Today Will Be Different

Eleanor is the 49-year-old protagonist of the novel. She was the animation director on the successful Fox show Looper Wash and worked on other artistic projects, including the autobiographical graphic novel The Flood Girls, a project that is on at the beginning of the novel. Though she is highly successful and respected in her professional life, her personal life is dysfunctional and unbalanced. She does not spend as much time with her husband and son as she would like, and she frequently makes impulsive decisions that create problems for herself and others. She is determined to work on becoming a better person, but Joe’s disappearance and reminders of her estranged sister, Ivy, cause her to relapse into old and unhealthy habits.

Eleanor’s trauma from losing her mother to lung cancer and being neglected by her father in her youth has made her deeply afraid of being abandoned and betrayed by those she loves. She believes that her father’s alcohol addiction has defined her upbringing and her present life, making her adept at detecting dishonesty in others and deeply distrustful of others. Her uncertainty and doubt cause her to depend on Joe’s certainty in everything, which she sees as a comfort when she is stressed and confused about things. When she consults Joe to relieve her confusion in the novel and he is not there, she starts to feel worried and angry, feeling the distrust stemming from her father’s neglect arising once again. Joe’s conversion to Christianity and his new openness to ambiguity also frustrate her because she depended on his certainty amid her mental chaos.

Eleanor’s greatest source of grief and trauma is her estrangement from her beloved younger sister, Ivy, whom she essentially raised after their mother died. Eleanor and Ivy had always been close, even when they became adults, and Ivy’s sudden change to alienating and distancing herself from Eleanor upon starting a relationship and marriage with Bucky causes Eleanor to become deeply hurt and angry. This pain and anger drive her to cut Ivy out of her life, which results in her internalizing the pain of her estrangement and having the unconscious grief come out in impulsive behaviors like stealing a mother’s lanyard at Timby’s school because the baby blocks on it spell out the same name as that of Ivy’s daughter. Her belief that she is purely in the right and that Bucky is the villain who corrupted Ivy fuels her anger and pain, and it is when she realizes that many of the things Bucky told her are true that she realizes that she is partly responsible for Ivy’s estrangement and that she must work on herself. This later gives her hope that she can possibly restore her relationship with Ivy.

Like Joe, Eleanor grew up Catholic and rejected it and all organized religion as a child, becoming an atheist. She and Joe bonded over their disdain for religion, and Joe’s assertion of knowledge without religion is something that gives her peace because of her dysfunction and impulsivity. When she learns that Joe has become a born-again Christian who embraces the mysteries and ambiguities of religious faith, she feels betrayed. However, after her attack by a guard dog and hospitalization, she realizes that while Joe is a Christian now, he still is the good, intelligent man she married. She also sees an illustration of him that she created for him framed on the wall of the hospital room, and he tells her a story about Thomas Jefferson’s faith that she understands and likes. These things make her realize that she does not mind him being religious and wants to go to Scotland with him so that he can study divinity. Her full acceptance of Joe and disregard of her biases allow her to improve her marriage to Joe and grow as a person, helping their marriage thrive amid change.

Throughout the novel, Eleanor realizes that she deeply values her marriage to Joe and wants to provide happy memories for Timby and be the supportive and stable parent her mother was for her. She decides to be more hands-on and present in her relationships, as well as hold onto hope of restoring a relationship with her sister, Ivy. Her work on improving her relationships gives her renewed stability and motivation to be kinder and more polite in her conversations with others, even using her advice constructively and positively to help others, like with Alonzo.