My Year with Eleanor (9 page)

The plane dipped abruptly, and the passengers collectively gasped. “Sorry, folks! Little bit of rough air here,” the pilot called out from the “cockpit,” which had no door and was so close he didn't have to raise his voice. I thought about who would come to my funeral. I was anxious that my media friends wouldn't have anything to talk about with my college friends. Then I realized they'd be talking about me so it wouldn't matter.

“To tell you the truth, I hadn't seen her that much in the last year,” someone would say over cheese cubes speared with festively colored foil toothpicks.

“Me neither,” another would jump in. “I did get a kindly worded text message on my birthday, though.”

After fifty minutes of the plane never really calming down, it began its final descent and we wobbled down to the sweet, wet earth.

As I staggered off the plane, all I wanted was to get to our B&B. Everything about the island was quaint—the gray shingled cottages, cobblestone streets, even the plump raindrops. When I arrived, our small, surprisingly airy room was empty; Matt must have been caught in traffic. I wriggled out of my damp T-shirt and waterlogged jeans, kicking them across the wooden floor in the general direction of the radiator. Wearing only my bra and panties, I vaulted onto the high four-poster bed, sprawling on my stomach on the white down comforter.

Television options in the late afternoon were grim. I settled on a romantic comedy about a spoiled figure skater forced to team up with an oafish ex–hockey player to compete at the Olympics. Romantic comedies, I'd noticed, occasionally ended with a wedding, but they were almost never about marriage. Movies about marriage were dramas. Things ended badly for married couples in movies. Jack Nicholson tried to break into the bathroom with an axe. Glenn Close was shot in the bathtub. Thelma escaped an abusive husband only to drive off a cliff with Louise. Matt burst through the door of our hotel room just as the figure skater beaned the hockey player in the head with a puck.

He took in my bra and panties ensemble. “No need to get all dressed up for me. But I'm glad you did!”

I laughed. “It was all part of my master plan. Now get over here so I can have my way with you.”

He set down his leather duffel, hung up his trench coat, and pulled off his wet shoes and socks. In three strides he was standing over me, leaning down to give me a kiss. Right before our lips touched, he shook the rain out of his hair, making me squeal. He flopped down on the bed next to me and propped himself up on one elbow. I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively and set upon unbuttoning his shirt.

“Let's get those wet clothes off,” I said. As he turned his face into mine, his feet grazed my ankle and I stopped. “But first you have to get those finger toes off me.”

He grinned and pressed his feet more firmly into my ankle.

I cringed. “Seriously, I love you a little less right now.”

“Oh, shut up and kiss me.”

T
he next day, the ceremony was all whiteness and light. The inside of the church was painted a gleaming eggshell and the high arched windows bathed the room in sunlight. Even the bride and groom were pale blonds. While Tom and Casey vowed to spend the rest of their lives together, I shifted uncomfortably in our pew. Just as flying forces you to reevaluate your life, weddings force you to reevaluate your relationship. Would Matt and I be repeating those lines to each other one day? Or would we be saying them to someone else whom we hadn't even met yet? That thought filled me with sadness and I squeezed Matt's hand, as if to confirm that he was still there.

At the reception I was introduced to Matt's ex-girlfriend of five years and her fiancé. Their wedding was in two weeks. The fiancé and I shook hands and tried not to picture our significant others having sex.

After they walked away, I asked Matt, “Are you okay? Was that weird at all, seeing her?”

“Nah, we broke up eight years ago.” Noticing that I looked anxious he added, “Nothing to worry about.”

I smiled at him. “I know. It's not that. I haven't done my scary thing for the day yet,” I said. “Usually something would've come up by now, but it hasn't.” I cast a desperate glance around the room, looking for some daunting situation I could throw myself into.

He thought for a moment. A slow, mischievous smile spread across his face. “I have an idea. Follow me.”

Before I could protest, he had placed my hand in the crook of his elbow in an exaggerated gentlemanly gesture and was leading me up the stairs. When we reached the end of the hallway, he opened a door and steered me into a room. Suddenly we were standing on fluffy peach carpeting, the kind that begged to be walked on in bare feet. There was a large canopy bed in the center of the room.

Matt moved behind me. “Now,” he said, sliding his hands over my bare shoulders, “let's get these wet clothes off.”

“But my clothes aren't wet.”

He grinned naughtily. “Let's get them off anyway.”

“Wait! We can't defile Casey's bridal suite!” I hissed, untangling myself from his grasp. “It's disrespectful and not entirely sanitary.”

“This isn't Casey's suite. Her room is at the other side of the hotel. There's another wedding going on here tonight. But don't worry,” he murmured into my ear, “everyone's going to be downstairs for
hours
.”

“Still, it's not right,” I insisted. “Come on, let's go.”

As I started to walk away, Matt caught my hand and twirled me into the deluxe bathroom, agleam in ivory marble. Pressing his body into mine, he backed me against the door, which eased shut with a barely audible click. He skimmed his fingers across my hip and flicked the lock.

I wasn't one of those people who got a thrill from having sex in non-sex-having places. The most daring place I'd had sex was our shower in Aruba, which wasn't really adventurous but for the off chance we might slip, crack our heads open, and have our pruney, fused-together dead bodies discovered by the turndown maid. This wasn't much more courageous. Did having sex in someone else's hotel room make me nervous? Yes? Was it technically a fear? Under normal circumstances, it probably wouldn't pass inspection. But what the hell? I'd wave it through. Barring any forced participation in a dance floor conga line, this might be my last scary moment of the evening.

“There's nothing sacred about a bathroom though, right?” Matt said. His lips were already working their way down my neck.

“There won't be when we're done with it.” I laughed, letting him pull me away from the door. As he kissed me, there was a soft whirring sound as he unzipped my navy satin dress. I closed my eyes and relaxed into him.

“What's that?” I whispered into his lips.

“What?”

We waited, and out of the silence came the unmistakable rattle of the doorknob.

“Why is this door locked?” a high-pitched voice screeched.

“Oh my God!” I mouthed at Matt. Like a dog chasing its tail, I spun wildly trying to reach the zipper at the back of my dress. I hoisted it up so fast that I pinched my back fat. I screamed silently.

Matt scanned the room for a place to hide. No shower curtain or linen closet.

A chorus of female voices attempted to soothe the woman's nerves. Bridesmaids.

“It wasn't locked earlier!”

“Are you sure it's locked? Maybe it's just stuck.”

“There has to be a key somewhere. I'm sure that old lady who checked us in has one.”

“Well, let's
find her,
” the screechy voice ordered. “I'm not using the communal bathroom at my own fucking wedding!”

I pressed my ear to the door. The wood was cool and smelled faintly of chemicals. I heard her dress swooshing indignantly as she turned to walk away, and the slightly frantic steps of the bridesmaids following her down the hall. When the sounds of bustling taffeta had faded into the distance, I whispered to Matt, “Okay, I think they're gone. Let's sneak out while they're searching for—”

Before I could finish, the voices were back and growing louder.

“It shouldn't be locked,” trilled a matronly voice. “I assure you, it's your own private bridal suite. No one else is permitted to use it.”

Matt looked hopefully toward the window. A two-story drop. I snatched up a couple of fluffy peach bath towels. Maybe we could knot them together and rappel out the window like in the cartoons? No, there was no time. The voices had stopped outside the door. “I believe this is the correct one,” the hotel matron was saying over the sound of tinkling keys.

Screw the towels. I dropped them to the floor. We stared at each other in frozen horror.

“You can hold on to this key for the rest of the night,” the woman reassured the bride. There was a sound of metal hitting metal as the key entered the lock.

For a moment I considered hiding behind Matt, who would surely come up with some charming excuse when that door opened. Instead, I stood a little taller and smoothed down my dress. We could wait for them to storm in, I realized, or we could go down like heroes. I looked over at Matt and he nodded. Then I reached over and flung open the door with a flourish. A sixtysomething woman fiddling with the lock jumped back. Next to her was a bride with jet-black hair teased high on her head. Her hands, which had been on her hips, instinctively sprung into the air, acrylic nails ready to attack. Three bridesmaids in strapless lavender gowns squeaked in surprise. Matt and I linked arms. With straight faces and heads held high, we marched out of the bathroom. As we squeezed past the bride, the situation finally registered. Her forehead wrinkled in disgust.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” she shrieked, nostrils flaring. “WHAT THE FU—”

“Run!” I whispered to Matt and we charged, giggling, down the stairs.

T
he majority of guests were from Ireland, including the guy sitting next to us at dinner. We'd just sat down but he was already in that happy, drunk place where you can no longer tell what's inappropriate and you no longer care. While tuxedoed waiters passed out the salads, he turned to Matt and me.

“So are you two getting married then?” he asked loudly in his booming Irish brogue.

There it was. The question we hadn't raised in three years of dating. It had only taken a total stranger and about half a bottle of Jameson to bring it up. All heads swiveled in our direction, and I turned my head as well and stuffed a dinner roll in my mouth. When I turned back my cheeks were engorged with French bread, so everyone's attention shifted to Matt. He paused. I wondered what he was going to say.

A
fter nine months of dating, Franklin proposed to Eleanor during the weekend of the Harvard-Yale football game. He had invited her as his guest and on November 23, 1902, they managed to ditch their chaperones and slip away for a walk by themselves. By the time they returned, he'd asked her to marry him and she'd said yes.

Predictably, Franklin's mother disapproved of the match. She'd wanted a more attractive wife for her only son. In a move that's almost impressive in its deviousness, she suggested the couple keep their engagement secret for a year. Then she took Franklin on a five-week Caribbean cruise, hoping he'd lose interest in Eleanor. Their feelings only grew stronger. Franklin returned for his final term at Harvard, and they wrote passionate love letters back and forth.

“You are never out of my thoughts dear for one moment,” Eleanor wrote to her fiancé. “Everything is changed for me now. I am so happy. Oh! So happy & I love you
so
dearly.” When Eleanor told her grandmother about the proposal, Mrs. Hall asked if she was really in love. “I solemnly answered ‘yes,' ” Eleanor later said, “and yet I know now that it was years later before I understood what being in love or what loving really meant.”

They married on St. Patrick's Day in 1905. Uncle Teddy escorted Eleanor down the aisle, having chosen this date because he'd be in town to kick off the St. Patrick's Day parade. Eleanor was, in her words, “decked out beyond description.” Her dress was constructed of stiff satin and the same lace her mother and grandmother wore at their weddings. She pinned her veil with a diamond crescent that belonged to her mother. Sara, who was never one for subtlety, gave Eleanor a high-necked pearl dog collar with diamond bars. It was from Tiffany and cost $4,000, but the symbolism was priceless.

Eleanor was only twenty years old and Franklin was twenty-three. Of course, the upside to marrying your cousin is you don't have to change your name. After the ceremony, the president quipped, “Well, Franklin, there's nothing like keeping the name in the family.”

Eleanor's mentor from Allenswood Academy, Madame Souvestre, was battling cancer and unable to attend. Instead she sent a telegram that had only one word:
Happiness
. She died two weeks later.

M
att still hadn't answered the question, and a nervous tension settled over the table. He looked decidedly uncomfortable.

“Well, it's just—” Before he could finish, a tuxedoed waiter appeared with salads for everyone. Small talk resumed. Matt visibly exhaled with relief.
It's just what?
This whole time I'd been fretting over whether Matt was The One for me, but I'd been actively suppressing my fear that he might be having doubts about
me
. The song “Proud Mary” ended and the band moved on to “The Way You Look Tonight,” one of my favorites.

Matt nudged me. “Let's dance.”

The shuttle back to our B&B was packed with drunk Irishmen yelling college fight songs. Matt's ex-girlfriend was in the car, too, chattering away, but Matt and I were quiet.

We almost never fought, but when we were back in our room, he got annoyed at me for using too much of his saline solution and I snapped at him for BlackBerrying in bed. Before I'd even finished brushing my teeth, he reached for the lamp on the bedside table and flicked it off with irritation.