Sweet Adaline

Chapter Six

The door, swollen from the rain earlier that day and humidity of the last month, stuck at first as I opened it. It had been beaten loudly enough to know it was Adaline. She was as patient as I.  Stinging and dry I dragged my eyes across the two of the, anxious in my doorway. She glanced over at Brian who shifted uncomfortably, then back to me. "Brian, this is Ash. My Step brother." She stepped aside, so I shook the boy's hand. He smiled at me with distrust. "We were just driving around and I thought, 'hey, it would be cool to say hi to you. You know, since you guys hadn't met yet."
I'm sure that the awkwardness that kept the two lingering at the door, was more my own than theirs, although Brian had his own reservations about coming. His thoughts remained on the nightmares Adaline had been having and of names she'd been calling out in her sleep. The names were Simon and Kayla, and she frantically pled for them, begging for their love and their forgiveness. Her pleas were tragic and always forgotten by the time he was able to rouse her. Once he had her up, awkward in his arms, often on his mother's couch early in the morning, he was struck dumb. Somehow it was a violation of her trust, to listen to her sleep, and rifle through her dreams. She only trusted him with her heart moderately, while her spirit and her mind remained her own entirely and unbridled. Brian had surmised from the freak uprising of the dreams over the recent months, that this Simon was the same. These names were active in his thoughts since the start of her dreams, but from the moment they'd arrived at my doorstep and her attitude shifted from morose as she always was with him, to this enlivened nymph, his mind was so thick with the thoughts of it he could barely manage.
"Nice to meet you." My head was leaded with the sleep that was falling on it when they had knocked. I raised my brows and widened my eyes, in attempt to ward it off. Stepping away from the door, I watched her while Brian kept his envious eyes on me, under poor disguise. "Have a seat." I motioned to a heavily worn, tan love seat I'd picked up from a garage sale earlier that week. From Adaline's lack of comment, I could tell she wasn't impressed. Neither was I, yet it served its purpose.
The heat of his glare was exhausting, however I reminded myself of what a prick I was when I was a kid his age, not all that long ago. Insecure and jealous of anyone who so much as looked at Penny. I empathized with Adaline for carrying on with a boy that seemed so much like me at that age. I gave into a grin, which Brian molded negatively, and Adaline volleyed back to me.
"What are you two up to tonight?" I asked. She shrugged and was tempted by the guitar. Always tempted by it, disabling my attempt to ease the heavy tone of the room.
"So, Brian..."
"Just call me B." He said firmly.
"B. Ok" I replied with a nod of affirmation. "You have great taste." I immediately berated myself for those words.
His stare turned incredulous with shock.
"Adaline brought over some of your albums." I swiftly explained.
"Oh! Yeah." He said. He deflated slightly under his hoodie "Yeah. There's some good music out there." He finished succinctly and nodded, and idled ready to volley my next question. I looked around a bit and over to Adaline. The discomfort was unprecedented, in my apartment and under my own skin. My eyes drifted longingly at the counter where the jars sat, untouched, beckoning me. Daring me to find another way to break the tension.
"How's the Jack and Angela show? I haven't called for a while now." I asked landing stiffly on the couch.
"They're alright in that they talk." She replied, disengaged. "But you're mom is obviously getting tired of him. Jack can do that to people, though. I like your mom." she looked at me regretfully. "You ought to talk to her. You know, see what's going on. I mean..." she said with shrugged shoulders and dovish eyes.
"Yeah..." I was at a loss for words. I knew what I'd say to anyone else about it. I'd probably say something along the lines of, "Why? What's the point? She's gotten bored, so now she's just working out the logistics of getting away with some spending cash." Only, normally it would be a worried husband, unaware of his planned obsolescence. This time it was the sorry bastard's daughter, someone I'd invested time and friendship in. It was my sister, and I got the feeling she could use a little hope. False hope if that's all I had, and it was.
"Sure. I'll talk to her. I wouldn't expect much, though. We haven't seen eye to eye in this sort of thing for a while now." My admonishing words fell on deafened ears. She was still basking in the first few.
"It's just..." she struggled, "she brings out something good in him," It was one of the rare moments when she spoke genuinely about concern for him. "I'm not sure there's enough of that to spare." Brian remained standing, idle in the space between us with nothing to contribute.
"Are you playing much, still? It sounded like you'd been getting anxious to." Her tone rose a hair from secrecy.
"Yeah, well..." I squirmed in my seat a bit. "I have, but things just don't sound right. The notes are all muddy." Brian inspected his watch and then again, as well as around the room, as if something was scheduled to change. His patience was waning.
"Excuse me," I said, slipping away to the bathroom. He was done with the reunion before she beat on my door, and I wasn't about to hold him.
"What's your issue?" I heard Adaline say irritated. More muffled conversation ensued. He grew belligerent, anxious to leave, and I knew just what to expect: A rooted stance of defiance. His arrogance would charge her with an incinerating glare, and she'd wash it over with that look, Penny's look, the one she disarmed me with a thousand times.
"Fine. Whatever," were the last words I heard as I finished washing my hands, splashing a bit on my gaunt face.
"Can you take me home?" She asked me, eyes darkened with a stiff vexing thought. It wasn't actually a question.
"Sure"
"Simon." Brian said. His focus returned to the girl. "Call me or whatever."
"Why are you... Ok. Fine."
As quickly as he'd flushed out the door, his meaty Datsun was growling and revving, peeling out it's tires as it flung itself into the street and out of earshot.
"You want tonight to go like this?" I said. It was a dumbshit thing to say. She just shook it off and took her turn in the bathroom.
He may be a twat at the moment, I thought, but he means something to her and that's worth protecting. I picked up the guitar and sat on the floor, preparing my lecture. I'd tell her, "look Ad, you just never know how things are gonna turn out. If I knew that," and I missed the train. What would I have done? I'd have told her it was alright to feel scared. To feel alone. I'd tell her what my mother told me when I was fifteen, or sixteen. Sometimes, you're allowed to hate you kid, but that doesn't mean your evil or, I couldn't remember what she called herself that night over dinner, savage. But then she told me about that afternoon, how Kayla kept screaming and she wanted so badly just to make it stop, that she'd go black, and the look, that sinister expression I painted melodramatic in my mind, but it wasn't. If I did, at that moment, If I'd had the right thing to say, but I just hated her a little more, seething over a frozen pasta dinner. My heart began to race. I was suddenly dizzy. I'd have taken the chance to talk sense into the girl. But I didn't know.
The bathroom door is the only silent set of hinges in that whole ghastly place, and I never saw her slip into the room. She took a fat loud breath and rejected it with a sigh.
"I don't know." Adaline shook her head. "He was being really weird. I really wish I had a damn drink."
"Don't start that so soon. Believe me..." I started to say.
"Please." she flashed contempt like a badge, deflating my lecture, and headed for the kitchen pulling out a fifth of Gordon's Gin from her bulky cloth purse, though I couldn't see it. She opened every cupboard, finding no glassware in any of them, until she opened the one cabinet suspended over the kitchen sink. "Hey, dick. What's this?"
She came to me holding a jar of amber liquid. "This your secret pleasure? You're not one of those sicko's that drinks their own wiz, are you. Urine therapy, or something. I saw thing on that shit, on tv once. That shit's just, not cool." She said it half joking, but the more she spoke, the closer it appeared that she was genuinely concerned I might be that sort of sick. Up till this night, we really knew very little about one another.  
"Moonshine." I said. She glanced at the jar and back at me with cartoonish gesture, her shaggy head bobbling and her eyes lit like tiny forest blazes miraged in a flawless Saharan landscape. 
"Why? Did you make it?"
I was embarrassed and excited. She smiled, the vixen. "It's very strong. I used to have a big outdoor still when we lived out Eugene. It's a popular thing in Oregon."
"Oh. Well, let's check it out." She smiled and perked up at the thought of her first taste of moonshine. She placed it on the counter with a heavy thud and glanced back at me as she wrapped her short, thick fingers around the lid. "If this is a jar of wiz, it's gonna get dicey up in here" She said, and she smiled, and something sizzled in my chest in a hot flash. It took a grunt to crank off the top, but she managed without so much as a drop spilt.
Again, I hadn't had a drop for three full days. It had been so much easier for the last few hours than the two gruesome nights of nausea and desperation, prior. There was no reason to go back. I didn't even want to. I was through the darkness, and the light of sobriety had broken once again. Yet, as I pulled two plastic cups from the dishwasher, I knew it was impossible to resist. It wasn't the alcohol I wanted to enjoy. It was Adaline and anything that followed us down this seedy avenue. This was a night for regret. I knew it right away.
She splashed a little into each cup, swearing as it spilled over the sides onto her hand, and trickled down the side of the jar onto the marbled linoleum counter.
I melted with the yeasty smell of alcohol once the cup was in hand. Trembling while everything was silenced, conceded to the will inside that jar. My tongue dried though my mouth filled with saliva. It grew harder and harder still to breathe.
She shrugged and threw it back and ghasped almost instantly. "Sho-ho-holy god-damn! This shit is awful!"
"Well, no, it's not Boone's. It's moonshine." I said
"Damn! I can feel it burning all the way down my throat." Her brow was furrowed like a confused animal, and she vigorously frowned. Then tossed another splash in her cup and down the hatch, boisterously planting the empty vessel in one swift chained gesture, as if declaring expertise in the game. She shivered, inhaling through pursed lips, which grew emphatic as she shook her shoulders tossing her wild locks around with a waft of her vanilla musk. I fought not to stare. She dipped out of the kitchen and snatched up the instrument, tossing herself onto the couch.
The sweet notion of sobriety was fully evicted. "Fuck it" I mumbled and took a gulp to kick down my visceral thirst. A few cubes of ice, another wealthy splash of booze to each cup, and the rest of the OJ.
She stared at me blankly as I returned with the cups, plucking the E string as she tweaked the nut, dropping it down a half step. She took the cup without a glance and threw back a swig from it, consciously dampening a wince from the dry sharpness of the drink.
"I figured out what it was that was wrong with that song you were playing."
"Yeah?" I inquired, lazily pouring myself into the bean bag in the corner across from her.
"He tuned this first string down a half step. He did that for everything. I don't have a tuner, and I'm guessing you don't either, so this might sound a little shitty. We'll see though, right?"
As she playfully narrowed her eyes at me, her fingers danced across the strings. The tempo was hot in which she filled the room with his song. The girl played it more energetically than I recalled it played by Elliott, as he let the notes ring melodically. I liked this new life she infused in it.
It was joyful and bright. She played it as well as any of the other's that she'd practiced for years. The arpeggios seemed effortless, light and pithy. Then with chords that were more exact and familiar. It was cheerful, remarkably so, and seemed even to crisp the air and cool the lights to a brighter glow. It was so much more captivating, her velvety rendition. Then she slowed it for the chorus, her voice wavering as if it were goodbye. Goodbye to what, though? To whom, it was apparent in a way. A love. A strained and stolen, vibrant and remarkable thing. The one that lays foundation, and slips inside it, lost forever to an organic life all it's own
We were silent from the last notes that left her guitar. The welcomed patter of the evening showers, danced on my roof with lovely percussion. We both felt it, the nourishment of the rain. It had been constant all day. 'Finally,' I thought. I woke early to its effusive hush. For the last month or so, these soothing showers came only in the night, only after the violent blistering heat that abused the desert throughout the afternoons.
We looked at each other, knowingly as the percussion slowed.
"You wanna go out there?" Adaline asked me with that glimmer of vitality that lit up her face, and mine with it.
"You want to?" I answered. We were children, alive with the notion.
We took off our jackets and shoes and socks, preparing to be soaked by it. As we did, and our excitement grew, lighter my body became. I was sloughing off the weight of the world.
We practically danced out into the gravel, barefoot and beautiful, foolish and free. I tried to restrain myself, staying true to my despondency, but found myself increasingly unable. I was being stoned by nature's miraculous vitality.
She'd climbed onto the trunk and sat, head held high and facing infinity. She took a long absorptive breath and held out her arms before her, embracing the sensation of each raindrop that fell against her skin. Her eyes were closed. I did the same, standing in the gravel beside her.
I hopped onto the trunk to sit beside her and we stared off beyond the chain link fence, beyond the desert wash, now so robust with desert life. Beyond the brown and brush of the alleys and unfenced yards that faced us, we looked into the overcast oblivion.
The steel toned blue grey cast was one of perfect neutrality. Every tree, desert brush and rooftop was laid flat and shadow less, two dimensional against its colorless backdrop. And yet, by its simplicity, it was infinite. Devoid of shade or variation of hue, I looked on wistfully without any visible limit.
The shimmering asphalt was an active minefield, spontaneously and perpetually exploding with life, only to settle and burst again over and over. Billions of drops of diversity, all with the common pursuit of racing to the earth in perfect succession. As quickly as they condensed and became one, the next collided shattering the fluid peace of which they'd become one with. And tomorrow they'd do it again.
The musk of desert sage and lavender, entwined with the sharp sweetness of pine and palm became the air we breathed, intoxicating. The scents resurrected us, wiping clear our minds of any memory immediately confounding. All greens were green. No shades distinguished the beautiful from the dry and desperate. They were alive by the newness of their freshly nourished shower. Browns were deep and earthy.
The sleek wet coat dampened the concrete and brick, erasing the water markings of age and wear, the harsh scars of their histories. They too were fresh and young again. The asphalt, no matter how beaten and abused, was sleek and stout, ready and purposeful, no matter the texture. Black and glassy, like fields of onyx.
The rain fell in waves, as though each cloud was independent, working associatively only to remind us of the simple beauty of natures chaos. Some came with force and conviction, with wave after wave of seamless assault. And then there were the rains such as the one we sat entranced with on my trunk in my gravel lot. They were the most pensive of desert monsoon showers. They fed the earth as they seemed to drift weightlessly like particles in rays of light.
Thunder rolled with constancy like a Colorado River rapid. It rose from silence growling, raising audibly for seconds, long spanned out seconds, and rose and fell in volume, as it drifted. Then once it tapered out, still we heard it, the way we would when the jets soared across the length of the city, to and from the Air Force base.
Then the flash lit the neutral grey cast without a sound. Again a flicker. Unexpectedly, the vicious crack like artillery fire startled and shook us. Even the steel body of my Toyota, that we sat on quivered from the crack. Silence for a moment longer, the rolling thunder rose again, not quite cyclically.
It drizzled on us, teardrops openly spaced and descending listlessly. Then without notice, the pace of it quickened, falling faster. It thickened its populous, falling harder, soaking and chilling us. And then it slowed again to even less a rate than before. Each drop, so spaced from the last, alluded to its retirement.
A warm, distinguished draft of effervescent mesquite came on us. We smiled. It was a truer smile than any other. It erupted from deep within, not for a want of something, but for the beauty of love. Something so rare to us, that in this storm, this shower, we were cleansed and rinsed anew. We were extinguished of the flames within that burned our spirit, and we breathed life into our lungs. The rarity of life, a thing we all too often, hourly in fact and more constantly, feel the burden of had become again a treasure. Here, in this, our resurrection, we knew. We were connected, inseparable.
"He says he loves me." The said softly into the gently slowing rain.
"It's a scary thing." I replied, more to my own thoughts on it, rather than to her. ""
"I think I do. Sometimes, but maybe..." She paused.
"Love is...a lot of things. But every time, I've found, it's scary. Even when it was absolutely perfect, it scared the hell out of me. At least some part of it."
"I wish we could just get into the happily ever after part."
"You know what it's not?"
"Huh?"
"Everything we need it to be. Faithful, lasting honest. It's whatever it is in the moment, and then..." I watched her for a moment, swept over my own jaded heart. "Somebody told me once, the best part of love is when you're too scared to say it."
"What the fuck does that mean?" she said
"Well, I think they were talking about that intense rush you get when you're lost in the wildness of infatuation. You're jacked up from this constant adrenaline high?" She nodded.
"And you can't think of anything but the last thing he said to you, and what the hell he meant by it. You're addicted, and want only to be with him every second, but you get so damn nervous when he's right there in front of you that you can barely come up with enough conversation to fill a minute. You let your heart be enslaved by him, invested solely in the need to trust him, trust that he won't hurt you.
"You want him to know how much you adore him. You want that more than life. You believe that if he just knew that, he'd make you his. You want to tell him everything, but are petrified that everything you think you've learned about him will be sheer misinterpretation. You tell yourself, 'I have to tell him now! I can't stand it!', but you convince yourself instead that it's just not right yet. You need to know more. If you wait just a little bit longer, he'll know beyond all doubt that all he needs is you, and what an incredible woman you are. He'll understand, and not just hear you, but feel you." I paused. "And when he does, that moment will last an eternity. Maybe that's 'Happily Ever After'," I waited again, recalling all I'd said.
She stared at me, content to listen as though she'd paid to hear my rant. She seemed as captivated by it as I was. Just for that moment, it felt nice to remember Penny on the grassy mall at Oregon State, that first time I asked her out on something of a date, though we'd hung out after class a few times before.
Then I recalled the night after some Nick Cage/Meg Ryan flick how I described that terrifying ecstasy I felt and how I scrambled for the words to convey to her that I liked her, and then the way her eyes hung onto my mine longing, bewitched by the harmony of each others breath. Her angelic glow and her affirming smile that promised me I hadn't made myself the fool.
"That about sums it up alright! So, what do I do?" She asked excited, the Great Enigma. I was lost to the feeling of weightlessness, recalling Penny's first kiss, on the porch of her parent's house. Soft but full, her body against mine with fervor and surrender, and drunken by it, we slipped away in united weakness.
I smiled kindly and shook my head. "You just live it. Live it through. You'll rush it, we all do. Don't miss it though. If there's anything you can do, it's just appreciate the ache of it. The agony of not knowing."
"How? How can it be any better not to know?" Adaline inhaled deeply as she shifted her weight complacently, leaning back.
"Because you never 'really' know. Everything changes. What he feels this moment may not be same as the next. Perhaps yours will change." Her objection to even the remote possibility of her feelings changing, was etched across her face. "Maybe he'll feel more certain about his feelings for you and as they mature, he's able to give more of himself to you. And maybe he'll grow away. And maybe you'll do the same. The point is, nothing's certain. There's only one thing that's clear right now. What you feel. What you believe. Once you start giving it words, comparing it to some poet's criteria, weighing it down with descriptions and obligations, your heart gets lazy. Let your spirit shout it out. Leave the task of professing your unyielding passion to those magnificent eyes you've got. You understand? Don't wait for him to spell it out. Some of us just can't. Just keep doing what you've been doing."
"Which is?" she said, sitting up.
"Trust your intuition." I smiled, and I lied. Somewhere in there was a lie, were it intuition or a bit about trust, but It was eating me already. She was compelled to invest in her feelings, just like they all are. Feelings to a woman. It's like that shine to a man like me. I want to believe it. Have to. I used to be married to an angel, but angels don't do what she done. It was time for another drink. Another few drinks. Time for this little girl to get the fuck on. I shook it off, the black heart rage. It would come again, no doubt. It was the shine. Maybe I got wicked eyed. Her eyes left mine anyway.
She sloughed off the car and went inside, leaving me to ruminated in cool misty air before following her back into the apartment, back to my drink. My fucking drink. The thought of it there on the floor, toxic, stirred the sediment in my gut. I slid off and felt the gravel, hard and rocky beneath the tender pads of my bare feet.
For once, the silence inside was raw A flat. She and I shuffled from the door to the counter to the couch and the floor and the instrument, like two old friends that just had heavy sex, and the musk of it was still in the air. But that musk was all me. Then she was gone. I drank further, and could have recalled conversations between us, had anybody asked, but there were none. I plucked out that melody, Elliott's melody, but the fever wasn't there, the hot insistency. They were just beautiful arpeggios and B's and G's and D's., But still there were no words. I couldn't recall here singing to me. I wanted so badly, Penny, she reminded me of her, that's what it was. She smelled exactly like Penny. That was the scent, the way it washed over me like paradise wind, when she and I would drink like marathon. We laughed about our prescriptions, about our flaws, about what our parents would have said at such a time, and we would shoot another round.
Adaline and I bellied up to the bar. Wait. Yes, we stood there and she asked me, "What's the first thing you remember? About her I mean." There was this sweet jealous rounding to the way she said, "about her."
"She asked me once, 'If you could do anything...' and I cut her off totally and I said, 'I'd travel', but I doubt she liked that. That was before we were really a thing. I liked her and all, but I was more caught up in my studies and my distilling and..."
"In yourself."
"huh, no. It wasn't, no, more like..."
"Say it."
"No. She asked me, and I was just as honest as, you know."
"Yes. Is there anything other than honesty in a marriage destined for failure?"
"Woah."
"You're out of OJ."
"Hey, we weren't even married." My heart pumped and pumped for the fury of two men, maybe a dozen. My plastic cup popped off the linoleum tile with a spray of remnant as I realized my fingers had given out on me. I giggled, and forgot the subject, forgot what she'd just said, and nervously collected my vessel, bent over and stubling my ass against the oven and the counter, then thrusting out my arm to cushion my collision with the wall. 
As she went on, a portrait of myself at that age formed in my mind. Certainly, there were differences between us, but I began to understand the obscurities that at first put me off. Emphatically, she praised him for his intellect. I simply listened, refraining from chiding comments. It wasn't the time. As she carried on about his profound artistic temperament and somber mystique, she melted further into her new place on the couch. We drank another round throughout the course of our conversations.
She asked me about the Whisky and how I had made it, so I described the process. Then we discussed the true decline of Jack and Angela's marriage. My inhibitions lowered, I spoke with more candor than I previously intended. I explained further about the way my mother tended to operate, and I told her about the "other men". She found it all incredibly entertaining. In truth, I did as well. Angela had managed a fantastical history in that regard.
The more she drank, the closer she came to telling me about the dreams she'd been having of a woman and her baby, lifeless in the chair, and about the fear and misery she felt. She wanted to tell me that she hears a woman call out to him. That she dreams of a phone, a white cordless that she feels too guilty to lift and dial his number, so she swallows her sorrow and a final breath.
Adaline wanted to tell me this because she knew it had to be my Penny. She was certain that if she could only tell me, the dreams would stop and she could sleep again. And maybe I could take solace in knowing someone else, someone close of whom had even the slightest understanding of my pain. But she knew I'd find no relief in it, so she said nothing still, though the words ached in her lungs.
Our stories remained invigorated and pithy. Penny was hardly spoken of. Kayla was never mentioned. Neither was Elliott, the boy from Forest Park. The same boy that wrote the song that Adaline knew so well. Too well. And when the night was deeply upon us, she put her mixed cassette into the deck, and we pulled out of my drive and I delivered her home.