The Age of Hope (28 page)

“Oh, shit,” Penny said, and she raised her glass, drank with the others, and then went to console Judith. They returned later, arm in arm, and Judith approached Melanie and hugged her and said, “I’m so happy, and so jealous, but mostly I’m happy.” And then she hugged Ariel as well, and Hope was aware of how muscular Ariel’s forearms were, and how short she was.

There was some discussion among the children that weekend about Hope, and she was pleased to be the centre of attention, even though much of the conversation focused on her reckless driving and the need for a maid. Well, the truth was, she was a bit of a menace on the road, but then she had always been a reckless driver. The Belair she had inherited upon Roy’s death had gradually acquired various nicks and dents, testaments to a corner cut too close or an attempt at parallel parking gone awry. When she hit a parked car, she immediately left the scene of the crime and moved on down the street to find a different parking spot.

However, she was offended by the idea of a maid. “What are you thinking? I can still cook and clean. And I’ll be driving when I’m ninety. Mrs. Kraus, in Eden, she’s ninety-five and still drives a standard.”

“That’s wonderful for her,” Penny said, “until she kills some kid on a bicycle.”

One evening after dinner, Hope said, apropos of nothing, “I refuse to be a burden on you kids.”

“Oh, Mom,” Penny said, “you’re not dying.”

“Of course I’m dying. We’re all dying.” She turned to her other three children. “Your sister’s writing a book. About me.”

“What?” This was Judith.

“I am not, Mother. It’s a novel. And it’s sliding all over the place. It lacks structure.”

“Like my life,” Hope said.

“That’s not true,” Judith said. “Do you feel that, Mom? Your life has been full.”

Hope sensed that Judith wanted her life to be full because if it wasn’t, then she was an embarrassment and a failure, and perhaps this meant that Judith’s life was not full either. It was a selfish statement, completely without empathy.

“I know that it’s been full,” Hope said. “Look at my children.”

Conner had stepped outside to the balcony for a cigarette, and he returned now and studied Penny. “Are you? Writing a book about Mom?”

“No.”

“Well,” Hope said, “it’s about a woman born in 1930 and it follows her life. That’s what you told me, isn’t it?”

“Does she have children?” Melanie asked.

“Three,” Penny said. “Maybe.” She made a face.

“Where’s it set?” Judith asked.

“Oh, here and there. Eden. Winnipeg.”

“You’re actually using the name Eden?”

“For the rough draft. It feels more authentic.”

“If I’m in it, I’ll sue you,” Conner said. He looked quite serious, and then he grinned.

“She won’t publish it till I’m dead,” Hope said. She was enjoying herself. Her heart was full. She loved all of her children. She was going to be a grandmother. Immortality beckoned after all. “I wish we had more wine.”

Mr. Arthur Templeton. What a debonair and aristocratic name compared to hers. She ‘d always felt, deep down, that her name belonged on a farm, that one might easily conjure up the image of a long row of cages filled with hens, poor girls, losing track of their eggs as they rolled down into wire gutters. In her early days, during the age of her despair, she had opened the
Concise Oxford Dictionary
and discovered to her chagrin that the word “coop” came from Middle Low German and was, variously:
1 A basket. Only in ME. 2 A wickerwork basket used in catching fish. ME. 3 A cage or pen for confining poultry etc. ME. 4 A narrow place of confinement; slang, a prison.
She imagined a dirty little shanty in which a family of sixteen lived, though she wasn’t sure where this idea came from. Over time, though, she managed to sublimate all these images and definitions, and had come to see her acquired name as positive. She construed associations. A coop represented a safe place. It provided food. Wickerwork baskets, freshly dipped in the Sea of Galilee, full of fishes. Various other baskets, replete with loaves. The Sermon on the Mount. Jesus come to walk among the poor, freeing prisoners. Eventually, she came to accept her name, and to appreciate the sharpness of the singular syllables, the symmetry in the number of letters: Hope Koop.

She first introduced herself to Arthur Templeton in the lobby of her condominium. She had just returned from a shopping trip at Safeway and was standing near the elevator when the bag that she was holding broke and five potatoes, Yukon Gold bought in bulk, spilled out and bounced along the tiles, coming to rest in various corners. She was alone in the lobby—Ibram was outside talking to a tenant—and so she set about gathering up her potatoes. She had retrieved four of them and was down on her knees, peering under the couch in the middle of the lobby, trying to find her last one, when the elevator doors opened and out stepped an older man dressed in a dark suit, wearing a fedora, and wielding a cane. The man paused in the middle of the lobby and said, “You lost something?”

Hope looked up. She was aware of the man’s polished shoes, the fine cut of his suit, and his sharp jaw, above which played a slight smile. She felt foolish, caught in this humiliating position. She stood. Brushed off her slacks. “Oh, no,” she said. “Well, yes. I lost a potato.”

“Under there?” The man pointed at the couch.

“Yes, it escaped.”

“Indeed,” the man said, and he lowered himself with great care to the floor and peered into the dark space where the potato had disappeared. “Aha.” He swung his cane under the couch and the potato rolled out. He picked it up, stood, and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said.

He held out his hand. “Arthur Templeton.”

She took his hand and said, “Hope Koop.”

“Ah, yes,” Arthur said, as if he recognized her, or had been waiting a long time to discover her. He said, “Spuds for dinner, then?”

She was surprised to hear him use the word “spud.” It seemed so out of place with his dress and demeanour.

“I like to bake a potato every night. It’s easy, I find.”

“It is.” He studied her. “I’ve not seen you before. You live here?”

“For four years.”

“Well, I’m a blind man then not to have noticed such a beauty.”

“Oh,” she said. “Thank you for your help. It was nice to meet you.” And she passed through the open elevator door and did not look back at him.

How odd, she thought as she rose to her floor. There was mirror in the elevator, and she saw herself and was grateful that she had worn her finer dark blue slacks and a cream-coloured jacket to walk to Safeway. After her trip to Paris she had become more careful about what she was eating, or perhaps she was just less interested in food since Roy died. In any case, she had lost a little weight and had acquired a new wardrobe. Even her daughters had remarked, at the time of her birthday party, on her new outfits. She had her hair coloured with highlights every four weeks at a small salon down the street, and now, aware of her appearance, she thought that while she might no longer be a beauty, she wasn’t bad looking. “Oh, look at you, Hope,” she said. She felt light-headed.

Over the past few years, Hope had begun to feel invisible. She belonged to a whole herd of grey-haired women in running shoes who apparently did not exist. She felt it when she came face to face with the young girl who served her at Starbucks and she had to navigate the silly debit machine. All those buttons. The younger girls were often kind and helpful, certainly because they must have grandmothers her age. The disdain she felt came from women in their forties who were desperately trying to stay young. It was as if these women saw a reflection of their future selves and were frightened. Hope was slightly offended and slightly amused by this.

So now, to experience the flutter of being seen was special indeed. Indeed. Hadn’t Arthur just used that word? What a confident word. As if there were nothing to be doubted, complete certainty. This was something else she had noticed about Arthur during that brief encounter. He seemed so sure of himself.

She kept an eye out for him, subtly, but she did not see him. And then, two weeks later, on her way to meet Conner for lunch, she ran into him just outside the lobby doors. She thought later that he might have been lying in wait for her—the encounter was too coincidental—but at the time she put it down to chance. He raised a hand and bowed slightly and said, “Hope Koop.”

“Mr. Templeton.”

“Arthur, please.” He said that he had just been thinking of her. He had an extra ticket for the symphony the following night. Would she like to join him? “I hope this isn’t too forward, but my daughter, who was supposed to be joining me, had to postpone her trip. She lives in Kansas City.”

“Oh, but I don’t know you.”

“I’m not dangerous. In any case, you can outrun me.” He lifted his cane and smiled.

He was quite brazen and she wondered if Arthur Templeton was
fast.
A playboy. However, he had a daughter, which made him, in Hope’s mind, a family man and therefore safer, and so she said, “Yes, I would like that.” She was immediately sorry because she felt that she was betraying Roy, and she couldn’t imagine what she would wear.

“Good. Then I will call on you at 6 p.m.” He nodded, said goodbye, and slipped away.

She wore a dark dress with a matching belt and a necklace of pearls. She was dressed and ready to go by 3 p.m. and spent the remaining hours alternately studying herself in the mirror and sitting at the dining room table staring out the balcony windows. She had not eaten since lunch, and by the time they were seated, her stomach was grumbling and all she could feel was embarrassment. She needn’t have worried. Arthur was hard of hearing. It felt very intimate sitting side by side with this strange man who, during the concert, leaned towards her and whispered little details about Shostakovich and the various movements. Arthur, she realized, was erudite and well informed.

He insisted on taking her out for a late-night snack—highly unusual, he admitted, as he was usually in bed by 10 p.m. They ended up in a French café not far from the condominium, where she finally ate. Creamy pasta with legumes and shrimp. They shared a litre of wine. She learned that his wife had died six years earlier, and he had been an economics professor at the university. He had one daughter, Cheryl. He was eighty-two. He did most of the talking, though she did manage to tell him a little about herself and her children. And Roy. She felt that Roy should be sitting at the table with them.

Two days later a single rose arrived in a cut-glass vase. A note came with it that read, “Hope, thank you for the wonderful evening. With affection, Arthur.” She was startled by the word “affection,” and then pleased.

The following week, they took a taxi out to Assiniboine Park and walked slowly through the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden, talking the whole time. Arthur was a conversationalist, much more so than Roy had ever been, and he was a very good listener as well. A week after that, in what she felt was their most intimate time together, she drove him out to Eden and showed him the house where she had lived with Roy and raised their children, the dealership that Roy had owned and then lost, the church she had been married in, the site where her first boyfriend had died in a plane crash, her parents’ grave. He was curious about Mennonites and she gave him a cook’s tour of her own experiences, of Roy’s background, of the enclave of Eden, making it clear that she herself no longer adhered to the Mennonite faith, though she still considered herself a Christian. “Absolutely,” she said. He told her that he was an atheist, the first she’d heard of this, and she refused to believe him. “It’s such an arrogant statement,” she said.

He laughed and suggested they find a bite to eat in town. “Take me to your hangout.”

“I don’t think so. Tongues will wag.”

“What fun,” he said. “Hope has a lover.”

She flushed and said nothing in response, aware that words were forceful and full of temptation. That afternoon, before they said goodbye, she told him that she didn’t like the word “lover.” “It sounds silly. We’re too old for that kind of talk. And the truth is, it wouldn’t work. You don’t believe in God.”

“I’m sorry, Hope. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I’m not frightened, I’m just being practical. I have had one
lover.
His name was Roy.”

“This is what I like about you, Hope. Your obstinacy.”

She lifted her head, suddenly alert. “And you? You have had others?”

“Bernice, my wife.”

She didn’t believe him. He was constantly flirting, with waitresses, with young women at the grocery store, with her. This was not so disturbing as it was amusing, and somewhat awkward, as if he still imagined himself as a young man. She was suddenly tired. She said goodbye.

And yet, she had, just the other morning, woken with a warm heart and an image of lying beside Arthur. Of course, she hadn’t been naked or anything so risqué, but she had pictured touching him, and he her, and this is what had produced the warmth and the confusion of feeling. Her imagination was passionate and full. “Stop it, Hope,” she said. But she didn’t stop, because these thoughts made her happy. Arthur made her happy. She went out and bought muted rose-coloured underwear with lace trim and a camisole with a tiny satin bow perched where her cleavage was supposed to be.

She had not mentioned Arthur to either Penny or Conner, though they might have suspected something. The last time Penny visited she ‘d noted how vibrant Hope seemed. “It’s like you’ve gotten younger, Mom. What’s going on?”

“Oh, nothing.”

Arthur cooked a meal of curry and chickpeas and chicken, laid over a bed of rice, and he served her in his dining room, where the lights were turned down and candles flickered. He’d put on some music—Henry Purcell, he said, and Hope nodded, as if Purcell made perfect sense, though she’d never heard of him. She asked where he lived.

“He’s dead,” Arthur said. “Many years.”

That evening, she was very aware of Arthur’s mouth, of the sensuality of his lips, and though she tried to calm herself, she realized that she was growing quite fond of the man sitting across from her. She had come to realize that a relationship needn’t be symbiotic, that two people didn’t have to see eye to eye on everything. Arthur was more political than she was. Unlike Roy, he believed that unions were a good thing. He walked in marches. He served at a soup kitchen on Christmas Day. He taught her to play chess. He took her to hear chamber music. He had plans to travel to Egypt and the Middle East. About this plan he was rather wry, saying, “If I don’t die first.”