The Age of Hope Read online

  Melanie was a mystery, the girl who had driven her to madness, the baby she had never truly learned to love, and still there was a space between them, and Hope did not know if this was her doing or Melanie’s. She was willing to take the blame. She saw how easily Melanie fit into Roy’s lap in the evenings, what camaraderie there was between them, and she wondered what the trick was. How did Roy manage? He was rarely home, did not pay much attention to the children, and then suddenly he popped up, like a jack-in-the-box, and the children fell all over him, especially Melanie, who watched hockey with her father.

  Hope couldn’t stand hockey games. The sound drove her batty and she had to leave the room. Besides, television in any form was uninspiring. She allowed her children one hour of TV a day, and after that it was reading (no comics—who do we think we are, cavemen who require hieroglyphics?), games, playing outside, or just generally lying about and staring at the sky. She had a rule that applied to books, especially novels: if her children were reading, they didn’t have to do chores. A book in the hand was of extraordinary value, which is certainly why Penny walked around the house holding an open book—her time of frantic cleaning had passed, and these days she did her best to avoid housework. Hope knew that her thinking regarding books went contrary to the general sentiment of the people of Eden. Books were seen as a waste of time. What was the point, unless you were reading for information? To lose oneself in a book was to be slightly wacky, a little greedy, and ultimately slothful. There was no value. You couldn’t make money from reading a book. A book did not give you clean bathrooms and waxed floors. It did not put the garden in. You couldn’t have a conversation while reading. It was arrogant and alienated others. In short, those who read were wasteful and haughty and incapable of living in the real world. They were dreamers.

  When her mother, at the age of seventy-seven, fell and broke her hip, Hope found herself spending afternoons at the hospital, reading to her at her request from William Blake or Robert Frost. Poetry was her mother’s first love, and with great ease she would recite whole stanzas of, for example, Wordsworth. The broken hip led to x-rays and the x-rays revealed inoperable cancer. Hope told Roy that she wanted to care for her mother at home. “The hospital is so cold and unforgiving. The nurses try their best, but Mother should be surrounded by family.”

  And so the last months of her mother’s life were spent in the guest room on the main floor of Roy and Hope’s home, and Hope’s life was changed. She couldn’t just leave the house and drive down to the grocery store, or take a day trip into Winnipeg. And she didn’t mind. The responsibility, the routine, grounded her and she found, unusually, that she looked forward to the mornings, to feeding her mother and changing her bedding and talking softly to her. After school, the children stuck their heads into Grandma’s room to say hello. Penny was the least squeamish of the children and would do her homework at the desk beside Grandma’s bed, pausing to answer whispered requests for water or a bedpan.

  The day came when Grandma was too ill to remain in the house and so she was moved by ambulance back to the hospital, where, within a week, she died. Hope was with her. One second her mother was breathing and then she wasn’t. How easily she had slipped away. Hope touched her hands and kissed her forehead and sat and watched her. She wanted to say something but she could think of nothing profound, and besides, there was no one to hear, except Hope. Ever since her stay at the psychiatric hospital, Hope had been unable to cry, and even now, sitting with her dead mother, she found herself without tears. This did not dismay her, nor was she upset by the lack of dismay. Her mother had once told her (this was after the time, years before, when she had run away from home for a few days, leaving Roy to take care of the children) that one could run away from home, from husband, from children, from trouble, but it was impossible to run away from oneself. “You always have to take yourself with you,” she said. And now, bending towards her mother, Hope wondered if in death you were finally able to run away from yourself. This might be death’s gift. She knew that the thought wasn’t terribly profound, but she was moved by the notion of completion and of escape.

  She touched her mother’s face and held her hand and said, “I miss you already, Mother.” She reached for the pull switch beside her mother’s bed and she tugged the cord and within a few minutes a nurse appeared. “My mother died,” she told the nurse, and hearing these words, she felt their force and she closed her eyes and then opened them, only to find that her mother had not moved. The nurse bustled away and returned with the head nurse. Hope asked if her mother could lie like this, just until the children arrived. And her husband. “They would like to see her.”

  “Certainly, Mrs. Koop,” the head nurse said, and she told the younger nurse to fetch Hope a glass of water.

  She phoned Roy and told him that Mother had died. He asked immediately if she was okay, and she said, “Could you drive home and fetch the children? They will want to see her and say goodbye.”

  The children and Roy, when they arrived, gathered around Grandma’s deathbed. Conner cried, as did Judith. Melanie was more curious than sad, and Penny coolly insisted that Grandma’s teeth be put in. “Rigor mortis will set in and then it will be impossible.” She went to the desk clerk and asked for permission to reinsert her grandmother’s teeth. She returned and did it herself, sliding the teeth in with a slight snap.

  “Ewww,” Judith said, and turned away.

  Roy seemed awfully pleased with Penny’s bravado and smarts and squeezed her arm. “Atta girl,” he said.

  Penny simply shrugged.

  Hope felt a tug of panic and tried to push it away. It settled in her lungs and in her back. She felt as if someone were crushing her chest. Roy looked at her and said, “Are you okay, Hope? You look pale.”

  She waved him away and said she was fine. “Don’t worry.”

  She went down the hall to the bathroom and washed her face lightly and then studied herself in the mirror. She couldn’t recall how many children she had, even though she had just been in the room with them. She thought maybe four, but she couldn’t be sure. She called out their names—Judith, Conner, Penny—but she could not recall the fourth name. She walked slowly back to the deathbed and as she entered the room she saw Melanie, suddenly so tall and angular, like her father, and she said aloud, “Of course, Melanie.”

  Once again, as it had been with her father’s, the funeral was simple and took place at the Holdeman church. The singing, uncomplicated and forceful and buoyant, fell onto her ears as she grasped Penny’s and Judith’s hands. Melanie, with her little monkey face, saw death and its arrival as a party to be attended, and she swung her bare legs and attempted to keep up with the singing. Roy’s family attended the funeral. They were a remote presence, though Hope would recall later that Roy’s brother, Harold, gave her a bear hug that lasted far too long. Their bodies pressed together intimately and she finally pushed Harold away, and in doing so she felt confused. Frida drove in for the funeral, as did Emily, and Hope took comfort from their presence. She felt surprisingly loved. The image of her mother on the funeral pamphlet came from years earlier, when she had been in her prime. She was leaning against a car, wearing a long skirt and high heels. Her hat was placed cockily to one side, she had a coy smile. She was beautiful. The Bible verse below her photo was from Psalm 116: “I love the Lord, because He hears my voice and my supplications.”

  She was so gentle. This was the main sentiment passed on to Hope by those who attended the funeral. A kind and gentle woman. Or as one man put it: she knew how to take care of herself. Hope understood that this was not meant to imply selfishness. Her mother had never shown selfishness. She had had a great capacity for others, perhaps because she knew how to take care of herself. Hope thought that she might learn something from this fact. It was never too late.

  Several weeks after the funeral, Judith came to Hope and said that her friend Maxine was pregnant and wanted to get an abortion, except it was impossible in Winnipeg and so Maxine was p
lanning to go to Minneapolis the following weekend, but they needed an adult to go with them.

  This information was offered in one mad Judith-like gush, and Hope, who was working in the kitchen, cleaning up the Saturday lunch dishes, thought that she might have misheard. “What are you saying, Judith?”

  “She’s pregnant,” Judith whispered.

  “Maxine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s the father?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Mom. She doesn’t want the baby.”

  “It matters.”

  “If you don’t want to help, forget it.” And Judith turned to walk away.

  “Hold on. Did I say that? That I don’t want to help? I’m just trying to understand the facts.”

  “There are two facts, Mom. She’s pregnant. She’s going to have an abortion.”

  “Does her mother know?”

  “Are you crazy? Why do you think I’m talking to you? I’m asking for your help.”

  Hope saw with absolute clarity what was happening, and she felt both very pleased to be trusted in this way and at the same time used. “Why me?”

  “Who else, Mom? Every other person in this town would go nuts. They’re all narrow-minded hypocrites.”

  “You don’t have to use that language. Was this your idea?”

  “What?”

  “To talk to me.”

  Judith shrugged.

  Hope experienced a shiver of pleasure that she could be trusted in this way. What was wrong with her? Perhaps the death of her mother, and the vacancy inside of her, had affected her thinking.

  At that point Penny walked into the kitchen and stood, inspecting them. She was wearing hot pants and tall black vinyl boots. Her legs were so spindly and she was so awkward that Hope didn’t have the heart to tell her that she looked like a daddy longlegs. She felt sorry for her. She lacked the flair and good looks of her sisters.

  “This is private,” Judith said. “Get lost.”

  “What’s it about?” Penny sat down on a stool by the kitchen counter. Her knees were very sharp.

  Hope too wished that Penny would disappear, and wishing this made her feel guilty. “Where did you get that outfit?”

  “From Judith.”

  “That was yours?” Hope asked Judith.

  “Yeah, and listen, Penny, if you don’t leave, I’ll take it back.” She went to her sister and pulled her from the stool and gave her a push. Penny stumbled backwards on the high boots.

  She straightened up. “Is it about sex?”

  “Go away.”

  “Judith. We’ll talk later. Okay? Give me time to think.”

  “But you don’t know the facts. You’ll jump to conclusions and make the wrong decision.” Judith was now on the verge of wailing.

  “Later.”

  And so, later that night, in the quiet of Judith’s bedroom, she sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed and said, “You’re asking me to be complicit in something that is much too big. It’s too big for Maxine, too big for you, and certainly beyond my responsibility. Maxine has to talk to her mother.”

  Judith shook her head. “It’s going to happen. It’ll take place in some dirty backroom where it’s dangerous, or it can be safe. And you can help make it safe. You don’t know the trouble she’s gone to to find this place.”

  “What place? Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “No, I’m not sure. I’m not sure about anything, Mom.”

  “Has she talked to someone? To a counsellor?”

  No response. Judith’s face was resolute. Her hair was loose and long and fell to her shoulders and at that moment Hope saw the virtue and beauty and youth of a girl who believed she understood the world. She was suddenly and immensely grateful that it was Maxine and not Judith who was in trouble. A year earlier, in the middle of winter, Hope had attended the funeral of a sixteen-year-old girl who had been killed when hit by a car on Main Street. Haley Geddert. Hope had been weary from sadness and buoyed by the ecstasy of understanding that she had been spared such grief. She felt that way now. She said, “What do you need of me?”

  Judith straightened, sensing victory. “Maxine needs a guardian, someone to sign the permission. She’s seventeen.”

  “She understands the seriousness of this? The repercussions?”

  “Mom, she understands everything. Especially the repercussions of having the baby.”

  “Oh, Judith, I don’t know.” Though she did know. She knew exactly what she would do, and it distressed her.

  What amazed her, when the weekend was over, was how easily everything had been done, and she thought that in itself was just wrong. They drove, the three of them, to Minneapolis late Friday afternoon, arriving after dark, and they took a hotel room near the clinic. Everyone, Maxine’s parents included, had been informed that this was a shopping trip. A weekend in the States. Penny had wanted to come as well, and had cried and thrown a tantrum when she was told that she wouldn’t be allowed. Hope had considered telling Roy but realized that he would put a halt to the “adventure,” and knowing this, she experienced guilt at her duplicity. She had never lied to Roy before, or deceived him. Maxine was the daughter of the local bank manager, the same man who had signed an enormous loan to Roy for the development of the new dealership. Hope saw herself as a confirmed criminal. Someone would have to pay.

  Maxine was a short girl with curly dark hair and a round face and black pennies for eyes who talked non-stop as if she feared silence and deeper thoughts. Hope, as the chauffeur, had tried to talk about the abortion during the drive, but Judith had changed the topic and Maxine had been far too perky. She was impervious. That night they had pizza delivered and ate in front of the television. At some point, Hope turned off the TV and stood facing the girls. She announced that she had something to say and would say it once, and after that she would say no more. “Maxine, you can still choose not to have the abortion. Tomorrow, we can go shopping, buy some clothes, go out for a nice meal, and drive back home. You can have the baby, and if you still don’t want to keep it, you can give it up for adoption. I know of several couples who would love a healthy baby. I worry that you girls will see the world as your candy store, where problems can be easily erased with a push of a button. Oops, there we go. Well, the world doesn’t work that way. We all have souls.”

  It was a sloppy, sentimental speech and as the clichés spilled forth she cringed. In any case, her sentiments had no effect. The decision had been made, though Maxine now tried to comfort her.

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Koop. Everything’s cool.”

  “Don’t you think the father should know? Who is the father, Maxine?”

  “You don’t want to know, Mrs. Koop. Anyways, I told him, and he’s all for it.”

  “For what?”

  “This.” She circled the room with her hand, taking in the small space and the larger world outside.

  “The abortion?”

  “Yeah. He thought it was for the best.”

  “Is he paying for it?” Maxine laughed. “As if.”

  “Who is?”

  “I have some money put aside for university. I’m using that.”

  It came out, without much cajoling, that the father was a married man of four, a stalwart community man, a churchgoer, someone Roy had breakfast with every Saturday morning. Al Olfert. “But you can’t tell,” Maxine cried.

  “Oh my,” Hope said. She was amazed. “Lola, his daughter, isn’t she your age?”

  Judith rolled her eyes.

  Hope was not naive. She knew that married men and women slept around and manoeuvred themselves into and out of difficult circumstances, and she knew that it was the manoeuvring itself that provided the thrill. “How did you manage this?” This was not exactly the question she wanted to ask. She really wanted to know where they had met, how Maxine had come to say, “Yes, Al, go ahead and put your penis inside me,” how often this had happened, if Maxine loved him, if Al was willing to love Maxine, and why Al hadn’t offered to pay for the
abortion, stingy man. She felt sad for Al’s wife. She said, “He needs to take responsibility.”

  Maxine lifted her eyebrows. “He ain’t going to marry me.” She laughed. “Nor me him. I have plans to travel, Mrs. Koop. I’m going to school.”

  “Let it be, Mom,” Judith said. “Lola would go nuts.”

  “Lola should know what kind of a man her father is. All the children should know. Mrs. Olfert should know.”

  “Actually, he’s kind of sweet. Very funny.” This was Maxine speaking.

  “Bah,” Hope said, washing her hands of the girl’s ignorance.

  That night, she slept with Judith, and in hindsight she would think that the hours she lay beside her beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter, who slept in a T-shirt and underwear, were the trip’s pinnacle of pleasure. How docile, how elastic the girl was while asleep. Hope woke early and studied Judith’s face, slack and untroubled, strands of hair falling down over her cheek. One of Judith’s legs, long and lean, had come to be thrown across Hope’s own knee, and Hope lay there, barely breathing, waiting, waiting, waiting.