The Amish Seamstress

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Wow, Zed.” I glanced up at him. “This is really something.”

  He tapped out a rhythm on the steering wheel with finger and thumb. “Keep reading. I’m not the only one the judges had an opinion on, you know.”

  “No?”

  He smiled but did not reply, so I returned my attention to the pages in my lap and continued. I finally spotted what he was talking about under the section labeled “Costuming and Set Design.” He’d been given a nine out of ten, and beside that the judge had scribbled out the words, Except for several of the fabric choices, the film exhibits amazing accuracy with both current and historical Amish clothing styles.

  “Nine is good?” I asked, wishing it had been a ten.

  “Are you kidding? That’s nearly a perfect score!”

  I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help feeling just a little bit proud of myself. “Okay,” I said with a smile. “Then nine it is. You can thank me later.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, but I only have Ms. Wabbim to thank.”

  We both laughed at the private joke. I had made most of the costumes for the film, but modesty had prevented me from allowing my name to appear in the credits. Zed insisted on honoring my efforts somehow, so in the end, he had listed the film’s costumer as “Ms. Wabbim”—a code he’d come up with for “My Secret Weapon and Best Buddy Izzy Mueller.”

  Thinking of that now, I faltered a bit, and I had to cover by clearing my throat and looking out the passenger window. His best buddy. Me. Only now I was in love with him.

  What was I going to do?

  Taking a deep breath, I pushed such thoughts from my mind and focused on the pages in my lap.

  “There’s only one problem,” he said. “What are we going to do someday when one of our movies wins an Academy Award for best costume design, and we have to admit there is no Ms. Wabbim?”

  I smiled, secretly thrilled to hear how he he’d so easily tossed out a “someday” for us, not to mention that he’d called it “our movies” rather than just his. Did he really see it that way? Did he plan on bringing me in on his creative projects from now on? Did he hope we would always be as close as we were now—or possibly even closer?

  “I guess we’ll have to hire a stand-in to accept the award for you,” he said, answering his own question.

  “So you think this little ol’ Amish girl has a future as a costumer for the Hollywood elite?”

  “You bet. Stick with me, kid, and I’ll take you places.”

  I laughed. “Stick with me, and you’ll end up with the slowest seamstress in history.”

  “You pulled it off for this film.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t easy. I’m so slow at handwork. Mamm says that’s why I could never make a living with my sewing, because I daydream too much.”

  Zed shook his head. “She’s wrong. You are kind of slow, but that’s because you’re a perfectionist. And that’s a good thing, Iz. For my purposes, at least.”

  I shrugged, not so sure he was right. Either way, it was why I had enrolled in the caregiving course, so I could stop having to try so hard to make money with my fabric goods and instead earn a more consistent income as a caregiver for the elderly. I truly enjoyed spending time with older folks, and the fact that sometimes I was able to do embroidery and other handwork when just sitting and talking with them made the job even better, as it allowed me to kill two birds with one stone.

  At one point, I had thought I would teach prior to marriage, but all it took to rid me of that notion was the week I’d spent last year helping out my sister Becky when her co-teacher was home sick. I was only there to assist, but it hadn’t taken long for me to see that teaching would not be the right job for me. Between my tendency to daydream and my inability to focus, I found the whole experience overwhelming and exhausting. Sitting quietly with my handwork, chatting with old folks, was much more my style.

  “I mean it, Iz,” he said, his expression serious. “You are so gifted. And you have no idea how much I appreciate your help with the film.”

  “I do know, Zed. You’ve only said it about a billion times.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, but here’s what I haven’t said enough: It’s not just that you pitched in to help, it’s that you brought such an amazing skill set into the mix with you. In fact, I think you’re about the most talented person I know.”

  “Besides yourself, you mean?” I teased, heat rising in my face.

  “Goes without saying,” he replied, not missing a beat.

  We shared a grin, but I knew my skin had to be redder than his car. I wasn’t used to compliments, not even from him.

  And I totally didn’t know how to handle the sudden pounding of my heart when he looked my way.

  Fortunately, we were nearing our destination, so his attention was on his driving and figuring out the safest place to pull over onto the side of the road.

  “Anyway, these score sheets really are great. Thanks for sharing them with me.” I rolled them up and returned them to the cup holder.

  As he pulled to a stop and turned off the car, I gazed out at the beautiful covered bridge in front of us and smiled. Even if we were still just friends at this point, I couldn’t imagine there being anyone on earth I would rather go location shopping with than him.

  The next morning the entire lecture session of my caregiving training was lost on me. I couldn’t stop thinking about Zed. In fact, since he’d brought me home last night, I hadn’t been able to get him out of my mind. Now I was sitting in the back row of the conference room with nine other students, none of whom were Plain, and trying to pretend I was actually listening to our teacher. At least we only had one week of training left and then our exam. After that I would be an official, certified caregiver and wouldn’t have to endure any more long, boring lectures when my mind was so utterly distracted.

  “Izzy?”

  My thoughts were interrupted by the instructor, Patricia, who had obviously just asked me a question. Now she was just waiting for my answer, staring at me from the front of the room, her reading glasses pushed on top of her head, her gray hair pulled away from her face.

  “Yes?” I sat up a little straighter.

  “I asked why it’s important to promote independence in your elderly patients. Just give us one reason out of many.”

  I took a deep breath. I’d read about this the night before as I did my homework—although I’d been obsessing about Zed then too. I took a guess. “To help keep the patient’s frustration level as low as possible?”

  Patricia pursed her lips together and then said, “Good,” as if surprised I was able to come up with an answer. Then she continued on with the lecture. “The more helpless the patient feels, the more likely they are to react, including aggressively. It’s in everyone’s best interest to encourage independence…”

  I took notes in my spiral notebook as she spoke, trying my best to keep my focus on the lecture, but soon I was doodling, first drawing lines, then circles, and then a heart and wondering if or when I should tell Zed how I felt about him, that I was in love with him.

  I added a face, arms, and legs to the heart and then drew on an eighteenth-century Plain dress before adding a cabin as a backdrop. I couldn’t get over how well he had done on his first film. He certainly had a lot of talent and drive. I was so proud of him, but I couldn’t help but envy him a bit as well, even though I knew it was wrong. It wasn’t the filmmaking I envied, nor even that he was able to go college and I wasn’t. What I wanted was to be as sure about my path in life as he was—and had always been—about his.

  Since the day we met, he had known what he wanted to do, and he’d been willing to learn and grow in whatever ways it would take to make that happen. I, conversely, had never been that sure about anything, except maybe my friendship with him. And my love for my grandmother, who died when I was little. Otherwise, my entire life had been without purpose or direction.

  A loud bang from the front of the room startled me. The instructor had dropp
ed a large, hardcover book. She bent down to pick it up, and as she returned to a standing position, she locked eyes with me. For a moment I wondered if she’d dropped the book on purpose.

  I returned my pencil to where I’d stopped taking notes.

  She continued talking. “The patient’s safety is always of the highest concern and you must closely supervise…”

  Maybe I wasn’t in love with Zed. Maybe I only felt as if I was because he’d be leaving for college the next day and because, above all, I was going to miss him terribly. I blinked back a tear and stared at my open notebook, realizing I’d stopped listening again.

  “And that is, of course, one of the biggest benefits of working with the elderly,” Patricia said, though I’d missed the first part of her thought and hadn’t a clue what she meant.

  What I liked most about working with the elderly was hearing their stories. Just yesterday morning I had been taking care of Phyllis, my favorite patient here at the nursing facility, and listening to her talk about being a girl in New York City and going with her grandmother to something called the Russian Tea Room. Phyllis was in her late seventies now but still quite capable, and as we talked I suggested she stand at the mirror and brush her own hair while I cleaned her dentures. So, ya, I guess I did promote independence, even if I wasn’t a firm sort of person by nature.

  The instructor clicked the remote to her computer and a slide of a patient chart flashed on the screen. “When you’re doing home health care, you’ll need to assess your client.” She clicked the remote a second time. “Start with a questionnaire for the patient and family members.”

  I wrote down questionnaire.

  “Encourage them to be as honest as possible.”

  As honest as possible. I swallowed, trying to rid myself of the lump that had just formed. Even if I did love Zed—and I couldn’t think what else this overwhelming feeling was—I couldn’t be honest with him. It would ruin our friendship. It would end our friendship. I blinked away another tear.

  “Izzy, do you have a question?”

  Startled, I quickly shook my head.

  Thankfully someone else did, although I didn’t hear exactly what it was because I was placing my pencil back on my paper. Next to questionnaire, I wrote, encourage honest answers.

  I’d never been kissed by anyone. Would kissing Zed be like kissing a buddy? Realizing I’d just made a face, I stopped immediately and quickly looked at the instructor. She hadn’t noticed.

  No, kissing Zed would not be like kissing an old friend, not the way I felt three days ago. Not the way I’d felt last night. Not the way, if I was honest with myself, I was feeling right now.

  I’d never even wanted someone to kiss me.

  Until now.

  A noise in the hall distracted me for a moment, but then I focused on Patricia again.

  She said, “When you’re developing short term goals…” I wrote that down but obviously I’d missed something.

  I looked up at the screen. There was a new slide with the title Goal Setting.

  The instructor continued. “Encourage the patient to pursue a hobby—either an old one or a new one. For example, they may no longer be able to travel, but perhaps they can write about their experiences or tell someone who can write them down. Telling stories often becomes therapeutic for patients…”

  I wrote that down too. Which brought me back to thinking about Zed. That’s what he did. He told stories. On film. And he had such a gift for it too.

  Then there was his cute smile. His kind heart. The way he brushed the blond bangs from his eyes when he was feeling self-conscious.

  No, if he ever kissed me, it wouldn’t feel like a buddy’s kiss at all.

  Somehow I made it through the rest of the lecture without Patricia calling on me again or challenging my attentiveness. I tried to stay focused, but it was so hard with Zed competing for my thoughts.

  As she wound things down up front, it struck me that it was a good thing I’d always been a voracious reader, because otherwise there was a chance I could have ended up being somewhat ignorant and uninformed. I’d never been able to concentrate in classrooms and hadn’t picked up much knowledge that way, even as a child. But perhaps, over the years, those gaps had been filled by my addiction to books of all kinds—history, fiction, biographies, and more. And Zed was so smart that I was often expanding my repertoire of reading just to keep up with him.

  After the class ended, I followed the other students out of the conference room, down the hall, and through the breezeway to the skilled nursing facility where we did our clinical training. We’d already learned the basics—feeding, dressing, and all the other stuff my fellow students seemed to balk at but I didn’t mind.

  In the first few weeks, we’d been working alongside certified assistants, but now, as the course neared the end, we were on our own as much as possible in caring for the patients.

  I went to Phyllis’s room first but didn’t find her there. She was probably down at the craft room. She had some shoulder problems but was still able to design, cut, and paste—which she loved to do. I’d seen some of the handmade cards she’d constructed, and they were clever. Phyllis had worked as an attorney, and I couldn’t imagine she had much time for card making back then, but she seemed to enjoy it now.

  She had lived in Manhattan much of her life, and she had stylish gray hair and dressed in classy sports suits. Her only child, a son, lived near Lancaster, and she’d told me that was how she’d come to the area ten years before.

  I stopped at the end of the bed of Phyllis’s roommate, Marguerite, who had just had her eighty-ninth birthday. She was also a dear, but she could no longer communicate, poor thing. According to Phyllis, Marguerite had grown up in France but had married a U.S. soldier at the end of World War II and moved here to the States with him. Though she’d spoken English almost exclusively after that, nowadays, whenever she said something, it was in French, and usually just a syllable or two. How I longed to hear her stories! I could only imagine what she would tell me if she could.

  Her children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren visited her regularly, all calling her Mimi. She smiled and seemed to remember them, although it was hard to tell for sure.

  Phyllis had taken Mimi under her wing and would ring for help anytime she thought the older woman needed anything, often in the middle of the night, I was told.

  After I greeted Mimi, who was immobile, I turned her to check for bedsores. Thankfully, there were none. Next I helped the patients of mine who ate lunch in the dining hall get there, wheeling some and walking alongside others. Phyllis hadn’t come out of the craft room yet, but I knew the staff person in charge of that area would wheel her to the dining room when she was ready.

  After I’d settled my mobile patients, I collected Mimi’s tray from the kitchen and returned to her room to feed her. Getting enough nutrition down her was a challenge. Today she had beef-and-barely soup, creamed spinach, and custard. I raised her bed to a sitting position and began. I knew it took me longer to feed Mimi than it took the other caregivers. They seemed to be able to shovel in the food quickly, wipe her mouth, and then give her another spoonful.

  I couldn’t do that. For one thing, Mimi seemed fascinated by me. Perhaps it was my kapp or my Plain dress, but she couldn’t take her eyes off me and always chewed and swallowed more slowly for me than the others. Because she couldn’t tell me her stories, I’d been telling her mine—or, more accurately, the stories my grandmother had passed down to me about her childhood during the depression and as a teenager during World War II. I wanted Mimi to be able to compare her experiences with someone in the U.S., a Plain someone and conscientious objector at that.

  After I finished feeding her, I had two more patients who were also bedridden. Of course, I took too long with them as well, and by the time I finished, it was nearly time for my break. Before I took it, I stopped by Phyllis’s room again, hoping to tell her hello, but she still wasn’t there.

  Mimi w
as sound asleep, her feet sticking out of her covers, so I pulled the blanket down over them as I thought about Phyllis. I decided her son must have taken her out for lunch. I knew how much she loved those dates with him.

  For the next hour, even though I should have gone to the break room to eat my own lunch, I hurried from patient to patient, seeing to all of their needs. To be honest, my mind continued to fall on Zed, but the urgency of finding another blanket, fluffing a pillow, or changing a spilled-upon shirt pulled me back to the present much faster than my instructor’s lecture had. All in all, I felt pleased with how little I was thinking about him as the day progressed.

  When I returned to Phyllis and Mimi’s room again, Phyllis still hadn’t appeared but Mimi was awake. I raised her bed and opened the curtain to the sunshine out in the courtyard. She smiled sweetly.

  On my way out of the room, I nearly collided in the hall with the shift supervisor. After apologizing, I said, “I hope Phyllis gets back before I leave.”

  The supervisor’s face froze.

  Alarmed, I asked, “What is it?” I feared my favorite patient had been transferred to another facility. Although that didn’t make sense. Her things were still in the room.

  “No one told you?” the woman stammered, holding a clipboard to her chest.

  I shook my head, studying her expression as the realization slowly dawned. Phyllis hadn’t been transferred.

  She had died.

  I tried to take a breath but couldn’t. I gasped, an odd groan coming from my throat. Perhaps I looked as if I might faint, because the supervisor grasped my elbow to steady me. Another noise erupted from me, this one sounding like a cow lost in the woods.

  From where we stood, I could see into Phyllis’s room, to the empty but perfectly made bed. I forced my eyes toward sweet Mimi instead. She smiled and gave me a little wave, her faded eyes lighting up as best they could.