by Yael Levy
The maid walked over to Rachel to let her out.
“Thanks, Marissa,” Rachel said and gave her Suri’s book. Then she nodded toward the backyard, where Suri had resumed planting her invisible potatoes.
“What’s with Suri today?” she asked.
“Sorry, no speak English.” The maid smiled, looking a little frightened, and showed Rachel to the door.
CHAPTER THREE
The metal doors of the packed subway train opened. Rachel landed in Manhattan, geographically a bit over twelve miles from her home in Brooklyn, though otherwise light years away.
“Sorry. Excuse me. Pardon me.” Rachel repeated the mantra while she bumped into the other passengers, packed like sardines in a can.
She walked eight blocks from the station to her school on 27th Street, the Fashion Institute of Technology. She enjoyed strolling, taking in all the sights and sounds and smells. A world as different from Brooklyn as a French loaf is from rye bread. More than anything, she was happy to get away from the intense dating scene that permeated all aspects of life in Brooklyn. “How are you?” quickly turned to “Seeing anybody yet?” “Could you please pass the mustard” led to “I know the perfect guy for you.” Whatever the situation, marriage was the answer.
“Think it’s gonna rain?”
“Get married!”
“Have indigestion?”
“Get married!”
She walked by the flower district, sidewalks teeming with vases and baskets full of colorful roses and lilies and flowers whose names she didn’t know. She passed through the garment district; a region of sweaty men pushing wheeled racks of dresses along Seventh Avenue, notion and fabric shops, and imposing office buildings filled with designers and showrooms. Echoing off the tall gray buildings, a babble of languages buzzed through the air. Smells of roasting chestnuts and pretzels rose from vendor stands, mingled with car exhaust and varieties of perfumes from the endless pedestrian traffic.
From the outside, FIT was just a series of office buildings, but those buildings probably housed the greatest concentration of raw talent in the city, perhaps in the world. Rachel still couldn’t believe she was a student there, that they’d accepted her over a year before. With no prior art training, she’d competed against accomplished artists from the High School of Music and Art, renowned from the 1980s television series Fame. Though she liked Glee, there was something about Fame that really spoke to her, and Rachel had watched old re-runs so many times that the songs still blared in her head.
She remembered taking the drawing tests as if it were yesterday. She’d sat next to kids with years of training, who seemed smug and complacent that they’d be getting seats at FIT. Kids with fluorescent-colored hair, rings all over their bodies, and grungy ripped jeans. Real artists. Kids who looked at her as if she were some kind of deviant, with her sleek auburn hair brushed back in a neat ponytail and freshly laundered long-sleeved shirt and long denim skirt.
She remembered her fear. Why had she even bothered coming to the tests? Who was she kidding? Rachel Shine, an Orthodox Jewish girl from Brooklyn — an artist? She should just walk out and forget about being an artist, she’d thought. She could be a receptionist. Or go to nursing school. Her mother had always wanted her to be a nurse. “Those little white uniforms are cute, and what a great way to meet a doctor!” She’d heard that line so many times that even when they weren’t together, she could still hear Ma’s voice in her head.
But her father understood. He didn’t talk much, but when he did speak, she knew to listen. “I always wanted to be an architect,” he’d told her, “but in those days, who’d hire a religious Jew to be an architect? Maybe I could have gotten work. But the career path was so undefined then.” His own mother had told him, “Go be an accountant. You’ll always have work.” So he did. And he always had work. And accounting gave him a good job as he’d worked his way through law school. Now he was a successful tax attorney and had Michael Kaufman as a partner. But that didn’t make up for his lost ambition: He’d always wanted to be an architect.
“Try,” Abe Shine had told his youngest child, his daughter with the dreams. “Try as hard as you can, Rachel. Follow your heart, or you’ll always regret it. You can always be a receptionist if it doesn’t work out.” Then he’d looked at his wife and chuckled. “Or you could always go to nursing school and meet a cute doctor. But give it your best shot.”
The faculty at her private religious high school did not want her even thinking about FIT. Who knew whom she’d meet there? What kind of crazy artists would confuse her religious path? Or worse — maybe she’d marry “out!” Better to stay in Brooklyn, where it was safe.
But, like the Fame theme song said, Rachel wanted to learn how to fly. She had worked on her portfolio and stood firm with her school to release her transcripts.
Voraciously, Rachel had studied art books and practiced drawing and painting on her own. She worked incessantly on her artwork, and apparently it was good enough. The FIT evaluators found something promising and “raw” in her work. A tabula rasa, one instructor had called her — a blank slate like an untouched canvas. Rachel was a student they could teach. So she’d been accepted, while some of the talented Music and Art kids hadn’t made the cut. Remember, remember, remember.
• • •
“Hey, Rachel, you’re late,” Fitzgerald intoned in his trademark monotone voice. Fitz took it upon himself to critique Rachel’s artwork as well as her habits. At six feet tall, he stood sketching at his easel, wearing a white paper jumpsuit that complemented his bleached spiky mohawk. Lean and pale, with shaven red hair, Fitzgerald resembled Vincent Van Gogh — except when he dyed his hair green or purple or yellow, depending on his mood. Then he resembled Van Gogh in a colorful period. Today he was a symphony in white.
Rachel smiled. “I’m not late. I’m just real early for the next class.” She placed her sketch board firmly on her sturdy, paint-splattered easel. The room smelled of paint fumes and solvents, and charcoal dust peppered the air.
“Fitzgerald, leave her alone. You just came in five minutes ago.” Christine jabbed him in his ribs. She looked like Fitz’s opposite, with Goth rags held together by artfully arranged safety pins and witch-black dyed hair.
“That’s beside the point, Chris.”
Rachel laid out her supplies to work on the poses. “He just likes to torment me.”
Christine laughed. “That’s because he’s in love with you, Rachel.”
Rachel shook her head and grinned. “I’ve told you a million times, I can’t marry out of my faith.”
Fitz laughed. “Who said anything about marriage? I just want to sleep with you.”
Christine swatted him with a paintbrush.
Fitz shook his head. “Women.”
The plus-size model, Ada, was posing today, wrapped in a voluminous cotton robe. Rachel tried to sketch her.
“You all will immortalize me!” The enormous woman gushed and folded her arms across her body, where they promptly disappeared in a mountain of fabric.
“I can’t do this.” Rachel dropped her hand to her side and sighed to her classmates, who stood at their heavy wooden easels, sketching in circle formation around the three-hundred-pound model.
“It’s all a matter of perspective, Rachel.” Christine held up her thumb to measure the model.
“I don’t know. There are no lines I can follow.”
The model caught Rachel’s eye. “Are you immortalizing me, hon?”
Rachel stared at her blank sketchpad. “You bet.”
Fitzgerald laughed. “At this rate, Rachel, you are going to win that internship for sure.”
Rachel moved her conté crayon around on the rough newsprint paper. “It’s just really hard to concentrate.”
Christine grinned. “You mean a three-hundred-pound model doesn’t do it
for you?”
“And break,” announced Tricia, the instructor.
Ada lumbered off the central podium and strolled around the circle, reviewing her immortalization. “I love it!” she pronounced at each easel. Rachel tried to close her pad before the model saw her blundering lines but was too late.
“You need more passion, hon,” the model advised.
Tricia came over to see the fuss. “Absolutely. More passion, Rachel.”
Ada went back to the center of the room. “Should I disrobe, Tricia?”
“That’s a good idea.”
The model took off her robe, and Rachel tried to avert her eyes. Most rabbis would have told her it was improper to sit in a nude drawing class, but Rabbi Cohen had looked up the texts and found that, in her specific situation — as a female studying for her profession — it was permissible. Still, it felt awkward.
“Come on, Rachel, draw with passion.” Fitzgerald chuckled.
Rachel stood at her sketchpad.
Christine laughed. “It would help if you opened your eyes, Rachel.”
Ada called, “Immortalize me!”
Rachel looked away from the fat naked lady. “Um, I think I need a coffee break now.”
She ran down six flights of stairs to the lobby, where she bought a coffee. The lobby was filled with an exhibit put together by the Display majors, which consisted of mannequins decked out in white spandex jumpsuits. The sign read FUTURE BRIDES. Rachel sighed. Even at FIT there was no getting away from the theme.
She returned to class, where the students had finished sketching and moved on to painting. Melodic tunes played in the background.
Ada sat in middle of the room in all her glory.
Rachel reminded herself that this was part of her training to become an artist: to learn how to see. Still, it felt immodest and she wondered why the model had to be naked. Couldn’t she learn how to paint by observing the curves and textures of bananas or grapes? She put down her coffee, fetched a cup of water to dilute her paints, and began to paint what she saw.
“How’s your project going?” Christine asked as they worked. Whispering was tolerated while students were painting.
“It’s going. Going nowhere.”
“I keep telling you, you can’t paint with your head, Rachel. You gotta use your heart,” Christine admonished.
Fitzgerald cursed with far more passion than Rachel could muster for her project. “The wrong freaking color!” he complained. “This needs red.” He rubbed paint off with a rag. Then he dabbed red paint all over his canvas.
“What do you think?” he asked Rachel.
There was no model in his painting, only dabs of red paint. She didn’t reply.
“I’m showing in a gallery tonight, ladies,” Fitzgerald announced.
Christine nodded, scratching her nose, which lightly jingled her three nose rings. “Count me in. You coming, Rachel?”
“With you and Fitz? Is that like a date?”
“C’mon, Rachel,” Fitz said. “It’s not like a date.”
“Where I come from, going anywhere with a guy is a date.”
Fitzgerald ran his hand through his mohawk. “Did anyone ever tell you, Rachel, that you are truly odd?”
Rachel nodded. “Yes.”
Christine laughed. “With everyone trying so hard to be the weirdest person at FIT, you are the biggest freak without even trying, Rachel. You really are.”
“In Brooklyn I’m too free-spirited, and here I’m too conservative,” Rachel sighed. “So wherever I go, I don’t belong.” She smoothed a wrinkle from her long denim skirt and tugged on her fuchsia sweater. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I guess. Anyway, I’ve got a party tonight.”
“Another one? Didn’t you just go to your friend’s wedding?”
“Yeah, but after the wedding there are seven nights of parties, where the couple gets blessed.”
Fitzgerald cursed again and threw green paint at his canvas. “Seems like you get out more than I do.”
“We live dangerously in Brooklyn, Fitz.”
Fitzgerald dabbed his paintbrush into Rachel’s cup.
“Hey! What’d you do that for?”
“What? I can’t use your water?”
“You got my coffee cup, Fitz!”
“Oops.”
Tricia came over to survey their progress. “I love your work, Fitzgerald. Now that’s passion.”
She nodded at Christine’s work, too. “Lovely choice of colors, Christine.”
But Tricia shook her head, severely unhappy with Rachel’s. “Technique, accurate. But where is the feeling, Rachel? Your commitment?”
Fitz clutched his chest. “She left her heart back in Brooklyn.”
Everyone laughed. Even naked Ada.
Tricia ended the class by reminding everyone to bring in their work for the next class. She wanted to see an illustration of True Love. A romance. Rachel wrote down her assignment while Tricia also reminded the class that a representative from Disney would be by in just a few months to review their portfolios.
Everyone wanted to win the coveted internship to illustrate for Disney for the summer. That put an artist on the map. Rachel sighed just thinking about it. She knew she was expected to marry soon — but she dreamed of expressing her art, having a career, being recognized for her own achievements. And yet her family and friends — everyone she knew — lived to see her married. Would flying to Orlando for a summer set her back in the marriage race? How could she please the community she loved yet still maintain her own identity? She had no idea how she’d balance the two, but she knew deep in her gut that she had to try.
Disney. That was one goal she longed to achieve. Disney had been her inspiration ever since she was a little girl. She longed to create a world that was beautiful and romantic, like Cinderella or Snow White. A world that was light and happy and flowers and sunshine, where beautiful girls fell in love, got swept off their feet, married Prince Charming — because they chose to — and lived happily ever after. But she knew from her married friends and relatives that the fairy tales were just that: made-up stories. Real world marriages required sacrifice, hard work, and commitments: endless cooking, monotonous cleaning, and critical mothers-in-law. Rachel briefly wondered if Cinderella and Snow White cried at those fairy tale weddings, and what they served at the smorgasbord.
• • •
Rachel lugged her heavy black portfolio onto the train back to Brooklyn feeling harried. Taking shallow breaths, she tried not to inhale the glorious smells of the NYC transit system, which reeked of fried onions and body odor. Unable to find a seat, she replayed her long day — six hours of feeling dejected over her insipid art, and everyone on her back, reminding her that she needed more passion.
Nobody told her how to get more passion. What exactly was passion?
The rush hour crowd squeezed even more tightly together like anchovies in a tin. Do anchovies feel passion? she wondered.
She clutched the strap over her head to steady herself as the train jolted forward.
And then she saw him — again. The waiter from the wedding. He was standing right next to her.
He turned toward her. Her heart beat fast. He smiled. She smiled back.
“Would you please move that?” he said, nodding toward her portfolio. “It’s a bit heavy on my foot.”
“Sorry!” She picked up the leather case, which revealed some of her paintings, and zipped it closed, bumping into a person on her other side.
“Hey! Watch what you’re doing!” the lady snapped.
“You’re an artist?” the waiter asked.
“Trying to be.” She smiled.
“What do you like to paint?”
“Whatever I find beautiful. Kids. Faces. New York City garbage.”
He laughed. “You’ve got to love the garbage.”
“Right. So how come you never sent me the bill?”
He frowned in confusion. “Bill? For a painting?”
“For your suit. The wedding. Remember?”
“That was you?”
She nodded.
He studied her as the train vibrated and rattled. “You look different.”
“Right. I don’t usually wear ball gowns to school.”
“Neither do I.”
She laughed.
“Your face looks different. I’d never have recognized you.”
“I’m not wearing any makeup.” She held her breath. Her mother would kill her if she knew. She may as well be as naked as Ada.
“Well, you look nice without the makeup. Your hair looks different, too.”
Rachel flushed. “Okay! So I’m like the big bad wolf — my, what big teeth I have.”
He smiled. “No, but you do look different without that whole get-up.”
“What was wrong with my get-up?”
“Nothing. Just, it’s not natural.”
“You prefer natural to glamorous?”
“Natural is glamorous.”
“You are so not from Brooklyn.”
“How’d you guess?”
“Women’s intuition.”
“You’re Rachel, right?”
“Aha. So you do remember me.”
He smiled again, not the least bit embarrassed. “I’m Jacob. Jacob Zohar.”
Nice Jewish name. “Pleased to meet you.” She’d have liked to shake his hand, but other than in a business context, it was forbidden to touch him. She steadied her portfolio with her free hand.
“So what do you do, Jacob Zohar? Are you a professional waiter?”
“Nah, just earning money to get through school.”
“Oh! What are you studying?” Please God, she prayed silently. Please let it be medicine. That would make Ma happy. Or law. Or even accounting. Just let it be something good.