A Dress for the Wicked

by Autumn Krause

  Her words sent my heart straight up into my throat and I stepped forward, still holding out my sketch. She was moving away, and I had to stop her—she hadn’t even seen my work. She couldn’t turn me down, not like this.

  “You should go.” The woman in the horsehair gown nodded at the maid. She came forward, ushering me out.

  “Wait!” I said loudly, desperately. Yet it had no more effect than the yipping dogs. No one even glanced in my direction.

  “Of course, we appreciate you coming,” the horsehair woman said brusquely. I turned toward her, ready to entreat her to help me—anything to make it all stop so I could explain and show them I belonged. The maid’s firm hand landed on my shoulder, and she shoved roughly.

  And then, just like that, I was outside, stumbling over tufts of dead grass, my senses jolted from the blinding sunlight and drastic change in temperature. It happened so quickly that, for a moment, my lips were still parted as I tried to protest.

  “Record time,” the man with the three pocket watches said. “I was hoping you would rescue us from this godforsaken wasteland of a place.” He turned his face to the cloudless blue sky. “I dream of . . . sorbet.” He sighed longingly, sweat glimmering on his forehead.

  I could barely hear him, much less reply. My breath was short, like I’d been running, and I started sweating again but not from the oppressive heat. I crumpled my sketch into a tight ball, the outline of the dress disappearing with the clutch of my hand and the crinkle of paper.

  “Oh, honey.” His face softened underneath its sheen of perspiration and smudged eyebrow charcoal. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s not you. It’s Madame Jolène. Let’s see it.” He held out his palm. Automatically, I placed the ball there, my movements dull, as though I wasn’t the one making them.

  The man propped his foot up on one of the tent stakes, spread the drawing across his knee, and stared at it in silence for several moments. The zebra on his pocket watch leered.

  “It’s good,” he said. He ran his hand over it, smoothing out the wrinkles. “It’s quite good.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Madame Jolène didn’t even see it.” Talking sent nauseous waves through my stomach, and a disgusting, bitter taste rose on my tongue. Nothing made sense. Everything inside me had pulled me to this place and tricked me into believing my dreams were coming true. Despair, strong and thick like tea dregs, surged with the taste of bile. I glanced around, trying to determine the best place to vomit.

  The man’s charcoal-darkened eyebrows arched. “She didn’t even see it?”

  “No.”

  “Well.” The man brushed his hand over the sketch one more time, but the creases still crisscrossed the paper. “That’s a shame. It’s lovely. The best I’ve seen all day, or my name isn’t Francesco Mazinnati. I imagine you’re the closest thing to style this place offers. The last thing I want is for Madame Jolène to hire a girl who only knows about dressing scarecrows.”

  He smiled at me. It was a strange sight, especially since the charcoal on his eyebrows had started to run down the sides of his face. He handed the sketch back to me, his movements careful, as though it was a fine painting or a drawing from Madame Jolène herself.

  Somehow, his actions quelled my nausea. I stood there, gathering myself. I’d just been inside the coolness of the tent, but the heat of the day had already begun to reclaim me—as though the country was pulling me into itself again. I was surrounded by a barren wasteland of dead grass and sunbaked trees, the backdrop of my childhood and, if I kept standing there, my future.

  I didn’t give myself time to think; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to move. I would have stayed rooted to the scorching ground forever. Without a single thought or word to the man, Francesco, I walked to the tent flaps and stepped through them to face Madame Jolène once again.

  This time, she was standing in the middle of the tent, her little dogs and her servants revolving around her in chaotic circles.

  “Madame Jolène!” My shrill voice cut through the commotion. Everyone froze, their eyes fixing disdainfully on me, as though I was a drunk stumbling into Sunday liturgy. Even the little dogs went still, like they knew I was breaking some sacred rule of etiquette and were quite appalled.

  Only Madame Jolène remained in motion. She cast one glance at me and then threw an annoyed hand into the air, sending her bracelets spiraling down her wrists. “You again? What on earth do you want?”

  My fingers clenched so tightly around my sketch that they added more wrinkles to the paper. The room’s coolness swept across my skin. Still, I made myself speak.

  “I think you should see my sketch.”

  “You think I should see your sketch?” Her words were razor sharp. I didn’t say anything else. I simply held it out to her. The horsehair woman let out a scoff, but I remained where I was, arm extended into the air, sketch hanging in empty space.

  Madame Jolène didn’t take it. Instead, she pursed her lips, considering me. My face had to be flushed as red as Madame Jolène’s dress.

  Madame Jolène had looked at me before, but only in condescension. This time, her eyes ran from my worn, low-heeled shoes, over my old dress, and to the yellow feather in my hair. They stopped, lingering on the feather. Her gaze wasn’t cruel or unkind. Instead, it was detached. I wanted to squirm under the weight of her attention, but I knew I shouldn’t. I forced myself to remain still, chin up and shoulders straight.

  “Interesting choice,” she said. “Yellow feather and purple gown. Very interesting. Tell me, dear . . .” The word dear sounded neither affectionate nor playful from her lips. “How did that little idea pop into your head?”

  She stepped back behind the table and the maid rushed forward to pull out her chair. Without even pausing, she sat down on it.

  “‘Fashion is the unexpected,’” I said, parroting Madame Jolène’s own quote from a recent article.

  A slight smile came to her tight lips, loosening the corners a bit. “And what is unexpected?”

  “‘The elements of an outfit that surprise—and sometimes even confuse—but delight,’” I continued, watching her face for any hint of approval.

  Madame Jolène held out her hands, but not for my sketch. Wordlessly one of her ladies picked up one of the Pomeranians and handed it to her. She set it on her lap and slowly ran her fingers over its furry head and down to its beaded jacket. “You presume you have the capability to work for me?”

  “I know I do.”

  “Bring your sketch here.”

  It was a ludicrous request—I had been holding it out to her for the past several minutes. I stepped forward, my limbs moving stiffly. A chill had settled into my bones, or maybe it was the disapproval of everyone around me, their disdain as paralyzing as any cold.

  I held my breath as Madame Jolène took the drawing. Her eyes started at the top and then slowly worked their way down the page, in the same way she had observed my outfit. I held still, my breath caught in my throat, twin beats of my heart pulsing in my neck and chest.

  “Well drawn,” she said.

  I gasped, the sound weak and whispery. I had been so certain she would hate it that her approval was more alarming than any rejection.

  “Her choice of colors shows promise,” the woman in the horsehair gown murmured, craning her neck forward to see the sketch for herself.

  “It does.” Madame Jolène sounded reluctant. “Where are you from?”

  Obviously, she hadn’t bothered to listen when I told her earlier.

  “Shy. My mother owns a pub there. I’ve always loved fashion, ever since I can remember, and—”

  “A pub? How primitive.” The dog in Madame Jolène’s lap began to yelp. She rose to her feet, pushed her chair back, and stepped around the table, not bothering to set the dog on the floor. It fell to the ground with a yelp.

  “Listen to me well.” She seemed to grow taller as she walked toward me. I could smell the chypre scent of her perfume and see the muscles in her face tighten unde
r her skin. “You may be ambitious, but my critics necessitate your acceptance. They say my collections are extravagant and that I have no connection with the common man. Your inclusion in the Fashion House Interview will ease public pressure and appease those ridiculous members of Parliament, nothing more. Understood?”

  Acceptance? Her tone was so taut I thought I’d misheard her. It sounded as if she was banishing me for all time, not admitting me to the Fashion House Interview. I was accepted? I would live at the Fashion House, create couture, compete to be an actual design apprentice? I glanced from Madame Jolène to the horsehair woman, trying to confirm this wasn’t some cruel joke. The horsehair woman was staring at me as dourly as Madame Jolène.

  “Understood?” Madame Jolène demanded again. One of her thinly tweezed eyebrows arched, but it didn’t matter. I, Emmy Watkins, was going to compete in the Fashion House Interview.

  “Yes. Thank you,” I said. I wanted to say more, to tell her how much this opportunity meant to me, that I’d do my very best to be chosen as an apprentice at the end, but she had already turned away. I didn’t care. I could prove her wrong. Yes, it would be hard work, and I’d have to fight to be the best. But the one thing that every girl dreamed of—getting into the Fashion House Interview—had somehow happened for me.

  “File away her sketch,” Madame Jolène ordered, and the horsehair woman immediately slipped my sketch into an embroidered valise before rattling off traveling instructions for tomorrow morning to me. I listened, but it was hard to concentrate, and it wasn’t because she was speaking quickly. From my peripheral vision, I saw the maid step forward to fold up the newspaper on the desk. The headline, in conjunction with Madame Jolène’s contempt, spoke louder than the woman.

  I’d gotten into the Fashion House Interview . . . but I was the only person who was happy about it.

  Long shadows were crawling across the ground by the time I returned home. Since it was Sunday, our pub was closed. I’d heard that in Avon-upon-Kynt, places stayed open even on the Lord’s day, but in Shy, everyone went to church and then to their houses for early dinners and bedtimes.

  I walked through our vegetable garden, let myself in the back door, and made my way past the kitchen toward the staircase. The table was set with four place settings of our nice blue china. Crumbs dotted three of the plates, and half-finished tea sat in the matching cups. The fourth setting was untouched. Mrs. Wells and Johnny. I’d completely forgotten. Thinking of my mother trying to make small talk with the taciturn Wellses made me wince.

  I made my way up the stairs. My room was directly at the top, right across from my mother’s. Slowly, I eased my door open, trying to keep it from creaking, and stepped inside.

  “You’re back.”

  My mother was sitting on my bed, holding Madame Jolène’s advert.

  “I’m—” I started, and then stopped, trying to think of what to say. Suddenly, all I could see were the dark semicircles under her eyes and how, even though she normally stood straight and tall, her shoulders were drooping.

  “So, you went to Evert to apply for the Fashion House Interview. Were you accepted?”

  There it was. The question hung heavy between us. My mother had made it easy for me, summing up everything so all I had to do was admit that yes, I had been given a spot. Yet it was hard to nod, to confirm everything she’d said.

  “Johnny was disappointed you weren’t here.” She changed the topic without any warning—but that was just like her. She was always saying things without saying them, leaving me to read her true feelings between the lines. Over the course of my lifetime, I’d gotten quite good at it.

  “I’ll make money at the Fashion House and send it back,” I said. “Marriage isn’t the only way to save the pub.”

  “How do you—?”

  “I’ve seen the letters from the bank. I know we’re behind on the mortgage.”

  A new anger flashed in my mother’s eyes. She hated appearing weak, even to me, her only living relative.

  “It isn’t just the money, Emmy. It’s a secure life with a good man who will take care of you. Do you think you can find that in the city?”

  “That’s not why I’m going to the city. I’m going to design. I’m going to do everything I can to be one of the apprentices.”

  I walked over to the far side of my bed. An old carpetbag was tucked against it. I crouched down and unlatched its mouth. The motion sent delicate dust particles spinning up into the air. I had never used the bag before. In fact, it had not been used since my mother had returned to Shy, pregnant with me.

  When she’d been about my age, she’d gone to the city to work in a textile factory. Whatever had happened between her and my father remained a mystery to me. The only time I’d heard anything about him was when I was seven, when I’d walked into the kitchen to find my mother, a woman who was always in perpetual motion, sitting still at the table. She held a letter and said to me, “Your father died.”

  And that was it. She didn’t cry, and she told me not to cry either. I obeyed. It wasn’t difficult. I’d never known the man. It would’ve been hard to cry for someone I’d never met. I soon forgot about him, aside from occasionally wondering what parts of me belonged to him—my eyes? Or maybe my nose? My appreciation for whimsy and beauty, two things that I definitely had not inherited from my mother?

  Others had not forgetten him. People in Shy had memories that stretched long into the past. Even while they gave us bags of hand-me-down clothing or did simple repairs to the pub, they always whispered about the single mother and her daughter.

  “How did she look?” my mother asked after a long while.

  “Who? Madame Jolène?”

  “Yes.”

  “She looked . . .” I stopped. I wanted to tell her Madame Jolène was haughty, and that my stomach had been in knots ever since we met. I said, “She looked beautiful.”

  My mother winced, and I sat back on my heels. A shaft of fading daylight caught her face, illuminating the lines around her mouth and across her forehead. I suddenly wanted to hug her and tell her to trust me and everything would be all right. But then she spoke.

  “I’ve worked hard so you don’t make the same mistakes I did. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I understand why you want to go to the city. When I was your age, it seemed like such a beautiful, mysterious place. Anything could happen there. But it isn’t like that. The city will chew you up and spit you out.”

  “This is my only chance.” I stood up and walked over to where she still sat on my patchwork quilt. “I can’t just stay here making drawings in the kitchen and tailoring people’s church clothing. I have to try to do it for real.”

  I rarely spoke to her so freely, and I searched her face for a hint of understanding, anything that showed she knew I wasn’t trying to hurt her.

  “I’ve spent my whole life trying to show you what is important,” she said. Her eyes darted around the room, and when she spoke it sounded like she wasn’t even sure what she was saying. “And you haven’t learned.”

  “You sound like Grandfather.”

  At the mention of my grandfather, her eyelids fluttered, her head bending forward at the neck. Her hair was pinned up into its normal workday bun, and the pearl-like outline of her spine jutted out against her skin just above her collar. I thought she might cry, but even in her darkest moments—like when the men had come to take her beloved piano away to sell at public auction over in Evert—she never did.

  During his life, my grandfather was a deacon here in Shy. We lived with him until he died, and my mother bought the pub with her inheritance. He and my mother had always had the same conversation—or at least that’s how it seemed to me.

  She would say, Emmy is your granddaughter. Why won’t you even look at her?

  And he would reply, She has the face of her father.

  “I am nothing like your grandfather,” my mother said harshly. Her eyes darkened, and I held my breath, knowing I’d pushed too far, that I’d never re
ach her now. We both sat in silence. Then, slowly, she softened and held out a hand. I thought she was going to stroke my hair like she did every night, but she stopped, uncertain. “You don’t have to do this.” There was a hint of pleading in her voice and suddenly, I thought I might cry. “You can stay, and we can forget this happened. We can go downstairs and have some tea and scones like we always do. We can use the blue china.” Her voice became a whisper, and she finished the gesture she’d begun, gently brushing my hair back from my face.

  I wanted to stay still. I wanted to let her run her callused fingers through my hair and sink into her arms. But I couldn’t, and anger rose from the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t my fault. It was hers, forcing this choice on me, forcing me to hurt her.

  “You know I need to go.” I struggled to hold back tears and somehow managed to succeed.

  My mother pulled back her hand and stared at me for a long moment. Then she said, “Very well.”

  She left me standing in my bedroom in my purple dress, the yellow feather falling halfway out of my hair. As I packed, I kept listening for her footsteps on the stairs, kept looking up to see if she would open my door, kept waiting for her to come and say she understood. It wasn’t like us to shut each other out. Then again, it wasn’t like us to be apart.

  I thought for sure we would say goodbye to each other, but she went to bed early. The next morning when I went to her room, her door was ajar, and she’d left a note saying she’d gone out. I looked for her, but she wasn’t in the vegetable garden or at the bluffs overlooking the pond. I waited until I would nearly miss my train and then, glancing over my shoulder every few moments in case she was there, left for the station outside Evert.

  Chapter Two

  ON THE TRAIN, the views outside my window sped by, accompanied by the train’s click-clacking chorus. They changed from rolling farmlands to clustered factories and, finally, to elegant storefronts. Growing up, I’d heard the refrain “farmers, factories, Fashion House” constantly—it was taught to all the schoolchildren as an easy way to understand how the farmers provided wool and silk threads, the factories turned those into fabric, and the Fashion House designed the styles—but now, seeing each link of the refrain passing by my train window, it was clearer than ever before.