1. This Is Glue. Strong Stuff.
It's lunchtime, and Elenore can't stop messing with her engagement ring.
It's beautiful, but it's too big. She has dainty hands, which her parents still like to tease her about ("Dallas Winston's got a dainty-handed daughter," her mother will say.) The center diamond makes her look like a child playing Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, though she's still a brunette. But it was his grandmother's, and it means a lot to him that Elenore wear it.
The middle of June is an odd time for Elenore. She's always had a strange relationship with the summertime. As a child, summertime meant visiting extended family in Tulsa and learning about glory days long before her cousin, Willow, and Willow's cousin, Rosemary, got really into Springsteen and played Born in the USA up and down the neighborhood.
As an adult, summertime reminds her of unraveling – unraveling out of her sweaters and into sundresses that she might be too old to wear and unraveling herself out of a place where she never belonged. But the middle of June is special. The middle of June is when she discovered she was pregnant with Veronica.
Today, June 16, 2010, is the sweet sixteenth the anniversary of that day. She's celebrating by having lunch with Veronica, her Aunt Violet, and her cousin, Anna.
Veronica, now fifteen, sits next to her mother. She's recently finished her first year of high school and is, unlike her mathematically clueless mother and grandmother, at the very top of her class. Of course, unlike her mother and grandmother, Veronica loses her shoes after they're already on her feet, so perhaps it's a fair trade. Right now, she's trying (and failing) to cut her chicken breast using only the side of her fork.
"Might be easier if you used a knife," Elenore says.
"No way," Veronica says. "My dexterity is practically zero. If I use anything other than a butter knife, I can only imagine disaster. Blood will be spilled. Tears will be shed – children's tears. I use the side of my fork to keep the children from weeping because I am a thoughtful young woman."
"So, given anything stronger than a butter knife, you turn into my father in Brooklyn, 1959?"
"You make him sound like Carlito's Way."
"That's impossible," Violet interjects.
"Why?" Veronica asks.
"Well, they never go to Brooklyn in Carlito's Way."
"Well, if my grandfather isn't a middling De Palma film, which New York film is he?"
"Dog Day Afternoon," Anna suggests.
"I can get behind that," Violet says.
"So, we agree my father is Pacino?" Elenore asks.
"Just don't tell your ma," Violet says and points her fork at Veronica.
"What?" Veronica asks.
"How come you know so many fancy-ass movies?"
"I'm fifteen. I've been around the block."
"Fifteen ain't exactly ancient. Plus, Jenny's less than a year younger than you, and she ain't seen shit. Steve's takin' her to see that fuckin' Karate Kid remake as we speak."
"In Jenny's defense, that was Dad's pick," Anna says. "He still hasn't forgiven her for dragging him to see that second Twilight movie back in November."
"It's called New Moon," Veronica says.
"Veronica, and I mean this with all the love in my heart, I don't care."
Veronica sighs, and Elenore can tell that even though they'll probably see each other later tonight, Veronica misses Jenny. They're an unlikely pair of best friends who likely wouldn't have become best friends at all if they weren't cousins first. Veronica is a nerd. There's no better way to put it. She studies so much and so deeply that Elenore once threw a snorkel at her and said, "In case you need air." She used to be a little more outgoing (used to act in school plays and volunteer to give school tours on open house nights), but when some of the other kids made fun of her, she withdrew a little bit. They called her Eager Beaver, a nickname that only became crueler as she got older. By eighth grade, it was too much. Elenore was glad to have pushed Veronica to apply to the private school she attends now (and even gladder that they'd offered her a scholarship – even if it doesn't cover the whole thing, Elenore's still paying much less than she would have needed to otherwise).
Jenny, on the other hand, is Veronica's perfect foil (which is how Elenore's mother puts it). Where Veronica is contemplative like her grandmother (and her father, even if she still doesn't know that), Jenny is combustible like her grandfather. She gets into fights with girls and boys at school for the rush of endorphins. She's tiny (even tinier than Veronica, who's Tinkerbell-sized), but she almost always wins because she's not above ripping someone's hair out. None of this is to say that Jenny is just a whirling dervish. She takes after her Great Aunt Jane more than almost anyone, in the end. Jenny admits to loving the rush of a good fight, but she doesn't get into a fight unless she has a good reason. Now that they're teens, Jenny's reason for getting into fights is almost solely to defend Veronica. On the flipside, without her knowledge (because she would have been livid if she knew), Veronica likes to confusingly insult people who make fun of Jenny's height. After a seventh-and-eighth gym class wherein Jenny ran the fastest mile, and the boy who ran the slowest mile called her the Flying Shrimp, Veronica looked at him and said, "'It should take you about four seconds to get from here to the door. I'll give you two.'" The kid was so perplexed that he hadn't even bothered to look it up, and Elenore was impressed that her fourteen-year-old was well-versed enough in Capote to quote Breakfast at Tiffany's in casual conversation.
(Apparently, her grandmother assigned it to her over the summer between seventh and eighth grade so they could talk about how Hollywood bastardizes literature by taking a perfectly reasonable character and turning him into a racist caricature. Lucy Bennet has got to be the only grandmother in the world who gives her granddaughter homework over the summer, but it gives Veronica the leg up she needs.)
They're good for each other – Veronica and Jenny. They lift each other up and teach each other about the important things. Veronica teaches Jenny about what to expect in the next grade level once she's been through it. She gives her notes on which books she may actually enjoy and which electives are worth taking and which ones are taught by assholes. Jenny teaches Veronica that it's OK to wear red every once in a little while and to stand up for herself when people call her Eager Beaver. She'll punch a kid's lights out, to be sure, but not before Veronica stands up for herself like she used to when she was ten years old. They teach each other about music. Veronica got Jenny really into Carole King and Joni Mitchell, and Jenny, whose mother studied music in college, got Veronica hooked on both sets of Four Seasons – Valli and Vivaldi. Elenore knows it's silly, but for the past few years, she's judged her own relationships based on whether or not she and the other person support and educate each other like Veronica and Jenny Winston. She thinks it's why she's wearing this engagement ring today.
"Anyway," Anna says, "I think I know why Veronica suddenly knows so much about the cinema."
Elenore fiddles with her engagement ring again.
"Ah, that's right," Violet says. "Elenore's marryin' herself a film buff."
Elenore blushes like she's not forty-three.
"He'd hate it if he heard you call him that," she says. "He'd tell you he's a musical scholar who happens to like film soundtracks."
"Well, can you ask if I can call him a film buff?" Violet asks. "I feel bad carryin' on a conversation with a scholar, but a buff … a buff's a guy I can do business with."
"Oh, we know," Anna says. "I got to be alive somehow."
"And you're grateful, ain't ya?"
"Mmm, most days, Ma. Most days."
"Well, you better be thankful for it on Friday night. 'S when I'm plannin' to throw my niece the damn finest bachelorette party New York – naw, the East Coast – naw, the world – has ever seen."
Violet and Anna clink their glasses together, and Elenore buries her face between her palms. She feels Veronica's comforting hand on her shoulder.
"There, there," Veronica says. "I know it's embarrassing to have people who love you and want to see you have a good time before you sign yourself for an ancient patriarchal tradition, but look at it this way: At least you didn't need a dowry."
"Where have you been?" Elenore asks. "Of course I needed a dowry. It was a half-eaten box of microwavable turkey dogs and a beat-up VHS copy of Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, but it was a dowry."
"And I'm sure he loved it."
"Mmm, well, he says he did, but I haven't decided whether I believe him."
Violet leans forward in her chair and stares intently at Elenore, who can hardly believe her aunt is still this determined to go out and have parties at sixty. She knows sixty isn't old (and that she's only seventeen years away from it herself), but when her own mother turned sixty at the end of 2007, she'd said, "Well, this gives me an excuse to be home by 8:15 without feeling guilty." But then, of course, Elenore's mother is a Bennet – intellectual and, despite her verbosity, introverted. Violet is a Winston – clever, certainly, but more than that, indefatigable. She'll throw a party just because it's Thursday, and she'll throw an after party for the sake of Friday. Elenore has always admired that about Aunt V. In her twenties, she even tried to live a little bit more like her. Whether it worked is still open for debate.
"Now, I've tried to make this party as Elenore-friendly as I possibly can," Violet says.
"But we couldn't make a whole list of things you'd like to do 'cause it put us right to sleep," Anna says, and Violet nods.
"I am not that boring!" Elenore objects.
"Your idea for this party was to get everybody in a room to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special and make fun of how bad it is," Anna says. "You weren't even going to buy booze."
"I don't drink!"
"Maybe you oughta start. Then maybe your alternative party suggestion would be something more exciting than 'Roam the Met for a couple of hours.'"
Even Veronica has to stifle a laugh at that one.
"And here, I thought you were an artist, Anna," Elenore says.
"I'm a musician," Anna says. "And if you had the guts to be an artist of any kind yourself, you'd know that art don't happen when you're sittin' on your couch watchin' the Star Wars Holiday Special."
"I think that's the opposite of art," Violet says.
"Thank you, Mom. Art don't happen while you're sittin' on your couch, bein' a nerd. Art happens when ya let yourself get a little … Gatsby."
"So, you want me to throw a lavish party in a futile attempt to attract the attention of my married former lover, for whom I became rich, reckless, and selfish? Is that what you want me to do, Anna?" Elenore asks.
"I dunno. I don't remember the book. I do remember Robert Redford, though."
Violet shakes her head with disapproval.
"Too blond," she says.
She sharply points her index finger at Elenore.
"Anna's got a point," Violet says. "You're getting married, and for once in your life, we want you to have real, honest-to-goodness grown-up fun."
"Will you stop pointing at me like that?" Elenore asks. "You look like Indiana Jones."
"I know that's a compliment from you, so you can cut the shit."
Elenore sighs.
"Do you promise me there are no strippers?" she asks.
"There are no strippers," Violet says. "I wanted to get at least one, but Anna here has got your back."
"That doesn't mean I want to have it, but I do," Anna hastily adds, and Elenore grins.
"And there are no penis-shaped desserts?"
"By God, Elenore, do you even like what you're marryin'?"
"I do! It's just that this party is a mix of my mothers' friends, my teenage daughter, and our teenage cousin. The only person in my life who's my age is John, and this is the one party you can't invite him to. I just don't want things to be awkward."
"Things are going to be awkward, Mom," Veronica says. "It's a bachelorette party for a woman in her forties."
"Who died and made you Phyllis Schlafly?"
"Betty Friedan."
"Excellent. I love the irony."
Violet nudges Anna.
"Do you understand what they're talking about?" she asks.
"Yeah, I'll give ya the CliffsNotes later."
Violet shrugs and goes back to pointing at Elenore.
"Easy, Indy," Elenore says, and Violet retracts her finger.
"Either way," she says. "I got Sadie and Jane to come to this thing. They're even older'n me, and they still got the energy for a good time. You gonna rob 'em of a good time?"
"I know how to have a good time!" Elenore says. "In my own way."
"Can't believe my brother raised such a fuckin' square, man."
Elenore takes a long drink of her water. On the one hand, she knows that Violet is teasing her. She's her aunt, and she adores her (in her way). She doesn't really think Elenore is a square. But even as she's supposed to mature and self-assured, Elenore's sense of self is always thrown a little off kilter when someone suggests she doesn't fit with her parents. It's not getting any worse, but she's skeptical it's getting much better.
Violet and Anna spend the rest of lunch talking vaguely about the plans they have for Elenore, sprinkling in phrases like "penis cookies" and "pink handcuffs" just to see what kind of reaction they can get out of Elenore. Every now and then she wants to prove to them just how not frigid she really is, but then, she looks at the proof – Veronica. She's just sitting there, grinning like she doesn't know any better (because she doesn't), and even though she's already fifteen years old, Elenore isn't ready to ruin things for her yet. She's not sure she'll ever be.
She's hopeful somehow that getting married will change something for Veronica. She's hopeful that if Veronica has a paternal void that she's been hiding from her mother all these years, perhaps this will fix it. Who is she to tell her own daughter that she has a void because she didn't grow up with a father in her life? She fiddles with her engagement ring some more and continues to wish and hope on it like it's a talisman and not a promise.
When the women part ways after lunch, and Elenore and Veronica begin their walk back to their apartment, Veronica threads her arm through Elenore's, and they walk like they're a couple of old Hollywood starlets.
"Violet and Anna are exhausting," Veronica says. "I don't know how Jenny puts up with them."
"Ah, Jenny's tough," Elenore says. "I think I saw her bend a crowbar over her knee when she was three."
"And here, I thought that happened when she was two."
"Have I mentioned how glad I am that you're my daughter?"
"You say that as though there's an alternative."
"Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. In the Bizarro dimension, which exists in Superman comics as well as in our own world, my dad spelled my name as my mom intended on my birth certificate. Apparently, being E-L-I-N-O-R instead of E-L-E-N-O-R-E inspires me to make very different and somehow worse decisions. I drop out of college after meeting a wannabe investment banker named Laird …"
"Laird?"
"Yes, Laird … and Laird moves me back to Connecticut, where my maternal family's from. At twenty years old, I give birth to his daughter, whom he names, because he comes from patriarchal money and believes, then, that it's his right to name the heir."
"I don't even think matriarchal money is a concept."
"That's true. If it was, we wouldn't even need money. I'm finally starting to understand what my mother meant when she said all theoretical disciplines depend on one another for success. Anyway, in this world, where my mother stops speaking to me because I have renounced feminism and all its works, I give birth to Laird's daughter, whom he names Henrietta, after his great grandmother."
"Hank for short?"
"Honey, I said we're in Connecticut with my mother's family, not in Tulsa with my dad's. Keep up. It's integral to the story."
"My apologies."
"Henrietta is blonde, but at fifteen, she decides she wants to turn a whiter shade of pale, so I take her to the family stylist where she becomes platinum. She doesn't like pop punk or cherry cola, and when I asked her to watch A New Hope with me when she was seven, she said no."
"A travesty."
"But that's just it. I haven't even gotten to the travesty. One day, Laird decides we need to attend his family reunion in Hartford. Hartford, as you remember, is where our cousin Lynnie grew up. In this universe, my mother and Lynnie never became close, so she never left Hartford. She's still there, and though I am tangentially aware of her existence, we have never met, and I know nothing of her."
"I feel like I'm going to have to reach for the sick bag."
"So, Laird, Henrietta and I show up for Laird's family reunion. And Laird introduces me to his mother."
"You have a fifteen-year-old daughter with Laird, and you've never met his mother?"
"There's a reason for this."
"Is the reason that you forgot where this story was headed?"
"No! Give me a little more credit, Veronica. Jeez. So, we're at the family reunion, and Laird says, 'Elinor, spelled like Elinor from Sense and Sensibility as your mother intended and before your dad's phonetic spelling got in the way …'"
"He says all of that, too. I believe it."
"Well, you should, because it's happening right now in a different corner of the universe. He says that, and then he says, 'I'd like you to meet my mother.' And his mother turns around …"
"Oh, no …"
"And it's my cousin, Lynnie."
"Eww! Eww!"
"She stopped speaking to him after she realized I was Lucy's daughter. I never asked about her because it's not a woman's place to ask questions in high society. I have, after all, seen the film High Society. Laird and I don't divorce, of course, because divorce is always embarrassing in …"
"High society."
"Thank you. Laird knew we were cousins throughout our marriage, but, you see, he's a creep; he's a weirdo. We live separately – I in the main house and Laird in the guest home – for five years before Laird takes his life, clutching a bottle of Dom Perignon from the year of our wedding. I inherit a ludicrous sum of money, figure out how inter-dimension travel works, wind up in this dimension's version of late December back in '93, and get you."
Elenore takes a long breath and then sneaks a peak at Veronica to see if she reacts to the "late December back in '93" comment. Her eyes look a little busy thinking about it, but it doesn't look like she'll ask any questions. It's not like that will keep her from having them, of course. Elenore just decides to pretend.
"What did you think of that?" Elenore asks.
"Well, it was like a really fast episode of Days of Our Lives," Veronica says, "and I think it's a little weird your brain jumped right from 'in a Bizarro dimension' to 'incest in a Bizarro dimension,' but that's who you are. You don't stop. You are a soap opera machine."
Elenore smiles. It's who she was before her daughter was born, and it's who she didn't learn how to be again until her daughter was ten years old. That Veronica doesn't seem to remember what those first ten years were like (or that she can focus on the good parts and not the parts where her mother used to cry in the bathtub or freeze up when someone brought up Prince or "Auld Lang Syne") is something Elenore is thankful for. She'd prefer not to remember the darker parts of those first ten years, either.
(But she does.)
"Well, not to brag," Elenore says, "but I did live through the era of Days of Our Lives where John Black was Roman until Roman came back from the dead so that he could be Roman again."
"I think my brain just exploded," Veronica says.
"Turn around."
"What?"
"Turn around. Let me see the back of your dress."
"Do I need to call Chris Hansen?"
"Veronica."
"Fine, fine."
She turns around, and Elenore quickly scans the back of her dress.
"Nope, no exploded brain," she says.
Veronica whirls back around and glares at her laughing mother.
"Mom," she says.
"What?" Elenore asks.
"I thought there was something really wrong with my dress!"
"There is. It's that you bought the baby blue one when you know you looked better in the red."
"That's enormously erroneous and egregious."
"You think you're cool 'cause I bought you that ACT prep book."
"I'm pretty sure that's the very definition of uncool."
"No, pocket protectors are the very definition of uncool."
"Maybe, but ACT prep books for a rising sophomore are coming in at a close second."
Elenore throws her arm around Veronica's shoulder now.
"Have I mentioned how lucky I am to have you?" she asks.
"Here we go again."
Elenore's apartment looks different now that a boy is moving into it. When she tells people that it looks different, of course, she means that everything is the same, only now, there are bigger shoes in the foyer, and there's a massive gym bag in the corner of the living room, near the TV. Originally, they kept the bag in the foyer, too, but when Veronica (smart as Socrates and absentminded as Aristotle) kept tripping over it and managing, by the grace of God, to escape only with a skinned knee, they moved it.
"We're home!" Elenore shouts, and her fiancé, six-foot-tall music scholar, Pete Butler, comes out of what will soon officially be their bedroom.
"I'm not," he says.
"That's right, you're not."
She presses up in her shoes to kiss him.
"But soon, you will be."
"Am I a terrible fiancé for scheduling our wedding around the time my lease is up?" Pete asks.
"Are terrible and practical the same thing?" Elenore asks, too.
"I guess it depends on the context."
"I've always been more interested in the conquest than the context."
"That's a lie if I've ever heard one."
Elenore laughs a little, but inside, she cringes. It's a lie if Pete has ever heard one, but it's still not the biggest lie he's heard from her.
Veronica tries to slip past Elenore and Pete, but Pete stops her.
"Hey, kid," he says. "You OK?"
Veronica shrugs.
"Um, yeah, I guess," she says. "I just figured I'd get some reading done before dinner tonight."
"Reading? But it's the middle of summer. Doesn't your brain want to take a break?"
"Pete, you have a Ph.D. Does your brain ever want to take a break?"
"Well, in my defense, I'm forty-five, and you're fifteen."
"Your point?"
"When I was fifteen, the middle of summer meant ice cream trucks and the final days of disco."
Veronica claps Pete on the back.
"You suburban sap," she says.
Pete smiles, and Elenore feels her heart soar. She loves that they like each other.
"What's it like being fifteen in the summer for a prep school city rat?" Pete asks. "Is it all waiting in long lines for maple-bacon doughnuts and Billy Joel's greatest hits at MSG?"
"What fifteen-year-old in 2010 do you know who listens to Billy Joel?"
"You."
Veronica folds her arms across her chest and frowns. Elenore's stomach drops to her knees when she sees the look on Veronica's face. When Veronica was younger, she looked like Elenore when she frowned, which meant she really looked like Dally. But now that she's older – older and spending more time with other people – she looks more like her own father everyday.
"At least I have better taste than 'Piano Man,'" she says.
"That's right," Pete says. "Be proud that you're 'A Matter of Trust' kinda girl."
Veronica smiles. She looks more like Elenore again.
"I really should get to reading," Veronica says. "Grandma told me that my homework for the next two weeks is to make it through as much of Les Misérables as I can. She wants to talk about cultural capital and when history becomes kitschy."
As Veronica takes off for her room, Elenore calls out to her.
"Your grandmother uses you as a parrot, you know!" she says.
"I like to think of myself as her Charlie McCarthy," Veronica calls back.
"How is that better?"
"Well, if I'm Charlie McCarthy, I get to say more words, and I get to be funny."
"I have met some pretty hilarious parrots. None of them were confined to Edgar Bergen's lap, so ask yourself, who's really the winner, here?"
"Love you, Mom."
Veronica closes her door, and Elenore grabs Pete by the waist again.
"If you make an Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy joke before you kiss me, I swear to God," Pete says, but Elenore just kisses him instead.
"Not everything has to be snappy," she says. "See?"
"Can most things be snappy?" Pete asks.
"Oh, of course. There's no point to life if it's not at least 85% snap."
Pete laughs, and Elenore can't help but feel overwhelmed that she's going to marry him in a month and a half. She can still hardly believe they met at all. Almost four years earlier, when Veronica started junior high, Elenore was offered the opportunity to teach American Constitutional Law at NYU. She jumped at the chance, both because it was an honor and because she remembered how much she hated the class when she took it for her Politics minor as an undergraduate (a pro-Reagan instructor during the Reagan years, making for enough fuel to haunt Elenore's nightmares well into the second Clinton administration). During the first semester she taught the course, she attended a screening of Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten in the film department. There, she met Pete Butler, an associate professor of music. He told her that his favorite song by The Clash was "The Magnificent Seven" because it combined all three of his favorite things: punk rock, Old Westerns, and great accents. Elenore told him that her favorite song by The Clash was "Rock the Casbah" because it combined all three of her favorite things: a fabulist musical narrative, a popular lyrical squabble worse than "Purple Haze," and accidental cultural imperialism. When he laughed, Elenore was intrigued. He asked her for coffee, and after that, they never went another day without each other.
Pete is two years older than Elenore and is, perhaps objectively, the most handsome man she's ever been with. He's tall and muscular with thick hair that's still mostly dark brown (a little gray, but Elenore calls it distinguished) and big brown eyes. He's polite and funny and can talk your ear off about the last movie he saw or the last book he read. Even Lucy likes him, and Lucy hates all men, except for Dally and Sodapop. When Lucy finds more than a few things to like about the man you bring home, you know you ought to keep him.
That Pete gets along so well with Veronica is part of the appeal. They know how to get each other's goats, but in the few years Pete's been around, he's made every effort to support Veronica. He showed up to the Christmas concert she was forced to sing at in the seventh grade and applauded after her awkwardly hushed solo on a song from The Polar Express (for which she was inevitably mocked). He bought her the most beautiful Jane Austen box set for her fifteenth birthday in February, which proudly (if not smugly) sits front and center on one of the bookshelves in the library at Ponyboy's place. Every Friday night, Pete and Veronica take turns showing each other movies that are important to them. This means that Pete is well versed in the High School Musical trilogy, and fifteen-year-old Veronica Winston has seen more Pacino movies than a fifteen-year-old child ever needs to see. Elenore is just thrilled to see that the two of them like each other so much. It'll be seamless, she thinks, to have him move into their apartment in August. Maybe it'll be what they've been missing.
(Have they been missing much?)
"Hey," Pete says, pulling Elenore out of her thoughts.
Thank God.
"Hey," Elenore says.
"Do your parents expect me to come to dinner with you and Veronica tonight?"
"I don't know, Pete. Does Sam expect Dave told hold on when he's comin'?"
"Elenore …"
"Of course, I'm not 100% which one of them is which when they sing. I'm not a very good fan of Sam and Dave, even if I do insist that our first dance at the reception is to 'Soul Man.'"
"Elenore …"
"I was going to surprise you at the wedding, but I've already got you a pair of sunglasses. We can't be Sam and Dave for obvious reasons, but we can be Jake and Elwood Blues. We're going to debut our newlywed selves to our guests by walking out to the opening of 'I Can't Turn You Loose.' It's going to be a whole deal."
"Wait, are you serious?"
Elenore walks over to the linen closet in the hallway and pulls out two pairs of cheap plastic sunglasses. She hands one pair to Pete, who holds them in his hands and lets out one thrilled laugh.
"Dead serious," she says.
Pete's face lights up.
"I love you," he says.
"Oh, sure you do."
Pete laughs and tucks the sunglasses into his back pocket. Then, he looks at Elenore with his serious eyes.
"You really want me to come to dinner with your parents, then," he says.
"Well, you don't have to be so excited about it," Elenore says.
"Come on, Elenore! After how it went last time, how do you expect me to look forward to it?"
"It didn't go any way last time."
"Your dad hates me."
"So? My dad hates everyone. Unless you are my mother or a woman in his living family, there's a 100% chance my dad hatesyou. Yoda has a walking stick; my dad has a walking shtick. Take either away from either one of them, and they can no longer get by."
"He looks at me like he's gonna eat my liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti."
"Again, it's his shtick. He couldn't get by without it."
Pete sighs and sits down on the couch. Elenore stands above him and paces. He's right that Dally seems to dislike Pete in a way that he hasn't disliked someone in a long time, maybe even before Elenore was born. Elenore hasn't talked to him about it. They're close (with one notable caveat), but there are some things you just don't talk about in front of Dally.
"I just thought after three or four years, he'd learn to at least tolerate me a little bit," Pete says. "Your mom seems to be able to convince him to do anything. She can't convince him to hate me a little less?"
"That's their issue," Elenore says. "They can't convince each other of anything. If Lucy knows for a fact it's Tuesday, but Dally has convinced himself it's Friday, he will continue to believe it until his knuckles are white with conviction. It doesn't matter how many calendars she points in his face. If he gets it in his head that it's Friday, he cannot and will not be moved."
"I get it, Elenore."
"And you think this is hyperbolic. I know that. But surprise! It's not! This is an actual argument that my mom and dad had in 1984. Do you know how long it lasted?"
"Until Wednesday or Saturday, depending on whether you're Lucy or Dally?"
Elenore smiles at him. She can feel her eyes start to sparkle. At least, that's what Lucy would say. Some time after Veronica turned ten, and some time after Elenore found a new therapist who didn't try to infantilize her for enjoying things she "should have put away in her adolescence," she started to reuse some of that wit and creativity she'd been hiding for too long. When she and John Webber, who remains her best friend, were in their teens and early twenties, they used to play off one another's wit and creative verve all the time. They never really stopped playing with dolls, even once John's Kenner action figures leapt out of their hands and into a display case. She and John had bits. He could have kept up the story about Laird from Connecticut for a few hours if he'd been walking in between Elenore and Veronica earlier this afternoon. But somewhere around the time Elenore got pregnant, she became embarrassed of her playful self. Maybe it was her affair with an older man, even if that older man played make-believe in his books for a living. Maybe it was that she was becoming a mother, and there's a certain set of expectations for a mother – first and foremost, she doesn't write a soap opera at the dinner table, starring her fork and spoon. After all, she'd been so obsessed with writing soap operas she made all the wrong choices and turned her life into one. But then, maybe it was that she was worried she'd never be the tough, cool daughter that her parents probably expected her to be – that she wasn't Winston enough, especially compared to her cousin, Anna, a badass musician with a glam rock look second only to Dita Von Teese. No matter what it was, Elenore hid the sparkle in her eyes until she decided it was OK to let it back out again. When Lucy finally saw it and pointed it out again, Elenore was pleasantly surprised that she was pleased.
"I like you," she finally says.
"Yeah, I know you do."
She sits down beside Pete and goes through a list of all the things to not have a conversation with her father about. Don't talk to him about the weather because he sees right through that. He's a high school dropout, not a moron. Don't talk to him about music because he's very particular about what he'll tolerate on the radio (unless you're Lucy, in which case he'll sit through both sides of Ram). As the list gets longer and longer, she wonders if she should need to rattle off this list at all.
It's time to head over to her parents' place before she comes to a real conclusion.
Lucy can't cook very well, so she cuts up a rotisserie chicken from the market for dinner. Veronica, the sweetheart she (somehow) is, can't stop talking about how much she likes it, anyway.
"And, you know, I think it's admirable to have a grandmother who knows that her strengths are in the lecture hall and not the kitchen," Veronica adds after a long speech about why lemon pepper is the best rotisserie flavor the market has to offer.
"It's not as quippy as you think it is, babe," Elenore says and takes a bite of her chicken. "Wouldn't sell quite as many sweatshirts as the 'House and the Senate' slogan you're thinking of."
"I didn't mean for it to be sweatshirt material," Veronica says. "I just think it's nice that I have a grandma who doesn't think it's her duty to make tuna noodle casserole because she knows she's bad at it."
"I think I lost track of the place where this was supposed to be a compliment," Lucy says.
Veronica grins.
"Grandma, you're a feminist icon," she says. "Gloria Steinem is jealous of you."
Lucy rolls her eyes and swallows her forkful of chicken.
"I should say not," she says.
"Plenty of 'em out there jealous of 'er, though," Dally says, almost like he didn't hear what he was saying.
Elenore chokes on her water and comes away from it laughing. Beside her, Pete cracks a smile, too.
"Elenore?" Lucy asks. "What are you doing?"
"I'm sorry," she says. "It's just … Dad, I know Mom made you read The Feminine Mystique after I was born …"
"You said you weren't gonna fuckin' tell her that, man," Dally says to Lucy from across the table.
"And you said you were going to stop addressing me as man," Lucy says. "We all make promises we have no intention of keeping."
They give each other that look that Elenore has only ever seen between Lucy Bennet and Dallas Winston. It's a peculiar look, but after all these years of watching them, Elenore knows what it means.
"I just think it's really funny to hear Dad engage a conversation about feminist icons," Elenore says.
"I'm takin' a page from your kid," Dally says. "And it's fuckin' true, man. Your ma's got this colleague in … one of them cities in the middle, and she wrote this book a long time ago, when you was still in high school. Your ma wiped the floor with that book the next year."
"You're the only person who thinks that," Lucy says. "People have forgotten all about my entry and focus entirely on hers."
"That's their problem, Bennet."
"Stop being so nice to me, Dally. I'm going to vomit all over the table, and I don't think either one of us really feels like cleaning it up."
Dally rolls his eyes, and Lucy chuckles from behind a long sip of her water glass. Elenore reaches out for Pete's hand, which he takes. She can't help it.
"Well, Lucy, I'm sure your book is the superior one," Pete says. "I can't say the same for my first book."
"What's the matter with your first book, Pete?" Veronica asks.
"Oh, when I look back on it, I realize I don't sound a thing like myself," he says. "I'm trying too hard to be one of my favorite critics. A film critic, actually."
"Who?" Elenore asks.
"Sorry?"
"You heard me. Who?"
"I can't believe we're getting married in a month and a half, and you have to ask!"
"Well, here I am. Asking. And not in a weird Notting Hill kind of way, but in a … practical I-should-know-this-if-we're-ever-ambushed-to-go-on-The Newlywed Game kind of way so we can bring home a bunch of money."
Dally looks at Lucy from across the table again.
"She gets this from you," he says.
"I know," Lucy says. "Isn't it wonderful?"
"All right," Pete says. "My favorite film critic is only well known in a few circles, which is a shame, since I think some of her essays blow Pauline Kael out of the water."
Dally turns to look at Veronica.
"You understand what he's sayin', Bug?" he asks.
"Yes, but only because I'm going to have to live with him," Veronica says.
"You gonna fill me in?"
"After dinner."
Dally nods, and Veronica turns back to the conversation between Elenore and Pete.
"Her name is Edith Jones-Reynolds," Pete says.
Lucy drops her fork on her plate. Pete jumps a little out of his chair.
"Did I say something wrong?" he asks.
"Ya shouldn't have to ask," Dally says. "Ain't real tough."
"Pete doesn't need to be tough, Dad," Elenore says. "He writes about duels and rumbles. He doesn't participate in them."
Dally quickly scans Pete up and down. Then, he exhales hotly.
"Worse 'n Pony, then," he says.
Elenore's stomach drops right back into her knees. If he has something to say, he might as well say it. Fifteen years of radio silence is starting to grate on Elenore's nerves in more ways than one.
"Pete, you said nothing wrong," Lucy says. "I'm just surprised that Elenore wouldn't have mentioned it to you."
"Mentioned what?" Pete asks.
"Edith Jones-Reynolds is my great aunt, actually," Elenore says. "She's my grandma's sister on … well, on my mom's side, obviously."
Dally exhales again like Elenore chose the wrong words, though she's quite sure she did no such thing.
Pete looks like he's a little kid in front of the Christmas tree.
"Are you kidding me?" he asks.
"Nope," Elenore says.
"Edith is my mother's younger sister," Lucy says. "She's technically closer in age to me."
"That means she got to have a career of her own," Elenore says.
"I see," Pete says.
"Edith is a lovely woman," Lucy says. "She's been practically everywhere, you know. I think she lives in three time zones at once."
"When my mom was growing up, Edith would forget her birthday every year," Elenore says. "And then, sometimes six or so months later, she'd remember and feel so guilty that she forgot, she'd send my mom a hundred dollars in the mail."
"It's true," Lucy says. "Her real name isn't Jones-Reynolds, either. She's just Edith Jones. She added the Reynolds when she started getting work published as homage to Debbie Reynolds."
"I've read that she's a big Singin' in the Rain fan," Pete says.
"She is," Elenore says. "But Susan Slept Here is her first love."
"I can't believe this," Pete says. He still sounds so thrilled. "You're related to my favorite film critic, and I wouldn't have known it if you hadn't asked who my favorite film critic was."
"You might have figured it out when she showed up at our wedding," Elenore says.
"She's coming to our wedding?"
"She's my aunt!"
"I think I'm falling in love with you all over again."
Elenore can feel a deep blush rising in her cheeks. She wishes Pete hadn't said that. She wishes Pete hadn't said anything that sounded even remotely like that. He has no idea that the thought of someone falling in love with her is catnip for her. He has no idea that the last time a man told her he loved her, he didn't mean it. He has no idea what kind of fire he's playing with when he falls in love with Elenore Winston and tells her so.
She wishes she wasn't this romantic.
Then again, it's the romanticism that got her Veronica, and there's nothing in the world better than Veronica.
"I really can't believe this never came up," Pete says.
Elenore opens her mouth to respond. She does not have the chance. Instead, and much to her surprise, Dally speaks instead.
"Really?" he asks. "You can't believe my daughter never told you that her great aunt is some movie critic ya like?"
"Well …" Pete says, but as it turns out, he doesn't have much else to say.
"Lemme ask you somethin', man," Dally says. "You told my daughter everything she needs to know about you?"
"Let's see. She knows my full name, my accurate date of birth, the place I was born, the place I was raised … she knows that I watched a lot of Dark Shadows as a kid, and she knows that as an adult, I enjoyed the song 'MMMBop.'"
"There's not much more you can know about a person," Elenore says.
"You're fuckin' wrong," Dally says.
It's a short sentence, but it's enough to knock the wind out of Elenore. He's not going here, is he? And without talking to Elenore about it privately! Her father isn't the kind of man to make a scene. She has to trust that. She clutches her napkin in her lap and tries not to let it take her back to being twenty-seven.
"Dad," she says, "what are you talking about?"
"'M talkin' about your boyfriend," he says.
"He's not my boyfriend. He's my fiancé. Ring and all."
"Yeah, yeah. Didja know some other broad had that ring 'fore you did? When your boy here was married?"
Everyone stops eating. Veronica chokes on her roll and spits it out in her napkin. She turns her head to look at Lucy and smiles sheepishly.
"Sorry, Grandma," she says.
"It's OK," Lucy says. "Give me your napkin. I can throw it out for you."
"I think I'd rather come with you."
"And I think you're a smart girl."
Lucy and Veronica awkwardly excuse themselves from the table. Veronica's chair squeaks when she gets up, and Elenore almost looks at her to suggest she should have a little more decorum. But she knows that would make her a hypocrite.
She's about to have no decorum with her father.
Elenore sends Pete home and tells Lucy to take Veronica into her room to watch TV.
"We're not going to watch TV," Lucy says. "We're going to talk about Les Misérables."
"TV, Victor Hugo, I don't care," Elenore says. "I just need a little space so I can talk to Dad."
Lucy looks past Elenore and toward her husband, who's staring at his hands like he's not sure what he wants to do with them. She looks back at Elenore.
"Well, if anyone can take him," Lucy says.
"It's you," Elenore says.
"Yeah, maybe, but you're half me."
"I'm also half him."
"Even better."
"He's self-destructive!"
"So, use your Lucy half."
Elenore sighs, and Lucy grabs her hand.
"Whatever he does," Lucy says, "anything he does … it's all for you."
Elenore exhales. She tries to keep her breath steady, but it shakes.
"I try to know that, Mom," she says. "I do."
Lucy squeezes Elenore's hand one last time and takes off for the back of the apartment with Veronica in tow. Elenore takes another deep breath and walks toward Dally. She wishes she were wearing high heels. The sound of high heels hitting the wood makes her feel like she's finally Winston enough.
"Dad," she says. "We need to talk."
Dally looks at her with a dangerously amused expression she's only read about in books.
"You didn't know your boy was married before he met you," he says. "I found out for ya. Don't think there's much more to talk about."
"There is so much more to talk about," Elenore says. "You promised me. You promised me you wouldn't look into my dates that way."
"He ain't your date. You're supposed to marry him. I get guys and broads all the time comin' in, askin' me to check up on the people they're marryin'. Found the whole thing to be a little fuckin' hokey, 'How do I know this is the person I fell for' and some other shit ya hear on TV, but then you said you was gettin' married to a guy I didn't like too much to start. Made a lotta sense all of a sudden."
Elenore flares her nostrils.
"I'm not your client," she says. "I'm your daughter. You don't have the right to sneak around like that if I don't ask you."
Dally stares at her, and the longer his look lasts; the more Elenore understands what her Aunt V meant when she said she used to think he was the Big Bad Wolf. It's the first time Elenore really knows why people always tell her they were afraid of her father.
"He got married when he was nineteen," Dally says like this isn't any different from the final briefing with a client. "He met her in one of his classes or somethin'. Her name is Lisa. They got married in Vegas – bad fuckin' look 'f you ask me. They were married for four months. The broad filed. I ain't gonna get into all the details, but the papers say he ain't much more'n a dick."
Elenore wishes it wouldn't, but she feels her world start to become terribly and terrifyingly small. She can hear it start to crack underneath her feet. She knows that she should be upset that Pete kept something from her, but she can't get there. She's keeping something much bigger from him. A four-month marriage when you're young is nothing. It's practically commonplace, as Elenore remembers from a class on marriage and family law when she was too young to think about marriage and family beyond a textbook. It's not that Pete was married and didn't tell her about it that makes her feel so bad. It's that she's forty-three years old, and she's always been somebody's second choice.
Almost always.
"I don't understand what would possess you to do this," Elenore says.
"I told ya," Dally says. "I don't like him. Now, I got a reason."
"I don't understand why you didn't like him in the first place. I mean … I do understand. You're Dallas Winston. You don't like anyone or anything because liking people and things isn't cool."
Dally raises one eyebrow at her.
"'S that what you think?" he asks. "You think I walk around like this 'cause I wanna be cool? 'S that what you still fuckin' think?"
"Well, what else is there?" Elenore asks.
"Ya know, kid, I'd tell you."
"Yeah, right."
"Naw, I'm serious. I'd tell you. But I'd be doin' what I'm tryin' to avoid."
Elenore breathes shortly. She remembers the only other time in her life she was this angry with her father, but now that she's not hooked up to an IV, she feels like she has a chance.
"Give me one reason," she says. "Give me one reason why you think Pete is a bad guy and how you think that justifies what you did."
"And then what?" Dally asks. "You'll back off."
"I didn't say that. I just want to hear it."
"All right, fine. I don't like the way he sucks up to your ma."
"He's trying to impress her! I think it's sweet!"
"Yeah, well, it ain't. He ain't even tryin' to talk to her like she's a person. It makes him sound phony."
"So, we're doing Salinger now. Awesome. Should I call the ducks in Central Park? See if they're interested in reprising their role?"
"Stop makin' jokes. I'm tryin' to be real with you."
Elenore takes a long breath in and an even longer breath out. She can't believe she's about to say some of the things on her mind, but she's forty-three years old and tired of looking at her father like he's Midas.
"OK," she says. "You want to be real with me? Well, then, it's only fair that I get to be real with you. I guess I can't really be surprised that you'd run a background check on Pete after I asked you not to because, hey, that's who you are, right? You're still the guy who does exactly the opposite of what he's told."
"You better stop talkin' like that," he says.
"Or what? What will you do?"
Dally doesn't say anything, and Elenore gives him one curt nod. They both know he won't do anything to hurt her – not on purpose. He hadn't even run the background check with the intention of hurting her. Even as she stands there, angrier with him than she's ever been, Elenore knows he meant well. It doesn't matter. Just because he meant well doesn't mean he did good.
"You are impossible," Elenore says. "What was that at the table? Announcing that Pete's been married like that in front of Mom and Veronica? That's so out of character!"
"You're usin' more'n more book words every minute," Dally says. "There somethin' you wanna tell me?"
Elenore closes her eyes and remembers her breathing. This is not five years ago. She can do this.
"No," she finally says. Her voice is firm. She sounds like his daughter, and she can tell by the look in his eye, even as he holds onto his conviction with the same white knuckles as always, that he's proud of her tone.
"You know I'm not there yet, and you know you can't get it out of me. You gave me all the power here. You trusted me to use it."
"So?"
"So. Do you still trust me to use it? Or are you going to make me give it back?"
Dally doesn't say anything. He still doesn't have to. He doesn't like to give up his power for anyone unless it's Elenore. It'd kill him to take it away from her. After all, he loves her a lot; even if it's been more than a decade since the only time he's ever said it.
"Have ya told him?" Dally asks.
"You're using too many pronouns," Elenore says. "You can't expect me to …"
"Have ya told your fuckin' boyfriend? Have you told him what you ain't tellin' me?"
Elenore looks down at her shoes.
"No," she says. "I haven't."
Dally stands up and points at her. Elenore can't help but find a sliver of amusement. It's not often she sees much of a resemblance between her father and Aunt V, but when they have a point, they may as well be twins, too.
"You fuckin' know it, too, don't you?" Dally asks.
"What do I know?"
"You know he's gotta be a dick if you're keepin' somethin' like this from him. He keeps somethin' from you, so you keep somethin' from him."
"Dad, I had no idea Pete was lying to me about having been married until you decided to be Georgina Sparks at the table."
"What are you sayin'?"
"It's Gossip Girl! God, it's like you don't even pay attention when Veronica has the TV on."
"I don't."
"Well, you should! And I realize I'm letting this conversation get away from me, and I realize that's because you put me on the spot about what I'm keeping from Pete and what I'm keeping from you, but it doesn't change anything. I'm not going to tell him, and I'm not going to tell you. I'm not there. I'm not ready yet."
Dally's eyes are wolfish again. He's in for the kill, but Elenore's not sure who his target is.
"I know why you ain't tellin' me," he says. "But you gotta think about why you ain't tellin' him. It ain't the same. 'F I'm a bettin' man, and I can be, I'd say it's 'cause you know he ain't too good. He kept somethin' from you. Even if you didn't know, ya must've had a clue there was somethin' off."
"So what if I did? Does it matter? I'm keeping something from him."
Dally clicks his tongue a little. Elenore wants to fall through the floor. He sounds disappointed in her – the sound she's been trying to avoid for sixteen years.
"See, man, this is what don't make sense," he says. "You're always tryin' to prop up the guy standin' next to you. Whoever he is. Me, Sodapop, the Webber kid, your boyfriend, Veronica's old man … we're all fuck-ups, and you try to treat us like we ain't. Like we been right the whole time or somethin'."
"I think it's OK to give people the benefit of the doubt," Elenore says.
"It's more'n that. It ain't that you're keepin' somethin' from him. You don't got a problem tellin' lots of people the truth about Veronica. You just have a problem tellin' me."
Elenore doesn't say anything. Most of the time, she loves that her dad knows her better than she knows herself. She can't say that now.
"You're keepin' it from him 'cause there's somethin' fucked up about him," Dally says. "What kinda guy doesn't tell his girl she's gonna be his second wife?"
Elenore opens her mouth to answer his question, but he cuts her off.
"No," he says. "I ain't gonna let you take me round another goddamn circle. You know what I'm sayin'. You gonna think about it, or 'm I gonna have to find out more about him on my own?"
Every time Elenore breathes, her chest rattles. She's surprised by how much she's not thinking about Pete, and maybe that should tell her something. She doesn't let it. She keeps her eyes locked on her father.
"I'm starting to understand," she says.
"What?" he asks.
She bites her tongue and lets it go. If she doesn't say it, it will fester, and Elenore has never done well with festering.
"You really are Dallas Winston, aren't you?" she asks.
He takes a moment.
"Ain't ever been anybody else," he says. "You just thought I was."
Elenore lets his words pour over her, and they start to turn into sweat. She doesn't have the chance to say anything. She hears Lucy and Veronica's footsteps coming from the back of the apartment. When they come into view, Lucy has a cross look on her face, and Veronica is on the phone. She's grinning a little too widely, and by the look on her face, Elenore knows there's only one person it could be on the other end of that call. Her stomach drops.
"I'll let you know when I'm finished with it," Veronica says. "Yes, I can finish it. You used to read me Tolstoy. I think that was sufficient training. It was!"
Her face falls.
"Oh," she says. "OK."
"Tell him I'm still furious with him for calling in the middle of our Victor Hugo time," Lucy says. "Tell him I knew him when he was eleven, and for that alone, I can destroy him."
Veronica pauses and listens. She turns to Lucy.
"Pony says that he knew you when you were fifteen, and that's just as embarrassing," she says.
"Tell him he's dreaming."
Elenore turns her attention back to Veronica on the phone.
"OK," Veronica says. "No, no, I understand. I'll talk to you soon. Love you, too. Bye."
Veronica hangs up the phone and puts it in her pocket. She's grinning too widely again. Elenore swallows hard.
"Hey, Mom, guess what!" she says, but Elenore isn't ready to deal with it.
"Tell me in a few minutes, babe," Elenore says. "I have to take care of one last thing with Grandpa."
"Oh."
Elenore looks at Dally, and he moves into the kitchen. Some part of her realizes what a big deal that is – that she can make Dallas Winston move into the kitchen with just one look – but she doesn't care. She has one thing to say, and she's going to say it. He's got his back to the fridge, and she's almost nose-to-nose with him. It reminds her of a scene she saw before, though she likes to pretend she doesn't remember where.
"Listen to me," she says. "You found out about Pete being married, and that's something I'm going to have to deal with on my own. But you've got a taste for it now – going behind my back. And if you do it again and try to find out about Veronica before I can tell you, then you and me … then we'll be done."
Dally doesn't look hurt at all. Elenore knows why.
"Is that a threat?" he asks.
Strangely, Elenore smiles.
"Yeah," she says. "I think it is."
Dally almost smiles, too.
"Should do that more often," he says. "'S a good look on you."
She backs off and lets her smile get wider. Maybe she's Winston enough, after all.
It always starts with banter, does it not? Chapter title is a quote from The Blues Brothers. As for some of my more obscure references, Phyllis Schlafly is one of the most infamous antifeminist writers and the subject of Mrs. America. Pauline Kael is a film critic, perhaps best known for her critique of auteur theory. Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy were a famous ventriloquist act.
I can only imagine this will be somewhat lighter than its predecessor … then again, I wasn't quite sure how dark some parts of 'Look What You've Done' would get, so, I'm game for just about anything. I know where this is going structurally, but the nuances and the little things take on lives of their own.
Hinton owns The Outsiders. I own a lot of bad Star Wars jokes.