Miss Scarlet's School of Patternless Sewing (15 page)

Mary Theresa’s sudden shift surprised Scarlet, but not enough to distract her from the day’s mission. Still buzzing from her high-octane mocha, Scarlet finished wrapping Mary Theresa and the rest of her students. The next step would be slicing the back of the duct tape that was affixed to their bodies. But when she saw Marco poke his head in to see how things were going, a brilliant idea popped into her brain.

“Marco, take a picture of us, OK? I’ll stand in the middle and hold up my nana’s vintage shears.” She reached into her back pocket. “Double darn! I think I left my iPhone at work yesterday. Can we use yours?”

“You read my mind,” he said, pulling out his phone from his shirt pocket, which was well intact, Scarlet noticed.

All the women waddled their way to the center of the room, then they slowly zombie-walked their way over by the window upon Marco’s suggestion. Scarlet was standing front and center when Marco decided she would look even better holding a roll of tape too, and impersonating a champion gladiator crafter.

“Scarlet, catch!” Nadine tossed a roll of duct tape to Scarlet.

“Noooo!” Scarlet shrieked, alarmed that it might hit one of the women—not to mention the six-inch blades she held in one hand. She almost toppled over just to catch the flying tape. She held out her arm and the roll slid down it like a ring toss at the state fair.

What she didn’t notice was that she had caused Olivia to fall backward, which made Stephanie try to catch her—but she lost her balance and reached for Jennifer’s arm, only managing to grab her hat instead. Jennifer then tried to move away from the commotion, but belly collided with Mary Theresa. All of them teetered back and forth as the Saturday foot traffic stopped on the sidewalk and crowded outside the window to gawk.

To Scarlet, the whole episode happened in slow motion. She scurried around, not knowing whom to catch first. Age before beauty, she thought, and she lunged for Rosa, but missed—all while witnessing the flapping arms, the shocked faces and squeals. One by one the ladies tipped to the floor in one brightly colored duct-tape massacre.

“Scarlet!”

“Oh, please no…,” Scarlet mumbled. Standing in the middle of five fallen females bound in colored duct tape, and herself holding scissors in one hand over her head and a roll of duct tape in the other, Scarlet slowly pivoted to face… her mother.

“Hey, Mom! Oh. Carly… you’re here too. Why?” Scarlet asked in a shaky voice.

Carly handed Scarlet her iPhone. “You left this at work yesterday. I was in the area, so I thought I’d be nice and drop it off. This is what you wanted to do at my design house? These poor women look like they’ve been held hostage by a bowl of Skittles.”

“Mija, I came to bring you lunch,” her mom, Jeane, said. “I
felt bad that we went out to eat for Charles’s birthday and forgot to tell you. I brought you leftovers.”

“You went out for Charles’s birthday and didn’t invite me?” Scarlet whined.

“You always say you can’t go because you’re too busy working, so we stopped asking,” Jeane fired back. “Oh dear God. Look at this mess. This is why you gave up Cruz and a decent job? To play? Oh, Scarlet, when are you going to get serious with your life?”

A
fter the duct-tape drama, long after Olivia, Stephanie, and Jennifer had finished constructing their dress forms and left, Rosa took her time and wandered about the room to pick up the last of the scraps. Mary Theresa hadn’t yet finished but stuck around to see the project through to the end. Scarlet showed her how to secure her brand-new customized dress form to the top of the music stand. They both sighed with accomplishment, and set it next to the other forms along the wall.

The three women stood back and surveyed the array of stuffed torsos. Red, yellow, green, black, silver, hot pink, and one with multicolored swatches all over—of course belonging to Olivia. Some of the body shapes were sleek and lean, while others were lumpy and thick. All of them were breathtaking to Scarlet. She snapped pictures from different artful angles.

“This was a wonderful idea, Scarlet. I think Daisy would have been mighty impressed with this idea. They look like they could be in a magazine. They are like giant torso-shaped lollipops,” Rosa joked. “I’m happy you made one too. Now we have a complete set.”

Mary Theresa pulled the elastic band off her head and let her long dark hair fall to her shoulders. She massaged her scalp,
stretched out her arms, and yawned so long she let out a tiny squeal.

Mary Theresa sighed as Nadine entered and handed out burritos Marco had ordered for them. “Marco ordered these from La Perla for you.” “I cannot believe this day is already over,” Mary Thearsa said. “I completely forgot about my task list. I’ve never done that before. I got lost in the project, I guess. Stuffing all that batting made my mind wander.” She set down the food on the table and slid her hands down the sides of her taped masterpiece. “It’s nice. I can’t believe this is me. I pictured myself different.”

“How’s that?” Scarlet said, pulling up chairs for them to sit on.

Mary Theresa peeked around her dress form, raised a shoulder, and skimmed her chin. “It’s embarrassing. I can’t say it out loud,” she answered with half a smile.

“An alarm went off in your pants today. I think you left embarrassed behind in the dust,” Scarlet joked as she peeled back the wrapper from her food and took a bite.

Rosa, visually exhausted, limped to the chair and sat. She shook her finger at Mary Theresa. “Hey now, if anyone should be embarrassed it’s me. I’m almost eighty; look at mine! My butt is flatter than a sketchbook, my waist is thicker than a tree trunk, and mis melones are bosom buddies with my navel. But everything is in working order, so I refuse to complain. I’m making it work—and for the record, I coined that phrase long before Tim Gunn ever did!”

Mary Theresa stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her duct-taped statue to compare the faux body to her fleshy one. “You’re right… OK well… I’ve always been self-conscious about my chest. I’m so flat. If it weren’t for having kids, I’d swear I had the body of a little boy. But now that I examine my silhouette on the wall, and this contraption I constructed for the past five
hours, my chest isn’t that horrible. I mean, I’m no pinup model like our teacher over there…” Mary Theresa wagged her thumb in Scarlet’s direction.

Scarlet rolled her eyes and slouched back in the creaky metal chair. “Oh, stop! It’s the clothes. I’m a sucker for the golden days when women wore bullet bras, girdles, and showed off their gams with class. Hey, I made this top and jeans—guess what movie it’s from!”

“Marilyn Monroe in
The Misfits
. You told us three times this morning,” Mary Theresa said.

“Oh, sorry,” Scarlet said.

“Not that it isn’t unique.”

“Thanks,” Scarlet said as she picked at the pink polish on her thumbnail.

“That didn’t come out right…,” Mary Theresa said. Scarlet’s voice wasn’t quite as chipper as before, and she thought she might have hurt the girl’s feelings. “Your outfit is impressive. I mean, more than impressive. It’s quite darling. You’re very skilled at your craft, Scarlet.”

“I agree,” said Rosa. “And your mother was wrong to speak to you that way in front of all of us. Your boss, too. I feel guilty that I didn’t vouch up for you.”

“Aw, don’t,” Scarlet said. You barely know me. I’m used to my mom and Carly. One day I know my mom will be bragging about all the celebrities wearing my clothes, and Carly will boast about discovering me. I visualize the moment.”

Mary Theresa sat on the edge of the folding chair and reached for her burrito. “I’m sure your mother didn’t mean it. People often say, or even do, cruel things to loved ones and regret it later.” She looked up at Scarlet. “I bet if you gave her the chance to apologize, she would.”

“My mother won’t relax until I’m spoken for, and earning
six figures,” Scarlet said with a rough laugh. “Everything I do is a reflection on her. If I fail, she fails. And Carly? I think the woman has a catastrophe-seeking radar to locate me every time something goes wrong. I know what I want to do in my life, and I don’t want to waste a minute trying to change what they think of me. I use their doubts to fuel my ambition. All I can do is prove them wrong. If that means going it alone, all the better.”

“You’re right,” Rosa said. “I’ve always had family try to tell me what to do. Didn’t listen to any of them, and they’ve deemed me nuts. Go with your gut and push through the pain to reach your goal. But there is one fact I learned, ladies. If they truly love you, they’ll come around when you need them the most, so don’t give up completely.”

Mary Theresa couldn’t comprehend their rationale. “But why make it so difficult? Every day is a struggle already. Why not go with what is proven to work to lessen the blow? Do the best you can with the tools presented and accept that there is no such thing as perfection.”

Scarlet got up and knelt at Mary Theresa’s side. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Some people grin and bear it; others smile and do it’? Perfection is a state of mind, darling. Think back to the last time you felt truly happy. What were you doing? That should be your definition of perfection. Mine is when I’m sewing. And when someone responds to something I said, made, or shared. It makes me feel alive.”

Rosa closed her eyes and smiled from ear to ear, recalling a multitude of those “perfection” moments. Like the time she swam between two dolphins in Hawaii or when she helped a team of women in Mexico open their own weaving businesses. Visiting a beach in Thailand just long enough to make love on a bed of diamond-colored sand. Yes, Rosa had had more than her fair share of perfection. And she hoped to pay it forward.

“Today was a perfection moment for me,” Rosa said to her new friends.

“Oh really?” Mary Theresa said, slightly baffled. “Aside from the birth of my children, I don’t know if I’ve ever had one.” She dropped her head in her hands. “But after listening to you two, I really want to find out.”

W
e want cereal! We want cereal! We want cereal!”

So much for the eleven steps to preventing a headache. These days Mary Theresa knew of only one: three extra-strength Tylenol Gelcaps. Not that they’d work fast enough to take away the brain pain caused by the children pounding their spoons and chanting for their favorite sugar-coated breakfast cereal. Huddled over the beige granite countertops, the newly single stay-at-home mom ripped open two packets of Quaker Instant Organic Oatmeal, dumped the powder into plastic
Toy Story
bowls, and added hot tap water. Nearly two weeks had passed since Scarlet’s lecture at sewing class, and Mary Theresa had yet to find a perfection moment.

She stirred the mixtures until creamy and added a mini-box of raisins to each dish. “There,” she said aloud. “That ought to be sweet enough, and it is all natural.”

Almost three weeks had passed since Hadley left, and she had yet to build a successful bridge between her part-time job and full-time motherhood. Each morning she awoke at six a.m. to a jumbled pile of duties for the day. She mapped plans on Excel spreadsheets, but in real life, her theories didn’t translate. The kids were so darned unpredictable. She’d have better luck training wild horses to sip from teacups.

Her heart ached for Rocky and Lucy because she knew how much they missed their father, and no amount of hugs could reassure them that he would return soon. Hadley tried to help by videoconferencing with them every night. He read them stories, asked about the details of their day, and blew kisses through the screen.