The Age of Hope by David Bergen

girls. They get caught in a triangle or they have difficulty finding their way with friends. I saw a lot of that when I was teaching grade three. Sometimes the child just needs a break. I don’t mind helping out.”
    “Do you think so? She already spends after school cleaning the house. That’s what she does. And writing in her notebook. If she stayed home, the house would vanish from cleanliness.”
    “She’s such a sweetheart. Don’t worry about her. I could teach her at my house. A bit of math, social studies, and I could read to her. Even though she’s a fine reader, children like to be read to. In this way she could stop worrying.”
    Hope felt a kinship with her middle daughter. Poor thing, lost in a jumble of siblings. She told her mother that she would consider it. She would even talk to Penny, try to find out what she wanted. Perhaps Penny would know what she was suffering from.
    In spring, when the fields were still full of water and the lilac bush in the back was pushing out new buds, Hope travelled to St. Anne, a neighbouring French town, where she had arranged for a room at the community centre. She had put up posters announcing that a Friendship Club would be meeting at 2 p.m. every Thursday, Hope Koop presiding. She carried some board games and an article from Reader’s Digest that she imagined might start a conversation. She also carried her Bible as something to fall back on should there be a difficult discussion or a need to go to a source.
    The first day, one woman showed up. Her name was Annie and she smelled of alcohol. She was slightly younger than Hope, maybe thirty, but appeared to have lived harder. They talked about their personal lives, swapped stories about children, shared a recipe or two, and said goodbye. Hope, driving home, thought that the first meeting had been a tremendous success.
    At the second meeting, three people appeared. Annie, her cousin Linda, and an older man named Frank who showed an obsessive fascination for Hope’s breastfeeding. In the end, she left the room to feed Melanie, and returned with the child draped over her shoulder, patting her back, seeking the elusive burp. Frank wanted to talk about Armageddon and the end times. He took Hope’s Bible and read from Revelation and went on a long rant about Richard Nixon being the anti-Christ. Linda waited impatiently for Frank to finish and then she said that the hardest thing in life was to accept one’s lot. “All this nonsense about the world coming to our doorstep and destroying life as we know it is just fearful people blowing smoke up your ass. Take control of your own life. Make smart decisions. Realize that this is it, this is all you have, this life, in this little place, on this planet, in this corner of the world.” She paused and looked at Hope and for a brilliant moment Hope saw that what she was saying was absolutely true, and then the window that looked out onto that clear space slammed shut.
    As she drove home later, Melanie slept on the floor, wrapped in blankets. Hope didn’t intend it—in fact she would think later that there hadn’t been a plan and it was almost as if someone else were driving her car, but she pulled off onto a side road and turned the ignition off, and she sat and listened to the wind blow, rocking the car slightly. The field to her right was bare, with patches of water, and she saw a path made of flowers and sunlight winding its way between the puddles. She got out of the car and left Melanie and she walked down through the ditch and out into the field. Her shoes were immediately wet but she did not notice. The temperature was near freezing, but the sun was warm and fell on her head and shoulders. She walked the golden path between the bright puddles and found, deep in the field, a bed of straw that had been laid out for her, and onto this pallet she first kneeled and then lay down. She heard high above her the cry of a bird that sounded very much like the call of a child. She