Suits

In November, my father’s brother died. In December, I drove back for what would have to pass for a Christmas visit because I was scheduled for a business trip flight early on the twenty-sixth.

I had barely taken off my coat when he opened the guest closet and waved me over. There were six suits of varying dark colors. “Your uncle’s suits,” my father said. “You’re a little too tall, but maybe your two boys could use these. Ted was particular. He only wore good suits.”

“I’ll ask them,” I said.

“You can take them back with you tomorrow. It’s almost Christmas. You’ll see the both of them, right?”

“We’ll see,” I said.

“They’re like new, if that’s what bothers you. Ted was wearing them right up to the end.”

“Ok,” I said, using ambivalence for a placeholder as I changed the subject. “Did they ever find out what happened at that restaurant we ate at six hours before it blew up? Gas line accident or bomb or something set up on purpose?”

My father looked puzzled. “That place you didn’t like last summer?” he said, closing the closet and beginning to walk down the hall. “I don’t get the paper, and the tv is on the fritz now.” He stopped by my sister’s old room before he turned to gesture at me. “I want you to see something before you take off again.”

On a card table, next to the bed, was a large wooden board with slots that held, by my quick multiplication of row and columns, ninety-six slides. “I’ve been looking through all these,” he said, pointing to the rest of the table’s surface where a pile of slides, no way to exactly count them, was sprawled wide enough to suggest five-hundred or more. “Here,” he said, “take a look. This old hand-viewer thing still works. Just press and you’ll see yourself when you were a Boy Scout.”

I remembered the viewer. He’d used it for almost a year before my mother had bought him a projector and saved everyone from having to pass his slides around like mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. “I used to watch these enough to know which was which, but the projector quit on me, and it’s hard to keep track looking one-by-one. I even took off all those metal frames so the slides would fit in that thing, but I stopped after this many because it made such a mess.”

“There I am in full uniform,” I said. “By the looks of how new it looks, it’s my eleventh birthday. You asked me to put it on right after I opened the box.”

My father didn’t answer, but he laid the Scout slide back in place and inserted another, looking closely before he handed it to me. “There we all are,” he said. It was a photo of my father and his three brothers taken, by the looks of the car parked nearby, in the early 1960s. All of them are wearing suits, so I’m nearly sure it’s a Sunday.

My father took it back and looked again. “Now that Ted is gone, I’m the last. Isn’t it something that the youngest died first and then the next and the next in reverse order, and here I am the oldest the only one left to remember?”

“Yes,” I said at once. I waited to give him time, but he replaced the slide and laid the viewer on the table. When I looked around for something to mention as a distraction, I noticed the throw rug I’d slipped on in August was missing. “Where did the old rug go?”

“Your sister threw it out. I was telling her how you complained, and she took a look and saw some of the threads that hold things together had broken or frayed so the rings were coming loose and she didn’t want you to trip over it again.” 

“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “Don’t let her toss the old viewer. There’s already enough slides to keep me busy for my next ten trips here.”

“That’s a long time when for somebody who’s eighty-two,” he said. “You better look all you want right off the bat.”

“I’ll sit down with it when we get back from whatever restaurant you pick. What sounds good?”

“Out by the hospital. Your sister takes me there after my checkups. We went there when you didn’t come for Ted’s funeral. And I have discount coupon that expires New Year’s Eve.”

He paused, catching me looking at a shoe box on the bed. “I left those ones you brought for my birthday right there for safe keeping,” he said, but he sat down on the bed with the box and began to untie his old, torn shoes. “I got another few months out of these. I don’t walk that much anymore and there was still some good in them.” He handed both shoes to me. “Here,” he said. “Throw them in the trash can outside the restaurant. That way, you’ll know they’re finished.”

The sun came out as we traveled the familiar roads. It was warm enough to imagine that Christmas wasn’t five days away. Neither of us spoke until my father pointed at the windshield and said, “It’s all gone up ahead.”

“What?”

“The mess they left behind at the restaurant that blew up. It didn’t take long once they got around to it. If you got over this way more often, you’d know all about it.”

My father stared straight ahead until we approached the site. There was nothing but patches of snow and mud. “See how it is?” my father said, sounding triumphant. “Like nothing was ever there.”