The Age of Hope (16 page)

“It’s just that I want the best for you, Hope. You’re special, and I think you should know that, and sometimes I wonder if you do know that.”

“I know that, Em. But thanks anyway. Drive carefully.”

After Emily had gone, Hope closed her eyes and felt the sun warm her face and chest and thighs. Melanie, the child she had learned to love, came down to the dock carrying a small bag that held nail polish and clippers and an emery board. She sat cross-legged at Hope’s feet.

“Would you like the full pedicure today, miss?” she asked.

“That would be perfect. Thank you.”

Hope and Roy had never been diligent about taking photographs, and though there were a few family photos, black and white, from the sixties, and the odd photo of a child at play (one of Judith on horseback, wearing tall riding boots, her hair pulled into a ponytail), there had been little record keeping. Nor did Hope keep a diary, though Emily always urged her to. And so the past was like a vacant lot of the mind, a place where one might scrabble about looking for something of value, a remembrance of perhaps the trip to Disneyland or the family vacation in Portland, or of Christmas 1966. As the children grew—they now ranged from nineteen down to nine—she realized that if she did not begin to record the precious moments in their lives, she would eventually reach old age and have nothing to stir her memories. She decided to buy a camera, and purchased a Kodak Motormatic from a shop on Portage Avenue in Winnipeg. She was immediately baffled, what with all the bells and whistles, the depth of field, the flash, the shutter speed, the light meter, et cetera, et cetera. Roy, who should have been mechanically inclined, was even more stumped, or perhaps he just feigned uselessness because he didn’t want the responsibility.

For a month after she had discovered the simplest manner of taking the most basic photos, she charged about the house snapping pictures of the children, who ultimately became impatient with the intrusions. The first roll of film was a dud because she had installed it incorrectly. The film never did advance. The second roll of thirty-six images, 100 ASA, turned out to be mostly blurry, though there was a lovely clear shot of Penny and Melanie standing by the front door, on their way to school. Penny looked distracted and impatient and Melanie was grinning madly. It turned out that Conner had taken that shot. Recognizing Conner’s ability, Hope handed him the camera and several rolls of film and asked him to be in charge. Over the next month, fourteen rolls of film were used up and then stored in the fridge and at some point Hope carried them down to the drugstore to be developed. She picked up the photos a week later and went through them, only to discover that most of them were of Conner’s friends and of various motorcycles standing in the street, or of cars, sometimes a grill, other times a dashboard showing a tachometer. There was a photo of Conner smoking, standing with his arm around a very beautiful girl whom Hope didn’t recognize. She was disconcerted by this beautiful girl who was leaning so coyly against her son. She also didn’t understand why he needed to smoke, though she didn’t have the strength to confront him. There wasn’t one photo of the family. Disheartened, she retrieved the camera and gave it to Judith, who was leaving for Europe.

After only a year of university, Judith had convinced her father that she would be getting a fuller education if she travelled in Europe. “I’d learn seven languages, be surrounded by real art rather than just looking at pictures of the
Mona Lisa
, meet Italians and Spaniards and French, eat fresh olives.” The list went on and on and Hope marvelled at Judith’s loquacity and Roy’s gullibility. He agreed to one year of travel. She would be required to write a letter once a week, and to live for a time in one city and take a language course, preferably German, though French would be fine as well. The whole family drove her to the airport in Winnipeg. Judith was embarrassed by all the to-do, but she dutifully hugged everyone, and when it was Hope’s turn to hold her eldest daughter, Judith whispered in her ear, “I’m so happy.” She flew from Winnipeg to Toronto and then over to Amsterdam. They did not hear from her for three weeks and then a letter arrived, scratched-out words on thin blue paper that offered little solace to Hope, who read it twice while sitting at the dining room table.

On my first day, my first night actually, I couldn’t sleep because of jet lag and I wandered the streets. There’s a red light district where women sit in the windows, some on pillows, some on swings, and you can just hire them. It’s all legal. Very bizarre. The bars and coffee shops are open very late and everyone is so friendly and most people speak perfect English, better than me. I met Rolf, a Dutch boy, who’s very sweet. We hitchhiked to Paris together and then went to Salonika and we ‘re planning to go to Crete next week. Or maybe to Venice. Don’t worry Mom, everyone hitchhikes here. It’s like the poor person’s train, and very safe. I’m having so much fun. Tell Dad that I plan to go back to Paris to study at the Alliance Française. Though Rolf says I could live with his family and study Dutch, which is very close to German and I already know a few words. We met Marika, who’s Swedish, and she’s travelling with us for a while. That’s how it works. Everything’s cool, people come and go. I feel so stupid because everyone speaks at least three languages brilliantly. Though both Marika and Rolf like the way I think. Isn’t that funny? The way I think? I’m not even sure what that means. You can send a letter to the American Express office in Athens. I’ll be there next week for a few days. Or the Express office in Paris, where I’ll be next month. I think, anyway. I’m so happy and love you all so much. Hugs and kisses to Penny and Conner and Melanie. Mom, you would love the small cobblestone streets of Amsterdam, and the bicycles everywhere. It’s so gorgeous and romantic. I’m taking lots of photos and everyone says I have an eye for it.

All my love, Judith

Hope was pleased. Judith, the daughter who had so grudgingly offered love, was now dispensing all of it to her mother. She thought that she would indeed like the cobblestone streets and the bicycles. She had always had a hankering to see Anne Frank’s house as well. Judith had made no mention of whether she had seen it. But then there was so much left out of this letter. What was she eating? Was she warm enough? Where did she sleep? With whom did she sleep? Rolf? Hope thought that this was entirely possible. Not because Judith was loose, but because this was the nature of the world in 1972. Hope, at the age of nineteen, had been studying nursing and had kissed only one boy, Jimmy Kaas, and the extent of her travelling had been the forty miles from Eden to Winnipeg. What wisdom did she have to offer to anyone?

When Emily heard that Judith was heading off to Europe, she had said that Hope should read
The Drifters,
a story about boys and girls Judith’s age who travel through Europe in the late sixties. Hope ordered it through Book of the Month Club. It was eight hundred pages and she did immediately what she did with all big books. She cut it into three sections so as to make it more manageable and to save her wrists. A heavy book was hard on the joints, and in bed the weight lay on her chest. The problem with cutting the book up was that sometimes she misplaced the second or third section and so had to hunt through the house, trying to remember where the rest of the novel was stored. When she began to read
The Drifters
she immediately wondered if Emily was trying to poison her with dark and dangerous and desperate thoughts. Perhaps Emily knew something that she didn’t. And then Judith’s letter arrived and all she could think was that Judith had become one of the characters in
The Drifters.

That night, Roy read the letter in bed. Hope kept glancing at him, anticipating his response. But he surprised her. He folded the letter, put it on the bedside table, removed his glasses, and said, “Well, she seems to be having a good time.”

“You think so? Aren’t you worried about the aimlessness and the drugs and the sex?” she asked.

“Did we read the same letter, Hope?”

“Well, the general picture of her activities, what she talks about. Prostitution, hitchhiking with a Dutch boy, maybe I’ll go to Salonika, or perhaps Crete. All of that sounds aimless to me. She moved so fast through all those countries.” She picked up the section of the book she had been reading. It was the middle section. The front few pages hung loose, and she tore those off and discarded them. “Listen, look, I’m in the middle of this novel and this is Judith’s life as she’s living it now.” She flipped to a page and read a section where the young people are in Torremolinos, in the house of a rich man who organizes orgies. When she finished reading, she laid the book down, sighed, and looked over at Roy, who was sound asleep.

She wrote Judith regularly, sending the letters to American Express offices in various cities throughout Europe, often uncertain if she received them or not, though there would arrive the occasional letter in which Judith made reference to something Hope had written in one of her letters from Canada, and this was a relief—at least some of the mail was being picked up.

And then one day Roy came home late, sat down at the dinner table, unfolded his napkin over his lap, and announced that the dealership had won a trip to Barbados. “We’ll be taking a little holiday,” he said, looking at Hope. Melanie was overjoyed until she learned that only her parents would be going. “It’s an adult trip,” Roy said. “Sorry, sweetie.”

Hope disliked leaving the children and worried that something might happen to Judith while they were gone. How would they be contacted? On the other hand, winter had been long that year, drawn out and cold, and as she shopped for a new bathing suit in Winnipeg, and a few lighter tops, and some shorts and several pairs of sandals, she found herself stirred by some sort of excitement, the anticipation of the exotic. Why should her children have all the fun?

Barbados turned out to be very poor, and during the drive from the airport to the resort, she observed the shanties and the barely clothed children playing in the streets and she wondered why the children weren’t in school. She was depressed by the poverty, and became even more despairing upon arriving at the resort, where numerous swimming pools glistened like jewels and palm trees lined the twisting walking paths that led to their private villa. She saw herself eating up an overly large portion of the world. What gave her the right to this luxury and the wonderful food she would be eating, when that boy in torn shorts sitting by the shantytown got only gruel? Whose self was bigger? Who was more important? She sat on the edge of the king-size bed and told Roy that she felt sick.

“Did you see all those poor people? And look at us.”

“We provide an income for those people. The economy is based on tourism, Hope. They need our money.”

“That’s just pure rationalization, Roy. A simplistic argument.”

“Well, here then.” Roy took out his wallet and removed the cash and laid it on the bed beside her. “Start with the chambermaids, and then head over to the restaurant and the waiters, and don’t forget the bellhop, and when you’re done here, head out into the streets and make sure everyone gets an equal share. Go on then.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” She looked down at the cash as if it were poisonous. “You know that won’t help. It’s just that I feel so helpless.”

“Well, get over it, Hope. Let’s go for a swim.”

She put on her black one-piece and tied her hair back with a pink scarf and she carried a wicker basket that held her books and suntan lotion and hat and sunglasses. She was aware of being noticed and took pleasure in the fact that she was still beautiful. She found a spot under an umbrella and ordered a margarita. Then another. Roy was beside her, laid out on his chair. He was wearing red trunks and black socks with brown shoes. She rarely saw him so naked in public and for a brief moment she suffered shame. His legs were alabaster. And those socks. The heat, even though she was under an umbrella, was astoundingly oppressive, and after her second drink was done, she rose and stepped carefully down into the pool, where she submerged herself up to her neck. She had had her hair done that morning, and she didn’t want to ruin it for the evening dinner, at which the other couples from across North America who had also been invited on this trip would be meeting for the first time. The warm water of the pool and the alcohol had a soothing effect on her, and by the time she had recovered her spot beside Roy, she had come to accept her place in the world. To complain, something Roy thought she did too much of, was to be ungrateful, and she had made a decision to make the best of things, to be obliging.

There were nine other couples, owners of various dealerships throughout the States and Canada, who met for dinner that night and Hope sat beside Anita Stark, from Arizona, whose husband, Will, owned four dealerships in Phoenix. Anita was very gregarious. She kept touching Hope’s right arm throughout the meal and she made Hope feel quite at ease. Anita was fit and she wore a tight top and a short skirt. She was a mother of three children very close in age to Hope’s, and so they talked of children. Her eldest daughter was a classical pianist who was aiming for Juilliard. Anita said this so matter-of-factly that Hope became slightly despondent and replied that her eldest daughter was running with the bulls in Pamplona and hanging out with a Dutch teenaged smoking hashish. “So you see,” she said, and she let her sentence dangle, and Anita tilted her head, as if waiting for a profundity, but it never came. That was all Hope had to say. Her children would be failures.

Across the table from Hope that night sat a couple from Dallas. Flip and Denise. Denise was certainly Flip’s mistress. She reminded Hope of Judith. Hope felt sorry for her because she saw immediately that five days with this older crowd might do this young girl in. Flip kept putting his arm around her in a possessive manner, as if Denise might suddenly try to run, or one of the other men might try to snatch her. Denise had little to say. She appeared bored and smoked Camels, tilting her head upwards in a disdainful way as she exhaled. The other couples hailed from Montreal, Vancouver, New York, California, and of all places, Fargo. Because Fargo was geographically close to Eden, Hope thought that she might have something in common with Cindy, the wife, but Cindy was incredibly shy and it was all Hope could do to tear several words from her small mouth. Her husband, Alistair, on the other hand, was a vociferous bore. He liked numbers, and he used those numbers when referring to his golf game or units sold at his dealership, or when assessing the bodies of women poolside. Cindy hovered and smiled bleakly, sipping a gin and tonic.