The Age of Hope (9 page)

Earlier, she had unpacked her suitcase, hanging her blouse and skirt in the closet, placing her other articles in a drawer of the dresser. The room was dimly lit and the open suitcase, now empty, frightened her for some reason, as if it were the gaping mouth of a large beast. She closed it and snapped the locks. Placed the suitcase in the closet, next to her shoes. Now, at night, lying on the bed, she wondered how it was that women in books were able to travel so well and so far and to have full and confident emotional lives. Like Adela Quested, the character in the novel she was now reading,
A Passage to India,
given to her by Emily a year ago. Hope had just recently picked it up and she thought the story of Adela and her mother-in-law was so unlike her own life, so exotic and untamed and full of possibility, that this might be why she had run away from home. She needed to feel the threat of danger, and the movement of time. Time. What a horror, especially when she was at home with the children and the ticking of the clock on the kitchen wall was like a prisoner knocking on the wall of a dungeon. There were no women in plays or books or movies who spent their days bleaching sinks, ironing clothes, and holding children. Of course not. That would make for an agonizingly empty story.

In the morning she felt better. She ate breakfast in bed and then slept some more and read and in the afternoon she went shopping for a dress that would carry her through this pregnancy. She found one at the Bay, and while she was at it, she bought a fur coat that was on sale and she had it stored till the winter. She bought a two-piece bathing suit for Judith, a notebook and fountain pen for Penny, and a slingshot for Conner. For Roy she bought a pair of cufflinks and for herself a small bottle of perfume, which she imagined she would share with Roy at some future intimate moment. These purchases left her feeling hopeful and buoyed up. So buoyed up in fact that she checked out of the hotel and drove home, arriving to find the house empty of children. It was a Saturday. She phoned the dealership but Roy wasn’t in his office, though the dealership would be open on a Saturday. She got in her car and drove around town looking for Roy’s car, and saw it parked outside Gertrude’s Inn. She found the family inside eating dinner and when Conner, who saw her first, called out, she went to them and sat and the waitress brought another plate and a setting of cutlery and she ordered steak, medium, with a baked potato. She touched Judith’s head. Penny studied her and asked, “Where were you?”

“In the city, buying a few things. I have something for everyone.”

“The calendars are all gone,” Penny said. “But we found the clocks.”

“Yes, well. We’ll buy new calendars on Monday. How about that?”

She took Roy’s hand and squeezed it. He let her hold his hand and seemed entirely pleased to have her back.

The following November, when Melanie was a newborn and John F. Kennedy had been dead for merely two weeks, Emily Shroeder left her husband, Paul, and moved with her daughter to Winnipeg, where they settled in a dingy apartment on Young Street. Divorce was infrequent in Eden, and no woman that Hope knew had left her husband to live on her own in a small apartment in the city. Emily, however, seemed happy with her circumstances. She found work at one of the city papers, writing book reviews and covering community events, and Angela went to a nearby public school. One weekend, on a Saturday, Hope and Judith and Melanie drove into the city to visit the Shroeders. Judith held Melanie in her lap during the drive, and at some point, when Hope looked over at her eldest daughter holding the infant, she was astounded to realize that Judith was very mature for her age.

The apartment was small and crowded, a complete contrast to the spacious house Emily had left. She had walked away empty-handed and so her dishes and cutlery were a mishmash. A folding card table was used in the kitchen. “Very bohemian,” Emily joked. There were unframed prints taped to the walls in the living room, bright images of nothing but paint splotches, though there was one larger poster of a dark-haired woman displaying her bosom as she lay back on a long narrow couch. Hope felt a slight thrill as she glanced at the poster. No one in Eden put pictures like this on their walls. A single fat candle burned on the hearth of an electric fireplace. Emily had created a bookshelf from planks and bricks, and Hope was drawn to the spines of the paperbacks, as if hidden there was the promise of something grand and mysterious. Emily and Angela shared a bedroom—in fact, they shared a double bed—and Hope tried to imagine sleeping with one of her children, rather than Roy. She thought that there might be something cozy and safe in that. Emily’s new lifestyle both horrified Hope and made her jealous. Emily confessed that she had gone on a date the other night with a younger man named Karl from her university class. They had gone to a concert.

“The symphony?” Hope wondered.

And Emily said, “Oh, no. It was an impromptu sort of thing in a bar. A folk band, friends of Karl’s.”

Hope looked around helplessly. “Have you seen Paul? Do you talk?”

“We talk. He comes into town to pick up Angela, and she goes back home for weekends sometimes. Which leaves me completely free. I forgot what that feels like. You should try it sometime.”

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll just up and leave this one with Roy and I’ll find myself a young man who plays in a folk band.”

“Oh, I know. I’m the scourge and the pariah.” She shrugged. “I’m happy.”

“And Angela?”

“She loves her new school, though they don’t work her hard enough. She’s making friends.”

Hope noticed that Angela had changed. The girl looked at Judith and shrugged, and the two of them stood in the kitchen with their mothers for the longest time, as if they didn’t recognize each other, until Emily pushed her daughter towards the bedroom and said, “Show Judith your record albums.”

They were in the bedroom now, adjacent to the kitchen, and Hope could hear them talking, or she could hear Angela doing most of the talking, and there was music playing. She felt sorry for Judith.

They ate a small lunch together, fried rice and raw carrots, and then the girls watched TV in the living room. Emily had taken up smoking, and she liked to sit in her jeans and loose top and blow smoke rings at the ceiling. Her hair was longer and she wore silver jewellery on her wrists and a beaded necklace around her neck. She leaned forward and asked if Hope would like to smoke some marijuana. “It’s very relaxing,” she said.

Hope made a face that was noncommittal. She was shocked, actually. This was not the Emily she knew. What was next? Road trips and dropping acid?

Emily stood and found her purse and took out a single cigarette and lit it. Her eyes closed and such a display was made of everything, the inhalation, the breath holding, the exhalation, that Hope thought of the word “exaggeration.” Everything seemed to have become big and important. And this made her feel very unimportant.

“Wanna?” Emily held the cigarette out for her.

Hope shook her head. “No thanks.”

“It’s all right. You’ll find your way.”

Melanie was pushing her face against Hope’s breast, looking for a drink. She had decided that this one would breastfeed, regardless of the stigma. She lifted her sweater now and unhooked her bra and offered Melanie the breast. Emily said, through the haze of smoke, that Hope was doing the right thing. “This opinion about breastfeeding being wrong, what stupidity. Good for you.” She dipped her small chin and nodded, as if to affirm Hope’s decision. The girls came in and Judith watched Emily smoke and Angela looked at Hope’s bare breast and the baby sucking on it and said, “Ewww.”

Emily laughed and said, “There’s something you never had, young girl.”

Hope cast about, looking for something to say. “You know how everybody is always asking, ‘Where were you when you heard about JFK?’ Well, I just say I know exactly where I was. Having a baby. I remember holding Melanie in the hospital, trying to nurse her, and the nurse came in and said that he was shot.” She paused. The girls were pensive, as if waiting for a punch line. She felt breathless. She stumbled along, adding to her story. “And then Jackie’s pink suit. Blood everywhere.”

Emily put out the joint and smiled. “Karl says it’s all middle-class anguish. And then this fear that it was the Communists.”

“Well, what if it was?”

“Well, that’s just silly,” Emily said. She waved dismissively, as if there was no more to say about that.

Later, driving home, Melanie slept in the back of the car while Judith sat silently in the passenger seat and looked out at the fields and the blowing snow. Hope’s heart felt heavy as she attempted small talk.

“Does Angela like her new school?”

“I guess. Her teacher’s a man.”

“That’s fun. Has she made new friends?”

“Sure she has. Lots. On the weekends they have dance parties.”

“You can have a dance party.”

Judith didn’t answer. Then she said, “Angela thinks that our interests have
diverged.
”

“That’s what she said? Hmm.”

Judith turned to look at her mother and said, “Why don’t
you
get a job? Like Emily.”

“Well, I don’t know. Emily works because she needs the money. She has to pay rent.”

“Angela has a boyfriend. His name is Jarrod.”

“Well, that’s nice. Is she going to marry him?”

“Why do you feed the baby like that? You look like a cow.” She began to cry. Little hiccups interrupted by sniffling, her face turned to the window.

Hope let her cry for a while and then reached for her hand. She held it while she drove. “Everything will be okay. Emily and Angela are just finding their way in a brand-new world.”

“Our world is so square,” Judith said. She wiped at her face.

“What are you talking about? What a strange word. Did Angela tell you that?”

She shrugged.

Hope was angry. “Goodness. That girl’s head is swollen. She should be a better friend. You know what a friend does, Judith? A friend accepts you, no matter what. A friend doesn’t fly off to greener pastures, and a friend is not ashamed to be seen with you, and she is proud of you and loves you.”

Judith pulled her hand away and laid it in her lap. She didn’t speak. It seemed that Hope’s speech had frightened her a little. It had frightened Hope.

That winter, the three older children were in school and she was alone with Melanie, who turned out to be the calmest and least demanding child she had ever birthed. She found that she could put Melanie in a high chair with a few toys and leave her there for two hours and Melanie would happily play and coo. Hope wondered if this was a problem. She believed that a feisty child was a healthy child. She did not want her fourth child to be simple.

According to Doctor Krahn there was nothing wrong with Melanie. “The last born is often like this. Even at her age she knows her place. She’s privileged. She’s surrounded by older siblings who are blazing a trail for her. No, this girl is a healthy specimen. She’ll probably be an Olympic athlete.”

“Well, we don’t want that,” Hope said.

Because Melanie was so easy to cart about and because she was so charming, almost like a doll one might buy at Eaton’s toy department, Hope found herself going out more. Though mornings were still difficult. She found that she just wanted to stay in bed, and sometimes she did this. Melanie, so quiet and independent, lay on her back in the crib, babbling at the mobile above her. Hope woke occasionally, her head in a dark cloud, aware that her daughter might be in danger, and then hearing Heidi downstairs with Melanie, she promptly went back to sleep. By noon the cloud had mostly dissipated and she found then the energy to bundle Melanie and put her in the car and go out for lunch or visit a friend or two in town. Sometimes they drove to Winnipeg, but Hope found the return trip increasingly difficult. She envisioned herself driving past the Eden turnoff and on into Ontario and up through Thunder Bay towards Toronto. These thoughts and feelings frightened her. She did not share them with Roy, who, having decided to buy out his father and expand the business, had enough on his plate.

She did not love Melanie as she had loved her three other children at birth. There was no joy, simply the plodding heaviness of changing diapers, giving her the breast, burping her, laying her down, picking her up, doing the laundry, giving her the breast again. She was grateful that her three older children were in school, because if she was overwhelmed by one child, what would she do with four all day?

One evening, Roy asked if she needed a holiday, or if she needed to talk to someone. She said that she was fine. Winter had been very long that year and she’d been shut in. They were sitting at the dining room table. Supper was finished. The kids were upstairs and downstairs. Conner had run outside to work on a fort in the backyard.

“Jim Martin’s wife, Liz, was put in the Winkler Mental Health Centre last week.”

Roy had a way of saying things, as if he didn’t quite understand the subtlety of language. She wondered how he managed to run a business with thirty employees.

“Put in?” she asked. “It sounds like she’s some sort of rabid animal that’s been locked up.”

“She went voluntarily. Jim said that one morning she woke him up and asked him to drive her to Winkler.”

“Oh, so now you have
me
going crazy. I’m not going crazy. I’m fine.” She wondered if Liz had seen the breakdown coming. Was it like a train on a track, far in the distance, and it just kept coming, slowly and implacably, until at some moment it arrived? How did she know to ask? She found herself envying Liz in some small way. Liz would be by herself, in a room, with no one making any demands. Hope looked down at her thighs and smoothed her hands across her skirt. She had dressed for dinner at 4 p.m. Up until that hour she had wandered about the house in her nightie, moving clothes about, lifting a dishcloth and putting it down, sitting and staring out the window. She felt better now that she was dressed and the children and Roy had been fed. She said again, “I know that if I can swim through the mornings then I’m good to go. I’m very contented right now.” She sighed and stood and went to fetch Roy more coffee.