Ask Eleanor (Special Edition With Alternate Ending)

by Briggs, Laura

  “But – as you said – a friend always asks.” She saw a smile appear faintly on Brandon’s face, softening its grim lines.

  He took a sip from his glass. “Do you remember that night after Faust,” he said. “What I was saying to Lucas?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I remember. Lucas was rather annoyed with you for declaring his work pointless.”

  “I meant the other part of it,” he said. “What I said about my work. You may have forgotten it. It wasn’t that important, or a striking statement worth remembering.”

  “I remember that, too,” she said.

  “I said I wanted to do something else. I didn’t have the guts to quit, clearly, but now there’s no choice in the matter, is there?”

  “So what will you do?” She perched on the arm of one of the drab chairs pushed near the door. On its seat, Brandon’s trench coat and a blazer jacket, dropped there earlier, apparently.

  Brandon shifted his position. “Write, maybe,” he answered. “Make something of my memoirs. Maybe a military piece. Fiction or nonfiction.”

  “The next Tim O’ Brien,” said Eleanor. “Or the next great American poet.”

  For a moment, he looked startled, then relaxed slightly. “Of course,” he said. “Poetry. How could I forget?” He smiled affably. “But I’m serious about the other. Perhaps. It’s just a thought right now.”

  He glanced at her. “The other night at the party,” he said. She waited, expecting another question about her tears and bitter refusal in the cab. “The pink dress. You looked very pretty. I meant to tell you that before you left.”

  She smiled, partly with relief. “Thanks,” she answered, softly.

  He set the glass on the table. “Would you do a favor for me, Eleanor?” he asked. There was an element of hesitancy in his voice.

  “I would,” she answered, softly. “What is it?”

  He rose and made his way towards his desk. “I came across this when I was looking for boxes in my storage locker,” he said. “Need some for packing up my office, you know.”

  Her smile grew smaller in response to this thought. Brandon’s cordoned-off zone now empty of all its battered sports bios and manuals, the military art removed – all replaced by whatever Scott Freeman owned. The thought of no longer seeing Brandon’s familiar face a few doors removed from her own office made her heavy with sadness.

  He cleared his throat. “It’s only some scribblings from through the years,” he said. “Nothing much. My journal, some odds and ends from my journalism years. But I would like your opinion, if you’ll look at them.” From beneath his desk, he produced a battered file box, one side re-taped multiple times to hold it together. A white label on the side, its writing illegible.

  He seemed somewhat shy about this request, his voice taking on a humbler form of gruffness. His fingers had closed somewhat protectively around the box’s handholds, although he was attempting to look indifferent about the whole thing. Eleanor’s heart stirred at the sight. She formed a casual smile in response, rather than have him feel more uncomfortable by suggesting sentimentality was in his gesture.

  “Of course,” she repeated. “I would be happy to.” Her hands closed around the box, finding it surprisingly lightweight. “I’ll take good care of them.”

  “Just whenever you have time, give them a look,” he said, glancing away towards one of the upper shelves with this statement. He cleared his throat again. “No hurry, of course. But I can trust you to be honest with me about them. When you read them.”

  “You know you can,” she answered. “I’ll be frank. Brutally honest, if I must.”

  He laughed. “Brutal honesty isn’t one of your talents, but pragmatism will do. I shouldn’t mind the softness if they’re as bad as I expect.” He finished off the contents of his glass with this statement.

  “And if they are?’ she asked.

  He sighed. “Then I’ll enlist in the Foreign Legion,” he answered. “Become a fry cook in a burger hut. I’ll do something with myself, don’t worry.” He grinned in a mocking fashion.

  She balanced the box on her knee, tempted to open its top, but refraining from it. Brandon paused before the bar cabinet, placing his empty glass on its tray.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asked Eleanor. “I have soda water and ginger ale in the fridge if you’d like something mixed –”

  “No, thank you,” she answered. “I should hail a cab. I have the galley in my bag and it needs reading tonight. I haven’t had the chance until now.” She thought of Lucy’s disappointment, knowing this final task was Eleanor’s alone.

  Brandon’s face softened. “I heard about Will Allen today,” he said, carefully. He watched her face for confirmation that she was aware, too.

  She nodded. “As did I.”

  “How is she?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.” Her fingers picked at a torn edge on the box. “She’s unhappy. Devastated, in fact. But there’s nothing anyone can do about it. At least, there's nothing she will let me do about it.”

  Brandon grunted. “I may not be Marianne’s brother, but I would still thrash him for you, as we discussed before.” He closed the cabinet below.

  “I thought we decided that was a little too archaic,” she reminded him, with a wry smile. “Along with the shotgun marriage.”

  “Yes, well, he still deserves it,” Brandon grumbled. Neither of them spoke after this statement. Eleanor rose from the chair’s arm.

  “I should go,” she said.

  He nodded. “Yes, you should,” he said. “It’s late in the day and you still have work waiting for you.” There was something wistful in his voice, she thought, as if remembering the recent past in which the same sort of post-work tasks awaited him.

  “Tomorrow, then,” she said.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “At least for the next week or two.” With that, he opened the door for her.

  The box ended up beneath Eleanor’s table as she sat on the sofa, the galleys spread open over her lap. There was only one error which caught her eye thus far – a typo on page seventeen – but she was only on page thirty at seven o’ clock. Time was passing slowly, her efforts to read crawling along.

  She pictured Brandon as a writer. Sitting in his apartment, laboriously pounding out line after line, paragraph after paragraph of grim realities and truth. She remembered Lew Nelson’s mention of the war photographer turning to iconic landscape scenes for therapy.

  Perhaps therapy depended upon the person. The war photographer had already shared his pain to his fullest capability with the images on magazine or newspaper pages. Brandon’s had still been bottled inside, perhaps, even after working as a war correspondent for the AP.

  Her pencil tapped against the pages of her manuscript. So what of everyone’s pain? Outlets, releases, therapeutic experiences – did everyone need one? She had advised people to take up hobbies or try therapy, but she had never imagined herself needing such things. Not even now, when the edges of her world were eroding away. Marianne a disillusioned, single mother-to-be. Brandon fired, Eleanor slowly supplanted by a younger and more ambitious generation of media experts. Whose advice, she supposed, would be much more modern than her cautious words and Ellen Darbish’s pragmatic examples.

  Therapy. Or something therapeutic. But what would that be? A puppy? A psychiatrist? Knitting?

  The phone rang. Eleanor ignored it, her fingers turning the page in her manuscript. Eye scanning the page for misspellings or homonyms as the phone continued ringing.

  The answering service picked up after a moment. “Eleanor, it’s Will,” said the voice on the other end.

  Eleanor froze, listening.

  “I need to talk to you. It’s important. If you could meet me tomorrow morning at eight at the place we met before...I need to talk to you. Please.” He hung up after these words.

  For a moment, Eleanor’s apartment seemed consumed with silence. She didn’t hear the tick of the clock in the kitchen or the low,
persistent hum of the refrigerator. Nothing but the sense of Will’s words hanging in the air after they had been spoken.

  *****

  It was the same plastic burger palace from before; only now, the playground was empty and the interior was crowded with morning commuters. Suit jackets slung over chairs, flannel shirts rolled above the elbow, paper cups of black coffee, and griddle sandwiches with bacon and ham protruding from between the toasted bread.

  Eleanor ordered a cup of coffee before she surveyed the room for sight of Will. On the far wall, near the table they had all shared before, she spotted him. A dark-haired figure sitting at a table for two, with nothing before him but a Styrofoam cup and several torn sugar packets.

  She approached. He looked up from his brooding silence, surveying her with an expression half-wary, half-eager. There was something almost frightening in his face. Eleanor felt tempted to turn and walk away, to escape before whatever he said to her became a permanent part of her memory.

  “Please,” he said, pushing the chair across from him out. “Sit down.” He sounded relieved that she had come; she suspected that he anticipated her not showing up at all.

  His smile was weak as she sat down. “I defy you to dislike me now,” he said, bitterly. There was a trace of his original charm in it, but she did not smile. She didn’t say anything in reply.

  “You hate me,” he said. “Of course. You should. After what I did, I hate myself. It’s a terrible thing – waking up every day and hating yourself. Don’t ever try it, no matter what anyone says it’s worth.”

  She studied the cup of coffee between her hands. “Why did you want to see me?” she asked, before looking at him intently.

  He paused. “To talk to you. To tell you that I’m not a complete monster –” here, his voice became less certain of itself.

  “It’s Marianne you should talk to, not me.”

  He laughed. “Marianne,” he repeated, painfully. “That’s – that’s beyond me. I could never look at her and say – when the moment came, I couldn’t even look at her to say goodbye. That’s not possible, you see. It requires a third party to endure it.”

  A brief twinge of pity stirred in Eleanor. “Why did you leave?” she asked, softly. She touched his sleeve. “Is it true that you were in love with someone else? Or do you love Marianne?”

  “Kate, you mean,” he said. “My fiancé.” The words had a flat, emotionless pronunciation, as if he were stating a fact. “You and everyone else in greater Pittsburgh read the announcement. Not my idea, hers. No relationship in our little circle is complete without it.”

  “You still haven’t said why,” said Eleanor. “Why any of this.”

  He was trembling. “Because my father was going to cut off my allowance – leave me penniless – destroy my business before it was more than a name on a website. All because his son was wasting his life on – on something he didn’t give a damn about.”

  “Then it was about the money.” Eleanor felt cold inside with these words.

  “It was not just the money! It was the dream! It was everything I wanted to get away from his life and he sucked me into it by making it hell!” The anger in Will’s voice had drawn stares from two or three tables. He had struck the surface of the table with his hand, scattering the pile of empty sugar packets to the side.

  “All because of Marianne?” Eleanor asked, quietly. She could see the glint of tears in Will’s eyes, just below the surface.

  “The last straw,” he answered, after a moment. “For them, I guess. So there was a compromise that would cut me free of their world while tying me to something – someone – more suitable in the process. I was so desperate that I ... but none of it matters anymore.”

  He glanced away from her. “Marianne must truly hate me,” he said. “Only a heartless cretin would do this to her. She’ll make it all known to the world anyway, I’m sure, much to my father’s chagrin. She’ll sue me for child support. That’s the only satisfaction I have.”

  “You don’t know my sister very well,” answered Eleanor. “If you think she’ll do that.”

  “I knew your sister ...” he began, “I knew things about her that I will never know about anyone else. Things I will think about until the end of my existence.”

  It was a dramatic statement; Eleanor was tempted to disbelieve it, although his misery was evident. She could see the lines of frustration in his face and his hands, the nervous, restless energy beneath the surface. For a moment, she pitied his fiancé, although she supposed the woman was aware of Will’s past and present relationships as part of this bargain.

  An arranged marriage. And all so his family could avoid Marianne and her child.

  “Your website is ... finally taking off, then,” said Eleanor.

  “I suppose,” he answered. “Not that it matters. A patron in one of my father’s friends to fund it. Blood money to bring it into existence. A poetry foundation as a front – all so my father doesn’t have to feel the shame of losing a son to an unpalatable society of street artists. Wouldn’t you feel proud to have someone mechanize your dream so effectively, Eleanor? Almost so it doesn’t need you to exist?”

  She didn’t have an answer for a moment, for Will’s words touched an imperceptible nerve for her. After a moment, she recovered herself.

  “You could go back to her,” she said.

  His mouth trembled. “Too late for that,” he said. He did not look into her eyes with this reply.

  So it was more than the site for struggling poetic genius, she realized. It was also the apartment bigger than the closet, the BMW whose keys Marianne had been holding that morning she dropped by. It was the clothes and the organic foods and the art which would now probably decorate Will’s office as chairman of the city poetry foundation. Perhaps just a little – but wasn’t a little enough, sometimes?

  “Tell her that I’m sorry,” said Will. “Tell her that I truly loved her. That if there’s anything I can do –” he hesitated, “– that I would have given anything to have spent the rest of my life in those few weeks.”

  Not anything, Eleanor thought. Not even almost anything. Even in this state of absolute pain, he could not fully claim that.

  “You want me to say that to her?”

  “If you would,” he said. “I’ll beg you, if you like. I just want her to know that it wasn’t for the reasons she thinks.”

  “And you think these are better?” Eleanor queried.

  “Don’t you? Or would it be better if I had used her while I waited for someone else?”

  “No,” said Eleanor. “This way I suppose you have the convenience of being remembered fondly.”

  On his face, a grimace appeared, as if Eleanor had struck him physically. “I deserved that,” he said.

  Eleanor’s coffee was untouched. She found she had no desire for it, but she lifted it anyway as she rose.

  “Goodbye, Will,” she said.

  “Goodbye, Eleanor.” He smiled at her. It was a look almost too painful for her to meet. So she turned away and left, leaving him alone in the place where only a few weeks before she had watched him and Marianne bask in the glow of a train’s interrupted journey.

  She did not look back as she pushed open the door and exited. But she knew he was still sitting there, staring at the table below his coffee cup and empty sugar wrappers, as if its tiled surface held the answers.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “He was sorry. I was certain of that.” Eleanor’s voice was gentle. “I don’t know him very well but I knew him well enough for that.”

  “Then he’s not happy with his engagement,” Marianne ventured.

  Eleanor wondered if that was hopefulness in her sister’s voice. A wishful desire that Will would break off his alliance with the Grayson family and come back to her.

  “No, not exactly,” answered Eleanor. “He didn’t talk very much about her. Except to say – that it had gone too far for him to leave her.”

  She waited for a laugh from Marian
ne, a mocking answer to a scenario in which Will was compelled by unknown circumstances to marry someone whom he had cost neither apartment nor future, nor impregnated with his child. But none came.

  They were in Marianne’s studio. Eleanor was seated on a folding chair, while Marianne had been in the act of painting a canvas when she first arrived. Now the painting and easel were set aside, the paint drying to the surface of the palette and the stiff bristles of her brushes – not that Marianne showed any signs of caring about this.

  Marianne was silent in response to this answer. After a moment, she spoke again. “Did he say anything else?”

  “Yes,” said Eleanor. “That he loved you. And that he regrets hurting you more than anything.”

  Marianne’s eyes were glistening in the light from the high windows, but no tears emerged. “Did he,” she said. She turned the brush in her fingers, her tips touching the brittle, half-wet paint on the end.

  “He thought you might want to pursue ... support for the baby,” began Eleanor. “A paternity suit. I suppose so his family can’t challenge it–”

  “No.” Marianne’s voice was short. “No. Never. I don’t want to crawl to someone else. I don’t want him to feel that he – he ruined me. That he can fix it all by –” She didn’t finish this thought, climbing to her feet from her seated position on the floor. Her hand slammed the brush onto the table as she crossed to one of the shelves crammed with supplies.

  “I don’t think he meant it that way, dearest,” said Eleanor. “I think he meant it to be helpful.”

  “That isn’t what I wanted.” This reply was slightly choked. “I wanted him to come back to me if he loved me. And if he can’t, then I don’t care about the rest of it.” She had recovered herself by now.

  A typical Marianne answer: all or nothing. Eleanor had expected this, even as she regretted it. Will would be too weak to ever know his own child; Marianne would fumble along on her own, in a fashion which Eleanor was powerless to change, whatever form it took.

  From the shelf, Marianne’s hand drew a bottle of turpentine, fumbling with the lid as she opened it and poured it into a jar. Were those fumes good for the baby? Was any of this – paint, clay, plaster – Eleanor forced herself not to think of the answers to these questions as she watched Marianne douse the paintbrushes into this solution.