"I'm going to miss shopping for him. I guess I can’t buy men’s clothes anymore." Of all the ways I had imagined my 80-year-old mother missing my father, this was not one I ever considered. She said it in a voice thin and weary, while shopping, reluctantly, for a black dress.
I thought about all the perfectly pressed pants hanging in my father’s closet, the seersucker shirts on the right side of the long bar, the long sleeve velour pullovers for mild Las Vegas winters, on the left. I thought of dress shoes, loafers, summertime whites, paired and evenly aligned on racks below. I thought about his armoire, stacked with cardigans and V-neck sweaters in blues, grey, browns, and cream. I thought about dozens of cufflink pairs in boxes from stores that no longer exist, in the triple dresser, and unopened packages of blue striped boxers and sleeveless ribbed undershirts my mother always had around whenever my father complained all of his had holes in them, and how happy she had been to retrieve one, and how ridiculous I always thought her for taking pride in what seemed to me, a subservient deed. It was all something which I -- with a husband who buys his own shorts at the warehouse club – always failed to appreciate. I see what she was up to, now, every time she had stepped into a men's clothing store, into the closet, or up to the ironing board.
My mother had loved knowing which colors he should wear, when sports jackets needed elbow patches, which ties went with what suits, when to take out the summer weight suits, how to store away Mohair overcoats. It was a currency, an offering, a gift.
And now she could not even buy the man a damned belt.
“Oh I guess I can shop for the rest of the men in the family,” she said vaguely. I try to see her picking out shirts and pajamas for my brother, my husband, my two sons. I know she will do this and I know that the garments will all be the right size and color and style. But I am heartsick these items will not travel home with her in crisp shopping bags, to be emptied with pride, as my father watched, occasionally fingering a shirt, smoothing the nap of a corduroy pant leg.
Mom says she wants to sort some clothing my father had never worn. From his armoire, she pulls new pullovers, pajamas, shirts, and we make piles on the king-sized bed -- this one to Goodwill, the other to the church clothing drive; these for the Mexican day laborers who help the landscaper on Thursdays.
In their walk-in closet, larger than the master bedroom in my own house back in New Jersey, I recognize the suit my father wore to his grandson's wedding four years ago, when he could still stand up straight and dance with my mother. There are the straight-leg Levi’s I bought him 15 years ago, which he never wore; and the flannel-lined, comfort-waist, relaxed-fit ones I sent from L.L.Bean last winter when he said his legs were always cold, which my mother says became his favorites.
I linger with my right arm up the left sleeve of the tweed sports jacket, which we teased make him look like a doddering college professor. My father, forced to quit school in tenth grade to help support seven siblings – he had wanted to be a doctor. I will think about this after his wake, when I find one of his high school notebooks, marked "Science 1942," filled with a meticulously rendered drawing of the human heart, the hopeful sweep of his careful script where he labeled the aorta.
On the way to the funeral home, my mother insists we stop at the dry cleaners, where my father had been a regular since retiring here 25 years ago. He always walked in smiling, teased the counter girls, complained prices were too high. Nina the shop owner is silent when she hears the news, and reaches across the counter to squeeze my mother’s arm, which, like the rest of her, is covered in black even though my sister and I told her that, in 2006, it was not necessary for a resident of the American southwest to dress like an old school, mid-century Italian widow.
He had a way, my father, a very slow and deliberate way, of moving through a house – his own, mine, anyone’s -- and touching things in his path. Adjusting the stack of mail, toying with bric-a-brac, neatening magazines, repositioning kitchen canisters; moving each item barely a fraction of an inch. He pestered everyone to phone the airlines to reconfirm flights, scoffed that I charged clients too little, and insisted my young sons learn to open doors for ladies. I dismissed it all; he was obtuse, old-fashioned, stubborn, controlling.
Later, or maybe just very recently, I realized that like his habits and quirks, his opinions and beliefs, like his Listerine breath and Vitalis hair, the bad jokes and overcautious bromides, these were only the packaging. I loved, and cringed at, most everything about him. I secretly admired his outdated chivalric stance; I despised his over-protective inquisitiveness and I knew it was just his way of trying to put things right. Suddenly, now, I imagine him wandering into my room, asking what I am working on, saying, “Humph,” and on his way out, moving the flower vase a centimeter to the right.
The day before I leave Las Vegas, I drop my mother at the hairdresser, where everyone put down their scissors and blow dryers and brushes dripping with cream hair dye, to give her a quiet, gentle hug. I retreat to a café to complete a work project, past deadline. I miss my home office, 2,700 miles away, and I am distracted by the barista trilling out orders...Angela—venti latte skim; Jose – double mocha espresso; Tony, small coffee regular...Tony--please pick up your coffee.
Tony is (was?) my father's name, and regular is how he took his coffee; then he would tear open five or six packets of sugar and while attempting to drop them in his cup, spill half on the counter.
I try to ignore this unclaimed Tony coffee, to settle in, wait for my grande decaf skim. I felt pretty steady when I walked in, but now I wonder if I may have asked for coffee in my father's name. But the barista calls out my name and the correct brew, then yells again for Tony. Undone now, I tell her I will give it to Tony, and I take the cup to my table, place it next to my laptop and for the next hour no one approaches the counter to say his name is Tony and he did not get his coffee.
I tell this story to no one, thinking it too surreal for words. I am afraid I will not be able to locate the right tone which must exist I imagine somewhere between skepticism and serendipity and intelligent dismissal. I am afraid I will tell the story badly.
But I love this story. [continues]
–Excerpted from Quay/A Journal of the Arts, Fall 2007
