My husband, Frank, and I share an office in our multi-physician clinic practice. Our L-shaped desks face and abut each other in the center of the room. Daily I marvel at the tidiness of his desk. At the end of the day he will have dispensed of pending work and will proudly survey the expanse of walnut veneer that assures him that no task has been left undone. He might fondly adjust the tape dispenser and stapler to assert his full control over his work place and than flip the office light off with a sense of peaceful accomplishment at the end of the work day.
This composure envelopes him up until the very minute he arrives home and enters his closet. There is something about the closet and the clothes there that make him reckless, senseless. I think he believes that the clothes don’t like him and he in turn treats them poorly. Along the wall a rack holds ties in big banana bunches. He peels through them daily and always picks one from a handful that he likes best. These select ties are easy to recognize because of the chronically wrinkled neck and large-size silver safety pin that secures the cloth label to the back of the tie. Likewise, of all the belts dangling from the belt hook vine he will only wear two, one black and one brown to cover all occasions. Coconut white shirts hang limply in a row along the lower closet rod. Every few months I buy two or three new shirts and pluck the oldest ones. The middle-aged shirts have slightly frayed necklines and sport wrinkled rolled-up sleeves, but barring a missing button he will wear them anyway. Slacks dangle from the upper row of hangers. Most of them are gray with back pocket buttons that wobble on precariously thin threads. The rear-end material is often shiny and worn, presaging the hole that will be the final common pathway before the trash can.
The most endangered species in his closet jungle slither along the back wall. It is the motley collection of shoes with which he is in a constant standoff. I cannot buy new shoes to fit him and he will only venture out for a shoe purchase on the rarest of occasions, so he faces the same pairs day after day. He has brown suede oxfords that he will only wear once a year. Inevitably he picks a blazing August day and by the end of it swears that he cannot wear those shoes they are–TOO HOT. He has white Rockport walking shoes that he bought eight years ago after his parents each purchased a pair and testified to their comfort. Frank wore them once and couldn’t get over the whiteness, so now one shoe is confined to the depths of the closet while the other serves as a doorstop for our bedroom door. My favorite shoes are his brown leather moccasins. He refused to wear them for years until one day when we were working on a home improvement painting project. Now that they are brown and white speckled he seems much more fond of them. Every day for work he wears his no scuff, Comfortech Florsheim dress shoes. These shoes have lived up to the durable, indestructible billing given to them by the enthusiastic shoe salesman. Unfortunately, the shoestring was no match for the rest of the shoe and it popped early in the life of the shoe. Not to be deterred Frank tied a tidy knot in the string just between the third and fourth eyelet on the right shoe. I’m sure it’s hardly noticeable underneath the table at those executive staff meetings. The only shoes routinely allowed to free-range outside the closet are his used-to-be-white-now-brown Reebok tennis shoes. These old shoes are soft and flat and worn all over. The rubber tread is slick and smooth. The insides have a bald spot where his heel rubs the back. The limp laces sag in the bow and require triple knotting to prevent dragging along the ground.
And I ask myself, who is this man who can master his work desk, and can’t tame his closet? Who is the fellow who wrestles with his tuxedo for the black tie holiday dinner and finishes the job by tying the laces of his black patent leather dress shoes with a double knot? Who is this guy who will stretch out his legs at the end of the day only to exclaim, “Look at that! I’m wearing one blue sock and one brown sock.” For me he is living proof that the clothes do not make the man.