Finally I went to the university’s online directory of faculty and just started scrolling through the art department’s pages, looking for familiar faces.
Woah. Mark Schenley was a professor now.
I widened my eyes and looked at Franklin, who was flopped on his side with a little drool puddling on my linoleum kitchen floor. “It’s so crazy, it just might work,” I said to him with all the drama one typically uses when hatching a devious plan with one’s dog. His response was one lazy half-wag of his tail.
“I’m taking that as a ‘yes.’”
My cat Reggie took that opportunity to sprint out of the room at top speed, his tail long and straight behind him.
“Whatever,” I grumbled toward the cat. “Nobody asked you.”
Mark Schenley had been a teaching assistant during my undergrad days. It was his job to oversee senior workshop and supervise us putting the finishing touches on our portfolios. I teased him relentlessly about everything from the athletic shoes he wore (art students don’t wear athletic shoes, and if they do it’s Chucks only) to his outdated phone.
I think I might have even mocked a self-improvement quote he had posted on Facebook. I was kind of a bitch. I was like the fourth grade boy who kicks a girl because he likes her and that’s all he knows to do.
Mark seemed so wise, but also relaxed about what he knew. He had a very gentle way of guiding students toward their best efforts and away from bad ideas. He could do it without undermining their confidence.
As for my poorly executed flirtations, he was a good sport. Now I can see that he must have fully understood my feelings for him—my huge crush. I wondered if he had merely tolerated me or if there was a part of him that enjoyed all the attention I gave him. Besides, he had a serious girlfriend at the time and probably would have gotten in trouble for dating a student.
If I had other options, I would not reach out to Mark and ask for a reference, but I was getting desperate. And he was so good-natured and calm that I thought he might say yes, despite all the awkward tormenting he received from me.
I sent Mark, Dr. Arnett and Professor Hurley each an email. Sophie had helped me write it. Somehow she was able to summarize the past four years of my life into three slick paragraphs that made me look like a competent, art-minded adult.
***
I had Candy Blue paraphernalia all over my house. There were sketches, full color mockups, several crates of supplies in my basement, and complete samples of almost everything we’d ever made. So I don’t know why it was so difficult to find a few potential birthday gifts for Lee’s sister.
I should have at least found out how old she is, I thought to myself as I rummaged through a canvas bin full of samples. I needed to find something versatile. Casual enough for a student, but work-appropriate, too. I found a pendant necklace that would work with jeans or dress clothes, a pair of sparkly black stud earrings, a colorful chunky bracelet, and a saddle-leather minimalist wrap bracelet.
As I untangled everything from the random cords and chains in the bin and then wrapped each piece in a fabric swatch I had laying around, I wondered what Lee would think of the pieces. Would they appeal to his hipster sensibilities?
Sophie and I had done all we could to make sure our supplies never came from a place known to have abhorrent labor conditions. But if Lee was vegan or vegetarian, would he be offended by the leather piece? Well, if he was judgmental about any of his beliefs, we probably wouldn’t get along anyway.
I stopped in front of my bathroom mirror before heading out to our little coffee date. The first time Lee and I met, I was kind of sweaty and had helmet hair from riding my bike. The second time might have been a little better. I decided to leave my hair how it was: sleek pompadour ponytail. My chucks, ripped jeans, and sleeveless navy blue blouse would be fine for today.
I freshened my makeup but tried to keep it to a minimum. I didn’t want to overdo it and come across as desperate. Or come across like someone who would just really, really like to find a new boyfriend before going to her old boyfriend’s wedding.
When I got to the coffee shop, Lee was already there, sitting at one of the sidewalk tables. I parallel parked just a few yards from where he was sitting, but he kept looking up the street. I guess he didn’t expect me to ride up in a black Jeep Wrangler with custom wheels.
“Oh, there you are,” he said when I walked up to the table. “Nice ride. Do you go muddin?”
I laughed and shook my head. Hopefully Lee wasn’t a Prius driver.
After we said our hellos and ordered coffees and a fruit plate to share, I got out the jewelry I’d brought.
“I probably should have asked you more about your sister,” I said as I unwrapped the pieces. “We have a pretty good variety—casual stuff, formal, work wardrobe.”
As I set the pieces on the table, Lee looked sincerely impressed.
“You made this?” he asked.
“I designed these and made the prototypes. But I probably didn’t make these actual samples,” I said.
He picked up the necklace and examined the glass pendant, brushing his thumb across it gently.
I explained, “We have a few people who do freelance work. Sometimes they’re students or stay-at-home moms who like to earn extra money. They do all of the actual assembly. We do too much volume for one person to make everything.”
“This is really cool,” he said quietly, gazing at my face a little longer than I expected. “You’re talented.”
“Thank you.” I heard that all the time from customers, but for some reason when Lee said it, it meant more.
He picked up each piece gently and examined it. Lee looked at the wrap bracelet last, smiling when he picked it up.
“This is it,” he said. “Cassie will love it.”
I smiled and stood up to go back to my car. “Oh, I have something else.” I took out a brown paper gift bag stamped with “Candy Blue” in silver letters and a piece of bright blue tissue paper printed with silver squiggles. I brought it back to our table. “You can give it to her in this.”
Lee smiled. “She’s going to know I had help. Men don’t gift wrap, you know.”
He fumbled with the bracelet a little. I took it from him gently and wrapped it in the tissue paper and put it in the bag.
“Thank you so much. This is really nice,” Lee said. He stood up and began taking his wallet out of his back pocket. “What do I owe you?”
“Oh no, absolutely not,” I said, holding one hand up, palm toward him. “This is my thank you for helping me with my application stuff.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said. He stared at his wallet for a moment as if he wasn’t sure what to do next. Finally, he put it back in his pocket. “So how is your application coming along?”
I stared down into my mug of coffee. “Not too great. I sort of don’t have a portfolio. And I’m scraping bottom trying to come up with four letters of recommendation.”
“But you have this really cool, thriving business. Can’t you somehow leverage that? Like use it for your portfolio or have some of your business contacts give you letters of recommendation?”
I let out a chuckle that sounded more bitter than I’d wanted. “I assure you, no one in the fine arts department will be impressed by this.” I flipped my hand toward the jewelry lying on fabric swatches on the table.
“We have some pretty dedicated fans,” I said. “There are actually a few people who seem like they’ve bought our entire catalog. But none of that will impress the graduate faculty. There’s going to be way more applicants than open spots. They want to see meaningful, highbrow art. Stuff that makes a statement, not jewelry from my basement.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to whine. I know I’m so lucky to be able to make a living with this stuff. It’s all because of my business partner, Sophie. She’s a marketing genius. Before this I was the cliché art grad waiting tables.”
“You’re not whining,” Lee said. “I can see how it co
uld be frustrating. Here you have this cool stuff, but in their eyes, it doesn’t really count.
“I just hope that you, you know, you see the value in what you’re doing,” he said.
I stared into my mug again and tried to hide a little smile.
“Jewelry designer and entrepreneur is a really cool career,” he said.
“Thank you.” I wanted to believe him. But I didn’t.
6.
Hannah was crying. Again. Sophie patted her hand and I scribbled in my sketchbook. I’m one of those people who gets the giggles when they’re uncomfortable. And sitting there in my former boyfriend’s current fiancée’s living room while she wept over her misunderstood vision for her wedding day, I was kind of uncomfortable.
I drew a square with my pencil and then filled it with stripes. Then I filled in between the stripes. Then I just made the square blacker and blacker while I waited for Hannah to pull herself together.
“What about the bridal party?” Sophie asked as she handed Hannah a tissue. Sophie was brilliant. That’s exactly what we needed. Human buffers, and hopefully someone to talk some sense into Hannah.
This was our second meeting. During the first meeting, she told us she liked the designs but she didn’t want us to make anything yet. She suggested some changes and we agreed to meet again to decide on final designs. It wasn’t that bad. Custom work can be like that. But this crying meltdown—it was bad.
It seemed like she didn’t like the designs, but she couldn’t tell us exactly what she didn’t like or what changes she wanted. She just kept saying stuff about her “vision.” Extremely picky and extremely inarticulate are the two worst qualities a client can have.
On top of that, Hannah was full of patronizing drivel. The fact that she thought it was ok to start every single comment with “No offense, but…” made me think she was kind of dumb. Good for Clint: He didn’t like being challenged so they were probably a perfect match. He made a math mistake on a bank deposit once. After I corrected him, he pouted for two days.
“My bridal party?” Hannah said with a sniffle. Then she began counting on her fingers. “My mom made me ask my cousin to be my maid of honor and her taste is so tacky. She wanted us to get dyed shoes. Dyed, you guys, to match the dress.”
Hannah rolled her eyes dramatically and resumed pushing one finger down at a time.
“Uh, Amy’s a bitch. Monica lives in New York. Josephina is stuck up her boyfriend’s butt. Kate’s broke…”
“Ok, ok, what I’m hearing is that you’re just not feeling supported right now?” Sophie interrupted Hannah’s monologue before she ran out of fingers.
Hannah nodded as she silent-ugly-cried with her hands flopped in her lap and her shoulders hitching rhythmically with her sobs. Sophie rolled her eyes at me then leaned toward Hannah. She put an arm around her and Hannah leaned her head onto Sophie’s shoulder.
I made an exaggerated, horrified sneer toward Sophie.
Sophie held up her middle finger at me, behind Hannah’s head.
I had to put my head down, with my hair covering my face, and pretend to be drawing something very tiny and detailed, in order to hide my giggling.
“There are so many decisions to make when you’re planning your wedding,” Sophie said. She was patting Hannah’s shoulder a little too briskly. I wondered if Hannah’s tears and snot were soaking through Sophie’s blouse. “I know there’s a lot of pressure on you, as the bride.
“I think the best thing to do, at this point, is reach out to someone you trust,” Sophie said. “This is the second round of designs and we will keep working until you’re happy. But I want you to get some more input on the designs and getting them to fit with your, um, vision. I think it would really help if you could get input from someone who understands what you’re wanting and will recommend the changes that are just right for you.”
Hannah nodded. “Ok, I’ll show them to my mom. She’ll know what to do.”
Then Hannah looked right at me. “I’m not a bridezilla, you know. I’m not.”
My cheeks started to burn. Had she figured out that I thought she was kind of a joke?
“Ok,” I said.
Sophie took both of Hannah’s hands in hers. “Nobody thinks that. We’re all just working hard to make this perfect for you.”
As soon as we were out of Hannah’s pink paisley apartment and in my Jeep, Sophie began rummaging through her purse. She found a tissue and some hand sanitizer and began working on the damp spot on her blouse that was left by Hannah’s tears.
“You better hope sorority girl privilege isn’t contagious,” I said. “You are contaminated.”
“So gross,” Sophie said. “I studied marketing because it’s supposed to be a tear-free, hug-free occupation.”
I shook my head. “Better you than me. I would have slapped her.”
“Mmm-hmm. She knows you don’t like her and she totally called you out.”
“You think? That was so awkward,” I said. “I didn’t know what to say.”
“No kidding.” After a pause, she said, “I’m sorry I got us into this. It was kind of insensitive considering your history with Clint.”
She truly did sound sorry.
“Don’t say that,” I said. “Your business instincts are always right. They’re a pain in my butt, but they always turn out well. Besides, I think it was the push I needed to just move on—finally get going on my MFA degree.”
“I’m glad you trust me on this,” Sophie said. “Because she’s kind of got us by the balls. Did you know she has a blog?”
“No!”
“Yeah. And it seems popular. Lately it’s been all about planning her wedding,” Sophie said.
“Of course.”
“Her twitter account, for the blog, has, like, twenty-thousand followers.”
“Has she said anything about us?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s how I found out about ‘Preppy University.’ We had a huge bump in traffic to the site and in sales one day last week. So I looked into where all the new customers were coming from. It was Hannah. She kind of raved about us.”
“Wait. I’m still stuck on ‘Preppy University.’ That’s just gross.”
“I know,” Sophie said. “Candy Blue isn’t even preppy. But anyway, we got the same volume of orders in that one day that we usually get in a week.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all of this before we went to her house?”
“Because. It would seem kind of crappy to put all that pressure on you. You’re not exactly a fan of interacting with the customers. So, you know, wouldn’t that make it worse?”
“I’m a big girl, Sophie,” I said. “You have to keep me in the loop.”
Sophie mumbled, “Ok.”
I understood why she didn’t want to tell me what was going on. I didn’t always act like a big girl. Too much of the time, I just acted like a big baby. I probably should have said that to Sophie—told her she was right.
That would have been the actual big girl thing to do. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it right now. The silence in the car was getting heavier and heavier. And something was bothering me. I tried to ignore it. I’d been trying to ignore it for a long time, but it was just getting worse.
As the tense moments ticked by, the problem I was thinking about throbbed in my mind. There was no good time to bring it up. Finally I decided it would be better to get it over with now, when we were already in a bad mood.
“Sophie, how come, whenever I bring up my MFA, you change the subject?” I asked. My hands squeezed the steering wheel.
“What?”
“You’ve never said one supportive thing about me applying to go back to school,” I said. “It’s like you don’t think I can do it or you’re too worried about what will happen to Candy Blue if I’m busy with other stuff.”
“Jesus, Morgan. You make me sound like a selfish asshole. Is that what you think?” Sophie was looking right at me. I kept my eyes on the road. My cheeks got warm an
d I clenched the steering wheel even tighter.
“I’m not saying you’re selfish. It’s just, like, I can’t believe you’re not being more supportive of me. And, you know, my stupid goals.”
Sophie shifted in her seat and looked out the passenger side window. Her voice dropped to a mumble. “I am supportive of you. You know I love your art. It’s brilliant. But…” she sighed. “I just wonder if you’re doing this for the right reasons. And, honestly, it doesn’t make much sense to dump a ton of time and money into fine art when that’s never going to support you.”
“Oh. Ok. Good to know. I am destined to fail. Thanks for the insight.” I turned on the radio. This conversation was over.
She snapped the radio off. “Don’t be so dramatic. You know that’s not what I meant. I do think you’ll be successful—I know you will—but that doesn’t mean you’ll make a good living.
“If you had some burning desire to teach then that would be different,” she said. “You haven’t even worked on your art in a really long time, have you?”
“No. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been busy working with you on our business,” I said.
“Bullshit. I know your schedule. I make sure you have time for your art,” Sophie’s voice was trembling and growing louder. “Because I support you. But you don’t work on your paintings and stuff. So suddenly now it’s super important to you?”
I had no response. Art used to be important to me. I missed that feeling and I knew that studying it again would help me focus on it, instead of just being lazy.
After a painfully quiet two minutes Sophie said, “Just tell me this Morgan. Why are you doing this now?”
“I always wanted to. It just felt like the time is right,” I said.
“But why? Why do you want to do it at all? Does it change your career prospects? Why can’t you just make the art you want to make? Why do you need a degree to give you permission to do your art?”
Designing Morgan Page 4