Isobel went up to her room and got ready for bed. She lay awake for some time, replaying the date, wondering if she had sounded smart, if she had come across as funny or as too young or as just perfect or . . .
She was finally falling asleep when she heard the sound of her phone. It was Jeff, sending her another text.
MISS U,
it read.
MISS U 2,
she replied.
Isobel shimmied down under the lightweight summer covers and smiled into the darkness. This business of dating was fun, she thought. And then she fell asleep.
Chapter 21
Louise was barely out of bed two mornings later when her phone chirped like a bird, indicating a text from her former husband. It could wait. Louise didn't do social media or most other tech-related things before she had consumed a good deal of coffee. So it was not until she was showered and dressed and in the kitchen gratefully drinking her second cup of French roast that she read Andrew's text. She didn't know what she had expected to hear from him, but it wasn't this.
She was glad Bella had gone to the powder room and that the servers were busy in the breakfast room because the word she expelled was not one she would have wanted anyone to hear. Anyone but Andrew, that is.
“Bastard,” she said now. It was accurate and far cleaner than the first word that had come shooting out of her mouth.
He had a right to have sex with his wife, a right to make babies with her, but for God's sake, couldn't he break this news in a more mature way?
V PRGGRS!!
the text read.
DO OCT.
Sophisticated! What the hell had happened to the man she had fallen in love with and married, the man who would write love letters in his terrible handwriting, the man who would take the time to bake a cake from scratch for her birthday, even though the results were consistently lopsided?
Louise sighed. She would have to tell Isobel, but she really didn't want to just yet. Isobel was so happy about the attention she was getting from Jeff. Her first date had gone so well . . . It would be cruel to spoil her pleasure with yet anotherâdisappointing? difficult? disturbing?âannouncement from her father.
But maybe telling Isobel soon was the smarter thing to do. Andrew might approach his daughter on his own, and Louise didn't want Isobel finding a similarly crude message on her phone, at least not without first having been prepared.
Another cup of coffee later, she called Catherine from the porch, away from prying ears. (She had caught one of the current guests, a hulking woman of about sixty-five or so, lurking outside of the kitchen the other afternoon, her ear cocked toward the kitchen door. When asked if she needed assistance, the woman had had the nerve to take offense and mutter something about the prying proprietress. . . .)
“Hello,” her friend said.
“Guess what?” Louise responded, without a proper greeting.
Catherine sighed. “I hate when people say that.”
“My shit of an ex-husband knocked up his wife.”
“I see. Well, that is news. When is the blessed event to occur?”
“October.”
“I wonder if this has anything to do with his canceling Isobel's visit?” Catherine mused. “Either way, I'm so sorry. It's bad timing for you, isn't it, this news?”
“Bad timing for Isobel, too,” Louise said. “First he cancels her visit and now this.”
“You can't be sure Isobel will mind so terribly, can you? I mean, she wrapped her head around the fact of two stepsisters prettily easily. Then again . . .”
“Exactly. Then again, this kid is Andrew's.”
“And in some ways then, a part of Isobel. Something she shares with her father and not at all with you.”
Louise frowned. “Thank you for pointing out that all-too-obvious fact.”
“Sorry. I call them as I see them.”
“Yeah, no worries. I have to go. Thanks for listening.”
Catherine said, “Anytime,” and ended the call.
Louise went back into the kitchen. It was the time of the morning that she usually enjoyed. The inn was blessedly empty; guests had gone off on their adventures, Bella and the housecleaning staff had finished their work for the day, even Isobel was usually out with Gwen or off on an excursion of her own, novel or notebook in hand.
Today, however, Louise found the silence to be evidence of isolation, not of peace and quiet and strengthening solitude. Andrew's news had shaken her. She didn't know why, but the idea of his having a child with Vicky had never even occurred to her. “Stupid,” she pronounced to the empty kitchen.
Louise had been so intensely grateful for Isobel and Andrew had seemed so contented, too, neither had even mentioned the notion of having another child. She wondered now if that had been a big mistake.
Andrew had known about the miscarriage, of course, and had been appropriately horrified and sorry for her. He also knew that the baby had been a girl. Louise had not known this until the awful end, at three months into the pregnancy. A nurse had asked if the child had a name . . .
Had the nurse asked for the name of the father? Louise could not for the life of her remember. Father. That was a cruel joke. More like drunk, angry, barely conscious source of sperm . . .
Louise picked up the teakettle and put it down again. There was much to doâguest rooms to be inspected, bills to be paid, dirty laundry to washâbut she felt disinclined to do any of it. What she suddenly wanted to do more than anythingâand even though she hadn't had the impulse for well over a yearâwas to call Andrew and demand closure, real closure this time. . . .
With Herculean effort Louise talked herself off the ledge. She had learned the hard way that most times when you said you wanted closure, what you really wanted was an entirely different ending to the story that had already ended. Demanding closureâmore than once or twice, anywayâwas not a way to heal. It was evidence of an emphasis on your own pride and damaged ego. To demand on having the final word was, she had come to realize, to demand the right to a spoken version of the nastiness running through your head like a dirty, swollen stream, roiling with broken branches and dead fish. Soâand it had been difficultâshe had stopped pestering Andrew with calls and letters, had stopped insisting they have a final conversation when what she really meant by “conversation” was that Andrew shut up and listen to her abuse.
Closure with Ted had looked like something very, very different, Louise thought now. She had gotten a restraining order after the accident, but he had come to see her in spite of it, full of the usual meaningless apologies and excuses meant to elicit pity for a misunderstood and downtrodden man. Closure had then involved the police. And therapy, to help heal her bruised ego and come to terms with the loss of the baby. And then, of course, closure had involved the slow, painful healing of cracked and broken bones.
Not many months after Louise's fall, Ted had been arrested for punching some guy in a bar fight. He was back out on the street after that again where, exactly seven months after the date of Louise's miscarriage, he had died a particularly fitting deathâif one could say that without being totally callous. Ted Dunbar was shot and killed by the brother of a woman he had attempted to rape. The avenging brother was no prize, either. It turned out the gun he had used to kill Ted was stolen and he had had a string of drug-related arrests trailing behind him for years. Louise had no idea what had become of the man who had unknowingly removed the scourge from her life.
And that was just fine, because she had horrible people in the present to deal with, like Calvin Streep. He could be even nastier than his boss, and that took some doing. He called around noon with a series of demands that went from the merely annoying to the undeniably absurd. There had to be bottles of hand sanitizer not only in the bathrooms but also in every room of the inn. There also had to be a variety of deodorants and perfumes on hand for freshening emergencies. The groom, it seemed, was a fastidious sort. “If one was inclined to be nasty about it,” Calvin Streep cooed, “one might be tempted to say that he has a mania about personal cleanliness.” And it would be utterly divine if she could also manage to have a few professional seamstresses standing by the day of the wedding. The bride, Calvin Streep explained with faux honey in his voice, “liked her chow.”
When Louise had finished spluttering and protestingâ“Why isn't Flora Michaels handling that sort of thing?” and “But I'm only the innkeeper, not a . . . a hygienist! ”âthere was a long moment of deadly silence. Louise braced herself.
“I don't know how you're used to doing things up there in the boondocks,” Calvin Streep pronounced in icy tones, “but down here in civilization we are accustomed to getting the job done in a timely manner and exactly as the client has requested it.”
“Look, all I'm saying is that I really don't think providing dressmakers and deodorant is my responsibility. If you read my contract, you'll see thatâ”
“Are you saying you want to break your contract, Ms. Bessire? Because I'm afraid Ms. Michaels's lawyers will have something very interesting to say in response.”
“No, no,” Louise replied wearily, “I'm not breaking any contract, I'm justâ”
“Then we understand each other,” Calvin Streep said with false cheer. “Good day, Ms. Bessire.”
Louise stuffed her cell phone into the front pocket of her jeans. She wished she had an old-fashioned phone, the kind with a hard plastic receiver you could smash down onto the cradle, a statement-making kind of phone.
In lieu of that, she could only hope that Calvin Streep choked on the lemon slice in his luncheon cocktail or the olive in his four o'clock martini. For someone like him, the social embarrassment alone would be punishment enough. The thought made her smile. It was the first smile she had been able to muster all day.
Chapter 22
CITYMOUSE
Hello, Dear Readers!
The great and magnificent Diana Vreeland was quoted as saying, “The only real elegance is in the mind; if you've got that, the rest really comes from it.”
I think that what Ms. Vreeland meant by elegance of the mind (that's my slight rewording) was a habit of contemplation or consideration before action. In other words, the habit of inquiring before making a judgment.
And I think I see what she meant that everything else flows from your state of mind, from the purity of your thoughts, from the clarity of your feelings about things.
I hope I'm not totally wrong!!!!
Ms. Vreeland, the French actress Jeanne Moreau, and even the American actress Anjelica Huston, have been termed
“jolie laide”
by those who think about such things. I like this term and the idea it denotes. It's a very interesting and I think a very liberating idea.
I wish more women (and girls) would embrace and claim their own individual and possibly unconventional or irregular or off-kilter beauty against the cultural or societal standards (I think they might be separate things, though they are certainly related) of beautiful.
It has been said that Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The problem is that from the time we can understand the adults around us, we're told that beauty should look like A and not like B. So how can you learn to develop a truly personal sense of beauty when your thoughts and perceptions have been shaped and guided (some would say wrangled or coerced) by your culture's standards from the beginning? It's really hard for most people (I think) and not as hard for some (like me, and that's not bragging, it's just a fact) to take an honest look at those cultural standards (of the momentâthey're always changing over generations!) and say, “Okay, that's one way of looking at things. But hey, here's another way! And wait, here's yet another way! I think I like this third way best . . . At least, for now!”
“Knock, knock.”
Isobel looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Mom. What's up?”
“You busy?”
“Just finishing this post.” Isobel rapidly typed out a closing line. “Andâdone.”
Isobel's mother came into the room and perched on the edge of the unmade bed. “We got some news from your father this morning,” she said without preamble.
Instantly, Isobel felt wary, and afraid.
Please,
she thought,
don't let Dad be sick.
“What is it?” she asked, feeling far more trepidation than she let on in voicing those three simple words.
“Vicky is pregnant.”
Later, Isobel remembered feeling absolutely nothing in that moment. Numb. Not happy, not sad. And then she had said: “He called?”
Odd, she thought, even then, that this was her first question. And if he had called, why hadn't he asked to talk to his daughter?
“Well, no.”
“Then how did he . . . Oh, please don't tell me it was another lame e-mail.”
“Actually,” Louise said, her tone neutral, “it was a text.”
“What did it say, exactly?”
Louise shook her head. “That's not important. The message was clear.”
Isobel jumped up from the desk chair and paced through the clutter on the floor. “He's such a coward!”
And,
she added to herself,
he certainly has no elegance of mind.
Louise declined to respond.
“I mean, he didn't even have the nerve to tell you he was cheating!”
“To be fair,” Louise replied calmly, “he said he had planned on telling me soon.”
“Yeah, right. I believe that.”
“Can't you give your father the benefit of the doubt?”
“No,” Isobel said emphatically, throwing her hands into the air for emphasis. “I can't.”
“Anyway,” her mother went on, “we should be happy for Vicky. We should wish her a healthy pregnancy and birth.”
“Of course,” Isobel agreed, however grudgingly. “Do we have to send a card?”
“No. But it would be nice. If you like, I'll buy one and sign it from us both.”
“Okay. You can buy it but I'll sign my own name.”
It's not Vicky's fault that my father is a jerk,
Isobel thought.
It's not her fault she got fooled. Smart women get fooled all the time. Look at what had happened to my mother all those years ago. And look at what had happened to her in the more recent past . . . Really,
Isobel thought glumly,
it's a miracle anyone ever trusts anyone. But that is negative thinking and unproductive and . . .
“The child will be your half sibling,” her mother was saying. “I know that's big.”
Isobel hadn't yet taken in that interesting fact. Now, she did. Wow. This child would be a flesh-and-blood relative. They would share DNA. They might even look alike. “Yeah,” she said, her tone deliberately light and careless, “but it's okay. I probably won't even see him or her more than a few times in the next twenty years. I'm sure I won't be invited to birthday parties and graduations, let alone the wedding.”
“Isobel . . .”
Isobel sighed. “Sorry, Mom. I can't help but feel a bitâgrumpy. The situation is just a bitâweird.”
“Yeah. It is. And don't be sorry.”
“It's just not something I was expecting. Though I guess it's perfectly normal. People get married and have babies.”
“Yeah,” her mother said. “A lot of them do. Look, are you going to be okay? I should get back to work. Calvin Streep has issued a demand from the bride for hand soaps in the shape of lobsters and clamshells, and I have absolutely no idea if such things even exist. Though they're probably for sale in some awful tourist shop.”
“Yeah,” Isobel said. “I'll be fine.”
“You sure?”
Isobel managed what she thought was a reassuring smile. “Sure.”
Her mother kissed her cheek and left the room.
Isobel sank onto her bed. Her mind was racing; her emotions were a muddle. Where to begin sorting out this news and all it might mean for her?
She had never given much thought as to why her parents hadn't had more children. Now, she wondered. It might have been for any number of reasons, all very normal, like economics (though her father did make a lot of money) or health issues (had her mother had a really bad pregnancy?).
But for some reasonâVicky's demand? Or his own desire? âher father was having another child now. A child of his middle age. Isobel guessed that she was no longer child enough for him. “The thrill of me has worn off,” she said quietly to the otherwise empty bedroom. “Imagine that.”
And then she thought of Jeff, of his killer smile, of how he had sent her a birthday card back when he had hardly even known her, of how he had taken her to such a pretty place for dinner. Suddenly, she felt very anxious to see him, and soon.
And then, as if summoned by her need, her phone rang. It was Jeff.
Boy
, Isobel thought, smiling to herself.
Summoned?
She was even more of a romantic than she had realized!
“Hey,” she said.
“You sound upset,” Jeff replied. “What's wrong?”
She was shockedâpleasantlyâthat he could tell from a one-word greeting that something was bothering her. But still, she hesitated to tell him what.
“Oh, nothing,” she demurred. “Just something with my dad. It's all right.”
“Are you sure you don't want to talk about it? You know I'm here for you, right?”
Isobel didn't answer immediately. They had only known each other a very short time. How could Jeff be sure he wanted to be there for her when he hardly knew her? Then again, it was an awfully nice thing to say.
“Yes,” she said. “I do know. It means a lot to me. Okay, I just found out that my dad and his wife are having a baby.”
“Good for telling me,” Jeff said heartily. “No secrets, okay? You need to understand what you mean to me. You need to know that you can rely on me for anything.”
“Okay.”
“Good. Well, I've gotta go. I promised my dad I'd look over some reports for him. Good night, Izzy.”
Isobel tried to hold her tongue, but the tongue was a slippery thing. “Um,” she said, “I kind of don't like nicknames.” Actually, she hated them except in the blogosphere and even then, not for herself.
Jeff laughed lightly. “Really? But you're such an Izzy. It's soâbubbly. So full of life.”
Isobel thought about that for a few seconds. At the moment she certainly didn't feel bubbly or full of life. But mostly she was a happy person; pretty much anyone who knew her even a little could attest to that.
“Well,” she said, conquering her final bit of reluctance, “I guess it's okay.”
“Good. It'll be my special name for you. No one else will be allowed to call you Izzy.”
No one else would want to, Isobel thought, but then, when she had hung up, she felt ungrateful. Jeff cared about her. He had the right to give her a nickname that pleased him. It was the least she could do for her boyfriend.
Boyfriend!
That word still sounded so odd. Isobel Amelia Bessire had a boyfriend. Whoa.
It was almost an hour later when Isobel, sitting at her computer, realized that Jeff hadn't actually said anything about the news that her father was having another child. But that was okay. Lots of guys were really bad talking about emotions. Guys liked to fix problems; they saw emotions as puzzles to be solved. They were totally misguided about that, but there wasn't much women could do but accept their wrongheadedness as inherent and unchangeable. It wasn't cause for anger!
Isobel got up from her desk and looked into the mirror that hung over the dresser.
“Hello, Izzy,” she said to her familiar reflection.
And she felt only slightly embarrassed and only a little bit like a stranger to herself.
It was the teeniest bit exciting.