The Summer Everything Changed

by Holly Chamberlin

  There was something both pitiful and disgusting about the woman; after only moments in her presence, Louise felt simultaneously sad for and repulsed by her. Isobel declared her the most unstylish fashion-addicted person she had ever seen, and that, she said, was saying something.

  Worse, Flora Michaels’s personality was as entirely devoid of charm as was her appearance. She treated Louise with a condescension that bordered on pathology and ignored Isobel as if she were a sticky, obnoxious toddler and not a well-mannered, well-groomed, and perfectly articulate fifteen-year-old. (Isobel didn’t seem fazed by this treatment, but it made her mother’s blood boil.) As for Flynn and Quentin, unobtrusively on hand for minor and unexpected emergencies, they, wearing jeans and plaid shirts, were well beneath her notice. Louise again thought it odd for someone whose profession required her to handle and satisfy Bridezillas and their mates to display such toxic behavior, but maybe that was the key to her success, she thought, being more awful than any awful client could be.

  “You must be Louise Bessire,” the wedding planner said, thrusting her bony hand at Louise, who gave it a very careful shake. She noticed as she did (how could she not?) that the nails were bitten down to the quick. “I, of course, am Flora Michaels. And this,” she added, jerking her head in his direction, “is Calvin Streep, my assistant.”

  “Executive assistant,” the man amended blandly. He did not put forth his hand.

  Calvin Streep was a sour-faced specimen, also of indeterminate age, and as comfortably padded as his boss was skeletal. Louise was immediately reminded of that awful old nursery rhyme about Fat and Skinny and the pillowcase race. Calvin Streep clearly despised his job or, perhaps more accurately, he despised Flora Michaels. He practically snarled his obsequious responses to her questions and demands, and when her back was turned he produced the most amazing expressions of loathing Louise had ever seen out of a horror film. At least his clothing was inoffensive. He wore a lightweight cream-colored linen suit with a pale blue oxford shirt and pink silk tie. On his feet he wore sensible and very expensive loafers, complete with shiny pennies. The only incongruous note was struck by a rather large gold and ruby ring he wore on the pinkie of his right hand.

  Before a half an hour had passed, Louise had decided that Flora Michaels and Calvin Streep could easily have been invented by Charles Dickens, should he have decided to continue his career from the grave, or by some other, still living writer who specialized in macabre and obnoxious characters.

  In addition to her assistant, Flora Michaels had brought a photographer with her, whom she failed to introduce. He was a bald, gruff-looking older man in head-to-toe camouflage (why camouflage? Louise wondered). The moment the three had climbed out of their Hummer (why a Hummer? Isobel wondered), Flora Michaels loudly directed him to “photograph everything,” which he proceeded to do—from the wide expanse of the front lawn to the details on the antique lamp shades in the parlor, from the lacy wood tracery of the gazebo to the hand towels in the first-floor powder room.

  By eleven o’clock, Louise was approaching the limit of her patience. She stomped into the kitchen, where she found Isobel flipping through a magazine at the table.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?” Isobel asked loudly. “You’re periwinkle again!”

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong! That—that creature! Well, if she thinks I’m going to replace that lovely old carpet in the front hall because the blue doesn’t match the blue of her client’s eyes, she’s crazier than I assumed.”

  “Good for you, Mom,” Isobel said. “Stand your ground. Wait. Really? The carpet has to match her eye color?”

  “Not her eye color,” Louise said with a grimace. “His. The groom’s.”

  “Ah. Jake.”

  “I think it’s Blake, actually,” Louise said. “Or maybe it’s Zack. Zack Dakota.”

  “That doesn’t sound right, either. Whatever.”

  At exactly noon, Flora Michaels announced a break in the activities. Louise had provided a simple but substantial lunch, which she and Bella laid out in the breakfast room. Flora shrank from the buffet as if it offered toasted bugs and baked entrails and instead installed herself on a straight-backed chair in a corner of the room, where she sipped a fluorescent yellow concoction from a plastic bottle she had fished out of her monstrous bag. (Isobel murmured that the painfully bright liquid had “cancer causing” all over it. “I mean,” she said with a shudder, “that color is not found in nature!”)

  After glancing briefly, and with disdain, at the buffet, Calvin Streep took himself off into town for what he called “a proper meal.” The photographer, whose name no one seemed to have caught, grabbed a sandwich in passing and continued to document every square inch of the inn, with the sole exceptions of Louise and Isobel’s rooms. Louise held firm in spite of Flora Michaels’s whining demands for access to their personal space.

  “More for us,” Louise said with a sigh, surveying the untouched potato and green salads Bella had graciously prepared. Louise, Isobel, Flynn, and Quentin ate in virtual silence. When they had finished their meal, Louise packed the remainders for Quentin to take home. If Flora Michaels wanted coffee later in the day, she could damn well send her assistant into town for a cup.

  When Calvin Streep returned to the inn an hour after he had gone, Louise detected the slight but unmistakable scent of alcohol. His eyes were brighter, as was his attitude. Louise found that she couldn’t blame Calvin Streep for his indulgence. She might take to boozing at lunch or worse if she had to work for Flora Michaels.

  Louise was in the backyard with that estimable creature when she said, “Have I mentioned that the couple have demanded a miniature carousel? Well, they have.”

  “What do you mean by miniature?” Louise asked, hoping to clarify the conflicting images that had leapt to mind.

  “Small, my dear,” Flora Michaels replied, in a tone that betrayed just what she thought of such an idiotic question. “Tiny. In that vein.”

  “Yes, I understand what ‘miniature’ means. What I mean is, is the carousel small enough to sit on a table?”

  “What? No, it’s an actual working carousel.”

  “For children?”

  Flora Michaels’s tone was now glacial. “There are no children invited to this wedding.”

  “Okay, so . . . Who’s going to ride this thing?”

  “No one is actually going to ride it. Lord!” Flora Michaels attempted to stamp a foot and tottered dangerously. Louise did not reach out to steady her, and the wedding planner eventually righted herself.

  “So, people will just stand by looking at it go ’round and ’round?”

  Flora Michaels shrugged.

  “How tall is it?” That was from Flynn, who had appeared at Louise’s side like, she thought, a saving angel. “What are the dimensions?”

  With a sigh of great exasperation, Flora Michaels fished in her monstrous bag and retrieved a folded catalogue. “There,” she said, handing the catalogue to Flynn. “Page thirty. Pictures and the specs.”

  Flynn frowned down at the page and made several odd noises that sounded a bit like a lawn mower’s engine spluttering. “Won’t work,” he declared, thrusting the catalogue back at Flora Michaels. “Fire hazard.”

  Louise frowned and nodded in what she meant to be a wise way.

  “How could a carousel be a fire hazard?” Flora Michaels demanded, waving the catalogue.

  “You think it runs on wishful thinking?” Flynn snapped. “Nope. No way. That’s a death trap of a machine you’re talking about. You’d never get the insurance.”

  Flora Michaels thrust the catalogue into the depths of The Incubus and squinted around the yard.

  “Can the gazebo be relocated?” she asked suddenly.

  “It most certainly cannot!” Louise cried. What in God’s name might that cost! And where were they supposed to relocate it to? Louise wondered.

  “Why not?” Flora Michaels demanded. “It’s just a stupid little building.”

&
nbsp; Flynn’s face took on an expression of extreme gravity. “Too much torque involved in the deconstruction and your leverage would completely collapse the infrastructure, causing the internal fuse lines to crack and run the risk of combustion. Also internal.”

  Louise fought mightily not to collapse in laughter. Where had Flynn learned to lie so creatively?

  Flora Michaels sighed. “I told them that holding an event in the backwoods was a mistake . . . Calvin!”

  Her scream—not a cry, a genuine scream—caused both Louise and Flynn to wince. Across the yard, Quentin and Isobel clapped their hands over their ears.

  “We’re done here for today,” Flora Michaels announced, turning back to Louise.

  Calvin, who appeared to be sagging by this point if the beads of perspiration on his forehead were any indication of fatigue (or an oncoming hangover), grabbed his employer’s arm and half-dragged her across the yard and around to the front of the inn. Louise and Flynn, Quentin and Isobel, followed in silence.

  Calvin Streep got behind the wheel of the Hummer. His boss crawled in next to him, and the enigmatic photographer and his piles of equipment installed themselves somewhere in the vehicle’s massive darkened interior.

  There had been no farewells, no thanks, no more bony hand to shake.

  “I hope he knows how to drive that thing,” Quentin said as they watched the Hummer speed off down the narrow road, a clear menace to vacationers not on the watch for military-style vehicles and to local farmers rambling along in their pickup trucks.

  Flynn shook his head. “The photographer didn’t say a word all day. Not one. Amazing.”

  “Smart man,” Quentin said with a nod.

  Isobel sighed dramatically. “Geez, it was like a reality show around here today. Seriously crazy in that, ‘oh come on, this has to be scripted’ sort of way. You know, fiction being stranger than truth.”

  Louise grabbed her daughter’s arm. “You don’t think . . . Oh my God! Do you think there really are hidden cameras? You don’t think that creature planted microphones in the ferns or behind the couch cushions? I saw her creepy assistant lingering over by the chaise in the parlor . . .”

  Isobel rolled her eyes. “Mom, you need to relax. No, I don’t think they hid any cameras or microphones. Besides, I think in reality shows the cameras are right out there. Everyone knows they’re being filmed.”

  Louise let go of her daughter. “Well, it’s too late to back out now. We are well and truly committed to this disaster.”

  Flynn cleared his throat. “You do realize that stick figure, Florabelle whatever her name is, needs this wedding to go off without a hitch as much as you do. She’s a pain all right, but in the end, she’s your ally. Keep that in mind and don’t let her get to you.”

  “He’s right, Mrs. Bessire,” Quentin added. “Someone like that, her bark is way worse than her bite.”

  The men’s words made sense, but at that moment, Louise could take very little comfort in sense. “I think,” she said to the group, “that I need a drink.”

  Chapter 12

  CITYMOUSE

  Greetings, my Fellow Travelers on the road to—well, on the road to somewhere fun and happy and stylish!

  Gwen and I were digging through LouLou’s storage closet up in the attic yesterday—it was one of those drizzly, gray, and icky humid days when the only place you want to be is in an attic (even though it was hotter and wetter up there than downstairs, so why were we there????) unearthing fabulous treasures—when suddenly, Gwen shrieked and I shrieked and then we were each holding up a shoulder of a paisley maxi-dress in the most vibrant shades of blue and green and purple. With much clatter of our sandaled feet and an unfortunate bang of my knee against the doorsill (you should see my psychedelic bruise), we ran downstairs and hunted down LouLou, who (though very busy with Blueberry Bay business) told us—get this!—that the lovely dress we were clutching (carefully) once belonged to my grandmother!!!

  “In fact,” LouLou said, finger to her chin, “I think I have a picture of her wearing it.” And she proceeded to hunt out an old photo album, one of those faux leather–bound thingies, where she found a white-bordered “snapshot” of her mother wearing the dress! My (young) grandmother is standing kind of self-consciously, or so it seems to me, in front of a house LouLou recognized as a neighbor’s. The grass is green (though the colors in the photo are faded), so it was either spring or summer. And you can see the tail end of a car, some old monster from the late sixties, back when cars were as big as boats and, in my opinion, often gorgeous.

  Then LouLou went on to say: “I remember being really surprised when my mother bought that dress. It was so unlike her to wear something that would call attention to herself. I remember suspecting a friend had talked her into buying it. Anyway, I don’t remember her wearing it more than this once, but then again I was pretty young at the time. I remember finding it in the back of her closet after she died and I was going through the house. I couldn’t believe she’d kept it all those years. It must have meant something to her after all. I guess that’s why I kept it, too.”

  The dress now hangs in my closet, and I’m saving its first reappearance for a special occasion. It’s a little long, so LouLou will have to hem it when she has the time. (I’m hopeless with a needle and thread, and don’t let me near a sewing machine—quel désastre!)

  I wonder how I’ll feel, wearing a garment that once belonged to my ancestress, a woman who, from what I know from LouLou, was very unlike me. She was, according to legend and lore, shy and unassuming and not very self-confident at all. I most certainly am not shy (!) and I do tend to assume and I think I’ve got a pretty good sense of confidence in my self and abilities and all that.

  Anyway, some people believe that a feeling or a spirit can cling to possessions over time, sort of a psychic residue deposited by the owner of those possessions. But maybe that’s only when the person who owned the thing (a hat, a bit of jewelry, a dress) was a force of nature, someone unlike what my poor grandma was said to be.

  I have no idea. Hopefully, someday I’ll find out!

  ’Til next time, My Friends!

  Isobel closed the laptop and sighed deeply. She felt tired and more than a wee bit grumpy. Faking exuberance wasn’t as easy as some people made it out to be, even when you were faking it on paper—or a screen. Talk about being an unreliable narrator!

  And her bad mood was all her father’s fault. She had found the e-mail from him that morning; he had sent it in the middle of the night. With no warning, he had cancelled their vacation in Newport, Rhode Island. Isobel had been looking forward to touring those massive old mansions, and strolling the Cliff Walk, and shopping the boutique stores in town, hunting out little gifts for her mom and Gwen and Catherine, and finding something weird and wonderful that she could talk about on CityMouse.

  True, Vicky and her daughters were to have been there, as well, but Isobel had even been looking forward to spending some time with her stepmother and stepsisters. Why not? They hadn’t done anything mean to her, unless you could say that by having an affair with a married man Vicky had knowingly committed an act of meanness . . . Whatever. Isobel did not like to hold a grudge. She was the sort of person—and, according to her mother, always had been—who gave a person the benefit of the doubt not once but twice, and sometimes even three times.

  Except, it seemed, when it came to her father.

  Andrew Bessire had given no explanation for the cancellation other than “a pressing work matter.” Isobel had no real reason to doubt him, but at the same time she did doubt him, of course she did. And she wondered if he would send Vicky and the girls to Newport without him. Probably. But of course he couldn’t send Isobel, as well. Her presence, without her father being there as a buffer, might not appeal to Vicky. Isobel had only met her stepmother once, and that was at the wedding just that past December. She had been perfectly pleasant to Isobel, but, as any bride, she hadn’t had time to stop and exchange more than greetings with
any of her guests.

  To argue that she should have made time for her new stepdaughter, as Isobel’s mother had argued—maybe a private breakfast that morning, before the ceremony—was futile now, after the fact. It was what it was. To argue that Vicky should have made an effort to meet Isobel long before the wedding was also moot. Besides, for all Isobel knew, her father was to blame for that, too. Maybe he hadn’t wanted them to meet. Isobel could understand that. He probably had been afraid that she would lash out at Vicky. Not that she had ever been the type to lash out at anyone, for any reason. But given the fact that Isobel had outright refused to see or talk to her father for several months after his awkward, faltering explanation of why he was leaving his wife and child, Andrew Bessire might be excused for considering his own daughter an unknown quantity.

  Isobel got up from the desk chair and wandered around her room, idly kicking aside whatever stuff her feet encountered. It didn’t matter what disappointment she was feeling in her real, off-screen life; whatever it was she hid it from her readers. The blog was a determinedly happy place. She would never allow her own personal misery (or even just a bad mood) to leak into its domain. Okay, she had shouted-out to her father the other day . . . But that was the first and the last time she would let a bit of angst infect CityMouse.

  Isobel stopped her wandering and flopped onto the unmade bed. She had told her mother about her father’s e-mail over breakfast that morning. Her mother had dropped the piece of toast she was buttering and had then begun to apologize, almost as if it was her fault that Isobel’s father was a jerk.

  “I am so, so sorry, Isobel,” she had said, her eyes wide with concern and an emotion a little too close to pity. Somehow her mother’s reaction, though there was nothing wrong about it, made Isobel even angrier with her father and a little bit angry with her mother, too, something she couldn’t immediately understand.