by Rhonda Riley
She took my face in her hands and made me look at her. “If she said she will come back, then she will, Evelyn.” She wiped my tears. “Now, you quit this crying.”
She stayed the afternoon, helping me press butter and cheese.
Her conviction reassured me. Still, I kept seeing Addie on top of him. I gagged on my own confusion and sickening jealousy. I wanted each of them and wanted to be each of them.
What had felt like blessed solitude and privacy before Addie came into my life now felt jagged and harsh. Admitting her absence to Cole and then to Momma made it more real. Equally real was the fact that if she did not come back, I would never know who or what she was. With each day that passed, those unanswered questions seemed a greater and greater injury. It seemed incomprehensible that I could have held her so intimately and not known. Inwardly, I railed against my imposed innocence. I grew lighter and more delicate, frayed by the air I leaned into as I listened for her return. I stayed close to the house and hung on every little sound.
Exactly two weeks from the day Addie and Roy left, when I had lost almost all hope, I heard footsteps coming up the drive.
I ran toward the back door, hoping for Addie, but Roy stepped into the kitchen. He stood there alone, expectant, wider and taller than I remembered him.
“Where’s Addie?” I craned my neck, peering past him for Addie.
He said nothing and opened his arms as if I would step into them.
I tried to shove him out of the way to see if she was outside. “Where’s Addie? Is she okay? Did you do something to her?”
He refused to move. “I am Addie.”
“No. Where’s Addie? Tell me!” I screamed in his face.
He held his hands out, calmly offering himself. I stared up at him, at Roy’s brown eyes, at Roy’s face and lips, his neck, shoulders, waist and hips, at his feet planted on the floor.
I backed up into the kitchen. “No. Where is she?” I went cool and hard.
“I am Addie.” He stepped toward me. There was something familiar in how he looked at me, nothing like the swaggering Roy.
“No!” I shook my head. “No!” My voice thin as a whip.
“You said that he was a fine example of a man, one a woman could get healthy children off of. And you want children,” he said.
I stared at him. Addie must have told him what I’d said.
“I did this for you, Evelyn.”
His voice did not fit. It was still Roy’s voice, but the phrasing was different. And it was deeper, more resonant. He stepped closer and reached out as if to catch me. I smelled the familiar chlorophyll odor of Addie as I collapsed onto the chair he held for me.
The room dimmed and turned grainy. I grabbed his arm instead of the hand he offered, and dug my fingers in. “Don’t do this to me,” I snapped. “I want Addie back. I want you to look like . . . like me?” My words faded to a whimper and I sat down.
He touched my face gently. “Evelyn, it will be all right.”
I leapt up. “Who are you? Not my skin, not his skin, but you! I have to know! What are you! Show me what you look like! Let me hear your voice! Yours.”
He gave me a long, intent look that made me step back and sit again.
“Okay,” he said.
He planted his feet. His opened his mouth slightly and sighed. His fingertips spread across his chest. Had Roy ever seen Addie do that? Then a sweet chime rang out from him, followed by a slow deep chime that settled into a steady drone. Then the sweetness segued to raw sound. Pure harmonics. A hard wail. He was aiming at me! Wave followed wave, higher, larger. His pupils dilated. The floor resonated. The arms of the chair hummed. My head filled. Louder and brighter, filling me, pulling me out of myself. Overwhelming. I wanted to cover my ears, my chest, my belly, but I didn’t move. Then something in me rose to meet that sound that was now no longer sound. Beautiful and horrible. Not color, not light, nor odor, taste, or touch, but some distillation of all. Buoying me, holding me, pressing. Beyond him, I sensed other harmonics. And it seemed to me I heard the voices of children—our children, I was sure.
Blindly, I put my hand out and touched his chest, and his voice receded, pulling back into him, rippling into questions as it withdrew. We breathed hard. Outside, a bird called. A train whistled far away. The 10:10. The world continued to turn. Morning light shone in across his shoe and up his leg. His hand at his side was large, a meaty man’s hand. The hair on his arm, dark. His face red from effort. Sweat, beading at his temple, ran down past his ear and onto his throat. His hair a deep brown. His eyes the golden brown of burnished oak.
Keeping his eyes on mine, he took my hand from his chest and cupped it in his hand, then moved it down between his legs.
I felt him growing in my hand, pushing against the fabric of his pants. I closed my eyes as he led me down the hall to the bedroom.
He lay down on the bed and opened his arms. I lay down beside him and pressed my face into his neck. I wept.
He held me tightly, his voice emanating sweet and light from his chest. But, for once, it had no effect on me. The tidal wave heaved itself up from the distance and hurtled toward my shore, its beautiful, obscene curve come at last to wash me, to drown me. I cried, trembling and clutching him to me, then beating him away.
Eventually, I sobbed myself to sleep inside his arms and the purr of his voice. I woke alone in the slant-light of late afternoon, the ends of all of my nerve cells swept clean. I heard him humming down the hall—a normal man humming a hymn. The sound of frying eggs interrupted a deep male voice singing Addie’s odd, jazzy version of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
Wobbly on my legs, I walked down the hall and stopped in the kitchen doorway to watch him. He turned from the stove with a question on his face.
“I’m okay,” I told him and eased myself into a chair.
He pulled some perfect biscuits out of the oven. God, he was beautiful.
I motioned toward the bedroom. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I should have realized what a shock it would be for you. Should have planned it with you. But I saw the opportunity.” He set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me. A slice of ham beside it. Addie and I had done that—made breakfast for supper, when we were tired or hadn’t gotten around to making anything else.
“Tell me,” I said. “How did Roy like having a twin?”
He filled his plate and sat down across the table from me.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t ask and he didn’t say. He’ll drink as much as you give him. I kept him drunk, very drunk, and the shades drawn. Not long after you fell asleep that night, I heard him creeping around in the kitchen. Then the back door squeaked. I checked the cookie jar and figured out what he was up to. My first thought was to get the money back, then I realized what else I could do. Or at least try. I wrote you the note and ran after him. He hadn’t gotten far. We hopped the midnight freight out of the mill and got as far as a Forest City motel. I was sure I needed to be isolated with him, like I was with you.”
The two of us ate hungrily, me looking at him and him gazing back at me. Incomprehensible. Yet he sat like any man, eating eggs, chewing, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. I could hardly breathe. But I, too, sat like any woman and ate my supper.
He ate with the same concentration and gusto as Addie. When he had sopped the last smear of egg yellow with his biscuit, he wiped his hands, then took a small wad of money out of his pocket. He laid it on the table and pushed it toward me. “That’s what’s left. I wish it was more. But there was food, the motel, and the booze. I had to buy some clothes, too. I left him enough money for the train back to Kentucky. He looked up at me early one morning before I handed him the bottle and said, ‘I never knew you were such an ugly, goddamned ugly woman. How’d you get here?’ I was starting to get a beard by then.”
He tipped forward, slurring and jerking his shoulders the way Roy had when he was drunk. I laughed then and Addie laughed, too. “Ugly, goddamned ugly woman,” h
e repeated and we could not stop laughing. Every time we glanced at each other, we giggled and he mimicked Roy again. My face locked into a laugh, I felt hysteria rising.
Finally, I choked on some biscuit and had to stop myself.
“Do you like this?” I asked when I had calmed down. “Being a man?”
The question sobered him. He sighed and answered, “Yes, I do. But I don’t like it more than being you.” My skin prickled when he said “being you.”
“I wasn’t sure if I could even make it happen. It took longer than I thought it would. I had to concentrate everything I had on him. With you, it just happened. I went out only for food, booze, and clothes—and a haircut. When I saw I was finished, I came straight back here.”
“Did it hurt? Will you stay like this? Will you need to be around him?”
He sat very still for a moment, rubbing his chest. “No, it didn’t hurt. But I could feel things coming apart and reassembling.” His hands rocked up and down over our empty plates. I felt my own wrenching internal realignment.
He smiled and shrugged. “I feel okay. I feel . . . stable. Fixed again.”
He put his hand over mine. “And you?”
“I am not stable yet,” I whispered and began clearing the table.
We washed the dishes, side by side, not touching, though I felt his warmth next to me, waiting, available.
Near sunset, he went out into the barn. Quietly, I followed to watch. Hobo stood alert at the barn door, barked once, then wagged his tail. Addie stopped and knelt. Hobo approached her with familiarity but no affection. Addie took Hobo’s muzzle in her hands—in his hands. Suddenly, Hobo leapt up, licking Addie and running excitedly around him, barking.
In the barn, the livestock rustled—a muted snort, a whinny of interest. I walked down the porch steps to get a better view. Addie went first to Darling’s stall. I heard that faint hum. Darling nosed him and nickered in recognition. He ran his hand down her neck, Addie’s touch. But a man’s deep, full laugh accompanied it. When he opened the stall gate, she pressed into him. Hobo circled them, yapping. The cows bellowed at the excitement, the chickens clattered in the coop.
Addie bridled Darling, mounted bareback. With a wave, he cantered off, disappearing into the pasture. I could see them for a long time, then, at the far end of the pasture, dusk snuffed them out of sight.
By the time I heard him shutting up the barn for the night, I’d made his bed—the same bed I tried to get him to sleep in after I found him in the mud. I laid out some of Lester’s clothes for him, certain this time they would fit, at least in length. The shoulders might be too narrow.
That was all I could do. To do more, to have him in my bed then, on that first night, felt like it would be the undoing of me. Too much for one day. I was numb.
He did not comment when he saw the bedroom door open and the bed turned down, but stopped and, taking my head in his hands, kissed me gently, squarely on the forehead and said good night.
“Good night, Addie,” I replied. But I could not walk away from him. “You need a man’s name. I can’t call you Addie. And I can’t call you Roy. He knows where we live. What if he shows up again? You need a name, one that sounds like Addie.” Then I said the first name I could think of, “Adam. You can be Adam.”
“Adam? Yeah, I like that. Adam.” He sat on the bed and took his shoes off. “I don’t think Roy will be back this way to raise questions. But I might run into someone who sees a resemblance. It would make sense for us to be from the same clan. And I owe him for this.” He swept his hand across his lap. “My last name should be Hope. Roy can be a middle name.”
“You need a story, too. Where do you come from? And why are you here?”
My questions filled the room for a minute.
Adam took a deep breath. “From here. For you. As always. Though I forgot to think up a name, on the way back, I decided that I’m from Kentucky, like Roy. The other side of the mountains. I came here because I heard about how good Addie was with horses. I’m good with horses, too. So I came to see if you two could give me a job. And now it looks like you will really need a new hand. So do I get the job?” He smiled an invitation.
I let it pass. “Adam Roy Hope,” I pronounced him. He gave me Addie’s smile, her gaze through his new face.
We went to our separate beds.
I could sense him through the walls. Then the fatigue of my confusion and desire came down like a hammer and knocked me into a sleep in which there was no skin, no voice, no entangled limbs.
The next morning, I woke to the sound of footsteps in the hall, the floorboards telegraphing the new weight of Addie—of Adam. Everything else remained the same, the squeak of the oven door as he opened it, the groan and sputter of the pump as he drew water for coffee.
I dressed slowly and went into the kitchen, into the welcome of his wide grin, into a normal day. We did the same chores in the same order. Same cows to milk, same chickens to feed, same pitchfork for the manure. Same red dirt underfoot. But she was now he. The world seemed surreal in its placid continuity while, in me, tectonic, dizzying shifts took place.
I could almost taste the strange irony of my desire. For her. For him.
After the morning milking, we finished sawing the fall logs, a job that we had started with Roy. Sawing the thicker log was a two-person job. We didn’t talk much. All I had were questions. The same questions I had had all along. There were, I was sure, no more answers now than there had been when I found him. I felt drained, stunned, my skin stretched over nerves held together only by routine. The noise and effort of sawing offered a small antidote.
He took over the splitting and stacking when we finished the sawing. Through the open barn doors, I watched him while I cleared the manure and lay down fresh hay. He circled the stump we used as a chopping block, then swung the maul in a practice swing. He shook his head, then stepped back farther from the stump and swung again. Rocking back on his heels slightly, then forward, just as Addie used to do, he swung again. The maul landed dead-center and he laughed.
In the afternoon we stopped for lunch. Adam noticed the healed cut, a thin red line at the base of my thumb as I handed him a sandwich. He touched my wrist. “What happened?”
I pointed to the shelf, “The cookie jar, I smashed it against the wall when I found it empty. I hadn’t found your note yet. I cut myself cleaning it up.”
I smelled the grassy, fresh-mown odor of his sweat. The warmth of his touch lingered on my hand. “I need to take you down to meet Momma and Daddy. I want to let them know you’re here. The sooner they meet the new hired help, the better, I think.”
We walked to the mill-village, cutting through the woods where I had played as a child. To cross the creek, we walked single-file over a narrow fallen tree. Halfway across, I heard, above the soft burble of the creek, a single, crisp chime, clear as the water behind me. I turned to look, almost slipping on the slick log. Adam grabbed my elbow, to steady me, and grinned sheepishly at me.
“I know it’s you.” I continued across the creek and down the path.
Otherwise, we were quiet. The sun shone through the sparse canopy of late winter. With him behind me on the narrow path, I could imagine that nothing had changed, that I would see Addie if I glanced over my shoulder.
We reached the edge of the mill-village and my self-consciousness immediately returned. I felt naked, aware of him by my side. We waved to the old lady who lived in the first house. Her little granddaughter, sitting in the porch swing, waved back, but the old woman continued her sweeping without noticing us.
Momma and Daddy were alone at the table when we arrived, a pot of pinto beans and a plate of corn bread between them. They stood when they saw Adam.
“Momma, Daddy, this is . . .”
“Adam. I’m Adam Hope. Pleased to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Roe.” He held his hand out. Daddy shook his hand and nodded.
Momma’s eyes were wide with surprise. “My, it is nice to meet you, Adam. Sorry, y’all are missin
g Evelyn’s sister, Rita, she’s off with some friends,” she said as she took Adam’s hand. She motioned for me to get more plates and forks and returned her attention to Adam.
“Y’all are just in time for supper! Sit down.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Sorry to barge in like this. I’m from Kentucky. I came to Clarion looking for work.”
“Are you a good mechanic?” Daddy asked. “One of our machine boys left for the Radley mill about a week ago.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll keep that in mind, but I’m not much of a mechanic. I’m a trained groom and stable hand. Too many of us already in Kentucky. I came here because I heard about Addie Hardin and Cole Starnes’s work with horses, so I—”
I interrupted, “I’m pretty sure the Starneses aren’t looking for any help. But I have really been missing Addie’s help. If she doesn’t come back . . .”
Daddy’s interest had lagged as soon as he saw Adam wasn’t looking for a mill job, but now he pulled out a chair for Adam and sat down opposite him. “That’s something to consider. Her momma never came back.”
Momma touched my arm and sighed sympathetically. She ladled ham and beans onto our plates and pushed the skillet of corn bread closer to Adam.
I shook my head. “I could use the help.”
Adam took a piece of the corn bread. “It’s a small place, but more than one person can do. I’d be happy to work for room and board for the time being. Until you know what the situation is. I’ve done farming, too.”
There was a beat of silence, then Daddy turned to Momma. “Lily Mae, why don’t you offer the boy some of your sweet pickles?”
Momma got the pickles and some of her corn relish, opening a fresh jar of each and presenting them on the little flowered dish she reserved for company.
Adam added a generous portion of each to his plate and moaned appreciatively when he had a mouthful of pickles. “These are great, Mrs. Roe. Did you can them yourself?”