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Hope

She’d been the kind of breathtaking baby that stopped people short. A baby with a mesmerizing gaze who would engage your eyes as though regarding the core of your being—the very truth, as it were, of you. She’d been the kind of happy and happy-go-lucky child who could infuse everyone around her with a feeling of inexplicable and ineffable gladness.

And yet, in spite of the sparkling start, her life had evolved as a more or less steadfast march from bundle of joy to bundle of nerves; nerves relentlessly assaulted by a mean-drunk husband and an emotionally distant, possibly demented, son.

She had tended toward undercooked poultry and overcooked meat—yet charmingly so for all the assiduous effort she unflaggingly put into getting it right. But it had been Hope’s fate that no one would find these charming tendencies endearing, or rightly appreciate her facile mind or capacity for provocative thought. One such thought Hope’s facile mind had come to harbor was that her destiny had turned out to be that of a figurative and literal conduit for pointless perpetuation. Nothing more, nothing less.

There had not been, and would not be, a pot of gold at the end of her rainbow. No rainbow, as far as that went. Just a tangerine-colored Corelle plate of chicken-fried steak, buttered green beans, and mashed potatoes.

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