The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,113

and lifted the lid of the jewelry box again. His shoulders, suddenly frail, slumped forward. I peeled his fingers off the box lid and laid it down. I held his face, forcing him to look at me. His head felt fragile between my hands. He was not my father, but he was the man who raised me. “Daddy, we’re going to go into the kitchen and you will eat your supper. You have to eat now.”

His watery, bloodshot eyes focused, but he didn’t see me.

He let me take his arm and lead him into the kitchen. I sat him at the head of the table, the bowls of neighbors’ offerings crowded in front of him. Rita made him a plate.

“Thanks.” Joe tried to smile at me. “None of us could get him to come out of the bedroom. Not even Bertie.”

After Daddy began to eat, I joined Adam. Mavis Montgomery had cornered him and chatted excitedly, praising the girls’ singing. She had been in the hospital during Jennie’s funeral. Even in the crowded house, a small space remained around them.

I stayed by Adam’s side until I thought I glimpsed Frank’s face through the packed living room. All I could see was that familiar brow turning away from me, but I was certain it was him. The shock of seeing him lurched to the surface of my skin. “Let’s go. Now,” I whispered to Adam. In a glance, I saw that Adam had not spotted Frank yet. Quickly, I gathered up the girls and we left.

The next morning, Adam departed for his mountain trip. He returned two days later, not jovial and refreshed as he normally was after his retreats, but home and safe.

The days ached. The sky bruised my eyes. Every minor detail of daily life—the crumpled, folded brown bags the girls carried their apples and snacks to school in; the small scar on one of the horse’s flanks; Adam’s muddy chaps drying on the back porch—all seemed a knot of meaning, dense and indecipherable and simultaneously devoid of meaning. I hated the sorrow that seemed to be slowly unhinging my world.

The sparse, damaged fibers still holding me together were worn thinner by Momma’s revelation. In my sleep, I met her in the white space of dreams, where I asked my questions and she answered. She spoke reluctantly. Her lips moved, but there was no sound. I woke in a hot, futile rage.

My biological father’s ignorance seemed unjust, unnatural. Men have an alien, physical capacity for innocence: their bodies can bring forth life that they know nothing of. Only in complete insanity or a coma could a woman do such a thing.

A week after Momma’s funeral, I told Adam I was going grocery shopping, and while Daddy worked his shift at the mill, I went through Momma’s things, spending hours investigating every corner of her house. I pulled out drawers and turned them upside down. Sweeping her dresses aside, I searched the closet corners. I held each book by its spine and shook it. Nothing. Thirty-nine years had wiped out any trace there might have been of him. Every trace but me.

The Sunday after my private search, Bertie, Rita, Mary, and I met at Momma’s to go through her clothes and jewelry. I lingered after they left, straightening the kitchen, then followed Daddy’s pipe smoke through the house to the front porch. I found him in his usual spot, sitting in his rocker, puffing on his pipe. A large oak tree spread its branches over the yard and the land sloped so that the mill was a hundred feet from the porch. All my life he had sat in that same spot on the porch, facing the mill.

Now he was my only source of information. His gaze, locked on the mill, held the vague softness of a man looking out to sea, expecting nothing. He had regained his color since the funeral, but none of the weight he had lost during the last months of Momma’s life. He was suddenly an old man.

My determination to confront him wavered, and my direct, rehearsed questions vanished. “You and Momma took care of all of us kids the same. I never felt I was treated worse. But you two always let me wander off on my own. I had more freedom. Why was that, Daddy?”

His rocking continued uninterrupted for so long, I thought he might ignore my question. Then he stopped and took his pipe out of his mouth. “You didn’t need any