Ask Eleanor (Special Edition With Alternate Ending)

by Briggs, Laura

  “I’m not either,” Eleanor answered. “Same job, same apartment, same city, for a very long time. But you – you changed your major how many times? You must have some sense of adventure.”

  “Ah, that was more ... indecisiveness,” he answered. “Part of the charm, my family assures me. My sister and mother, anyway. I’m sure my brother thinks I should have followed his example and made up my mind to take the most carefree path available.”

  A mother. A sister. A brother – apparently a younger one, judging by his attitude description and the general personality chart of child age order. She stored these away in her memory, as if collecting information for a file.

  “But what of you?” he said. “What of Eleanor the person? You know, I don’t think you mentioned what you were doing in Pittsburgh, either. You, who are not a true native of the city.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then hesitated. Shrinking from the mention of “Ask Eleanor” and all it represented – the years of opinions, pounding away at a keyboard, making judgments on other peoples’ lives which she sometimes suspected herself unqualified to offer. It did not seem like a topic for pleasant small talk at this moment.

  “I’m a writer,” she answered.

  “Big one or little one? Books, magazines, or poetry?”

  “Journalism,” she answered, with a smile. “Of a sort. I freelance articles. For the Pittsburgh Herald and other papers, too.” This was technically true, after all. She was an independent writer of sorts, in which the Herald was simply a kind of ‘home base’ for her column.

  “What sort of articles?” he asked.

  “All kinds. All sorts of subjects. I like variety. But not a headline piece or news piece, I’m afraid.”

  “So I won’t have seen your name on the paper’s front page?” he asked.

  “No,” she answered. “I’m afraid not. Not even if you read the paper daily.”

  “I have to,” he answered, with a slight grimace. “I’m afraid not to do it.”

  There was something odd in his tone with this statement, embedding some other meaning in his wry observation. Perhaps he was one of those people annoyed by his own habits.

  “Anyway, I moved to Pittsburgh a few years after graduation,” she said. “There were publishing opportunities here and I wanted a change from Montpelier. That’s where I’m from originally.”

  “Really?” he said. “The gorgeous state of Vermont. I hail from Washington state by origin, so we were separated by the whole middle section of the country until now.”

  “A whole country between us,” said Eleanor. “It sounds very foreign somehow. What language do they speak in Washington? Washingese? Washinglish?”

  “Pig Latin,” he answered. “Nothing a journalist and English major could interpret at all. But my family made me learn Legalese instead for the sake of going out into the world as someone successful.”

  A laugh escaped her – it wasn’t that funny, was it? – and she bit her lip to hold it back, even though she wished to do the opposite. But he had seen it, his own face aglow with the same warm affability as previous moments when they were comfortable together. As if it were natural, the two of them talking in a playful manner, its banter second nature to them both.

  “So what do you miss?” she asked. “Leaving Washington and hearth and home. Are there regrets?” She cut her sandwich halves into four neat triangles, giving her something to occupy her hands besides picking apart the lettuce emerging from between the bread.

  He was silent for a moment; then he sighed. “I don’t know yet,” he answered. “Coming here was ... sort of inevitable for me. But I sometimes wonder if it was meant to be.”

  “It isn’t what you imagined,” she ventured.

  “The city? No, the city is ... a perfectly fine city. It’s the rest of my life that sometime has me confused.” But here, he smiled again, although not quite as easily as before.

  “I do miss my car, though,” he answered. “I’m sorry I sold it before I left. I now think it would have been handier to have driven it here and endured its obscene in-city gas mileage for the sake of avoiding all the time I spend walking or in public transit.”

  “You’re not a stroll-and-think kind of person?” she said. “More of a song-on-the-radio type?”

  “The very one,” he answered.

  He told her about his law school’s atmosphere, then about the job he held before coming to Pittsburgh, a job at the university’s library. She told him about Marianne’s artwork and the differences of personality between them.

  They split the check afterwards. He offered to pay, but she declined, although the offer pleased her. Perhaps it was no longer merely a lunch by chance in his estimation.

  As he walked up the street, in the direction of his office, he glanced back and waved farewell to her. She raised her hand with a smile, feeling a blush for how eager and wide that smile had become.

  A cab rolled to a stop before her at the curb – an unintentional bit of luck coinciding with her wave to Edward. It seemed a positive sign to Eleanor as she climbed inside.

  The main office of the Herald was alive again with post-lunchtime activity when she stepped off the elevator, seeing the scurry of some editor hastening to a deadline and Jeanine on the phone at her desk, sounding irritated with someone on the other end. She approached her own office, where she was pleased to see that, for once, Lucy was not back from lunch on the dot.

  The door to Brandon’s office was open, with him at his desk polishing off a carton of noodles. “Have a good lunch?” he asked, as she passed.

  “I did,” she answered. “I had a very good lunch. Thank you for asking.” With a mysterious little smile as she continued on, noting the look of puzzled response on Brandon’s face before she was gone.

  *****

  There had been no answer from Marianne’s cell phone for Eleanor since her sister hung up on her. A childish response to their argument, she felt; she might have taken more steps to point this out to Marianne, except the revisions on the book kept her busy.

  Remove the first three paragraphs from chapter two – weren’t they extraneous in Eleanor’s opinion? Yes, the editor knew they had agreed to leave them the first time, but upon reading them again ...

  Could she rephrase her explanation of guilt versus desire in the chapter on cheating on committed partners?

  Find another word for “inappropriate” that seemed less...confrontational ... in the publisher’s estimation.

  The manuscript was due to return to the publisher in three weeks. Another round of revisions would follow and then her book would be ready for its debut. The same as every time before, but Eleanor felt a strange additional pressure upon her this time. Something she couldn’t pinpoint, which made her anxious and overly-cautious this time. Not at all the steady and confident Eleanor, rooted in her meticulous methodology for completing a task.

  And then there was the lunch with Edward. Pleasant, friendly, fun – but with a frustrating lack of definition at its end. There had been no questions about what either of them did on the weekends, no hinting at future lunches or dinner invitations. No sudden invite for herself, for instance, to the retrospect which his coworker had casually mentioned in the coffee shop. No, Edward had not mentioned anything about his personal time. Or asked her anything about her own.

  Maybe he wasn’t interested in her. Maybe she misconstrued the chemistry and it was all on her side: a desperate bid for attention when faced with an attractive man’s appearance. Such thoughts made her shrink inwardly, as if cringing physically in her mind.

  Edward Ferris. If she phoned every hotel in the city, she could learn which one had him registered as a guest. She could stroll by and – and what? Hope that he would invite her to have coffee somewhere? Dinner somewhere? Accompany him to the symphony in formal dress?

  This was ridiculous. This had to stop before she did something utterly foolish and felt ashamed of herself afterwards. Not that anyone would ever know. Who among h
er friends and family had even a clue that Eleanor had a sense of the romantic, except for possibly Brandon?

  She thought of all of this as she climbed the stairs to Marianne’s apartment. There was no elevator in this building, forcing Eleanor to climb to the top in heels and the heat of the summer in the stuffy stairwell, the wool of her business pants suit clinging to her.

  She knocked on the door and there was no answer. She knocked again. Marianne had no classes at this hour, no gallery showing, no working hours at her part-time job at a used book and music store. If there was ever a time she might be home, this was it, in Eleanor’s estimation.

  “Marianne,” she called, loudly. “Marianne, it’s me. Eleanor. I want to talk to you – please.” There was no sound on the other side at first. Then a scuffling noise, the rasp of a lock being forced back, and Tannis was before her.

  “Hello?” There was something between caution and confusion in Marianne’s roommate’s voice, although nothing resembling warmth.

  “Is Marianne here?” Eleanor asked. “I’m sorry, but she’s not answering her phone today...” Through the half-open door, she could see the small apartment’s interior behind Tannis. The space had been seemingly rearranged since her previous visit, with no sign of Marianne’s fabric art or sculpture supplies visible.

  “Marianne,” repeated Tannis, with an edge of something incredulous in her tone. “If you speak to her anytime soon, will you tell her if she’s not staying until the end of the month to please get the rest of her stuff out of here?”

  “Her stuff,” Eleanor repeated, cautiously. Not Marianne‘s art supplies, she realized, but her possessions. “Then she’s not here anymore?” Tannis’s statement about the end of the month – that was regarding Marianne’s residency in the apartment.

  “Not anymore,” said Tannis. “Not since Wednesday. I haven’t seen her since then.”

  Eleanor could see the barest corner of what was once Marianne’s part of the apartment. Where no crooked painting of Mexican oils hung and no postcards of masterpieces were visible pinned to the walls anymore.

  “Didn’t she tell you?” Tannis asked.

  “No,” said Eleanor, softly. “No, she didn’t tell me. Do you know where she is now?”

  “Somewhere with him,” answered Tannis. There was no mistaking whom she meant. With that, she gave Eleanor a forced smile of sympathy and closed the door.

  Chapter Eleven

  Marianne was living with Will, it seemed. In a less-than-spacious studio apartment a mile from her old one, where all of her things had been moved except for those she abandoned to be discarded by Tannis in the trash barrels or dumpster.

  “I was going to tell you,” Marianne said.

  “When?” asked Eleanor. “You haven’t been speaking to me, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “It’s just ... I knew what you would say, El. I didn’t have to call you to find out. You’d say all the same things you always do and then we’d both be mad. And it’s not like you think. It wasn’t a sudden decision. It just ... happened.”

  “Things like that don’t just happen,” said Eleanor.

  “But it did. One day, I was with him, then at home. The next, it just didn’t make sense anymore. And I was only with Will.”

  “You moved everything you owned – your name is being removed from the lease on your old apartment. If something happens, where will you go?”

  “What do you mean, if something happens?” Marianne demanded. “What will happen, Elly? We’re happy. We’re meant to be together. I don’t want anything else but this.”

  There were arguments for that. Millions of them, about it being irresponsible, dangerous, childish, even, to move in with someone whom she scarcely knew. Whose character and past were as foreign to her as, for instance, free market enterprise. But what good would it do to make them?

  “Stop worrying about me. I’m happy. And that should be enough for you, shouldn’t it?”

  It wasn’t. Eleanor was in a gloomy state afterwards. Pensive and moody as she sat on her sofa in a pair of shortened fleece pants and a pinstripe button-down shirt. It was only a partway comfortable ensemble – she would prefer to be wearing a softer shirt as well – but she wasn’t spending this evening alone.

  At six-thirty, her apartment buzzer sounded. At six-thirty-five, Lucy was on her doorstep.

  “I’ve come prepared,” she said. “Two takeout specials from the Italian Pie – the Caesar salads, light dressing – and a portable scanner for making quick copies.” She held up a white shopping bag, held in one hand by its paper straw handles.

  Her hair was partly de-curled, flowing down her back in half-hearted waves which lacked the flawless finish of the office and were surprisingly longer than Eleanor remembered. A teal blue workout suit in place of her office clothes, white straw sandals dressy enough for the workplace – so this was Lucy Deane after hours. Eleanor was at once self-conscious of her straggly dishwater hair pinned untidily with its white clip and the loose nature of one of her blouse’s buttons.

  “Come in,” she said, closing the door behind Lucy. Who was gazing, seemingly in awe, at her surroundings.

  “So this is your apartment,” she breathed. “Wow. It’s so ... so ...”

  Spartan. Bare. Dull. Eggshell. The possible outcomes of this sentence fired themselves off one by one in Eleanor’s brain like impish missiles.

  “... so sophisticated. I love the lines and the harmony of the accent pieces. There’s no distraction – not that distraction is bad. I’m an art lover myself.”

  “Thank you,” said Eleanor, who sensed a space in which to reply. “Here, let me take that.” She took hold of the shopping bag, placing it on the side table as she removed the two salad cartons inside. Plastic forks in cellophane wrappers were taped to the top, an extra-long receipt trailing towards the bottom of the sack from its adherence point on one of the boxes.

  “Is that a balcony?” Lucy had crossed the room, sliding open the glass door that separated Eleanor’s living room from the railed-off patio suspended above the city, identical to all the rest of the apartment’s balconies with respect to its potted plants and sensible deck furniture.

  “Wow. What a view.” Lucy’s voice sounded strangely diminished in the outdoors. “Of course, it’s not equal to the historic downtown – but what is, really?” She was leaning over the edge of the rail, peering up, then down, at the city landscape and the building’s outer walls.

  “Indeed,” answered Eleanor, her voice low and somewhat grim with this reply. She was seated before the low, straight-legged coffee table, where the evening’s entertainment lay. The edited manuscript of her book.

  A moment later, Lucy had returned and closed the door. Cross-legged on the floor before the manuscript, she drew it towards her and began unbending the brads from its holes.

  “Let’s leave them.” Eleanor drew the manuscript towards herself again. “First, I want to read through the possible modifications I’m making to chapters one through five – the extension of the personal anecdotes and case examples.”

  “Oh.” Lucy’s voice was slightly crestfallen. “I see. All right, then.” She folded her hands on her lap, a look of patience appearing on her face.

  “Now, this part here is chapter one, where I modified the story about one of my examples–”

  “Who’s the example?” Lucy interrupted.

  “Who?” repeated Eleanor. “No one. I mean, it’s simply a random example of someone –”

  “But who was it?” said Lucy. “Is it one of the columns? A letter? Or someone you knew personally?”

  Eleanor pursed her lips. “It was someone I knew personally,” she answered. “But –”

  “Then include that information.” Lucy crawled forward on her knees, inching towards the open pages. “That’s the kind of personal tidbit readers will love. Juice. Raw, real life between the pages.”

  It was a former relationship of Eleanor’s own, actually. A thrice-dated individual whose pr
evious love life had been the topic of conversation several years ago at a restaurant.

  “This person gave me permission to use their story, but not their name,” Eleanor answered. “I can’t expose them to public recognition without jeopardizing my professional reputation.”

  “Then change their name,” persisted Lucy.

  “The details of the event would have to be changed or anyone who knows them will recognize the story.”

  Lucy shrugged. “So change them,” she said. “Change everything. Grab it and fictionalize everything but the heart of it.”

  Eleanor’s voice tightened slightly. “Isn’t that what I’ve already done?”

  “But without juice. Without raw nerve, Eleanor.”

  Eleanor paused. There was no way to argue this which would satisfy Lucy – short of letting her intern rewrite the story herself, that is. She chose to move on to the next modification instead.

  “In chapter two, I made some basic vocabulary adjustments. But in chapter three, I rewrote page forty to extend the story about the infidelity club –”

  “Is this another personal example?”

  “No.” Eleanor sounded slightly terse. “No. This is an example from a column. And I can’t print the real name of the person who contacted me about it.”

  “But it is juicier, don’t you agree? And while I see that no names are printed here, what if we added some? With a ‘names changed to protect the innocent’ angle’?”

  “Perhaps,” said Eleanor. “But the publisher didn’t specifically request that to be changed. All they wanted was an extension of the description of the club’s rules.”

  “But they didn’t say not to change it, did they?”

  Eleanor’s fingers released their hold on page forty. “Yes, but it’s a matter of time, Lucy,” she said. “You realize that there are over two hundred pages here, more than half of which require some form of revision.”