Chapter 11
ISABELLE
Isabelle said it out loud on a Sunday morning, holding a mug of ginger tea and looking at the terra cotta floor she'd laid on her hands and knees with a mallet and a level she'd learned to use from a YouTube video.
"I want to take on clients."
Margaret was sitting at the island with a coffee and the newspaper she still read in print because she said screens ruined her hands.
Jonathan, who had been tripping over himself to be even kinder to Isabelle than usual since returning from his business trip, had already left for work.
Douglas was on the other stool, eating a croissant he'd brought from Tartine, dropping flakes on the counter.
"Restoration and interior design," Isabelle said.
"Historic homes. Bringing back the original architecture and then designing the interiors around what the house was always supposed to be.
What I've been doing on this house for years, except with someone actually knowing I'm the one doing it. And paying me for it."
She hadn't planned to say it today. She'd been circling the idea, ever since she'd moved back into the Pacific Heights house and walked through the rooms Xavier had emptied of himself.
His suits gone from the closet. His books gone from the study.
The two water glasses still on the nightstand, both of them, which had almost broken her.
She'd stood in the hallway looking at the sconces, touched the mounting plate and thought: I'm going to fix these.
And then, with a certainty that surprised her: I'm going to fix other people's houses too.
Douglas set down his croissant. "Yes."
"You haven't even heard the rest."
"You're going to say you're not sure if anyone would hire you, or if it's the right time because you're pregnant and your marriage is falling apart and you've never had a real client before.
And I'm going to tell you that you laid this floor.
" He tapped the terra cotta with his shoe.
"And you found an 1890s ceiling medallion in a demolition yard in Oakland and cleaned it with a toothbrush.
And you taught yourself to read a level from the internet.
So skip the doubt and tell me what you need. "
Isabelle stared at him. Margaret turned a page of her newspaper.
"What he said," Margaret offered. "Minus the theatrics."
"That wasn't theatrics. That was an endorsement."
"Douglas."
"I'm serious, Iz. You've been doing professional-quality work for years. The only difference is that nobody's been writing you a check." He picked up his croissant again. "Also, this kitchen is better than half the projects in Dwell magazine, and I will die on that hill."
Margaret folded the newspaper and set it aside. She had the expression she wore before delivering a clinical assessment: direct, stripped of ornament, impossible to argue with.
"What would you need to get started?" she said.
"A portfolio. Photos of the work I've done here. A website, probably. And someone willing to actually hire me."
"I know someone," Margaret said.
"What?"
"A colleague. Doctor Soto. She and her partner bought a Queen Anne in the Western Addition last year.
Beautiful bones, terrible renovations from the eighties.
Drywall over original millwork. Vinyl over hardwood.
The whole horror show. They want someone who can restore what's underneath and then design the interiors to match.
They've talked to contractors, they've talked to decorators, but they haven't found anyone who does both. "
“I—I don't have a business yet. I don't have insurance. I don't even have a website."
"Then get those things. I'll stall Grace until you do." Margaret picked up her coffee. "You have the skill. You have the eye. You have a house that proves you can do the work. Everything else is paperwork."
"Paperwork you could do in a week," Douglas added. "I know a web designer. And I know a photographer who specializes in interiors and architectural spaces. I'll connect you."
Isabelle looked at the two of them, treating the most terrifying idea she'd ever had as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
She pressed her hand against her stomach.
Nine weeks now. The nausea had arrived just as Margaret had predicted: suddenly, persistently, with a preference for mornings and an indifference to ginger tea.
"I'm pregnant, separated from my husband and I'm about to start a business I've never run before," she said. "That's insane."
Douglas just grinned at her from across the island and Margaret hid a smile behind her coffee. Isabelle realized that this was the first morning in weeks that the ache in her chest hadn't been the first thing she noticed upon waking.
Margaret left for the hospital at noon. Douglas stayed another hour, sitting in the living room with his laptop, building her a list of things she'd need: business license, liability insurance, a portfolio site, professional photos.
He typed quickly, pausing every few minutes to look around the room and point at something.
"The fireplace surround. Photograph that. The bookshelves. The plaster walls. And the hallway sconces, even though you hate them."
"I don't hate them. They pull gold."
"They're beautiful and you know it. Photograph them. Photograph everything in this house, put it on the website and let people see what you can do."
"What if nobody calls?"
"People will call."
"What if they call and I can't do it?"
Douglas closed his laptop. He looked at her with the expression she'd known since Berkeley, since the apartment on Bancroft, since the kitchen counter with cheap wine: total certainty, bordering on impatience.
"Iz. You can do it. You've always been able to do it. The only thing that's changed is that now you're going to let yourself."
He left around two. She stood in the doorway and watched him walk down the hill toward Fillmore, and she thought about the first time he'd walked away from this house, weeks ago, when he'd come with croissants and she'd been in the garden with dirt on her jaw.
She'd gone inside to make dinner for Xavier and had tried not to think about the restlessness or the longing that had filled her.
But then, weeks ago before he had shattered her, Xavier had been her whole world.
She was done saying nothing.
Isabelle spent the afternoon photographing the house.
She used her phone, moving from room to room, kneeling and angling and waiting for the light.
The fireplace surround with its salvaged marble.
The bookshelves with the hand-cut dovetail joints.
The plaster walls in the living room, the color of the inside of an oyster shell.
The kitchen floor, warm and imperfect, each tile carrying the memory of her hands.
She photographed the hallway last. The sconces.
The brass that pulled gold when the hallway wanted silver.
She stood at the end of the hall, took the picture and looked at the image on her screen and saw, for the first time, what other people would see: a hallway that was alive.
Warm, flawed and built with intention. The work of someone who cared about every joint, surface and shadow.
Her phone buzzed. She turned it over and looked at the screen.
Xavier.
How are you feeling? How's the nausea? Is there anything I can do?
She could see him choosing each word, weighing it, restraining himself.
There was so much he wasn't saying. No Bella.
No please. No I miss you. Just the question about her health, the baby and the offer to help.
Isabelle could see the effort it took him to stop there, to not push through into apology or plea, and the effort itself was something new.
Xavier had never in his life restrained himself from going after what he wanted.
The restraint was its own kind of communication.
Isabelle typed back: Nausea's manageable. Baby is fine. I'm okay.
She waited, watching the screen. She could see him typing. The dots appeared, held for a long time, disappeared. Appeared again. Disappeared.
What finally came was two words: Good. Okay.
And then nothing else.
Isabelle sat on the stairs of the house that was now hers, legally, entirely, the deed in her name, holding her phone and missing her husband so much it made her chest hurt.
She missed the sound of his key in the door at six o'clock.
She missed the water glasses on the nightstand.
She missed the weight of his arm around her waist in the middle of the night, the way he'd find her pulse with his thumb, that old habit, as though he needed to confirm the biological fact of her sixty times a day.
She missed him, she was furious at him, and she was building a life without him and she didn't know yet whether that life would eventually include him again outside of their child.
Isabelle pressed her hand against her stomach. The ultrasound image was taped to the refrigerator, held in place by a magnet shaped like the Golden Gate Bridge that she'd bought at a tourist shop years ago as a joke and never thrown away.
She looked at the photos on her phone. The hallway. The kitchen. The plaster walls. Her work. Her skill. Her hands, her labor, her eye. Years of building something beautiful inside someone else's life, and now she was going to build it inside her own.
Isabelle opened a new contact in her phone and typed: Grace Soto. Then she texted Margaret: Give me Grace's number. I'm ready.