The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,180
this? What kind of man is my husband? Where is my husband?
Would he appear at my door as he had when he returned as Adam? Would I hear his voice again, feel his touch?
At night, I tossed in my bed, craving him, wanting to enter the room of his body and feel his hands on my face. To taste his mouth and press my chest against his. There were no buffers between the need, the absence, and myself. When I wept, I wept for need, not grief.
If I kept everything ready for him, Adam would return. Years before, my readiness, my ripeness and solitude as a young woman had called him out of the Carolina clay. Surely, my loneliness could now do the same. I waited and waited and waited. I, along with all his clothes, and his horses, and his tools, waited.
The pasture greened up in the first rains of spring, but otherwise, everything remained the same. Weeks, then months crept by.
The girls and Pauline visited as often as they were able, and the emptiness of the house always seemed fresher, stronger, in the wake of their departures. I deflected their requests for a memorial. Some days, I did not answer the phone.
I kept up the house and the garden. The tomatoes came in by the bushel. White acre peas, cucumbers, and corn followed. I made Adam’s favorite relish, an old recipe of Momma’s. I lined the jars up on the pantry shelf. Gleaming, ready.
By midsummer, the tension of waiting for his arrival had stripped away my passivity. Methodically, I pulled out all of Adam’s Florida maps. I worked my way through his bookshelves, reading his books on Florida history, geography, flora, and fauna. I studied his notes in the margins, then visited all the circled destinations on his maps. What I initially told myself would be a tribute to Adam quickly turned into a desperate search. I began to see older men who looked like him everywhere.
His individual physical features that I had savored for so long now seemed common. I raced down a crowded Cedar Key pier to touch the arm of a gray-haired man whose wide back reminded me of Adam’s. At the farmer’s market, my heart startled and I gawked at a man who laughed like Adam. I drove across the parking lot of a state park to pull up beside an old man who walked like Adam. Each time left me with a dissonant sense of failure, as if my mistaken leaps of recognition were somehow dispersing the very qualities I sought.
Still, I scrutinized every stranger who paid me the slightest attention or kindness. Everywhere I went, I watched and waited, on alert. I was looking for a single straw in a haystack.
Listening for his return seemed to be the only thing that held my muscles to my bones, that kept the supper dishes from sliding off the table, and brought the sun up in the morning. My clothes hung loosely on me. I dug through boxes and closets to pull out smaller clothes the girls had left behind.
I struggled to hold myself open, to remain vigilant for his return to me.
One day, I went to a local nursery for some flowers to plant by the back door. I reached over the flats of four-inch pots, searching for the most robust among the dark orange marigolds, Adam’s favorite shade. From behind me a man’s voice asked, “Can these take full sun?”
I turned.
He was exactly my height. He appeared to be in his sixties, gray hair, warm hazel eyes, and a thick white mustache. He laughed at my surprise and repeated his question, his broad hand grazing the flower tops. He absently scratched his breastbone and told me how much he liked the color I’d chosen.
As we strolled by the vine section on our way to the checkout counter, he cupped a passion vine blossom and asked, “What kind of flower is this?”
His words whipped through me. Our question game! I searched his face, his pale, intelligent eyes for signs of recognition. All my nerves were poised, ready for Addie’s beaming smile or Adam’s deep laugh. I touched his arm, squeezing to stop my hand’s trembling.
As I opened my mouth to say Adam’s name, the man glanced over his shoulder awkwardly and shifted the potted flower he held so that his arm slipped from my touch. “Excuse me, I need to help my mother.”