Ask Eleanor (Special Edition With Alternate Ending)

by Briggs, Laura

  Chapter Twenty

  “He really is sweet. So considerate. I couldn’t believe it when he finally said yes. I mean, I had been hinting for months that I wanted him to come with me, so it was like fate,” said Lucy.

  She was sitting on the edge of her desk, glancing over the proof of Eleanor’s next column – Eleanor, who was seated in her usual spot, watching a mint tea bag sink to the bottom of a paper cup of hot water.

  Eleanor wondered if her skin looked as bad in this light as it had in her apartment. The unforgiving glow of florescent bulbs was the worst, highlighting all the careworn lines of age and the puffiness of a sleepless night.

  “He’ll make a great lawyer. Of course, a bigger firm would be nice. A partnership would be ideal. But that doesn’t happen overnight and we both know it. He got off to a late start, fooling around with some degree in Sociology or whatever. Not that it matters, since I’m really the faster climber career-wise of the two of us, anyway.”

  Eleanor wondered if it were possible to refund the pink satin dress. There was no possibility of getting back the last month or so of her life, of course. Her wasted thoughts on a pointless relationship, the accumulated little hours of pleasant, futuristic fantasies, her personal dignity – all beyond recovery.

  “He really liked you, by the way. He asked me all these questions about you, your career, what your work was like...I know he didn’t say anything about it at the party, but it really is true.”

  Lucy had Eleanor’s attention now. “Really,” she said. “I had no idea.” Did she sound guilty with these words, she wondered, a second after they were spoken? Or merely politely interested, her hearing playing tricks on her mind again?

  “But what did you think of him? Lucy persisted. “Honestly. Your opinion’s incredibly important to me. Did you like him?”

  Eleanor tugged the string attached to the tea bag. “Of course,” she said, albeit faintly.

  “Not just the first impression, I mean. He has a nice laugh and has such a great personality –”

  “I’m sure he does...”

  “And looks-wise, I know he’s attractive –”

  “Yes. Very.” There was no bitterness in Eleanor’s voice with these words, to her relief.

  “But is he a good match for me?”

  Eleanor looked at her, seeing the genuine interest and hopefulness in Lucy’s eyes. Hope which she could crush with a subtle answer to the negative – a suggestion that Edward was too old and too far behind Lucy’s youthful ambitions, perhaps. Too slow, too easygoing.

  “I’m sure he is.” Eleanor drew her lips into a smile. “He makes you happy. That’s what matters.”

  She had given up on the cup of tea before her, its paper form sinking beneath the water, tag and all. Instead, she lifted her bag from its place on her desk.

  “I have an appointment this morning,” she said, “so I’ll probably be out until after lunch. When I come back, I’ll start on the latest column’s mail.”

  “There’s not an appointment in your calendar this morning,” answered Lucy, with a little frown as she shifted her position on the desk to see the appointment planner stationed between computer screen and phone.

  “It’s a personal appointment,” said Eleanor. “I’ll be back later.” She pushed open her office door and escaped without hearing anymore mention of Edward’s charms.

  *****

  Marianne had not answered her phone when Eleanor called. She hadn’t heard from her sister since the message left on her machine. She had gone to Marianne and Will’s apartment early that morning and knocked on the door, but neither of them was home. She had taken a cab to Marianne’s studio in a hopeful bid to find her there, but it was locked up when she arrived.

  So now she took a bus to a part of town not far from Marianne’s current apartment – a stone’s throw in distance, perhaps, but a completely different world in terms of atmosphere. Henri’s gallery Chique was in this neighborhood: today was the opening of his latest local show, and Eleanor knew that Marianne would be there for it. Marianne was one of Henri’s favorite artists, her work on a constant rotation of display and achieving modest sale by its presence there.

  The gallery was on the first two floors of a converted factory building. It had no windows in front, only a sign which bore the owner’s name, a phone number, and an unusual logo which Eleanor’s eye had attempted to decipher over the years and failed. She could see it as she approached, along with the gradual trickle of artists and patrons entering its doors.

  Eleanor had been here a handful of times over the years, mostly for Marianne’s two art shows or to admire a new, never-before-seen piece which her sister allowed to be displayed at Henri’s for its unveiling. Here she had made the acquaintance of more than one potential suitor sent packing. Including Miles, she remembered. Who had worn a suit and stood by with a nervous but excited smile as Marianne stood in a cluster of artists and talked.

  Marianne. In a black and silver dress almost elegant and a pair of silver sandal heels too high for her to walk comfortably. In her element in this place, surrounded by those who understood the meaning of her pieces, the paintings of tormented figures writhing in colors, or, else, of waves of sand and water in splatters and lines.

  “ ... the inspiration for that piece was the illusion of the shore,” Marianne explained to her listener. “I spent a whole afternoon watching a beach in Connecticut for it. Not the people – the beach itself, the way the water would transform it like an Etch-a-Sketch with each wave...”

  Eleanor had felt a surge of pride for Marianne on that evening, surrounded by her finest work and hearing her sister’s conversation on its creation uttered in such confident and knowledgeable tones. It was the most mature side of Marianne, the side which emerged with her work’s completion. Not with its creation or its eventual fate, no, but with its first appearance, Marianne had all the presence of mind and pride of a parent. Now this comparison caused a twinge of pain for Eleanor, contrasted with the slow creation of another kind of life within Marianne.

  The gallery had changed since that evening six months’ ago, its main floor transformed from an individuals’ paintings to a montage of artists’ and their work. A series of clay sculptures like deformed heads. A sheet of glass near the corner, an artist judiciously applying small, colored tiles to its surface. A ball of string being wound around a bronze figure of a goddess bearing a torch – part of a former lamp, Eleanor realized, from the bulb socket at the top.

  The banner above the door had read Art: In Progress. Until now, Eleanor had not realized how literally the gallery meant that statement.

  She glanced around, but there was no sign of Marianne among these displays. She made her way up the gallery stairs, past a couple squeezing through the narrow, closed passage in their descent. They spoke in hushed, familiar tones to each other.

  “– different, but I liked it.”

  “It would look better on the mantelpiece than that ugly urn –”

  At the top was a door like the ones used to hide a stairwell, an odd feature which Eleanor recalled from a previous visit. On the other side, the second display room, its progress revealed to her as she pushed open the door.

  Rusted hardware linked and stacked like Tinker toys by an artist wearing a magnifying lens. A stack of coconuts apparently finished, leering faces like a crude totem pole. Beyond them, Marianne at work on her canvas, which was a tarp draped from two hooks on the ceiling to a pool of fabric on the floor.

  It was a finger painting – or a graffiti design – which one, Eleanor could not tell from this distance. She could see only Marianne’s blond head and pink bandanna headband, the sky blue blouse with sleeves rolled and its front covered by one of Marianne’s heavy brown canvas aprons.

  As Eleanor approached, she could see the apron’s front was splattered with paint, possibly from the past, but equally possibly from this occasion. Paint splattered Marianne’s orange canvas sneakers and her capris, the rumpled waves of tarp on
the floor. Cans of spray paint protruded from a gym bag beside her; bottles of it were open, tops screwed with a dispenser like a bottle of olive oil or hand soap. Marianne’s hands were smeared with red and a shade similar to teal – no gloves, Eleanor noticed, with a cringing thought for its later removal.

  “Marianne,” she said. “What does it represent?” She gestured towards the work in progress, which Marianne had been gazing at for the past few seconds.

  At the sound of her voice, Marianne glanced at her. Her eyes had a slightly hollow appearance, a smear of blue paint on one cheek.

  “Nothing,” she answered. “I don’t know. Right now, it’s just ... paint.” Her tone was bitter, tinged with irritability. Eleanor pretended not to notice.

  “You called me yesterday,” said Eleanor. “I tried to phone you, but –”

  “You were busy,” Marianne answered, softly. “The gala. I remembered it. Well, I saw it in the paper this morning, anyway.”

  “I stopped by your apartment this morning, but you weren’t home,” said Eleanor. “And you hadn’t been answering your phone –”

  “I turned it off.” Marianne pumped another pool of red paint into the palm of her hand from one of the bottle’s dispensers. She smacked her hand forcefully in the midst of the painted image, small droplets spraying outwards. Beads of red appeared on Marianne’s cheek and hair like pinpricks; Eleanor had stepped aside to avoid a similar fate.

  “You turned it off?” repeated Eleanor. “Why would you do that? What if someone needed to call you? What if you had an emergency?” She couldn’t explain what, although the thought of a complication with Marianne’s condition came to mind most readily.

  “Then I’ll turn it back on,” Marianne answered. Her hand smeared the center of the canvas, traveling away from it in a line of trailing color.

  “What about Will?” said Eleanor.

  “He already phoned.” Marianne removed her hand from the canvas and lifted a second bottle of paint. She looked tired – she sounded tired, Eleanor realized – as if she had been without sleep. She, too, had a bad night’s rest it seemed. A scenario which struck Eleanor as ironic.

  “How long have you been working on this piece?” asked Eleanor.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Since seven.” Marianne seemed not to notice the incongruity of her statements. “Did you come by for a reason, Elly? Or just because you wanted to check up on me?”

  “Actually, I came because you phoned,” said Eleanor. “Not that I wouldn’t have come to see your painting...”

  “Forget about the message,” said Marianne. “I don’t want to know what you think of the painting yet. Not before it’s finished.”

  Eleanor looked at the size of the canvas, the upper one-quarter untouched by anything but a spray of color. A stream of yellow dripped down one side, forming a pool at the base of the canvas piled like miniature mountains.

  “You’ll be painting this all week?” she asked. Marianne shrugged.

  “Probably only for a day or so,” she answered. The color of her complexion was poor as Eleanor studied her profile. Pregnancy was beginning to manifest itself in Marianne’s health and appearance, she feared.

  “Who else is here?” Eleanor lingered, although she moved away from the puddles of paint. “Of your friends – Geon? Or Molly – or Melissa –”

  “You mean Maggie,” said Marianne. “They’re doing pieces here, too. Geon is downstairs – he’s the paper pulp exhibit near the front door. But Maggie’s just over there –” she gestured with a paintbrush dipped in green, its bristles dribbling a trail across the tarp, “–near the water fountain. Go and see it if you want. It’s impressive.”

  She sounded more heartened by this subject than that of her own work. Eleanor moved away from the canvas, gradually mingling with the surrounding patrons of art in the gallery. Two people admiring a series of strings covered in fine bits of metal and glue, now being flexed into shapes as they stiffened, like frost-covered blades of glass turned metallic. A man nearby was giving strong consideration to some sort of fabric creation, its artist currently absent from the scene.

  Maggie, a rather meek and seemingly-normal artist by Eleanor’s estimation, was displayed near the back of the room. Hers was a sculpture of some sort, unrecognizable in its early stages, except where a series of bent wire coat hanger emerged from beneath the first layer of white. There were strips of paper piled on the table and a hot pot simmering with a smell like bread fermenting. Flour and water, Eleanor knew.

  Maggie was standing apart from her work, talking with a long-bearded man responsible for an ongoing painting of the gallery’s scene. Eleanor was in the way for two of the gallery’s workers, who were attempting to carry a world globe sculpted from flattened aluminum cans. She edged aside, further, then still further, until she backed into another patron who was turning away from the corner display.

  When she turned to apologize, she found a familiar face looking into her own, that of Will Allen.

  He looked startled at first; in his hand was a brochure for the gallery show, open to the list of exhibits. She could see from the tag in his hand that he had just made a purchase – there were similar tags affixed to other works which were for sale.

  “I’m sorry, Will,” she said, with a small laugh. “There’s a slight crowd here, it seems.”

  “There is,” he answered. “There always is, I’m told.” He attempted a smile which came only faintly, his glance moving around the room in general before looking at her again.

  “How are you?” he said. Politely, as if they hadn’t seen each other in ages instead of days.

  “How long have you been here?’ she asked. “Since seven?”

  He looked puzzled for a moment. “No – I only came about fifteen minutes ago. I had a meeting this morning. I only stopped by because – because it was the opening day. Everything starts to disappear by the middle of the show.” His fingers folded the brochure in half as he spoke, tucking it in his pocket.

  “I actually came by your apartment this morning,” said Eleanor. “I didn’t catch either of you, so I must have been too early.” On Will’s face, she saw marks of strain. Was he in pain, perhaps?

  “Have you seen Marianne’s work?” she continued. “I’m sure you have – it’s as tall as the room – and nowhere near finished, she tells me.”

  “It wouldn’t be.” He smiled. “The better artists take their time, I’m sure, in finishing a piece. The ones who finish first are interested in the money.”

  He had bought one of those finished pieces, she surmised. For she could see behind him, an odd wire sculpture like currents of electricity, a tag affixed to one of its jagged points.

  “Yes, well –” she began. And then Marianne appeared from behind the partition walls of Maggie’s showcase. Eleanor offered her a smile, one stronger than her previous efforts when she first arrived at the gallery.

  “Marianne, Will says he hasn’t seen your canvas yet,” she said. “Did you forbid him to give an opinion on it, too?”

  Marianne didn’t answer. Her hand was still wet with paint, Eleanor saw, a crimson stain along her nails like blood.

  “I didn’t realize you were here today,” she said to Will.

  He cleared his throat. “I – the Copeland piece. I came to pick it up.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Of course.”

  She was staring at him in a manner which made Eleanor feel awkward, which was nothing new, although it was not the same as before. Will’s eyes seemed frozen on Marianne’s; in Marianne’s gaze was a mixture both burning and alight with emotion.

  “You said you were at a meeting this morning?” Eleanor asked. “Did you – take a job?”

  “No,” he answered, although he wasn’t looking at her as he spoke. “No, I ... I’m launching my website, actually. I had a meeting with a potential patron.”

  “You’re launching your site?” repeated Eleanor. “Marianne, why didn’t you tell me?” She glanced at Marianne, who left inste
ad of answering her.

  “Marianne?” Eleanor repeated. Will didn’t follow, but seemed rooted in place. Eleanor glanced at him and saw a look of frustration on his face before she turned away. Pursuing Marianne’s quick pace between the clusters of patrons and an artist carrying a roll of wool batting.

  Marianne was wiping her hands on the surface of her apron, moving not towards her canvas but the stairs. Eleanor caught up with her. “Marianne, what is the matter? What happened?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Marianne was untying the apron strings behind her, her fingers fumbling with the knot.

  “What has happened?” Eleanor repeated, fiercely. “Between you and Will – did you have an argument?” Marianne pulled open the door to the stairs and descended into the passageway. In the brief shaft of light before it swung closed, Eleanor saw the first tear crawl slowly down her sister’s cheek.

  Eleanor grabbed her arm. “Marianne,” she said, pleadingly.

  “He doesn’t love me, Elly! He loves someone else!” She turned towards Eleanor, half-screaming, half sobbing these words in a voice which was not loud enough in its broken form to carry from the passageway.

  For a moment, Eleanor could not speak. Marianne had pulled her arm away and finished hurrying down the stairs as Eleanor followed.

  “Marianne, wait!” she said. Her sister pulled her apron over her head, wadding it into a ball as she maneuvered between the artists’ displays.

  “Marianne! Where you go?” The thick-accented cry belonged to Henri the gallery owner who approached from one of the sculptures receiving admiration from a cluster of patrons, concern in his voice for the artist departing his show. Marianne did not bother to answer him, either, but pushed open the door to the gallery and disappeared in the sunlight outside as Eleanor followed, giving Henri a look of empathy in the process.

  She was making swift strides in the direction of her apartment, which Eleanor struggled to match in her high heels. “Talk to me, Marianne.” Her tone was firm, even though it was laced with dread. “Tell me what is going on.”