
I sat, still staring at the floor when Joe’s truck pulled up. Adam shut the door as he left.
Heartsick with confusion, I saw myself in the mirror. I stayed in that room until Adam’s tears dried on the floor and the room darkened down. Something in the core of me went quiet. I listened and listened until I could hear no more, until I knew. There was really only one answer I was capable of giving him.
I made an admission to myself then locked it away in my heart as if it were a treasure: he is not one of us. To have him and to bear his children was to depart from not only my family and my people, but from my kind, from my—the word rose up unbidden, startling—species.
Early the next morning I heard Joe’s car in the driveway and then Adam thanking him for the ride. I walked around the table to see out the kitchen window. Clouds, orange-gold and clipped with silver, fanned out from dawn’s blood-red sun. Joe’s truck disappeared down the road.
Adam walked in the back door behind me and stopped.
“I missed her,” I said, keeping my eyes on the sky. “I missed her so much.”
He came up close. “Ooh,” he said when he saw the sky. I leaned my head back against his chest. “I missed you.” He put his arms around me. We stayed like that a long time, watching the dawn diffuse into day, then I took him by the hand and led him to the bedroom.
We began slowly, tentative as if we had never done it before. The weight and press of him was not like Addie. He was flat and hard and boney where she had been soft and curved. He had hair where she had been naked smoothness. But the odor of him was familiar, and Addie was in his touch. He moved over me like silken water, encompassing me, making a room of his body, as she had. That familiar hum rose in him. Our rhythm changed, quickening, and he arched. I jumped back from him. “Come out. I don’t want babies now.”
He smiled down, amazed at the mess he’d made on my belly. “There’s so much,” he muttered apologetically. “I . . .”
I laughed. “I had me a virgin.” I wiped my fingers across my belly, touched my lips and then his. He tasted the bitter saltiness of himself and laughed. A big, deep, beautiful belly laugh. We smeared ourselves, laughing the relief of sin after drought.
We lay still for a long time in the echo of what we had just done. Then we turned toward each other again.
“Yes,” I told him.
“Yes?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. I will marry you.”
We decided to wait a few weeks before telling anyone about our plans to marry. A nine-day courtship would be short by anyone’s standards.
Soon, Adam had met everyone but Cole. Mr. Starnes had been sick lately. Also, with full-time work, and his girlfriend, I knew Cole had little extra time. He’d been coming around less even before Addie left, but still I was surprised that I hadn’t seen him yet. Adam and I planned to go see him and Mr. Starnes the next Sunday.
I stood in the kitchen Friday afternoon, dressed but still vague and soft from making love with Adam, when a sharp knock broke my reverie. Cole smiled at me through the door pane. His smile turned to concern as I smoothed my hair. I opened the door and let him in.
“Evelyn,” he said. “Are you . . .”
We both turned to the sound of footsteps in the hall. Adam appeared. Looking down as he zipped up his pants, he didn’t notice us. His boots were tucked under his arm, his hair messed up.
Cole shot me a glance of surprised disappointment and turned to leave.
“Cole!” Adam boomed, dropping his boots. “Good to see you!” He beamed, caught off guard, his arm out as if to hug Cole, who leapt back, knocking over one of the kitchen chairs.
I held my hand out to slow his retreat. “Cole, this is Adam Hope.”
Cole righted the chair. A short, awkward silence followed. Adam looked at me helplessly. Cole stared at the floor.
“Is Addie back? You heard anything?” Cole directed the question at me with a quick glance.
I shook my head. I wanted to say, “It is not what you think, Cole! I’ve known him for years. You know him.” Instead, I asked Cole, “Can you help me with something out by the barn? Can I show you?” Cole held his hand out stiffly. “Nice to meet you.” They shook hands briefly.
“Sure. Let’s go.” He stepped aside and I led him outside.
We squatted to inspect a split in one of the corral posts.
“Cole, it’s not what you think.”
“I think you hardly know this guy.”
“And how well did I know you before?”
“You knew stuff about me. I lived in the same town. Who is he?”
“This is different from . . .” I admitted, then added, “And now you’re with Eloise. Right?”
He examined the post, ignoring my question. “We can just bind this. Don’t have to pull it. With a two-by-four and a few long screws it should last a couple more years at least.” He stood up and brushed the dust off his hands and narrowed his eyes as he glanced toward the house.
I straightened up and moved into his line of sight. “Cole, I miss Addie something terrible. I’m alone here now, and I want something like what you have with Eloise. And he reminds me of Addie.”
Surprise flashed across his face. He glanced away at her name.
I continued, “Trust me, Cole. I was right about you. I’m right about him. He’s a good man. And I’m alone now.”
His face softened. He nodded, conceding. “The house still smells like Addie. It’s so strange, her going off like that and not even saying good-bye. Like her momma, I guess. But if she found a fella, I guess you should have one too. It’s just that it’s all so fast.” He scuffed his boot in the clay and studied the ground. When he looked up again, a slow smile crept across his lips. “Yeah, it’s been a year for me and Eloise. I’m going to ask her to marry me soon.”
“Cole! You’re getting married?”
“Shh! I haven’t officially asked her. Don’t tell anyone.” He nodded, suddenly as bashful as the boy I’d met in the cornfield a couple years before. He brushed away my surprise. Then his face was serious again. “You’ve got to be more careful, okay? What if it’d been your daddy or momma at the back door instead of me? I’ll be back tomorrow to help you with this post.” Then he mounted and rode off.
I called after him, “Good luck! I hope the answer’s yes!”
He laughed and waved as he trotted off.
He did come back. Adam deferred to him in the corral repair. Cole was brusque and to the point while they worked. But as soon as they were done, Adam leaned on the fence, then asked about the white chicken-scared mare Cole and Addie had cured. Cole started slow, but warmed each time we laughed at his flapping imitation of Addie’s apron full of biddies and his chicken-holding duties.
I fried us some corn bread and sausage for lunch. While I washed up, Cole joined me at the sink. “I see what you mean. He is like her. He’s got the gift with horses. Darling follows him like a puppy. Just like with Addie. Spooky.” He gave me a friendly, quizzical glance, then grinned. “Maybe it’s you. Maybe a body has to be good with horses to hang around with you.”
“You have no idea.” I laughed.
Adam was deft at courtship of every kind, and within a short time had won Cole’s respect and friendship. Having been Addie was good preparation for befriending Cole. But there were other times, when our combined experience as women left us unprepared. Neither of us had been a man. I couldn’t offer Adam tutorials, as I had with Addie. A few weeks after Adam’s arrival, Joe and Daddy showed up to help rehinge and rehang one of the barn doors.
Adam and I were hanging up laundry when they pulled up in the driveway. They got out of the truck and walked up to the flapping laundry.
I was farther down the clothesline and couldn’t see them but I heard Joe snicker and Daddy make his funny huffing noise of disgust. I peeked over the lines of damp clothes just as Daddy turned away and started for the barn.
Joe leaned close to Adam. “Look, buddy, you may have it real bad for her, you may be so sweet on her you just gotta help in every way. But you just gotta let her take care of those things.” I dipped under a wet shirt to see what the fuss was. For a heartbeat, Adam stood there looking puzzled, and then he handed me a bundle of my damp, clean panties he’d been hanging up. Joe rolled his eyes at me and dope-slapped Adam as they left the clothesline to join Daddy, who squatted by the barn studying the derelict hinge.
I asked Adam about it later.
“There’s a lot of subtle stuff to this manhood,” he said and spread the fingers of one hand over his breastbone—Addie’s gesture. Suddenly, it seemed effeminate. I straightened his wrist and lifted his elbow a little.
He thumped himself on the chest. “Better?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“So no more hanging up panties for me—at least when anyone else is around,” he continued. “Some other lessons I’ve learned.” He held up his fingers, counting them off. “Limit questions to those about cars, engines, and sports. Do not look another man in the eye for more than a second when you pass on the street, one quick glance and a nod will do. Most men want you to stand beside them and look at something else with them, not face them when you’re talking. Don’t spend much time in the kitchen with the women. Arrange yourself before you leave the bathroom.” He glanced down at his new body. I laughed, remembering Addie’s puzzled survey of her crotch when I had told her about menstruation. I felt his strangeness viscerally, a stirring in my solar plexus.
After a couple of months we were ready to announce our engagement. We decided against him formally asking my daddy for my hand; Adam did not want to leave Momma out. But he did give Daddy a pouch of his favorite pipe tobacco after we finished dinner that Sunday. Momma and I joined Daddy and Adam on the porch after we finished the dishes. Daddy was lighting his pipe when Adam and I announced that we wanted their permission to marry. He dropped the match, stomped it, and took his pipe out of his mouth. They both stopped their rocking and stared at us. Adam had been successful in his courtship of them. They liked him, I was sure of that.
Momma searched my face and her expression of amazement burst into a smile of satisfaction. I felt a twinge of anxiety when I saw Daddy’s surprised face. He’d never liked surprises and tended to foist them on Momma whenever possible.
“It’s . . . Uhm, it’s awfully soon, isn’t it?” Daddy directed the question at Momma, not us.
“It is soon, Robert. But that’s not the question. They’re asking for our approval. If we approve, what does it matter if we approve now or in six months? They’re not asking to get married today.”
Daddy listened. A second match flared and he sucked on the pipe.
Momma glared playfully at him, but her voice held serious undertones. “Nobody’s rushing you. We can take our time with the answer. But, Robert Roe, do you remember how many times you had dinner at my daddy’s house before you asked for my hand?”
Daddy rose to his feet. “As long as I am not being rushed . . .” He held a congratulatory hand out to Adam and nodded to me as he excused himself to go inside. A second later, we heard the bathroom door shut. He hadn’t agreed, but he was letting us have our way.
Momma sighed. “Mark my word, he’ll soon be saying it was all his idea. Welcome to the family, son.” She beamed up at Adam.
Adam and I grinned at each other. We were home free.
That night Adam snuck back out to the farm from Joe’s and woke me in the middle of the night. We went outside and made love near the apple tree. He lay under me on the very spot where I had found him, the smooth undersides of his open arms pale against the dark, red clay. A cloud passed over, dimming the moonlight for a moment, and I had a sudden fear that he might go back into the mud he had come from, that he could vanish, dissolving beneath me as I pressed onto him. But he did not. He pulled me down to his perfect mouth and remained as he was, a man.
Everyone seemed surprised at the speed of our engagement, but not the engagement itself. After everybody knew about it, Momma and Daddy paid less attention to Adam’s comings and goings on the farm.
We went at each other like drunken rabbits. Everywhere, anytime we could, working late into the night to make up for chores we had missed during the day. I was as crazy in love with him in his new body as I had been before. Everything I had done with Addie could now spill over into the world. In the fields, in the barn, in the daylight, in every room of the house. What I did with Adam had a name and required simple privacy, not secrecy. I put my fears about children behind me, but they followed me, mobile and unobtrusive as shadows.
On the Monday after our engagement had been announced, we were making love when Adam surprised me with a question. “I don’t want to pull out. Do you want me? Do you want this?”
I could not look away from that bright gaze. His whole body was so warm, almost hot. The last of my resistance uncoiled. “Yes,” I said.
What rose from him was not his normal sound of pleasure. Stronger, his cry swept past sweetness into a joy intense and sharp as sorrow or rage. It rose and passed not through, but into. Into me.
That was it. When my monthly time should have come, four weeks before the wedding, I knew. He was right about his fertility. We’d gotten on the train there is no getting off. Too late for more questions. Only time would bring the answers.
We had stepped into the public whirlpool of events that comes with a wedding and having a child.
I was in a state of bliss. Sweet, wide-open joy.
women usually talked about sex back then only as something to put up with. The physical details were left unstated. If a girl was lucky, her mother might give her a frank private talk about the specifics of what parts were going to go where the night before she married. But most mothers skirted the issue, assuming the barnyard to be education enough. There were no women’s magazines in the grocery store checkout aisle, proclaiming the joys of multiple orgasms. No books or charts for us.
With A., I never needed a chart or a manual. The act itself could vary so. Some nights I felt myself unfurl. Other nights our lovemaking tightened down as if to single points of skin and nerve. At times, all the energy came from me, other times it came at me, A. all heat and need in my arms. Our simple, closed-mouthed good-night kiss might erupt into passion, leaving us exhausted and wet. There were nights of skin, surfaces rubbing and rolling into each other. Or we were just our mouths, drinking each other in. Frenzied nights when I wanted to devour him. Nights when our lovemaking was a single breath on an ordinary day: short, barely noticeable, and completely necessary. Complex or simple and common as pounding rain, the texture of it could be anywhere. Tender, sweet, hard, predatory, silly, muddy, clear, cathartic—whatever a face or a glance or a word could be the whole act could be—in a single night. Adam was like Addie in one other way: the same exquisite sound burst from him when he climaxed and then immediately afterward, a beautiful, contagious belly laugh.
Usually, we went straight from climax into the state that precedes dreams, when thoughts are unmoored and drift heedlessly on their own. Other times, it was as if we had been revived and we’d have to read to calm ourselves before we could sleep. There were times when gratitude, awe, or tenderness would take me so that afterward, when we lay beside each other, I would reach for him again. Later, I would bring one of the children back into the bed with us, and we would sleep all a tangle of arms and legs, of sweet, young breath and thicker, older breath. And each of our daughters at one point as infants interrupted our lovemaking with her cries and I brought her to our bed, where she suckled and slept again while I lay on my side, Adam, spooned behind me, entered me again, and we continued gently, slowly, bodily bridging the child and the act that made the child. We called it “rocking the baby.”
I have often thought of what my old grandfather said about the beauty of sex. I think not just of what he said, but why he needed to say it. The act is a vessel that can hold a continuum of human intentions—a sweet, holy song of flesh and love, the simple, mindless rut of youth, or the darkest violation. It encompasses what we bring to it. Too often people fill it with shame.
The association of shame with sex was alien to A. Sex with him seemed a thing unto itself, neither wholly of nor from either of us, but some perfect distillation of the two of us. Making love to him felt like a form of worship. Not a worship of him or of me, but Life worshiping Itself through our bodies. Life praying to Itself and to all that is not Life, asking for more Life and thanking Itself. The holy stuff of life springing through us as it springs through every living thing.
It lasted decades with A. I never got over it.
Never.
The wedding was not going to be very fancy. Momma would make my wedding dress. We went together to pick out the cloth. She led me toward the whites at the back of Ina’s shop, but I wasn’t sure. I showed her a pale blue. She rubbed it between her fingers and said, “So, you, of all brides, should not wear white?”
“Someone might step on this.” I bent over and picked a straight pin up off the wood floor.
“Only one reason I can think of for a girl not to wear white at her wedding,” she continued. I walked away to consider a bolt of rosy-pink satin.
Momma brought over a bolt of white she favored and plopped it down on top of the cloth I looked at. She lowered her voice. “Evelyn Roe, if every woman who had been with her man before she married him wore a colored wedding dress, white wedding dresses would be as rare as a milk bag on a bull. If I wore white, you can, too.”
“Momma? You . . . ?”
She nodded.
“But I always thought you were . . . I . . .” I couldn’t have been more surprised.
“Everybody thinks that of their momma. And everyone is human, even mothers. No need to proclaim in public what’s done in private. You pick the white you want. I’ll do the stitching.”
“It won’t be so private soon, Momma,” I whispered.
She glanced up quickly, the shock and disappointment I had expected in her eyes. Then she searched my face, wide-eyed, as she had the day I wandered away when I was a little girl, but she did not seem to see me. Suddenly, her whole face broke into a smile and she said, “Well, I’ll be goddamned.” She never cursed, but she said it again. For a second, her mouth hung open in shock, then her eyes brightened.
She looked around the store. I thought she was checking to see if anyone had heard her curse, but she seemed to be seeing something else. She pushed out a sigh. “Evelyn, I don’t think I can make it home without a cold, sweet drink.”
I giggled with puzzled relief as we walked down the street to the soda fountain.
We each had a float—an unusual extravagance for my mother. She sat opposite me in the booth, sipping from a straw like a girl while I tried to imagine her so in love with my daddy that she, like me, could not wait. High school girls tittered and whispered behind me in the next booth.
“Are you happy, Evelyn?” Her voice was low and serious.
“Yes, Momma. He makes me very happy.”
“And you’re sure about this. All of it?” She waved her hand at my waist. “This is what you wanted?”
I could only nod and blink my tears away.
“Well, that’s all I need to know.” She patted my hand.
I had stepped over into motherhood. I had joined the club.
We bought the white cloth, a cotton eyelet. For that afternoon it did not matter that there were other things I could not tell my mother. At last, there was one important thing I could tell her. Standing in line at the cash register, waiting for Ina to ring us up, we were like all the other women, ready to make out of patterns and whole cloth something new.
Days later, I stood on a footstool in Momma’s bedroom, turning slowly while she pinned the hem of my dress. Rita and Bertie joined us. My life had suddenly become interesting to them. They both had a crush on Adam, particularly Rita. Bertie would finish high school soon and had a beau who, though steady, did not seem like the marrying kind. My dress was too simple to truly sustain their interest, but they seemed reluctant to leave, as if afraid they might miss some secret bridal ritual. They began a primping marathon, brushing and grooming each other, considering their profiles and the fashion magazines they had bought for me.
Rita and Bertie wanted me to wear my hair in a style they had seen in a movie and were determined to demonstrate. Rita sat on the low bench of Momma’s dressing table while Bertie fumed at her fine, light hair. She winced each time Bertie swept her hair up. The more Rita whined, the harder Bertie brushed and pinned. I’d seen their tiffs countless times and knew the progress of them as if they were scripted.
I’d never been as close to them as they were to each other, but suddenly I realized that I never would be. My inner life had spun away from their world. I looked down at the top of Momma’s head. The three of them thought they knew what this marriage was to me, but they did not. They thought they knew Adam, but they did not.
“Hold your head still,” Bertie admonished.
Rita pressed her lips together, tears of frustration in her eyes.
I gazed at my flushed face in the mirror. Momma knelt before me, pulling the hem of my dress even on both sides and sliding the last straight pin through the cloth. I caught Rita’s reflection and tried to smile my encouragement, but she saw the tears in my eyes and took them as confirmation of the outrage she suffered at Bertie’s hands. Her face crumpled. Crying, she shoved Bertie away and dashed out of the room.
Momma glanced up at my face.
I blinked and tried not to cry.
Momma glared at Bertie. “You, too. Out and take those magazines with you. Apologize to your sister.”
“What’d I do?” Bertie sulked.
Momma shut the door behind her, then turned to me and smoothed my dress sleeves down over my arms. She handed me a handkerchief. “Evelyn, this is a big step, a big change. It’s normal to be a little rocky. But Adam has a good heart. I think you’re doing the right thing.”
In a gush of gratitude, I tried to laugh, but managed only a strangled snicker.
“Are you feeling bad in your stomach? You might try some soda crackers if you are.”
I wanted to tell her so badly, but how could I explain that I was afraid to have the babies of such an obviously robust and normal man? The truth seemed like a heavy weight then, and the lies were a gulf between Momma and me. Instead, I blew my nose, wiped my eyes, and took the dress off.
“Evelyn, it’s just the baby coming making you feel this way. Everything’ll be fine.” I laid my head on her shoulder and cried.
Even before we were actually married, the benefits of marriage were evident: gifts and help. Once we announced we were getting married and were going to live on the farm, everybody—particularly the men—began to take the farm seriously as a place to live.
First, Daddy had to be convinced that Adam really wanted to live on the farm. Daddy saw the mill as security, a place where a man could work his way up and get a good retirement, a life less dependent on local rainfall.
Adam pointed out that if Addie and I had been able to run the farm, surely he and I could do better. “Robert,” I overheard him say one day when they were out on the porch, “I promise you, if your daughter is ever close to going without anything, I’ll be down at the mill the next day looking for a steady income. I expect most of our money to come from the horses. Addie made some money with them, and I’ll do the same. Better, I hope. Evelyn and our children will not do without.”
“I’m glad to hear that, son. That’s good to know. You’ll have a family to support.”
They went straight into a discussion of how the farmhouse should be wired for electricity. An ice-box and indoor plumbing were also in the plans. Suddenly, everyone thought it was a pity that I had to go outside to relieve myself, that I washed my clothes in a tub, or lit a lantern at night. Before Adam, it seemed to everyone that we had just been two girls keeping house, waiting for a man to come along. If we had known he’d come with an ice-box and a washing machine, I’m sure we would have found one sooner.
The wedding was simple: the preacher at Momma’s house, the new white dress for me, and a borrowed suit for Adam. Then, after the ceremony, plenty of food set up on sawhorses and boards in Momma’s front yard under the oak tree. Mostly family and a few friends. Cole came with Eloise, now officially his fiancée. Freddie, Marge, and the Sunday-evening picking folks provided the music. Even my strange, aloof cousin Frank contributed by photographing the wedding. Everyone got fed, the men drank, and some of us danced.
Our honeymoon was as simple as our wedding. We got married on Saturday, left right after the wedding, and drove to my cousin Pauline’s place in Florida. Momma took a rare day off on Monday to take care of the chores and Joe took Tuesday.
Pauline had moved to Florida only months before and rented a cottage on Lake Swan, a large, spring-fed pond. The cottage was tiny, only two rooms and a porch.
When we arrived, Pauline announced that she would not interfere with our wedded bliss. She winked and was gone, off to stay with a friend. We were out in the middle of nowhere, miles from Gainesville where she worked. The lake, shallow with a pale, sandy bottom, was clear as drinking water.
We made love that night in the water under a gibbous moon, quietly, with as little motion as possible. “I think I can feel the baby in you. Our tadpole daughter.” He pulled me under as he climaxed, his sweet voice suddenly muffled and shimmering the water above us in the bright distortion of moon. We tumbled through the water, my hair floating around us, his face inches from mine, laughing bubbles.
Later, I stood shoulder-deep in the crystal water as he floated beside me, pale belly, rope of penis, long legs, and, below him, his shadow like an angel on the sand as he waved his arms. I put my hand on my belly, which was still flat, and asked myself the question every expectant mother asks: “Who is this child?” Then there was the other question that I dared not ask out loud: “What is this child?”