The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,187

Remember, I stayed about a week with them when they lived in Chicago. The walls were so thin. And I’ve heard Rosie . . . So that was Daddy?” She rubbed her chest. “And that time after Jennie’s funeral when you stopped Daddy, I thought it was because he was doing something only women did. I thought you were upset because he was acting like a woman.”

I wiped my eyes and tried to smile at her. “Do you remember the time in the mountains with all of us?”

She squinted in the effort to remember, then her expression changed. “Oh, when the rocks sang? That was amazing. You were right there when I opened my eyes. Are you saying that was Daddy, too?”

I nodded.

After a moment, her face slowly broke into a wide smile. “Momma, a while ago in bed, when I . . . it was like my chest opened up in a new way. Wonderful and scary.” She paused and sighed. “So, you are telling me that, at forty-four, my body has learned a new trick and it’s unique to us?”

Not to “us,” I thought—to you, the daughters of Adam. But I just nodded.

Lil’s revelation stunned me. It had never crossed my mind that the girls would attribute his voice to me or their unique voice as a gift from me.

But I know how secrets and assumptions grow larger over the years, fed by the tensions and yearnings of their keepers. They also diffuse as they settle, like a strange pollen, spreading invisibly over the fields of our daily lives. Simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. What we do not say never ceases being. It waits. Robust. Elemental.

The day after my conversation with Lil, I received a brief letter from Sarah:

Momma, I’m including this picture to prepare you—all of you. It’s the latest picture of me. I haven’t done anything to myself or the photograph, I swear. I probably should be alarmed, but I’m not. It feels natural. I’m okay. I’m happy. And I am pregnant again! Three months by the time I see you! A daughter is coming, I’m sure. Oh, and there’s a canyon here that reminds me so much of Daddy. Looking forward to seeing all of you soon.

Love, S.

In the photograph, Sarah squats beside her young son, Michael. He grins up at the camera, a happy little Chinese boy sporting the cheekbones of the McMurrough clan and a purple shirt. Sarah looks directly at the camera, her face is serious, her chin thrust out as if offering her features to the world. She is still quite distinctly Sarah. Same chin, same forehead. But her once-curly auburn hair is black and straight, her pale irises are now dark brown. Her eyelids are Asian. She has become a Chinese woman. The daughter of A.

I stared at the photo until my eyes burned, then teared. I had it finally: proof.

I began to write.

Recently, I found out that the “magical sea monkeys” we purchased for the girls when we first moved to Florida are a species of tiny shrimp-like animals, triops, which survive in the hidden pools that are the carved afterthoughts of desert flash-floods. When the pool dries completely, the dehydrated creatures, lifeless by all human measures, can wait decades for the next flood, when they will once again spring into life and swim.

I find a humbling, comic comfort in triops. In their company, Adam seems normal, or at least natural. In the last decade, I have gotten tired of questions and of questioning.

What is simply is.

My hope is that my daughters will forgive me my innocence, my ignorance, and my fears. All I know is this: A. was and is. He walks this earth, whole and unrecognizable. He is here among us, somewhere. Beside you, perhaps. And on this December day in the year 2000, I know that the Florida air is warm, the windows are open. My grandsons run down the hall. Gracie’s plane is touching down. Sarah and her family are flying over the Pacific. The odors of baking bread fill my home. In the kitchen, Lil and Rosie sling Christmas carols around like cabaret songs. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” indeed.

Within hours, my youngest daughter will come through the door bearing in her body her second child and undeniable proof of A.

I will hand my daughters all that I have written here.

I will, at last, be true.

I have often found myself thinking of that day long ago at the springs when I lay on my back