The Age of Hope

by David Bergen

  The next afternoon she set out again and found herself in the Louvre, wandering through the great halls, overwhelmed by the tourists and inundated by the numerous works of art that at some point all bled into one great indistinguishable master painting. She panted and padded in circles. She had to find a bathroom. She approached a security guard and asked in French where the toilets found themselves. The guard pointed and gave the directions and so she set off on a complete goose chase that ended in a dark corner near the rendition of the Opera House, done to perfect scale, and it was there, unbeknownst to the swarm around her, that she gave in and peed on the floor. She stood there and looked off into the distance, purse clutched to her chest, as the urine rolled down her leg and formed a puddle at her feet. When she was finished, she slipped away and hastily sought the nearest exit, passing by the sign for the women’s washroom. Too late. Out through the large courtyard to the street, where she hailed a taxi, got in, and sat, her bottom wet, humiliated, on the verge of tears.

  She wasn’t sure later why she told Judith the story of the unfortunate incident at the Louvre. Perhaps she believed it would be an amusing anecdote. Perhaps she was trying to say: take care of me. Judith was horrified and related the tale to Jean-Philippe, who was apoplectic. Over the next hour there was, or so it appeared to Hope, who understood little French, a teaming-up on the part of the two of them against her. She had unwittingly united them. For two days Jean-Philippe would not speak to her, and when he finally did speak, he said, “It is necessary that you realize, Hope, that to piss at the feet of the master painters, it is a sacrilege and a travesty.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I was lost. It was impossible to find a bathroom. Don’t the French have to pee like normal people?”

  “They control their bladders,” Judith said. “And they’re not fat.”

  At that moment, Hope was eating a peach pastry that she had picked up at the patisserie. She held her fork in the air, paused thoughtfully, and then deliberately ate another mouthful. Judith had always had a taste for cruelty, especially towards her mother. She seemed to reinforce what Hope knew in her own mind regarding her physical appearance. That she was overweight. Hope was aware of the French women her own age who strolled along the wide boulevards in Paris, perfectly coiffed, in high-heeled shoes, wearing expensive clothes. They were like aliens. She said, “French women eat like birds. I’m not a bird.”

  “C’est vrai,” Jean-Philippe said.

  Hope turned red. She felt helpless. She said, “Perhaps I will take a train and visit the south.”

  Judith did not argue. In fact, she made the arrangements, buying her a return train ticket and booking a hotel in Marseille. Two days later she rode in the taxi with Hope to the Gare de Lyon. Ever since the plan had been set in motion, Judith had been softer, more forgiving. “You’ll have a wonderful time, Mom. The Mediterranean is gorgeous.”

  “I worry,” Hope said. “Won’t it be even hotter there? And will the hotel have air-conditioning? Will I get by with English?”

  Judith took her hand and patted it. “You’ll be fine. It’s an adventure. Phone me when you arrive.”

  “I wish your father were here.”

  “I know you do.”

  “You shouldn’t fight so much with Jean-Philippe. You don’t know what you have.”

  Judith smiled. “It’s the heat. It makes us all crazy.”

  “Je suis fou,” Hope said.

  “Folle. You’re a woman. Hope est folle.”

  “In fact, I worry that she is.”

  “Oh, Mom, you’re not.”

  “I feel like it sometimes. The other day, in a café, watching the people, I felt terribly alone. As if every other person knew exactly who they were, but I didn’t. For a moment I even forgot my name.”

  Judith looked concerned. “Does that happen often?”

  Hope shook her head. “I’m not senile. I meant in a philosophical and moral way. Who is Hope Koop?” She sighed. “This city has made me into a romantic.”

  “It can. It did me.”

  “And then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you having an affair, Judith?”

  There was a pause, and Hope knew she was right. She didn’t really want to know the details and so she squeezed her daughter’s hand and said, “Thank you for making the arrangements.”

  She thought later, on the train, after she was settled in her window seat and facing the direction the train would be travelling, so as to see the approaching villages and the cows and sheep in the fields, that ever since Roy’s death she had become a coward. Especially when it came to her children. Or perhaps she had become weary of confrontation. Fighting with and caring for her needy children wore her out. They were still so demanding. Hope did not recall that she had given her own mother any grief when she was Judith’s age. She married, had children, raised them, helped her mother die, buried her, and never once had she called on her for help or counsel. There was something to be said for independence and for not revealing the sauces in your kitchen, as Jean-Philippe would say. It did not surprise her that Judith was having an affair. And it should not surprise Jean-Philippe either, though it certainly would, because men seemed to think that they were immune to emotional pain, that “fucking around,” if she could use that term, was the domain of men. Well, it wasn’t. Women could be as cruel and foolish and selfish as men.

  She was glad that Judith did not have children. She could not bear another catastrophic breakup like Conner’s, where the grandchildren were torn from her bosom. She had not seen Rudi or Ilke for several years now, not since the funeral, though Conner did give her the annual school photographs, which Hope taped to the fridge door. The children were stretching out. Their faces had changed. If she were to pass them on the street she might not recognize them. A year ago, while at the Bay shopping for a bra, she had seen Charlotte pass by the lingerie section. She was wearing a red coat with a faux fur collar and at first Hope had not recognized her, and then she heard her speak (she was with another woman, equally handsome) and she knew that it was Charlotte. Hope followed her, past the underwear and over into the women’s jacket and blazer section where, she presumed, a lawyer might buy a suit. She stood very near the two women, rocking on her feet. It was the other woman who noticed Hope. She looked at first confused because Hope was standing so near and was staring with such great intent. “Yes?” the woman asked, and Charlotte turned.

  “Hope,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “You whore,” Hope said, and she turned and walked away.

  Roy would have been appalled. But Roy was dead, and so he could not be appalled. Or perhaps he had been appalled up there in heaven. She, on the other hand, was here on earth, and she felt no remorse, no guilt. She wondered if she would have been so flagrant if Charlotte had not been wearing the red coat, or if her legs weren’t so shapely and long. If she had had an axe in her purse, she would have brought it down on her head.

  Upon arriving in Marseille, she was immediately struck by the filth and heat. It was a port town and appeared to attract all kinds. She had consulted her map and discovered that her hotel was a five-minute walk from the train station. Feeling adventurous, and thinking she might stretch her legs, she decided, unfortunately, to walk. She found herself wandering down narrow streets with shops that sold piping and toilets and copper wire. Men sat in circles at the edge of the sidewalk, smoking water pipes. She meandered here and there, dragging her heavy suitcase. Her ankles were sore, she was thirsty, and she despaired of ever finding an exit from this hellish maze. Near a shop that sold cigarettes and newspapers, she sat on her suitcase in the shade and fanned herself with the folded map, keeping an eye out for a passing taxi. None appeared. She wondered what Judith had been thinking, pushing her out the door and sending her down to this polluted city where vagrants held out filthy hands and asked for sous. She longed for the cool clean comfort of her condominium on Wellington Crescent in Winnipeg.

  A voice spo
ke. “Madame, you require assistance?”

  She looked up and saw a middle-aged man in a brown suit. He carried an umbrella, which was opened. The man’s face was clean and kind. His eyes were deep blue, rather like Roy’s when he had felt deeply satisfied with himself and the world, which often occurred after they had made love.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “I am lost.” She wiped her forehead with a small white cloth that she kept in her purse.

  The man in the brown suit said, “Please, which hotel?” She handed him the map and pointed at the spot where the hotel was supposed to be. He studied it and then he took her elbow and helped her stand. He asked for her suitcase. “With your permission?”

  “Yes. You may.” He might be a thief or a con man, but she did not care. Let him steal her belongings—they were mere things. As long as she found her way to the hotel, where she could draw a bath and clean herself and drink coffee and then sleep. She followed him up the sidewalk, the suitcase clattering at his heels. He had handed her the umbrella, and she now held it and immediately felt relief from the sun. The man in the brown suit stopped at a small restaurant that sold noodles. He offered her a chair, asked her to wait please, and disappeared into the rear of the shop. He came out five minutes later, just as a car pulled up to the curb. He opened the rear door of the car and indicated that she should get in.

  She shook her head.

  “I apologize,” he said. “You will be safe. The driver will take you to your hotel. No need to pay.”

  “And my luggage?”

  He raised a hand and a young boy appeared and picked up her suitcase and placed it in the trunk.

  “Please,” the man said, and he took her elbow and helped her get into the rear seat. His touch was deft and kind. The door closed. She looked up at him from behind the glass of the closed window. He opened the front door and spoke to the driver in a language she did not understand. Then he turned to her and said, “Bon voyage.” And he was gone.

  Later, soaking in the bathtub of the hotel room, staring at the high, finely detailed ceiling, she considered the man in the brown suit. The comfort of strangers was not foreign to her, but the fact was that in her life she had not had access to very many strangers until this day, when the man in the brown suit arrived like a celestial traveller, unbeckoned and nameless.

  Unwittingly, she had kept the man’s umbrella, and over the next week, as she struck out to explore the city, to go to restaurants, or to walk in the parks, she carried it with her, expecting at any moment to see the man in the brown suit and thereby return it to him. But she never saw him again, and so she returned home with the umbrella and hung it on her coat rack by the front door, where it sat for a time, until she lent it out to a friend—she forgot which friend—who required protection walking home during a summer squall that descended with a black ferocity, and then dissipated as quickly as it had arrived.

  Hope had always been less adamant than Roy about attending church, in fact she had often stayed home Sunday mornings when he attended, saying that she ‘d rather feed the children a hearty breakfast than sing old hymns. In hindsight, she wondered if her children might have benefited from a more rigorous religious education. Perhaps Conner would have married more wisely and had children who were actually his, or Judith would have found someone who was faithful, or Melanie would have been less confused about her sexual orientation. This second-guessing usually came upon her when she heard other women, old friends from Eden, speak of how successful their children were, or how beautifully their grandchildren were coasting through the world. Doubts assailed her and she imagined that she had failed to give her children a solid foundation. Though she had given them love, hadn’t she?

  In the latter years of her seventh decade, she began to drop by an Anglican church that she had discovered quite by accident one Sunday morning when, walking by, she heard music coming from the open doors. She entered, sat down near the back, and heard a man in white vestments speak in a manner that was both familiar and lofty. She knew immediately that he was lofty because he sprinkled his sermons with Greek and Latin phrases, read parables by Kierkegaard, and quoted philosophers, dropping their names like raisins into a rice pudding, and though she did not recognize many of these writers, she took pleasure in hearing their names.

  The pastor, a Reverend Wenders, one day quoted Aristotle: “One who throws a stone has power over it until he has thrown it, but not afterwards.” She was so moved by this passage that she approached Reverend Wenders after the service. She had to wait for a long time because there were numerous parishioners, more genuine than she was, who also had important things to say to him. When she finally caught him, they were alone, and she introduced herself as Hope Koop, as if this might have some meaning for him. He seemed impatient. He said, “Yes?” and he waited.

  She was disconcerted. She had imagined that Reverend Wenders would be as personable in person as he was behind the pulpit, but this seemed not to be the case. Perhaps he was tired. All these needy people.

  “Oh,” she said, “I just wanted to thank you. For the sermon.” She paused, waited, saw that he would not prompt her further, and so said thank you again.

  “You’re welcome, Hope,” he said, and he turned from her.

  She was pleased that he had remembered her name, even though she had just told him not one minute earlier. This was a sign of someone who listened and cared and took note. But she had wished for more. She had imagined she would lean towards him and whisper confidentially that the passage about the stone throwing had moved her greatly. And then she would shift gears slightly and explain why it had moved her, confide that a number of years earlier she had wanted to kill the woman who had been her daughter-in-law, but instead had called her a vulgar name. To her face. And in doing so she had released the stone from her hand and no longer had power over it. More than that, she wondered if it might be possible to write a letter to this woman, asking forgiveness. But what concerned her was that the letter was also a stone of sorts—wasn’t it?—and once sent she would have lost all power over the letter as well, and was that a wise thing to do? Or should she let sleeping dogs lie? Or was the dog even sleeping? She thought not, because she still did not have access to her grandchildren, and the stone that had been thrown—the vulgar word, that is—and the throwing of that stone had guaranteed that she would not see the grandchildren until they were much older and could decide for themselves if they even wanted to see Grandma Koop. They might not, though she couldn’t imagine why not. And in conclusion, she wondered if her desire to write the letter, to take back power over the stone, was ultimately a selfish act, one that indicated the simplest desire to hold Rudi and Ilke, whom she still loved dearly.

  All of this went unsaid, because Reverend Wenders had said a simple thank-you, and disappeared. But Hope did not despair. She was grateful that what had been stated, that line about the stone, had allowed her to even think these thoughts—surprising thoughts indeed, thoughts that would not have even jumped into her head if Reverend Wenders hadn’t helped them arrive. And so she was grateful to him.

  She went home and pondered on these things for several days and then she sat down one morning and wrote a letter to Ms. Charlotte Means, her ex-daughter-in-law.

  Dear Charlotte,

  It is me, Hope. I imagine this is not a letter you want to receive, or even read, but please bear with me. I have been thinking much about relationships these days (I have time to think), and I want to say that I am no longer angry with you. I am too old for bitterness and anger. I have discovered a new country, a place where brooks babble and birds flit from tree to tree. I find myself in the midst of that bucolic setting and I feel peace. And feeling that peace, which has arrived completely unbidden, unwilled, I want to say that I am sorry for whatever grief I have caused you. I cannot speak for my son, Conner, who has his own road to walk, but in my case, please know that I am sorry. I have tried, over these past years, to hold the memory of Rudi and Ilke, but I find lately that my recoll
ection is failing. I hope they are well, and thriving. Please, if you can, tell them that I still love them and that I think of them constantly. That day, when I saw you in the Bay and I was so rude, I simply lost it. I threw a stone that I could not take back, and that stone, I am sure, hurt you. I am sorry. About my life, I am well. As well as I can be for a woman who is turning seventy. I pray for your family. I pray for Rudi and Ilke. Thank you for listening.

  Hope Koop

  She kept the letter for a week, and then finally mailed it, walking up to the post office in Osborne Village, where she stood in line behind a girl with pink hair and tattered black stockings. She had imagined she had no expectations regarding the letter. It was an act of bravery and clemency, for herself only.

  And she was correct to believe that nothing would come of it. Even though she waited with faint anticipation for a response, it never came.

  And then Emily’s Paul died. In fact, killed himself. Hope was sure of it, because Emily was so sure of it. Paul had driven his car, a Belair sold to him by Roy when he still had the business, into the back of a parked tractor-trailer on the Trans-Canada Highway. He had had no business driving on the shoulder at a hundred kilometres an hour. Broad daylight, perfect weather, warning triangles posted, and still Paul had hit the tanker and the car had spun into the ditch, engine smoking, leaving Paul himself a tattered mess of flesh and irretrievable organs. Emily and Paul, after all the years of living apart, were still married. At the funeral, held in Eden, Emily was held in suspicion by those, many of them mere acquaintances, who saw her as a betrayer and a wayward woman. She had lived a selfish life.