The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,66

our lovemaking tightened down as if to single points of skin and nerve. At times, all the energy came from me, other times it came at me, A. all heat and need in my arms. Our simple, closed-mouthed good-night kiss might erupt into passion, leaving us exhausted and wet. There were nights of skin, surfaces rubbing and rolling into each other. Or we were just our mouths, drinking each other in. Frenzied nights when I wanted to devour him. Nights when our lovemaking was a single breath on an ordinary day: short, barely noticeable, and completely necessary. Complex or simple and common as pounding rain, the texture of it could be anywhere. Tender, sweet, hard, predatory, silly, muddy, clear, cathartic—whatever a face or a glance or a word could be the whole act could be—in a single night. Adam was like Addie in one other way: the same exquisite sound burst from him when he climaxed and then immediately afterward, a beautiful, contagious belly laugh.

Usually, we went straight from climax into the state that precedes dreams, when thoughts are unmoored and drift heedlessly on their own. Other times, it was as if we had been revived and we’d have to read to calm ourselves before we could sleep. There were times when gratitude, awe, or tenderness would take me so that afterward, when we lay beside each other, I would reach for him again. Later, I would bring one of the children back into the bed with us, and we would sleep all a tangle of arms and legs, of sweet, young breath and thicker, older breath. And each of our daughters at one point as infants interrupted our lovemaking with her cries and I brought her to our bed, where she suckled and slept again while I lay on my side, Adam, spooned behind me, entered me again, and we continued gently, slowly, bodily bridging the child and the act that made the child. We called it “rocking the baby.”

I have often thought of what my old grandfather said about the beauty of sex. I think not just of what he said, but why he needed to say it. The act is a vessel that can hold a continuum of human intentions—a sweet, holy song of flesh and love, the simple, mindless rut of youth, or the darkest violation. It encompasses what we bring to it. Too often people fill it with shame.

The association of shame with sex was alien to A. Sex with him seemed a thing unto itself, neither wholly of nor from either of us, but some perfect distillation of the two of us. Making love to him felt like a form of worship. Not a worship of him or of me, but Life worshiping Itself through our bodies. Life praying to Itself and to all that is not Life, asking for more Life and thanking Itself. The holy stuff of life springing through us as it springs through every living thing.

It lasted decades with A. I never got over it.

Never.

The wedding was not going to be very fancy. Momma would make my wedding dress. We went together to pick out the cloth. She led me toward the whites at the back of Ina’s shop, but I wasn’t sure. I showed her a pale blue. She rubbed it between her fingers and said, “So, you, of all brides, should not wear white?”

“Someone might step on this.” I bent over and picked a straight pin up off the wood floor.

“Only one reason I can think of for a girl not to wear white at her wedding,” she continued. I walked away to consider a bolt of rosy-pink satin.

Momma brought over a bolt of white she favored and plopped it down on top of the cloth I looked at. She lowered her voice. “Evelyn Roe, if every woman who had been with her man before she married him wore a colored wedding dress, white wedding dresses would be as rare as a milk bag on a bull. If I wore white, you can, too.”

“Momma? You . . . ?”

She nodded.

“But I always thought you were . . . I . . .” I couldn’t have been more surprised.

“Everybody thinks that of their momma. And everyone is human, even mothers. No need to proclaim in public what’s done in private. You pick the white you want. I’ll do the stitching.”

“It won’t be so private soon, Momma,” I whispered.

She glanced up quickly, the shock and disappointment I had expected in