Visit to the Seamstress
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
The You Sew Good alterations shop was exactly where she told me it would be. Like she’d said, the predominant store in the strip mall was a furnace repair shop with pick-up trucks and vans out front that broke the building’s sight line from passing traffic. The furnace store had a broad sign lettered in a style common to auto repair shops – navy block letters on a white backdrop – and I saw F-U-R-N-A-C-E just before finding the street sign. I pulled blindly down the incline and thought it an appropriate place to find an alterations storefront even after the miscommunication that came earlier in the day.
I’d called a week before and set a time to see her so that she could mark the place for a hem in the new suit pants I’d bought. She told me she operated a location on Roadridge Road, a few blocks from my home, but only on certain days and after certain hours. We agreed to a time to meet within the timeframe she offered, but when the day arrived I had to break the appointment. She was pleasant enough when I called to cancel and we left it open-ended – I could stop by on one of the days I planned to take off from work the next week. She was in the Roanridge store after five on Mondays and Wednesdays, but otherwise I’d have to travel across town to catch her during the day.
The following Monday, I dialed her number to confirm that we could meet at her Roanridge location and she told me that she’d closed that location four years ago. I wondered if I was talking to the same person. I knew I was, but I double-checked the number anyway. And then I wondered if I should trust her with my pants. I decided that I was still fortunate to find a tailor nearby, even if it was about 10 miles further than I planned to go, but it was worth sparing myself the hunt, so I agreed to see her.
I walked up to the shop door and looked through a broad window labeled with a McCain/Palin bumper sticker anyway. I felt like I was looking in on a pornography set from the 1980s. The room was well carpeted, the walls were covered in wood panelling, one corner was blocked off by drawn curtains which I figured be the dressing room, and the lighting was false and yellow – like poor quality stage lighting, and I pushed the door open ready to perform if need be.
Mary had told me her name on the phone and I saw her first thing. She was prettier than I expected, talking to the mailman about her age – maybe five years older than me. They were discussing a man who’d just left in a Hummer. He told them that he bought his truck from a man who’d purchased it in a charity event. It had supposedly been driven by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The mailman says, “He said that Arnold Schwarzenneger drove it in The Sixth Sense, but Bruce Willis was in that, right? Schwarzenneger wasn’t in The Sixth Sense, was he?”
Undecided, they both turned to me.
“I don’t know,” I say, feeling their let down that the new person in the room can’t add anything to the conversation. In a few more exchanges, it was decided that the man must be a liar, though he dressed decently and drove a nice vehicle.
The mailman left and the door drew closed behind him.
“What can I do … are you the person who called earlier about pants?”
“Yeah, that was me.”
“Okay, you can try them on back there.”
She continues talking, her words flowed at a pace comparable to her sewing machine’s stitching.
“I made four appointments last Wednesday night and three people showed up,” she says.
“Is that right?”
The curtains were closed and her voice came again from the open room.
“Is there enough space in there for you?”
“Yeah, I have enough space.”
A stool was pushed in the corner and it was laden with clothes, some folded and some pant legs dangled down like aborted puppet limbs, all the life come out from them after the puppet draws his hand away. I put my shoes against the wall and tried to balance with stocking feet on thick carpet. In one corner, there was a thin wedge that the seamstress could peak through if she crossed the room at the right time and as I unbuckled my jeans and stepped out from them, I saw her flash past. Her voice seemed louder as she crossed the open spot.
“My boy is just beginning to walk and he falls into things,” she says.
“Is that right?” I asked flatly, not tracking with the conversation or her comment.
A boy came toddling out from a backroom. I could hear him breathing and taking hollow steps that wouln’tt make impressions on the carpet. I slipped on the slacks. My feet stepped on the too-long material that I’d come to have taken up, and then a muted, warm poop smell hit me. The smell was filtered through a fresh diaper, but there was no question that it was stale poop.
Mary, the seamstress, was behind the counter and sewing, a good 15 feet away from the boy, and likely had no idea he’d filled his pants during his nap. I decided to pretend not to notice.
I walked out and faced the counter, and she came from behind itm talking with a push pin shoved in her mouth.
“Are you ready?”
She folded down to her knees by me and asked me to turn around. I felt her take up the material and pin it in place.
“Okay,” she says.
“Is that it?”
“Yeah, I only have to do one leg.” I could feel the cold metal pinning through the cloth as the sexual tension dissapates.
“You can slip those off and give them to me. I’ll fill out the ticket for you.”
I went back and took them off, replaced them with blue jeans and in mid-pants change, her boy came toddling through the curtain, stumbled and fell backward against the stool. He laid there for a few seconds, stared at me, and cried.
“Is he okay?” she asked.
“He’s okay, I think.”
Mary’s boy had seen a stranger standing in the nude, and it was probably not his first time. I hope that he comes to realize his mother was doing a favor for all the men who saw her, but it had nothing to due with rampant nudity or anything physical. I doubt what he sees, though, is worse than some children’s upbrinings and the tricks that their mothers pull in the bedrooms next to them.
I took my pants to the counter and she filled out receipt for me, a pink draft that I stuffed into a pocket.
“Thank you,” I tell her, glad for the story.
In fairytales, the seamstress is sometimes the most unsightly person in the kingdom. Mary was more princess than seamstress, and yet the operation she ran carried an ere of obscenity that could only be found beneath a passive furnace store on a Monday afternoon. The most dangerous places in the world are the quaint and unexpected ones.
