Free The Age of Hope by David Bergen

Roy about this, because it would be like throwing a problem down in front of him that he might not even have been aware of. So she left it alone and sometimes studied herself in the mirror, and she discovered that if she focused on her legs, which were long and holding their great shape, she could imagine that she was still young, and that Roy wouldn’t have to look elsewhere.
    She called her mother, as she did at eight o’clock every evening, not because she wanted to but because it was her duty. You see, she could have told Roy, the children so consume me that I can’t even talk to my mother or have her in for dinner or simply be there as a daughter. Not that her mother had any expectations. She was retired now and often dropped in to help with the children, though when Hope saw her crossing the backyard and approaching the house, the weight of another body to talk to and feed and care for overwhelmed her.
    On the phone now, she said, “I’m pregnant, Mom.”
    “Oh, Hope. That’s wonderful. Isn’t it? Are you happy?”
    “I’ve been too worried, Mom.”
    “About what, Hope?”
    “Everything. About my plants, that they will die. I worry about the kids. I hoard cans of food for the apocalypse. I worry that Roy will be unhappy with me. I worry that I worry too much.”
    “Oh, Hope. I’m sorry. Do you have someone to talk to?”
    “You mean friends? I talk to Emily.”
    “I mean a doctor, someone who won’t let you make excuses. Someone who’s objective.”
    “I can’t talk to Doctor Krahn about this.”
    “There are pills that can help. But first you should talk to someone. How are the children?”
    “Judith wants to visit you Friday night, as usual. Conner is going to a birthday party Saturday. Penny is her usual silent self, slipping through the world. She waxed the kitchen floor yesterday. Just like that. I worry that she senses the craziness in the house.”
    “She’s such a sweetie. They all are. Talk to Doctor Krahn, okay? Promise?”
    “I will.”
    But she didn’t. She had little faith in Doctor Krahn, who had helped her birth all her children, who would be there for the birth of this child, but who wasn’t terribly smart when it came to conversation. He seemed frightened, or perhaps a bit thick. Why would she talk to him?
    Emily, when she learned of the pregnancy, thought Hope was mad and was digging herself in.
    “What do you mean, ‘digging myself in’?” It was one thing to feel sorry for oneself and admit to the vast responsibilities in life, and it was another to have a best friend criticize and imply failure. “I like children. I’m a good mother. It’s just sometimes I get tired.”
    “Well, sure you do. Four sets of diapers, all those nights getting up, four times you toilet train, four times you send them off to grade one, four times you teach them to ride a bike. By the time they’ve all left home, you’ll be four times worn out.”
    Emily’s voice was shrill. Hope looked at her and wondered if she was jealous. She’d had only one child and she’d implied that she would never want another, but what if that wasn’t true? What if Paul was incapable, or Emily was incapable? That might make her more strident.
    She often saw herself as beneath Emily. Emily was smarter, she spoke French, she owned Great Books and had just read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, from which she read long passages out loud to Hope, and then paused and raised her head as if to say, See? Emily had an opinion on everything, and she was constantly talking about “running away” as if Eden were a curse from which she needed to escape. Roy, only once, wondered out loud if it was healthy to spend time with a woman who so hated the town she lived in. “Sometimes,” he said, “negative thoughts land in our lap and they sit there and we don’t know how to chase them away. Emily’s like that. She drops those thoughts in your lap, Hope. She’s full of dissatisfaction.”
    Emily said now that she was