Page 2 of A Dress for the Wicked
“Just running out to the store. I’ll be back soon.”
“Be sure you are. Mrs. Wells and Johnny are coming over later.”
“Are they?” I tossed out the words easily, as though the thought of a visit with Johnny was the most delightful thing in the world.
“He’s a nice boy, Emmy. Dependable.”
He also has sweaty hands and an inability to maintain a conversation,I thought. The last time Johnny had been over, I’d found myself prattling on about the size of buttonholes while he’d downed cup after cup of tea.
“The black one is pretty,” my mother said abruptly.
It had been strange for her to offer a suggestion. She rarely commented on my love of fashion, and whenever she did, her tone was so grim that one might think my passion was to preparebodies for burial at the undertaker’s home, not design and sew gowns.
“It is,” I’d said. “But it’s not quite right.”
“The black one is best,” she repeated, her voice tinged with agitation. “You should wear the black one.”
By then, she had tucked the ledger under one arm and begun to bite her nails. It always made her seem young, as though she were my sister, not my mother. Sometimes she would resolve to stop. Inevitably, though, her hands would wander to her mouth and her nails would be reduced to stubs once again.
I didn’t say anything else, and she waited, the silence building between us. Finally, she made a harsh sound under her breath—one single, angryhumph—and left my doorway. The minute her footsteps had receded down the stairs, I grabbed my purple gown out of my closet and struggled into it. I slipped the yellow feather into my hair. Then I snuck out the back door of our pub and walked the two miles to Evert, the neighboring town where the interviews were being held.
The strange man was behind me now, nudging me through the tent. “Madame Jolène is waiting, darling. And let me tell you, Madame Jolène doesn’t wait for anyone.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him one last time as I slipped through the tent flaps, clutching my sketch and trying to conjure up some kind of prayer for my future. The last image I saw from the outside was the smiling, toothy zebra.
The minute I was inside, all thoughts vanished as I took in the tent’s interior. Its canvas walls were striped teal and black. Huge fans, the blades painted with gargoyles wearing top hatsand bowlers, hung from the ceiling, rotating in hissing swoops. A man in a gray suit controlled their direction and speed with a crank. Five fluffy Pomeranians attired in embroidered jackets padded around a bronze statue of a woman whose long streams of hair poured down over her voluptuous body in lieu of clothing. In the tent’s center hulked a huge marble table with legs carved in the shape of horses’ hooves.
And there, sitting behind the table like a queen, was Madame Jolène. Though I’d seen countless illustrations of her and read dozens of articles about her career, none of my research had prepared me for this moment.
At first, all I saw were her eyes, piercing and gray, like the pointy ends of sewing needles. She seemed to stare at me for a very long time, though it could only have been a moment before she directed her attention to the woman seated beside her. The woman was dressed in a green gown hemmed with extravagant layers of horsehair. As they whispered together, I suddenly realized I hadn’t taken in Madame Jolène’s attire. Her presence was even more captivating than her designs, though she was wearing a bloodred gown adorned with patches of lace.
“Where are you from?” I barely heard someone say.
No, not lace. Those were pieces of delicate metal arranged in sharp, neat rows across her bodice. But her gloves were lace. Black lace that wrapped around her palms and wrists, leaving her fingers bare.
“I said, where are you from?” The woman in green spoke harshly, clearly annoyed by my distraction.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice strange and high. Somehow Madame Jolène made me feel as if I didn’t belong in my own skin, much less in the gown I’d designed. “I’m from Shy.”
“How...adorable.” Madame Jolène cut off the ends of the words, as though they weren’t worthy of her breath. The bracelets on her wrist clinked as she raised one hand to her forehead and pressed her fingers against her porcelain skin. A woman in a high-necked, lace-trimmed black dress came forward to set a cup of steaming tea in front of her. She wasn’t outfitted like a maid, but she stepped back into the corner demurely, her hands folded.
“This,” Madame Jolène said, “is a circus.”
The woman in the horsehair gown touched her shoulder in a firm but sympathetic gesture.
“You need this,” she said. She hesitated before saying, “You need one of them.” Without looking, she gestured toward me.
One of them? Without meaning to, I peeked down at myself, trying to see what they were seeing. Scuffs on my shoes. Bits of dirt clinging to my hem, picked up on my long walk here, and painfully visible despite my efforts to brush them away. Pilling at my waist from where I carried trays for delivering dinner. I raised my sketch a little, as though I could somehow hide my inadequacies behind it.
Not that it mattered. Madame Jolène wasn’t looking at me. Instead, she lifted her teacup to her lips. The steam from the tea drifted up around her face in thin streams.
“I don’t design for the press,” she said. “I don’t design for anybody.” She set the teacup down without ever sipping from it.“Since when is beauty for everyone? If fashion does not inspire aspiration, then what, tell me, is the point?”
I noticed, for the first time, a newspaper on the ornate desk. It was turned to the fashion pages. Even at this distance, I saw the bold headline: “PARLIAMENT SLASHES CROWN’S ARTS BUDGET, PUSHES FOR TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS AND FASHION FOR ALL.”
I was aware it wasn’t Madame Jolène’s first choice to include a country girl in the Fashion House Interview. Country girls had never been included in the competition, and it was well known that she’d been encouraged to do so as a sign of progressiveness.
But this scene was not at all what I had imagined.
