from me, between Rosie and Sarah. But his eyes were closed, his head rolled back. The girls leaned in closer as Sarah picked up a second mallet and swirled it gently in the smallest bowl. The timbre and volume changed. Adam’s hand moved up his chest. Lil smiled, open-mouthed in surprise. The first interest I’d seen on her face in days.
Adam sighed and shivered, his eyes still closed. The girls inched closer to the bowls. Sarah concentrated. Her breathing was deep and measured as she pressed the mallets slowly, around and around, deeper then higher in the bowl, varying the tone and resonance. Without looking up, she motioned to a third mallet sitting next to her and said, “Gracie, yours.”
When the third mallet touched the middle bowl, I heard the sharp intake of breath around me. I felt the harmony in my solar plexus, a sweetness that made me smile. The tone of the three bowls seemed to mingle into a peak, then separate in a broad pattern. As it changed, rising and falling, my family moaned around me. Lil had slumped back against the footboard of her bed. Rosie stared, unfocused, at the bowls, her hand on her belly. Lil blinked, and her eyes rolled back in her head as her back arched slightly, then dropped again. Her face softened. Adam exhaled sharply. Gracie lurched forward in a small spasm and clutched her chest with her free hand. Something I could not see or feel moved through them like a wave, orgasmic.
Sarah moved the mallets lower in the bowl, Gracie followed, and the sound sobered, changed rhythm. She looked around at us. “More?”
“Yes,” Adam whispered.
I nodded.
Sarah looked at Lil, who mumbled, “Please. Yes, more.”
Sarah picked up the tempo again. “Stay there and a little faster,” she said to Gracie. And the sound moved from somber to ticklishly pleasing. Then the room exploded. Adam, Lil, and then Rosie burst into guffaws and rolled on the floor. Sarah bit her lip in concentration. I went limp and happy, leaning back against Lil’s closet door, my head warm. But Adam and each of the girls suddenly sucked in their breath, then exhaled explosively, wiggling as if being violently tickled. Tears streaked their faces. Lil pounded the floor and clutched her father’s arm. Rosie tried to stand to do God knows what, but couldn’t make it up off the floor. Gracie kept her mallet moving, but held one hand over her mouth as if to stifle her laughter. A tear slid down her face and into her bowl. Sarah stared down, mouth open, eyes big, and her pupils dilated.
The sound filled the room, and the strange St. Vitus dance of giggles, guffaws, and snorts continued around me. My head and chest hummed with a tender, amazing joy. But what I felt was clearly not the fantastic joke they all seemed to hear.
Then, abruptly, part of it cut out. I opened my eyes. Gracie, a wide, foolish grin on her face, held both hands up in the air.
The sound dropped and stopped. Sarah put the mallets down gently and rubbed her arms. Their laughter bubbled down to whimpers, then exhausted sighs.
“Wow,” one of them moaned thickly.
Gradually, the girls begin to move around me.
“Oh, and to think I used to spend money on drugs,” Rosie said.
Adam snored. Gracie stretched beside him and closed her eyes.
Sarah, Rosie, Lil, and I slowly gathered up the dirty dishes and leftovers and wandered back into the kitchen. They washed the dishes while I sat at the table. I watched them jostling shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen. Bright-haired, slim young women. Lil now as tall as Rosie. So like me when I had been a girl. And so like their father when they rolled on the floor laughing earlier.
I thought of Momma. For a moment, I saw her face drawn with illness, the appeal for forgiveness in her voice when she told me about my father. How could I explain to them what I did not understand? Adam was, and always had been, vast and strange, beyond my vocabulary. I glanced down the hall at the photograph of Addie and me hanging there. How could I explain that to our daughters?
Lil put her dish towel down, came over to me, and laid her hand on my back. “Thanks for the sisters, Mom,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
She looked down at me. “You didn’t like the bowls as much as we did, did you?”
“Oh, I like them. But it was different for