When Hope Hempstead Griffin received the little note from Megan, something came alive in her that had been dormant for years. How long had the note been there? She hadn’t collected the mail in days! It was four in the afternoon when she opened the front door of her palatial home, stepped over the custom-hooked doormat that read Hope and FR Griffin and walked down her curved brick driveway in her terry-cloth robe and furry slippers. She pulled an armload of bills and catalogs out of the box and waddled back up the drive at a slow pace, leafing through the mail. Once every month or so she got a letter from her mother, sometimes a small package addressed to the girls, all of which she threw away unopened, but other than that there were only rare items personally addressed to her.
She dropped all the other stuff on the kitchen table and tore open the note. “The lake,” she whispered in a reverent breath. She read the few lines over and over. She held the note in her right hand and clutched her robe together over her pendulous breasts with her left hand. She absently ran a hand through her messy hair as though she were suddenly concerned with her appearance. Her lips began to move in nervous, meaningless, silent chatter. With a sweep of her hand she cleared a month’s worth of newspapers, magazines, catalogs and junk mail into the trash can. She put the note, alone and prominently displayed, in the middle of the table. She went to a cupboard in search of a coffee cup, but she found the cupboard empty. She rummaged through mounds of dirty dishes in the dishwasher and then the sink until she found one that wasn’t too nasty and slowly washed it out, her lips moving the whole time.
The coffeepot was permanently stained but she rinsed it out and loaded it with filter, grounds and water. While the coffee began to brew she went into the downstairs powder room and fussed a little with her hair. It was perfectly hopeless. Ha, ha, she thought. Hopeless Hope. Well, it would have to do for now. She hadn’t had a proper coiffure in months. She hadn’t washed her hair in days. Or showered, for that matter. “Coffee. Shower. Dress. Hair. Clean kitchen. Manicure. Take out trash. Run dishwasher. Unload. Reload. Vacuum. Sheets. Clothes...clothes...summer clothes...” Her lips moved over these words but the only sound was an occasional squeak.
When her coffee was brewed she sat down at the table with her address book. She flipped through the pages, and when her eyes lit on a name she mentally approved of, she reached for the phone and dialed. She hadn’t talked to her friend Maxine in so long. They had served on so many fund-raising committees together and had carpooled, belonged to the same country club. It would be so nice to tell someone like Maxine her news.
“Maxine? Max? Hi, it’s Hope! How are you?”
“Hope? I’m fine. But how are you?”
“Oh, great. How about Bob and the boys? Good?”
“Excellent. Tennis, track and baseball are just about in full swing so you know what I’m going through. And the girls?”
Hope’s laughter was melodious. “Oh, they’re ridiculously busy. Lessons, meets, games, drama club, cheerleading. Everything you can squeeze into a day! Having teenagers is so busy!”
“Busy doesn’t even touch it. What are you up to these days?”
“Frantic. Simply frantic as always. No rest for the weary. And making summer plans already, too.”
“Really? What are you doing this summer?”
“Well, we had planned another summer at the Cape, but I think there’s going to be a change of venue this year. It seems my family... You’ve heard me speak of my family? Back in Minnesota? Charley Berkey? From Chatting with Charley, Channel 10? Well, it seems the family has decided to summer at the lake house on precious little Lake Waseka. It’s the most charming place in the world. I grew up having all my summers there—riding, tennis, boating, everything you can imagine!”
“Won’t that be nice for you! I’m so glad you’re making plans for yourself!”
“Oh, the girls are thrilled. They haven’t seen Grandma Berkey in ages! And she raised me, after all. She’s eighty-eight now, and still kicking up a fuss. Ever since my grandfather the judge passed, she’s become more cantankerous every year. I do love the old darling. Filthy rich, you know. In fact, I’m quite sure this reunion has to do with her estate. She probably wants to discuss her bequests. It was actually her family who had the money to begin with...”
“So the girls are going with you, then?”
“Of course! I don’t know if Franklin will be able to go or not. He’s been in London all month and I haven’t even run this by him yet. He does love the Cape but I’m sure once he knows...”
“Frank? What about...what about Pam?”
Hope laughed indulgently. “Pam? Maxie, darling, sometimes you have such a passion for indiscretion! Franklin might take liberties with my feelings...successful men are used to giving orders and having their way, often taking their wives completely for granted. But I doubt even Franklin would be so crude as to bring Pam along on our family vacation!”
There was silence on Maxine’s end. Hope began to fidget.
“Pam is temporary, Maxine. If it hasn’t worn itself out yet, it will soon. In any case, I’m going ahead with our plans for the lake. It was the highlight of my youth and I’m sure the entire family will be there.”
It wasn’t that Hope had read an awful lot into a little card. It was how she lived—building castles in the air. She had a whole imaginary life. On some level she knew what was real and what was fantasy, but as it happened, she preferred her fantasy life. Her hands began to tremble slightly.
“Hope, forgive me, but I don’t think Frank regards Pam as temporary,” Maxine said.
Hope laughed again, but her laugh was hollow this time. “But of course she is! Just the other night Franklin said something that sounded awfully like he was just this close to coming home. Of course, I don’t intend to make it that easy for him. He’ll have to make a few changes, that’s for sure! I’m not going to allow him to just stomp all over my feelings for the rest of my—”
“Hope! He divorced you! Years ago! He’s remarried! They have a child!”
Hope’s voice was weak and pathetic. “We have children, too.”
“Yes, two adorable teenage girls who really deserve to have a mother who is living in this world! Hope, darling, I know this has been hard on you, but you really must consider talking to someone about this. A professional. A therapist. You need help!”
“Maxine.” Hope sighed, remembering now why it had been so long since they’d spoken. “Sometimes you’re so...so...bold. I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine. It’s not that I need a therapist to tell me that my husband has divorced me. Believe me, I’m more than aware of the fact. It greets me daily. The problem is very simple. I married for life. The vows I took are permanent.”
“Oh, really? And how’s that working out for you?”
“I won’t keep you! You have carpooling and meetings and probably some fabulous function at the club. Say hello to Bob and your handsome sons. I’ll call you again when we’re all home from the lake and settled in. Until then—”
“Really, Hope...”
“Goodbye, Maxine. Have a lovely summer!”
She hung up the phone and shook her head sadly. Why were all her friends so willing to give up? So quickly? So easily? Well, not her! She had things to do!
She gathered up discarded shoes, slippers and clothing on her way up the stairs to her bedroom. She shook dust balls off those items that had been on the floor for a long time and made a mental note to mop the foyer and kitchen floors. Soon she stood under a steaming shower and mentally ticked off all the things she had to do right away. What a scandal she’d become, letting things go as she had.
Hope’s husband had left her six years ago. Her daughters were then eight and ten. He told her he wasn’t happy. He hadn’t been for a long time. He didn’t like their life. He’d felt unfulfilled and suffocated by her. The arguing, for one thing, as if that was her fault. It was Franklin, in her opinion, who constantly avoided intimacy and who also seemed to avoid home in general. She had been very clear about her needs and more than specific about how he needed to change to meet them. But Franklin could be a thoroughly selfish man.
She had painstakingly built the perfect home and family for him and he was perpetually unappreciative! In addition to keeping a flawlessly ordered and spotless home—thanks to a little domestic help—she volunteered at the school, at the church, and was almost exhausted from her country club and Junior League activities. She made sure they had season tickets to the symphony; she hosted a fabulous summer barbecue and a Christmas party for the corporate officers of Franklin’s company every year. If it were not for her judiciously chosen charity work they would not have been present at every glittering, star-studded event in Philadelphia! All this so that Franklin would look good to his colleagues, to his rich family. And did he care? Hah! When she thought about how she impeccably choreographed their every family trip, right down to what each of them would wear every day and where they would eat every meal, she couldn’t imagine that he’d last very long living alone in an apartment! It was ludicrous.
And of course he hadn’t. Lasted long in an apartment, that is. He was soon living in a rather spacious town house with a woman named Pam. Younger than Hope, naturally. And from a simple miner’s family! It was all part and parcel of the old midlife crisis. Franklin had been all of thirty-eight when his crisis struck, but then he’d always been precocious. And this Pam was a CPA. Married before, of course. So they had that much in common. They could sit up late at night and talk about number crunching and ex-spouses.
Ex. Ex. Ex. Ex.
Franklin divorced Hope after a one-year separation. He gave her the six-thousand-square-foot house, the car, and worked out a time-share agreement with her for the house on the Cape. She could use it for the last two weeks in July. Big deal. He continued to pay her living expenses and had given her half the stock he received when he left the investment firm. He paid the taxes, utilities, phone, gas, cable TV and even for bottled water. But he refused to continue her country-club membership, pay her credit card accounts, or for a housekeeper, beauty shop, florist or spa. He paid alimony and child support and told her to figure out how to budget for the first time in her life. He said what he had given her was generous. Given! As though she hadn’t worked her ass off for fourteen years to create the most perfect, flawless home and family for the vice president of finance of a major investment firm!
A year after the divorce he had married Pam, who Bobbi and Trude said was nice. But she convinced herself that nothing had changed. She wouldn’t take the family portraits off the walls, wouldn’t pull up the personalized welcome mat and kept sending out Christmas cards signed, “The Griffins—Franklin, Hope, Bobbi and Trude.” She wrote an annual newsletter that chronicled every family member’s achievements for the year, including Franklin’s. She kept going to her volunteer posts and kept talking as though she and Franklin were still living together, embarrassing the girls and everyone around them. She wouldn’t stop going to the club even though she was no longer a member until one of the managers had to ask her to stop coming unless she came as the guest of a member. She was mortified to realize no one ever invited her. But it didn’t change her thinking.
Nothing would change her thinking, not even the gradual disappearance of all her friends. Her behavior definitely further deteriorated when her daughters went to live with their father. They told her she was crazy. That’s when she let herself and the house go into the tank. She’d gone through all the money from the stock in short order, stunned to realize after it was gone that it had been a few hundred thousand dollars. She stopped going out. She kept running into people like Maxine, who were interested only in confronting her with her divorce. She only cleaned and dressed when the girls were coming home for a weekend, but even then she didn’t do a very good job. Then they started begging to be allowed to skip their weekends with Hope. They claimed the house was a mess. Well, it was hell without help. Hope’s best housekeeping efforts had a rather smeary, lackluster effect that she’d gotten used to. She’d bust her butt if Franklin would even get out of the car when he picked up or delivered the kids, but since he didn’t care, she didn’t care. She had her groceries delivered. She had gained something in the vicinity of eighty pounds. Thirteen pounds a year. Roughly one pound one ounce per month since Franklin left her.
She spent her days and nights on the couch, watching TV and cutting pictures out of catalogs. Earlier on she spent most of her money paying for the useless things she’d bought from the shopping channel; Franklin had bailed her out of credit card disasters twice but on the third time around he refused and her card was canceled so she was reduced to catalog snipping until her monthly check was due. Then she ordered COD. She frequently overordered and had to send packages back.
But all that was going to change now. She was going home. Home to her rich family. Grandma Berkey had piles and piles of money and was older than dirt. She probably wouldn’t last much longer... Hope would finally get her inheritance... Maybe she would move in with Grandma Berkey and start over... Oh, God, she needed to lose some weight! She needed to get her house in shape! She would have to get in touch with the girls and let them know what they were doing this summer.
Somehow, in the fever of all this, she pushed aside the fact that Megan had cancer. Hope’s mother, Josephine, had chronicled all she knew about Megan’s illness and treatments in her regular letters to Hope, but Hope almost never read them. If she did open a letter, she merely scanned it in search of something of importance to her. It had not for one second occurred to Hope that Megan might be spending her last months at Lake Waseka.
Hope dressed in the only clothes that would fit her and began the most thorough job of housecleaning she had done in at least five years. She heaved out so much trash—from papers to cans to dead houseplants—she completely filled the Dumpster at the far end of the alley. She scrubbed, scoured, dusted, washed, wiped, shined, vacuumed and waxed. She laundered and ironed. She phoned in a grocery list that was largely fresh greens and cleaning supplies. She called carpet cleaners and window washers. She wrote checks for those services she couldn’t cover immediately and made appointments to have her hair and nails done. And her legs waxed.
Hope’s house had twelve rooms and even though she had been the only one living there full-time for five years, it took days to snap it into even tolerable shape. She was never going to be a very good housekeeper. She drank a lot of coffee, didn’t eat any sweets and only slept for a few hours each night on the sofa in the den. Then she called Franklin.
“Is this the Franklin Griffin residence?” she asked the woman who answered the phone. She pretended not to know Pam’s voice even after all this time.
“Just a moment, Hope. I’ll get him.”
It annoyed her very much that Pam would take that kind of liberty with her. She grimaced and tapped her freshly manicured finger on the streaked kitchen counter.
“Hello, Hope,” Frank said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, Franklin. And yourself?”
“Well, thank you.” He waited. She didn’t speak. “What can I do for you, Hope?”
“Nice to talk to you, too, Franklin.”
“All right, then—”
“Wait! Wait a minute,” she begged. “I’m making some summer plans and I have to discuss the girls’ schedules with you, among other things.”
“Shoot,” he invited.
“Well, my family is opening up the lake house for the summer. We haven’t been back since the judge died,” she explained, which she knew was not the truth at all. Her brow wrinkled. She’d taken him to the lake the summer they got married...1996? It had only been seven years since the family had stopped going there but the years had been very hard on the house. Was that when Franklin first began to doubt that she came from a very rich, prominent family? Was that why he really left her? “It’s been completely refurbished,” she informed him quickly, hoping first that Megan would at least buy some new appliances, and second that her daughters would lie to their father about its condition. “I’d like to take the girls there for six weeks or so this summer. From about the tenth of June to maybe the end of July.”
“No can do, Hope. We’re going to be in New York and the Cape until the middle of July. The girls are expecting you to join them at the Cape and bring them home by the first of August. As usual.”
“Franklin, this is my family!” She stopped herself just short of demanding that he be there with them. Despite what she said to others, she knew Franklin was not inclined to spend any time with his old family.
“Maybe we can work out some compromise, but the girls are going to have a say in this. They don’t have to go with you at all if they don’t want to.”
“Franklin, why do you persist in trying to turn my own daughters against me? Isn’t it enough that you’ve taken them away from me? My own children?”
He sighed into the phone. “We’ve been over this, Hope. They love you very much but they hate this game you play, pretending we’re still married. Not to mention all the other airs you put on.”
“I don’t do that,” she insisted, her voice beginning to tremble. “Believe me, Franklin, I’m well aware that you’re not married to me anymore.” She wouldn’t go so far as to admit that she was not married to him, however. That was too much. She loved Franklin! “All I want to do is take my children home to see my family. We haven’t seen each other in years.”
“All right. I’ll talk to the girls about it. Maybe something can be worked out. It won’t be for six weeks, though. That’s too long. But maybe a little longer than—”
“And, Franklin? I’m going to need a little extra money. To buy some clothes for myself and the girls and to—”
“The girls have clothes,” he said irritably.
“The right kind of clothes. I know how to buy my daughters’ clothes. I’m not taking them back to Minnesota dressed like a couple of punk rockers. I have to get a few simple, inexpensive things for myself and I’m going to need some travel money. Also, I’ve just put some work into the house... It was quite falling down around me. I’d happily pay for all this if I had any money, but unfortunately on my limited income...”
“Hope, I give you two thousand dollars a month and pay all your bills, including gas for your car. You have only to buy food and clothes. You have a college degree. Have you ever thought of going to work?”
“Can’t we call it a loan, then? You could simply advance me a few months of that allowance you give me...” She could not call it alimony. No matter how hard she tried.
“And add it to what you already owe me? No, I’m afraid not. Sooner or later you’re going to have to be accountable.”
“At least May and June, then! At least send those checks early! For God’s sake, Franklin, would you like to see me beg? Am I not quite humiliated enough for you?”
“Overdrawn again, Hope?”
She was silent for a moment. “Does this young girl you’re living with know what a cruel bastard you can be?”
“Do you mean Pam? My wife? Who is only eleven months younger than you?”
“Please, Franklin,” she whimpered, but it was more a plea for him to stop throwing that truth in her face than a plea for money.
“I’ll send May’s check now,” he relented. “And I’ll talk with the girls and call you next week to let you know what time they’re willing to compromise from their summer plans. And...if you decide to drive to Minnesota, you can use the gas card as usual, but I’m unable to fund plane tickets.”
“Drive? You expect me to drive?”
“Actually, Bobbi would probably be thrilled to do the driving. I don’t know if your nerves can take it, but she’s coming along with experience.”
“Ohhh, Franklin...”
“Is that it? Money and vacation plans?”
“Yes,” she said, suddenly very tired.
“I’ll be in touch, then. And, Hope? I want to remind you that the insurance coverage you have will pay for counseling...if you’re interested.”
She stiffened. She had told him many times before that she would indeed consider counseling—marriage counseling. She was about to remind him of that when she remembered she needed that check right away—to cover the carpet cleaning, window washing and beauty shop expenses. Where did her money go? She couldn’t eat that much every month. And there were only those few little COD catalog purchases... “Thank you, Franklin,” she said as sweetly as she could. “Please convince the girls to extend their vacation time with me. Please. It’s very important to me...and I ask for so little.”
“I’ll speak to them,” he said.
She was so tired. All that cleaning and primping. All that stress and worry. She would have to rest now and wait. It was going to be all right. Once she saw Grandma Berkey again everything would be fine.
She didn’t think about Megan’s four-year battle with cancer. Her oblivion was so complete that if someone asked her, right now, how the family fared health-wise, she would say, “Very well, thank you!”
* * *
In 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down and the Game Boy was introduced, right before Hope was due to become a junior in high school, she took her last realistic look at her family. Her cousin Bunny was dead. Her parents had had a very troubled marriage and her father, Roy, had run off, couldn’t be found and didn’t send money. Her mother was sick—depressed and emotionally unavailable. Her mother had no job, no husband and no money. Her sister Krista couldn’t stand to be at home anymore and was running with a bad crowd, skipping school and getting into serious trouble. Twice the police brought her home in the middle of the night. Her youngest sister, Beverly, had been Bunny’s best friend and was broken by her loss. She was in even worse shape than Jo. Her cousin Charley had been exiled to Florida to have and give up her illegitimate baby. Charley’s last letter to Hope said, simply, “I’m going to run away the second I get back to Saint Paul so don’t expect any help from me...unless you want to come with me.”
“Mama,” Hope entreated. “You have to ask Grandma and the judge for help!”
“The judge can’t help us,” Jo said.
Hope later learned that the judge had offered help with the condition that Jo agreed to divorce Roy and live by Berkey standards. Jo refused.
The family was in utter chaos after Bunny’s death. And that was when Hope started looking for a better life.
As a little girl Hope had spent hours looking through the photo albums at pictures of her mother and Aunt Lou dressed for their formal dances at the club and pictures of their incredible coming-out parties and unbelievable weddings. Aunt Lou had twelve bridesmaids—like Grandma Berkey before her—and so did Hope’s mom. There were trips to Europe and carriage rides through the streets and ice-skating at the winter carnival. What the hell had happened to them all? How could this be? Falling apart was one thing but this whole family was ready to be shot and buried—they were that humiliating.
Grandpa Berkey was still on the bench and she went to him. “Please,” she begged. “I’ll do anything you want, act any way you please, just let me live with you and go to a decent high school and maybe get into college somewhere. Please, I’m begging you. I want to have the kind of life you planned for your daughters.”
Charmed, her grandparents took her in. They dressed her, showed her off, sent her to a private school. And she did as she had promised. She followed their every wish from crossing her legs at the ankle to getting home before ten every night. She went with them to the club for dinner every weekend, danced with all the old codgers, learned to play bridge and wore long, lacy dresses when torn jeans, bra tops and exposed garter belts were all the rage.
She had a coming-out party, got her college degree and met a man from a rich family. When she got married in Saint Paul, a simple but elegant affair held at Central Presbyterian Cathedral with dinner at the country club, she introduced Franklin’s wealthy family to Grandma Berkey and the judge as the people who’d raised her. She had whispered to the Griffins that her biological mother was emotionally unwell and Hope hadn’t lived with her since she was small. Jo didn’t argue with this story. Hope’s father, they said, was deceased. No one else from the family came to the wedding. No one seemed to think this odd. Nor did they ask any questions.