The Unraveling
by B.L. Makiefsky
When I was married, I wore clothes too large. Pants, jackets, sweaters draped my thin frame like a tarp thrown over a pile of sticks. I felt protected. My ex-wife Ruth said it was because I was trying to be bigger. Maybe better. But isn’t that what marriage vows are? A promise to be someone you’re not? Fittingly, when the marriage ended, I started buying clothes that were more appropriate. I wear normal sizes now, that is, large, and not extra-large or, in my grandest illusions then, XXL.
Now my mother tells me it’s time to rejoin the land of the living. Her exact words. “Danny,” she admonished me last week. “You don’t measure up.” All my life, she’d been trying to get me to take on more. Classical music, ballet. Aeronautics. Cheeseburgers. “I only meant,” she said the next day, trying to apologize, “that you’re not the man you used to be.”
But I don’t want to be fat, or thin. Just whole.
Tonight was my daughter Joey’s high school graduation party. She had attended a private school and Ruth and I wanted to do it right. We rented the lavish banquet hall at the country club I no longer belong to. Open bar. Dinner. Five-piece band. For the occasion I bought a stylish Armani-like suit on sale that fit me to a “T.” The saleswoman at Macy’s had assured me that it wasn’t too tight. That is the look now, she said.
My date Angie, a friend of a friend’s friend, wore something you’d see on the red carpet in Hollywood, not in a town like ours. She turned heads, is what I’m saying.
My daughter rolled her eyes when I introduced her to Angie.
Past the bar on a table were photos of Joey, from diapers to diploma, which I showed to Angie. I was in a few myself. She asked if I’d lost weight. I told her that I used to wear clothes that were too big, trying to live up to what I was not. She turned to the bartender, ordered a martini and said, “how stupid.”
I left for the men’s room, where things truly started to unravel. I was facing a row of tall urinals, polished, stately, like sailors in dress whites standing at attention. You stand before these things, and they invite you in close; you feel worthy. I was staring at the marble wall, minding my business, when a voice called out from a ways down: “You’re looking fit, Danny-boy.”
It was Herb, my ex’s fiancé. A stockbroker and bodybuilder. I said hello, and thank you. I never liked him much, not because he was dating Ruth, but rather…he was well built and knew a lot about money. And was dating Ruth. There was the time, too, when Ruth and I were having a spat over child support and I didn’t know I was on speaker phone. Until Herb said, “You’re bigger than that, Danny.”
On our way out of the bathroom, I noticed that even Herb’s clothes had muscles. I made certain to open the dungeon-like door for him. It took a good push. When the door closed behind me, it brushed my coat sleeve. I thought nothing of it.
At our table a short time later, between the serving of the salad and entrée, Angie started to pinch and tug at my elbow. A signal, I thought. The start of something grand. I pressed my thigh into hers. She smiled, and tugged all the more. My funny bone leapt with joy. My heart soared. But silver threads and golden needles it wasn’t going to be. You might say loose ends bothered Angie.
The head of school stood up to speak, and the music stopped. He thanked Ruth and me for the privilege, as he put it, of entrusting to his care Joey’s desire for a higher learning. He asked Joey to stand, and she looked lovely in her soft blue crepe gown (half of which I had paid for).
Angie started to tell me something, just as the guests stood and applauded.
As I stood, however, the right sleeve of my suit coat slid from my elbow to rest at my shirt cuff, held by only a robust thread or two. Angie’s hand went to her mouth. A minor calamity; few, if anyone, had yet noticed the doughnut-like bangle on my wrist. Rather than applaud and risk exposing my wardrobe malfunction, I raised the fist of my good sleeve overhead to cheer Joey. Guests—some dozen tables—thought I was asking for quiet to make a speech. They sat down. The room was still, or nearly so, as several people squirmed right and left to better see me.
Terrified, I looked back at them, these faces plump in their riches, or fearsomely desiccated, staring expectantly at me. What did they see? A dandy and pretender, or candle in the wind? The band started up again. A drumroll.
I simply waved to the guests with my left hand, smiled and started to sit down. Until my well-tailored pants ripped at the seat. Rather loudly. My mother laughed so hard she spit food. From the table next to ours, Herb said, also rather loudly, “probably the blue cheese.” More laughter. I turned to see him grinning, and my daughter make a face.
Angie got up and left.
I got back to my feet quickly.
“I’m a thin man,” I cried out. “A shell of one, bones and nothing more. This world of ours makes a poor shelter, it covers so little. I cheat it every chance I get, and dance naked in my dreams.” People continued to stare at me. I looked away, then down at the jumbled threads of my life—family, marriage, daughter, romance—a sleeve now lying like someone’s fucking Halloween sock discarded in my empty salad bowl, bits of cheese and shredded carrot stuck to it.
“It’s a tight fit, this,” I said. “Thank you for coming.”
B.L. Makiefsky was the winner of the 2012 Michigan Writers Cooperative Press chapbook contest, for the short story collection “Fathers and Sons.” Among publications, his work has been featured in (or is forthcoming) are the Detroit Free Press, Dunes Review, Thoughtful Dog, Pithead Chapel, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Fiction Southeast, Hypertext Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, the Great Lakes Review and the Jewish Literary Journal. For links to his work, please go to blmakiefsky.com. In addition, his one-act play, Bagman, A Play Between the Lines, was a contest runner-up at the Old Town Playhouse in Traverse City, Mich., where his full-length play, A Good Joe, also received a staged reading.