Ask Eleanor (Special Edition With Alternate Ending)

by Briggs, Laura

  “I couldn’t help but notice your online biography mentions your college thesis subject...I would love to know why you chose it, since it's generally such a generic topic ...”

  *****

  Dear Misunderstood: I’m not sure we can define failure by a list of circumstances. After all, it is the light or meaning behind those circumstances that determines whether you are a victim of events or suffer the passive state of one who merely blames someone else for their own limitations...

  Halfway through, she ceased typing. Preoccupied by the sound of Lucy’s keys clacking away across from her and her assistant's hopeful glances directed towards the letters in the “controversial” pile.

  Maybe she should have addressed the dilemma of “Accepted” and his wife instead.

  *****

  If Marianne showed this much interest in her life – barring the phraseology barbs that left her feeling outdated – Eleanor would have been flattered. Then again, at any point in her life she would have been flattered to have Marianne look up to her with such wonder and awe. A role model for her little sister, an example for Marianne academically and philosophically, although all of those stages of influence were now past them both.

  She climbed the stairs to Marianne’s apartment as she considered this truth. In her hand was the key to her own apartment, along with a list of instructions for picking up her mail and watering her plants, something which Marianne did whenever Eleanor was gone for more than a day on business. When she remembered, that is.

  The door was answered on her second knock, not by Marianne, but Tannis. She gazed narrow-eyed at Eleanor from the other side. In the distance, Eleanor could hear the voice of a sultry pop singer forefront of a throbbing jazz guitar’s chords.

  “Hello,” said Eleanor. “Is Marianne home?”

  “She’s not.” Tannis’s voice was flat as her body curved itself into blocking the view through the partially-open doorway. “She’s not at home much these days. Do you want something?”

  “Yes, actually – to leave my apartment key somewhere where she’ll find it.”

  A sigh came in response to this. “Fine. I suppose.” Tannis leaned away from the doorway. “Come in.” The door opened wide enough to admit Eleanor.

  There was a tentative peace, at best, between Marianne and Tannis, but only by its barest threads. They were opposites in a great many ways, physical appearance included: Tannis’s dark mane of corkscrew curls the opposite of Marianne’s blond flyaway, the bronze, brown skin beneath her green sundress a contrast to Marianne’s pale complexion.

  They were the same in other ways, Eleanor had learned – their music preferences, art enthusiasm, taste in men – but in a manner which generally made people incapable of remaining friends for long.

  “Just leave it somewhere on Marianne’s side.” Tannis closed the door behind her. The music grew quieter as she turned it down slightly. Eleanor sidestepped a basket of torn fabric half-covering a wire frame posed grotesquely. One of Marianne’s sculptures, a boundary marker in a space of art materials, strips of fabric and bottles of tacky glue, needle-nose pliers and a torn plastic bag of cotton batting.

  Marianne’s fabric art supplies. Clearly they had not been removed to the art loft as promised.

  The truce zone of the apartment was fairly tidy, a beige sofa and cheap Oriental carpet, a large stereo system and several contemporary posters. A curtained-off closet on Tannis’s side was crammed with clothing from her retail job, a series of shelves packed with the glazed and painted vases, pots, and other creations from Tannis’s pottery work.

  Tidy, compared to Marianne’s side, that is, which appeared to be the scene of a violent storm. Clothes strewn across the floor, an unmade bed occupied by several art books and discarded accessories.

  “Do you know when Marianne might be back?” asked Eleanor.

  Tannis shrugged. “Who knows?” She sounded indifferent to the question, her tone one of I-could-care-less for Eleanor’s benefit.

  Eleanor crossed the floor. Her eye caught sight of a blue shirt lying on the floor. Too big to be Marianne’s – a man’s shirt. A painting smock or castoff from a boyfriend? Eleanor felt dubious about this prospect.

  She had been in Marianne’s apartment only a handful of times. In the six years or so they had shared this city, she had seen a variety of living spaces for her younger sister, each as untidy and short-lived as the last one. The inside of a one-room flat with a sofa squeezed tight from corner to corner for a bed. The cold water unit, the spacious two-bedroom place which Marianne had shared with two other friends, all of whom had now drifted away from her life, Eleanor assumed.

  The only clean spot was on Marianne’s side table. There was a note there, a scrawled piece of paper next to the lamp. Call M about N, it read. T show at the Pal. Don’t forget book!

  “There’s probably a man somewhere.” Tannis spoke again, as if reading Eleanor’s thoughts. “She’s always gone when there’s one around.”

  Eleanor didn’t say anything in response. Marianne’s infatuations, like all exterior fixtures in her world, were generally short-lived and never equal to her deeper passions, something she assumed was mutual, given the easygoing departure of most suitors. She took note of the painting askew on the wall, a brightly colored oil of a scene in Mexico. A souvenir, probably.

  “Do you have some paper and a pen?” she asked. “So I can leave a note for her?” It would increase the chances that Marianne might see her original note, the discreetly folded sheet of instructions.

  Tannis sighed. “Sure.” She turned and began rummaging around under a stack of CDs beside the stereo until she produced a woodblock notepad and a stub of a red pencil.

  Eleanor scribbled a quick few lines. Call me when you read this. I will be back on Thursday. Propped against the lamp, it would be hard to miss, if Marianne came home to go to sleep or change clothes at any point. Perhaps she should have asked Lucy to water her plants, she reflected, grimly.

  “Sorry to trouble you,” she said to Tannis. Who was still waiting expectantly behind her, her body language a subtle suggestion that Eleanor’s arrival had interrupted some ongoing project of which her visitor was unaware.

  “No problem.” Tannis offered her a tight smile as she opened the door.

  Later, in the quiet of her apartment Eleanor consumed whole-wheat pasta salad, listened to a Tibaldi album on CD, and spent another evening with a stack of emails from the column’s inbox. The phone did not ring at all.

  Chapter Seven

  At Willet College in Massachusetts, Eleanor was the keynote speaker for a psychology panel presentation on self-healing and self-esteem. A ten-minute speech on how we help ourselves by listening to others, a suggestion by her agent to increase “face time” in the public as her third book entered the final editing stages.

  “There is no greater release for us than human sympathy – or empathy,” she said. “Even if it seems the opposite of what we wanted to hear, it’s the affirmation of knowing someone heard us that matters. That’s what we respond to as humans, whether it’s in a newspaper column or from a counselor in their office.”

  The applause at the close of her remarks was not the wild enthusiasm as in her dream a week ago on the plane, but was a welcome sound to Eleanor’s ears. The sound of appreciation – not one which writers generally heard after making their case. An excellent change, she decided.

  That afternoon, she had an interview with Thinking Out Loud, a Boston-based talk show nationally syndicated for public and educational television, where she sat on a peach-colored sofa with a microphone fastened indiscreetly to the lapel of her grey business jacket, trying to look professional and relaxed despite the pressure of televised conversations.

  Across from her, the hostess Dinah Shaw was seated also, legs crossed beneath an ankle-length velvet skirt which matched her tunic blouse and chunky necklace of purple stones. “We’ve been speaking this hour with Eleanor Darbish – best known for her weekly column “Ask E
leanor,” now in its eighth year of syndication, and the author of the upcoming advice book Tell Me the Truth.”

  She turned her attention from her unseen audience, rejoining after a hypothetical commercial break, to the author in question. “So tell us the truth, Eleanor. How do you find new challenges and new advice for a third self-help novel?”

  Eleanor smiled. Cameras made her nervous, as did the glare of televisions spotlights, but these were things her agent had informed her would become second nature in time. “I think it’s really the influence of readers,” she answered. “Problems may be universal, but the individual response to those problems isn’t, Dinah. We all have different reactions and different feelings – and we work through them differently as a response.”

  Lucy Deane would like part of this answer, she thought, the reminder of the readers’ power.

  “But what does that mean for us as humans?” pursued Dinah. “Does that mean we all have our own answer to each crisis? That would make it challenging to give anyone advice, I suspect.” Her dark head was a sleek helmet of hair, its ends curved slightly inwards in a uniform wave like a flapper’s bob.

  “It’s not that we have our own answers,” explained Eleanor. “Just different feelings regarding the same problems and answers. Even if most of us come to the same solution in the end, we struggle to get there. It’s the journey that’s different for each of us.”

  “Really,” said Dinah. “That’s fascinating. And the kinds of journeys in your new book – romantic? Career? Self-esteem?”

  “All of these subjects,” said Eleanor. “And others. But romantic relationships in particular play a bigger role in this book than the past two volumes.”

  “And why is that?” asked the hostess. “Is a facet of your own life influencing that change?”

  Eleanor’s cheeks flushed hot. “Well, no,” she answered. “No, it’s only the – the volume of mail and emails I receive on the subject of love outnumber those on finances or career, for example. The book, of course, comes from the same source as my column, which is reader’s letters –”

  “So it’s the readers shaping your life instead of you shaping theirs, in this case,” suggested Dinah.

  “Yes. I suppose so.” Eleanor paused, a split-second too long to consider the rest of this answer, apparently, for the hostess had turned her attention to the second camera again.

  “Tell Me the Truth will be released from Gillion Books this coming November. Our author’s column, “Ask Eleanor” is also published online for readers who miss it in their weekly editions.”

  “And that’s a wrap.” This, from the show’s director, the cue that the microphones were now turned off. With the conclusion of this statement, Dinah Shaw’s smile became slightly less frozen as she glanced towards Eleanor. “Well, I think that went well. Thanks so much for coming on.”

  “Thank you for having me,” said Eleanor, who kept smiling, aware that this chatty moment would be visible during the show’s credits. “It’s always an honor. I was surprised that you even asked me, given how many months it is before the book’s release.”

  “Oh, well, you’re one of our most popular guests,” said Dinah. “We always get mail requesting you back after an appearance. People love those little stories about your mother and your family.”

  “Really,” said Eleanor. Who found this fact somewhat surprising. “I didn’t realize that.”

  “We’ve thought about doing an on-the-spot question segment with viewers writing in beforehand,” said Dinah. “Give it some thought – we’d love to have you back in November.”

  It was flattering, this fact of being popular and being invited back for the book’s release; but it did not linger in Eleanor’s thoughts for very long but dissipated like a cloud of perfume wafting away in the air of an open room. It was her third day in Boston, the day of departure, and she was in the airport terminal with another novel open before her. The depressed painter and his creations had long ago been finished. Now it was a novel about a woman displaced in 19th-century Russian society. A slow middle which was constituted by a series of dreary, rainy afternoons and a great deal of lukewarm tea being consumed by the character.

  When she thought of Boston, it was of the watery punch and post-luncheon conversation of faculty and students after the panel discussion at the college. The sight of all those eager young students, in which she caught glimpses of herself. Shy and interested, eager under the surface and afraid of making a mistake in asking a question – saying something banal, or stupid, or, else, offensive.

  Dr. Rooker, whom, Eleanor had gathered from their introduction, was the head of the college Psychology Department, had sought her out first for conversation after the questions were at an end.

  “We were so pleased you agreed to come,” she said. “It’s so hard to get professionals who have a name in journalism to actually show up for these sorts of things. Most of them always give us the pat line about being ‘too busy.’ I think we all know that they just don’t take a small academic panel seriously.”

  Another one spoke up. “I remember reading in a magazine somewhere that you do quite a few panels and speeches. My last class speaker did a webcam Q&A. Very efficient, but not very human, I felt.”

  “I still find the age of the internet a little daunting,” said Eleanor. “So I’m afraid webcams are still beyond me.” She had tried it once when her mother was still alive and found it strange to see her mother’s face pixilated and reassembled in a jumbled fashion as a result of her slow internet connection.

  “Well, there you have it. Not everybody has gone into the brave new world yet,” said Dr. Rooker. “It always makes me feel better to know somebody established in the media still struggles with those devices.” She took a sip from her cup of punch and moved aside a little to allow one of the half-shy, half-eager students to move closer with a question.

  The student’s question, something on discipline and social media, had not stuck in Eleanor’s memory firmly in the manner of his professor’s remarks. No, it was something about the “established in media” part that lingered for her. Stately and professional-sounding. Dignified and mature, yes, in the manner which Haldon Media implied made her a valuable acquisition, but something else. Something Marianne would define as “stodgy.”

  She wasn’t, was she? Compared to Marianne, yes, but not in general. There was nothing antiquated or stiff-necked about liking box seats at the opera or symphony, or a dislike for theatrical performances which involved nothing but food and profanities slung at the audience. Or spending a quiet evening at home and eating food which was not consumed directly from a cardboard box or a deli’s wax wrapper, no matter how ethnic or chic the deli. It was normal enough, common enough; thousands of people did the same every day. Maybe millions.

  The book on the unhappy Russian woman lay open and abandoned on Eleanor’s lap. She gazed out the plane window on the flight home, watching the clouds like white cliffs and low plains. A vast and surreal landscape which looked soft as cotton and as solid as snow drifts.

  Eleanor had once pondered on her first flight the idea that one could somehow walk upon them. Climb them, feel them as an actual surface and not as misty vapors; the air and water which a human form would dispel immediately with a touch. She couldn’t believe in such things, of course; she wasn’t sure she had ever believed in such things, even as a child. A sensible, albeit wistful child.

  Upon arrival, her bag did not tumble immediately down the luggage chute as she waited at the Pittsburgh airport’s luggage carousel. The silver rack was turning emptily despite the straggling number of passengers who gathered around it.

  She shifted the strap of her carryall. She could pull out the dreary Russian novel and continue on, she supposed, or check her email once again. Another passenger a few yards away was doing the same, scanning their email on their cell phone. The man standing a few feet away from her, however, was not.

  He appeared to be studying a guidebook: one for Pittsburgh,
a scene of the city superimposed on the front. When he lifted his gaze from its pages to look at the empty carousel, she saw a pair of light grey eyes. His straight brown hair was cut short in the back with longer bangs towards the front, parted neatly over a smooth forehead.

  Over thirty, she thought. Closer to thirty-five, maybe. His face was thin and angular, but handsome, somewhere between serious and earnest. There were traces of youth around the edges of his mouth and the smoothness of his cheekbones. She wondered if the same was visible in her own – that of a healthy, attractive woman near the new middle age, for instance. Barring ‘stodginess’, she supposed.

  He had noticed her looking at him, his eyes no longer fixed by the empty, turning slats. Embarrassed, she moved her gaze to make it seem she had been looking for someone in the airport crowd moving behind him.

  There was still no sign of the luggage. The stranger in the navy wool coat shifted a shoulder bag of black vinyl into a more comfortable position, it seemed, as he waited.

  He was looking at her now, she realized. She blushed slightly, keeping her eyes fixed forwards on the empty carousel. A minute passed, then another, until it felt ridiculous to stare directly forward like this.

  Her gaze flickered briefly in his direction again; unable to resist under the prick of feeling someone else’s eyes on her. Now it was his turn to look interested in something else, it seemed, possibly at the sliding doors in the distance.

  Something about this struck her as childish. Not offensive, but silly – in a way which made her want to laugh, for some reason. Her lips had already formed a slight smile. She pressed them to hold it back, but in vain as they pulled free of her resistance.

  She glanced towards him – at this moment, he had been looking in her direction and had not time to escape. Their eyes had met equally now. There was no reason, she thought, impulsively, why they should not meet the rest of the way.