Free The Age of Hope by David Bergen Page B

laid it before him. He waved the smoke away and said, “You’re looking good, Hope. I was nineteen back then, and I told Ella that you were quite a looker. It was very different, you inviting me in like that. I thought that you were either nuts, crazy, or didn’t care.”
    “Oh, I care. Thank you very much. I trusted you.”
    “That’s what I said to Ella.” He grinned.
    Hope turned to Ella and said, “I’ve got a wedding dress. And we ‘re almost the same size, don’t you think? Except I’m bigger at the moment.” She stood and indicated that Ella should stand as well. She stepped towards Ella and faced her. They were eye to eye. “Pretty close, don’t you think?” She looked at Harlin.
    He put out his cigarette and nodded. “Whaddid I tell ya, El? Isn’t she a wonder?”
    “I’ll go upstairs and look. It’s in the cedar closet.”
    She climbed to the second floor and passed by Penny, who was sitting on the stairs with her notebook and pen. “Are you eavesdropping again?” Hope said good-naturedly. Penny’s habit over the past year, since she had learned to read and write, was to listen in on adult conversations and take notes. Penny shrugged and closed her notebook. Hope found the dress in the back of the closet, covered in plastic, and she carried it back downstairs. On the stairs, Penny said, “You’re going to give it to them for free?”
    “To borrow. That’s all. Don’t worry. Are you worried?”
    Penny had a long face and a mouth like Roy’s, and whenever she was uncertain, her mouth went downwards in an unhappy way, like Roy’s, and it was doing that now.
    “They’ll bring it back, sweetie,” Hope said. “What am I to do with it? It’s just sitting there, in a bag.”
    She continued to the kitchen. She removed the plastic and held up the dress and said, “So?”
    “It’s a beauty,” Harlin said.
    “You could try it on,” she said, and she took Ella back up the stairs, past Penny, and closed her in the master bedroom. Ella came back downstairs wearing the dress, no shoes, and for a moment, when Hope saw the manner in which Ella’s long dark hair fell over the bone-coloured buttons at the back of the dress, she suffered a pang of regret. She said, “It fits you. Very nice.”
    “Better than nice. Sexy,” Harlin said and he pulled Ella onto his lap.
    Hope had the strange sense that Harlin had just pulled her onto his lap, this being her kitchen and that being her wedding dress. Even Ella seemed uncomfortable. She stood and brushed lightly at the front of the dress and asked Hope if she was sure.
    “I’m sure,” she said, though she wasn’t sure at all. “Don’t bother cleaning it. I’ll get it dry-cleaned.”
    Later, after Harlin and Ella were gone, Penny appeared and poured herself a glass of milk and then sat at the table and watched her mother prepare supper. Penny didn’t speak—she just watched. She was empty-handed, her notebook was upstairs. Sometimes, Penny made Hope nervous with her silences and long gazes and this was one of those times. She looked at her daughter and then went back to her work and finally Penny spoke.
    She said, “What will Daddy say?”
    “About what?”
    “The wedding dress. That you gave it away?”
    “I didn’t give it away. I loaned it to them. They were in need. Daddy will understand.”
    Penny got up and wandered into the living room. Then the side door opened and closed and from the kitchen window Hope saw Penny in the backyard, on the swing, and Conner was aiming his pistol at her and shooting her. Penny kept swinging and Conner kept shooting.
    At supper, which was roast chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy and corn from a can, she came right out and said that Harlin and his fiancée had visited and she’d given them her wedding dress. “You remember Harlin, don’t you?” she asked Roy.
    He looked at her and said that he did. “I thought you were saving the dress for the girls. For Judith.”
    “For me?” Judith