by Susan Juby
My room is like a little oasis of good taste in the desert of bad taste that is the rest of the house.
I stared down at the design I’d created. I was increasingly unhappy with it. Pretty? Yes. Elegant? Yes. Groundbreaking? No. I was torn. Play it safe with an impeccable gown or risk it all?
I thought about John’s comments about how he liked an intellectually rigorous approach. I thought about Mr. Carmichael’s lectures about fashion theory and history. I could tell at least a few of the other contestants were chance takers. It was written all over them.
Just as concerning, there was no one to wear it. I felt stumped on every level. Merde! I didn’t have the funds to hire a professional model. I don’t think there even is a modeling agency in town.
My father got home and appeared in my doorway, and I admit that I looked over his shoulder for Mischa. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to see her or not.
“Charlie girl,” he said. “How you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
“Good. Good. I’m glad one of us is.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He shrugged. My dad is one of those people who, depending on the day and his state of mind, can look anywhere from twenty-five to fifty-five. He’s actually thirty-six. He’s handsome and rather chic, in a slightly bedraggled way. There is a reason he has no problem drawing the eye of ladies, especially those with severe problems.
“Fine,” he said.
“Are you taking care of yourself?” I asked, which is code between us for are you staying clean.
“Oh yeah.”
“How’s Mischa?” I asked, the words out of my mouth before I had time to stop myself. I never ask about his ladies. I don’t want to know.
He heaved another sigh. “I don’t know, Charlie girl. Not good, I don’t think.”
You don’t want to know about this, I told myself. Do not ask about this situation.
“Why?” I asked.
“Her ex just came back to town. I guess he’s bad news. It’s got her down. Me too. I miss her. She’s a sweet girl.”
“Ah,” I said.
“She’s isolating in her apartment. Afraid to go out. It’s terrible. I’ve asked her to come over, but she’s afraid. She won’t let me visit in case it makes things worse. She just got out of treatment herself a few weeks ago. I’m worried about her.”
Do not engage, Charlie Dean. Do not. You have enough problems of your own without getting involved with your father’s affairs of the heart.
“Where does she live?” I asked.
“Right around the corner, basically. On Albert Street.”
“Do you want me to go see her?”
My father’s face cleared like a sky swept clean by a storm. He smiled, his features becoming young again.
“That would be amazing, Charlie girl. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
“Give me the address. I’ll go over this afternoon.”
My dad was like a kid, all full of enthusiasm. He slapped his hands together and generally twinkled.
“This is great, Charlie. Just great.”
Half an hour later I was on my way to Mischa’s.
She lived only four blocks from us in an apartment that wasn’t as grim as some of its neighbors. The building was a basic box, but it had a fresh coat of paint and hardly any shopping carts out front. My dad had given me the buzzer number for her apartment, and I pressed it, feeling slightly disoriented. To be honest, Charlie Dean was not sure what she was doing chasing after one of the ladies.
The ringer sounded many times. Then there was the hollow click of someone picking up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mischa. It’s Charlie. Charlie Dean.”
Silence.
“I just thought I’d say hi. See how you were.”
“I’m fine.”
“Can I come in?” I asked.
Another long pause.
“Okay. I’m in 304.”
She buzzed me in, and I made my way through the orange-and-brown-wallpapered, fake-wood-paneled 1970s lobby and into the elevator. Even the dead flies in the overhead lights looked vintage.
I knocked on her door.
“Yes?” she said, as though we hadn’t just spoken over the intercom.
“It’s Charlie.”
“Okay.”
She opened the door and peered out.
I tried to smile reassuringly.
“Hi,” I said, wishing I’d chosen to stay home. My store of small talk was completely exhausted.
“Do you want to come in?” she asked, looking as though she’d like nothing less than to let me inside.
“Sure.”
The apartment was clean but dark and nearly empty. It smelled strongly of cigarette smoke.
“I just moved in,” she said. “I didn’t pay the fees on my storage locker.”
If there’s one thing Charlie Dean knows about, it’s the role storage lockers play in the lives of those who are frequently evicted. A storage locker is basically a halfway house for people’s belongings.
“It’s very tidy,” I said, standing in the living room/dining room that contained one lumpy couch covered with a blanket, and a large TV. A full ashtray wobbled on an overturned plastic crate on the tiny deck. The sliding door was cracked open a few inches.
“Do you want to sit down?” she said.
“Maybe we could put on a light?”
She gave a little laugh. “Sorry. I don’t have any lamps yet. The overheads are so bright.”
She turned, and for an instant she was silhouetted against the half-open blinds. I saw what I hadn’t seen before. Mischa was beautiful.
My aversion to my father’s ladies and the trouble they brought, not to mention the way they were not my mother, had blinded me to the fact. But Mischa had a marvelous profile and line to her, an elegance that wasn’t obvious when she was in her jeans and leathers. She had long, slender limbs, a graceful neck.
“Will you be my model for the fashion show?” I blurted.
She frowned and tilted her head back as though trying to avoid a blow.
“Aren’t models supposed to be really young and perfect? You know, fifteen and a hundred pounds?”
“We can use anyone who inspires us,” I said. Then, because I felt like I had to be honest I said, “Plus, I asked this girl at school and she said no.”
I thought of the laughter that had followed me down the hall after I approached Bronwyn.
“God, I feel more like a house that’s about to be torn down than a model,” she said.
I stared at her as something caught fire in my imagination.
“You’d be perfect,” I said.
We stood awkwardly in the dim living room.
“How’s your dad?” she asked.
“He’s all right. I think he misses you.”
“I’m just, uh, taking some time out. I’ve got some stuff on the personal front to deal with. I haven’t been feeling well.”
“Your ex,” I said.
“It’s all okay. He hasn’t been around.” She gave a little shudder. “God, he would hate me modeling, even for a high school fashion show. That’s probably all the more reason to do it.”
“So you’ll say yes?” I asked.
“I’ll stop by tomorrow or the next day. We can talk about it. You can show me your designs.”
A smile transformed her pale, angular face into something glorious. She wasn’t unblemished golden perfection, like Bronwyn. Her look was more complex. More fragile and on the verge of fading from one more hard blow.
As soon as I got home I set all the drawings and mood boards of the unoriginal, unexciting dress aside. I pulled the copy of Black Friday with its photos of abandoned malls from under a stack of glossy magazines
. Some were stripped down to their rebar frames. Some were just left as is to slowly sag into the landscape, honeycombed with empty stores waiting for the consumer who never came. Flooded floors were elaborate reflective pools mirroring cracked atriums and soaring glass walkways.
These images of light cascading through shadowed interiors and escalators paused forever were the ones that made me swell with emotion, good and bad. They were remarkably, unexpectedly beautiful, just like Mischa. My thoughts went back to the gutted mall across the street from the fateful motel in Edmonton. My heart imploded, but as I flipped through the pages of the book I had to acknowledge the power of the photos. They were beautiful and sad. The concept took shape in my mind!
Back to work I went, printing out photos and doing sketches and putting samples of colors and textures and thematic connections on a new mood board.
My design would risk it all—it would take emotional and intellectual chances—it would be filled with loss, disappointment, and hope. And it would be worn by the ideal model.
fourteen
MARCH 7
Fashion is like a terrible disease transmitted through the eyes. My poor orbs were being exposed to so much fashion design that I was starting to have the same reaction I get when I see a really good painting, an interesting building, or a cool sculpture. It’s this clenched feeling around my heart, like somebody’s squeezing it. My hair stands on end. Who am I kidding? My hair always stands on end.
Even more baffling was the fact that Tesla, definitely not the type of girl who would normally pay attention to a guy like me, kept texting. It was messing me up.
In the positive column, I found the name of the style of clothing I would make if I ever get a model. It turns out that some designers specialize in “deconstructed” fashion, which is when the clothes are a mess, with the seams all shitty and unfinished and nothing fits properly. Deconstruction is apparently some big movement in art and philosophy and literature inspired by a sadistic French philosopher called Jacques Derrida, who expressed himself in the most complicated way possible so no one completely understands what he was getting at, even now. I know this because I tried reading the Wiki entry.
As a deconstructionist, I could send my model down the runway wearing a golf bag and clown shoes, and if anyone asked me to explain, I’d just say something about Issey Miyake’s 1994 collection or every second collection by Rei Kawakubo, especially the one she did with the big stuffed lumps sewn onto random parts of the clothes. Genius.
Having figured out my approach, I started looking for a model. After hinting around the subject for a while and not getting anywhere, I reluctantly broke down and asked B if she’d do it. She told me to never ask her something like that again, and she was only just sort of joking.
I called Booker and asked him if his new sort-of girlfriend, Destiny, would like to be my model. He said he’d check, and three minutes later he turned me down on Destiny’s behalf. Apparently she had “other things to do” that day, even though I hadn’t told Booker what day the show was.
It was a pickle and a conundrum, as my gramps likes to say. During my shift at the Salad Stop after school, I thought about whom I should ask to wear my ugly clothes. I considered the problem as I served twelve kinds of organic salads to customers who should have been eating something that was not salad. I thought about it as I wiped down counters and put the expired greens and mixed salads into the organics compost bin right before closing time.
The doorbell chimed, and I cursed under my breath. Last-minute salad customers are an offense in God’s eyes.
I swiped my hands down my green canvas uniform apron with the pattern of cascading lettuce leaves. The apron made me feel this borderline despair that was actually sort of invigorating. What would John Galliano or Valentino say about my life and my uniform? Nothing positive, I bet.
Four girls, all around ten years old, waited at the counter. Well, three stood at the counter. A fourth stood a few feet behind them, looking like she didn’t know what the hell was going on.
“We’re just closing up,” I said.
“It’s 5:55.” A white girl with blue eyes and long, straight brown hair pulled into a tight ponytail pointed at the sign with our hours.
I sighed. What were preteens doing eating salad? Shouldn’t they be eating Pizza Pockets or something like that? What was the world coming to? Was no one safe from salad?
“Yeah, okay, what can I get you?”
“I would like an apple-cider-marinated kale salad with walnuts and apples. Hold the pomegranate seeds. I think I might be allergic,” said the brown-haired girl.
“You’re not allergic,” said the girl next to her. She had olive skin, a wide mouth, and strong features that would make her either super striking or homely in the next few years. Right now she was walking a fine line, and puberty would push her over it. “You’re just not adventurous.”
The strong-featured girl, all chin and nose and cheek, but mostly chin, looked at me. “I’ll take her pomegranate seeds,” she said.
“Me too,” said the third, a ponytailed Asian girl. She had a pretty face and a gentle expression.
I waited for the one standing behind them to place her order.
“What about you?” I asked when she didn’t speak up.
“She’s not ordering with us,” said the strong-featured girl. I decided she was not going to be attractive when she got older.
The girl with the brown hair turned and spoke over her shoulder to the fourth girl. “That’s right, Esther. Don’t try copying us by ordering the walnut and kale salad. With or without the pomegranate seeds.”
“Exactly. You’ve been copying us all day. And we’re really getting sick of it,” said the girl whose kind and pretty face was apparently a front for an unkind and unpretty personality.
The little brats were bullying the kid right in front of me. Like I didn’t exist. Like I wouldn’t react. I don’t know why that irritated me so much, but it did.
The girl standing behind them had wild dark curls and large eyes with dark smudges under them, like she didn’t get enough sleep or was sick. She pursed her lips but didn’t speak.
“We don’t have any pomegranate seeds,” I said. “Something wrong with the crop this year.”
For the two hundredth time I wished the boss would take the seeds off the menu. Who puts a seasonal item on a permanent menu, anyway? Only someone who takes a lot of steroids and was continually giving himself mini-strokes at the gym due to overexertion.
I thought about telling the mean girls that nobody likes assholes, even young ones, but I didn’t have the energy.
“Okay, so you’re not all together?” I said. “You want to order separately?”
The brown-haired girl put her arm around the shoulders of the girls on either side of her, turning them into a single mean-girl organism. “Just us.”
“Your mom said for you to buy salads for all of us,” said the fourth girl in a quiet voice.
“Just because you don’t have any money doesn’t mean you get to sponge off my family,” said the first girl, who was clearly headed for fame and fortune as the sociopathic CEO of a Fortune 500 chemical company.
“She said—”
“Whatever, Esther. Just order after we’re gone so we don’t have to hear your voice anymore.”
These were the scariest kids who’d ever come through the Salad Stop, and that’s saying something, given that all we have here is salad.
After the ringleader paid for three salads, I told them that I’d be with them in a moment. I grabbed three corn-fiber biodegradable takeout containers and slipped into the back and out the back door. I glanced around quickly to make sure no one was watching, then used tongs to scoop up three bunches of greens, food of the damned, out of the compost bin, and slopped them into the containers.
I carried the containers to the front of the shop,
and then added the bare minimum of fixings, minus the pomegranate seeds.
I’d have done worse, but they were just kids, even if they were terrible people.
“Here you go,” I said, handing each of the three girls a container. Kale is so fibrous that hardly anyone can tell if it’s fresh or not. “Enjoy, now.”
They each grinned at me. The one with all the features batted her eyes.
“Bye, now!” they said, then giggled and swaggered out in their matching Hunter boots, like they’d just vanquished an entire army of Marvel arch-villains. The door opened and closed, and the doorbell sounded a tropical birdcall, which is exactly the kind of thing that causes morale to soar among Salad Stop employees.
I looked at the girl who wasn’t allowed to copy the salad order of other girls.
“Sorry about the wait. What can I get you?”
“Nothing.” She gazed at the ceiling as though inspecting it for spiders, and I realized she probably had no money to order one of our god-awful, soul-destroying salads.
“No shirt, no shoes, no money, no problem. It’s on me. What’ll you have?”
She looked down, as though she didn’t want me to see her surprise. When she looked up, there was a very small smile on her face. “I think I’d like exactly what they had,” she said, so deadpan, I laughed out loud.
“Good for you,” I said. “That’s the up-yours spirit!”
With a bit of a spring in my step I went to the fridge behind me and pulled out the stuff to make her a marinated kale salad, with extra walnuts because fuck it. She deserved them.
“That’s not where you got their salads,” said the girl.
“Cor-rect.”
A grin had spread across her face. It was sort of a funny face. Hypermobile. Like an old-school comedienne.
I pushed her salad container, stuffed to bursting, across the glass countertop.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Bon appétit!”
She turned to leave the shop but hesitated at the front door.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“They’re still out there.”
