She averted her eyes, focused on her goal, just as a lineup of fragrances snuck into her senses: hemmed cotton, trimmed wool, raw imagination. They emanated from a slightly open doorway and blended in the valley of her lungs. As though on tracks, she found herself guided toward the scents, into her old classroom. Enticing and intoxicating as champagne.
A few more steps and apprehension dropped away. Light through a cluster of windows pronounced vibrancy in the bolts of fabric, poised at attention within the worn shelves. She trailed her hand over the spectrum of textures. As always, the French caretaker kept the materials organized by hues. They flowed like a rainbow, their divisions softened by the gradual transitions: from Persian blue to cornflower to cerulean to teal.
In this very space, like nowhere else, Julia had luxuriated in her impulses against the grain. For within these four boundless walls, the art of a woman’s freethinking was demanded, rather than discouraged.
And still, she had spent the past two months telling herself that her parents were right, that funds from clerking part-time at the nursing home should be spent on holiday gifts, not a hobby taking bites out of her regular studies. The commute itself, to the downtown academy, had contributed greatly to the slip in her respectable grades. Only a slight slip, but enough to raise concern from parents whose eldest daughter, Claire, had yet to stray from a trail spun of tradition, trimmed with approval.
Sometimes Julia wished her sister weren’t so dang likable. Had the girl been wretchedly competitive, or haughty in her seniority, like a typical sibling, Julia might have scuffed at Claire’s exemplary footsteps. Instead, so flawlessly formed, they gave her little cause not to smile, curtsy, and follow.
With a sigh, Julia pulled her fingertips from the propped fabric. She hadn’t expected a return to this familiar playground to cause such a tug on her heart. The thorny pulse of missing an old friend.
Loosening her grip on her handbag, she gazed at the pair of dress forms in the corner. Dashes of chalk acted as blueprints for the developing ensembles. She was trying to recall how many times she had used those very mannequins when a sight trapped her: Eggshell trim dangled awkwardly from the breast pocket of the maroon suit jacket. She scanned the tiled floor for the delinquent straight pin. Its metallic point sparkled, a beacon to her slender fingers.
Another’s design was considered a personal expression. Soulful. Sacred. But surely a student would appreciate the unobtrusive remedy.
Julia quickly retrieved the pin and tacked the trim back onto the pocket. As she confirmed its levelness, however, she had a vision of the extreme opposite: the entire pocket at a slant. To test the idea, just for a second, she angled and secured the accessory. The hem of the skirt needed to be raised as a complement. She shimmied the fabric upward around the wire cage below the limbless torso. Then she stepped back, evaluating.
What a statement the garb would make with a sharp, lightning-bolt collar rather than a conservative rounded appeasement. And if the belt were an inch wider with, say, a square copper buckle—
A sound from the doorway whirled Julia around. Her teacher entered, a small box in her arms. Mismatched pattern pieces hung over its edges like a deflated circus tent. Julia’s anxiety, instantly revived, sprang to attention.
“Ah! I see already you are here, Zhoolia.” The same tough elegance permeating Simone’s French accent encompassed her trademark appearance: dark hair slicked into an impossibly tight bun, no bangs to soften her angled features, slender arms pale against her all-black attire. Only wrinkles huddling around her eyes confessed her age exceeding fifty. And aside from her raspberry lipstick, the jeweled chain on the half-glass spectacles dangling from her neck provided her sole splash of color. “Have you been here long?” she asked.
Julia grappled for her thoughts. “I—arrived a little earlier than I planned.” Even more consuming than the rudeness of her untimely arrival was her tampering with the suit behind her. She could think of no discreet way of returning the outfit to its original state. Inching to her right, she settled for barricading the view. “Did you end up visiting New York last month, to see your niece?” She flung the question across the room, a verbal sleight of hand.
“Mmm,” Simone affirmed, moving toward a worktable beneath the windows, her posture and movement like a swan’s. “Have you ever been?” She set down the box.
“Oh yes,” Julia replied. “About once a year since I was little. My mom liked to take my sister and me there to holiday shop, see Broadway shows, and such.”
“And you are fond of it? That big city?”
A memory floated toward Julia: the first time she rode an open carriage through Central Park, the glow of lanterns painting the drifting snowflakes gold before her eyes. She swore heaven couldn’t be any more beautiful. “I think it’s the most magical place on earth.”
The teacher nodded, then nodded again. “Good.” The right answer. Simone disdained wrong answers. And, as Julia had learned, a student never had to question into which category their response had fallen.
“May I help you with that?” Julia hurried toward her, pulling the woman’s eye line to a safe periphery.
“Scraps,” the teacher complained, her fist full of thin strips from the box. “Silk pieces, they promised. But no. Only scraps.” She dropped them into a rejected heap on the long rectangular table, a fixture Julia knew well. On occasion, she had literally lived on the nicked and scarred slab—eating, sleeping, dreaming among the spools and yardsticks when a gust of creativity caught hold.
“Well,” Julia offered, touching the coveted material, “hopefully the war will be over soon, and everything will go back to normal.”
“Mmm . . . normal.” The word entered the air, soft as a wish. A brief pause and Simone’s wistfulness disappeared, shut down on command. “Alors.” She straightened. “You are wondering why I called you here, non?”
Fresh tension snapped through Julia as she waited.
“Let me first say,” she began, “the opportunity, at your level of experience, is an exception. However, I would prefer not to see a talent like yours wasted. Not to mention the effort and time I have contributed to your education.”
This was even worse than Julia expected. The woman was obviously inviting her into the advanced design program. A wondrous offer for a one-year student, almost unheard of.
Regardless. Julia’s answer would be the same: Thank you for everything—but—but . . . The words resisted, dug in their heels, as Simone said, “You see, you’ve been offered an internship.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t.” Julia’s decline toppled out before the last statement soaked in. “What was that?”
Simone’s expression held at stoic. “An internship, chérie. At Vogue. Naturally, they’ll want to interview you first, but I assured them you’d be perfect.”
“I had no—that you—” All of the thoughts in Julia’s head crashed into each other, landing in a pile of confusion. A single word crawled from the wreckage: “How?”
Simone shrugged one shoulder, as if both took too much effort. “During my trip to New York. I brought a file of your sketches, and two of the gowns you designed for the fashion show.”
Though the showcase last spring was only class-wide, the rave reviews Julia had received sent her spirit gliding cloud-high for an entire week.
Simone went on, “A dear friend I studied with decades ago is now working in designs for Vogue. And she believes you have something special. A gift. As do I.” That last sentence, above all others, lit Julia inside. Compliments from the woman were like collectible coins. Rare and priceless. “But,” she pointed out, “you will have a lot to learn before then.”
“When would it start?”
“They had hoped for this winter, but I told them of your studies. She would be willing to wait until late spring for you. And