The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,62

asked.

“You can do that? You could be Addie again?”

“I don’t know if I can do it again, I’m not even sure how I do it. But I would try if you want me to. Then you could have a family with someone else. I could, too. Or I could stay as I am and father children with someone else.”

Another thing I had not thought of.

“We could,” he continued, “each find someone else. Is that what you want?”

I thought again of Addie with Roy, and flushed with jealousy and confusion. “No, no, no. Not that.” I began to cry, and backed out the bedroom door. He grabbed my wrist. I stood there, covering my face with one hand, the other arm held awkwardly out toward him.

“I don’t know what you are. What if our babies? What if they are? What if they are like mules and can’t . . . ? What if we can’t?”

He waited until I caught my breath and said in a measured voice, “Do you know who you are, Evelyn? Who all of you are? Where do you come from? You don’t know any more than I do.”

He dropped my hand and began to pace. His erection had fallen. “I listen in church, Evelyn. No one knows, no one truly knows. There is faith, but not true knowledge. All we know is how we are supposed to act to keep living and to get along.” He gripped the footboard of the bed and peered at me. “But I have to know? I have to be able to say who and what I am? Or you won’t accept me now?”

He opened his arms and looked at me until I felt as naked as he was. “Here I am. This is all I can offer you.” He was exquisite, beautiful.

Suddenly quiet, he sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. “I will not be alone because I cannot say what I am. I want children, too. I want them very much. And, no, I cannot tell you how normal they will be.” There were drops on the floor between his feet. I stared at them as if I had never seen tears. I had never seen him cry before.

He shook his head. “I know it, as certain as I know that I have lungs though I do not see them. I know it, Evelyn. I can give you children.”

He got up and slowly dressed. “Marry me, Evelyn.”

I sat, still staring at the floor when Joe’s truck pulled up. Adam shut the door as he left.

Heartsick with confusion, I saw myself in the mirror. I stayed in that room until Adam’s tears dried on the floor and the room darkened down. Something in the core of me went quiet. I listened and listened until I could hear no more, until I knew. There was really only one answer I was capable of giving him.

I made an admission to myself then locked it away in my heart as if it were a treasure: he is not one of us. To have him and to bear his children was to depart from not only my family and my people, but from my kind, from my—the word rose up unbidden, startling—species.

Early the next morning I heard Joe’s car in the driveway and then Adam thanking him for the ride. I walked around the table to see out the kitchen window. Clouds, orange-gold and clipped with silver, fanned out from dawn’s blood-red sun. Joe’s truck disappeared down the road.

Adam walked in the back door behind me and stopped.

“I missed her,” I said, keeping my eyes on the sky. “I missed her so much.”

He came up close. “Ooh,” he said when he saw the sky. I leaned my head back against his chest. “I missed you.” He put his arms around me. We stayed like that a long time, watching the dawn diffuse into day, then I took him by the hand and led him to the bedroom.

We began slowly, tentative as if we had never done it before. The weight and press of him was not like Addie. He was flat and hard and boney where she had been soft and curved. He had hair where she had been naked smoothness. But the odor of him was familiar, and Addie was in his touch. He moved over me like silken water, encompassing me, making a room of his body, as she had. That familiar hum rose in him. Our rhythm