away.” I looked over my shoulder out the door of the stable. My eyes followed the path of the girl. “Have you ever been with another woman?”
“Evelyn. Evelyn.” He took my hand and led me out into the yard. Gripping my shoulders, he turned me suddenly to face away from him. “Look at the sky, Evelyn. Look at the pastures. And the trees. I love that sky, those trees and fields and every horse there. I love all the faces I see in town. I love the way the roads curve or go straight. All these things give something to me. I love all this. It is so beautiful. So beautiful.” His voice broke and fell lower.
I did look at those green pastures, at the soft undulation of the distant, tree-dotted fields. The depths of cumulus towered in the distance. Through my tears, I saw the beauty he saw.
He tightened his hold on my arms. He whispered again, hard and fast against my ear. “All those things and everyone else is outside of me. But you, Evelyn. You pulled me out of the ground. And I know how your tongue rests against the roof of your mouth, how the sweat gathers under your breasts in summer, how your narrow wrists ache after hours of hoeing, how you take your pleasure from a man. And I know all this not through empathy or imagination. Not even love. But because I have been you.”
His last sentence was an unexpected turn. He had found the perfect pitch. As soon as he said those words, I knew them to be true. He belonged to me as no other had. And I to him. And he would, in some ways, never belong to me. I did not know his parameters. That was the source of my anxieties. It wasn’t the threat of infidelity. It was him.
For months afterward, I thought of Dorian Gray. Every time I saw Adam shaving and my eyes tracked the skim of the razor over his ageless skin, I imagined a middle-aged Roy Hope. Like me, he would have reading glasses on the nightstand by his bed, a tube of Ben-Gay lotion on hand for his aching joints. Several times, when Adam thought he was alone, I saw him scrutinize his reflection, frowning as he leaned in close, turning his head side to side or pushing his hair up to expose a perfect hairline.
Like all other questions about him, the question of his age dogged me, patient and loyal. But unlike other questions about him, time would inevitably make this question public, progressively more public.
Before the year was out, Gracie announced her engagement to Hans, the Dutch student she had been dating, the man she had been with the night Adam and I drank the Kool-Aid. They wanted to get married soon, they explained. Then Hans would be able to legally work in the United States while he completed his doctoral degree. Their engagement was no surprise, as Adam had predicted; we’d seen a lot of Hans since that night. But their shy addendum to the engagement announcement was completely unexpected: Gracie was pregnant—a happy accident, they explained.
I should have been disappointed that she had not been more careful with birth control, but all I felt was relief in knowing she could have children. Her pregnancy was the final proof that the girls, despite their sexually ambiguous beginnings, were normal. Not mules but fertile women!
Gracie insisted on a wedding at the ranch. She and I strolled out of the kitchen so she could show me where she wanted to stand with Hans as they made their vows. As she pivoted, surveying the land around her, her long red braid swung out behind her and she shielded her eyes from the afternoon sun. “Yep, this is the spot. And in about a month, the sun will be setting right over there.” She pointed.
I realized that we were standing where all the vans and cars had parked the night Adam heard her voice ring out sweet, joyful. I understood why she was choosing to commemorate the spot, and I smiled. She reminded me so much of my younger self at that moment.
The guest list was effusive and rambling, a menagerie of our past and present. Gracie wanted an informal wedding not much different from their parties, except that it included North Carolina relations and friends, as well as Florida horsemen, Hans’s family, and, of course, a varied pool of the girls’ friends—hippies, academics,