The Age of Hope by David Bergen Page A

casual slacks and a short-sleeved shirt and he wore runners. He had just returned from a game of golf, nine holes with his wife. They didn’t have children, not yet, and so their lives were more open, less structured. Hope found that she suffered a moment of jealousy as he described the round of late-afternoon golf. She herself had considered taking up golf, in order to be with Roy, but he had discouraged it, had in fact been downright impatient with her swing. And besides, she didn’t have five free hours in her life on any given day.
    She had called Pastor Ken the week before to arrange this appointment, and when she set it up she had been feeling unstable, she couldn’t breathe properly. Even though she did not attend church regularly, Pastor Ken had sounded quite open to meeting with her. She thought that he might be able to help her. She hadn’t mentioned any of this to Roy, who might have bristled. He saw Ken as an effeminate man who had too much time on his hands—time spent with the women of the church.
    “Tell me what it is you would like,” Ken said as he sat and leaned forward.
    “If I knew that, then I wouldn’t be here,” Hope said.
    Ken laughed. He was so easy-going she felt immediately that she could speak her mind and nothing would come of it, that there would be no repercussions.
    She told Ken exactly this.
    He said, “Who punishes you for speaking? Not Roy, certainly.”
    “No, no. Not Roy. It’s just sometimes I feel mad. Crazy. As if my thoughts are the opposite of everyone else ‘s. In church sometimes, I walk out and I swear under my breath. I say terrible things. But only to myself. But it’s like I can’t help it. Everyone’s so perfect, so pious.”
    “Well, that’s not true.”
    “But it seems so. Mr. Geddert was mowing his lawn the other day. Perfect diagonal rows. I wanted him to slip, to veer off. I imagined his foot getting caught and him losing a toe. Awful, isn’t it?”
    Ken smiled again. He asked, “You walk out on my sermons?”
    She was embarrassed. “Sometimes.”
    He applauded silently. “Good for you.”
    “Why?”
    “We don’t need more sheep, Hope. And you are certainly not one of the sheep. Your thinking is vivid and contradictory.”
    “Roy says it’s crazy thinking.”
    “To him. He sells cars. He runs a business. Raising three children is much more demanding and can lead to bigger questions and ennui.” He said this last word with a certain flourish and though she didn’t know the word she thought that this was exactly what she was suffering from. “Don’t get me wrong. Roy’s a good man. He is big-hearted and generous and I imagine he is a good father and husband.” He lifted his eyebrows.
    She nodded.
    “But that doesn’t mean he understands your existence at home. Be clear, Hope. If you need something, then ask for it. The worst that can happen is he’ll say no.”
    She wondered if he would pray with her, but he didn’t. Perhaps it was too intimate an act, something one did on a grander scale with a congregation or alone in one’s room. Certainly not with a young woman, in the office, kneeling side by side. Driving home that evening, she felt buoyed up. Funny thing, she felt sensual as well, something that she hadn’t experienced for a while. She was looking forward to seeing Roy.
    Judith, at the age of nine, had become engrossed in painting and drawing, and for her birthday Hope bought her a watercolour set of twenty tubes and three brushes of graduated sizes. Watercolours, to Hope’s mind, leaned towards soft bucolic settings and pastoral images: church bell towers, flowers, cows at pasture, or perhaps small birds on bare branches that were beginning to show little green buds. Not so with Judith. She preferred dark shades and darker subject matter. Her paintings were miniatures, almost requiring a magnifying glass to discern the details. Every painting, regardless of the setting, had at least one human in it, if not more. The humans,