Chapter 2
CITYMOUSE
Greetings, Dear Readers!
Gwen, my sidekick extraordinaire, my partner in daily adventure of the most varied kind, was extra Gwentastic yesterday when she unearthed a treasure beyond compare at the very bottom of a lopsided cardboard box stuffed under a shelf at Say It Again, one of our favorite hunting grounds, on Route 1 in Wells. With her usual (careful) vigor she rooted through layers of old and delicate lace, some of which threatened to fall apart in her hands, to finally uncover a sterling silver, monogrammed calling card case!! It's even got a silver mesh chain on one end so you could carry it around your wrist when you went a-calling.
Here's a picture of her find. And, well, the owner of the shop admitted he hadn't even known it was there, at the bottom of that old box. Desperately afraid we wouldn't be able to afford to buy the case, Gwen and I held our breaths, but in the end Mr. Green was
molto generoso
and sold it to us for a very reasonable price indeed. It now resides with its rescuer, Gwen, who likes to imagine the full name of whoever sported the initials
A. C. P.
Allison Catherine Peterson. Or maybe Ann Carol Paulson. We'll never know the truthâA. C. P. will remain for us a missing personâand there's something really poignant about that.
But, in other news, LouLou and I are celebrating our two-year anniversary in Ogunquit and at the Blueberry Bay Inn, and the almost-two-year anniversary of CityMouse. Time flies when you're having fun, doesn't it? (Does anybody know who first said that? Truer words were never spoken!)
How deluded I was when first I came to what I truly thought to be the wilds of Maine! I've seen the wilds nowâour first summer here, LouLou and I ventured north one weekend (before our lovely inn got underway) and spent a few days in Greenville at a teeny, family-run motel on Moosehead Lake, and that, my friends, is splendidly rural and wild and supposedly chock-full of moose though we didn't see a-oneâand let me be clear that Southern Maine is not wild nor is it unkempt or in any way messy. It only goes to show that so much of what we think we know we don't know at allâit's all so much misinformation and bad marketing and prejudice. So the lesson here is not to make snap judgments and to keep your mind open until you can make an informed decision all on your own.
But one thing I learned in these past two years is that it's not what is around you but what you carry inside of you that makes you happy in one place or another, that makes life here or there merely bearable or actually, in fact, happy.
And one of the things I found that I do carry inside of me is style and the love of fashion for the FUN of it, so that even if most of my local pals don't share this quirk of mine, YOU do, everyone who reads this blog and everyone who is HERE with me so that I never feel alone!
To all you style gals back home, it's CityMouse signing off for now with moose hugs (eergh!) and lobster kisses (ow!) from Maine.
Isobel posted the blog and closed her laptop. It was true, she thought. So much had happened since her father had left the family and her mother had decided to move north to Maine.
She had been sad to leave her friends, some of whom she had known since kindergarten, and her school, where she was a top student and popular without trying to be. And for about a moment she had grumbled mightily about moving to what she had thought of as a hick town where she was convinced no one had ever heard of fashion, let alone the concept of style. But grumbling did not sit well with Isobel. She was not negative by nature or given to self-pity. It wasn't too long before her spirits rallied and she began to look forward to the move with excitement.
Besides, she had been eager to get far away from her father and all he representedâtheir former so-called perfect family life.
The first few weeks in their new home had been really tough. School was out for the summer, so there was no convenient way for Isobel to meet people her own age. So when she wasn't helping her mom with Blueberry Bay Inn stuff, she found herself spending an awful lot of time online, reading through style and fashion blogs (Tavi Gevinson was her heroine, though she admitted to being a lot less ambitious than Tavi seemed to be), idly wish-shopping for vintage on eBay, and scrolling through QVC's website for stuff she couldn't afford and didn't need. In short, she was busy being generally unproductive.
And then, because Isobel Amelia Bessire was not happy being unhappy and unproductive, one day it had occurred to her that she could stop wasting precious time and pour her energy into writing a blog of her own. After all, she thought that someday she might want to become a writer, or maybe a stylist or a buyer. This venture could be practice for her career !
It hadn't been difficult to come up with a taglineâ“You can't take the city out of this girl! ”âor a mission statementâ“To find and cultivate style even in the wilds of Maine.” She had altered that statement a bit now to something less bellicose and challengingâ“Style is where you make it.”
The blog allowed her to keep in touch with at least some of her friends from at home in Massachusetts, though she had to keep reminding herself that this was now home, Ogunquit, Maine, and that the sooner she accepted that fact, the better her life would be. She would re-achieve the peace of mind and contentment and all that other good stuff she had once possessed.
And she was well on the way! For example, she had totally lucked out in meeting Gwen Ryan-Roberts. They had run into each other on the grounds of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. Gwen was there taking pictures of the giant wooden sculptures by Bernard Langlais. Isobel and her mother were strolling the lovely gardens out back. The three had struck up a conversation, and the rest, as it was said, was history.
Gwen had a real gift for photography (she was currently obsessed with the urban street photos of Scott Schuman, known as The Sartorialist), and she drove her own car, which was lucky for Isobel because without a car, you were virtually a prisoner in your home.
Together the girls spent hours hunting out local thrift, resale, and antique shops, buying what they could afford, and taking pictures of anything that struck their creative fancy.
Over time the blog had become a lifeline for Isobel, especially as her mother had become increasingly busy with the running of Blueberry Bay. And as her father, almost imperceptibly at first but more obviously over time, had become less and less of a presence in their lives. It was to be expected. He was remarried. He had two little stepdaughters. He had his big career, as he always had. He had his life.
And Isobel had hers, complete with CityMouse. Sometimes she wondered if she came across as kind of hyper on the blog, but the thing was that the writing just seemed to come out the way it came out and she didn't want to censor that or edit herself the way she did for a paper at school or even an e-mail to a friend. Except, of course, that she would never allow herself to say mean or nasty stuff about anyone on the blog, not that that was a struggle, as Isobel liked to think (and she was right) that she didn't have a mean or nasty bone in her body. Maybe an impatient bone or a moody bone (or two), and maybe even on occasion a pissy bone, but not a mean or a nasty one.
Yeah, it was all good. Isobel looked around her room and smiled. The walls were painted a bright, deep pink (her mother had once called them magenta but Isobel thought that raspberry was more accurate) and hung with framed posters of European capitols and famous works of art. To the right of the room's narrow closet hung a small oil painting Isobel had removed from the breakfast room because she loved it so much and wanted to be able to look at it whenever she wanted. It was by a local painter named Julia Einstein, and it showed a view of a garden from an upstairs window. The colors were bright and happy, the image bold and confident. The painting energized Isobel. Not that she needed much outside help in the energizing department.
The furniture consisted of a jumble of pieces she had wanted to salvage from their house in Massachusetts, in spite of her mother's assurance that the Blueberry Bay Inn came already largely furnished. That didn't matter to Isobel. Some of the pieces she had shipped north hadn't been meant for use in a bedroom but that didn't matter, either, like the old book-stand, the kind that you found in private libraries and museums. Lacking a gorgeously illuminated medieval text to display on it, Isobel piled on the latest editions of
InStyle
and
Vogue
.
The rest of her book collection was stacked every which way on shelves Isobel herself had nailed into the walls (with some later corrective help from Quentin Hollander, the seventeen-year-old local guy who worked at the inn full-time during the summers and part-time off-season). Isobel liked to read almost as much as she liked to write. In addition to a good old-fashioned (but recent edition) dictionary, there was her mother's battered college copy of
The Riverside Shakespeare,
a complete hardcover collection of the Harry Potter series, paperback copies of the Hunger Games series, a book about the life and career of Coco Chanel, and a very expensive book about El Greco, who was one of her favorite painters. That had been a Christmas present from her father a few years back; the quality of the colored plates was outstanding. The rest was an eclectic mix, from a secondhand copy of a book about birds of the Northeast, a coverless copy of Hemingway's
The Sun Also Rises,
a first edition of Daphne du Maurier's
Rebecca,
and a book about jewelry written in England in the 1940s. That she had found in Yes!, a cool secondhand bookstore on Congress Street up in Portland.
The bed was the same one she had been sleeping in since she was first out of a crib. The current bedspread was a paisley print that Louise found riotous; Isobel thought it was restful.
On the floor (under piles of magazines and clothing, the latter clean but often rumpled) was an old wool carpet her parents had bought on a trip to Paris when Isobel was small. She had always loved it, and rather than leave it behind in Massachusetts, as her mother was inclined to do, the carpet, with its intricate design worked in maroon, goldenrod, and deep green, had journeyed north.
All in all, the room was what some people, the kinder ones, would call an organized mess, and what other people, the less kind, would call a train wreck. Yes, the room was cluttered; Isobel was a collector by nature, not a minimalist. A “pack rat,” Mrs. Brown, the housekeeper back in Massachusetts, had called her before she had refused to attempt to clean under the piles of clothes and magazines and books heaped on the bed and littered across the floor.
The inn had a small staff of housekeepers, three teenaged girls from Macedonia, none of whom were allowed into Isobel's room. It was her haven; it was sacrosanct. And what looked like junk to some people, was considered treasure by others.
Isobel leapt from the desk chair. Speaking of treasures, she had promised Gwen she would call her when the latest post was complete. There were endless whimsical baubles and fantastic oddities still to find!
Chapter 3
“Yes, yes, I heard you the first time, Ms. Michaels. Yes, I'll be sure to get those measurements to you as soon as possible.”
Flora Michaels sniffed loudly. “See that you do.” She ended the call without a good-bye.
Louise fell back onto the bed, letting the phone drop at her side. God, she longed for a nap but she couldn't justify one just yet, not when there was so much to do. There was a new guest checking in later that afternoon, and a professional painter was coming by to give an estimate for repainting the gazebo. And, of course, there were the measurements of every room on the ground floor of the inn (why?) to get to the wedding planner.
Maybe if she just closed her eyes for five minutes . . . Nope. Wouldn't work. Closed eyes led to serious snoozing. Louise sighed and sat back up against the pile of decorative pillows.
As messy and disorganized as Isobel's room was, Louise's was neat and ordered. She had painted the walls a very soothing azure blue; the floorboards were wide pine painted white. Here and there, like at the foot of the bed, were scattered throw rugs in a dusty rose color. A comfortable armchair from their former house in Massachusetts, one of the few pieces she had brought along to this new life, was positioned to allow a view of the backyard and the grove of pine trees that marked its boundary. The chair was one of her favorite pieces, already on a third upholstering, this time in a pretty sea-foam green that contributed to the room's cool and peaceful feel.
There was a small, rather dainty desk in which she kept a box of old-fashioned writing paper, and a good Cross pen she had gotten as a thank-you gift for her work organizing a fund-raising event for a local charity back in Massachusetts. Two checkbooks, one for her personal account and one for the inn's; a roll of stamps; and a stack of bookmarks Isobel had made one summer in day camp completed the stash. The bookmarks were cardboard strips (unevenly cut) on which Isobel had pressed Queen Anne's lace under a layer of clear shelf paper.
A hefty-sized bookcase was stocked with favorite titles Louise wanted at hand at bedtime, including a copy of every Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels novel published to date. She had read each novel at least three times and would no doubt read each novel three additional times. In Louise's opinion, you stuck with a good thing, especially when the good thing was a favorite author. Recently, she had succeeded in getting her friend Catherine hooked on Peters / Michaels, but Isobel was proving a tougher case. She was still favoring some of the older teen series, though recently Louise had seen her engrossed in a copy of
The Great Gatsby
. There was hope yet.
The bed was new, one Andrew had never seen let alone slept in. (He had never visited his former wife and his always daughter in Ogunquit, and Louise suspected that he never would.) She had treated herself to high thread count sheets and an expensive down comforter covered in a luxurious silky fabric somewhere in shade between the azure walls and the sea-foam chair. If the room looked a bit like an underwater grotto, so be it.
In addition to the window facing the backyard, there was one facing the narrow side yard. Louise had hung white sheer curtains for the warm months; in the fall and winter, she replaced these with curtains of heavier fabric. Though there was an air conditioner in the window facing the side yard, Louise rarely used it. The room was nicely cross-ventilated; only on those nasty humid days when temperatures crawled into the nineties (this was a common enough occurrence in Southern Maine) did she crank up the AC a few hours before bedtime.
Louise sighed. She knew she would spend less and less time in this lovely haven as the busy season took hold, and she strongly suspected that this summer, what with the celebrity wedding looming, her sleep schedule would be pretty severely reduced. It worried her. She was already drinking way too much coffee just to keep awake past three in the afternoon, and if she weren't careful to exercise some self-control, the one homemade pastry she snuck around ten each morning would turn into two pastries. What would happen from there was anyone's nightmarish guess. Being activeâsupervising the housekeepers (who, being intelligent, energetic, and hardworking, didn't need much supervision), or discussing a change to the breakfast menu with the cook, Bella Frank (who had her own firm ideas about what to serve the guests), or asking Quentin to take a look at the dishwasher or some other appliance (which, often enough, he had already earmarked for repair)âdidn't necessarily mean you were conscious while doing so.
Louise fought with her eyes, which insisted on closing, but she knew it was a fight she was not going to win. She got off the bed and went down to the kitchen.
“Knock, knock.”
Louise turned to find Catherine, and her dog, Charlie, at the kitchen door.
Catherine King was fifty, an early retiree from a very successful career as what Louise thought of, without any disrespect, as a “corporate something or other.” She was a bit shorter than Louise but taller than Isobel (not hard to do, according to Isobel herself). Her hair, once bright red, had deepened in color to a sort of burgundy, and she wore it tied back or up in an old-fashioned but becoming French twist. Her eyes were very green and her skin was very white. Though she spent a fair amount of time outdoors these days, a lot of it painting
en plein air,
she managed to avoid burning or tanning through a combination of sunblock and protective clothing. “If I'm an object of ridicule in my long sleeves and floppy hats, so be it,” she pronounced. “So far I'm the only one in my immediate family who hasn't gotten skin cancer.”
“Any room at the inn?” Catherine asked.
“Yes, and I was just about to make some coffee.”
“Ah, music to my ears. Any water for Charlie?”
Catherine rarely went anywhere without her dog, Princess Charlene, a five-year-old chocolate lab she had found at a shelter shortly before moving to Ogunquit from a wealthy suburb of Hartford, Connecticut. Her career had kept her too often on the road and too busy to be a proper parent to an animal, especially to a dog. Now that she was retired she was reveling in her first adult relationship with a four-footed creature.
“Why Princess Charlene?” Isobel had asked when Catherine had first come to Ogunquit, only months after Louise and Isobel had established residence.
“Because that poor young woman seemed so in need of rescuing for a time, remember?” Catherine had said. “Just like my baby. Mind you, I don't so much think that Princess Charlene of Monaco needs saving anymore. She seems to have found her footing.”
Isobel loped into the kitchen just then.
“Hi, Catherine, bye, Catherine. Hi, Princess Charlene, bye.”
She was out the back door in a flash.
“Does Isobel ever sit still?” Catherine said. “That's a rhetorical question.”
Louise placed a French press pot of coffee on the table, along with two mugs. Both women took their coffee black. “Only when she's writing her blog. And then her leg is bouncing.”
“Huh. Lucky gal, she'll probably never have to diet.” Catherine took a sip of her coffee. “Ah, that's magic,” she said. “You know, even though you and Isobel look nothing alike, there's no mistaking you for anything other than mother and daughter. It's a look in the eye or something. It's really quite extraordinary. Two peas in a pod. The apple not falling far from the tree.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Just uh-huh? What's on your mind?”
Louise drained half of her cup of coffee and then told her friend about the phone call from the celebrity couple's wedding planner. Catherine listened without comment.
“And the next thing I knew,” Louise finished, “I was saying yes. I think she mesmerized me. There was something odd about her voice, something compelling, almost threatening. It was like I didn't dare say no!”
“Have you signed a contract yet?” Catherine asked.
“No, I haven't seen it yet, so technically I'm still in the clear if I decide to change my mind. Though, for all I know Flora Michaels could have the power and prestige to blacken my name if I did bail now . . .”
Catherine shook her head. “You won't change your mind.”
“Who says I won't? This is a huge commitment. Maybe too huge for me.”
“I say you won't. You'd be nuts not to grab this challenge. This could set you up for years to come. You could really make it big. And other clichés denoting success.”
“What if I don't want to make it big?” Louise argued, pouring herself another half cup of coffee. “What if I'm fine just making it medium?”
“Medium is boring.”
“Maybe for you. I've always kind of liked medium. It's comfortable andâ”
“Boring. Anyway, when the contract comes in, you had better let me review it. Lord knows I've reviewed a contract or two in my time.”
“Would you? I'd be grateful. I don't think I've ever read a contract in my life. Dealing with the mortgage papers on this place almost sent me to a rest home.”
“What are friends for if not sharing expertise?”
“What expertise do I share with you?” Louise asked, genuinely curious.
Catherine made a show of considering the question, twisting her mouth and wrinkling her nose. “I don't know. I'll have to give it some thought. In the meantime I will admit that you make good coffee.”
“Well, that's something.”
Catherine stood. “Come on, Charlie. We've wasted enough of Louise's time. She's got a celebrity wedding to plan.”
Charlie finished slopping water onto the kitchen floor and led Catherine out the door.
Louise smiled to herself. Being with Catherine, even if only for a few minutes, always cheered her. And having someone she considered a best friend was almost a brand-new experience for her. It wasn't until she was muddling through the divorce that Louise realized she hadn't had a best friend in years, maybe not since grammar school.
Sure, there had been the women she volunteered with, and the mothers of Isobel's classmates, but there had never been anyone really intimate. And she had never spent much time wondering why she had no close female friends. Her life was very full without them; besides, she had always considered Andrew the best friend she could ever have.
And look how that had turned out! A woman should never sacrifice female friends for the sake of a male friendship, even that of a husband. There was plenty of good emotional energy to go around. You just had to use it. Too bad Louise had learned that lesson so late in her life.
Catherine was, Louise thought, a good role model for Isobel. Not that she herself was so bad a role model, but Isobel's having several older women she could admire and try to emulate couldn't hurt. Louise's own mother hadn't been much of an inspiration, though she had been a kind and loving woman. She had been fearful by nature and had grown increasingly timid as she aged. When Louise wasn't finding her mother and her trepidations supremely annoying, she was finding them pitiful. Neither feeling had made her think of herself as a good or dutiful daughter.
But enough of the past. Louise sat at the kitchen table and opened her laptop. There was an inn to run, guests to satisfy, and a celebrity wedding to host. Assuming, of course, that she was capable of doing such things . . .
Louise stared blankly at the screen saver; it was a photo of Isobel at the age of two. Once again, she was overcome by an awful feeling that she was reaching too far. The hospitality industry was a notoriously fickle business, not for the faint of heart or those without serious financial backing. And in Louise's case, she felt the added pressure of proving to her ex-husband that she, too, could be successful in business.
Besides, if she failed and lost the business, what then? She would have to get a regular job (if she could find one; she had been out of the workforce for over sixteen years), and that meant uprooting Isobel once again. Even if she decided that it was financially smarter to stay on in Maine, they couldn't stay in Ogunquit. They would have to move north, maybe to South Portland, somewhere more affordable than a vacation destination.
No, Louise thought, determinedly opening one of her accounting files. Isobel had been through too much upheaval already. Louise would have to make the Blueberry Bay Inn and their life in Ogunquit work. She remembered all too clearly what Isobel had gone through in the months after her father's defectionâthe sleepless nights, the crying jags. Isobel blamed her father for having hurt her mother and for having wantonly destroyed what was, in her opinion, a perfect family.
“I hate him,” she had declared to her mother, days after her father had moved out of their home and into one of those sterile furnished apartments in downtown Boston, meant for people in town on extended business trips and/or those in Andrew Bessire's unhappy situation.
“Don't hate him,” Louise had said, fighting her own feelings of despair. “Be angry if you need to be. I am. I probably will be for a long time. But don't hate your father.”
“Don't you hate Dad right now?” Isobel had demanded.
“No,” Louise had said, honestly. “Hate is exhausting and it's unproductive. I hated someone onceâyou know who I'm talking aboutâand it didn't help me heal. It was only when I forced myself to let go of the hate that I got better inside.”
Isobel had known that her mother was referring to the man who had stolen her innocence, the college boyfriend who had repeatedly hit her until one day, in an attempt to escape his anger, Louise had accidentally stumbled down a flight of stairs and wound up in the hospital with a concussion, a broken wrist, a cracked rib, and a fractured ankle. What Isobel didn't know and might never know was that that episode had cost the life of Louise's unborn child. Her first daughter, the one she had not been able to protect.