Isabella

By Marcia Davey

Isabella is a young woman who finds her opportunities in the small village where she was born. She knows where the bones are buried and has indeed planted some of her own. Millville was an important manufacturing outpost during the Civil War and is now remaking itself into a historical footprint along the Blackstone River.

The old Stamina Mill has been turned into apartments, and Isabella will oversee its residents. And when Kyle mysteriously returns from university in Boston, he too will need remaking. He too will feel Isabellas charmagain. And yes, Kasey Jones will find her inn is free and make peace with Doriss parrot and Dan Patchetts dog.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524526641

Marcia Davey

Marcia Davey graduated from Acadia University and Providence College. Her first book, Three Stories, was published in 2004. Camille’s Fond Embrace was published in 2004, Gallivanting in 2008, Priest in 2010, Chevy Blues in 2013, and now in 2016, Isabella.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Marcia Davey.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016911866

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-2666-5

      Softcover      978-1-5245-2665-8

      eBook         978-1-5245-2664-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/21/2016

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

They say, best men are moulded out of faults;

And, for the most, become much more the better

For being a little bad.

Shakespeare

Measure for Measure

CHAPTER ONE

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward once drove in an open sports car through several New England villages along the Blackstone River, searching for a location to shoot some scenes for their next film. Nobody bothered them – asking for autographs, taking pictures, asking personal questions about their marriage. They stopped for lunch at old country inns and stayed overnight at family-operated Bed & Breakfasts. They were graciously served and then ignored to the cusp of impoliteness because New Englanders, for the most part, know the value of solitude.

Several people said they saw their car with Connecticut plates drive through Millville. They may have stopped at the stone bridge to shoot some footage or make some notes, but nobody reported this. It would be unusual for a stranger to drive through the town of Millville without stopping and getting out of the car at least once.

The first Levesque families, on the other hand, came from Quebec to Millville, not for solitude, but to work in the textile mills along the Blackstone River, and this French name is still found throughout the area. Isabella and Sophie Levesque represent the newest generation of those who stayed after the mills closed. Sophie was now living in Boston; Isabella was living at home and commuting in a seasoned red Datsun to the local Community College.

At Thanksgiving, Sophie brought two college friends home for dinner. One was from California and the other, Jocelyn, was from England.

Jocelyn told about life in London and Phoebe talked about California: the Napa Valley where they grow grapes and turn water into wine. Like Jesus did, she told them.

After dinner, Isabella took Chum for an extra-long walk. They walked down to the library: Closed for Thanksgiving the sign said. They walked down by the old mill that once used local whetstone to make scythes for the Civil War, and across the stone bridge - its historic arch now undergoing restoration - through the bracing wind, to another mill that once turned cotton into underwear for the northern troops. This mill was transitioning into condominiums and folks wondered how these new residents would change village life. Isabella’s guess was that it would change the population from eight thousand to eight thousand and thirteen. That’s all. But they were strangers, and would be vetted slowly.

She sat on the stone wall behind the library, a granite building once part of the mill complex, and then on a bench placed there by Boy Scout Troop #34. Chum tested the water, but swimming season was over for both of them. Lighted lamps were appearing in the houses along Main Street. Families were now exposed in their front rooms, aglow in the reflected light from their television sets. The rusty leaves from the maple trees had been erased by a Nor’easter. Kyle Townsend was home from college and enjoying an illegal smoke on his front steps. He wished her a happy thanksgiving.

How are things at school? he asked. She said Great, and returned his wave. How are things in Boston? she asked. (Kyle’s father had been killed in an industrial accident and his family received a large settlement, large enough to send Kyle to a university where he lived in a fraternity house and smoked on the roof.)

So far so good, he said. Chum ran up to the porch and sent his tail into overdrive as Kyle reached out to pat him. Isabella stayed put as not to intrude. Kyle now studied in the rarified air of male privilege, but Isabella felt relief at not being forced into a gender warfare that might threaten her survival. She thought that Kyle and Sophie had abandoned their homes and families for something not as strong or as true. She perceived changes in them as soon as they left Millville, as though they had crossed over to another side.

Was it a bit of handed-down puritanism? Is that what made her grandmother treasure every day of her life? To Thine Own Self Be True, and only thine self and a few of your nearest and dearest.

How’s Sophie doing? he asked.

Great… she brought some friends home. You should drop by.

Maybe… if I get my work done. I wish the library was open. My house is noisy.

Mine too, Isabella said. See you then.

Yeah… see you. Say hi to Sophie.

Will do.

Isabella knew that ‘Say hi to Sophie’ - or for that matter - say hi to anyone, was just one of those things people said to move the conversation along. They really didn’t care if you offered the greeting or not, and no one ever called or followed up to see if you actually said Hi to a designated recipient.

When she got home, the chandelier lights were still on in the dining room. The table had been cleared of all Thanksgiving indicators except the pilgrim salt-and-pepper shakers, and Sophie and her two college friends were seated there with open books and pencils and yellow highlighters. They were working on a Philosophy project - some kind of assignment, father explained. That’s why he had muted the sound of the football game. Isabella was hesitant to interrupt them so she and Chum went into the den to watch the silent game. Millie was upstairs resting; she had put the turkey in the oven at five that morning and was now taking a nap.

Isabella accepted that she and her sister were on two different trajectories.

What’s the score? her father asked; he had dozed off.

The score is… Sophie one, Isabella nothing.

Joseph Campbell is amazing, Phoebe was talking. Can you think of it… going through life following your bliss?

Jocelyn said, But how does one find bliss? He doesn’t give us any guidelines.

Bliss just comes, said Sophie, Bliss comes when you least expect it.

Phoebe said, You have to put some effort into it. You have to try a lot of things and one of these things will jump out at you and you will cry out, THIS is your bliss!"

Sophie asked, What if we get to be fifty years old and we still haven’t found our bliss.

Jocelyn said, Then you’ve had bliss-less life.

The three girls laughed loudly and long. Isabella didn’t get the humor. What was so funny about a bliss-less life? She didn’t understand what they were talking about. Was it code? Was it code that they had picked up at college?

Isabella hadn’t yet met this code. She attended classes faithfully and her assignments were submitted on time; there was no talk about bliss. In fact, there was little chatter about anything other than the shortage of parking spaces outside Bailey Hall, or the expiration of bus passes. There were ninety-four students in her Biology class: some had dropped out of high school and then passed an equivalency test, some had babies and paid a fee for their supervision at the campus day-care center, some of the girls had purple hair and others had long decorated fingernails which provided a focus when their minds drifted, some had white lips and eyes that appeared blackened or blued by color from the Dollar Store. The guys tended to hide behind hooded clothing like The Knights Templar and joke about DUIs and robbing the Dollar Store. The professors (there were three) lectured and the students took notes. They took fill-in the-blanks tests.

Dr. Hensel had a German accent and he mumbled. His lectures were like translating a foreign language, but Isabella managed to get the gist of what he was saying. Because some students asked her for clarifications so often, she shared her notes with them. Now she condensed her notes into bullet points and outlined central ideas. She copied this on the machine at the store where she worked, and sold them to the Biology students for one dollar each. She made between thirty and fifty dollars a lecture…