Ask Eleanor (Special Edition With Alternate Ending)

by Briggs, Laura

  He was standing in the bright sunlight, her eyes blinking momentarily against its blinding brightness against the white wall and sidewalk. Edward’s figure dazzling, his features obscured from her sight as if he himself was sending forth this radiance.

  She blinked again, feeling the sting of tears from the brightness. Glancing towards the car driving past, the sidewalk now absent of Brandon’s marching figure. Then she looked again to where Edward stood waiting.

  The light had changed, softened by clouds overhead, although the pain she felt from that moment still lingered. The moment to cross was at hand if she wanted it. She stepped towards the man waiting on the other side.

  Chapter Thirty

  This time it was someplace spicy: a Thai food restaurant Eleanor had never been to, but had glimpsed among the streets that interconnected with that of Joy Li’s. It was a more casual dining venture than their last one, with earthen-stained tiles and olive-tinted walls, and lush green plants climbing forth from basket-style containers. A seating area of booths rather than tables.

  She and Edward sat across from each other, instead of side by side, as the couple in the booth ahead had done.

  “The sweet and sour salmon,” Eleanor decided, handing her menu to the waitress. “And a lettuce wrap, please.”

  Edward had ordered the house curry, and a soup that was too hot to eat when the waitress delivered it to their table. So instead, he kept one hand over hers, fingers cradled in a gentle pressure.

  “We might go sometime before autumn,” he suggested. The subject was their future getaway; he was speaking of the Phipps Conservatory, the beauty of its Victorian greenhouses recommended to him by a co-worker. “Harry’s daughter actually had her wedding reception there. He was so impressed he ended up buying a membership.”

  “It sounds nice,” she said. She meant it too. The distraction in her voice must have been from something else.

  Edward had noticed the difference when they were waiting for their table. His brow furrowed as he stole a deeper glance at her face. “Everything is…all right now,” he had said. With your sister, I mean?”

  “More than all right,” she assured him, gently squeezing the hand linked with hers. “For her and the baby,” she added, though he had not made this part of the inquiry. Being careful, no doubt, in how he addressed a situation that seemed frail in every way to Eleanor’s own perception.

  The relief in his face had been genuine, his responding touch different from the fumbling but sweet attempts to comfort her at the hospital. No less real, however, which was why Eleanor laid a soft, lingering kiss on his cheek as they crossed the dining room’s threshold.

  “What was that for?” Edward teased, though his mouth was already tugging itself into a smile on one side. “Impulse of the moment, I hope?”

  “For no reason,” she said, mysteriously. Her head leaned against his shoulder, the image reflected briefly in the window glass as they walked past it. It looked right. It looked the same as every other couple in this room. No one would guess their story, with all its omissions and complexities, and broken pieces of illusion.

  “I wanted to call you from the hospital waiting room,” she told him, once they had settled their orders, and conversation had begun. “I felt so ridiculous when it came to me that I didn’t have your number.” She laughed, as she added, “Or you mine, for that matter.”

  He looked at her with surprise over the top of the glass he held. “You know, the same thing occurred to me. Although, I should have thought to find your home number and leave a message,” he said, as if scolding himself for some mental failing. “Unless, of course, the famous Eleanor Darbish is unlisted.”

  “Hardly. At least, I get the same telemarketing calls as everyone else.”

  They both laughed at this, but there was no movement from either to correct it. Laziness on both their parts in this moment of relaxation, hands still clasped across the table. The difference between this time and last was Eleanor’s phone was switched on, in case of emergency calls. Better to feel safe and rude than to feel sorry, at least temporarily.

  “I missed seeing you.” Edward’s voice softened, his smile quiet. “I find myself planning our time together in my head without even realizing it. Until you’re here, and then I can’t remember what to say. ”

  Her heart fluttered with the words. If Brandon heard them and heard the emotion behind them, he couldn’t possibly doubt the nature of this connection. There was no reason to doubt it, not something which felt this perfect, which was why she shouldn’t be thinking about Brandon’s concern at all.

  “I’m starting to recognize that look.” Edward was studying her earnestly in the light from the nearby window. “Something’s on your mind.”

  “You know me too well, I suppose,” she teased, although its opposite was true. “Well, you’re a little bit right. I suppose I was thinking of all the changes these past weeks. At work and more personal ones too. How unprepared I was for all of them.” The movement of her hand in their mutual clasp nudged the vase between them aside an inch.

  “But not for your work, specifically,” he reminded her, sampling the spicy soup before him. “They’re leaving you virtually untouched. Not that I don’t understand your anxiety. For me, it’s been all anxiety for the past few months, with changes in profession, place, and people as of late.”

  “A good change, I hope,” she said.

  “The best, actually.” He took a drink from his ice water, then gave a small laugh. “It’s been a shock for my family, this shift in life plans. They haven’t known what to say in our last phone conversations.”

  “Have you told them?” she said. “About me – about us, I mean?”

  The notion seemed startling somehow, although she had already told Marianne of it herself. Long after it began – or didn’t – she thought, although she supposed this was due more to her sister’s own circumstances than anything else.

  “Not in so many words,” Edward admitted. “I did tell them it was over with…well, that I had moved on from my previous relationship.”

  Somewhat sheepishly, he added, “I think they were more surprised than disappointed. Surprised I was the one who broke it off, that is,” he clarified. “They felt Lucy was more likely to alter my life than any will of my own. The compass needle steering my every choice, you might say.”

  Eleanor toyed absently with the straw in her ice tea glass for this part of the conversation. “They would want you to be happy, I’m sure,” she managed at last. Words failed to come readily when the subject of her former assistant was raised. Her mind swept forth old remarks from beneath its rug – Lucy being the driving force in his relationship, the reason for his move, for his new career. Sweeping them along like a cloud of dust over the present.

  “Well, I can’t blame them,” Edward continued, spooning more liquid from his soup bowl. “As you know, I’m capable of a certain amount of change – but in other respects I’m usually more settled. I have a preference for settled, I mean. It’s difficult to break me out of the pattern once it’s formed, so to speak. Generally speaking, it’s been a stronger will than my own that’s been responsible.”

  “But not now,” she ventured. “Now, it was of your own free will. Wasn’t it?”

  “With you?” He looked as if the question were amusing. “I don’t think we’ll ever have to find out.”

  A romantic thought. Flirtatious and flattering, to be sure. Yet it wasn’t quite what she had hoped. She had been waiting for something more concrete, something more self-driven from Edward’s perspective. He smiled again as if to reassure her, then turned towards the waitress as she inquired about refilling his glass.

  In her thoughts, she was his essential constant; she was necessary to his survival, as he had once joked about her advice. As much as she had been the reason for his escape, she had been the means of it ever taking place. Her will might not be stronger than Lucy’s, but it was a sturdy pillar for him to hold in the waters where anothe
r’s plans had carried him.

  Was that true? Or did it even matter? Questions like this one were lying in wait for her; other equally complicated ones would come tumbling out of them both in the near future. Things that would change who they were to themselves, and to each other.

  Eleanor allowed her glass to be refilled, although it was only half empty. Her fingers played with her fork, spearing the remains of her salad. The task of eating caused silence to fall between them, the conversation of strangers all that remained to fill the void.

  *****

  There was a pile of mail open on Eleanor’s coffee table. With her hair knotted on top of her head beneath a clip, she considered the words on the pages, a jumble of language which she read over and over, attempting to decide which one and what answer.

  It was Sunday afternoon. She had spent the last two days in relative solitude and silence, since Marianne was sleeping when not at work for the sake of using her discount to buy a crib and a car seat – no diaper bag, since Lafita apparently sewed one from denim scraps and pieces of camouflage fabric.

  Brandon was at home, she supposed. And Edward – well, Edward was himself. And what that truly meant she was uncertain.

  What did she want? Why did she doubt a feeling that was this wonderful? Merely because it was Lucy’s hard fortune to love and lose? Or was it doubts – about herself, or Edward, or their future – lingering like the clouds obscuring the sunlight’s radiance for a moment? Doubts could happen to anyone, to any relationship. She knew that.

  She had not phoned him since their lunch date. She had told him that she needed time to think. To adjust to the speed of all of this, to the emotions which stirred within her, pleasant and unpleasant, in these past few days.

  He had not phoned her afterwards, making her suspect that these words had hurt him a little. As if she was accusing him of crafting a fate for their love equal to that of his and Lucy’s relationship.

  She was happy with him. Wasn’t that the main thing? Whatever came afterwards would just ... be. That was the glory of Marianne’s existence, as she recalled. Barring a weak-willed lover and a bitter family, it would have made her sister exquisitely happy for life.

  Why was she so uncertain? Why did she doubt everything she was doing these days? She was becoming ridiculous about it, like a dog digging obsessively in a yard for a long-forgotten buried object.

  There were other things awaiting her attention. The beginning of Tell Me the Truth’s promotion and her workday routine. The columns were waiting to be written, columns like the one she was now drafting for next week’s work.

  There were letters open on her coffee table and one on her laptop. Dear Eleanor: I’m so confused about everything in my life. My work, my girlfriend, my friends, even my family – somehow it all seems wrong. I’m lonely a lot of times, and, now, I’m thinking about what I should do. I know I shouldn’t try to fix something that’s not broken, but I can’t help feeling that I could change something to be different or better. Is that a crazy idea? And what do you think I should do?

  She tapped her fingers against the keys, idly. Open next to her elbow, a letter from a woman who wondered if her husband was leaving her, and one from a college student with a crisis of future career.

  Maybe Lucy was right. Maybe she should have considered changes to the column. Doing something fresh and interesting with her work, instead of making only the basic concessions. Lucy would be excited by the Twitter account, of course. But that seemed pointless to Eleanor. A random concession to the modern technology. It might not even be her making the Tweets in a matter of months – what if another assistant made them for her, for instance?

  It wasn’t a change. Not really. Nelson was right about her world of gradual alterations, made only when necessary. “Ask Eleanor” would continue onwards with a social media page, then with a barcode scan for seeing alternate pieces of advice, probably.

  None of that mattered to this week’s columns, however, nor next week’s. She should consider their problems separately.

  She perused the email’s contents again, and then re-read the letters. There was a toner stain from a printer on the corner of one, she noticed, while the second one contained a couple of typos, which seemed unfortunate for a college student’s epistle.

  Dear Problems ...

  What should she say? That it was imagination, the husband’ inattentiveness was probably normal, after all. That majors normally fluctuate, and there was still plenty of time to choose. There were so many answers. So many that she struggled to find, since the solution always seemed to be in front of her. So plain, so easy to see.

  Was Brandon right about her – that she always knew better, that she possessed an instinct for the best choices? It didn’t feel that way now. It felt as if she was as lost as the people in these letters.

  She flipped through some of the others. Dear Eleanor: I lost a lot of money in the stock market and now I have a chance to invest in real estate...

  Dear Eleanor: My daughter is dating a man who doesn’t like us at all ...

  ... I want to propose to my fiancé, but her divorce isn’t final ...

  ...my diet isn’t working, but I got one of those brochures for weight loss surgery ...

  She let her fingers rest on the keyboard. The screen before her swam with little lines, moving pixels tricked into life by her dry eyes. Think, Eleanor. There were answers to their problems in the back of her mind that were the same as all the answers she had provided as before.

  Not the same, no. Similar. Or was it only similar? She bit her lip with frustration.

  Her fingers began typing.

  I don’t know.

  I can’t answer this.

  I can’t help you.

  I can’t help you.

  Childish, she realized. She paused. Dear Problems...

  I can’t give you any advice, because I can’t manage my own life. Really. My sister has made terrible mistakes and is unhappy, I broke my heart over something foolish, and hurt someone else in the process. My whole life and that of everyone around me is a mess. So how does a person who has problems help you with yours? What comfort is there in knowing my life’s as difficult as yours, unless I can actually fix mine?

  She stopped typing here. Never had something so personal come from her fingers in response to a letter. Stories of Ellen Darbish’s two modes of discipline; of her same advice translated into two subtly-different languages for her children. But nothing personal of herself. Little pieces, little details all conveniently altered or changed. But nothing of Eleanor. Nothing of her personal self, her flawed self, had ever found its way into such raw translation.

  Dear Eleanor. She paused, then continued typing.

  Dear Eleanor: You know what you have to do. It’s not easy, I know, but there were a lot of people who were right about this. Even Lucy was right, although you didn’t want to admit it. But you wanted to be blind about the fact that your career was stale. Your life was stagnant – not because of what was in it, but how you ran it. You didn’t want to admit that the one time you seized an impulse, it was the wrong one. So maybe it’s time for you to face up to it.

  She gazed past the words on the screen and the open email behind it. Perhaps Brandon was right about herself. At least, to some degree, she did know what the best choice was in certain situations. An instinct for others that she had been using for herself in all the wrong ways.

  Instead of the screen before her, it was as if she was seeing something else: the recollection of a missing thing’s place, a connection between a key in a drawer and a lock she had seen someplace.

  The value of her mistakes. The value of learning something from them. It would mean more to her than it would to others.

  Reaching into her bag, she fished around in one of the pockets until she felt the rectangular slip of cardstock where she thought she had stowed it in the past. A business card which emerged in her grip.

  Robert Townley. Newsbites. A Media Company for News and
Entertainment Apps. A phone number and web and email addresses below.

  She began typing again. This time, not to Problems, or to herself, but to another source altogether.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Dear Problems:

  Life is frustrating. I know it. My own life has plenty of difficulties – a broken relationship for my sister, a deeper disappointment for myself in these past few weeks. I’ve questioned everything about my life, too – and that’s why I can tell you two things about your future.

  One, that you should take your time in making this decision. Rushing into it could hurt other people. The feelings of family or friends matter, for instance.

  Two, that you should make a change. It may be large or small, but you do need to find momentum. The fact that you’re unhappy is itself a symptom of something bigger in your life. But making the right choice is important, as important as making the change itself.

  I’ll be making changes in my life, too. So don’t think you’re alone in this dilemma. We all come to a difficult crossroads now and then.

  *****

  On Wednesday, workmen were busy affixing a new sign for the Pittsburgh Herald in the lobby and on the floor of the editor’s office. Removing the original raised metal letters on their wire rods, replacing them with something newer, hipper, in the eyes of the paper’s higher powers.

  It was Eleanor’s last day in her office. She had put most of her things in a series of neatly folded-out cardboard boxes from her recycling closet at home. The decorative paperweight, the knickknacks, the potted plants, and the office supplies. She had taken down the framed copy of her first article with the Montpelier journal. The first editions of her books, including her new author’s copy of Tell Me the Truth, were gone from its shelves.

  “Are you sure you won’t stay?” Bitterman had asked. “I mean, the paper’s growing, Haldon Media’s going to go to bat for some of our best. That could be you, Eleanor.”