The Coat

Every year, my father organizes a formal familial dinner. My parents, my siblings and I all go to the restaurant. My father insists on it being formal, men are to dress in suits and ties and the ladies in their attire of choice provided that it is elegant and dignified. Both my mother and sister enjoy this and derive immense pleasure from crafting their wardrobes. 

I find the ritual trivial and mildly annoying but it is pleasant to look smart occasionally, it’s ‘ennobling’ as my sister likes to say. The window by which I’m standing is slapping me with its ceaseless thunder and rain. The lightning momentarily highlights the hollows under my eyes and my shaking hands. It’s cold, I finally put on my long coat. My stature seems to expand, I almost look stately. I stand in front of the mirror for a few more seconds, fixing my collar, I take a deep breath in before walking out the door. I usually only spend a few minutes getting ready but tonight I am telling my father something important. I chose this annual event to do it. 

We had engulfed half our plates when I finally mustered the courage to speak up. I had rehearsed this many times. 

“Yes, Theodore, what is it?” My father said in his warm husky tone. 

“Well...” I started off confidently, almost playfully, I crossed my hands and put them out in front of me and continued: “Last time we spoke about the business, you know…”

“Yes…” 

“I’m not going to do it.” My voice was more abrupt than I had intended it to be but I felt relieved nonetheless. Almost instantly however, a new unfamiliar burden placed itself snuggly on my shoulders.

“Why not?” His jaw had already begun to tense up and he was evading my eyes. He looked at his plate, knife and fork busily at work, occasionally he glanced at me. He was feigning calmness and understanding but his stance was solid as a rock, his stare unyielding. I was looking at him, trying to pin down his elusive eyes.

“I want to do other things.” 

“What? Your tech stuff?” He retorted dismissively and with a hint of disdain. 

“Wait, just let me finish.” I said with a hint of impatience. He had managed to destabilize me already, with only a few words. He simply nodded and looked at me. 

“I..I..I,” I paused, I couldn't say the words, I felt a flush rise to my cheeks which only infuriated me further. 

“Just speak slowly honey.” My mother said. 

“You can’t even speak properly and you want to make it in Silicon Valley.” My father added.

My veins filled with venom as I spat: “Perhaps if you didn’t always dictate every move, every word, every gesture I make, I would be able to speak properly.” 

He shook his head and told me to calm down and to stop making a fool of myself, “What an ungrateful—” He sighed.

“Don’t speak to your father that way Theo.” My mother added while glaring at me. 

I seethed at her: “And you! You say yes to all his requests and wants! You’re the reason he has control over all of us!” I said that last sentence more softly, out of guilt, in an attempt to limit the blow on my mother.

My mother gasped, “You’ve turned into a madman! You’ve had too much to drink.”

“Sit down Theodore.” My father said, once again he meant to be calming but his voice was glacial. 

I sat down, suddenly embarrassed. My brother and sister were both flicking their eyes from one person to the next, trying to absorb everyone’s state of mind. I looked away from all of them. My father got up to go outside and smoke a cigarette. 

Many years later when I reconnected with my father, I learned that a drunken man came up to him this very night and mumbled some sinister remark before chuckling and fumbling away. My father mostly ignored him but he did not forget the sentence he had muttered: Let the dead die. Why did he say that? Had someone died in his family recently?

When he walked back in, all of us were eating our dinners sullenly, I had stifled everyone’s appetite with my announcement. As soon as my father sat down, he began: 

When I was 10 years old, my father left, my mother took care of us, she had a knitting business that she kept up to support us. She would sell clothes that were less expensive than those found in stores for families who were struggling during the depression, which was essentially everybody. I remember her sitting there, knitting for hours on end. One day, someone knocked on our door, my mother put her work down and went to check, it was one of her clients. As soon as she opened the door, Mrs. Hutchinson, her name was...Mrs. Hutchinson began shouting and agitating her arms in front of my mother’s face, she had one of the knitted jumpers in her hand, she was complaining that the fabric was not thick enough and that my mother should be ashamed to be selling such poorly made items at such a high price. By the end of her rant, she flung the item at my mom and stomped off. My mother was so upset by this that she immediately broke down in tears. I started distributing newspapers around town, I did that until I got enough money to buy silk fabric, my mother had begun making coats at this time. She used the silk I bought to line the coats, these were more expensive than all the other items she’d ever made but people loved them so much that she just kept getting orders for them. That, Theodore is how the business started. Through toil and sweat and tears.

He looked at me now, I could see the intensity in his eyes and I was not indifferent to it. I had heard parts of this story before. My father rarely speaks about his past. When his mother passed away, his entire being rigidified into a sort of memorial statue for her. How does one respond to that? Yes, father, I will take over the business, I know how valuable it is to the family. That is the right answer, one I wanted to give but no atom in my body was able to utter those words. Instead, I remained silent.

The subject of that dinner night was never brought up again, it had gone into the pile of taboos that we blame alcohol or fatigue for. When it came time to take over my father’s business, I simply refused, no speech was given, no family gathering was organized, I did not return home. I remained in San Francisco. I did not speak a single word to my father for more than a decade.