In Maine, it’s rare for anyone to tell you what he or she is good at. People tend not to brag, so it’s only when you compliment someone’s collection of decoys that you discover their owner carved them all. This is just fine for Carla, whose method is to set things in motion, then back off—it’s up to somebody else to make something of the opportunity. She is a perfectionist whose standards of perfection can be entirely mystifying (“This salad needs a nasturtium”). She likes the liveliness the open kitchen provides. She is very empathetic, and in order to pretend that’s not true, she often rushes off, as if she can escape her own nimbus of niceness. At day’s end, she’s likely to disappear onto her sailboat and hide out in silence.
The road that brought Carla here has twisted and turned, and it hasn’t always been easy. She’ll tell you (well, she won’t; you have to pry) that working as a waitress in Kittery many years ago, she snapped one night when a line cook deliberately set hot bacon on her hand. She quit, went to a phone booth, called her husband to pick her up, and then—on impulse—phoned a restaurant in nearby Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that she was impressed by and got an interview the next day. (She got the job.) Obviously, she’s grateful for what she has, but unlike some people, she equates having something with making it yourself. Adversity, along with her generous, kind nature, has made her especially sensitive to other women’s difficulties, and it was in part for them that she created the café. Carla has proven that if you offer a helping hand, the next thing you know, you’ll be slapping a high five.
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