He sat at the table, Isobel standing at his side, and she showed him the new post. Isobel read the important part over his shoulder.
“And here now is something I want very much to share with my Dear Readersâthis lovely photograph of my lovely boyfriend, Jeff Otten. He's a member of one of the very important and philanthropic local families and in my opinion (and in the opinion of everyone else here in Ogunquit!) a super nice and kind and smart person!”
He finished reading in a few quick seconds. And then he frowned up at her.
“You should have asked me if I was okay with this.”
Isobel's stomach dropped. She shook her head. “But you told me you wanted me to mention you . . .”
“Did I give you permission to say anything you wanted about me?” Jeff snapped.
The word
permission
struck Isobel like a slap. Were adults allowed to give each other or to withhold from each other permission? Other than bosses and army officers and priests and rabbis and other authority figures like that?
“But it's nothing bad . . .” she protested feebly.
“And this picture. When did you take this picture of me?”
“Well, actually, Gwen took it. It's from when we were hanging around the other day.”
Jeff jabbed the screen with his finger. “She had no right to take my picture. Who does she think she is? She invaded my privacy. I shouldâ”
“Wait, Jeff, I asked her to take it! It's not her fault, really.”
Jeff was silent for a moment. And then he said, “Can you take it down? The entire post?”
“The whole thing? But I only mention you in a few lines.”
“Isobel, I want you to take it down.”
Isobel felt the tiniest thread of fear but brushed it aside. “Well, all right,” she said.
“Now. Before I leave.”
“I'm sorry, Jeff,” she said, hurrying to take a seat at the table. “I didn't mean toâDid I offend you somehow? I don't understand.”
“You don't need to understand. You just need to accept that I don't want that post out there.”
Without further protest, Isobel took down the post, Jeff now standing over her as if, she thought, to be sure she did what he had asked.
“Now was that hard? Thank you.” Jeff bent and kissed her forehead. “I've got to go.”
Isobel tried to smile. “Okay. Does your dad need you at the office?”
“Yeah. I've been working on some important reports he wants right away.”
“Okay. Oh, before I forget. Gwen's parents got us free tickets to see
The Pirates of Penzance
at the Playhouse this Saturday night. They're supposedly really good seats, too. And Gwen said they could probably get another two if you think your parents would want to come.”
“This Saturday? No,” Jeff said, “we can't go. I'm taking you to hear a band at the Dolphin Striker in Portsmouth. Besides, I'm not into musical theater.”
Isobel hesitated. It was the first she had heard of plans to go to Portsmouth, and Gwen's dads had gone to the trouble of getting tickets, but the last thing she wanted to do was upset Jeff again with another silly blunder. “Oh,” she said finally. “Okay. What about your parents, then?”
Jeff laughed. “Izzy, really? My parents don't bother with local theater. If they want to see a professional show, they go to Boston or New York.”
“But the Ogunquit Playhouse gets some really big names, likeâ”
“Izzy. I said no. Look, I really have to run. I'll check in later.”
He left through the kitchen door. Isobel still sat at the table, laptop closed in front of her. She looked down at the sparkly bracelet on her wrist and frowned. Were all men soâso fickle and sensitive?
Isobel rubbed her eyes. They felt tired. She felt tired.
She wished she could talk to someone about what had just happened with Jeff. Her mom was beyond busy, and she had told Isobel that she hadn't been sleeping well lately. She would try her best to concentrate on what Isobel was saying, she was always good that way, but to go to her mother about something so minorâand it was minor, after all, Jeff's being sensitive (that was a more accurate word than
fickle
)âwould be unfair.
And she could forget about talking to Gwen. Gwen didn't like Jeff, and Isobel was sure that Gwen wouldn't give Jeff's side of the misunderstandingâit hadn't been a fight, really, not even an argumentâproper consideration. “It's all his fault,” she would say immediately. “He was being unreasonable. You did nothing wrong.” It was great to have someone unconditionally on your side, except when it wasn't.
Catherine, however, might be a good person to ask for advice. She was smart and sensible and in her own admission had “been around the block,” an old-fashioned expression Isobel found hilarious. But Catherine might feel weird about keeping their conversation from Louise, even though Isobel would assure her that she wasn't trying to hide anything from her mother.
No. She foresaw potential messiness if she involved Catherine.
As for her friends back in Massachusetts . . . Though some of them kept in touch through CityMouse, the nature of her relationship with them had changed. What intimacy there had been was pretty much gone. That had probably been inevitable. Sometimes when you didn't see a person on a daily basis, so much of what made the friendship real was lost. It wasn't always that way; lots of people maintained long-distance friendships over a long period of time. But maybe the friendships she had made with those girls back in Massachusetts hadn't been as strong as she thought they had been. Well, she had been a child then, really. And things always changed. The only thing in life you could count on was not being able to count on something or someone forever . . .
Isobel got up from the table and took her laptop up to her bedroom. Once there, she locked the door behind her and lay down on the bed.
She was determined to figure this out for herself. Adults didn't go running to someone else for advice about every single little glitch in their daily lives. Adults looked their problems square in the eye and wrestled them to the ground. Like what her mother had done when her father had left them. She hadn't sat around whining. She got on with her life. Like Isobel would get on with hers.
Chapter 33
“You might be interested in this.”
“What?”
Louise and Isobel were in the kitchen the following day. While her daughter grazed through a bag of SunChips (
ah, youth,
Louise thought enviously), Louise sorted through her collection of plastic food storage containers and lids. She didn't know how it happened but at least once a week a lid went missing. It was very frustrating.
“I bumped into the owner of that cute little boutique on Beach Street this morning.”
“The woman with that adorable little white dog I want to eat with a spoon?” Isobel asked.
“Yeah. Anyway, she told me she'd been chatting with Sally Otten at their church after services last Sunday and Mrs. Otten told her that Michael, her older son, the one who lives in Baselâ”
“Yeah, yeah, what about him?” Isobel demanded.
“Patience. Well, word is that he was promoted to president of something or other at his companyâsorry, Paula Murphy isn't the most coherent of storytellersâand that he won an award from some prestigious council on ethics in the pharmaceutical industry. Again, the details were a bit fuzzy.”
“Still,” Isobel said. “Wow.”
“That's what I said. I'm surprised Jeff didn't mention Michael's latest triumphs to you.”
“I'm not. Jeff told me that he and his brother aren't close.”
Louise nodded. “I guess I can see that. They are seven years apart. That difference doesn't matter much between adults, but growing up they must have lived in virtually different families.”
“Yeah.”
“And it can be more difficult to bridge that gap when both siblings are the same sex. There's competition and all . . . Maybe Jeff and his brother will grow closer later on in life. Maybe once they get married and have kids.”
“Yeah, who knows? Guys are hard to figure out sometimes.”
Louise raised her eyebrows. “Tell me about it. Hey, is anything troubling you? Is everything okay with Jeff?”
“Oh yeah, everything's fine. It's justâ”
“Where's the manager!” It was a bellowing demand, not a question, and it had come from the front hall.
Louise put her hand to her forehead and rubbed. “Oh crap, it's Mr. MacCready again. Really, that man can't go five minutes without a complaint. If it's not the butter being too hard to spread without shredding his fresh-baked muffin, it's the toilet paper being too harsh for his precious you-know-what.”
“The toilet paper, huh?”
Louise shrugged. “Slight exaggeration. Wait, you were about to say something. âIt's just' what? Godzilla can wait for five minutes.”
Isobel laughed. “If I was going to say something I totally forgot what! You'd better go tend to Godzilla, Mom. Creatures like that tend to make a big mess when they're upset.”
“You're right. Once more into the breach . . .” She hurried off to deal with Mr. MacCready and his latest unreasonable demand.
Later that day, after The MacCready had been pacified (the sprig of fresh lavender on his bed had irritated his sinuses and he wanted new sheets immediately) and the latest wedding crisis had been temporarily wrestled into order (no, it was unlikely that the inn would be able to hire a local lobsterman to display his boat in the backyard for the amusement of the guests), Louise found herself lounging on the front porch, enjoying a precious few moments of leisure. There was a slight breeze in the air, and Louise thought she could smell the salt of the ocean in it.
She thought back to her interrupted conversation with Isobel earlier. She felt sure Isobel would talk to her if anything really important was troubling her. Since Isobel was old enough to understand, Louise had stressed the importance of communication without reservation or shame or the fear of punishment. Certainly, choosing not to tell a few relatively minor incidents to her mother (was the gift of an expensive bracelet an “incident”?) didn't mean that Isobel would choose not to tell a big worry or a serious fear.
Suddenly, Louise remembered being in the car that day with Isobel and pointing out Jeff at the garage. Isobel had responded as if she had never seen Jeff before, but she had, she had met him in town days before . . .
Wait a minute
, Louise thought.
What had happened when?
She had had so much on her mind in recent weeks, days tended to run into one another; just last Wednesday she had thought it was Thursday and had taken the garbage to the curb in anticipation of a pickup. She wasn't at all sure she could she rely on her memory of the sequence of events involving Isobel and Jeff. She certainly hoped she was confusing the time line, because if she wasn't, then she had caught Isobel (albeit after the fact) in an outright lie.
Louise was distracted from this unpleasant thought by a guest pulling up to the inn and climbing out of her car. Ms. Jackson was a large woman in every senseâtall and broad and solidly built. Her smile and her good nature were as big as her physical self.
Louise got up and opened the door of the inn for her. “Hello, Ms. Jackson,” she said. “How was your afternoon?”
The woman beamed. “Wonderful. And there's nothing like spending the day in the sun to whet one's appetite. I'm absolutely famished!”
Louise smiled and followed her inside. “Well, there are some cookies in the parlor . . .”
“Excellent!” Ms. Jackson exclaimed, making a beeline for that room. “They should hold me over until dinner!”
And a cookie wouldn't kill me, either,
Louise thought, her worries about Isobel flown.
Chapter 34
CITYMOUSE
Hello, Everyone!
Recently, I ran across a quote from Anjelica Huston (online, of course, where so many of us tend to live too much of our lives) about the inimitable Diana Vreeland. She said that Ms. Vreeland “. . . made it okay for women to be outlandish and extraordinary.”
I don't know enough about the social history of the last century to say if Diana Vreeland was the most important influence in encouraging women to be outlandish and extraordinary, but even if she was only one of many strong women who helped less-strong women be proud individuals, well, that's a big feather in her cap!
Again, I am reminded of the term
jolie laide,
used in reference to both Anjelica Huston and Diana Vreeland. How much better to be
jolie laide
in mind and spirit, too, than to have a cookie-cutter personality and character and mind-set!
Now, here's a photo Gwen took about a week back of a woman we spotted the last time we were down in Portsmouth. The womanâwho was visiting the East Coast from southern Californiaâwas very amenable to our taking her picture. Her name was (is) Roberta Worthington and she told us that the lime-green-with-splashes-of-black-all-over-them skinny jeans she was wearing were actually a pair she had bought way back in the eighties (!) and pulled out once a summer every single year since. Fun tidbit: The first time she wore the jeans was to a Duran Duran concert!!! Can you imagine?? Her slouchy black blazer was a purchase from the early nineties and her bagâ
fantastique!
âwas “just a little Louis Vuitton thingie” she had picked up at a vintage shop about ten years ago. In short, nothing but her T-shirt and underwear (she told us this; we are not impolite enough to ask about someone's undergarments!) were new! Even her slim-line loafers (no socks necessary) dated from 2005. Clearly, this woman takes very, very good care of her clothes and never gains or loses more than a pound or two.
Well, I must run. Until next time!
Isobel posted, closed the laptop, and sighed. She didn't feel outlandish or extraordinary at all. She felt dumb. And sad. And she had been feeling dumb and sad since the post incident with Jeff. She felt sure he was still disappointed in her for ignoring him on her blog, and then for saying the wrong things about him.
The situation with her father and Vicky wasn't helping her mood, either. The last bit of correspondence she had received from the new Bessire family had been a brief and perfunctorily pleasant e-mail from her father and later that same day, a joke forwarded by Vicky, something about a husband and a wife and a homeless woman. Isobel hadn't found it in the least bit funny.
Victoria Bessire. It was odd to be sharing a name with a stranger. Bessire was her name, her mom's name, her dad's name, and now, it was Vicky's name, too. And it would be the name of the baby who was due to make his or her appearance in October.
Hmm. Isobel thought that old argument about patriarchal dominance might be worth revisiting when she was eventually out on her own. She wondered if Diana Vreeland had been born with that last name or if it was her husband's. Had she even been married? She would have to look that up. Someday. She guessed it really didn't matter.
Isobel got up from the chair and began to pace through the stuff accumulated on the floor of her room. If only things could go back to the way they used to be, when she and her mom spent all of their time together and were a real family, because yeah, even when it was just the two of them they were a real family. A family wasn't about the number of people in it or about whether the parents were both male or both female or one of each sex. A family was about the connection. That was everything.
Still, life had been so much less complicated before the divorce. And beforeâshe had to admit itâbefore Jeff. But if Isobel was having a hard time adjusting to this new life, her mother seemed to be thriving and happy, in spite of the challenges she faced with the inn. And Isobel was glad for her mother, really. And at some point her mother would probably want to date. She was young and attractive and smart and good. She deserved someone just as wonderful.
But what if her mother got married and took the guy's name? Isobel would be the only Bessire in the new family . . .
Isobel sighed. Growing up had never seemed particularly difficult until now. But maybe that was because, until her relationship with Jeff, she had never really been challenged, like an adult is challenged. With an adult relationship came responsibility, everybody knew that. It wasn't all gifts and candlelight. Some of it, maybe a lot of it, was the difficult work of getting along on a daily basis, dealing with moods and crises and the flu and bills that couldn't always be paid on time.
Adult relationships were about love; love was the only thing that made all the difficult parts of a relationship worthwhile. And Jeff hadn't yet told her that he loved her . . . Well, Isobel thought, guys could be notoriously bad at expressing their real emotions. Everyone knew that.
Desultorily, Isobel got dressed. She and Jeff and Gwen were going to the movies. Isobel did not expect to have fun. It was difficult work, juggling the needs of two people who despised each other.
Â
It was not a movie Jeff should have wanted to see, a story about a middle-aged woman finding true love after the sudden death of her longtime husband. Isobel had planned to see it with Gwen, but when she had mentioned her plans to Jeff, he had invited himself along. Gwen had not been thrilled, especially when she learned that he insisted on driving, but she hadn't cancelled, either.
Once in the mall theater, Isobel had made to sit between her best friend and her boyfriend, but with a quick maneuver, Jeff took that place instead. He had whispered to Isobel almost the entire time, which had at first seemed fun and then, pretty quickly, had seemed rude and embarrassing. Besides, how could she concentrate on the movie with someone talking in her ear?
But Isobel hadn't known how to stop it. She didn't know whether it had bothered Gwen, who said nothing about Jeff's whispering once the movie was over and they were strolling aimlessly through the mall, Jeff, once again, between them.
“Did Izzy show you the bracelet I gave her?” Jeff said suddenly.
“Which bracelet?” Gwen asked, turning to see Isobel beyond her boyfriend.
“The one she's wearing,” Jeff answered.
Isobel felt oddly embarrassed. “I'm sure you've seen it,” she said lightly. “I've been wearing it every day.”
“No,” Gwen said. “I haven't.” Isobel thought she said it sharply. “Let me see.”
Isobel held out her arm.
Gwen was silent for a long moment. Her expression was bland. “It's very pretty,” she said finally.
“White gold and diamonds,” Jeff said.
“Very nice.”
Jeff's phone indicated that he was wanted. “Sorry,” he said, already walking off a bit. “Gotta take this.”
“Of course I'd seen the bracelet,” Gwen said the moment Jeff was out of earshot. “I just assumed it was something your parents had given you ages ago. Why didn't you tell me Jeff gave it to you? It's kind of a big deal. Too big,” she added.
Isobel had no idea how to answer Gwen's question. Not really. Maybe she had said nothing to Gwen for the same reason she hadn't mentioned the bracelet to her mother until she had noticed it on her own. Still, what was that reason?
Lamely, she said, “It's not too big a deal.”
Jeff returned before Gwen could argue her point.
“Everything okay?” Isobel asked.
“Yeah. Why shouldn't it be?”
Isobel shrugged. They continued to walk on through the mall, past shops crammed with cheap plastic accessories for girls and cheap plastic sports paraphernalia for boys.
“Hey, Izzy,” Jeff said suddenly. “You should get a tattoo.”
Isobel looked at the window display of the store outside of which Jeff had come to a halt. There was an assortment of human skulls. Some were carved of stone; others looked very much like plaster casts of the real thing. There were framed photos of customers' tattoos. One guy's back was entirely covered by an elaborate image of a gorilla standing on his legs and beating his chest with his fists. Someone's forearm was simply black, as if it had been dunked into a vat of permanent ink. Isobel looked to the person at the counter inside. She couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, not that it mattered. The person was wearing a black, short-sleeved T-shirt and dark, baggy jeans; on his or her head was a bandanna and in his or her ears were massive plugs instead of regular earrings. What was visible of skin was entirely covered in ink, some of it red and yellow.
“Tattoos aren't really my thing,” she said, turning away. “I mean, I've got nothing against anyone who has a tattoo, and a lot of tattoos are really awesome, but . . .”
“Then, come on, but what?” Jeff prodded. “What do you mean, not your thing? Are you afraid of needles? Is that it, Izzy, afraid of a little pain?”
Gwen's lips tightened. “Pain is not pretty,” she said. “And infection is no joke.”
“Do you have a tattoo?” Isobel asked Jeff, dodging the needle issue (of course she was afraid of pain, any normal person was!), and hoping to erase Gwen's last provocative comments from the record.
Jeff grinned. “You'll see it soon enough.”
His response made her blush. (Gwen, behind Jeff's back, rolled her eyes.) Jeff had been getting more insistent, like what had happened in the movie theater, not the whispering but the . . . She wouldn't think about it now.
“Come on,” Jeff went on. “Something small and meaningful. Something personal.”
“Like what?” Isobel didn't know why she was allowing this conversation to go on. But she didn't know how to stop it, either.
You could just say, “I don't want to talk about this anymore,”
she told herself. But maybe that would be rude or unnecessarily dramatic.
“Like your favorite flower,” Jeff answered. “Or,” he added with another grin, “the name of your favorite guy.”
“But they're soâpermanent.” Isobel laughed nervously. “I'm always changing my mind. One day Oreos are my favorite cookie, the next day it's Chips Ahoy!”
Jeff sighed in that way Isobel had come to recognize as his I'm-trying-to-be-patient-with-you way. “Look, Izzy, the point is to make a commitment. The point is to take the plunge, know who you are, go for it, and not look back.”
“She knows who she is,” Gwen snapped. “She's a person who changes her mind a lot.”
Jeff's face flushed, and Isobel thought she saw his mouth tighten and twitch in a way she did not like at all.
Oh,
she thought,
please don't let them fight!
“I'll tell you what,” she said quickly. “I'll think about it, okay? Besides, I have to check with my mother before getting a tattoo. I promised her a long time ago that I would.” She had promised no such thing. She had always been against getting a tattoo. But neither Jeff nor Gwen said another word. The lie had worked, at least for the moment.
“Let's go home,” she said now. “Okay?”
Neither of them objected. Neither of them spoke again, either. Half an hour later, Jeff pulled up outside the Blueberry Bay Inn.
“I'll take Gwen home, then I'll come back,” he said.
“No thanks,” Gwen said quickly, getting out of the backseat. “I'm going to stick around for a while. Maybe stay for dinner.”
Jeff gave Isobel a look she couldn't quite interpret, except to know that he wanted her to get rid of Gwen. But Isobel could say nothing. She suddenly felt utterly exhausted. Finally, she opened her mouth, to say what she had no idea, but Jeff cut her off.
“Then I'm out of here. I'll check in with you later, Izzy.”
“Okay,” Isobel said, climbing out of the car.
Jeff took off, perhaps a bit too quickly, Isobel thought. How could she find out if Jeff had ever gotten a speeding ticket? Was that sort of thing public knowledge?
Gwen went up onto the porch while Isobel greeted a guest returning from a day at the beach. “There should be tea and cookies in the parlor now, Mr. Browning,” she said.
Mr. Browning smiled. “That sounds lovely,” he said. He clumped up the porch stairs, loaded down with the accoutrements of serious relaxingâa folding lounge, a cooler, and a duffel large enough to carry towels, a change of clothes, and several hardcover novels.
“No one goes to the beach anymore without lugging half of their possessions with them,” Isobel said, attempting a smile. She sat in the rocker next to the one in which Gwen had sunk. She felt a bit awkward. She just knew Gwen was going to quiz her about Jeff.
“Mmm,” Gwen said. “Look, why does Jeff always want you to be someone you're not?”
And there it was. “What are you talking about?” she said, more to postpone having to give a real answer than because she was genuinely puzzled by Gwen's question.
“I don't know, like that whole thing with the tattoo. He kept pushing you even though you told him you don't like tattoos and don't want to get one.”
“Oh, come on,” Isobel said, wearily. “He was just kidding around.”
“I don't think he was. I think he was dead serious. I think he very much wanted you to get his name inked on your arm. Or someplace lessâobvious.”
Isobel didn't reply.
“And then that time when you told me you really didn't want to go to that party and he pretty much dragged you along and . . .”
Isobel forced a laugh. “He did not âdrag' me along. I changed my mind.”
And he spoke to my mother beforehand,
Isobel added silently.
I had no choice but to go. At least, it felt like I had no choice.
“And I had a pretty good time after all,” she added. That was a lie.