We spent the afternoon walking across town on 34th Street and up Fifth Avenue, peering in shop windows and stopping in at Franklin Simon, where a red maxi dress with pink and purple paisley swirls wrapped me in a cloud of fantasy, an illusion that I could find a way to return with enough money to buy it before someone else did—someone who would not, could not appreciate its transcendent beauty as well as I.
Donna and Joanne murmured “cute” when I held it against me, briefly pausing their jabber about whether Linda would break up with Tommy for flirting with Barbara at the 1970 Battle of the Bands, before their apathy overwhelmed them, nudging them towards the exit.
I followed them through the revolving doors. As they ambled aimlessly down the avenue as if they could have been anywhere and their chatter resumed, a clot of annoyance stuck in my throat. But I feigned interest, nodding mindlessly, like the jack-in-the-box I spotted out of the corner of my eye in the FAO Schwartz window.
Young girls passed us, their faces serene, half-smiles glossed in self-assurance, like Cybil Shepherd’s photo on the cover of Glamour magazine. They were beautiful in all the ways I longed to be: slim legs descending from under crocheted miniskirts with red and blue flowers bursting from every seam and stitch, the long, graceful lines broken only by tall suede boots drenched in the colors of moody skies at twilight; ankle-grazing coats covered in dizzying check patterns of magenta and yellow spiked with tangerine; fringed jackets.
“Don’t you wish we could have this?” I said, turning my face to meet Donna’s.
“Have what?” she asked, as I waved my arm towards Saks.
“The clothes, that jacket in the window, those shoes with the buckles. The city,” I said, stifling my anger at her, at my dark green corduroy pants, threadbare between the thighs from nearly daily wear, and my aunt’s hand-me-down sweater, a spongy, short-sleeved affair with marled grey checks and a high neck that clawed and itched.
She shrugged, said we should catch the 4:30 bus from Port Authority and that she hoped there’d be no traffic at the tunnel; she had a date. That night, she later reported, she went bowling with Danny, and they made out in his car. I read my magazines and went to bed in quiet agony, still longing for the purple boots, for a Glamour life that beckoned ferociously—from a distance.
In 1973, when I was a senior in high school, I dated a guy named Alfredo. He preferred Al, but his mother and sister used his given name, so I did too.
They were a Puerto Rican family from the Valley, a section of Belleville with narrow streets pockmarked with loose macadam, rundown cars in driveways, and duplexes framed by metal awnings.
The streets in the Valley dropped from Belleville’s weary commercial strip to the dilapidated Erie Lackawanna train tracks that, in the 1950s, had taken commuters from the Newark suburbs to New York City. It was a short drive to downtown, and everyone said the closer you lived to Newark proper, the worse things got: crime, dirt, the wrong kind of people our parents had fled, propelled by an unreasoned, fetid fear; a racism fueled by the blood-stained soot of the 1967 riots. About 15 minutes north, safe in the bright white aura of suburban Essex County, they would find low-slung Cape Cod houses with front lawns, backyards just large enough for some plastic chairs and a small garden, and fresh air my parents never stopped talking about.
I’d met Alfredo at the donut shop where I worked weekends, he a porter who cleaned the restrooms and swept the floors and I a counter waitress who poured coffee during the early morning shift for ashen-faced men with bad teeth and yellow fingers, their breath still reeking of alcohol and cigarette smoke from the night before. Alfredo, a boy no one knew from the next town over, seemed a reasonable choice for a senior-year boyfriend. He was handsome, with jet black hair, green eyes, and a playful smile that hinted at the promise of secrets and time stolen under sweet, sweaty sheets.
He was not nice to me, yet I hungered for those Friday nights at his father’s bar, a dark slice of black wood and linoleum in Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood, where young people swilled rum and Cokes and swirled to salsa, and where Alfredo and I held hands before he left me with his mother and sister Carmen, never keeping his promise to return.
And so, I would sit at a high-top every Friday, and Carmen would tell me her brother was a jerk and I should break up with him. And she promised to teach me how to dance, how to make tostones and Puerto Rican coffee—and where to find the cutest tops, like her stretchy, blush-pink halter with ruffles at the hem, covered with flowers the color of bluebirds. The one that skimmed her body, that she wore without a bra.
“You’re the smartest girl I know, and so pretty. You could have anyone,” she said as we got ready to leave. “But you dress like you’re going to school or something. And aren’t you cold in that jacket? Looks like it’s more for spring.”
It was burnt orange, handed down from my 40-year-old aunt, a tall, willowy woman who wore gloves in the daytime and headband hats from the ‘60s. Boxy, with structured seams and a frayed lining, it was too old to keep me warm, and too ill-fitted and fussy for my petite frame. My mother insisted the thing was perfectly fine. Clothes are expensive, she would say, and we don’t have the money. My weekly check from the donut shop could pay for a top or two but wouldn’t stretch far enough for a winter coat. Carmen gently touched my shoulders, turning me around, her brow scrunched as she scrutinized what had now been transformed from an ugly jacket into a harness for my humiliation.
“We need to go shopping tomorrow,” she said.
The next afternoon I caught the bus for the 10-minute drive to Belleville, grateful that the early morning flurries had become a misty cold rain. Carmen met me at the stop, smiling, her bright blue headband buried in dark black curls, jeans with deep cuffs peering out of her lemon-yellow maxi coat. We were going to her favorite stores in Newark.
“Let’s stop home first,” she said. “My mom is making coffee so we can warm up before we leave.” We made our way down the slope and turned the corner to her grey duplex, a large plastic snowman crowding the small front yard.
Her mother was sitting on the sofa, the dark room warmed by the lights on the artificial Christmas tree. Next to her, a large white box with a red bow. Her small round face erupted in a wide grin when she saw me. “Here,” she said, “it’s for you, niña.” I apologized, told her I had no gift for her, I shouldn’t accept it. She shooed away my protests with her tiny hand.
I carefully untied the bow and opened the box to find a mid-length winter jacket with soft nubby black and brown checks topped with a creamy shearling collar. My hands shook as she helped me find the armholes, my body absorbing the warmth.
I felt a mix of gratitude and unworthiness, and when I opened my mouth, I couldn’t make a sound. I clutched her arm and clamped my wet eyes tight, laying my head on her shoulder. “Niñita,” she said, “te amamos. Feliz Navidad.”
Bloomingdale’s had an odd fragrance when you entered from the Lexington Avenue side—a mix of cheese and other aromas wafting up from the lower-level food court, the scents of fresh cut flowers, and Opium by Yves St. Laurent. The smell enveloped me, sweeping me past the leather gloves and the Ferragamo shoe salon, up the escalator to Level 2, where I would linger over belted pantsuits in crepe-y beige and black, picture the pants floating around my legs like a cool mist when I walked down the long hall from my boss’s corner office to my cramped space in the back behind the printer.
This was 1983, and the department marketed to hip Yes Generation urbanites. Its aisles were crowded with young women breezing through racks of big sweaters, tight-waisted jeans, and earrings the size of cucumber slices. Their pink smiles shone with a mix of confidence and mischief, as if in on a secret that, if they whispered it in my ear, would release the clench in my stomach, the one that held my desire to belong somewhere, to feel settled in my skin, in my clothes, as I moved through their world, a world that held me at a distance, like a visitor who is not expected to stay long, to take up too much time.
I unsubscribe to the cascade of emails, a daily drop from high-end boutiques, mall stores, and a couple of shops from a favorite street in London. But they always come back, flooding my inbox, telling me that they miss me, enticing me with a 20-percent-off promo code.
It’s a world that still has the power to tantalize, jostling me—for a moment—from my late-stage, post-corporate reality of off-price shoes, half-price tee shirts, and the occasional treat from J. Crew. That old longing wedges briefly in my chest, surprising me with its resilience. I remind myself that it’s marketing, that the stuff they’re selling has no connection to a quieter life. I take a breath, feeling a frisson of comfort, of warmth, in the cleave of my well-worn jeans, the embrace of a white Henley from the mid-aughts, and my gold Birkenstocks that could use new soles.
I enter my closet and survey my new wardrobe, taking me through the third act in what has been a wildly ordinary life, one now filled with potlucks, lunch invitations with friends, and outlet shopping on the highway. A closet for a new life, complete with new uniforms, for the visitor who has found a home.
Author's Comment
After years of trying to convince myself that my passion for clothes was frivolous, I came to realize that my evolving closets were (and still are) capsules that hold my dreams and aspirations at various stages of my life. I came to understand that this love affair was anything but shallow; in fact, it is among my most meaningful.
What We Choose
There were moments
as a country we understood
like now
and looked away
from the shadow knife raised
on the wall
holding what feels like our collective breath
for better or for worse this is still
a democracy
we will get
what we choose
Patricia Garrison is an essayist who left her career in communications to embrace the writerly life, fulfilling a dream she's had since age nine. Her work has appeared in Next Avenue, Herstry, Insider, Huffington Post, Moss Piglet, and Delaware Beach Life. She shares an empty nest with her husband in Lewes, DE.
Linda Barbanel, LCSW, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in New York City. She paints and makes wired jewelry as her own therapy.