28
Dear Theodora,
This weekend I had mozzarella sticks, also known as the fried pickle’s slightly drunker cousin. My best friend’s girlfriend got them for me as a pity gift at the bar. Fun fact: it’s actually impossible to eat mozzarella sticks without burning 75 percent of the roof of your mouth. But that doesn’t stop me from eating them at every opportunity.
Theodora, I know we don’t really know each other, but I hope I’m not overstepping any boundaries by saying that you’re entirely too hard on yourself. Whatever bold choice you didn’t make—I bet it’s okay. In fact, I know it’s okay. I have a belief that, as long as you keep trying and pushing and working toward your goal, something will happen, even if it doesn’t happen the exact way you thought it would.
For example, I was dead set on majoring in puppetry in college (yes, that’s a thing you can major in, and as you might guess, I had to explain that constantly to curious adults who asked what I wanted to go to college for). But I ended up staying here in Columbus when my little sister was born, and that turned out better than I ever could have imagined. I figured out that kids are awesome and hilarious and so, so weird, and that shaped my career in ways that might not have happened if I’d gone away to school like I planned.
So I guess what I’m saying is: it’s okay. Whatever you did or didn’t do, it’s okay, and you’ll figure it out, because you’re Theodora (fill in your last name here, please), damn it, and you get things done!
There. Was that enough of a pep talk for you?
And no disrespect to your teacher, but they sucked. You’re artistic because everyone’s artistic. You have to let yourself express it, and it won’t be long until you’re sewing . . . Well, I don’t actually know what you make in an intro-to-sewing class.
Yours till the mozzarella stick cools,
Everett
PS: You didn’t think I was going to forget about that portrait of Shaq, did you? I need proof.
Teddy read Everett’s email approximately fifteen times before she and Eleanor left for their sewing class. His words felt like the best kind of hug. Of course she and Everett didn’t really know each other, but he believed in her. He knew she could do difficult things, or even sometimes fail to do difficult things, but that she’d get it right next time. Sure, he didn’t know that the situation in which she chickened out was actually that email, that she hadn’t told him they’d met at the karaoke bar. But no matter. Everett St. James believed in her.
“I’m Theodora Phillips, damn it, and I get things done!” she said out loud to her empty room.
“Love the enthusiasm!” called Eleanor from the hallway. Teddy always forgot how thin these walls were (the Viking’s sleepover last night was nearly silent, aside from some loud bumps and shushes from Kirsten).
“You ready?” Eleanor asked, poking her head in.
Teddy shut her laptop. “You bet.”
IT WASN’T THAT Teddy expected a sewing class to be an adversarial experience, but she came in with her guard up. Maybe this would be like that elementary school art class. Maybe her teacher would hold up her pillowcase as an example of “what you shouldn’t do,” much like her unfortunately lumpy Shaq portrait. Presumably her pillow wouldn’t be a poor representation of an NBA star, but she still worried her stitches would be bad enough to deserve public mockery.
There were only a few other people in the class, and each of them was set up in front of a gleaming white sewing machine. The teacher explained that a pillowcase was a great project for absolute beginners, since it was basically sewing a rectangle, but it would teach them the skills they’d need to sew anything else.
Their first task was picking out the fabric, so Teddy roamed the warm, well-lit sewing space, running her hand across the bolts. There were so many colors and patterns that she felt overwhelmed, and she almost asked Eleanor what she was going to pick. She craned her neck to spot Eleanor on the other side of the store, humming to herself as she picked up some yellow-and-green printed fabric and held it up.
But no. Teddy could do this on her own. She’d sung karaoke, she’d befriended Carlos, and she was fully capable of choosing her own fabric.
“This isn’t a life-or-death decision,” she muttered to herself.
“It’s really not.”
She looked up to see her teacher standing beside her. She smiled gently. “If you don’t like what you make, you can always make another one.”
Teddy nodded. “Very good point.” She bent down and picked up an orange-and-red floral print.
“Beautiful choice,” the teacher said, then called over her shoulder as she walked away, “Red is definitely your color.”
Teddy looked down at what she was wearing—a red jumper over a white collared blouse. She and Eleanor had found it while vintage shopping at Flower Child, and she liked to think about the jumper’s previous life. Maybe it had belonged to some other person who was starting over, someone who was finally discovering who they really were.
After spending so many years in gray cardigans with Richard, Teddy could hardly believe that she’d become someone who had a color, and that color was red. She was still getting used to people seeing her, to trying to be seen, but she was discovering that she liked it.
Teddy brought her fabric back to her machine and tried her best to follow along with the teacher’s clear instructions. Eleanor was, of course, humming right along—her pillowcase looked beautiful. Showroom perfect, really. If there were ever a pillowcase art show at the Columbus Museum of Art, Eleanor’s would be on display. Teddy’s, meanwhile . . . well, her seams were crooked. She still wasn’t sure about the fabric. It seemed . . . wrong, somehow.
Teddy swallowed the ball of anxiety in her throat as the teacher walked slowly around the room, inspecting each person’s work and pointing out areas they might want to focus on. Teddy’s breath quickened as her teacher approached, and although it wasn’t really possible to use a sewing machine frantically, she felt as if her stitches had a slightly manic edge to them.
The teacher bent down to say something to Eleanor, and Teddy could feel herself sweating. Here it came. She was next, and this was the moment of truth.
Teddy sat motionless as the teacher finished talking to Eleanor and moved on to Teddy’s station.
She peered over Teddy’s shoulder as Teddy held her breath.
“Looks great!” she said.
“Wait,” Teddy said as the teacher walked away. “That’s it?”
She stopped and turned around.
“You mean you’re not going to hold up my pillowcase and tell the class that it’s an example of what not to do?” Teddy asked.
The teacher paused and pursed her lips. “No?”
“Oh.” Teddy turned back to her pillowcase, suddenly feeling lighter than she had all evening. She laughed. “Okay!”
She spent the rest of the class lost in the whirr of the machine.
THE CLASS WENT so well that Teddy and Eleanor ended up splitting the cost of a sewing machine and bringing one home. They named him Scott.
The next evening, with Everett’s latest email in mind, Teddy visited her mom. She wanted to find the lumpy portrait of Shaq, which she knew was somewhere at her mother’s house, because her mother never got rid of anything from Teddy’s and Sophia’s childhood. Somewhere in the basement, there was definitely a creepy jar full of their baby teeth. Teddy made a note to tell Kirsten about it; it would probably be great for some of her more experimental work, or at the very least for Halloween decorations.
Teddy’s old bedroom had been completely redecorated and was now a guest room with tan walls and Target-sourced artwork on the walls. Teddy supposed this was probably more soothing to her mom’s guests than the giant Titanic poster she’d hung above her bed in elementary school so she could sleep under the watchful gaze of Leo and Kate.
The closet, however, was where most of Teddy’s things lived. Boxes of old grade cards, stories she’d scribbled when she didn’t know how to spell much of anything, reports she’d written on elephants. She knew if she dug around enough, she’d find Shaq in all his slightly misshapen glory.
“What are you looking for, again?” her mother asked from the bedroom doorway, where she leaned against the frame with her arms crossed.
“Just . . . an old picture I made when I was a kid,” Teddy said from the closet. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but I need to see it.”
“Ooooh-kay,” her mom said in a singsong voice. “So how are things going?”
“Good,” Teddy said, riffling through a box of poetry from fourth grade. Wow, she’d written a lot of haiku about pandas.
“What’s happening on the job front?” Her mom’s voice carried into the closet, slightly muffled.
Teddy paused, elbow deep in a bin full of papers. “Uh . . . not much,” she said, glancing at an eighth-grade report card. Teddy is clever and extraordinarily bright, but reluctant to speak up in class. Some things never changed, apparently.
“Did you check out the links I sent you?” her mom asked eagerly. “You can take classes online or at night, so you don’t have to quit your job to get an MBA.”
“Mmm,” Teddy said noncommittally.
“There’s always law school like Sophia.”
Teddy frowned.
Her mother’s voice grew wistful. “I’m so glad she’s a lawyer. That was my dream job when you two were little. I wanted to be Ally McBeal, wearing those tiny skirts, surrounded by drama.”
“Yes!” Teddy hissed.
“So you do want to be a lawyer?”
Teddy emerged from the closet, a drawing in hand. “I found it! This is the portrait I made of Shaquille O’Neal!”
Her mom tilted her head, studying it. “Is that who that is? Huh. I figured that was one of your teachers.”
Teddy held the picture protectively to her chest. “He’s wearing a jersey, Mom. I know it doesn’t look much like Shaq—”
“It sure doesn’t.”
“But,” Teddy continued with an edge to her voice, “I wanted to show it to a friend.”
Her mom shrugged. “Okay. I made you a sandwich. You want some lemonade?”
Teddy smiled. “Sure, Mom.”
“You know,” her mom said, looking around, “if you get tired of living with your friends, you can always move back here. We can fix up your room, and don’t make that face.”
Teddy realized she was wrinkling her nose. “No, sorry. I don’t mean—”
Her mom rolled her eyes. “Come eat your sandwich and I’ll show you the website for the online college program I think you’ll like.”
As Teddy followed her mother downstairs, she couldn’t help but smile. Yes, her mom was kind of a control freak who didn’t seem to understand that Teddy had her own life, but she did everything out of love and an attempt to make Teddy happy. It might have been a misguided and overblown attempt, but it was an attempt all the same. But this time, Teddy knew she couldn’t simply go along with someone else’s plan—she had to figure things out herself.
But a sandwich? Well, she could at least let her mother do that much for her.