water.
I climbed up the trail to put away our leftovers. On my way back, ducking the overhanging branches, my arms full of fresh, dry towels, I felt a vibration through the rocks under my feet, like an approaching train. Puzzled, I stopped and listened.
Below me, Adam lay spread on the large, flat boulder—Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man encircled by daughters. Sarah curled up on his chest, her hands tucked under her belly, her eyes shut. Gracie and Rosie lay parallel to him, their heads pillowed on his outstretched arms. Jennie and Lil draped across their father’s legs. The four of them had their eyes closed, too. They appeared to be napping, but something in their posture suggested anticipation. Adam stared up at the sky.
Carefully, I made my way to the edge of the clearing a few feet above them. A pure, sweet tone lilted, threading through the sound of falling water. Adam’s voice, but not the sharp crescendo of his pleasure with me at night. A broad, tender tone, undulant, almost narrative.
Everything, save the sensation of his voice, seemed to have stopped. The girls were motionless. Adam’s eyes were still open, but he did not seem to be present.
The distance between me and them seemed enormous. I was outside their circle. Adam was the different one, the outsider. But here, alone with my family, I realized I was the different one.
His voice, undulating up to me, filling the air, seemed to be the manifestation of my difference from him, from them. Suddenly, I wanted to fight its seduction, to stop my ears and cover my chest. I stooped to pick up the towels I’d dropped.
My breath drew short. Then a single word flooded me: No. I shivered and pushed away my resistance.
Abandoning the towels, I climbed down and circled the rock they lay on. I knelt near Adam, a knee on either side of his head, my hands softly on his temples.
My legs tingled. The vibrato changed, sweeping up and down, seeming to fall into the timbre of the waterfall and reemerge over and over. Shimmering, joyful.
Gradually, his voice vanished as if withdrawing into the rocks and water. No one moved. A bird called nearby, and then a single-note retort followed down creek. Adam reached up and touched my wrist. He tilted his face up at me and we looked upside down at each other. The girls stirred. The spell broke.
Jennie looked up, drunkenly, and announced, “Momma, Daddy’s right, if we get very still and listen for a long time, the rocks sing.”
Sarah looked up from Adam’s chest, first at her sister and then at me. I saw in her eyes, so like her father’s then, that she knew it was not the rocks. I pointed out the towels for Gracie. She retrieved them and passed them out. The girls and Adam dressed. Speechless, we moved slowly. As if underwater, we gathered our things and returned to the car.
Sarah slept in the front seat with me and Adam. Gracie and Rosie stared out the windows. Lil and Jennie snored between them. Adam drove us down the winding mountain road, his face soft and relaxed.
As the road grew flat and straighter, the girls began to wake from their stupor, fidgeting and mumbling. I didn’t want to think or talk. I started singing “Red River Valley.” The girls picked up on the chorus, their voices harmonizing perfectly from the backseat.
Once home, they were unusually subdued. We all went to our homework and chores. I fixed us a quick late dinner of eggs and grits.
Later that evening, Sarah, the last to bathe and the only one still young enough to need help, stood naked in the tub, her arms at her sides. I poured a final rinse over her smooth shoulders and down her back. “It was Daddy singing today. He sang with his mouth shut. Not the rocks,” she said.
“I know, honey. But it was the mountains. Daddy can only do that in the mountains.”
She stared at me dubiously.
“It’s true, baby. Some places are special. Some things can happen one place, but not another.”
More staring and silence. Then she held her arms up for me to lift her out of the bath. “I want to live in the mountains then,” she declared while I toweled her back.
That night, in bed, I asked Adam if he had ever “made the rocks sing” for the girls before.
“No, not like that. But I realized we were alone and I could do it without disturbing anyone else.