by Susan Juby
Fully formed, hateful sentences rose up in my mind. “So now you’re an artist? A yoga bra artist? A running tight artist?” But there’s a limit to how much of a turd even I can be.
“Okay, well, I’d better go, then. Get myself some friends and some focus. Stop hanging around and mooching off you. Get better parents.”
There may be a limit to how much of a turd I can be, but there was apparently no limit to the number of self-pitying things I could say in a row. God.
Tesla pulled the dress from the form. She folded it into a neat bundle. “I’ll get you a bag for this,” she said.
“Don’t bother,” I said, and took it from her. The dress was perfect. Much better than I’d envisioned. “I mean, thank you.”
I tucked the dress under my arm and headed out of her rooms and down the stairwell to the side entrance.
John Thomas-Smith’s Indictment against John Thomas-Smith:
(See everything written above)
twenty-eight
HERE’S AN IDEA © CHARLIE DEAN DESIGNS:
Feeling down? Want to stay in bed? You may not! Summon the strength to conjure an outfit that will propel you into life! Your closets, even your linen closet if you decide on a saucy little toga, will contain everything you need. Take that outfit you have been saving for a special occasion that never comes and lay it on your bed, which should be neatly made. Stare at that ensemble and vow to be worthy of it. Eat a piece of fruit. Listen to your favorite song at a bracing volume. Shower. Do your hair. Tend to your skin. Put on your good outfit and blow yourself a kiss in the mirror. Et voilà! You are officially up and at ’em. You are also officially a Charlie Dean Champion.
DATE: MAY 2
Days until fashion show: 1 1/2
Charlie Dean is not a crier. When her mother died, she used all the tears she’d been allotted for life. But she felt a little weepy in the aftermath of the assault upon her person, her model, and her gown.
Two police officers came and took a report. The officers, a very young white man and an older South Asian woman, were nice at first. They took photos of our injuries and spoke efficiently into their radios. They said they’d look for Mischa’s awful ex-boyfriend. The term “APB” may have been used. There were compliments on the stylishness of my room and exclamations over the gown, battered as it was.
I heard Mischa tell them that she thought Damon might be high. They asked what he used and she said whatever, but mostly pharmaceuticals.
The male officer asked if the drugs he took were prescribed, and she said some of them were.
That’s when Jacques came home. The officers looked at him, and their attitude changed. Suspicion crept into their questions.
It is true that my father looks as though he has spent some time exploring the dark underbelly of life. But it was still a shock when they began asking him if the assault might be drug related.
“You got anything stashed around here?” asked the woman, all business and no more concern for me or Mischa or compliments on my gown.
“Having problems with your suppliers? Come up short for your connection?” asked the young man officer.
I saw them notice the track marks on Mischa’s arms. I watched her beauty fade in their eyes. What remained was only damage.
My father told them he was clean, and I could hear him trying to keep his voice even. He said he didn’t know what was going on or what had happened. But there was dreadful défaite in his tone and in the slump of his shoulders.
“Yeah, well, we’ll look into it,” said the female officer in a tone that said we had been placed at the bottom of the priority list. If there had been an All Points Bulletin put out on Damon, it was probably revoked as soon as they drove off. Turned into a No Points Bulletin.
The aftermath was si triste! I could see my father and Mischa felt ashamed in the way only addicts do. And I felt ashamed the way the children of addicts do. I hate to criticize, but those police officers did almost as much damage as Damon.
Jacques and Mischa sat at the kitchen table. She was back in her slightly trashy civilian clothes of a T-shirt and jeans. He stared down at his hands. The pair of them looked at once very old and very young. After ten minutes or so, my dad got up and went into his bedroom. I had to fight back worry that he’d slip out and score at the first opportunity. Les drogués are not good at handling the stress, as I have mentioned before. But I knew from long experience that if he decided to get high, there was nothing I could do to stop him. And anyway, I was too tired. Much too tired. Tend to yourself, Charlie Dean. Tend to yourself.
Mischa came into my room and sat, unmoving, in my good chair.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is my fault.”
My mind was dull, but I tried to remember what the website I’d looked up had said about how victims of violence often take the blame on themselves.
“It’s not your fault. You thinking it is, that’s part of the problem,” I said.
I wanted to bring conviction to my words, but all the sleepless nights had caught up with me, hollowed me out, and all the bad feelings I worked hard to keep out rushed into the void.
It’s funny how one bad thing can remind you of unrelated bad things. If you’re not careful, the bad can take over until it’s all you see.
I found out about my mother when I was in fourth grade. To call where we were living a home is overstating it. We were staying in room 16 at the Wild Rose Motor Inn on the outskirts of Edmonton. The motel was across from a mall, and behind the mall was my school, and I was allowed to walk to and from school by myself. My routine was to go through the mall on my way home and look at all the lovely things in the stores.
That day I carried a red tin lunch bucket that my mom and I had chosen from a novelty store because it exactly matched my red patent leather Mary Janes. On my way through I stopped in front of the window of La Vie en Rose. The mannequin wore a pink teddy with feather trim and a long candy-striped pink-and-white satin robe. I took in every detail so I could tell my mother about it. My mom and I loved to talk about the clothes we saw, even though we both preferred the clothes my mom made.
I hurried out of the mall, excited and a little afraid to get back to number 16. If my mom wasn’t doing well, I had to be very quiet. If she and my dad were both not doing well, I had to pretend I was invisible so I wouldn’t see or hear anything. They’d been using then for a couple of years at that point, and in those days, my dad was healthier than my mom. He kept things from getting too bad.
If my mom was feeling well, I would lie on the bed beside her and we’d talk, which meant that she would ask me questions and I’d answer. She liked to wear her pink marabou slides in bed, which I thought was very glamorous of her. I loved to stare at her pink-feather-tickled toes, and my shiny red shoes or blue boots or yellow sneakers.
Sometimes I forget the hard times and think that afternoon on my way home to the Wild Rose Motor Inn was the last perfectly happy moment in my life. But it wasn’t totally happy. Not if I’m honest.
I was on the other side of the four-lane highway, waiting for the light to change, when I noticed the ambulance parked in front of the motel across the road. My heart seemed to shrivel in my chest. There were two police cars parked behind the ambulance. When the light turned green, I couldn’t make myself walk quickly. A car honked at me when I was still in the intersection when the lights went yellow and then red. As I got closer, the silently flashing lights of the emergency vehicles reminded me of a TV with the sound turned off.
When I was still twenty yards away I began to pray, even though I’d never been to church except once with my mom to look at a stained-glass window.
Please let the ambulance be at one of the other rooms.
Please let the police be there for someone else.
Please let everything be okay.
Please let my parents be fine.
> Please let nothing bad happen that has not already happened. Please don’t let things get even worse.
The praying stopped when I saw my dad seated in a chair outside our room. The door to our room was open and I could tell there were people inside. Other guests had come out of their rooms to watch, like gophers poking their heads out of holes. Two police officers stood in front of my dad, and he stared at his feet. Maybe Jacques had hurt himself. Maybe it was nothing serious. There were often ambulances and police cars outside of the motels we stayed in. But they weren’t there for my parents. My parents were careful, they said. They promised to be careful.
I had on a yellow dress with a faint rabbit print. My mother had sewn the dress for me before she and my dad sold the sewing machine. The dress had a white eyelet frill at the bottom, and I’d been proud to wear it to school, even though the other kids were all in jeans and it was not warm enough. It was a day-brightening dress. That’s what my mother had said when I showed it to her that morning, and she was right. I got many compliments on it that afternoon, at the mall, and later at the motel from adults who didn’t know what else to say to me.
My dad lurched to his feet when he saw me.
“Where’s Mom?” I said, looking past him.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” he said.
“Mom!” I screamed, and tried to run past him, past the police, past the people watching. “Mom.”
My dad stopped me and pulled me to him, squishing my face into his hard, concave stomach.
“She’s gone, Charlie. We lost her,” he said.
A hole opened up in me so big, it threatened to take everything with it. It was impossible that my mother wasn’t waiting inside for me. That she wouldn’t lie with me anymore, asking me questions, that we wouldn’t talk about pink lingerie and pretty hair colors and things that were so beautiful, we could just die. That’s what we did when she was well. When she wasn’t sick or high.
A police officer whose uniform shirt was too small for his stomach asked if I was okay.
“I was just at the mall,” I said.
“You walked back here by yourself? Are you in school?”
“Yes. It’s okay. I’m used to it.”
“I’m so sorry,” said the police officer. “Your dress and shoes are really nice. I can tell your mom liked to dress you up.”
“Thank you. We really like clothes.”
I don’t remember anything else until another man, a social worker, made me sit with him in his car. He asked if anyone was hurting me at home. He asked if I ever saw my parents doing drugs.
I said no. Of course I said no. I knew my parents did drugs, but they did them in the bathroom with the door closed. Drugs is what they did while I read books and drew pictures and watched TV. But I would never have said that to anyone. Never.
The social worker tried to distract me when the paramedics carried my mom’s body to the ambulance on the stretcher. She was all covered up, so I couldn’t see if she had on her pink-feathered slippers. The last I saw of her was the ambulance pulling away, those silent lights still flashing on a dingy fall afternoon in Alberta. Across the highway the mall was busy. People going in and out. Looking at all the pretty things. I wanted to tell my mom about the display at La Vie en Rose. I wanted to hear her exclaim, “Oh my god, Charlie Dean. Couldn’t you just die over that candy cane stripe?”
When my mother died for real, and not just from loving beauty, she took half of me with her. But the half she left is very strong. That’s what the counselor I saw when I lived with my first foster family said to me. That counselor said I was resilient, and then she explained to me what that meant. It means being flexible and springing back into the right shape after being compressed, and it also means recovering after something bad happens.
That counselor was right. I am resilient.
There is not much else to say about it. My mother was the one who taught me to sew, and we made clothes, and she laughed and laughed, and sometimes she was the prettiest of all the mothers. Other times she was the ugliest of all the mothers, and I wished she wasn’t my mother at all.
I learned from Alateen and from my dad that she didn’t mean to leave us. She was sick.
She was also selfish.
I was in foster care for six months after she died. That’s how long it took my dad to prove that he could care for me properly.
The one good thing that happened when I was in foster care was that I met Diana Vreeland—in the pages of her memoir, D.V., which somebody left in a vacation cabin that I visited with my foster family. While that family hiked and swam, I sat on the deck in my dresses and read that book. Mrs. Vreeland taught me how to see. From Diana Vreeland I learned that style and taste and a point of view are more important than being beautiful. Those things are essential, along with resilience.
I thought about all of this back in my bedroom after the assault. My mind was lazy, sluggish, and I tried to think of what to say to Mischa. I felt sick every time I glimpsed my battered, glorious gown. It hung like a crime scene on its hanger.
Mischa sat slumped in the good chair. Her posture was so bad, I began to cry, still maintaining my own excellent, perfectly upright posture.
“Charlie?” said Mischa.
“Yes,” I said, keeping my voice very steady. If there had to be tears, they weren’t going to be the snotty variety. I would maintain a level of poise.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, tears leaking down my face.
“You’re kind of freaking me out right now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This will pass.”
My tears had one unintended positive benefit. They caused Mischa to sit up straight.
“I mean, I’m down with people crying. It’s just . . . you. You don’t seem very natural at it.”
“Thank you,” I said as another hot tear slid down my face. “I’m sure it will be over soon.”
“It’s going to be okay,” she said. “You can fix the dress. Don’t let him ruin this for you. For us.”
I stared at her through hot eyes. I should have been shoring up her flagging spirits. I was the encourager. The cheerer. Mischa was out Charlie Deaning me!
Two more tears slid down my face. I extracted the soft yellow handkerchief peeking from the breast pocket of my green suit and dabbed at them.
“I think I’m nearly done,” I said.
“Seriously. You just need to sew the dress back up and we’re good to go.”
I didn’t respond. Repairing the sequined sections and the torn seams and fabric would take more time than I had.
Another tear ran down my nose and plopped onto my lap, where the moisture soaked into the wool blend.
I maintained my fine posture and continued crying while Mischa got up and went to speak to my dad. Twenty minutes later she came back to my room.
“Okay. So I’m going to go to bed now. This has been a hard day. Jack is rattled, too. Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nodded again, still unable to speak, relieved that the tears were beginning to slow.
“See you in the morning,” she said.
It was another fifteen minutes before I finally moved. I got up and stood in front of the damaged dress.
“Charlie Dean,” I told myself. “That is enough. Get it in gear.”
And so I did. An hour later my dad softly knocked on my door.
“Charlie?” he asked. And I was relieved to see that he seemed calmer. He hadn’t used the incident as an excuse to get high.
The most chic thing is self-sufficiency. So that’s what I showed Jacques.
“I’ve got a few things to finish up,” I said, thinking of the damaged beading, the rips and tears in my beautiful gown. “Nothing an all-nighter won’t fix.”
Jacques looked relieved.
“God, you’re so
mething, Charlie Dean. It’s like you’re another species. A super-capable species.”
“Thank you,” I said. And I got to work.
twenty-nine
MAY 3
Barbra and Booker came with me when I took the dress and accessories over for a fitting the day before the show. It was probably unprofessional to bring even one friend, never mind two, but I was feeling kind of cracked down the middle.
We rode our bikes because Barbra couldn’t get her mom’s car.
There wasn’t a lot of conversation on the way, and I was grateful for that. But when we dismounted in Esther’s driveway and Booker started chaining his bike to the fence, Barbra grabbed my bike by the handlebars.
“How are you?” she whispered.
I could barely meet her eyes.
“I’ve been really busy.”
“I’m excited to see this dress.”
“My grandma’s friend helped.”
“Did she make the whole thing?” asked Barbra, who really does have a confrontational edge to her sometimes.
“No, she just showed me what to do.”
“She must be an amazing sewer.”
“Seamstress,” I corrected. “Or dressmaker.”
Barbra made a wry face. “Well, pardon me.”
“No, I was just . . . never mind.” I was just being the kind of excellent guy who corrects other people even though his whole life is a giant lie.
The front door opened, and Esther came running out of the house. With her dandelion head of curls, skinny legs, and big white shoes she looked like a cartoon.
She skidded to a stop about five feet from us.
Sheryl stood in the doorway, smiling.
“Is it ready?” Esther breathed. “My fashion outfit?”
I nodded and forgot all about the guilt and the sense of impending doom.
Barbra and I locked our bikes to Booker’s and followed Esther and Sheryl into the house.
Esther’s foster father waited in the kitchen, a white guy, early middle-aged, in a plaid shirt. He was trim and balding and had an honest face, like a game warden.