Read Online Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll, and Mental Illness by Mary Forsberg Weiland, Larkin Warren - Free Book Online
Authors: Mary Forsberg Weiland, Larkin Warren
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mother didn’t have fashion magazines around our house (my brief glimpse at Cosmo in juvie was actually kind of horrifying), I had never been to a fashion show, and I wouldn’t have known a supermodel from a shrimp fork. But Barbizon’s ads talked about teaching poise and etiquette, about confidence, assurance, and self-improvement. These were powerful buzzwords to me—I was eager to learn anything that would help me be a success at something.
Barbizon had an office in San Diego (I learned later that they have offices all over the country—and more than two hundred locations today). I begged Mom to take me there so we could find out more. Finally she said okay.
Barbizon’s San Diego location was on the far end of the Fashion Valley Mall. JC Penney was at the other end. Fashion Valley wasn’t a frequent destination for me and my mother, so it took us about a half hour to get our bearings. But when we walked through thosedoors, everything changed. The woman in charge, Candice Westbrook, was petite, with a short blond bob and direct blue eyes. I was never good at guessing ages (when you’re a kid, the world is divided into three parts: other kids, grown-ups, and old people), but I think Candy might’ve been forty when we first met. She reached out to shake my hand (I don’t think, until that moment, any adult had ever shaken my hand), and at that moment, she became a friend for life to both my mother and me. There was no way we could’ve known that then—all we heard was “fifteen hundred dollars’ tuition” and “She’s going to need braces.” Well, that’s the end of that, I thought, and the look on my mother’s face said the same thing. “Wait a minute,” Candice said. “I think maybe I can help.”
She told us she saw something in me. Something in my bones or in my face. I had no idea what she was talking about. But I certainly saw something in her—a way of speaking: direct, straightforward, with something warmer and kinder just beneath it. I immediately trusted her, and so did Mom. A payment plan was negotiated—basically, she loaned us the tuition. Not long afterward, I had a mouthful of braces. Candy helped me get a part-time job at the San Diego Zoo, as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. The costume was big and hot: I felt as though I’d wrapped blankets around my body and head, then tried to breathe while the summer sun beat down and parents took pictures of me standing with their awestricken little kids. For fifteen dollars an hour (which went toward my braces) and a free lunch, it was a good job and a fine alternative to cleaning bathrooms.
I know there are families, and kids, who get the “I’m going to make you rich, I’m going to make you famous” pitch from modeling “schools” and “agencies” everywhere, in exchange for a big check anda signature on a dotted line. That is never what Candy, or Barbizon, said to me or my mother. We were not hustled. What we were offered was an opportunity—access to information and instruction, to be better, to go forward and out into the world in a way that didn’t seem otherwise available to me. “I want you to know that this is okay with me,” my mother told me. “As long as you’re willing to work for it. Nobody ever let me do the kind of things that I ever wanted to do. But now, you—if you’re willing to work for it, I want you to try.”
Every Saturday morning for six months, I took the bus to Barbizon for a four-hour class with six other girls. We worked on everything from applying makeup (not clown makeup, but look-a-little-better-than-you-normally-do makeup) to walking across a room without falling over our own feet. How to speak to one person, how to speak in front of a classroom of twenty-five. How to stand, stand still, and stand up straight. How to smooth your skirt under your butt when you sit, so that a cold folding chair doesn’t surprise you. Where your hands go when you’re talking to someone (hint: not in, on, or
Barbizon had an office in San Diego (I learned later that they have offices all over the country—and more than two hundred locations today). I begged Mom to take me there so we could find out more. Finally she said okay.
Barbizon’s San Diego location was on the far end of the Fashion Valley Mall. JC Penney was at the other end. Fashion Valley wasn’t a frequent destination for me and my mother, so it took us about a half hour to get our bearings. But when we walked through thosedoors, everything changed. The woman in charge, Candice Westbrook, was petite, with a short blond bob and direct blue eyes. I was never good at guessing ages (when you’re a kid, the world is divided into three parts: other kids, grown-ups, and old people), but I think Candy might’ve been forty when we first met. She reached out to shake my hand (I don’t think, until that moment, any adult had ever shaken my hand), and at that moment, she became a friend for life to both my mother and me. There was no way we could’ve known that then—all we heard was “fifteen hundred dollars’ tuition” and “She’s going to need braces.” Well, that’s the end of that, I thought, and the look on my mother’s face said the same thing. “Wait a minute,” Candice said. “I think maybe I can help.”
She told us she saw something in me. Something in my bones or in my face. I had no idea what she was talking about. But I certainly saw something in her—a way of speaking: direct, straightforward, with something warmer and kinder just beneath it. I immediately trusted her, and so did Mom. A payment plan was negotiated—basically, she loaned us the tuition. Not long afterward, I had a mouthful of braces. Candy helped me get a part-time job at the San Diego Zoo, as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. The costume was big and hot: I felt as though I’d wrapped blankets around my body and head, then tried to breathe while the summer sun beat down and parents took pictures of me standing with their awestricken little kids. For fifteen dollars an hour (which went toward my braces) and a free lunch, it was a good job and a fine alternative to cleaning bathrooms.
I know there are families, and kids, who get the “I’m going to make you rich, I’m going to make you famous” pitch from modeling “schools” and “agencies” everywhere, in exchange for a big check anda signature on a dotted line. That is never what Candy, or Barbizon, said to me or my mother. We were not hustled. What we were offered was an opportunity—access to information and instruction, to be better, to go forward and out into the world in a way that didn’t seem otherwise available to me. “I want you to know that this is okay with me,” my mother told me. “As long as you’re willing to work for it. Nobody ever let me do the kind of things that I ever wanted to do. But now, you—if you’re willing to work for it, I want you to try.”
Every Saturday morning for six months, I took the bus to Barbizon for a four-hour class with six other girls. We worked on everything from applying makeup (not clown makeup, but look-a-little-better-than-you-normally-do makeup) to walking across a room without falling over our own feet. How to speak to one person, how to speak in front of a classroom of twenty-five. How to stand, stand still, and stand up straight. How to smooth your skirt under your butt when you sit, so that a cold folding chair doesn’t surprise you. Where your hands go when you’re talking to someone (hint: not in, on, or
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