The Age of Hope

by David Bergen

  “Oh, no,” Roy said, and he laughed.

  After the waitress had gone, Hope said, “Are you embarrassed by me, Roy?”

  “What do you mean? Of course I’m not.”

  “She’s a very pretty girl, that waitress.”

  “She is.”

  “You didn’t want her to think we were married.”

  “But we aren’t married.”

  “We ‘re almost married. In a month. You could have at least told her we were engaged.”

  “You could have told her that, Hope.”

  “She was talking to you. She didn’t even look at me.”

  “Are you jealous?” He was grinning.

  “Should I be? If I hadn’t been here, sitting across from you, would you have had a longer conversation with Norma Jean?”

  “Who?”

  “The waitress. She looks just like Marilyn Monroe.”

  “She does?”

  “Oh, Roy, you’re impossible. You should be careful, playing innocent like that. Something really good-looking will come along one day and slap you on your backside and you won’t know what hit you. You have to be prepared for the world. Girls like you.”

  “I’m not interested in girls. I have you.”

  “Even so.”

  Later, back on the road, Roy grew tired and asked if Hope wanted to drive. She said that she didn’t, he should pull over and have a nap. He stopped on the shoulder and turned off the engine. He fell asleep immediately and she watched him, his head angled towards her slightly. She had rolled her window down halfway. A fly entered the car and landed on Roy’s hat brim. She waved her hand. The fly took off and came back and landed on his cheek, crawling down to his slack mouth. She spent the next fifteen minutes shooing the fly, keeping it off Roy’s head as he snored lightly. When he woke, he did so with a start, as if embarrassed by his vulnerability. “Was I snoring?” he asked.

  “Not a bit,” she said, and she folded her hands in her lap.

  She had imagined that he would deliver the parts to the garage in Fort Frances and they would head back to Eden immediately. This was not to be. He said that he wanted to pay a visit to a doctor.

  “What, are you sick, Roy?”

  “Naww. You’ll see.”

  He drove to the hospital and parked in the visitors’ lot and said he would be right back. She sat and waited, and then got out of the car and walked about. She was glad that she had worn a sleeveless dress, what with the heat, though she wished she could remove her nylons and let her legs feel the breeze. She sat on a bench in a nearby park and waited some more. The sour smell of the paper mill floated in the air. An hour passed and she wondered if Roy had abandoned her. She thought she might be feeling resentful, but she counselled herself to be patient. She wished that he were more thoughtful, that he wouldn’t just take her for granted. “Oh,” she said to herself, “if I go away, no matter how long, I’ll come back and Hope will still be here, prepared to shoo flies from my face.”

  When he finally reappeared he was walking with a shorter man with a square face, older than Roy. They stood beside the car and they talked. They walked around the car. It was a Styleline Deluxe, a hardtop. Brand new, except for the few miles Roy had put on. The two men shook hands, and taking this as a sign, she rose and ambled over and stood off to the side. Finally, she was noticed. Not by Roy but by the other man, who stepped towards her and held out his hand and said, “Doctor Challis.”

  “Hi, I’m Hope Koop. Roy’s wife.”

  “Your husband here just sold me his car.”

  “He did?” She looked at Roy, who was studying her, shaking his head.

  “Yes, he did. He’s quite the salesman. In any case, you’re coming to our place for dinner tonight. You’ll have to spend the night as well, as Roy here has sold out your transportation from underneath you. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Koop. We’ll meet again at our house. You go on ahead. I’ll let Florence know.”

  Driving over to the doctor’s house, Roy was silent. She didn’t care. Just before they arrived, she said, “If you’re going to treat me like a submissive wife, I might as well be your wife, Roy. You walk away and leave me for an hour. I wait, and I wait. And then it turns out that we don’t have a car to drive home. I work tomorrow. In the evening. Will we be home by then? And do I want to spend the night at some stranger’s house? You might have consulted me. I don’t like to be in the dark.”

  “I was doing my job, Hope. He bought the car. I made three hundred dollars in one hour. Just like that. And now you’ve jeopardized the sale.”

  “How? What have I done? Because I said we’re married?”

  “What if he finds out? In any case, I don’t like to lie. I’m not a liar.”

  “Oh, Roy. Goodness. He won’t care. And you didn’t lie. I did.”

  “You’re so stubborn, Hope.” His voice was disappointed.

  They had arrived. The house obviously belonged to a doctor. It was large and made of brick and a second car was parked in the driveway. Three children were playing in the front yard.

  “What was his wife’s name?” she asked.

  “Florence. Her name is Florence.”

  They were given a bedroom together, because of course they were married. She had not anticipated that this would be the result of her little white lie, and she was amused by Roy’s mute acceptance of the fact that they would be sleeping together. Not in the same bed, but in the same room, lying in close proximity—him fully dressed, Hope wearing a nightgown that the doctor’s wife had given her. “Oh, Roy, we can sleep here, side by side,” Hope whispered, pointing at the bed. “I promise not to touch you.” He shook his head, and lay on the floor beside her bed, a small blanket covering him. She giggled, besotted by his rectitude. What a wonderful man. And this allowed her more leeway, more freedom.

  She held his hand before they slept, talking to him, her arm falling down to touch his chest. “What a handful those children are. Especially that boy Adrian,” she said. “Florence must be exhausted.” They had eaten late, much later than was typical for them, and the meal, with three courses that included a leg of lamb, had gone on and on, with much conversation that eventually turned to politics and then religion, which had been quite interesting because it turned out that the doctor was an atheist. Hope was especially curious about his lack of belief.

  “Not a lack of belief,” he had clarified. “I believe in humanity, in caring for one another, in the continuation of the species. I just don’t believe in God.”

  “But how is that possible?” Hope asked. “Where did you come from? Where are you going?”

  The doctor’s wife tried to temper the conversation, though she was quite occupied with the food and the children, but by then the talk had turned elsewhere, back to cars, perhaps, or to hunting and fishing, activities the doctor was especially fond of.

  In the middle of the night, when Roy thought Hope was sleeping, he rose and left the room and went down the hallway to the doctor’s bedroom and knocked on the door. She heard a single knock, and then another, louder this time, and then she heard voices talking, and then it was quiet, and finally Roy returned. He lay down and covered himself.

  In the darkness, she spoke. “What were you doing?”

  Silence, and then, “I was talking to the doctor.”

  “Now? What time is it?”

  “Three o’clock.”

  “You woke him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you talking about?”

  “I told him that you and I aren’t married. We are engaged though. I thought he should know.”

  “Oh. The deal is off then? He doesn’t want the car?”

  “He didn’t care. He laughed. He said that I worry too much.”

  “What else?”

  “He called me terrifyingly honest. And then he said, ‘Go back to your wife.’“

  “You feel better?”

  “Yes. I do.” And he whispered as he held her hand, “I love you, Hope. You can be stubbor
n, but I wouldn’t have anyone else.”

  And they both fell asleep.

  When she woke to sunlight falling onto her bed, Roy was up and gone, downstairs with the doctor eating breakfast. She heard the muffled voices, the children calling out, and she lay there for a long while, holding on to the enchantment of the night.

  It rained the day of the wedding. The men sat on one side of the church and the women on the other, and the music was unaccompanied and there were no harmonies. All of this was typical of the conservative Mennonite Church that Hope’s father had been raised in and then rejected. Cousin Frida, from across the river, was Hope’s attendant. She wore a pale blue dress and matching satin shoes, and a hat to which were pinned white flowers. Hope wore a white gown with long sleeves made of lace that revealed subtly the whiteness of her arms. A veil fell over her face. She carried a bouquet of carnations. Roy wore a charcoal suit that he had bought in Winnipeg for the occasion. The cut of the suit was narrow but still practical. He intended to wear it again at work. The tie was paisley. The wedding was a simple event, with a reception held in the church basement where the guests sat on wooden chairs around collapsible tables covered with swaths of paper and ate the fare prepared by the local ladies: bean soup, white buns, farmer sausage, cheddar cheese, and dainties that consisted of cherry tarts and matrimonial cake. Hope hadn’t wanted a wedding cake. She thought it was ostentatious.

  Petra attended with her husband. She was eight months pregnant and proudly waddled about introducing herself to Roy’s mother and Roy’s sister, Berta, asking anyone and everyone where the alcohol was. Hope knew that she had the capacity to be slightly scandalous, and she worried that Mrs. Koop might be insulted. She wasn’t. She said later that Petra was a treasure, certainly a good friend, and terribly interesting. This was how things worked in Eden. The outsider’s behaviour was easily excused.

  In the evening there was a smaller gathering at the home of her parents, and it was there, in the living room, that Hope’s father took out his whisky and his fiddle, and Hope and her mother, along with several guests who didn’t care what people thought, danced in the space that had been cleared in the centre of the room. Roy’s brother Harold was the only one of his family who was present, and he drank a little too much and danced with Petra, showing off moves that he must have learned overseas, during the war. Hope thought then that for several years he had had a secret life, and only now were they catching a glimpse of it. Hope slipped out of her shoes and lifted her wedding dress so that it didn’t drag across the hardwood, and she moved dreamily around the room to the tune of “Hey, Ho, My Honey.” She had removed her veil and now everyone could see her eyes, which sparkled. The guests thought that she was beautiful and happy.

  They spent their first night in the small house that Roy had bought three months earlier in preparation for their life together. During the night she woke and wandered through the house, touching the things she now owned: the new fridge, the Kenmore stove, the matching couch and chairs, the dining room set made of oak, the flatware, a sixteen-place setting of silver given to them by Frida’s parents, teacups, the Mixmaster, the brand new towels and napkins stacked on the kitchen table, and more teacups. She felt guilty and imagined offering her mother the gift of the Mixmaster, though she knew she would refuse. While Hope was making love to Roy for the first time several hours earlier, her mind kept slipping away to the trove of treasures that surrounded her in this new place, and in this too she had felt guilty, aware that she should be enjoying the moment. Not that she hadn’t found pleasure in Roy. She had. Though perhaps his pleasure had been greater. He had been in awe, struck by the gift before him, which was Hope. She had assuaged his nervousness with lighthearted humour and comforting words, and had been surprised by her own lack of nervousness and by the sense that she was in control. When she had completed the tour of the house and touched all of her things, she went back to bed and Roy woke and reached for her again. This time the lovemaking was less anxious, and slower.

  In the morning she and Roy drove up to Lake of the Woods, where Roy had rented a cottage for the week. Because Roy was just starting out in his father’s business and didn’t have a lot of money, he expected that Hope would use the small kitchen in the cottage to cook the meals during their stay. She made toast for breakfast the first day and warmed up tomato soup from a can for lunch. She had no plans for dinner. She imagined that if she were Mennonite, or if she had grown up Mennonite like Roy’s mother, and had some training in the ways of the kitchen, then she would have created a lovely roast beef dinner and baked zwieback and perhaps even made a soup from scratch. As it was, she stood in the kitchen, surveyed the mismatched cups and plates, and sighed and asked, “How about toast again?” The next day, she announced that she was ready to eat a restaurant meal. Enough was enough. This was their honeymoon. She said that she had to save her energy for other things. She smiled at her husband, who looked away in sheepish agreement.

  That evening, she wore her taffeta dress and high heels and she put on makeup. Roy wore his wedding suit. They found a restaurant that served chicken and mashed potatoes and salad and a brownie for dessert. It pleased her to watch her husband eat, just as it pleased her to catch him unawares in the bathroom brushing his teeth or shaving, leaning into the mirror as he ran his free hand over his jaw, his shoulder blades moving beneath his undershirt. He finished a second brownie and then talked about his twenty-year plan: children, a bigger house, buying his father’s business. She listened and smiled and nodded. She said she wanted at least three children. “Children should outnumber their parents, don’t you think?”

  It rained most of the week and they spent their time inside the little cottage, playing board games and reading magazines and falling into bed in the middle of the afternoon. On the second-last day the sun finally appeared and Roy rented a boat from the marina, a sixteen-footer with a thirty-horse Evinrude. Hope wore a yellow slicker and green rubber boots and she made a little lunch of leftover chicken and canned fruit cocktail and water in a sealer jar. Roy had borrowed two fishing rods and a tackle box, and so they trolled the edge of the lake and Roy taught her how to cast and let the spoon follow in their wake. She caught two pickerel. Roy threw the smaller one back and dropped the larger fish in a pail of water. That evening, he filleted the fish, dipped it in flour, and fried it in butter. They ate by candlelight, garnishing the plate with beans from a tin that Hope had found in the cupboards. She was twenty years old and she found it thrilling to be sitting across from this new husband, whose eyes in the flickering light turned from grey to green to black.

  Earlier, as they had been returning to the marina, the Evinrude had sputtered, caught, sputtered again, and then died. The vast lake all around had turned calm, and as they floated and drifted Roy tried to restart the engine. He checked the gas and took off the engine cover and tinkered. He pulled at the starter cord for five minutes, but there was nothing doing. He sat and looked at Hope and said, “Well, we’ll have to row.”

  He took the oars that were stored in the bottom of the boat and fitted them into the oarlocks. He sat with his back to her and as he rowed she observed the movement of his muscles through his shirt and the sweat forming on his neck.

  “We’re miles out, aren’t we?” she asked.

  “Well, at least we have dinner,” he said. She couldn’t see his face and so didn’t know if he was joking or serious.

  “Someone might come by,” she said.

  A loon surfaced nearby, studied them, and then dove back under the water.

  “The silence is nice,” she said. “At least we’re not scaring the animals.”

  He grunted and pulled.

  She thought of offering to take his place but she knew he would refuse.

  They were saved by an old fisherman in a cabin cruiser. He pulled up alongside and when Roy said, “Engine trouble,” the old man nodded and threw them a rope. “I’ve towed this coupla times already,” the old man said. “Harry should get his shit
together.”

  She hadn’t been worried at all out there on that immense lake. She saw the breakdown as an adventure, as something out of the ordinary. She might even have felt a little disappointment when the old man’s boat appeared, the last evening sun winking off the bright metal. Of course, had she been alone, she might have felt differently. As it was, she had Roy, and though he had been impatient and called the engine “stupid,” she had never, at any point, thought that she was in any danger.

  Six months into her first year of marriage, already wearied by domestic duties and not given to joining the typical women’s groups in town, Hope began to pick up hitchhikers, something she kept from Roy. She was fond of driving the car Roy had given her, and at least once a week she motored alone to Winnipeg, forty miles away. She shopped for clothes and then rode the escalator to the restaurant of Eaton’s department store, where she usually ate the same thing. A roast pork sandwich and a dessert of gingerbread and whipped cream washed down with coffee. She ate slowly and looked about at the other shoppers and was quite content. By early afternoon she would be on her way home, in her mind going over the possible supper options for Roy. He liked meat loaf and mashed potatoes. He didn’t like salads or vegetables, though he would eat corn. Noodle casserole was his favourite. One day in April she picked up a couple from the East Coast who were heading home to see family, and on another day she gave an older man a lift to a town that she had passed through on her way to Eden. Both of these incidents had come off without trouble, and she had not mentioned them to anyone.

  On one of her trips back to Eden on the Trans-Canada Highway in late May, it was raining and there was a hitchhiker huddling against the wind a few miles out of the city. She slowed and pulled over to the side, watching him in the rear-view mirror as he ran towards her, his small suitcase banging against his leg. She almost started the car and left him, suddenly fearful, but then she calmed herself and said, “It’s okay. You can do this.”

  He turned out to be more boy than man. He was nineteen and on his way to his parents’ reserve in Northern Ontario. He lit a cigarette right off and then asked if it was okay. Hope said, “Please, yes. Go ahead.” She was driving a brand-new Fleetmaster with soft corduroy seats and she imagined a cigarette falling onto the seat and burning a hole and Roy discovering it. He had rules about the car. The boy looked her over and asked where she was going. Water dripped from his baseball cap onto his lap. He was very thin. She explained that she was from Eden and had been in Winnipeg buying a few things for her home. He asked if she had any food. She said she didn’t. It was quiet then except for the single wiper slapping against her side of the windshield.