Raymond Marino hustled into work every day for scenarios like this one. As he was taught by his father, Nunzio, who worked for 18 years at the original Barney’s of New York, Raymond understood he was not just a salesman, not just a customer service representative. He was a style expert … a respected (mostly) style educator … responsible for teaching each generation of boys what to wear and how to wear it when they needed to appear in “polite company.” Raymond had built a career out of taking good care of young men who needed their first suit, notwithstanding his four employment interruptions due to his intermittent love affair with alcohol. Raymond was over 400 days sober on this Friday afternoon, though it had been twice as long since he had seen his son.
When the unshaven man hurried his boy through the Men’s Wearhouse door, Raymond made sure he was the one to greet them (even though it should have been the new girl’s turn). The father, dressed in a polyester Henley t-shirt without a label, and ripped jeans, explained that his son “needed to go to his friend’s Bar Mitzvah on Saturday” and that his ex-wife insisted he be the one to shop for a new suit “Teddy will be able to wear for the next couple years.” The father let it slip they had not come in the weekend before because he received a last-minute golfing invitation from his buddies. Given their rush today, there would be no time for Raymond to call old Ernie from the back room, with his chalk and mouthful of pins, to measure young Teddy for alterations.
After telling his son that he “could not pick that God-awful purple suit” (it was mauve and a Ralph Lauren), the father selected a nice charcoal number by Kenneth Cole. Raymond was surprised the father hadn’t gone straight for the cheapest option on the rack.
As he was trying on his size 12Y single-breasted jacket, Teddy did exactly what Raymond had been hoping for, he buttoned all the jacket’s buttons. After first confirming the father had not noticed the faux pas, Raymond bent down, at eye-level with Teddy, and made sure the boy was paying attention. Then, he spoke the words haberdashers have been sharing with young clients for generations. “The jacket’s bottom button should be left open.” Raymond kept his voice low and his gaze solemn to match the auspiciousness of the occasion, as his father had in these situations. It looked like Teddy’s father was distracted, checking out the new girl as she was walking past the end of their aisle.
Though he had heard the question countless times before, Raymond experienced a gleeful chill when Teddy asked, “Why?”
“Well,” Raymond said, noticing that Teddy’s father was again engaged in their conversation, “you’re going to want to make sure your legs are free to move while wearing this.” Teddy briefly nodded his understanding of this explanation.
“This tradition with the last button,” Raymond continued, confident in the time-honored role he was now playing in this young man’s education, “began with King Edward the 7th, from England. The king liked to ride horses and did not want his jacket to constrict his midsection while galloping along. Since then, jackets like this have been designed to fall comfortably across your hips and upper thighs without being buttoned.”
The father made some wisecrack about Teddy not needing to ride horses, but Raymond ignored it, eager to add the funny bit to his story. “Actually, King Edward was pretty fat, so he may have been unable to button that last button.”
Ready with his closing argument and ignoring the father’s smug eye-rolling, Raymond looked slowly back and forth between his two customers. He said, “Leaving the bottom button undone signals that you are in the know, that you respect the past and that you care about your appearance.”
Satisfied that his point had been made, Raymond stepped back to appraise the jacket’s fit on Teddy. It was slightly too big on the arms and across the chest, but Teddy would grow into it. At this point, the father brushed past, bent down, and closed the jacket’s lowest button. He then turned to Raymond and said, more loudly than he needed to, “If you were in the know and respected the past, you would appreciate that King Edward the seventh ate too much, routinely visited brothels, and fathered multiple illegitimate children. It was probably his copious drinking that killed him. I don’t want my boy to honor that man’s character by copying how he dressed.”
Stunned by this rebuke, Raymond found he could no longer look the father in his eyes. Teddy, understanding that their exchange was now over, bent his head down as if fascinated by his dirty Nikes. Raymond mumbled his endorsement for the Kenneth Cole suit and began escorting Teddy up to the front counter. He made no effort to up-sell them into a Michael Strahan or a Calvin Klein. When checking them out, Raymond did not offer the father any coupons for future purchases, as the corporate offices demanded of clerks.
Though his clothes had been unpretentious, that new BMW iX SUV the father helped Teddy get into certainly was not.
As Teddy and his father were driving away, all Raymond could think about was the unopened bottle of Dewar’s White Label he hoped would still be tucked away next to the spare tire in the trunk of his car. He made his way to the employee’s restroom, locked the door, and stared forlornly into the mirror at his Edwardian-sized belly. He absentmindedly fiddled with his jacket’s lowest button. Accepting the fact that the new girl would be taking the next several customers and intending to hide for the remaining time on his shift, Raymond pondered over the complexities of father and son relationships and then checked to see if his son’s number was still stored in his phone.
Bob Gielow writes fiction using non-traditional formats. A college administrator by day, living on the New Hampshire seacoast, Bob (he/him) spins tales in formats we all use when communicating with each other: text messages, emails, fictional Wikipedia posts, and diary entries all allow him to be clinical and thorough in describing his characters, their thinking and actions … without diminishing his ability to explore the resulting human emotions. Bob has over 30 short stories published in numerous online and print publications.
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