by Eric Kester
“The appointment is not bothering me,” I told Mom resolutely. “It’s casual. Probably, like, a million guys get fitted for a suit every day. A couple quick measurements and you’re done, right? Boom, boom, and you’re outta there. But if you keep making it a big deal then it’s going to feel like a big deal and I don’t want to feel that right now, okay?”
“Okay,” Mom answered quietly. She loosened her grip on the steering wheel and softened her grimace into something of a smile. “I’m just excited, that’s all. Your first suit! There aren’t many Grayport traditions I’m fond of, but it’s pretty neat that all the varsity players wear the same suit to the opening pep rally.”
I picked up the fudge from the floor, untied its twine halfway, then changed my mind and tied it up again and placed it back by my feet. Even out of sight, I could feel it calling to me. Mom had made it in Aunt Jackie’s kitchen instead of her old shop, but it still tasted like the best parts of my childhood. I hated that Mom brought it for me on each monthly visit, and I hated that I loved it too much to tell her to stop. Mom must’ve known how much it tormented me, but she also knew she couldn’t not bring it. To suddenly stop making me fudge would be a statement as powerful as Dad tossing my candy in the trash.
The tailor’s shop was located on a side street off of Main, wedged between Primo’s Pizza and a vacant storefront. The lot was empty and Mom pulled into a spot right up front. She turned off the engine.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Just a couple of quick measurements and we’re out.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to look so handsome.”
“Come on, Mom.”
“Your first suit.”
“Come on.”
“My little guy is growing up.”
I unbuckled my seat belt, opened the door, and stepped out of the car, careful not to step on the fudge. I looked at the tailor’s front window and saw my blob of a reflection staring back.
My little guy.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
An automated ding-dong announced my arrival as I pushed open the door to the tailor shop, and stepping in I immediately found myself surrounded by a gang of sharply dressed mannequins, all with waists smaller than one of my thighs. The shop’s worn brown carpet and beige walls flecked with peeling paint made the room feel pretty dingy, but the bright fluorescent lights overpowered the shabbiness with an aggressively clinical glare. Mirrors were everywhere. In the back corner was a chest-high counter. On it was, among other things, an old cash register, a calculator, and a tangled mess of paper receipts, pincushions, and measuring tapes. So many measuring tapes.
Behind the counter a curtained-off doorway led to a back room, and scurrying out of it came a frazzled red-faced man with wispy straw hair.
“Hello there,” he said.
“Hi.”
“Can I help you?”
I glanced at Mom, who gave me an encouraging nod. At some point in the past couple of years she’d stopped talking to strangers on my behalf. It drove me crazy.
“I have an appointment for a fitting.”
“Ah, of course. Let me just check our calendar.” The man pushed aside a stack of loose papers on the counter and picked up a notebook buried underneath. He flipped to what seemed like a random page. He held the notebook angled toward his chest but I could see that nothing was written on the page.
“Name?”
“Wyatt Parker.”
“Hmm, let’s see what we’ve got.” He ran his index finger up and down the page. “Ah, here we are. ‘Wyatt Parker.’ One thirty P.M. Right on time. Very punctual.” He motioned toward a small wooden platform in front of a mirror. “Take off your shoes and step onto the fitting platform and we’ll get started.”
When I crouched down to untie my shoes, a phone rang on the counter. The tailor reached for it but it was tangled in a knot of measuring tapes. He angrily clawed at them until the phone was free, then held the receiver up to his ear.
“Grayport Tailoring.”
I could hear a man’s voice frantically yammering into the tailor’s ear.
“Okay, calm down, sir. We can handle this. What kind of stain did you say it was?”
More breathless yammering.
“Sir, I’m a tailor and not a priest, so as far as I’m concerned, how you got that stain is best left between you and God. But I won’t lie to you, it’s gonna be a tough son of a gun to get out, especially from wool. I got some ideas, though. Just hold on a second while I get my assistant to help with a customer I have here.”
With one hand the tailor held the speaker end of the phone against his chest and with his other hand he rang a small bell on the counter. He paused a moment, then rang the bell three more times rapidly.
An annoyed voice came from the room behind the curtained doorway. “I heard you the first time, Dad.”
The curtains fluttered and a girl stepped through. As she walked she was tying her hair back in a loose topknot, and stopped suddenly when she saw me.
“Oh,” she said in surprise. “Hi.”
I felt like I had been kicked in the gut. Standing before me was Haley Waters, a tape measure draped over her shoulders.
“Hi,” I squeaked out.
“Physics, right?”
“Right.”
“You here to get fitted for a suit?”
If the universe were truly balanced, as Hinduism (and physicists) say, then this moment of absurdly terrible luck would be counteracted by an equal and opposite force of impossibly good luck. But unfortunately as I stood there trying to think of a way out of the situation, I didn’t spontaneously combust into a ball of flames.
“Yeah, I have an appointment.”
“Okay, cool. Just step up on that platform and I’ll get your measurements.” Haley was clearly uncomfortable—her voice seemed higher-pitched than usual and she was talking way faster than she ever did in physics class, where she answered questions in a poised, steady cadence.
My legs felt numb and I watched them in a daze as they shuffled me over to the wooden platform. It creaked loudly when I stepped up onto it. In front of me was a full-length mirror. Haley’s dad was talking on the phone again, and she slid past him to grab a clipboard next to the cash register. She was wearing a white button-down top untucked over a pair of dark jeans. As she walked over to me on the platform, she reached into her front pocket and pulled out a pencil.
“Okay, I just gotta fill out a few things first.” Haley rested the clipboard on the inside of her forearm as she scribbled the date and Wyatt Parker on top of the form.
She knows my name.
“Of course I know your name. You sit right behind me in class.”
Great. Apparently I couldn’t even trust that my inner monologue was remaining inner.
“So, Wyatt, first thing: You looking to rent or buy?”
Mom and I briefly caught eyes in the mirror. My throat felt so dry I could barely croak anything out. “Rent.”
“Right, okay. And what kind of lapel do you want for the jacket?”
I felt sweat start to gather on the back of my neck. “Lapel?”
“Notch, peak, or shawl?”
“Um, can you repeat the question?”
Haley smiled gently at me. “Notch looks best with broad shoulders, so I’m going to put you down for that.”
“Notch was my first choice, too.”
“Cool, so we’re set on notch.” Haley hesitated a moment. “Alright, so I guess we’ll just do these measurements now.” She put the clipboard on the floor. Then she used both hands to pull one end of the tape measure that was looped over her shoulder, effortlessly sliding the slack through the palm of her top hand until she was left holding the very tip, with the rest coiled on the floor. She took a step closer to me. “Just stand straight and relaxed.”
Suddenly it felt like earth’s gravity doubled in strength as it relentlessly pulled, tugged, stretched, and drooped
down every ounce of flab on my body. Haley started by reaching up to my neck, a doughy mass that swallowed my chin so much that it was merely a rumor of a chin. She wrapped the tape measure around where she probably thought my Adam’s apple would be if it were actually visible. When she was done with the measurement, she reached for the clipboard and recorded a number on the form. I peeked down to see what she was writing in the neck measurement box, half expecting her to write an exclamation point after the number. She did this all in a silence that could’ve meant nothing or everything.
Haley put the clipboard back down. “Okay, now for the…” She trailed off, then looked to the ground and cleared her throat. “For the waist. Can you face me?”
I slowly spun around. I could feel my pulse pounding all the way up into my temples. Holding the end of the tape measure in one hand, Haley reached around my waist with both arms. But they couldn’t extend all the way around to pass the end of the tape measure from one hand to the other. She quickly jerked her arms back to her sides. I started to say sorry but stopped and just stood there as sweat trickled down the back of my neck. Haley was blushing, I was pretty sure, because the little constellation of freckles peppering her nose had mostly vanished into a rosy flush. She tried reaching the tape measure around me again, but it just wasn’t happening.
“Haley,” hissed her dad in a half whisper that I could easily hear. He had finished his phone call and was watching from the counter. She turned to him and he mouthed the words “use the jump-rope technique.” I pretended not to be looking while he mimed the rotation your wrists make while jumping rope.
“Dad,” she snapped. “Stop.”
Haley turned back toward me and adjusted her grip on the tape measure so she held several feet of slack between two hands, kind of like a jump rope. While still gripping the two ends in each hand, she flicked her wrists and looped the tape measure over my head and tugged it toward her as it caught around the back of my waist. She then drew the two ends together just above my belt buckle, pulling them until the tape measure was snug around my waist. She looked at the number and picked up the clipboard again.
“My dad is so embarrassing,” she mumbled, maybe more to herself than to me. She really looked pretty upset about it.
“Don’t get me started on embarrassing dads.” I didn’t expect that response from myself. The words spilled from my lips. It felt pretty good, to be honest.
Haley’s eyebrows flickered upward just slightly. She looked up from the clipboard. “Try me.”
No way was I going to dive into Dad’s drinking or general assholery, but I was eager to keep the topic off the measuring. “Well, for one thing, instead of saying ‘you guys,’ my dad says ‘youse guys.’”
“Oh, come on. That’s not bad at all!” Haley put down the clipboard again and took up the tape measure. “My dad plays the banjo. Stand straight.”
She gently pressed the end of the tape measure into the side of my hip and crouched as she ran the tape down the length of my leg to my ankle.
“Banjo can be kind of cool,” I said.
“Not when you’re, like, fifty years old and play horribly emo country songs on your very own YouTube channel.”
“Bad, but still not terrible. Some emo country songs are decent.”
“What if I told you his YouTube name is ‘Tailor Miffed’?”
A chuckle blurted out of me. “Okay, yeah. That’s terrible.”
Haley was now smiling full on, and let me tell you, it was the sweetest thing in the world.
“So it’s settled. I win ‘Most Embarrassing Dad,’” she declared in mock pride.
“Hey, I’m not out of the running yet. Like, my dad tucks his shirts into his underwear.”
“Yeah? Well, my dad doesn’t even wear underwear.”
I glanced over at Haley’s dad behind the counter. He was using his pinky to pick something out of his ear.
“Really?”
Haley giggled. “No, not really. Come on, Wyatt, you can’t be that gullible. Arm straight by your side, please.”
She took my sleeve length, recorded it, and reviewed the measurement form. “Alright, I got the basic measurements here. Let me check our suit inventory in the back to see if—” She cut herself off. “I mean, to see what we’ve got for you.”
When Haley returned from the back room, she handed me a hanger with an enormous navy-blue jacket and a matching pair of dress pants.
“This looks like a parachute on a hanger,” I mumbled. I’m not sure why I’m always so quick to joke about my weight, but I think it’s a defense I developed as a kid, an attempt to get in front of the teasing. It never seemed to make me feel that much better, though, and I felt even worse when Haley didn’t laugh. Instead, she just looked at me kind of funny. I felt embarrassed for the cheap shot at myself.
There was a small changing room connected to the inventory room, and Haley, her dad, and Mom waited in the main room while I tried on the suit. The jacket fit over my shoulders easily enough, and the pants’ waist seemed about right. As I walked back into the main room, I was surprised by how comfortable I felt with the fit. Part of me desperately wanted to look at Haley’s face to see her reaction, but I was too nervous to look at anyone but Mom, who was beaming. Then I looked into the full-length mirror.
I was devastated. I looked objectively terrible. The jacket was just so damn big and rectangular; it fit across my shoulders okay but from there it fell straight down my sides like it was a tablecloth or an enormous square cape. The pants were even worse. Yes, they fit my waist, but the width of each thigh stayed uniform down throughout the entire pant leg, all the way to my ankles. The legs were so baggy I looked like a clown attending a funeral. I guess that’s how it goes with a guy my size. As a whole, the suit looked like a giant tarp that you toss over a wheelbarrow in the winter.
“Very handsome, Wyatt,” Mom gushed.
I opened my mouth to say something, but I felt a burning in the back of my throat. I was this close to crying.
“No,” Haley interjected suddenly. “No, no, no. The suit is all wrong. I mean, it’s fine—you look fine, Wyatt. But this isn’t the right suit for you. It doesn’t do you justice.”
“Justice?” I asked weakly. I was confused.
“Just give me a couple minutes.”
Haley dashed off to the back inventory room. She returned with another navy suit that, on the hanger at least, looked identical to the one I was wearing. I really didn’t want to try it on, but I also didn’t have it in me to deny Haley, so I reluctantly took the suit and plodded back to the changing room.
As I put on the new one, I noticed that it was different from the other suit. Not so much in its color or design, but in its texture. The fabric was so much softer and smoother.
When I returned to the mirror, I was stunned by what I saw. The suit wasn’t baggy, but it wasn’t tight, either. The jacket tapered down from my shoulders toward my waist at a slight angle, so my shoulders appeared broad and powerful. It even made my waist look smaller in comparison. My legs were proportionate, too, sturdy rather than billowy. I didn’t suddenly transform into a model or anything, but I think I looked—
“Pretty great, right?” Haley said, looking at me looking at myself. “You’re wearing that suit, know what I mean? That other suit was wearing you.”
I glanced at Mom. I don’t think I’d ever seen her smile so big. She reached into her purse and took out a tissue and dabbed at tears glistening in the corner of each eye.
“Mom,” I said. “It’s just a suit.”
I turned back to the mirror and scanned myself again, fighting and failing to suppress the giant, dopey smile that stretched across my face. “Why does this look so much better than the other one?” I asked Haley.
“It’s all about the fabric,” she said excitedly. “See, the other suit is made from a mix of synthetic materials. Sixty-five percent polyester and thirty-five percent rayon, to be exact, and that particular ratio yields a very stiff material. And
between you and me, I’m almost certain the manufacturer didn’t do enough crimping after the polymerization, which is why it looked so boxy on you. Almost crusty, you know? The suit you’re wearing now, though, is made from long-staple pasture wool, which is from the Teeswater breed of sheep found in Northern England. The fabrics they produce are crazy soft, and they tend to melt into your body shape and bring out its strengths in a very natural way.”
Not gonna lie: Hearing Haley nerd out on fabric was sexy as hell.
“So basically this fabric is magic.”
Haley giggled. “It’s not creating an illusion, if that’s what you’re saying. It’s just drawing attention to the best qualities of your natural shape.”
A thought suddenly popped into my head. “If this fabric is so much better, why didn’t we try it first?”
Haley hesitated. “It’s just that, well, it’s…”
“… much more expensive.” Haley’s dad approached us holding a calculator.
“How much more expensive?” Mom asked softly.
Haley’s dad showed her the number on the calculator. Mom stared at it for a long time. “Even to rent?” she asked.
“We don’t rent out that type of fabric. Too high quality.”
Mom squeezed her eyes shut very briefly. “Do you take payments in installments?”
I couldn’t watch this. I’d seen Mom in a lot of shitty situations. I’d seen her nervous and furious and heartbroken. But I’d never seen her look desperate. It tore me up.
“I suppose, but I’d want to take a look at your credit score first.”
Now an expression of utter helplessness replaced Mom’s look of despair.
Haley tugged at her dad’s sleeve and together they turned to the corner. “Dad,” I heard her whisper. “Stop this. Please.”
“We’re running a business here, not a charity.”
“Just give them a break. Come on. Please.”
“You think red tide will give us a break when the economy goes down? I’m thinking of the future. Let the adults handle this.”