The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,149

seemed to be a million of them in the hall, thousands of young people, staring down at us. Their faces looked more beautiful and funnier than any I’d ever seen.

“Excuse us, Mr., Mrs. Hope,” someone said in a high, tinny voice. It was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. I was gone, rolling on the floor and giggling. The joke was contagious. Every time Adam looked at me, he laughed, too. Wires of hilarity coursed through my face and stomach until I ached.

Then, gradually, we quieted, the wires of laughter loosened. Limp, we watched the undulant ceiling form and reform itself, the skin of the room. We breathed and held hands, lying on the floor, and listened as the house breathed around us. The birdsong brimmed on and on.

The ceiling and the birds were too active, and I turned to Adam.

He grinned. “Why are we still on the floor?”

“Because we can be.” I held his face in my hands and got closer. He hummed his sweet bell tone, a lilting spring-green sound. His face began to come apart, disintegrating into its individual features, but the change did not disturb me. I moved into his changing face, closer, until I could see nothing but the dark, bright black of his pupils, the endlessness of him. His features dissembled then reassembled into another complete face. A man, his mouth open in rage and pain. Then he was an Asian woman, large-eyed, expectant. Then a calm, fair child. On and on. Face after face. Each face distinct and whole, historied. Faster and faster, the changes came. Face after face. Like a current sucking me out of myself.

I cried out, jerked away, and shut my eyes.

Then there was just light and breath, the music of him, his essential beautiful alienness. He rose and rose and rose all around. He touched my face. The whisper of his fingertips on my cheek surged down my body and out my feet. A cry jolted me and I realized that the cry had come from me, my own voice of pleasure. I sank back onto my kitchen floor and lay beside my ordinary husband, the father of my children.

Children. Daughters. There was a knife, dark and solid in that thought, but I could not identify it.

I told Adam about the knife. He told me that the Kool-Aid must have something in it. He felt a little funny.

“I’ll say,” I agreed.

In a single fluid move, he got off the floor and took a sip.

I angled myself up and drained my glass. To me, it tasted like too many things I could not name. “What kind of Kool-Aid is this?”

“Exactly.” Adam peered at the glass in his hand. “This is the kind of Kool-Aid we need to ask questions about. I’ve read about kids putting LSD in Kool-Aid as a kind of test to see how ‘cool’ someone is.” I followed him to the sink and watched him rinse his glass. The swirl of pink water laughed down the drain.

Adam picked up the pitcher and sniffed the Kool-Aid. “There must have been eight or ten gallons of this in the coolers I saw some kids lug into the kitchen earlier.” He scowled, somehow both comic and paternal. “How do you feel?”

I rubbed his shoulder, my warmth for him erupting in my chest, radiating down my arm.

“Wonderful.” I giggled. “Go! Go find out what it is. I want to know.” I pulled him toward the back door and pushed the screen open. “I should go lie down again. I’ll wait for you in bed.”

He kissed me softly, then obediently set off into the darkness, an inch of brilliant candy-red sloshing in the pitcher he still held. He weaved his graceful way between the cars and vans parked behind the house. His mobility amazed me.

I was no longer sure I had feet, but I stepped outside and looked up. The night sky shimmered with points and streaks of pinks, lavenders, and oranges. Birdcalls slid through. The dark knife remained unnamed, solemn and quiet in the press of sound and color. Odors of hay and horses and wood and young people wafted by. Days or minutes may have passed since I’d sat on the couch reading. Time had turned to rubber. I was happy, very happy until the ground went red—first the rust-red of Carolina clay then blood-red. Then, the dark knife ripped the world in two and everything came in. An animal howl filled me. Jennie! Jennie! Jennie! But I could not