My Year with Eleanor

by Noelle Hancock

  Chris sidled up next to me. “Plotting your escape route?” He elbowed me playfully in the ribs. He’d been at the karaoke bar that night when I’d fled in terror. Next to him, his boyfriend, Cub, grinned broadly, revealing two rows of dimples. As always, I had to make an effort to keep my eyes from lingering on Cub’s face. Chris is very attractive with his delicate features and lanky body. But Cub has one of those athletic bodies and wholesome, handsome faces that made you proud to be an American. They are the best-looking and best-dressed couple I know. Their chic, preppy style is so similar they’ve been known to show up at parties inadvertently wearing the same outfit.

  “Oh, you came!” I squealed, throwing my arms around them. Just the sight of them made me less tense. The cocktail waitress arrived with their Bombay Sapphire and tonics, and Chris nudged me. “Care to fortify yourself with a beverage, Mariah?”

  “I have to stay sharp for my fans,” I deadpanned as they clinked their glasses together to toast. Dr. Bob also said that if you use alcohol to shield yourself from embarrassment or criticism, you’re not really facing the fear. And the only way to get over a fear is to feel it. Which was why, against my better judgment, I was going up there sober.

  “Just go after Cub and me,” Chris suggested. “We’re so terrible that we’ll make you look good.”

  I flipped through the song list book. A ballad? No, something more goofy, but not trying-too-hard goofy. I was overthinking this. Finally I picked a song that I suspected would invite ridicule, wrote down the number code on a slip of paper, and followed Chris to the karaoke machine.

  “If you punch in your code after me, your song should come up right after ours.” He picked up a remote control, pressed some buttons. “There are some songs in the backlog, though. It’ll be at least twenty minutes before your turn.”

  The first member of our group, a meek-looking fellow named Michael, did a booming rendition of “Some People” from Gypsy. It was over four minutes long, but he held the audience’s attention the entire time. Another guy went and did something from Sweeney Todd that I didn’t recognize, but he sang it well.

  Matt patted my arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I’ll go put in something less . . . stirring. Mix it up a bit.” He left but came back a minute later looking sheepish.

  “Hey, what’s your song code? I think I pressed the wrong button and accidentally erased a few songs.”

  Without taking my eyes off the singer, I rummaged in my back pocket until I found the crumpled slip of paper and handed it over. He returned and we watched a trio of NYU coeds giggle along to Madonna. When Chris and Cub’s song came on, I couldn’t help but smile. They performed a duet of Meat Loaf’s “I Would Do Anything for Love,” and Chris had been right—they were monumentally and wonderfully bad. And I loved them for it. When they eked out the last off-key note, I gathered myself and stood up. Might as well get this over with.

  Matt slapped me on the ass. “Go get ’em!”

  But then—something was wrong. Flashing across the screen was the title “Creep” by Radiohead. This wasn’t my song.

  “This is my song!” Matt said, standing up in surprise. “I’m sorry, honey. When I erased your code and put it back in, it must have logged it in after mine.” He shrugged apologetically and hurried up to the stage to take the mic from Chris and Cub, who looked confused.

  “What’s going on?” Chris asked, sliding into my banquette with Cub. “I thought you were going after us.”

  “Matt accidentally swapped the order of our songs,” I said uneasily. “He’s going before me, not after me.”

  Matt stepped into the spotlight and smiled smoothly at the audience. A natural performer. “How are you folks doing tonight? Listen, I’m going to need some backup on this one. Can I get a volunteer to come help me out up here?”

  “I’ll do it!” The guy from Cabaret charged to the front where he greedily snatched up the second mic. The first moans of guitar filled the room. Any hopes I had of Matt dialing it back for my sake were dashed as he crooned soulfully into the mic, instantly quieting the room. Cabaret guy kicked in a few moments later with a truly beautiful tenor. They were incredible.

  “I can’t believe it!” I turned to Chris, aghast. “It’s happening again! I have to follow a showstopper!”

  “And he brought a backup gay!” Chris gasped. “That ain’t right.”

  I spent the rest of Matt’s song trying not to think bad thoughts about him. And then . . . thunderous applause. My turn. I didn’t look at Matt as he handed the microphone over. I was scared of what I’d do with the mic if I did. Instead, through gritted teeth, I muttered, “Thanks, babe.”

  For my karaoke debut I’d chosen Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop,” a rap song from my formative years. I looked out at the audience without really seeing them. When the music began, the drama queens gave a low cheer of approval, bopping in their seats to the backbeat.

  Taking a deep breath, I recited:

  “Here I go! Here I go! Here I go again! Girls, what’s my weakness?”

  “Men!” the drama queens answered.

  “Okay then,” I continued, “chillin’ chillin’, mindin’ my bidness. Yo Salt, I looked around and I couldn’t believe this . . .”

  So overpowering was the music that I couldn’t hear my voice coming through the speakers. I couldn’t even hear the words coming out of my mouth, which threw me at first. But soon I was totally invested, doing both parts of the duet myself, seamless in my transitions, changing the octave of my voice to indicate whether we were hearing from Salt or Pepa. I was doing some moves, too, holding my free arm straight out in front of me, slicing through the air as the hip-hop artists do. A little hip gyration action. I was taking it down to the floor! I was owning this! I even sang the part where the random guy interjects to give his ringing endorsement of fellatio. Oh wait—the karaoke version skipped over the guy’s line! Censored it. Now I was way behind on the lyrics! I’d overreached! I stopped the dancing shenanigans and studied the teleprompter intently, stumbling through the words, trying to regain my vocal footing.

  I could hear myself now. It was my voice but not my voice. Too thin, watered down. The same one I heard every time I transcribed one of my tape-recorded celebrity interviews, cringing at my voice, high pitched and nervously asking questions. From the audience, Chris’s familiar laugh rang out above the music. It cut through my anxiety. The ridiculousness of what I was doing became clear, and the most amazing thing happened: I stopped caring. Just like that.

  I caught up—gloriously!—on the chorus. “Shoop shoop-be-doop, shoop-be-doop, shoop-be-doop-be-doop-be-doop,” I sang. “Baby baaaaby! Don’t you know, I want to shoop baby!”

  Then the song was over, sooner than I expected. With a sheepish grin, I handed off the microphone. There was a smattering of applause from the rest of the audience. The drama queens, sensing the momentousness of the occasion, hooted and hollered as I made my way back to my seat. The guy from Cabaret intercepted me with a hand on my shoulder, saying he respected me for “fully committing to a vision and going with it,” which may or may not have been a compliment. No matter. I felt liberated in some small way, having confronted this moment I’d been sidestepping for so long.

  “Nice, babe,” Matt said as I settled in next to him. “I think you could’ve gone bigger with it, though. Less head voice, more projection.”

  “What?”

  “I’m just saying don’t be afraid to come from the diaphragm, you know?”

  “The diaphragm,” I repeated.

  “You just sounded a little pitchy, that’s all. Maybe focus less on the dancing next time? I think it threw you off your game and, to be honest, it was a little distracting.”

  I stared at him.

  “What?”

  “You’re giving me notes? On my karaoke rap song? And after what you did to me up there?”

  “I’m just try
ing to be helpful.” He looked genuinely confused. “What did I do?”

  “Bringing down the house like that with fucking Tommy Tune on background vocals—”

  “He volunteered!”

  “After you asked for a volunteer! It’s like no matter what we do, you always end up being the star.”

  “Well, I don’t mean to be.”

  “I know! That’s the worst part!” I let my head fall back against the wall. “Sometimes I just wish you were a little less . . . perfect.” But I said it with a smile, willing away my irritation so it didn’t ruin the mood.

  He leaned over and kissed me on the lips. “Sorry, honey, I’ll try to be better from now on. Or worse, rather.” He turned back to the stage, but I continued to watch him.

  The only thing Matt didn’t excel at was being impressed. It took a lot to wow him. He was supportive, which was not exactly the same thing as admiring; he was also critical. I’d always thought that a couple should be, to put it simply, big fans of each other. But what happened when one person was more of a fan? I wondered, not for the first time, if Matt and I were a bad match. He was the prizewinning reporter and I larked around writing fluff. I creaked out ridiculous ’90s rap songs while he brought an audience to its feet with a soulful ballad. My accomplishments would always look duller next to his, my faults more glaring. Would being married to him be like attending Yale for the rest of my life? Would I always feel like I was struggling to keep up and didn’t quite deserve to be there? And would he eventually grow weary of my slowing him down?

  Chapter Five

  The giving of love is an education in itself.

  —ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

  Franklin was strolling down the aisle to stretch his legs when he spotted Eleanor sitting alone on the train. It was a muggy summer day in 1902, and he and his mother, Sara, were en route to his family’s estate in Hyde Park, New York. Franklin and Eleanor were fifth cousins, once removed, and barely knew each other; but he made his way over, and soon the two were chatting amiably. She was eighteen at the time and on her way to Grandmother Hall’s summer house. He invited Eleanor to join them in their car. Sara Roosevelt greeted Eleanor coolly—setting the tone for the forty years that would follow.

  By all accounts, Eleanor and Franklin were complete opposites. He was handsome, free spirited, humorous; she was serious and insecure about her appearance. On New Year’s Day they ran into each other again at their uncle Theodore’s annual reception at the White House. From then on, the earnest debutante and the jovial Harvard man saw each other often. Eleanor attended Franklin’s twenty-first birthday party later that month. He invited her to weekend house parties at Hyde Park, and to his mother’s summer cottage on Campobello Island off the coast of Maine. The two of them, of course, were never allowed in each other’s company without a chaperone.

  Eleanor later described some of the strict rules that governed meetings between single men and women at that time: “It was understood that no girl was interested in a man or showed any liking for him until he had made all the advances.” She added that “the idea that you would permit any man to kiss you before you were engaged to him never even crossed my mind.”

  Over a hundred years later, I was at a magazine party chatting with friends, thinking it was late and I should go home, when a handsome guy with thick dark brown hair strode confidently into the room in full black-tie regalia. Any other guy would’ve looked ridiculous wearing a tuxedo in a room full of jeans, but somehow he just made everyone else look underdressed. I’d seen him around. I knew his name was Matt; he was an up-and-coming reporter and had a reputation as a player.

  This was back when I was still socializing, before my job as a blogger took over my life and I stopped going out, and three and a half years before I lost that job. If I saw Matt at a party now—well, I probably wouldn’t have gone to the party in the first place, but I certainly wouldn’t do what I did next: I waited until he’d secured a drink, and as he was walking away from the bar I fell in step next to him.

  “Scotch straight up, huh?” I gestured to the glass in his hand. “You know what goes great with that?”

  “What?”

  “Me.” Without waiting for a response, I pulled the drink from his hand and took a long swig. Up close he looked to be in his late twenties but already had laugh lines.

  His eyes danced with amusement as I handed him back his glass, but otherwise his expression remained unchanged. The man was smooth. His eyes, by the way, are periwinkle. He is one of those people who would’ve been incredibly attractive anyway, but God went ahead and threw in periwinkle eyes in case you didn’t get the point.

  “Thanks for the drink.” I started to walk away.

  “Hey, you’ve gotta pay for that, you know,” he called after me in a teasing voice. Got him. I whirled around.

  “Oh please,” I scoffed. “You weren’t going to drink all that.” I gave him an exaggerated once-over and declared, “You look like a lightweight to me.”

  “For all you know, I’ve already had five of these.”

  I planted a hand on one hip. “I know for a fact you haven’t.”

  “The only way you could know that is if you’d been checking me out since I got here.”

  We grinned at each other, feeling like stars in a 1940s screwball comedy. Two hours and several scotches later I’d learned he was raised in Manhattan and graduated from Princeton.

  “Princeton, huh?” I tried not to look impressed. “Tell me, Princeton, do you always go around wearing tuxedos to casual parties?”

  He smiled. “Only occasionally.”

  “Yeah, I almost rocked my tux tonight but opted for the rugged outlaw look instead, as you can see.” I gestured to my cardigan and tweed slacks.

  He laughed. “I was covering a black-tie political dinner for the paper earlier. It’s been a long day. In fact, I should probably be heading home.” He looked down at his watch. Then his eyes flicked up toward me. “Would you like to come along?”

  I would. But I also guessed that he was a guy to whom things came easily, and things that came easily were often easily discarded. So I fixed him with an arch look and said, “Oh, I haven’t had nearly enough scotch for that.”

  He leaned in and I could feel the heat from our bodies mingling as he said softly, “That’s a shame.” He handed me his scotch glass with a wink. “At least I know you can give this a good home. It was nice meeting you, Noelle.”

  I waited three days before looking him up on his newspaper’s website and sending him an e-mail.

  “I knew you were going to e-mail me,” he wrote back. His brazenness was both annoying and enormously appealing.

  The rules of courtship had relaxed somewhat in the hundred years since Franklin was wooing Eleanor. Matt and I dated seriously over the next few months and officially became a couple on New Year’s Eve. The bathroom line at our party was horrendously long, so he stood guard while I crouched on a fire escape in my satin cocktail dress and peed into a plastic goblet. I knew right then he was the pick of the litter.

  “So what’s your plan for this weekend?” Dr. Bob asked.

  “I think we’ve progressed beyond small talk, don’t you?”

  “With your fear conquering, I mean. What’s on the list?”

  “I’m taking my fears on the road.” I leaned back and linked my hands behind my head. “Matt and I are going to a wedding on Nantucket Island this weekend.”

  “That sounds terrifying,” he joked.

  “Believe me, it is. Instead of driving with him, I’m taking a plane there and back because I’m afraid of flying.”

  Dr. Bob looked unconvinced. “That sounds more like someone looking for a way to get out of a long car ride.”

  “This isn’t just any plane. It’s one of those hideous puddle jumper planes that fall out of the sky on a remarkably regular basis. I always swore I’d never f
ly on one of those.”

  He nodded his head from side to side wearing an expression that said “not bad.” “And what about Saturday?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do on Saturday. It’s hard to plan a fear for a place you’ve never been. I’ll have to see what comes up.”

  “This couple getting married—are they Matt’s friends or yours?”

  “Please!” I laughed. “My friends don’t have weddings. They have Xboxes.”

  Matt’s friends were four years older and in a completely different phase of life. They owned houses and garlic presses. They knew where to put the zeros and the ones on their W-4 forms without asking their parents. My friends still stopped to examine the furniture New Yorkers put out on the street for trash and pondered whether or not they could carry it twenty blocks back to their apartments.

  Dr. Bob propped his dimpled chin on one fist. “Do you and Matt ever talk about getting married?”

  “Never.”

  “Do you think about marriage?”

  Sure I’d thought about it, but in the way that a middle schooler thinks about college. Marriage had always felt inevitable but so far in the future that it didn’t seem real. I couldn’t even picture myself married. I’d look ridiculous wearing a diamond. I still wore T-shirts featuring dinosaurs. If I got married, I’d have to upgrade my entire wardrobe to match one finger.

  “I guess I always had it in my head I wouldn’t get married until I was in my thirties.”

  My parents had eloped when my mom was twenty-two and my dad was twenty-four. By the time my mom was thirty, she had a two-year-old and a five-year-old. Every night my mom sat on the back porch for hours, smoking cigarettes and reading romance novels until the Texas humidity chased her back indoors. Sometimes I would sit with her, watching moths being lured to their deaths by our bug zapper. A few times over the years, my mom would look up from her book, sigh a cloud of smoke toward the tin porch roof, and say, “Promise me you won’t get married until you’re at least thirty.”