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.