Transcript for the Piece Audio version of What Would Scarlet Do?

I come across my prom dress once a year, when I’m cleaning out my closet. It is made of pink eyelet and has white ruffles and a huge skirt. It is a dress befitting Scarlett O’Hara.
I hang on to it from year to year because it holds special memories. Not only of the dance, but of the shopping trip with my stepmother Betty to pick it out.
Betty was an unreconstructed southern belle by turns strong and feminine, opinionated and demur. Firm in the conviction that she was born in the wrong era, she lived out her life as a belle on the page, writing three romance novels set in the south before going on to success writing historical fiction.
As old-fashioned as some of her ideas were, when you were alone with Betty it was easy to be drawn into her world. She volunteered to take me shopping for a prom dress and I was glad for the company.
I’d picked out a black silk gown cut off the shoulder. Betty came back with her finds and before I knew it, my selections included a purple gown with a bustle and the pink eyelet.
As we stood in the dressing room, Betty’s eyes shone with approval at the eyelet dress. “It is perfect, so ladylike,” she said. In that room, with her, it was perfect.
The perfect dress seemed less perfect when I got to prom and saw the sleek, silky gowns cut in the latest styles that my classmates wore. It was too late then, I’d been belled and there was no going back. What would Scarlett do? Following her lead, I hiked up my skirt and danced with abandon.
Betty died last Christmas after a long bout with Alzheimer’s. The disease stripped her of her beloved words and sweet personality. When I think of her, it is the little things I remember, the chocolate cherry birthday cake she’d make, the antique sugar shell she gave me as a wedding present, the dignity with which she carried herself, and, of course, the pink eyelet prom dress.
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