Chapter 20
CITYMOUSE
Greetings, My Friends!
I am currently having a problem with black.
Now, let me clarify that rather startling statement. It's not that I don't like black. In lots of sartorial circumstances and fashion panic situations, black is the best if not the only way to go. Black leather trench coat? No-brainer. Black satin clutch?
De rigueur!
Black patent leather Mary Janes? Every girl should have a pair by the age of five. Little black dress? Enough said.
No, the nature of my problem with black isâand this is going to sound weirdâit makes me want to vomit.
This happened once with forest green. I'd always liked forest green, and then one day about four years ago, out of the blue (ha! It's funny how we use colors in our expressions, like, “I'm in the pink,” and “the company is in the red,” and calling someone who is cowardly “yellow,” and saying you “feel blue” when you feel sad), I looked at something forest green (it was a wool coat of LouLou's) and I felt downright sick to my stomach. It was the oddest sensation. A color made me want to throw up. A nice color, too, not something harsh or overly bright or false; a negative reaction to a color like that would be understandable. That aversion, that gut reaction against forest green, lasted for about a year, and then, boom, just like that, it was over and I could look at the color again and say, “Wow, that's really restful and soothing.”
I hope this troublesome problem with black goes away quickly. I mean, black is kind of hard to avoidâit's everywhere! I even had to ask Gwen if she could not wear this great black cotton sweater thingie she wears a lot, at least for a while, until my tummy feels better in the vicinity of its inkiness.
Sigh. I guess I am an odd duck!
And now a word about something really important. Yes, more important than black and my problem with it. (I mock myself.)
I want to go on record as saying that I am one hundred percent with the Photoshopping protesters. No, make that one thousand percent.
A person might assumeâand be forgiven for itâthat someone interested in style might also be a fan or advocate of falsity and pretense, but that person would be dead wrong about me.
I believe in and try to promote (on this blog and in my daily life) authenticity and genuine self-expression. I believe in the importance of individuality. Difference and variety are the spices of life.
Look, I'm no psychological expert, so I can't say if looking at images of perfect girls makes imperfect girls anorexic or otherwise damaged, but come on, it certainly doesn't help! Sheesh!
I'm aware (and you probably are, too) of websites that promote extreme thinnessâthinspiration sites, I hear they're calledâand other websites that go so far as to promote anorexia, which is a disease and a nasty one at that, as a goal, a choice one might really want to make. Where do I begin to express my dismay! To choose to be ill is an illness. How can people not understand that? It's all just too sad.
And on a related noteâwhen will the media (i.e., all of us by our consuming it and so, allowing itâand I am as guilty as anyone) stop harassing women about their looks NO MATTER WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE? For example, and this drives me nuts, a woman is supposed to be thin we are told, no matter her age. But when a fifty-some-odd-year-old thin woman like Meg Ryan or a forty-some-odd-year-old woman like Sarah Jessica Parker is torn apart because the veins in her arms and hands are prominent, she's blasted for that, too! Damned if we do and damned if we don't! We can't win!
I am tearing my hair out. To eat a cheeseburger or notâthat shouldn't be the most burning question a woman faces!
But maybe we can win. Think about how it would feel to winâto be proudly who and what you are, societal pressures be damned! (More use of the word
damned
. . .)
Deep breath. I'm coming down off the soapbox now and saying farewell for the moment. Dear Readersâbe true to yourselves!!!
Isobel posted the blog and closed her laptop. In spite of her determination to keep autobiographical elements on the blog to a minimum, for about a second she had been tempted to drop a little hint about her upcoming date with Jeff. But only for a second.
Privacy was a notion Isobel took seriously, though sometimes she thought she was the only one of her generation who did. That was an exaggeration, of course, but all you needed to do was spend even fifteen minutes on Facebook or Twitter to realize that an awful lot of people had never learned or maybe had forgotten that “too much information” was not only unnecessary but downright ugly. Why did some people think anyone would possibly care where they got their afternoon coffee, and how their routine dental appointment had gone, and if they had woken up that morning with wicked crease marks on their face? Boring! Somewhere (probably online!) she had read that there were people so addicted to social media outlets that they spent eight hours a day on the sites. What?!
Isobel jumped up from her desk chair. Enough interior ranting! There was a very big and very important decision to make: What should she wear on her date?
Â
Jeff was exactly on time.
Isobel opened the door. She was wearing a pale yellow sundress with a scooped neck, fitted bodice, and full skirt, circa 1962. A lightweight white cotton cardigan was draped over her shoulders, held in place by a gold-tone sweater clip she had found at one of her favorite vintage stores.
Jeff was wearing another pair of awesome jeans and a black, fitted T-shirt that made it pretty clear his abs were amazing. Over that he wore a semi-structured linen blazer in taupe. His shoes were the ones he had been wearing when they had first met in town.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he said.
“So . . .”
Jeff smiled. “Can I come in?”
Isobel's hand flew to her mouth. “Oh gosh, yeah, sorry!”
“Is your mom here?” Jeff asked when he had stepped inside.
“She's in the kitchen. It's this way.”
Isobel led him to the back of the house where her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, her laptop open, a well-used notebook and pen next to it.
“Mom, Jeff is here.” Isobel stood, her hands folded in front of her, like one of the girls from
The Sound of Music
. She felt extremely awkward. It was weird.
Louise got up from her seat. Jeff put out his hand to shake hers.
“It's nice to see you, again, Jeff.”
“The pleasure is mine. I wanted to let you know that we'll be at Barnacle Billy's if you need to reach us. And you have my cell phone number; it's on my card.”
“Yes, I have it right here.” Louise pointed to the fridge. She had used a magnet in the shape of a mushroom to hold Jeff's card in place. “But I doubt I'll have a reason to interrupt your evening.”
“Well, thanks for allowing Isobel to have dinner with me.”
Isobel's mother downright beamed. “You're welcome,” she said. “Have fun.”
The drive from the inn to Barnacle Billy's in Perkins Cove took about four minutes, but finding a parking space looked like it was going to be a big challenge.
“Yikes,” Isobel said. “We could be here awhile!”
“No worries.” Jeff summoned the young parking attendant and gave him a folded bill (Isobel thought it was a twenty but that seemed outrageous; she figured she must have been mistaken), and when Isobel and Jeff had gotten out, he drove Jeff's car around two cars ahead of them to the only empty spot in the lot. She had seen her father do that once, give a parking attendant money to get them a space ahead of other people. She remembered how her mother had scolded him; she had said it was an unfair practice and that he should be ashamed to use his money to cheat others less fortunate. At the time Isobel hadn't given it much thought; she hadn't had lunch and just wanted to get into the restaurant and eat. Now, she felt a bit weird about what Jeff had done. Her mother was right, it was kind of unfair . . . But she knew she could be naïve; it was probably just the way things were done in the world of adults out on the townâand obviously, now she was one of those adults!
They sat at a table for two on the gorgeous terrace; Jeff held the chair out for her. (
Wow,
Isobel thought.
Seriously old-fashioned and pretty nice!
) The garden at Barnacle Billy's was lush and beautifully tended. It overlooked the water where the private pleasure boats were tied up; farther down the Cove were the working fishing and lobster boats, along with a few tour boats that were super-popular with the tourists.
“It's so pretty, isn't it?” Isobel said. She wondered if that remark was lame.
Jeff smiled. “I knew you'd like it out here. I reserved the table yesterday. Usually they don't take reservations for the terrace, but my dad is pretty tight with the owner so . . .”
A young waiter took their order. Jeff asked for a seltzer; Isobel was glad he wasn't drinking even though the ride back to the inn was so short.
Jeff asked her about school and wanted to know her favorite subject. He told her a funny story about Mr. Becker, the tenth-grade math teacher, who had been at the school since the seventies and who was well known to be a “leftover hippie.” He reminisced about homecoming weekends and explained that although the football coaches repeatedly begged him to join first the junior varsity and then the varsity team, he had refused. “I'm not a big fan of competition,” he told her. “Except when it's against myself. I'm always trying to better my own standards and my own performance in life.”
Isobel thought that was a very mature character trait.
He asked politely if Mr. Bessire lived at Blueberry Bay Inn with Isobel and her mother. Isobel had guessed that question would be coming. When she had first moved to Ogunquit, she had prepared a stock answer for the people at school and she pulled it back out now, only adjusting for the passing of time.
“My parents got divorced about two years ago,” she said. “My father is remarried and lives in Massachusetts.” That's all she would say about that. It felt like betrayal to share a woman's misery with a guy you hardly even knew, even someone as nice as Jeff Otten.
She asked about his family and he told her a bit more about his father, how he had inherited a pretty successful business from his father before him and how he had grown it to more than twice the size it had been. “He's a very impressive guy,” Jeff said. “I hope to become half the man he is.”
Isobel had nodded and said, quite seriously, “Oh, I'm sure you will be!” Jeff shrugged and looked down at his meal. She thought he might have been blushing, but it could have been a trick of light from the low candle on their table.
When he spoke of his mother, it was with real affection. “She's great,” he said. “She was the perfect mom when I was growing up, always there, always supportive, milk and cookies waiting when I got home from school, the whole nine yards. Now that I'm an adult, she spends a lot of her time working for one of her favorite charities. It helps support children with cancer. And she supervises the staff at the house, of course, and makes my father's life at home as smooth as possible. And believe me, with the stress he's under every day, that's a big job. She does it beautifully.”
Isobel almost cried. She was so pleased to learn that Jeff respected his mother's contribution to the Otten family. It took intelligence to recognize and appreciate the value of a stay-at-home parent's efforts.
It wasn't until much later that night did she remember that Jeff had an older brother. Michael, she thought his name was. She wondered why he hadn't mentioned him when he had told her about his family. But it was no big deal. She would ask Jeff about Michael at some point down the line.
Jeff didn't say anything about her clothes, but he did tell her at one point that she was beautiful and would look pretty in something hot pink, something, he pointed out, like the dress another diner was wearing. Isobel had never liked herself in hot pink, but she had smiled and said, “Thanks,” though Jeff's words hadn't exactly been a compliment. Still, the fact was that he was thinking about her as they sat together eating lobster rolls and steamers, not focusing on something else. Right?
They were back at the inn by ten o'clock, as Jeff had promised. They stood on the porch, away from the cool glow of the overhead light and the dimmer light coming from the windows of the parlor. Isobel felt intensely nervous and excited and afraid and eager all at once. How could she have made it to the ripe old age of sixteen without having been kissed by a boy? It seemed impossible . . .
He kissed her gently, with just enough pressure of his lips on hers for her to know they were there, but not enough to be aggressive. She was a wee bit disappointed by his restraint, though of course she knew that he was being a gentleman for her sake. She was, after all, only just sixteen. Really, it was something else to like and admire about him!
“Good night, Isobel,” he said. “Will you let me see you again?”
Isobel nodded. She wanted to shout, “Yes! Of course!” but figured that probably wasn't exactly a sophisticated response.
Jeff grinned. “Great. I'll wait until you get safely inside.”
Isobel closed the door behind her and watched him drive off from one of the narrow windows on either side of the front door. Before she had turned away from the window, he had sent her a text.
GRT TIME.
She smiled broadly but also hoped that he was paying attention to the road. After all, they were going to go out together againâbut only if Jeff made it home safely!
There were no guests in either the parlor or the library. The kitchen, too, was empty. Her mother was asleep; at least, she was in her room. Isobel wondered if she was waiting until she heard Isobel's bedroom door close behind her before she got into bed for the night. Isobel kind of wanted to talk to her mother, but she was also kind of glad she was let alone to savor the memories of the night.