Chapter 8-2
940 Words
“Look at these. Maybe you can tell me what’s missing.” Perrin had enjoyed teaching Tamara through the quiet afternoon, she was an apt student. She quickly understood right and wrong sides of fabric, seam allowances, and pinning. Cutting on the bias had tripped her up, but she was getting a handle on it. She also successfully threaded the Featherweight several times as well as jamming it up once royally.
But the unfinished costume designs had lain there on the cutting table the whole time and beckoned silently. And she was no closer to solving them.
“There’s a lineage missing.” Perrin had set out blank pages of paper with the role titles on them: Princess (arranged marriage), Maid-servant Companion, Queen Mother (of Princess), and True Love (same lineage?). She’d set small snips of different fabric possibilities on each, but they all looked like crap.
Tamara stopped in her efforts to undo the latest snarl she’d made by catching a fold in the machine. Only way to learn stuff like that was do it wrong enough times.
She came over to lean on the table beside Perrin. Close, if not quite rubbing elbows. A good sign that she wasn’t too uncomfortable about Perrin and her dad.
For a long time, they looked at the blank pages in silence. Then Tamara turned to face the room. She started doing all of the things that Perrin had done. She’d walked slowly about the room, running her fingers over a red velvet, a blue chiffon, and some black corduroy. Occasionally Tamara’s hand hesitated and Perrin noted which fabrics they were, just in case she couldn’t come up with any other ideas.
The girl dug through the patches bag under the table for a bit, asked a couple questions about the crazy-patch embroidery Perrin had rammed back into the bag in frustration. Next Tamara would be walking through the whole store and find nothing to help her. And then Perrin would call Bill and admit that he’d been right all along, that she was a clothing designer and not a costume designer. Crap, but she really didn’t want to let him down.
Tamara was passing the rack where Perrin hung works in progress, and also some of her own clothes in case the weather changed, or she suddenly felt cold.
She stopped there, and Perrin twisted around to see what she took down.
The electric-blue knit sweater Perrin had worn to lunch last week.
“You getting cold, honey?”
Tamara took it off the hangar and brought it back to the table. She folded it up and set it on the Princess’ blank sheet. Stepping back, she tipped her head sideways to inspect it.
Perrin waited for it. Let her eyes drift over the texture and color. The knits were soft, following lines and curves, a sharp contrast to the rest of the highly structured costumes. They’d be able to accentuate or diminish based on how they were knit: ribbed, stockinette, cabled… And the blue. It was close. So close. Not electric-blue, but…
“Jewel tones,” she let it out as little more than a sigh. Then she squealed. That was it! That was so it! Knit jewel tones.
She swept Tamara into a hug and then leapt up to waltz about the room with her. Both giggling madly as they went. When they passed her computer, she tapped the play button. Fleetwood Mac Second Hand News came roaring out of the speakers. And she did a shimmy that Tamara did a good job of imitating. They’d circled the cutting table twice, even doing an impromptu two-woman conga to totally the wrong rhythm when Tamara shouted something to her.
Perrin leaned down to hear.
“You and Dad will be perfect for each other.”
“Why?” she shouted back.
“You both have the same crappy taste in music.” Then Tamara did a shimmy-dip-twirl that Perrin did her best to copy as they danced a full circle about the cutting table. Arriving back at the computer, she stopped Stevie Nicks in mid-throaty growl.
“Come on, kid,” Perrin grabbed Tamara’s hand. “We’re getting out of here.”
“But Dad thinks I’ll be here.”
“You own a cell phone?”
She held it up. “But only for emergencies.”
“Fine, as soon as we’re in the car, you text him. Say, ‘Perrin had clothing emergency. I’m with her.’ Make sure you put ‘Hugs’ or a smiley face or something at the end. He did a real hard thing letting you off the hook before. He deserves something nice.”
They dashed out the door, Raquel and Kirstin barely having time to wave. They piled into Perrin’s mini-van and pulled out onto the streets of Belltown.
Tamara dutifully punched out a text. “Is ‘love you’ too mushy?”
“For your dad, you can never be too mushy.”
She finished the text, with a somewhat evil grin.
“What?”
Tamara looked out the window, watching downtown Seattle unfold and carefully avoiding Perrin’s question, but obviously terribly pleased with herself. “Do you always drive so slow?”
Perrin looked down to check as they drove up the Mercer Street ramp and merged onto I-5 northbound, “I’m going the speed limit.”
“But like everyone is passing us. Even Dad doesn’t go the speed limit.”
“Well, first, I have someone else’s kid in the car, which is kind of freaking me out. Second, yeah, I usually go the speed limit in self defense. I know how easily I get distracted, so moving slower helps. Now give, or am I going to have to pull over and wrestle you to the ground for your cell phone.”
Tamara studied the slowly moving landscape and gave out a long sigh of exasperation at their lack of progress. But her smile hadn’t gone away.
“I just included a P.S.”
“Sewing machine privileges,” Perrin threatened.
“I only said, ‘Perrin wants her fourth kiss soon.’” At Perrin’s strangled sound the kid just laughed. “Think it got a reaction?”
Perrin just imagined Bill’s reaction and hoped he didn’t drop her then and there for telling such a thing to his teenage daughter. Then she imagined the look on his face and wished she could be there to see it.
- Writer
