Apart at the Seams

by Melissa Ford

  “This is going to be great,” he promises. “Why don’t you text that guy Noah and ask him to write you when they’re approaching so you don’t miss it.”

  “You don’t think that’s a little self-absorbed?” I ask him. “I mean, he has to be nervous tonight, too, being nominated for an Emmy.”

  Ethan shrugs. “It doesn’t hurt to ask. He’ll understand your nervousness.”

  I quickly type off a message and then go back to staring at the screen, taking three minutes to finish a chip by taking miniscule bites. I’m too nervous to chew anything more than my lower lip. My phone buzzes five minutes later while I’m staring at Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on my screen.

  There are two cars ahead of us. Bee almost made us late with her extended pee break. I think she was texting from the toilet. I start laughing, but before I can answer, another text comes through. She’s going to tell you that our lateness was due to my manscaping, but don’t believe her.

  Are you in the black stretch limo? I type.

  “Are you texting with the writers?” Rachel asks me, her mouth slightly open.

  I nod and read Noah’s response. Only the best for David’s writers. Sorry, publicist is telling me to turn off the phone. See you on the red carpet.

  “That’s them,” I tell everyone, pointing at the sliver of black car on the screen. We watch it inch forward toward the edge of the carpet, and then the doors open and all seven writers pile out, along with a publicist who quickly scurries out of the shot. They’ve clearly been prepped on how to pause for photographs while still walking purposefully toward the front door. Ryan Seacrest makes a beeline for them, thrusting his microphone underneath Noah’s mouth and encouraging him to give them some of that Nightly wit.

  But I don’t even hear his answer because I’m too busy hyperventilating over the perfection of the outfits working together. The fabric picks up the last remnants of California sunlight, igniting the gowns and adornments of the suits so they appear like a conflagration, burning up the red carpet. The only thing I take in is when Seacrest takes a step back to survey the group and states to the female announcer next to him that the outfits are stunning. “Creative and daring choices for such a talented group,” he says directly to the camera.

  Rachel grabs my arm and shakes me out of my reverie. “Arianna, they were wearing your outfits. Your outfits!”

  “I know,” I mouth, watching Seacrest move on to the next set of celebrities moving up the walkway.

  “He called them creative and daring,” Ethan adds.

  My phone goes off with a text message from Tabitha, who tells me that the outfits looked amazing on the screen. And two from my samplehands, Dave and Ophelia, who both ask if I saw the coverage. I take a moment to write them back and then set down my phone, feeling antsy. I just want the real show to begin, to see those outfits again under the stage lights.

  I have to wait until midway through the award ceremony, until after Martin Scorsese wins an award for directing Boardwalk Empire, for the presenters to come out to announce the winner of outstanding writing in a variety, music, or comedy series. I press my hands over my mouth, willing the envelope to hold the show’s name, and I shriek, leaping off the sofa when the presenter leans into the microphone and says, “Finally! Give it up for the Nightly.”

  Rachel bounces up and down next to me as we watch the writers spill out of their seats and travel up to the stage. Under the lights, the outfits glitter and flicker like a spark. The women surround the men, giving off the illusion that their suits are the blackened wicks while the gowns are the flame. And the result is stunning, even made tiny by the television screen. I beam at Noah as he fumbles through their stunned acceptance speech and thanks everyone from David Lear to their mothers. And then their moment—and by extension, my outfits’ moment—is up, and they’re led off-stage.

  The host, Jane Lynch, jerks her thumb over her shoulder as the writers depart and jokes, “Those outfits looked like they were on fire. Headline tomorrow: ‘Nightly writers burn down the house.’”

  “Ari, that was awesome,” Adam tells me.

  “I am so proud of you,” Ethan shouts, smothering me in a hug. Beckett wakes up from all of our noise and starts wailing in surprise. “I’ll get him. He just wants to tell Mommy congratulations.”

  My phone buzzes over and over again with messages of congratulations. Even Francesca manages to send off a quick note thanking me for my hard work. I lean back into the sofa, feeling as if the entire world is giving me a hug right now. I am on fire.

  THE NEXT morning, I eagerly go online while I wait to grab hard copies of the newspaper on my way to the loft. Jane Lynch’s comment is echoed in every major news outlet as they discuss the Nightly win: “Nightly Lights Up the Night,” “Nightly is on Fire,” and “Nightly Burns Brightly at the Emmys.” I can feel a blush of pleasure, the heat creeping across my face, despite the fact that not one article mentions me. They mention the outfits and list Davis & Howe as the designers, which is a little disappointing. I reason that while media outlets may gloss over the fine details in favor of a popular designer’s name, celebrities or other designers who wish to hire me will find out the truth when they question Davis & Howe. At least, that’s what I hope.

  I’m alone with Beckett, Ethan already on his way to class, when my mother calls while I’m helping Beckett eat a bowl of yogurt without getting it all over both of us. I balance the phone between my shoulder and ear, trying to wipe a blob of yogurt from the floor. Beckett presses his yogurt-covered spoon to his ear, pretending to talk on the phone, too.

  “It was wonderful last night,” my mother gushes. “I watched it with The Girls. We’re just so proud of you.”

  I wait for her to say more, but she launches into the rest of the conversation: the new suits my father bought at the chain discount store that botched the tailoring, an old high-school friend who had a baby this week, and a craft fair she’s putting together at her church. I swallow my disappointment. I know there’s not much more to say, I mean, it’s not as if I was there and can relay any interesting stories. And I know my mother doesn’t really get the enormity of seeing your designs on television. I’m sure I’ll be sick of talking about it by the end of the day.

  “If you’re doing a craft fair, what happens to your trip? Aren’t you going to Chicago this fall?” I ask, dampening a paper towel to clean the yogurt out of Beckett’s hair. Every October, my mother and her friends take an all-girls road trip to Chicago, staying at a hotel in the city and going to museums and on architectural tours for a long weekend.

  “I think we’re going to skip it this year,” my mother tells me.

  “But you always go,” I tell her, as if she doesn’t know this fact.

  “I know, but Betty is getting a divorce, and that’s a mess. She’s the one who pulled the plug on the trip. Said that she can’t go away right now. She’s pulled away from everyone, really. She’s practically in hiding.”

  I highly doubt Betty is in hiding considering how much she loves being the center of attention. “Why don’t you go without her?” I question.

  “Without Betty?” my mother rebukes, as if I’ve just suggested dumping her body in Lake Michigan. “The Girls can’t split up. Anyway, I have some tests that my doctor wanted me to have scheduled for the beginning of October, and Maureen has her daughter-in-law’s bridal shower. Everyone is busy. We’ll go next year. So what do you have on tap for the rest of today? Just relaxing with Beckett? Catching up after missing him for so many weeks?”

  I bite my tongue from pointing out that I really could do without the constant reminders of how many hours I work. “Actually, I’m late. I have to drop off Beckett with the nanny and get to work. Let me run.”

  “Always running,” my mother sighs. “I suppose you have to start the next outfit.”

  That’s what I hope, I think as I hang u
p and race into the bathroom to give my hair a quick brushing. A few minutes later, I’m squeezing Beckett into his stroller when my phone rings again. “Probably Anna Wintour herself asking if Vogue can interview me for their next issue,” I tell Beckett, squinting at the unknown number. “Or maybe Vera Wang is trying to poach me.”

  “Hey, is this Arianna, Rachel’s friend?” a voice asks on the other end of the line.

  “Speaking,” I say slowly, wondering how Rachel fits into the fashion world. Did she give my number to a fashion blogger?

  “This is Lisbeth, Adam’s sister. We’ve met a few times over the years. Adam gave me your number. I was able to borrow a sample of the wedding gown that Rachel wants for the ceremony, and I wanted to know if you could do the alterations on it. Nothing permanent because I have to get the dress back to Martha Stewart after the ceremony. The magazine, not the woman.”

  “Oh,” I say automatically. “Sure. Should I pick it up from you? Or maybe you can drop it off today?”

  “Judd is passing it off to me sometime this week,” she chirps. “So I could get it to you after that.”

  “Of course,” I tell her, hanging up the phone. Rachel didn’t tell me last night that she had found her wedding dress. Part of me had wondered if she was just waiting for the Emmys and Fashion Week to be over before hiring me for the task. Anita Goldman, her mother-in-law, could certainly afford a Davis & Howe design, and beyond that, Rachel knows how I’m trying to launch my career. I try not to let it bother me that I’m going to be doing alterations to someone else’s design.

  “No worries,” I tell Beckett as we set off toward Martina. “I mean, I could have used the work, but it’s Rachel’s big day. She should have the dress she wants.”

  A half hour later, when I enter the loft, I expect flowers from Nigel Howe or some sort of congratulatory breakfast spread for the staff on my behalf, anything to mark my debut on the fashion scene. But the loft is unusually quiet, most people still processing the end of Fashion Week, which only closed last Thursday. A few people call out half-hearted congratulations and a few others wonder aloud about missing the Emmys. Tabitha thrusts a latte in my hand.

  “Swung by Volt on the way to work so I got you something,” she tells me, stopping short of calling the drink congratulatory.

  “Thank you so much,” I say graciously. “Wow . . . it’s really quiet today.”

  “There are two couture outfits on the spreadsheet,” she says, pointing at Francesca’s clipboard. “I’m planning on leaving early. Nigel and Arthur are still entertaining people and networking in the dregs of Fashion Week, and Francesca took today as a personal day.”

  Oh.

  I get to work, quietly attaching sequins and seed beads to a pattern Francesca left on a loom while I try not to cry. I don’t know if it’s exhaustion from the frantic pace of the last few weeks catching up with me or disappointment that my life hasn’t appreciably changed as I thought it would despite all that hard work, but it feels as if the tissue in my throat has thinned, letting through a thousand dots of light, internal stinging pinpricks. I thought that my phone would be buzzing today with either congratulations or work offers. I thought that, at the very least, things would have changed at work. I’ve proven myself, and I gave up a lot to do so.

  This was going to be my wedding, my special moment, my day to shine. And instead, it’s just like every other day. People are happy enough for me, but after a few words of congratulations, almost two months of work—two months of slaving away at an amazing, eye-profile opportunity—are buried underneath the rest of the conversation as an afterthought. The Emmy outfits? Old news.

  Not to me.

  I work until the late afternoon and then tell Tabitha that I’m leaving even though I know Ethan is staying out late tonight for back-to-school night, and I told Martina I needed coverage until seven, assuming that my day would be filled with meetings and phone calls. I take the subway to Soho, knowing exactly where I want to go even if I take my time getting there, pausing to examine the window displays. I duck into a makeup store and sit on one of the high seats, letting one of their makeup artists talk me into a smoky grey eyeliner that he insists highlights the blue in my eyes. I swing into a trendy jewelry store and buy myself a hammered-gold bracelet just because it’s pretty. Something to mark my big moment, to look down on and always think about the way those dresses caught the light.

  I breathe deeply when I reach my destination. Holly Golightly had it right. Tiffany & Co. does calm you down right away, with its quiet hush of customers and employees, the squat silver font, the robin-egg blue. It’s the familiar, fat curves of an Elsa Peretti heart, the smudge-free glass cases, the soft yellow lighting, the tree branch fixture. I don’t need to actually buy anything to feel satiated; like Holly, I just like being in this pretty, calm space.

  My phone buzzes, and I look at the screen. It’s Noah, three words. Where are you? I startle and rack my brain; was I supposed to do some follow-up with the Nightly today? Aren’t they in California, celebrating their win?

  Tiffany’s. Soho.

  Case of the mean reds?

  I smile at the screen. Perhaps. Where are you?

  I’m back in the city. Took a flight this morning. Working on tomorrow’s show from home. Life goes on.

  You must be thrilled. Congratulations on the win last night.

  I clutch my phone and lean over a case, examining a starfish necklace. My phone buzzes against my palm. Do you have time to grab coffee? I’m really down.

  Do you know Chocolat on Greene Street? It’s sort of tiny.

  Yeah, Bee Smith lives a few doors down from it. I’ll meet you there in a half hour.

  I head over ten minutes later and order myself a hazelnut hot chocolate so Noah can’t pick up the bill. I’m sipping it when he strolls through the door and collapses in the seat across from me at the table. He’s been growing out his hair, and it looks handsomely disheveled, as if he’s been running his fingers through it while he thinks.

  “I am nursing an attention hangover worse than the aftermath of my Bar Mitzvah. Do you realize that less than twenty-four hours ago, I was at a party where $700 bottles of champagne were being served, and everyone was telling me that I’m brilliant?”

  He places his forehead dramatically on the table, and I laugh, moving my mug out of the way. I have an urge to run my nails through that dark, thick hair. “You are brilliant.”

  “Ooooh, say it again,” he jokingly moans, as if I’m giving him a massage.

  “Noah Reiser, you are the smartest, funniest man in the world.” I sigh and take a sip of my hot chocolate. “I’m not doing much better.”

  “Do you know that even my mother hasn’t properly congratulated me? I mean, sure she sent an email and made a phone call, but did she rent one of those airplanes that writes messages in the sky? No.”

  His voice is muffled by his sweater sleeve. I crouch down so he can hear me. “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t even get a congratulatory bagel and lox spread at work.”

  “Oh,” Noah says, sitting up. “That does make me feel better. I was scared that you were being fêted with bagel spreads while I was being forced back to work and told to write witty things to justify my statue.”

  He grins, his white, even teeth standing out against the two-day tan he managed to inadvertently get while out in California. He goes over to the counter to get himself a cup of hot chocolate and brings it back to our table, eating the whipped cream off the top with a spoon before he takes a sip. I never noticed before how his eyes are different rings of brown, darker circles toward the outer edges and a warmer golden color in the center of the eye. “I’m guessing you’re a fan of Breakfast at Tiffany’s if you fled there today. Book or movie?”

  “The movie. I’ve never read the book,” I admit.

  “Never read the book? We ha
ve to change that.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Why does everyone assume that a book trumps a movie adaptation? Maybe in this case, the movie is better than the book.”

  “Not this case,” Noah says. “Book trumps movie, there’s no contest.”

  “You’re a snob,” I tell him.

  “You just like living your life as if you’re in a movie.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with trying to attain movie perfection in the real world: movie luck, movie love, movie happiness.”

  “Next thing I know, you’ll tell me that nothing very bad could happen to you there. That you’re looking for a home as nice as Tiffany’s where you can set up some furniture and name your cat.”

  “I don’t have a cat,” I comment. “Okay, movies have ruined me. I thought today was going to be different. I thought that today was going to be like one of those montages of successful moments that always appears about two-thirds of the way through the movie, where you see the heroine making everything fall into place. Nothing fell into place today. Nothing happened today. I mean, a few close friends wished me congratulations, but I just had two months of work flit by and then the only attention it got was two minutes of screen time. I’m trying very hard to be grateful; I mean, most people don’t even get that. But the anticipation of this day was so much better than its reality.”

  Noah nods sympathetically in a way that makes me wonder if this get-together is for me or for him. I stare at his long, tapered fingers against his mug. “The day after is always hard.”

  “At least you get to always say Emmy Award-winning writer Noah Reiser. But what am I? I don’t have a title. I don’t have a glamorous job. I’m just Arianna, and I’m still a finisher for Davis & Howe. Nothing has changed. And all those hours I gave to this? It was for nothing.”

  “No, not for nothing. It’s the start of something,” Noah insists. “Didn’t you ever read that Malcolm Gladwell book where he talks about how experts need to give ten thousand hours in order to get any good?” He pulls out his phone and opens up the calculator. “So you put in about twelve hours a day for sixty days? You’re already at seven hundred and twenty hours. Only . . . nine thousand, two hundred and eighty to go.”