by Susan Juby
No one paid attention to Tesla and me, except for a few fashion people, identifiable by their black clothes and severe hair. They inclined their heads at her like herons inspecting something just under the surface of the water.
Tesla walked by without acknowledging them. “This week the Digital Arts students are doing the menu and the cooking,” she told me. “With the help of our regular chef, obviously.”
Obviously.
Jesus.
“Every program gets to design and execute the menus for one week each year,” she continued.
“The painters always plan their menus using the color wheel. Once they tried to get as many tones and shades of the same color as possible. Unfortunately, the color was white. We had rice and pasta and peeled apples and boiled eggs, white cheddar and kohlrabi.”
She laughed, and I tried not to squint at all the shine radiating off her.
“So what will Digital Arts serve? Thumb drives in a mercury sauce?” I asked.
“If it’s too awful we can go to the Salad Stop for lunch,” she said.
I swallowed and prayed for an edible meal.
We’d reached the cafeteria. It was announced by a sign in metal letters mounted on posts that arched over the doorway.
“It’s new,” said Tesla, seeing that I was checking out the sign. “Very industrial, isn’t it? Looks like the sign for a death metal club. Which works, I guess.”
There was so much I wanted to ask. About going to a school where the students made signs like that. About why she glowed the way she did.
Instead, I followed her through the double doors, and we were greeted by a Digital Arts student dressed like a carnival barker.
“Come and get some delicious, healthful vegetable candy,” he said. He had a handlebar mustache. Kill me now.
We were served a stack of julienned vegetables arranged to look like Pick-Up Sticks, a little pile of white navy beans that had been dyed to look like jelly beans, and a puree of bright green “minty pea mash” served in a tiny plastic Garbage Can-dy bin. There is such a thing as too much irony and not enough food.
I figured all the items on my tray topped out at seventy calories, max. Seventy-two if I ate the plastic container.
Tesla asked a girl wearing an apron with a giant plastic lobster pinned to the front if we could have two garbage bins each. The girl said no, there weren’t enough.
No wonder students from Green Pastures come to the Salad Stop every chance they got. Compared to this, one of our salads was the caloric equivalent of a hot dog and fries.
When we sat down, Tesla pointed to her pink plastic pail.
“Isn’t it just so perfect that Spiegelman came up with this?”
“Mushed-up peas? I thought the Brits invented that.”
“No. The Garbage Can-dy concept. Do you know Spiegelman’s work?”
I thought I did but was afraid I might be wrong, so I didn’t answer and pretended to be busy eating.
“He won a Pulitzer for Maus, but what gets me is his work on alternative comics. She denies it, but you can tell our most famous graduate was influenced by him. A little too influenced, if you ask me. Keira Pale? You know her? The graphic novelist who drew all those stories about her family? Her sister still goes to Green Pastures.”
I’d heard the name. Knew there was some controversy. But until now I made a point of not caring about the dramas of the ultra-successful graduates of Green Pastures.
I ate a spoonful of pea mash. It had a texture like lightly crusted over snot but was surprisingly tasty. “He should have made them bigger,” I said. “The cans, I mean.”
Behind us the Digital Arts barker announced: “We have run out of delicious, healthful vegetable candy. You will now have to eat regular cafeteria food.”
A sturdy woman with two blonde braids wrapped around her head began switching out chafing dishes, removing the empties, turning on the electric heaters underneath.
“Want to go up again?” asked Tesla. “There should be chicken and rice and a vegetarian option.”
“You?” I asked, ready for her to say no, she couldn’t possibly, because she had to maintain her size zero figure or get thrown out of the club of people who never eat more than seventy calories per meal.
“God, yes,” she said, and got about twelve times cooler in my eyes.
And we went back for scalloped potatoes and curried carrots, and I took a breaded chicken cutlet, and she had some kind of tofu dish.
“This is a weird cafeteria,” I said. “But the food’s good.”
“Everything about Green Pastures is weird and good,” she agreed. “That’s why I love it.”
When we were finished, she asked if I was ready to go to the fashion wing.
I glanced at her as we got up.
“Are you sure you’re allowed to be doing this?” I asked. “Bringing me around. Helping me out.”
“I told you, I’m just an assistant,” said Tesla, moving efficiently down the hallway. “Mr. Carmichael asked if I’d help and I said yes. The scholarships are important. The school needs to be accessible to talented people whose families can’t afford the tuition. It can get a little rarified around this place.”
I didn’t trust myself not to say something ungrateful or bitter, so I changed the subject. “And is what’s her name?—Bijou?—is she all about the common folk, too?”
“Bijou’s all right. Her dad is Charles Atwater and she’s superrich, but she mostly uses her powers for good.”
“She volunteered, too?”
“No. She’s being punished. She was too harsh with some little kids when she judged their fashion show.”
That I believed.
“What’s Carmichael going to say if he sees me with you?”
“He won’t see us,” she said. “He’s in Montreal this week. And anyway, I’m not going to do your design for you. We’ll just talk about it. I’ll see if there are any resources I can connect you with. Books or websites. I’m sure you know a lot already, since your application was accepted. I’m just taking an interest.”
She stopped outside the atelier with its carved wooden double doors.
“There’s nothing untoward going on here,” she said.
Still More Inspiring Sayings for John Thomas-Smith’s Bad Mood Board
The Technical Textile Markets report that “in the fashion industry, the demand for man-made fibers has doubled in the last 25 years.” Since this clothing is made from synthetic materials, they do not degrade and will forever stay in the ecosystem.
—“WASTE COUTURE: ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY.” FROM HTTP://FASTFASHION.WEEBLY.COM/ENVIRONMENTAL-ISSUES.HTML
twenty-two
HERE’S AN IDEA © CHARLIE DEAN DESIGNS:
If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands! But make sure they have been carefully moisturized, nails manicured according to your unique style, then covered in gloves as soft as angora show rabbits. Because hands, even happy clapping ones, must be protected.
DATE: MARCH 18
Days until fashion show: 47
I am careful with my money and never waste funds on anything ugly or unnecessary. Even so, I worried that my savings would not be enough to buy good fabric for my dress, which demanded the best.
I’d considered the needs of my model, gotten her measurements, sketched my design. I was ready to create the toile. But I couldn’t send a muslin dress down the runway!
I’m a resident of Nanaimo, British Columbia, as opposed to Toronto or New York or London or Paris, so my fabric shopping options are limited.
On the Monday of our teachers’ professional development day, I stood in the middle of my room, surrounded by every piece of fabric and every piece of clothing I owned. Could I Pretty in Pink some old outfit to make my creation? No. I had a specific design to execute,
and besides, Andie’s dress had looked like a sack, even though I adored her can-do-with-scissors-and-satin attitude. Maybe I could find a way to turn average fabrics into my extraordinary vision, the way Gaultier did with his madcap and glamorous denim pieces? That would show the right proletariat spirit of making do and innovation.
But no. My heart was set on finding magnifique fabric for my magnifique design. I must have been moaning out loud because my father appeared in my doorway.
“Charlie girl? Everything all right?”
I could tell that he was feeling healthier and in good spirits because he and Mischa had resumed their romance. Also, he was wearing a fedora. The hat was a sign of wellness on him the way it’s a sign of watching too many Britney Spears videos on other people.
“I’m fine,” I said. If you have a parent who has trouble coping, it’s important not to ask for things, because the non-coper parent does not deal well with added pressure. You don’t want to overwhelm them by asking for money, emotional availability, or security. A lot of the kids I met at Alateen couldn’t accept that concept. They wanted, insisted, demanded their parents act like other parents. They were setting themselves up for disappointment. Charlie Dean is here to tell the curious that not facing the facts is a recipe for pein de cœur, which, for anyone who does not speak French and refuses to open Google Translate, means “heartbreak.” At least, I think it does.
Kids who demand more than parents can give are like animals throwing themselves at the bars of their cages. Very sad. Tragic, even.
I keep all my needs on the DL, which means “down low” for anyone who does not speak English abbreviations. My lack of demands keeps Jacques’s stress level from rising, which I believe helps him stay clean. Alateen said that I had no power over whether or not Jacques got loaded. I agree in principle, but just to be on the safe side I keep my dad’s emotional plate as clear as possible. One does what one can for the remaining parental unit.
“Why are all your threads on the floor?”
My dad, for all his failings, appreciates that I’m highly organized.
“I’m just trying to figure out my fabric options,” I said. “For the fashion show.”
“You are going to own that contest. There’s no chance anyone else in this town—hell, on this island—is half as good as you.”
He leaned against the doorway in his three-quarter-length shearling coat, which was too warm for the spring season. I found it for him at a thrift store in Red Deer. It was probably worth nearly $1,000 new, but I got it for $35. I haven’t told Jacques its real value in case he tries to pawn it.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Charles? Tell Papa what’s wrong.”
I looked at him, hands on hips. We were both wearing costumes. Mine was tweedy tomboy, his was alterna-rocker dad. We might have been dysfunctional, but at least we were interesting to look at.
“I don’t have the right fabric for my designs. The fabric is going to be expensive. I . . .”
My dad sighed.
“You a little short?”
“Only on funds and fabric selection,” I said.
I glared at the fabrics piled around me and draped over every surface. I loved the jumble of colors and the textures, the shadows and the light reflecting off the various surfaces.
“Just so happens I got a little payday,” he said.
I gave him a sharp look. Couldn’t help it. My dad and unexpected paydays were a terrible combination. He’s on long-term disability, and he earns money under the table from gigs. When he’s using, he also earns money selling drugs, which he immediately uses to buy drugs for himself.
Suspicion overwhelmed my natural politesse. “Are you dealing?”
“No ma’am,” he said, unperturbed. “It came from your mother’s people.”
I knew instantly it was true. He was clean. That was obvious from his behavior. Every so often a small sum of money from my mother’s estate comes through. The lawyers usually divert it from us into what we’ve been told is a fund my mother’s parents set up for me that I can have when I’m thirty. Thirty! I might as well be forty or fifty for all the good it will do me then. Other than that, my maternal grandparents try to pretend Jacques and I don’t exist. Just like they pretended my mother didn’t exist after she developed her problems. The lawyers are probably afraid that my dad will spend the money on drugs (can you imagine the nerve of those lawyers?!), but sometimes a payment from some dividend or share gets through. When that happens there’s a fifty-fifty chance I’ll see it.
“You know what, Charlie girl? We’re going to go to Victoria and get you whatever the hell material you need so you can win this competition.”
Have you ever had one of those moments when your heart feels dangerously big? So big that you worry it will rupture?
“It’s going to be expensive,” I said. “To buy what I have in mind.”
“When you are a famous fashion designer, you are going to keep me in the style to which I hope to become accustomed. I consider all matters to do with you an investment in art and talent and in the betterment of the world.”
I told myself to calm down. Don’t get your hopes up, Charlie Dean. Things have a way of not working out when Jacques is involved.
“We’re going today,” he said. “Right now. Just let me get Mischa.”
I almost didn’t breathe until the three of us were belted into our old Taurus and on our way to Victoria.
x x x
HALF THE EXCITEMENT OF GOING TO VICTORIA WAS TAKING our car over the Malahat. The twisty, narrow road can be quite dangerous thanks to speeders and inattentive drivers. Young men in huge trucks treat the Malahat like their own personal Indy 500. A person in an unreliable véhicule, such as our 2001 Taurus, approaches it like a bedouin tribesperson setting out across the Sahara on a lame camel. An act of faith and desperation!
There was a festive air in the car for a Monday late morning. Mischa sat up front with my dad. She wore an oversize knitted hat, the wrong shape for her head and face, but the happiness in her eyes overrode the chapeau style fail. In fact, she looked positively fraîche. Jacques wore his hat and a devil-may-care expression. I sat in the backseat, making notes and sketches, tending to my overstretched heart, and trying not to criticize my dad’s driving.
Mischa was not so circonspect.
“God, Jack,” she said. “You drive even worse on a highway than you do in town. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.”
The Barr Brothers played at a reasonable volume on the old stereo. I’d made us French-press coffees to go. I hoped my dad wouldn’t take offense at Mischa’s comments. He might be mellow, but he could also be touchy.
“You’d better pull over and let me drive,” said Mischa.
To my relief, my dad just said that would be fine with him. “It’ll let me think about some things. I think a song might be coming on,” he said.
Another positive sign! Père Dean is a good songwriter—Charlie Dean will give him that. Jacques has the soul of a poet and the habits of a member of the Velvet Underground.
He pulled over on the side of the highway, just outside of Ladysmith. Mischa moved into the driver’s seat, and my father came around and got into the backseat with me.
“Do you mind, Charlie girl?” he said. “It seems very creative back here. I want to soak up some of your energy.”
I nodded, and he sat quietly beside me and began making notes in his small black notebook.
In other circumstances, Charlie Dean would have asked Mischa if she had a valid driver’s license. As the most mature person in the car, I thought it might be important to do a safety check. But my dad was humming his song and jotting down lyrics, and so I left it.
Even though I was just traveling with my dad and his girlfriend, I felt socially accomplished par excellence!
After another hour or so we were on
Douglas Street, entering downtown Victoria. The traffic pressed in around us, heavy, every driver jostling for position.
“Where do we go?” asked my dad.
“It’s on Pandora,” I said. “The shop is called Special Occasions Fabrics and Notions.”
I put the address into my phone and the GPS guided us in. “Turn right at the next light.”
Mischa parked the car directly in front of the store.
“U2 parking,” said my dad. “Just imagine. Bono’s whole life is like this. Our trip was clearly meant to be.”
We all got out and stretched.
“Do you want to come in?” I asked them.
“I don’t think so,” said my dad. He turned to Mischa. “In order to make up her mind, she’s going to need to touch every piece of fancy material in the place at least six times. What say you and I go for lunch, Misch?”
“Perfect,” she said. “We can walk from here.” It was one of those marvelous March days made of spring breezes, blue skies, and new possibilities.
The three of us stood on the sidewalk outside Special Occasions, and I found myself hugging my dad. It surprised him. Charlie Dean is not much of a hugger. Then I hugged Mischa, too. It was either that or risk exploding from the excellence of it all.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” my dad said to me when I’d let go. “This moment.”
I nodded. My dad understands some things. He even knew this was the time to answer the question I’d been afraid to ask. He whispered in my ear the upper limit I could spend, and I nearly dropped my handbag and the portfolio case.
“Are you sure?”
There are times when having an impulsive wild man for a father isn’t the worst thing.
I spent three of the best hours of my life so far shopping. I contemplated gold floral-embroidered tulle, Swiss sequined tulle, jacquard brocades in every tone, all-over lace appliquéd with tiny, glittering stones, astonishing laser cuts featuring insects and birds, guipure laces, embroidered silk georgettes, spot organzas, sequined silk chiffons, and hand-beaded sequined meshes. Some of the fabrics were three or four hundred dollars a yard. Some were even more! I complimented the proprietor, a woman in what looked like an actual Chanel suit, on her astonishing selection, and she reminded me that there are two fashion colleges in the small city and a couple of well-known evening-wear designers. My good fortune seems never to end!
