by Susan Juby
With luck, the application readers from Green Pastures will assume Jacques is a high-powered entertainment exec rather than a minor DJ who hates EDM and pawns his equipment at least twice a year. I hope the application is heartwarming but in no way suggests that I might be too far outside the realm of a normal young person’s life.
My heart sped and slowed, sped and slowed in spite of the calming breaths I took. This application had to work. Everything was riding on it. My future, my well-being, my dreams. If I could just get in to the competition, I could win. And then everything would be possible.
Calm yourself, Charlie Dean, I coached. Panic isn’t chic and neither is desperation.
I dropped it into the mailbox and said the first of countless small prayers.
six
FEBRUARY 10
Creative writing is another thing they don’t offer at our school anymore. It’s too bad, because my application to enter the Green Pastures fashion scholarship competition suggests I might be good at it.
I figured most of the applicants would be as eager to please as golden retriever puppies. My application would be the only snarly schnauzer in the bunch. You’d be surprised how many people like that. Schnauzers have their fans. I’ve always had an ability to withhold things from people in a way that makes them want to find out what I’m keeping back. Until I lose my mystique, that is.
I still remember when Mr. Tanaka, our woodworking teacher (this was back when we still had woodworking), tried to take a special interest in me. He said he thought I had the right temperament to work with wood. After that I tried to be how he saw me: calm, one with the grain and whatnot. He let me stay after class and even gave me a piece of purple heartwood to use as an inlay in the gift box project.
Oh man, nothing went right with that box. Seriously. I sunk a hole into it in the wrong place. Cut a tenon joint that broke off. And about halfway through the project, right in the middle of class, I lost it. I screamed some choice swear words and swept the pieces of the box onto the floor, and then I kicked them for good measure. I yelled a few more swear words before stomping out of the room, out of the school, and out of Mr. Tanaka’s special attention pile.
That is just one example of the many times the inner snap show that lies beneath my supposedly mellow exterior has been exposed.
Lucky for me, not long after that Gramps got me going on metalwork. The thing about metal is that it won’t put up with your bullshit. If you throw it on the floor, you’re going to cut your hand. If you try to stomp it, you’re going to hurt your foot. Metal is always the boss. Even a reactive person with low self-control, like me, has to keep a certain respect.
The basic point is that my calm-and-aloof routine is well-known to be bullshit, at least among those who know me, but for the purposes of my application, a little distance seemed like a better strategy than trying too hard.
I wrote all my answers as vaguely as I could get away with. I skimmed a few fashion design books from the library and read some blogs and fashion sites.
Under the section where we were meant to list our technical skills I put:
18" C-Thru transparent inch/metric ruler
hip curve
French curve
tape measure
blue dot paper
I have them and I know how to use them.
All lies. I have no idea what a hip curve and a French curve might be. Ditto blue dot paper.
I wrote that one of my specialties was “fitting shoulders” after reading how hard that is on a clothing design forum.
If I get into the competition, I had better watch a lot of YouTube videos about French curves and shoulder holes so I can find out what they are.
As for the part about my inspirations, I did not paste a photo of the Diabetes Society donation bin, which is where all my clothing inspiration comes from currently, but instead I looked up a bunch of fashion designers who make stuff that looks like rags and said they were my inspirations. I figure that if I get in, no one will be surprised when I make something ugly.
I am not just reactive. I may also be something of an evil genius fashion fraud, if I do say so myself. Now I just have to tell my friends that I actually entered the competition. I’m kind of dreading it, though I couldn’t tell you why.
Sardonic Quote for Embarrassing Mood Board
“I never touch sugar, cheese, bread . . . I only like what I’m allowed to like. I’m beyond temptation. There is no weakness. When I see tons of food in the studio, for us and for everybody, for me it’s as if this stuff was made out of plastic. The idea doesn’t even enter my mind that a human being could put that into their mouth. I’m like the animals in the forest. They don’t touch what they cannot eat.”
—KARL LAGERFELD
PART TWO
Day at the Atelier
seven
HERE’S AN IDEA © CHARLIE DEAN DESIGNS:
If you knew today was the last day of your life, how would you dress? Well, today might be the last day of your life. So dress for it. This approach will ensure that you keep your look as profound and authentic as possible. From such beginnings is true style born.
DATE: MARCH 2
Days until fashion show: 63
When I checked the mailbox for the two hundred and twenty-seventh time since I mailed my application, and saw the crisp, white envelope, I turned hot, then cold, then numb. This was it. Would I have a future or would I be sentenced to the slag heap of shattered dreams, never to rise again?
I took the envelope out of the box like I was extracting a bomb and walked on pins-and-needles feet to the house and shut myself in my room.
“Please let it be an acceptance,” I whispered. Prayed, really.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I muttered as my heart smashed around in my chest.
When I finally cut it open, I did so with extreme care. I extracted the thick sheet of paper, and as soon as I read the first word I began to cry. Just a touch. Nothing disfiguring. A few drops of purest joy rolling down my cheeks.
Being accepted into the Green Pastures fashion competition was like being admitted to heaven. Or at least the place you go to be interviewed by God Hermighty before you get into heaven. Not only would I have a chance to show my work in a fashion show judged by a committee of fashion professionals and maybe win a scholarship to the best art high school in Canada if not the world, I would be spending a day at a workshop at Green Pastures, soaking up the creativity and knowledge.
x x x
I GOT THAT GOOD NEWS TEN DAYS AGO. TODAY WAS WORKSHOP day—also known as the best day of my life so far.
So why was I running late, which I never do? Why? Why?
To put it simply, Charlie Dean couldn’t get into the bathroom.
I awoke at six a.m. My plan was to meditate, which I do to improve my focus; eat a healthy breakfast of fruit and croissant (you-bake, but still: French!); take a shower; and then get dressed.
I’d spent a long time the night before deciding which suit to wear. I have been collecting suits since I reached my full height of five foot ten, which is an ideal height for a lover of clothes. My favorite right now is the one I think of as my Wallis Simpson. It’s a wasp-waisted, double-breasted charcoal number with a magnificent collar. I wear it with antique medals pinned to the hip to give it that authentic flare. Wallis was one of Diana Vreeland’s most famous clients. She was a forbidding-looking divorcée who lured the King of England away from the throne. The two of them eloped, which created un scandale majeur! I think they later became Nazi sympathizers or something equally heinous, so one can’t look to her for anything other than her taste in suits. Sure, she was somewhat homely and liked Nazis, but all most people remember is her fierce style. Wallis had more edge than a steak knife. She was also the person who said one can never be too rich or too thin, which shows she had sense.
I
didn’t go with the Wallis for the workshop. I thought a more approachable look would be less intimidating for the other contestants. Instead, I wore a menswear-inspired tweed number that Katharine Hepburn would have been proud to play a round of golf in.
Like Mrs. Vreeland and Wallis Simpson, I have devoted myself to becoming as perfect as possible in order to overcome some of my natural physical and circumstantial limitations. Diana Vreeland had to overcome a critical, attention-seeking mother and unconventional looks. I have to overcome a deceased mother, average looks, and dirt-common beginnings. I believe I can make up for those deficits by being as interesting as possible in my physical aspect and dress, having an excellent vocabulary and a superhuman work ethic, and being a superb designer. Diana Vreeland came from a society family in New York, so in some ways life was probably easier for her than it is for me, but I believe in the power of positive thinking!
Back to trying to get ready in the morning. When I went to the bathroom at 6:03 a.m., it was occupée.
I walked down the hallway and peered into my father’s boudoir. He was in there, sprawled among the sheets and assorted blankets not made of natural fibers.
That meant Mischa, the new girlfriend, was the culprit.
Perhaps she wouldn’t be in there for long. After all, she wasn’t much older than me, and teenagers need their sleep.
It should be said that my father has been dating Mischa for nearly a month, and neither of them has hit the skids. Yet. Mischa is polite and considerate and, at least so far, drug-free. She gives me my space, and I stay out of her way. She started staying over immediately, but I keep different hours from them. This was the first morning she’d been up before me.
To give Mischa her privacy, I stood behind my half-closed bedroom door and waited for her to emerge. And I waited.
No Mischa.
Charlie Dean is not now and never will be a camper, but she does know how to go outside when the occasion demands! This was a lesson learned during the times Charlie Dean and her father lived in their car. This was before I was put in charge of managing the rent money.
I ducked around the back of our unattractive house and hoped none of our neighbors would see me.
Then, because Charlie Dean has basically parented herself from a very young age and has learned about waiting and waiting and waiting some more when parental persons do not arrive on schedule, or at all, I did my fifteen-minute meditation. Surely Mischa would be done with . . . whatever she was doing in there by the time I was one with the creator and the universe.
But at 6:25 Mischa was still in the bathroom. My clothes were laid out, freshly ironed, and a starched blouse waited on a wooden hanger. My supplies were stored in my portfolio bag. I was supposed to be at Green Pastures at eight thirty.
I ate my healthy breakfast, enjoying the slices of honeydew, the two strawberries, and, when it was ready, the flaky, warm-from-the-oven croissant, of which I ate only half. Then I went to stand in front of the bathroom door.
Meditation and oneness with the universe or no, Charlie Dean was becoming frustrated.
I debated waking my father and asking him to get Mischa out. But that would mean talking to my father in the morning, which is an unsettling experience because of his extreme lack of vivaciousness.
So I knocked quietly but firmly on the door.
No answer for a beat. Then, “Yes?”
“Are you going to be in there much longer?”
“I’m not sure,” came her unsatisfying answer.
I took a deep, steadying breath. If Mischa was using drugs in there, she might not be entirely reasonable. It was important to tread carefully.
“I have to get ready for school,” I said, feeling that the bathroom door and I were getting to know each other a little too intimately.
“It’s Saturday.”
“I got into that fashion competition. We’re having a workshop today. This morning, actually.”
“Oh my god! That’s so great,” said Mischa, who is sweet even if she is a bathroom hog.
“I know. I’m really excited.”
“Does that mean you won the contest?” she asked, her voice only slightly muffled by the flimsy door.
“No. They’re going to tell us what to expect today. Then we go away and make our designs for the fashion show in May.”
“Are you nervous?” asked the voice behind the door.
I’m sad to report this was the best conversation I’d had for weeks. Maybe months.
Normally, I practice optimism because it’s supposed to lead to success. But something about talking to my father’s girlfriend who had locked herself in the bathroom caused me to de-optimize.
“Yes,” I said.
“You are going to do great.”
“You think so?”
“Look at you! You’ve got everything going for you. You’re so striking and unique. Your dad says you’re really talented. I love the way you dress.”
“You do?”
“Totally. It’s not like everyone else.”
Charlie Dean likes to give as good as she gets, so I said, “You too.”
Mischa didn’t answer. The door remained a scuffed white.
I considered pulling up a chair and settling in but decided against it. I had places to be.
“Are you okay in there?” I asked.
No answer.
“Do you need help?”
A long pause. “I’m having a panic attack,” she said.
“Ah,” I said. “They’re very common among people who are newly clean and sober.”
Charlie Dean knows this for a fact. When her father is not filling the house with active addicts, the house is full of newly clean addicts who are having a lot of panic attacks.
I fought back the drowning feeling I always get when I’m in danger of being late or, Dior forbid, actually am late. This woman was in trouble. I had to calm her down so I could get ready.
“There are easy and effective ways to get over them. Panic attacks, I mean.” I considered all the methods I’d employed while waiting to see if I’d been accepted into the competition. All that self-care would be for nothing if I made a bad first impression by BEING LATE on the first day. Breathe, Charlie Dean. Breathe.
“There are?”
“Absolutely. If you come out, I’ll show you.”
“I don’t think I can move.”
I took another deep breath. Charlie Dean does not let down the person in need, even when her entire future is riding on her getting into the bathroom.
So I took Mischa through the breathing and body awareness exercises that I’d learned from a counselor I saw when I lived with one of my foster families. At 7:07 Mischa finally emerged from the bathroom.
“Charlene, I feel much better,” she said.
“Please, call me Charlie,” I said, fighting back the urge to shove her aside so I could get inside.
Mischa looked younger than me. She had on one of my father’s T-shirts and some flannel pajama bottoms, which she’d clearly brought from home, since my father does not own pajamas. I thought of Calvin Klein’s basement rec room ads with the waif kids. Panicky Mischa would have fit right in. She really was a cut above most of his ladies. Indeed, she was almost as pretty as my mother had been.
“I really have to get ready now, but I’m happy to tell you what I know about coping with anxiety later,” I told her.
She smiled.
“Thanks, Charlie,” she said. And she patted my shoulder awkwardly, like she didn’t quite know what to do with me, and it was a strange moment indeed.
I sped through my ablutions and raced out the door. And I felt sort of like I’d made a friend, which was a nice surprise.
I also prayed that I hadn’t just blown my entire future in the process.
eight
MARCH 2
&n
bsp; After I sent in the fairly half-assed application I basically forgot about it, so I was surprised when my grandma handed me the envelope a week or so later.
“This came for you,” she said, handing it over.
“I’ll go to my room and open it.” I don’t know why I felt like I needed privacy.
My whole body felt strange.
I sat at my desk and used the sickle-shaped letter opener I’d made to open it.
Dear Mr. Thomas-Smith,
We are pleased to invite you to take part in the Green Pastures Fashion Scholarship Competition.
It probably took a full minute for me to process that I’d gotten in.
Being accepted confirmed my suspicion that it was a bullshit contest. But it also meant I had a chance of getting into Green Pastures if I could somehow bluff my way through. If I won, I could switch into another program. I might have only a one percent chance, but it was a chance all the same.
“John?” asked my grandmother. She stood in my doorway, holding a covered Tupperware. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
“Grandpa and I are going to the Legion for Cal Droog’s birthday party tonight. We have to make burgers. There’s lasagna in here. You just need to heat it up.” She gestured the container at me.
“Okay. Have fun.”
“You’re sure everything’s okay?” she asked. My grandma isn’t fancy. She never wears makeup, and her hair is short and plain, and I think she’s pretty beautiful. Nobody has eyes like my gram.
“For sure.”
She was staring at the letter, and I lifted it.
“I just got into this, uh, contest thing.”
“Do you need money?”
This is always her first question after she asks whether I need food.
“No, Gram. It’s free.” And then I told her about the contest and about the workshop.
