The Age of Hope Page 16

  “Of course, Grace. I understand.” And she pulled from her wallet a fifty-dollar bill and laid it on the counter. “Keep the change.”

  It had pleased her enormously, that encounter: the tepid attempt to shame her and then her aggressive response. She had walked out of Gertrude’s Inn with her back straight, looking at each customer who would meet her eye, never wavering, waiting till their gaze fell away in embarrassment and sheepishness. She had nothing to be ashamed of. These people did. Profit, profit, profit. Wealth as a sign of God’s blessing, of having lived a pure life. Nonsense.

  Now, back in her little apartment, alone, waiting for Roy to come home in the late afternoon, she wished she had that fifty-dollar bill back. She could have used it. For the first time in her married life she found herself counting money and worrying over the balance in the bank account. In the cabinet above the stove she kept envelopes of cash, usually in twenty-dollar denominations, for laundry, groceries, car repairs, clothing, medication, utilities, and entertainment, though the only amusement they could afford was the occasional movie. Gone were the days when Roy bought expensive seats at football games, or Hope met Emily at the theatre centre downtown. If there was money left over in the envelopes at the end of the month, she and Roy dressed up and went to Hy’s Steakhouse, but even this felt like play-acting, as if they were trying to recover a life they had once known.

  At the grocery store she had purchased two round steaks, mushrooms, a bag of carrots, a loaf of bread, a quart of heavy cream. And with this she would create dark gravy from the drippings, mixing in a tablespoon of flour and then the heavy cream. She would cook the carrots and sprinkle brown sugar over them, melt butter in the pot. She had pasta to boil as well, over which she would pour a ready-made sauce. Ice water and coffee, which Roy liked to drink with his meal. A Kit Kat for dessert: three pieces for Roy, one for her, though she knew that Roy would slide his third piece back her way. She had a sweet tooth.

  He had found work with an old acquaintance, Murray Fineworth. Murray installed drywall and he had said he could use someone tall like Roy, though Roy suspected Murray was doing him a favour.

  “Let him,” Hope had said.

  Roy returned at 6 p.m. every evening, his hair, face and arms dusted with a fine white powder. He showered, dressed in a suit and shirt and tie and dark socks and shoes, and sat down to the meal she had prepared. He talked enthusiastically about his day. He would get a raise next month, from ten to eleven dollars an hour. The eight-foot sheets, three-eighths, were manageable, but the ten-footers were a back-breaker. His fingers were cracked and bloody. He developed an allergy to the powder and took to wearing a mask and gloves. Still, his hands bled. In the evenings, after supper, she cleaned up while he settled in front of the TV. Later, she would inevitably find him sleeping, his head lolling sideways onto his shoulder. She would then guide him to bed and help him undress. Hang up his jacket, his pants, his shirt.

  One night she found in his right pocket the money clip he carried. It held ten one-hundred-dollar bills. She slipped it back into his pocket and felt there a piece of paper, and this she removed. The paper was folded. She opened it. Roy’s handwriting. “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. Phil. 4:8.”

  She folded the paper and put it back in Roy’s pocket, next to the money clip. She went into the living room and sat down and looked out the window at the night sky, which was threatening rain.

  4

  Age of Longing

  Hope’s first grandchild, Rudi Koop, was born on Christmas Day in 1982. She and Roy drove out to Eden to see the newborn the following day. A winter storm had left the roads icy, and as usual, driving in those conditions she suffered a sense of dread and impending doom, though she did not mention any of this to Roy, who would have called her ridiculous. She should be celebrating.

  Charlotte was propped up in her hospital bed, breastfeeding little Rudi, when Roy and Hope entered her room. Charlotte saw them and reached for a blanket and covered Rudi’s furry head and her swollen breast. Conner was ecstatic. He described the birth in great detail, the crowning, the afterbirth, the colour of the baby, the length of labour down to the minute. He had filmed the whole birth and said Hope and Roy should come over and they could watch it together.

  “I don’t think so,” Charlotte said. “I don’t want your parents ogling my bottom.”

  Conner chuckled nervously and Hope changed the subject, asking Charlotte if her milk had come in yet. This too seemed an intrusion, and so Hope shut her mouth and focused on the child. She was allowed to take him for a short time while Charlotte closed her eyes and slept. Roy, Hope, and Conner spoke in whispers, and when Charlotte woke, she snatched Rudi back.

  “He’s got your mouth,” Hope told Conner, and she reached out and brushed Rudi’s lips.

  Charlotte seemed understandably tired and irritable, though when her own mother arrived, she was immediately revitalized. Hope realized that some daughters and mothers had a special bond, and she wondered, without any great expectation, when her own daughters would have children.

  Hope had found an adorable cotton sleeper at a Boxing Day sale and she handed it to Charlotte. “It’s a little feminine,” she said, “but he won’t know the difference.”

  Charlotte took the sleeper and placed it on the side table by the bed. On subsequent visits Hope hoped Rudi might be wearing it, but she never saw it again.

  Ever since the loss of the business, Charlotte had been cooler towards Roy and Hope. When they dropped by the house to see Rudi and marvel, Charlotte usually excused herself and disappeared upstairs with the baby. Driving home one day, Hope said, “I guess now that she isn’t getting an inheritance, we’ve lost our value.”

  “I don’t think that’s how she operates,” Roy said.

  “She hates me. Every time I go near Rudi, she recoils. She just takes him away, as if I were going to strangle my own grandson.”

  Roy was quiet. Hope was being hysterical. She knew that was what he was thinking. But then men didn’t have that sixth sense about other women. They imagined that magnanimity was everywhere.

  When her first granddaughter, Ilke, was born two years later (a spitting image of Hope when she was a baby), Charlotte was even stingier with time and visits. It broke Hope’s heart not to be able to see the children regularly. Distraught, she called Conner.

  “Have I done something? Have I been too aggressive?”

  “Char’s overwhelmed, Mom. It’s not about you.”

  “Her own mother sees the children every day. All I want is once a week. Or every two weeks. A few hours, that’s it.”

  “Her mom lives here. Right next door. She’s been a big help.”

  “Well, I’d be a help if you’d let me. Are you two okay?”

  “We’re fine. It’s busy. We didn’t realize how much work a second child would be.”

  “Tell me about it. When you were born it was madness. And you were full of beans. How about Rudi? Does he explore like you?”

  “He’s actually quite calm. He likes to draw. The sight of paper gets him very excited.”

  The next visit, a month later, Hope presented Rudi with a watercolour set—forty different tubes of paint, five brushes, and a thick spiral-bound book of watercolour paper. Charlotte said immediately that Rudi already had a set, given to him by Charlotte’s sister.

  “Well, I’m sure it’ll last for years,” Hope said. She looked at Charlotte’s sour mouth and hated her. And was immediately sorry. This would not do, not if she was to keep seeing her grandchildren.

  The fact was, both Roy and Hope were now bound by the demands of their jobs and so they couldn’t just willy-nilly drive out to Eden to see the grandchildren. And come weekends, they were both tired out, though Hope went to great efforts to invite Conner and his family for spaghetti dinner or ribs. Over the p
ast year, Hope had been working for Merry Maid, a domestic cleaning company. At first the ugly yellow uniform and the foul demands of the job had humiliated her and she whispered a little thank-you that her mother didn’t have to see her changing the sheets on a stranger’s bed. Cleaning like this was so intimate and familiar, and whenever she encountered the woman of the house, she would think: Don’t think you’re so special, I know all about your dirt and your crap and your garbage. She had always imagined that a tragic shift in fortune was something that happened to other people, but look at her now. And, oh my, her hands, how they had aged.

  Miss Ling, one of her co-workers, was a Chinese woman with the thinnest ankles Hope had ever seen. She had worked for Merry Maid for ten years. Her husband, Jian, worked in a factory that built windows and doors. They had one son, who was seven years old and brilliant with the piano, and hearing this, Hope imagined that the boy was a prodigy of sorts. Ling was optimistic and she was tireless, and when Hope flagged, usually in the late afternoon, Ling stepped in and helped her on the second floor, cleaning the toilet and the tub, or perhaps finishing up with the vacuuming. “Hope,” she would say, “sit down for a bit, rest your feet.” Ling saw herself as Hope’s daughter and protector. When Hope talked about her hot flashes, Ling had just the remedy and produced little packages of Chinese pills, tiny black balls that she was to take twice a day. “Good for the kidney,” she said. “It will make you want to have sex as well.” She didn’t smile as she spoke, merely nodded as if sexual desire were something looming and necessary.

  They were a crew of three, the third worker being a Polish woman named Katerina, who was forty-eight and a single mother of three children all in their teens. Hope didn’t get along with Katerina. The three women usually ate lunch in the bright yellow Merry Maid car, and it was here that Hope and Katerina set to arguing, often about politics, for Katerina called herself a socialist and Hope thought this was ridiculous and unfortunate. Katerina, in fact, was itching to start a union, and she tried to sway both Ling and Hope. She had forty signatures so far, women at Merry Maid who, upon reflecting on their bleak situation, saw the possibility of a meagre salvation. Roy didn’t believe in unions, and so neither did Hope. She believed that hard work and fidelity would be reciprocated by management. Katerina guffawed and called Hope naive. “Don’t you want a pension? Benefits? Sick time? Overtime? Some sort of security? You’re what, Hope? Fifty-five? Who’s going to care for you when you’re sixty?”

  Ling, perpetually sanguine, tried to change the subject. She passed Hope part of her lunch. “Hope, here, please try the ginger noodles.”

  When Hope and Roy were still living in Eden, Hope had had a woman come in once a week to clean the house and do laundry and ironing. She had always imagined that Erna Loewen, her cleaner, had been quite happy. Hope set out sandwiches and cookies for her, offered her tea, and at the end of the day, laid out a two-dollar tip on the counter. Erna had never complained, had seemed quite contented, and had always been very polite and grateful.

  Well, now here she was, a cleaner like Erna Loewen, stooping to scrub toilets in a monstrous house out in Birds Hill, where horses grazed in paddocks and the three-car garages harboured expensive toys such as snowmobiles and boats and ATVs. She had once let it slip to Ling and Katerina that she too had lived this life, and the confession had not elicited pity as she had expected. Katerina had merely said that the pockets of the rich were full because her own pocket, and others like hers, was empty. “It can be no other way.” When Hope told Roy this, he smiled vaguely, but surprisingly he offered no argument.

  One day, Katerina did not show up for work. Again, the next day she did not appear, and so Hope and Ling completed the work of three people, and by the end of the day Hope was worn out. That afternoon, the coordinator, Bertie, arrived. She wanted to talk to both Hope and Ling privately.

  Hope sat in Bertie’s car. It was a cold January day and Bertie kept the car running. The heater was blowing warm air onto Hope’s tan shoes and her sore ankles, and for a brief moment she saw the space she was in as luxurious and safe.

  Bertie held a clipboard and a pen. She said, “On Tuesday, you cleaned a house in River Heights.” She said the address. “The owner claims a watch was stolen. An heirloom that had been in the family for many years. It was in the master bedroom. Was it Katerina who cleaned the master bedroom that day?”

  Hope’s mind was a muddle. She recalled the house, and she remembered having washed the kitchen floor and the stove, but she was thinking too that this was not right. “Katerina doesn’t steal. She’s not that stupid.”

  “We ‘re not saying she did. A watch went missing. It went missing after you and Ling and Katerina cleaned the house. Naturally, there are questions.”

  “Maybe the family misplaced it.”

  “No. The watch was kept on the dresser, in a box, and it had been there for the last year. The owner said it went missing after the house was cleaned.”

  Hope was quiet. Then she said, “What do you want me to say? Yes, I stole it? What would I want with an old watch?”

  “Just tell the truth.”

  “I didn’t take it.”

  “Did you see Katerina that afternoon? Anything suspicious?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever feel that Katerina was an instigator?”

  “Good grief.”

  “You have an excellent record with Merry Maid, Hope. Five years, not a complaint. We believe that Katerina is collecting signatures. Is that true?”

  “Is that a crime?”

  “No, but management is concerned that the staff might be unhappy.”

  “Are you happy, Bertie?”

  “This isn’t about me, Hope. Please. Understand that I have a job to do. If I don’t do it, I’ll get fired.”

  “Where is Katerina? Did you throw her under a bus?”

  “Let’s just say that she won’t be working with you and Ling anymore.”

  “Oh my.” Then she said, “I quit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m done. Finished.”

  “Hope, you can’t do that.”

  “Yes, I can. Just watch me.” And she got out of the car and shut the door. It was very cold and she had no ride back to town, unless she waited for Ling to finish work. She walked back into the house, found Ling, and told her the news.

  All Ling said was “Oh, Hope. I’m sorry.” And she returned to work.

  Hope sat on a chair in the foyer, still wearing her coat. She knew that Roy would be disappointed. Two years earlier he had left his job as a drywaller, taken the real estate test, and become an agent. He had just recently begun to make a little money selling houses, though it was her income that kept them afloat. But not anymore. In a moment of self-pity, she saw herself as selfish and egotistical. She did not know the value of things. She thought money grew like potatoes, just reproduced. She spent too much on cosmetics, on haircuts and colour, on shoes, though she hadn’t bought a new pair for three years. She had a touch of the maniacal. She could not bake. She didn’t like to make love often enough. She ate too much, had a sweet tooth that would lead to diabetes. Demanded her own bank account when there wasn’t enough for one account. Was needy. Careless. Did not think.

  She was extremely tired. She thought that she would have to call a cab and take the thirty-dollar ride back into town—half a day’s pay. She stood and went into the kitchen and picked up the phone, which was completely forbidden—they were not allowed to use clients’ phones. Well, she no longer worked for Merry Maid. After she had called the cab company, she stepped over to the fridge and took an apple and she sat at the kitchen table and ate it slowly, watching out the window for her ride.

  She did not want to return to the apartment just yet—she was not ready to admit to her poor behaviour, a sure result of her pride—and so she asked her driver to drop her off at a hotel downtown, at the corner of Portage and Main. She carried her kit of cleaning supplies, was still wearing her yellow Mer
ry Maid outfit beneath her coat, and to all intents and purposes, she looked like a bag lady. She went directly through the lobby of the hotel to the bathroom and washed up, smoothed her hair back. From her purse she took her makeup and applied it carefully, studying herself in the mirror. She wrapped her scarf around her neck, allowing it to drape and fall so that it covered her name, Hope, which was stitched to the yellow uniform. Her kit, with the brushes and cleaners and rags, she left in the bathroom. She carried her coat over her arm and went into the lounge and sat in a dark corner. She laid her coat over the chair beside her. She drank a Tom Collins and then ordered a glass of red house wine. It was getting late, past the supper hour, and by now Roy would be fretting. Perhaps he would phone Ling, though Hope believed that he would not stoop to such theatrics. He was very careful not to show his anxiety.

  She ordered a hot roast beef sandwich and a coffee and another glass of wine. She began to relax. The ebb and flow of guests in the lounge kept her interest. Men in suits and young women in high heels and short skirts and jackets with wide shoulders. She tried to remember when she had last walked into a lounge on Roy’s arm, wearing heels, feeling the warm stir of desire at her core. She finished and paid the bill and then, quite spontaneously, she approached the desk, took out her credit card, and asked for a room. “High up, please, with a view of the river.” She took the elevator to the twenty-first floor and stood by the window overlooking the railroad tracks, and beyond that the frozen river, and she thought how easily one could pretend that all was fine. She showered and put on a robe and then sat down and phoned Roy.

  “Roy, Roy, I’m okay. Don’t worry. I have a surprise for you.” She told him which hotel to come to, and she said that he should use the house phone in the lobby and call room 2130. “Okay? And ask for Charity. Can you do that?”

  “What are you talking about, Hope? What are you doing?”

  “Just come. Okay?”

  She hung up and went to the bathroom and looked at herself. She applied makeup once again, and found herself wishing that she had some proper underwear or nice lingerie. All she had was the Merry Maid outfit. She removed the housecoat and wrapped herself in a towel. Her knees looked tired. And so she put on the housecoat once again and ascertained that her calves still had some life in them. She did not know, would never know, if her body would have disintegrated to this extent if Roy had managed to keep the business. The fact was, if she still lived in Eden, she wouldn’t have had to work at that backbreaking job, and she would be taking better care of her face and her nails and her hair. Worry and manual work had worn her out. Still, rich women got old as well. The skin dried out, the breasts disappeared, the arms gathered flesh. Watching Roy undress in the evenings sometimes, she was amazed at how his body seemed to stay younger than hers. Though the skin on his neck was looser, and his ankles had lost their hair, up to the edge where the socks rested.