The Age of Hope (27 page)

“She’s decided.” No wonder Frida had been stuck for forty-five years. Even her child had no faith in her. Where was the agency?

Hope was not afraid of George. Whenever she arrived at the house and George answered the door and said, “Oh, you again,” Hope simply said, “Yes, it’s me, George,” and walked past him and went to find Frida. George didn’t know what to do with a woman like Hope. She was like that innocent-looking cloud on the horizon that becomes a tornado.

The day of the great escape, as Hope would refer to it later, in a rendition devoid of irony and pathos, she drove to Altona in the middle of the night and parked her car on the street outside Frida’s house. Frida planned to leave the bed and walk out with her winter coat over her nightgown and climb into the car, and Hope would whisk her away. She had prepared a Thermos of coffee and a tuna sandwich for Frida. Food and a hot drink could calm an uneasy soul.

The street was quiet. A soft snow fell through the light of the streetlamps. A cat crossed in front of Hope’s car, jumped on the hood, padded about for bit, and then disappeared. Frida’s house was dark. And then the door opened and Frida stepped out in slippers and an ankle-length down parka. She closed the door and stood on the porch, not moving.

“Come, Frida,” Hope whispered.

And then she came, an old woman, shoulders slightly bent, hair in a tight perm, looking back now and then at her house.

She climbed in and shut the door.

“Is everything okay?” Hope asked.

“I forgot my key. I’ve locked myself out,” Frida said. She looked at the house one last time, and then said, “You can go.”

Hope drove through the quiet streets, and it was only when they had passed the town limits and were on the highway that Frida began to cry. Hope handed her the Kleenex box. Frida whispered, “Poor George, he will be so worried. I should have told him. What will he have for breakfast?”

“Toast. Cereal. He’s very capable.”

“The coffee maker has been finicky lately, and he won’t know about the broken switch. It needs to be wiggled to make it work. I should have left him a note.”

“Do you want me to turn around, Frida? I can do that. Absolutely.” According to the woman at the shelter, this was not the thing to say.
Stay calm, don’t give in to her panic, talk her through the doubts. Carry on.
As if Frida were a mere animal with no free will. Why shouldn’t she choose, either way? Hope had found that the counsellor in the shelter, probably late thirties, was unfeeling about Frida’s quandary. It had seemed such a simple matter to her. Just leave. “But she’s close to eighty,” Hope explained. “She’s leaving the place she’s lived in for sixty years.” The counsellor had made a face, one of impatience, and Hope thought then that she was incompetent.

Frida was steadfast. She said, “No, keep going,” and she began to put on the clothes that Hope had brought along. Hope talked to her, mostly nonsense about her own children, about a movie she had seen the previous week, a comedy of sorts that hadn’t been particularly funny, but she liked movies no matter the subject. “Give me a movie star on a big screen and I’m happy,” she said. “I would think that in Ottawa you’ll have the chance to see some movies with Irmie. It’ll be very comfortable. Irmie has a bedroom ready for you.”

“I forgot my glasses,” Frida said. “They’re on the bedside table.”

“You can get a pair in Ottawa. They’re very cheap these days. Maybe you can even get two for one.”

“I don’t know.” Frida worried her hands. She had managed to change into her clothes, awkwardly, fighting her way out of her down coat and her nightgown, baring herself briefly as Hope kept her eyes on the road. Her face was pale, a round puddle of flesh that could no longer countenance her own perfidy. She began to cry again.

Hope took the Thermos and unscrewed the lid, managing this poorly as she drove. Some coffee spilled on her lap, scalding her.

“Shit,” she said.

Frida laughed through her tears. Reached for the Thermos and poured a little. Handed the mug to Hope, who took it and drank.

“This was for you,” Hope said. “I was going to give it to you at the airport.” She pointed to the tuna sandwich.

“I’m sorry,” Frida said.

“Why? You’re very brave.”

“Oh, I’m not. I’m not. Please take me home.”

“It’ll be fine, Frida. You’re afraid. But Irmie is waiting for you, and I will check you in at the airport. You’ve been fearless.”

“Not anymore. This is all wrong. Take me home.”

Hope pulled the car over on the shoulder. Touched Frida’s knee. “You’ve come this far. A long way.”

Frida was suddenly and irrevocably clear-headed. “I can’t.”

Neither of them spoke during the return trip, except once when Frida whispered, “I’m sorry,” and Hope said, “You have nothing to apologize for.” To the east was the grey ghost of a late-rising sun. Hope pulled up in front of Frida’s house. The lights were on.

“He’s awake,” Frida said.

“I think I should come in with you,” Hope said.

Frida shook her head. “That’ll only make it worse. I can manage.” She climbed from the car and opened the rear door and pulled out the suitcase.

“You phone me, okay? Frida? Call me today.”

“Yes. Yes, okay.” And she turned and walked back up the sidewalk, the little suitcase banging against her coat.

Hope watched as Frida rang the doorbell. The door opened, George stepped back, and Frida entered her home. George looked to the car where Hope sat, and then he shut the door.

She sat and waited and watched. The car ran and the heat blew over her ankles and calves. There was nothing to report. Only silence.

The next day George phoned, and when she answered he said, “You bitch,” and he hung up. He called again the next day, exactly at three, and as soon as she heard his voice, she interrupted him and said, “Do not phone here, George, and swear at me.”

“You stay away from her, Hope, and I’ll have no reason to call. You’ve embarrassed her and yourself.”

“How is that, George? There are only three of us who know of Frida’s wish to leave. Four if you count Irmie. And so how is that an embarrassment?” She was arguing with George, an impossible thing, but she could not help herself.

“Oh, I’m sure you’ve told people about me, Hope. George is cruel. George doesn’t let Frida do anything. Well, let me tell you this, Hope. Frida has a weakness for drama and storytelling. She makes things up.”

“I’ve known Frida for all my years, George. There’s nothing weak about her.”

“You’re not welcome in our home, Hope.”

“Frida agrees?”

“We both agree. We’ve talked about you, about you and Roy, and we agree that you like to encourage other women to leave their husbands because you didn’t have the same courage. Those are not my words. Those are Frida’s words. She said that.”

Hope set the receiver down. Her hands shook. She realized she was gasping for air.

A month later, she phoned Frida’s house and Frida answered. She sounded so soft. So careful. “George has changed, Hope. It’s much better now. You see, I answered the phone. It feels like when we were young and first married.” She giggled.

“I’m happy for you, Frida,” she said. They had little to say to each other, as if both ashamed in some way by what had come to pass.

She wondered if the shame she felt was for herself or for Frida, or for women in general. For a week she found herself disliking her own kind, the frailties and weakness of her sex. And then, the following week, she felt tremendous strength and was proud of all women, especially Frida. Why had she expected Frida, who had been married forty-five years, to simply walk away from her house, her linens, her towel sets, her silverware, her recently renovated kitchen, the solidity and comfort and scent of everything she had wished for, fought for, acquired, and accrued? Who was Frida, if not all that?

She knew that she had fallen short in some way with Frida. The sense of failure was like the smell of a mouse rotting in the ceiling tiles—faintly sweet and occasionally overpowering and then sometimes not there at all. And then the stink eventually dissipated and all that was left was the carcass, hidden and dried out, the infinitesimal skeleton of a rodent that once scampered through the house.

The problem, she came to see, was that she had tried to liberate Frida even though Frida hadn’t felt the need to be liberated. Over the course of time, she had convinced Frida that she lived in a prison. But who was to say that Hope was any less manipulative than George? They both wished to control her. Hope thought that she might have misplaced her righteousness. Her virtuous act was, from Frida’s point of view, not so virtuous. And so she forgave her.

Hope was discovering that she was most in need of forgiveness. Because she was living with a sense of sin herself. Six months before Roy died, Hope had told him that she was no longer interested in sex. She had been working up to this announcement for a while, and then one evening, during an argument about something completely unrelated to sex, she had declared that she was done with the act. She no longer had the desire. “You can go elsewhere. Hire someone or find a lover, but I’m finished.”

“Hope, that’s ridiculous,” Roy said. “I’m not going to go elsewhere. You know that.”

“Well, I’ve made up my mind.”

Roy did not speak to her for several days. And then one evening he presented her with twelve roses in a cut-glass vase. There was a card attached that read, “To Hope, with love from your husband, Roy.” She suspected that this was a trick of some sort, and so she was muted in her response, though she did thank him and kiss him on the forehead. She knew that men, even as they grew older and were less inclined, believed sex was a necessity. It was a performance, a testament to their potency. It was as if men were employed by a circus that demanded a nightly trapeze trick. Even old age should not be an impediment. Emily’s brother, now in his eighties, had remarried, and in order to have sex he required a penis pump. Why? Why not just accept the frailty and weakness of old age and simply cuddle? Why such a need to stay youthful?

In some closeted corner of her mind she wondered if Roy had died of rejection and heartbreak. She had kept her word, no sex, though there had been a minor setback one night after they had watched a movie together and she had drunk too much wine and she had
entwined
with him. This was the word she used, but only with herself. To “entwine.” He had been so grateful that night, so effusive and soft, that she wondered if she should reverse her decision. And then, after he died, she found herself in bed wanting him. She was bereft, and she thought that she might have sinned.

She hadn’t confessed this sin to anyone, not until Judith came for a visit. It was Hope’s seventieth birthday, and Melanie would be arriving from Vancouver the next day, but on this evening, sitting with Judith on the balcony of her condo, she began to speak in broad terms about love and marriage and children. Earlier that day, Penny had told Judith of Hope’s attempt to free Frida. Hope had listened to the story as well, trying to interject once or twice, but failing, because it appeared that Penny knew the story better than she did.

“No shit, Mom,” Judith had said. “You did that? Where did that come from?”

Hope was insulted. Who did her children think she was? Some weak nondescript seventy-year-old who no longer had any purchase in the world? The cult of youth had inflamed even her daughters, who were themselves practically too old for that. And now, in the evening, Judith was confessing that she was sorry she hadn’t had children. “I’m forty-six. I know there are women who have babies at forty-six, but think of the poor kids, stuck with such old parents.”

“Does Jean-Philippe want children?”

“He would. But he’s sixty-six. I look at him sometimes and imagine that I will be his nurse. We still have sex though.”

“Oh,” Hope said. She wondered what had happened with Judith’s affair. And then, for whatever reason, perhaps guilt wedded with opportunity, she confessed that she had deprived Judith’s father of pleasure late in the marriage. “Only for a bit. He died not long after, but I see now that I was wrong. And selfish. Why couldn’t I have just given in? I guess I’m saying this for your sake, Judith. Take my advice.”

“Jesus, Mom, I’m not a kid anymore. I can decide for myself what I want. Anyways, I don’t think you killed him.”

“Don’t say ‘Jesus.’ And I didn’t say I killed him. I disappointed him. And that’s a terrible thing.”

She was sorry she had told Judith this little tale, as if forgiveness could be had through public confession. She knew better. She knew that by talking intimately with her children she was making herself into a comic figure. Her children, kind as they were, had no inkling about her inner life, her dark and wayward thoughts, her need for independence, even her lack of affection for them. There were times when Penny was overbearingly self-righteous, and Judith mean, and Conner a disappointment, and Melanie simply unreliable. Emily would have understood. With Emily, Hope could say just one word and immediately there was a mutual vibration, even when they fought or disagreed. They understood each other.

When Melanie arrived for the birthday party, she brought with her the young woman who was her partner and lover. Hope had not yet met Ariel, and so was slightly nervous, though she needn’t have been, because Ariel was very much like Melanie: young and immature and easy-going. When Melanie had told her mother that she was in love with Ariel, Hope had said, “Are you sure? You might want to be sure.” Melanie had laughed and said that she was as sure as she needed to be.

Hope was very happy for her youngest daughter. She was even happier when she heard that Melanie was trying to get pregnant. The sperm was donated by a rower on the Olympic team. Allan Forsythe, six foot six, and a man who, Melanie claimed, if she had been attracted to men, would have made a fine husband. Hope imagined a granddaughter becoming an adult in a world in which she no longer lived. This was her melancholy bent, and it did not sadden her as much as amaze her. There was so much that she would miss. A toast was proposed and white wine was found in the fridge, a half bottle that had been opened two weeks earlier when Hope had entertained Emily. “Where’s Judith?” Penny asked, looking about, and Conner made a face and said that she was crying in the bedroom.