by David Bergen
In the morning, a bright blue sky welcomed her. Roy had left for work and Judith was already at school, and when she came down to the kitchen, she saw Conner and Penny at the table eating oatmeal. There was a strange woman at the stove. Well, not so strange. It was Heidi Goosen, Roy’s cousin’s child, a buxom girl of twenty-two whom the children already knew from family gatherings, and whom they adored.
“Why are you here?” Hope asked.
“Oh, Auntie Hope, good morning. Roy called me early this morning and said that you weren’t feeling well and could I come over and watch the children.”
“I’m fine. I’m well.”
“Okay.” This girl with the large bosom was not to be deterred. “I’m glad to hear that. I packed Judith a lunch. She’s going to Angela’s house after school. Later, I’m taking Conner and Penny to the library and then out for grilled cheese sandwiches and fries.”
“Really.”
“Don’t worry. Uncle Roy gave me money for lunch.”
Conner was chanting, “Grilled cheese and fries,” and spinning his spoon in his porridge.
“All right then,” Hope said and she turned and walked back up the stairs and lay down. She had nothing against Heidi Goosen: she was lovely, and she was family. She wasn’t the girl of Roy’s dreams, that was certain. And Roy was simply trying to give Hope a break, she could see that. She heard the children leave with Heidi. She rose and went to the bathroom and ran a bath. She lay for a long time in the water, refilling it, heating it up. She shaved her legs and under her arms. She lay back and studied her belly, which from this perspective appeared not at all large. She placed her hands on her stomach and waited to see if the baby would move. There had been a few bumps over the last while. Nothing at the moment. She got out of the tub and dried herself and then walked about the house in her housecoat. In the kitchen she removed the calendar from the fridge. Put it in the garbage. She took the calendar in the dining room, the one with the photographs of Paris, and she threw that out as well. She took the clock hanging above the piano and carried it to the garage and laid it down on Roy’s worktable. The grandfather’s clock in the living room was too large to move, so she found a sheet and hung it over the clock face. The clock on the stove was permanent—nothing to be done with that. She taped a piece of blank paper over it. The bedroom clock and the upstairs hall clock were portable and she moved those into her shoe closet, tucked away in a box with a lid. Then she found a suitcase and packed a few things—an extra skirt and blouse, some underwear, a second bra, pantyhose, a second pair of shoes, her makeup, her hairbrush, her Bible, a few books—and she carried the suitcase down to her car. She went back inside and wrote a note to Roy. She said, “I’m going away for a little while. Maybe two days. Thank you for asking Heidi to help out. She’s a godsend. My head is above water. Love, Hope.”
She drove to Winnipeg and took a room at a hotel close to the train station. It was spring, the trees were greening, the earth smelled new, and the streets were busy with couples strolling arm in arm. She decided to take a walk herself and made her way down towards the river, where she watched the ducks and the geese. She decided that she would smoke, so she went into a little store and asked for cigarettes. The man behind the counter asked what kind of cigarettes did she want and she said calmly, “Just give me the most popular.” The man raised an eyebrow and handed her a package of du Maurier and she paid and walked out. She sat in the bar of the hotel and ordered a glass of wine and she smoked, though she didn’t inhale because it made her dizzy. A man in a grey suit and a grey hat tried to talk to her. He leaned towards her and asked if she was alone and she looked at him and said that she was waiting for her husband. He said sorry and left.
That night she wanted to call home, but she didn’t. She thought Roy needed to be punished in some way, and if this was it, then so be it. He had all the pleasures, all the freedom, and now, for two days, she was going to be the one to demand certain pleasures and freedoms. She hoped the children would remember to brush their teeth before bedtime. Conner liked a warm glass of milk, and Penny liked to read till nine. This was allowed, but Roy wouldn’t be aware. But the kids would make him aware, certainly. She had raised them to be clear and headstrong and forthright. Poor Judith, probably believing that her mother was gone for good—because it would be Judith who would suffer doubts and fears. She needed her mother the most, and thinking of this now, Hope felt an overwhelming love for her oldest child.
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 a
nd 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 t
he 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?