Old Suits

By Jeanne-Marie Fleming

Loretta scooped turmeric into dry oatmeal, added water, and ate standing at the counter. The snow had stopped; the streets were salted; she would tackle her list.

Her car made its way up the long, narrow road ascending the steep hill, passing through a densely wooded area dotted with several buildings that were once a monastery but now functioned as a rehabilitation center for men. A chapel, a large crucifix, a field of white angels, and statues of saints line the edge of the snowy woods. This sanctuary, just two miles from her small post-and-beam home, had a clearing with a view of the river valley. A stranger in a gas station had told her and Jack about that holy lookout when they first moved to the area. It was a long time ago now, but she remembered the first time she and Jack, so in sync, as confident in their union, as they were in their strong bodies, sported new hiking shoes and set out on the trail. She had to bat the floating images from her mind: the wool blanket spread on the grass, the Bully Hill wine, the way the sky softened like butter as the sun set over the valley.

She parked in front of an old stone building, lifted half a dozen dark suits from her trunk, and greeted the man shoveling snow as she passed him on the walkway. Under the morning sun, the suits appeared slick with dust, and she berated herself for not getting them dry-cleaned. Her friend, Suze, had said the suits were dated, but Loretta was sure some of the men could use them for job interviews and the like.

A broad-shouldered man with a Duck Dynasty beard stared at the pile she had released on the counter and asked her if she had an appointment.

Loretta shook her head, adjusting to the dank odor. He wouldn’t take them.

"Can I make an appointment now?" she asked.

"Gonna be a couple of months out," the man said, stroking his beard.

She was aware of her smirk and covered her mouth with her hand. It was comical, really, to need an appointment so far in advance at this hole-in-the-wall consignment shop. Only Christ knew how she had worked herself up for this unburdening.

Could she look around? She wanted to know. He shrugged.

Her eyes moved along shelves of cups and saucers, cloudy glasses, chipped dishes, and baubles. She lifted a tiny teacup to her mouth, play-acting as she might have done with her little brother, Eddie, when they were small children. The musty odor seemed to be coming from old books housed in the antique hutches. She thought of her cellar—Jack’s books and papers, boxes of family memorabilia—that had to be gone through. She turned into a dimly lit, narrow room of vintage toys, metal lunch boxes, dolls, and dingy board games. Lifting the hood of a miniature red Chrysler, she remembered Eddie’s plastic matchbox cases stored in her closet. He had collected them in grade school, and her mother left them with her after the Peekskill house sold.

Loretta and Jack had wanted a family, but after her third miscarriage, the cruelest one, at twenty weeks, Jack put the kibosh on trying again. For a while, he held onto the idea that they could recommit to each other, start again as a couple with a clean slate, maybe adopt. Loretta poo-pooed the brochures for tropical resorts he brought home and rejected his suggestion of couples therapy. They stopped hosting Sunday barbeques and dropped out of the committee for the annual chili contest on Community Day. Invitations to friends’ homes eventually fell away. Jack took to watching television in the second bedroom and often passed out still clad in work slacks.

Loretta leaned on her grief. She lost her babies. She let Jack slip away. The only consolation for them was having Eddie, nearby, over for dinner a couple of nights a week when his young wife, Sylvia, worked at the hospital. Buying fresh vegetables, preparing a meal for the three of them, raised her spirits, and she knew Jack was a good influence on her brother.

While neither spouse wanted to undertake Herculean efforts, surely there could’ve been some contentment in store for them. On rare evenings when Jack found his way to the marriage bed, they made love with a panicked craving.

Jack’s insurance business had grown, and he hired Elaine, someone Loretta knew from local politics, as his office manager. He was flexible with Elaine’s hours and kept coloring books and juice boxes for her children when they showed up at the office for one reason or another. Someone had a cold, the babysitter canceled. Occasionally, she left the kids with him while she ran errands. Loretta worked as a teacher’s aide. In the evenings, she made collages, furiously ripping pictures from magazines and books, leaving torn pages on every surface. She collaged cards and envelopes, book covers, and surfaces of furniture she picked up at the dump. She thought her best design was the retro look on the coffee table, where she gathered vintage cigarette and liquor ads from Fortune magazines. One night, she picked layers of dried glue from her wrinkly hands and Jack asked if she was shedding her skin. “It’s not me who’s the snake,” she said.

Two years before Jack’s diagnosis came the call from the gym. If they had a defibrillator, her brother would be alive. Loretta suspected methamphetamines; but Sylvia, was private with the medical report, and Loretta didn't push. Losing her only sibling, the one who bore the brunt of their father's rages, shook Loretta's core. She anguished alone, withdrawing from Jack’s comfort, unwilling to acknowledge his shared pain.

Still, despite being intermittently estranged, Jack remained her closest companion. Hadn't they held hands that day in Dr. Sangson's office? Hadn’t she tightened her fingers around Jack’s when Dr. Sangson straightened the papers on his desk and cleared his throat? They received the news of his leukemia diagnosis calmly as if they had been waiting for something catastrophic to come their way. One afternoon toward the end, she was laying a blanket, warm from the dryer, over Jack, and he whispered, “You’ve been a good sport.”

After his death, she studied her calendar—the habit of charting sex was ingrained after all those years of trying—forty weeks without intimacy. Forty weeks in the desert. She thought of how she missed Jack while he was alive, but never reached for him. 

In the sanctuary, at the used jewelry counter, Loretta flipped over a pair of earrings backed with cardboard. "Are these tokens? How much?" she called out to the bearded man at the counter.

"Yeah, the guys make them. Old bus tokens. From Poughkeepsie," he said. Was this man with the watery eyes and ruddy cheeks an ex-addict? Loretta wondered. How did this place work? Could someone live here permanently? If only Eddie had gotten lasting help.

She returned to the counter to pay for  the earrings and retrieve the suits.  She thought she might speak to the bearded man about her brother’s on-and-off drug use, his boyhood, the suffering he’d endured. But seeing the man distracted, some game on his cell phone, she brushed lint off a wide pinstriped jacket, paid, and gathered up the suits. The navy pinstripe on top, he wore to Suze’s wedding. She recalled a slow dance, his nose at her neck, always the first one up to dance, pulling her along, never minding that she was taller than him.

She drove to Magazzino; at the entrance, a thin woman snapped her gum and asked her if she had an appointment. Loretta gave a quizzical look. The suits. The museum. Could she get at least one of these right today?

“Fine. No one’s here.” The woman handed her a sticker.

Muffled voices and sharp heels echoed in the vacuous space that housed a small collection of mid-century Italian art. Sunlight refracted through long windows on reverent white walls casting ghostly shadows. Eyeglasses forgotten in her car's console, the unfamiliar images and sculptures took on a surreal quality. She stood before a 10-foot igloo-shaped structure of slate slabs and thought about her resistance. “Aren’t you the least bit curious?” Jack said when she declined his invitation. She unbuttoned her long coat and reached to touch a piece of cold steel. “No, no touching,” the attendant, who had been watching her, spoke sharply. Loretta shuffled to the next room and sat on a cement cube. Quite sure it was for sitting. Observing the play of shadow and light, something stirred in her, and she remembered he had come instead with Elaine. Something changed that day, the grand opening of Magazzino.

Her eyes scanned the objects in the room landing on each one until they seemed to be spinning around her.

In the car, she pulled her lapels close, dabbed her eyes, and found her glasses. She looked into the rearview mirror. “I’m finally here, Jack.”

In Walmart, she drifted through the greeting cards aisles, reading the familiar lines in sympathy cards, before stopping in the bath section. A girl too young to have shimmery blue shadow over her eyes pushed a whimpering toddler in a shopping cart. Loretta observed them, feeling that familiar ache. What would her children have looked like at that age? Would her love for Jack have endured if their hopes for children had not been dashed?

She lost sight of the kids but was left brokenhearted. And it came from a deep place.

Loretta phoned Suze. Could she buy those kids a small gift—a doll or a puzzle, and wait for them past checkout? “Boundaries, woman,” Suze said. If a stranger handed her son a gift, she’d think they were a child molester. Her friend was right, of course; it was why she never allowed herself to sit down on a bench at playgrounds even though she honestly felt joy, not in a creepy way, watching kids on swings and chasing each other. She stopped in the garden department and looked at the forced tulips in pots covered with pink foil.

Back home, she tossed the suits on the bed in the spare room. Coins spilled from a pocket. She picked up a dime and then knelt to feel around under the dresser for the other coin. Another dime. She rolled them between her fingers, the cool metal warming her palm.

Giving her his mind a year later. Jack always said when settling a debate, "Take it or don't. My ten cents,"—never getting upset, unlike Loretta, whose anger sizzled like static between her temples.

She fell back on the bed, nestling into the suits and held the dimes above her head. The last hands to touch these coins were Jack’s. These could be made into sweet earrings, mementos, she thought, like the ones she purchased at the thrift store earlier.

She placed the dimes on her tongue, pressing and sucking them against the roof of her mouth, while noticing lines in the ceiling that resembled barren branches.

“You two have to bring your aggravations into the light. Don’t tamp down the fires,” the couple’s therapist would say. She promised that if they dealt with their grievances, their sex life would be more satisfying. Loretta thought about those words and her barely satisfying day-to-day existence. Satisfaction was such a meager expectation.

Her mouth turned metallic, she spit out the dimes and buried herself under the suits.

Why didn’t she go to the opening of Magazzino with him? Why had she refused to take a vacation? Why didn’t she let him buy the hot tub? Yes, yes, yes. Why couldn’t she access that word when she needed it?

Sleep caught her, and she woke several hours later, weeping. Why, why, why wasn't it she who died? Loretta slipped into one of the suit jackets and went downstairs. She filled the pot with water and spooned coffee into the filter.

Later in the week, Loretta struggled with a can opener and some tuna; it would have been a Raisin Bran dinner if Suze hadn’t stopped by, bringing a basket of goat cheese, bread, a tomato, a chocolate bar, and a half dozen eggs from her chickens. “It’s so easy, I swear,” Suze said, referring to the sourdough recipe. She lifted a bottle of rosé from a canvas bag and said, “I’ve missed this. Us.”  Then she reached around a stack of papers on the counter and pulled a potted orchid forward. Loretta was astonished to see the long stem with an arc of pink petals, despite her neglect. She took four ice cubes from the freezer and set them on the soil for a slow melt.

Suze hadn’t worked since the birth of her twelve-year-old son, but nine dollars an hour on her feet saying ‘Welcome to Walmart’, she wouldn’t do it.  She told Loretta she was going to apply for a job as an assistant teacher at her school.

Loretta had been Benton’s one-on-one at Saw Mill Elementary for the past two years. She adored him and sensed his moods better than anyone, but it wasn’t an easy job. “Last week, I was with Benton in his shop class. When the teacher started the drill; he freaks and takes off. I'm screaming his name. Monitors get on their walkies. Administration gets involved. The parents were called."

"Where did he go?"

"I was a fucking basket case. They found him. In an empty classroom. Lying on the floor.”

"I can handle kids."

Loretta told her that some of the teachers treat the aides like real shit. She held a tomato to her throat and recalled pulling over on her way home that afternoon and throwing up. Suze sat quietly, then filled a pot with water to boil the eggs so Loretta would have something to grab and go for breakfast. After a third glass of wine, Loretta talked about the nights Jack worked late, about his little stories of helping Elaine’s kids with LEGO models and math homework, about how she, Jack, Elaine, and her husband had all been friends a long time ago. “I think I was depressed,” she said. “I didn’t want to be around them anymore. She became an overbearing mother, and she never had another topic.” Loretta’s obvious green envy felt so shameful, but it was a relief to say it aloud to Suze. Suze reassured Loretta that she would never judge her. She imagined the untangling of Jack’s life, now that he was gone, was akin to going up to a dim attic and ripping down drop cloths to find a room that you never knew about.

“If I’m honest with myself, it was good that he had Elaine,” Loretta said.

At a bistro table outside a cafe. Elaine arrived, predictably lovely, telling Loretta she looked terrific and she’d been meaning to reach out for months, and how could it be that a whole year had gone by.  Work yada, yada. The kids yada, yada. Her mother moved in with them. She is terrible for not calling to even check on her.

"It is odd, Elaine."

"I wasn't sure…" Elaine's eyes welled up, and she twisted her napkin. "I wasn't sure what to say."

Loretta nodded, hoping Elaine would keep her composure, so she could continue. She said, "I was at Magazinno yesterday."

"Oh." Elaine's crossed leg bobbed up and down.

"What’s with the donkeys?"

"I didn't know you liked art."

The waitress brought two coffees.

"I never understood art. I do, though. Like it."

Elaine blinked and pushed her long bangs to the side. Loretta poured milk into her coffee, stirred her spoon, and continued. "Jack was a hoot, huh? What's to understand?’ He didn't care to know an artist's training, his motivation, his background." She sipped her coffee.

"He went with the flow," Elaine said. She sat back and wiped her mouth, holding the napkin in place.

"Some things we need to know." Loretta tilted her head sideways, looking straight into Elaine's eyes- intriguing with specks of green and gold.

"I don't know what to say."

There are many places you go during a year of grief and isolation where logic doesn’t rule, and at the end of some of those paths lies a jail cell. Of course, she wanted Elaine to be remorseful; she was, after all, blameworthy. There were still nights she lay awake wishing for an account of the whole story of what happened between her and Jack. She could demand that. On the other hand, the woman before her had once been a friend; they had shared a bond that went way back. At least, she could try to be the type of someone who could shake sand from a screen and start a new story.                      “I almost forgot, I saw Philip in town last week.” Elaine’s son was Loretta’s godchild, sixteen now. “I told him I wanted to take him out for a steak dinner for his birthday.”

"He passed his permit test," Elaine said, smiling. She reached her hand across the table and reddened. “There’s a lot I need to say…”

"No. Don't…. No apologies." Loretta reached her hand back. “You gave him something, I couldn’t,” she said.

The ground was thawing, and Loretta found herself back in Magazzino. She walked around, less out of place and more curious this time about the obscure Italian povera artists. She thought about her passion for collaging. It was not nothing, and someone, a neighbor of Suze’s, expressed an interest in purchasing her cigarette table, adding that his daughter could help her build a website. Before exiting the museum, she purchased a yearly membership and a hardcover book about Mario Schifano. What the heck, she thinks, her senses roused by his blood reds, his opaque blues, his creams, and his plain to see drips of paint on his canvases. She could imagine the artist painting in a state of virtual repose, pausing, giving the distractions of his mind full measure. There’s permission to turn from the work to glance out a window at lovers on the street, to kneel on the floor to play with a dog, or to step outside for some air. Schifano’s concept of the unfinished canvas for sale, both boggles and delights Loretta.

Her appointment at Peace of Christ was approaching, but she wasn’t sure now if she’d keep it.

At the dry cleaners, she told the owner to keep his thin plastic. He looked at her quizzically and pointed at the sky, at the mist.

“Please,” she said. The man shrugged and lifted the thin bags off the hangers. As she walked, she held the suits to her nose, but there was no trace of Jack in the clothing.

Cool drizzle hit her cheeks, and leaning against her wet car with the suits across her chest, she was taken with a sensation of Jack’s understanding; she knew he knew she was okay, no longer manifesting angry thoughts or pitiful deliberations. Her peace was his peace, and round and round reaching toward the sublime. An SUV slowed, and the couple in the front seats stared bewildered. A father, holding a boy’s hand, glanced quizzically at her. When a woman carrying a leopard umbrella and a large pocketbook asked Loretta if she needed a ride somewhere, Loretta said she wasn’t finished. The woman looked appalled and said, “What about the suits?”  

“I’m figuring that out,” she said, adding up ingredients for a good life. It was what rattled around in her head all the time now. She sniffed again for recognition of her husband. The dampness had summoned his scent ever so lightly.

She poured the sanitized suits into the back seat. Her car’s windshield wipers smeared the rain rather than clearing it, and how had she not noticed this before? At the oil change shop, the owner replaced the wipers as Loretta made small talk. She stopped at Suze’s house to pick up some eggs and invite her over later for a bonfire. The clouds were already dispersing. Suze took her out back to show her the two tawny brown baby goats she had bought. She got the job at the school, but said she wasn’t going to take it. Strange, Loretta thought, how you could want something so badly and then not want it.

Back at home, she felt something close to peace. The wet grass gleamed an ephemeral lime green; the trees were filling in again with fresh leaves. She gathered sticks and branches that had fallen over the winter and stacked them in a circle for kindling.

THE END

Author Bio: Jeanne-Marie Fleming is a retired teacher who recently earned an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her prose is published at Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Flash Fiction Magazine, trampset, JMWW, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. She’s a writing mentor for incarcerated citizens and lives in the Hudson Valley, NY.

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