Ask Eleanor (Special Edition With Alternate Ending)

by Briggs, Laura

  “You and Marianne are busy,” supplied Eleanor.

  “Yes. I suppose she is. When I saw her, she was fine –”

  “Saw her?” Eleanor’s smile became slightly less tranquil with this question. “But you – you haven’t been away, have you? Marianne said you were working on your poetry – connections.” For lack of a better word, she chose this one, thinking of Kevin from the Electric Bluebird and his distaste for conventional terminology.

  “I’ve been busy,” Will echoed, mockingly. “Trying connections, pulling strings – yes, indeed. You should be proud of me. Trying desperately to find a grindstone of my very own.”

  “Not at the expense of your health, no,” said Eleanor. Her tone was gentle, endeavoring to suppress any note of defensiveness or affront. “That doesn’t please anyone, least of all Marianne.”

  Will seemed to relax slightly. The tension in his shoulders lessened as he ran his hand through his hair. “You know how it is,” he said. “I think I must drive Marianne crazy in this mood, so there’s no sense in being around her. I’ve been gone from the apartment for a couple of days.”

  “But what about your sleep?” Eleanor ventured. She was having a sudden fearful idea of Will’s past returning. The kind of connections which the impetuous behavior in Marianne’s loft precluded. Such a past must have existed before Marianne. In some respects, was the reason for her sister’s presence in his life now, according to the conversational allusions of Lafita and Marianne herself.

  “Sleep? There hasn’t been much sleep lately,” he answered. “No, I’m fine without it.” He looked away, the moodiness of before tinged with something slightly bitter.

  “It’s none of my business, I know,” Eleanor said, gently, “but when were you last home?”

  He hesitated. “Tuesday,” he said. “I got a phone call and had some personal business since then. But as I said, Marianne was fine. Perfectly fine. She was ... every bit of herself. Her glorious self.”

  There was a ghost of a smile on his lips with these words, the familiar one of easy charm which Eleanor recalled from first meeting him. But it was gone a second later, replaced by a smile somewhat less real in appearance.

  “Job interview?’ she asked. Gesturing towards his suit.

  “This?” he glanced down. “No. The general placation I make to my father’s world now and then. He thinks it’s distinguished, compared to something that might have paint on it, for example.”

  Her smile became one of sympathy. In his eyes, she read a mixture of emotions. He was angry, distraught, wistful – a combination of pain and uncertainty, at any rate. After a moment, he looked away from her.

  “I’m sure you have places to be,” he said. “As do I.”

  “Tell Marianne that I said hello,” said Eleanor.

  “Of course.” He turned and walked away, hesitating long enough to look back over his shoulder. “If you talk to her before tonight, then tell her – tell her I’ll be back. By eight. At the latest.” His smile was softer, slightly apologetic, even. A look was on his face which she did not understand, before he continued on.

  It was probably a look of distaste for being hailed on the street by his lover’s inquisitive sister. He no doubt suspected she thought of him as an unsuitable choice. He probably thought she would call Marianne immediately and demand an account of all his recent actions.

  At this moment, however, she felt sorry for him. For whatever reason, he seemed generally unhappy, far from the charming persona with whom she was first acquainted. And there had been some sort of apology in his voice with the message to Marianne, as if he sensed her concern was not entirely that of a protective sister.

  Will’s personal business was none of her business. Marianne’s life was a little bit her business, she might say, but there were limits to how much she expected to know about it. Will’s distress, the hours they spent apart, the nature of their joint life – these were all barred from her by the barriers of Marianne’s romantic relationships.

  It was nothing. Will might be cranky and taciturn, gloomy and moody on countless occasions outside of his charming self. She didn’t know him very well after all, whereas Marianne – well, Marianne claimed a spiritual connection to him which transcended earthly comprehension.

  As if cued by some sixth sense, Marianne phoned Eleanor that evening. She wasn’t at home; she was still at her studio, busy layering paper over a giant frame of flexible metal, building a sculpture which sounded to Eleanor like the description of assembling a museum dinosaur.

  “He said he’s been driving you crazy,” said Eleanor, as she curled into a corner of her sofa. On the other end of the phone, she could hear the sound of paper being torn into strips.

  “Well, that’s ridiculous. He hasn’t. He’s just trying to be sensitive, but his work doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, I’ve been here the past two days working almost non-stop. I won’t see him until later. He’s at home now.”

  “Good,” said Eleanor. She felt slightly relieved.

  “Of course, he’s been calling me nonstop while I’ve been out. I’ve been on the phone practically once every hour,” Marianne continued. “I have to hook my cell phone to a speakerphone device because of the sculpture, you know. Will says I should get a Bluetooth earpiece, then I would have my hands free while I painted or mixed dyes.”

  There was a whirring sound on the other end. A blender, Marianne explained. To pulp paper for papier-mâché. Eleanor had seen this process a time or two, the fine powder produced by tearing, shredding, then cooking fibers into a state unrecognizable to anyone but an artist.

  There was silence except for the noise. Eleanor listened to it, imagining the figure of Will walking away earlier today, the bent shoulders and hunted expression of anger. Suddenly, it was transplanted by the remembrance of Edward walking away after seeing her home. Something like that was in his shoulders as well, she thought, although he had been trying harder to seem casual about it.

  Maybe he knew she had been tracking him down. Distantly, of course, but still...

  “He really loves me, you know.” Marianne’s voice came back on the line after a moment. “I have proof of it every day. He sent me a card in the mail, cut from all the scrap pieces of my woodblock prints. He cooks breakfast for me and lets me eat in bed. He reads my poetry, Elly. No one ever reads my poetry. And he loves it.”

  “You don’t have to keep selling him,” Eleanor protested. “I didn’t say anything, did I?”

  “Your silence speaks volumes,” answered Marianne. “But tell me about you now. The thing at your office – the big party – I know you’re going. Is anyone going with you?”

  It surprised Eleanor that Marianne even remembered TriCom’s anniversary. Someone must have mentioned it at the column’s celebration party. A few of the guests from her office were probably talking about it, the expensive nature of caviar and imported truffles or the hired jazz trio and orchestra.

  “No,” said Eleanor. “No, I’ll be attending alone.”

  “But what about that guy who asked you to dinner? Max or Mickey –”

  “Marcus,” supplied Eleanor. “And I haven’t seen him in eight months. I think it’s unlikely he’ll turn up out of the blue to lend me his arm for the evening.”

  “Oh.” Marianne sounded slightly crestfallen. “I thought he was more recent than that.”

  “No one is –” Eleanor hesitated. “No one is more recent, Marianne. I haven’t had much time for socializing, you know. The book revisions had been a little pressing lately.”

  That nightmare was finally over, at least. Lucy had fretted and frowned and persisted to make her point known for the rest of the twenty-seven chapters which Eleanor had corrected on her own over the weekend. Empty boxes of Asian salads, empty boxes of water crackers, and a continuous CD loop of La Traviata’s score. Now, she had only to fear the final round, and Lucy’s eager eye upon its last chance.

  “But I thought there had been someone more recent,” persisted
Marianne. “Hadn’t there?”

  “None that you’d remember.”

  On Friday, the carpentry crew arrived at Norlend Towers to construct the stage for the live performances. Eleanor saw the pieces of the stage being unloaded from a truck parked outside as she entered the building. Inside, the lobby big screen now showed a constant loop of party plans and gala preparations, interspersed with Mark Fueller’s smiling face.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Joy Li’s on Grant Street was Eleanor’s favorite place to lunch casually, its Americanized Chinese food a guilty pleasure. She felt a strange joy for cellophane-wrapped fortune cookies and for red paper lanterns suspended above like in a backyard garden, for wooden chopsticks and the row of Lucky Cats which waved from the window, all identical to the one Marianne posed and painted in her art studio.

  On weekends when Eleanor didn’t have any particular plans, and on occasional weekdays, she would go there alone to eat; or else with Brandon. It was a spot of comfort, a place for the spilling of personal grievances and workplace stories.

  They usually shared a small booth near the windows or a still-smaller one near the dim but cozy rear corner, where grey walls wrapped around the red vinyl seats and white-topped tables were marked with a dragon symbol. It was here that Eleanor found herself across from him at lunchtime on a Saturday.

  Brandon had phoned that morning. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she answered, honestly. His abrupt tone was not an affront to her, since she was used to his brusque manner of asking questions by now. Waste no time, reach the swift answer in journalistic fashion.

  “Then let’s go to lunch. I’ll drive.” A half-hour later, they were splitting a plate of spring rolls and crab rangoon. Eleanor had a fondness for appetizers, for small, snack-like things sweet or savory.

  “Sweet and sour chicken?” said Brandon. “You ordered it last time we were here.”

  “I haven’t felt like branching out,” Eleanor answered. “You didn’t order anything very original. Chinese dumplings and soy ginger – the only change you made was not ordering a side of cabbage.”

  “Too many spring rolls,” he answered. He wiped his fingers on a napkin, shoving aside the small plate before him of bits of fried wonton wraps and pieces of shredded carrot and cabbage.

  The waitress set a teapot and two china cups from her standing tray onto the table, then two plates of food. “Anything else, please?” she asked, in the thick accent of a recent Asian immigrant.

  “No, not now, thank you,” said Eleanor. She unwrapped her chopsticks and gingerly pierced a bright orange piece of chicken. Brandon was studying his plate with a slight frown – that was the worst part of eating with Brandon, his tendency to over-examine everything before eating.

  “Stop looking at it,” she said.

  “I know,” he grumbled. “But it’s lukewarm –”

  “We are the post-lunch crowd,” she answered. “What did you expect?”

  “A better heat lamp,” he answered. He peeled his chopsticks apart and jabbed at the rice, testing it with a critical expression as he poked some of it into his mouth. His severe expression softened slightly.

  “Not bad,” he said. “It would be better hot, of course. But not bad.”

  It was like this upon every occasion. Eleanor pretended not to notice.

  “I read your Friday piece on the new NFL rules,” she said.

  “Don’t pretend you found it interesting,” Brandon warned her.

  “Not ‘interesting’ in the sense that I was fascinated or awaiting conclusion with baited breath. But I thought that it was good. One of your best for the year, actually. An almost literary-quality analysis of the sport’s bureaucracy. You had me persuaded against it by the end.”

  He didn’t bother to ask if she was pretending to understand it, although Brandon was not above such questions. He was aware that Eleanor grasped the basics of football and remembered the names of teams, their places in the league, the specifics of tournaments and player trades. It was due mostly to gradual years of reading his column and borrowing his books on occasion, since she had neither brother, nor, after the earliest years of Marianne’s childhood, a father to acclimate her to sports.

  “Good. That was my point. And if I convinced you, who have a nature persuaded by fact and not feeling in most cases, then maybe I persuaded some of the knee-jerk, arbitrary decision-makers in our society whose sole criteria for an opinion is whatever they first heard.”

  “Harsh,” commented Eleanor. “You have no pity on them. You should, you know. It isn’t easy to form opinions on your own. Still harder when they’re opinions unpopular with others around you.”

  “I should,” said Brandon. “But I generally don’t have pity even for myself. If I’m hard on myself, then it seems reasonable that I can afford to be hard on others.” But he was softening slightly; Eleanor could tell by the corners of his mouth and the relaxed creases around his eyes.

  “Don’t think me such a grump – a curmudgeon – that I’m all reason and grim prediction,” he said.

  “Since when have I thought that of you?” asked Eleanor, who was somewhat surprised by this shift in the subject.

  “I didn’t say that you did,” he answered. “Never mind – tell me about your column. I read Bitterman’s trumped-up piece by Kingsly on the subject. Kind words and very flattering. Most of it was even true.”

  Eleanor laughed. “Then it really did meet with your approval,” she said, spearing a little more chicken on her plate with the chopsticks. A half-eaten spring roll tumbled to the side, a gentle slide into the broccoli.

  “Yes, well ... you know my thoughts on extraneous news pieces. But I thought it was a fitting tribute to your work. You’ve worked hard, you’ve earned the recognition you received. Rightly so.”

  Her smile of reply was faint. “Sometimes I think I ought to have done something else,” she said. “Like you said after the opera a month or so ago; there’s a lack of meaning in my work. Or, at least, a lack of forward momentum. Not that I want to fail and be fired, mind you.”

  “You won’t be on Haldon Media’s chopping block,” answered Brandon, with a snort. “No, they’ll pick the bottom-dwellers first. The pieces that survive in frailty at best and won’t survive the transition into our brave new world at all.”

  “I don’t listen to the rumors at work,” said Eleanor, stubbornly. “I’ve taken to deleting all of Jeanine’s forwards unopened – she’s really quite bad about circulating every dire prediction that comes her way.”

  “I prefer it to be spread verbally myself,” said Brandon. A sardonic grin in response to Eleanor’s glare over the rim of her tea cup.

  Brandon fell silent for a moment. He took a deep breath, then exhaled.

  “What I said to you the other night at your party,” he said. “About having – hidden depths. I didn’t mean to imply that I was –” He paused. “Embarrassed by them in general. Or hide them for that reason.”

  She could see he was embarrassed when he met her eyes. Why, she couldn’t fathom, unless it was over being thought vulnerable or a failure at something. Sympathy stirred in Eleanor, along with a sense of bitter disappointment for Marianne’s lack of judgment on this subject.

  “I hope you haven’t been thinking about that since the party,” she said, gently. “It was all nonsense on Marianne’s part. She’s thoughtless sometimes; and she doesn’t see your better qualities the way your friends do. People who have known you as long as I have never think of you as cold or unfeeling.”

  “I once imagined myself as the opposite of that picture,” he said, poking his chopsticks at a dumpling. “The sort who rescues a damsel in some form of distress, an unwed mother or …” At this moment, he remembered Marianne’s announcement, his eyes cutting apologetically towards Eleanor. “Not that I had such a fantasy regarding your sister...or that she needed rescuing. That wasn’t what I meant by it.”

  Eleanor bit back her smile. “I kn
ow you didn’t,” she answered. “But I think Marianne’s in need of rescuing. From herself, not necessarily from Will or anyone else.” She lifted her cup of tea, moodily.

  “Her news came by surprise, I take it?” said Brandon. “I’m assuming you didn’t know. You hadn’t said anything.”

  “It was as much a surprise to me as to anyone else within earshot,” said Eleanor, with a smile of chagrin. “That’s Marianne all over again.”

  “If I were Marianne’s – male relative,” Brandon hesitated for lack of the word he wanted. “Not your father, heaven forbid, but a brother of sorts. Then I would do something old-fashioned, I suppose. Thrash him in the name of chivalry, for instance. Give him a good lecture on gentlemanly behavior.”

  Eleanor didn’t laugh, although her lips twitched slightly. “I hardly think that’s necessary,” she said. “It’s not as if he’s ruined Marianne’s reputation. Nor has he done anything wrong, you know, in the sense that she's as much a part of this as he is.”

  “Still,” Brandon grunted. “He could behave more responsibly. That’s enough reason for anyone to feel concerned.” He lifted the tiny teacup before him, his thick fingers handling its smooth surface awkwardly. He placed it back down without drinking any.

  Concern did not seem a word which quite expressed it to Eleanor’s thoughts. Perhaps it was something else he was meaning and didn’t find the right phrase for it.

  “I’ve had several words with Marianne and now she thinks I dislike him,” said Eleanor. “I can’t, of course. Not now. Now he’s a part of her life in a more permanent sense. And there is something ... very likeable about him.” This, with a sigh, because it was true. She had been attracted to Will, not in a romantic sense, but in the way one is simply attracted to certain people because of their charm or personality.

  Brandon’s chopsticks closed around a slippery dumpling, which escaped him until the second try. “Will Allen’s reputation wouldn’t be encouragement,” he said. “I was bothered when I met him at the party. That he was Marianne’s choice, I mean.”