The Last of the Stanfields by Marc Levy
“There are three sides to every story:
your side, my side, and the truth.
And no one is lying.”
Robert Evans
1
ELEANOR-RIGBY
October 2016, London
My name is Eleanor-Rigby Donovan.
The first name may ring a bell. My parents were huge fans of the Beatles and the song “Eleanor Rigby.”
Back in the 1960s (my father hates it when I point out that he grew up in the previous century), rock fans were split into two very distinct groups: you were either a Rolling Stones fan or a Beatles fan. For reasons beyond me, it was inconceivable to like both.
My parents were seventeen when they got together for the first time, in a London pub not too far from Abbey Road. All eyes in the room were glued to an international broadcast of a Beatles concert, everyone singing along to “All You Need Is Love.” With seven hundred million viewers looking on, the moment marked the beginning of a decades-long love story.
And yet they fell out of touch just a few years later. Life, always full of surprises, reunited them under rather odd circumstances in their late twenties. And so it was that I was conceived a full thirteen years after their first kiss. They sure took their time.
My father’s sense of humor knows no limits—it’s how he won my mother’s heart, as the story goes—and so, when registering my birth, he decided to call me Eleanor-Rigby.
“We listened to that song around the clock while we were creating you,” he confided to me one day in explanation.
I had absolutely no interest in knowing this particular fact and even less in picturing it. As for my childhood, I could go on and on about how miserable it was, but that would be a lie, and I’m a terrible liar. Like every family, mine is dysfunctional. Here as well, we find two distinct groups: families who admit it, and families who don’t and go on pretending. Our family falls into the first category: dysfunctional but happy, perhaps too happy at times. It was impossible to say anything serious at home without being made fun of. There’s an overriding will amongst my kin to take everything lightly, even when the consequences are serious. And, I have to admit, while I was growing up it often drove me up the wall. Each of my parents insisted the other was responsible for the lunacy that permeated all conversations, meals, and gatherings throughout my childhood. And I wasn’t the only one driven crazy, either. My big brother, Michel (born twenty minutes before me), and my little sister, Maggie, had to deal with it as well.
Maggie—named for “Maggie Mae,” the seventh song on the A-side of Let It Be—has a strong personality and a heart bigger than anything, and yet she’s completely selfish when it comes to the little things. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. If you have a serious problem, she’ll always be there for you. Don’t feel like getting into a car at four in the morning with two buddies too drunk to drive? She’ll steal Dad’s keys, hop into his old Austin, and drive all the way across town in her pajamas to pick you up. Then, she’ll drop your friends off at their doorstep, but only after giving them a good scolding, of course, despite the fact that they’re two years older than she is.
But try grabbing a slice of toast from her plate at breakfast and she’ll give your forearm something to remember. Don’t hold your breath for her to leave you a drop of milk in the fridge either. Why my parents have always treated her like a princess is a mystery. From the start, Mum harbored an unhealthy level of admiration for her—the baby—and thought she was destined for great things. Maggie was going to be a lawyer or a doctor, or even both, savior of widow and orphan alike, eradicating world hunger. In short, she was the golden child, and the entire family had to keep watch over her, and her future.
My twin brother, Michel, is named for the seventh song on the A-side of Rubber Soul—though on the album, of course, it’s Michelle, the female version of the name. The radiographer didn’t see his willy during the ultrasound. Apparently, the two of us were too closely bound for the doctor to make it out. Errare humanum est. Then: big surprise during the delivery. But the name had already been chosen, and changing it was out of the question. Dad simply dropped the l and the e, and my brother spent the first three years of his life in a bedroom with pink walls and an Alice in Wonderland mural, and the rest of his life explaining to everyone that he wasn’t French. One visit to a shortsighted radiographer can yield some truly unexpected consequences.
Those whose high level of education rivals their own hypocrisy tend to fidget uncomfortably as they explain that Michel is “special.” Prejudice is the prerogative of people convinced they know everything. The world Michel inhabits is blind to violence, pettiness, hypocrisy, injustice, and malice. To doctors, his world is full of disorder. But for Michel, every last thing and every last thought has its proper place. His world is so spontaneous and sincere that I sometimes think we’re the ones who are “special.” These same doctors have never been able to confirm whether it’s Asperger’s or if Michel is just different. Maybe the truth isn’t that simple.
Michel is an incredibly sweet man, a true wellspring of common sense and an endless source of laughter. If I’m the terrible liar, Michel’s weakness is that he can’t keep from telling the truth, saying the first thing that pops into his head. Michel waited until he was four years old to start speaking. While queuing up in the supermarket, he opened his mouth to ask a woman in a wheelchair where she’d found her “carriage.” Overcome with emotion at hearing her son finally utter a complete sentence, Mum swept him into her arms for a kiss before turning beetroot red with embarrassment. And that was only the beginning . . .