The next day at work, Fabienne drank copious amounts of coffee as she made her way through e-mails and phone messages and a stream of people in and out her office door. Mid-morning, her boss, Unity, came in and sat down.
“Good to see you’re back,” Unity said crisply, crossing her legs, her shimmery flesh-colored stockings reminding Fabienne of how much she hated flesh-colored stockings.
“It’s good to be back,” Fabienne said brightly, hoping a smile and a lightness in her voice wouldn’t betray the fact that she was running on caffeine.
“How are the exhibition plans coming along? Charlotte seemed to have everything in hand while you were away.”
“Yes, she did. She’s been a big help,” Fabienne said honestly because Charlotte had dexterously managed to keep all important decisions on hold for Fabienne while still making it appear as if they were making progress.
“I’d like to see a concept this afternoon. I’m worried about timing given it’s your first exhibition for us and you’ve been away so much.”
“I know exactly how much time we need and everything is in hand. But I’m also very happy to run through a concept today. It’ll be rough though.” Fabienne kept her smile on; the only alternative was to look utterly dumbfounded at the thought of having to present a concept that very afternoon, all the while knowing that a concept wouldn’t normally be presented for at least another month.
“Good. Two o’clock. My office.” Unity stood up, her white skirt suit unwrinkled and spotless. Jil Sander, Fabienne guessed. Sleek and Scandinavian-like and always serene.
Fabienne tried to stop her own hands drifting down to the wide-legged black tuxedo pants and jacket she wore, along with a white shirt that seemed to be sagging in deference to Unity’s crispness. It was an outfit she always wore when she didn’t have time to think, an outfit she always loved, but today it felt less polished than it should. She waited until Unity had returned to her own office and then scurried out into the hall to find Charlotte. “We have to put a concept together by two o’clock. No lunch for us today.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Maybe it’ll keep her off our backs.”
“I hope so,” Fabienne said.
In Fabienne’s office, they laid out the photographs of the dresses they’d already chosen and Fabienne began to sketch a plan, a narrative, a story, which placed each piece in an order, an order that she was making up as she went along, but at least it was a start. She always drew and re-drew the exhibition concept many times before she felt it was final and she hoped the first draft would have enough in it to satisfy Unity.
After a couple of hours of discussion and drawing, Fabienne stretched. “Great, I’ve got enough to keep me going. Can you do a timeline showing when we’ll write the captions, when each piece needs to arrive from the loan museums, when we need to meet with the builders, when the programs need to be started, when we need to think about which pieces to pick for the website—everything. If she can see we know what we’re doing, she might just believe us.”
“Will do,” Charlotte said.
“If you can get it to me by one, then I can make any changes in time. I’ll re-draw this now,” Fabienne indicated the concept sketch, “and we’ll have enough.”
Fabienne didn’t step away from her desk for the next two hours. She planned and she sketched and she thought and she looked over the photographs of the pieces she and Charlotte had shortlisted in e-mail conversations over the last week. Then, at two o’clock, smiling, and feeling as if Unity might actually find it within herself to smile too when she saw what they’d done, she collected Charlotte and walked to Unity’s office.
Fabienne began with a short introduction about the idea behind the exhibition and then led Unity through a narrative that wound its way from Lanvin’s La Cavallini dress in both its incarnations—one with flowers and one with crystals—through Chanel’s camellia corsages, to Dior’s Venus dresses, a spectacular Worth embroidered and sequinned jacket, a sparkling Schiaparelli with so many paillettes one could almost believe there was no fabric beneath to support them, an early Stella Designs velvet dress with a white crystal-studded peony that was one of the first pieces her grandmother had ever shown, some Collette Dinnigan and Akira Isogawa and, of course, the Vanderbilt dress from Tiffany, set like an exquisite engagement ring with diamonds. At the end she stood quietly, knowing she’d done good work, that the exhibition would be a paean to the traditional métiers which had been intrinsic to the transformation of fashion from homemaker craft to art.
“I’m not sure,” Unity said, “about the whole idea anymore. It’s so brazen, all of this decoration. Do we want something so arrogant for your first exhibition?”
Fabienne carefully put her drawings down on the desk. “It’s a way of honoring lost crafts,” she said, voice level. “The handmade, the painstaking, the patient. All that’s precious and might easily be forgotten in this modern age. It ties in perfectly to contemporary ideas about slow-movements, about returning to pre-internet and pre-machine days when things took more time, when we valued individual artistic endeavor just for the sake of beauty. Not money. It’s an homage to a way of life that fashion has grown from, a way of life where the quest wasn’t to own more, but to own a piece of genius. I think people will appreciate the chance to see a set of skills that have almost vanished, to contemplate what it would be like if fashion wasn’t disposable, if we viewed what we wore as art rather than fad. You could step into any of these pieces right now and wear them out and you would not look as if you’d stepped out of time. These pieces are the opposite of ephemera; they’re ageless.”
Unity didn’t speak. Nor did Fabienne. She’d said everything she needed to and she wasn’t going to jump into the silence and babble like Charlotte was doing, making suggestions about replacing some of the more ornate pieces with something simpler.
“Perhaps you two should get your stories straight,” Unity said. “You either want simple or you don’t.”
“We don’t,” Fabienne said firmly.
“I need to think about it,” Unity said, standing up.
Charlotte scuttled out of the room and Fabienne was about to leave too when Unity stopped her. “I understand you and Jasper Brande are no longer an item. I’m sorry things didn’t work out.”
Fabienne shook her head. Was Unity offering friendly commiserations?
“He’s joined our board of directors,” Unity said smoothly. “I hope that won’t be a problem.”
Why? Fabienne wanted to shout. He was a sought-after board executive but why, of all the boards in town, would he join this one? “No problem for me,” she said, matching her tone to Unity’s, at the knife-edge of condescension. “I don’t have anything to do with the board. That’s your job.” Then she left the office.
* * *
All she wanted was a glass of wine and bed, Fabienne thought as she pushed open the door to her apartment and deposited a pile of work on the hall table. If she woke again at two in the morning, then the paperwork would keep her occupied, although after today’s meeting, she’d lost a little of her enthusiasm for her new job. She was just pouring the wine when her phone rang. She sank gladly onto the couch when she saw Will’s name on the screen.
“Hi,” she said. “How are you?” His face flickered out of pixels and into flesh and she put down the wineglass abruptly. “What’s wrong?” He looked as if he hadn’t slept or shaved since she’d last seen him on the sidewalk outside Tiffany.
“It’s Liss.” He paused and Fabienne could feel the effort it took for him to hold himself together. “She has a bladder obstruction. She’s in surgery.”
“Surgery? Is she well enough?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will.”
The buzzer in Fabienne’s apartment sounded. “Just a sec,” she said and she reached out to press the button to let in whoever had buzzed. “It’s probably just a delivery. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be quick.” She opened the front door and Jasper waltzed in, calling out, “Fab! How are you?”
Fabienne realized she had her phone in her hand, that Will could clearly hear Jasper’s voice, could probably see Jasper leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Jasper, give me a minute,” she muttered, turning away. “I’ll call you back,” she said to Will. “I won’t be long.”
“Okay,” he said gruffly, hanging up.
“Why are you here?” Fabienne wearily asked Jasper who had sat himself down on the sofa.
“To see you. It’s been ages. I heard your grandmother died.”
Even though she was used to his dispassion, she still recoiled at his words. “She did,” she said shortly.
He hesitated. “I know that before I would have just sent you a text. But I wanted to come and tell you I’m sorry. I miss you, Fab.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He shifted awkwardly, then caught her eye. “I miss you a lot.”
And that was why she’d stayed with Jasper for so long. Because he could, at times, beneath the nonchalant and fun-loving exterior, be sincere and charming. But it wasn’t enough. “I’m seeing someone else,” she blurted.
“Is it serious?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Who is it?”
“No one you know. He lives in New York.”
“How are you going to have a relationship with someone in New York?”
“I don’t know, Jasper, but that’s my problem. You have to go. That was him on the phone.”
“Wouldn’t life be easier with me here in Sydney than with some guy half a world away?” He smiled in a way that had always softened her, once upon a time, but it no longer worked.
“Easier maybe,” she said. “But easy isn’t what I want. I’d rather have every complication in the world knowing I could see Will even just occasionally. He’s worth that.”
“And I’m not?”
Fabienne shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ve just organized dinner for you and me next week with Unity and some of the other board members.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I thought it’d be good for you to meet the board. Schmooze a little. Having board members on your side is a good thing for your career. And you’ve always accused me of only thinking about myself. I wanted to show you I could think about you too.”
“I can’t come.”
“You have to. It’s work.”
You have to. And in those three words, Fabienne saw the Jasper she’d fallen out of love with, the one who cared more about work and himself than anything else. “I have a phone call to make,” she said.
He remained on the sofa, eyes locked to hers, waiting, she knew, for her to back down. But she didn’t. Eventually he stood up. “Eight o’clock Thursday at Aria. Unity will expect you there.”
“Good-bye, Jasper.”
As soon as the door clicked shut, she called Will back. But he didn’t answer. Nor did he reply to the two texts she sent him. In the end, she was thankful for the work she’d brought home because it stopped her from checking her phone every minute of the long and sleepless night.
The next few days rattled Fabienne. She spent a lot of time in the archives at the museum, looking through piece after piece, refining her list of Australian designers for the exhibition. But she had a peculiar sense that all she was doing was assembling, mustering an army of clothes rather than fighting for something that mattered; spending her time amid the brilliance of others, moving pieces on a chessboard that had long ago reached stalemate. Some of the designers on her list she had studied with, had thought of, once upon a time, as her peers. Most of them she hadn’t spoken to for a very long time.
Every time she left the archive she would return to her desk and re-draw the exhibition concept, tightening the narrative, editing out all imperfections. And that was the only time she felt a glimmer of something more than pointlessness, where she smiled a little and fell out of the world for a couple of hours as she drew and drew and drew.
She texted Will and Melissa every day. She had one text from Will: Liss isn’t doing great and then nothing. Of course he wouldn’t even think of texting if Melissa really was ill. She prayed, even though she didn’t believe in prayers, that Melissa would recover. Any god would surely see that Melissa was worth saving.
Thursday evening came around with the ridiculous dinner which she couldn’t get out of because Jasper had invited her boss and it was therefore a work occasion at which her presence was required. She told him she’d meet him there, that she’d go straight from work and, on the way, her phone buzzed with another text from Will.
She’s out of hospital, it said. Settling her back in at home now.
I’m glad, Fabienne texted back. How are you?
I’ve been better, was the reply.
I love you, she returned.
Thanks.
Thanks? Then she shook her head at herself. His sister had just undergone a serious operation and here was Fabienne expecting him to text declarations of love. She thought about calling him but she imagined that if he had time to talk to her, he would have called himself. A person in Melissa’s weakened condition, undergoing such a surgery, would require constant care. All Fabienne could do was keep sending messages to both him and Melissa so they knew she was thinking of them.
At the restaurant, Unity and Jasper were laughing together at the bar. They’d be the perfect couple, she thought grimly as Jasper kissed her cheek.
“We’re all here now so we can sit down,” he said after he’d introduced her to the other board members.
She had the bad luck to be sitting next to Jasper and across from Unity so she turned her attention to the man on her other side and introduced herself.
“How does one become a fashion curator?” the man asked. “It’s not the usual sort of job is it?”
“I don’t suppose it is,” Fabienne said, used to the question. “I studied fashion design and art history at university. Curating combines both my interests.”
“Fab used to design a bit too,” Jasper added and Fabienne winced. It wasn’t something she cared to discuss among this group of people.
“You have to be very good to be a designer,” Unity said faux-sympathetically.
“Fab’s one of the best,” Jasper said and Fabienne shot him a look. He almost sounded supportive, which wasn’t a word she’d used to describe him for a very long time.
“There’s that saying: those who can’t do, teach,” Unity mused. “Maybe it should be: those who can’t create, curate.” She laughed at her joke, as did some of the others who’d overheard.
Fabienne stabbed her sashimi viciously. And what exactly is the saying about those who sit at the top of organizations doing nothing besides going out for dinner? She swallowed the words and, as soon as she could, she excused herself to the bathroom. Jasper was waiting for her on her return, stopping her before she could reach the table.
“You’re too good for them, Fab,” he said. “Way too good.”
“Why are you being so nice?” she asked suspiciously.
“Because I really do miss you. I’m just sorry it took you dumping me for me to work it out.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry it did too.”
He touched her arm. “I remember when you first moved in with me. You used to sew all the time. I’d go out cycling with the boys”—he held up his hands—“which I know I spent too much time doing, but I’d come back in the afternoon and you would’ve been drawing and sewing all day and you’d look so satisfied, as if you hadn’t missed me at all. As if all you really needed was a pencil and a sewing machine to be truly happy.”
“I remember that,” she said. “Those were the good years.”
“They were. And then you did it less and less—I know I used to drag you out most nights for dinners and corporate entertaining and maybe you didn’t have time and that’s why you stopped. But I look at you sitting there at the table and your face is so blank, so stiff. Nothing like your beautiful face when you’d spent a day making things.”
An avalanche of memory almost made her stumble, those summer days when Jasper would be gone cycling for hours and she’d have the whole apartment to herself and she would, as he’d said, just draw and sew and forget to eat and feel a contentment like nothing she’d felt for a long time since. She’d wear the clothes and people would remark on them and she’d shrug and say it was just a hobby. There was nothing to lose if it was just a hobby. But then she’d worked harder, in jobs like Charlotte’s, writing about others’ beautiful clothes, or commissioning display cases for exhibitions, or putting together funding proposals and she’d stopped designing, had let the daily grind slowly wear away the thing she most enjoyed.
She leaned in to kiss Jasper’s cheek. “You’re a good man. Thank you.”
“But Will is better?” he asked quietly, eyes fixed on her face.
“For me, he is.”
“Then be happy.” He smiled. “Go home. I’ll tell them you’re not feeling well. And I’ll flirt hard enough with Unity so she forgets about it and doesn’t hold it against you.”
Fabienne laughed. “Have fun.”
“I think I will.” He grinned at her and walked away.
The minute she stepped outside the restaurant, Fabienne felt as if she’d taken off a dress she no longer needed, as if her skin—her self that she’d hidden for so long—had finally been revealed.
She took out her phone and telephoned the administrator she’d put in charge of Stella Designs. “I’m coming to New York,” she said firmly. “I’m going to design the next collection.”