Douglas Kennedy - Five Days

‘Well, the place is called Specs.’

‘Don’t think this is the place for me,’ Richard said. ‘I mean, look at the guy behind the counter.’

The fellow he was speaking about had a shaved head and a pair of high-modern pince-nez glasses hugging his nose. He also had large black circular earrings implanted in both earlobes.

‘He looks reasonably friendly,’ I said.

‘For someone who belongs in 1920s Berlin. This guy is going to look at me—’

‘And see a potential customer. Now stop all the fretting and just—’

I opened the door and all but pushed him into the shop. Rather than being all cold and ‘too cool for school’, the fellow behind the counter was charm itself.

‘Now I surmise from the way your wife had to shove you in here,’ he said, ‘you are just a little reluctant to try a change of style.’

Richard did not correct him about the ‘your wife’ comment. Nor did he seem to blanch when the guy accurately read his unease. Instead he said:

‘That’s right. I’m a style-free zone.’

The guy, who had a name-plate on the counter in front of him — ‘Gary: Spectician’ (is there such a word?) — reassured Richard that he was ‘among friends here’. He then proceeded to expertly take charge. Within half an hour — having put Richard at ease — he talked him through various frame styles, quickly discerning that, when it came to wanting a particular look, Richard hadn’t a clue what he really was after. So Gary showed him all sorts of permutations. After talking about how — given his coloring and his oval face — highly geometric frames ‘might be just a tad too severe. and I really don’t think we want the harshness of metal again, now do we?’ he convinced Richard to choose a brownish, slightly oval frame: highly stylish, but simultaneously not a radical statement. Nonetheless, seeing them on him, it was clear that they changed his look. Rather than appearing angular and actuarial Richard now came across as somewhat hip, professorial. Bookish. Thoughtful.

‘You think they work?’ Richard asked, clearly approving of the image reflecting back to him in Gary’s mirror, but also needing my sanction.

‘They’re a great fit,’ I said.

‘As long as your optician in Bath can give me your prescription over the phone, I’ll have them ready for you in about an hour.’

Luck was on our side. The optician in Bath was able to scan Richard’s prescription down to Gary — and we headed back out to Newbury Street.

‘Now let’s find you a leather jacket,’ I said.

‘I feel strange,’ Richard said.

‘Because I’m being bossy?’

‘You’re hardly bossy. But you are persuasive.’

‘But, as a salesman, surely you know the thing about persuasiveness is that you can only persuade someone if they truly want to be persuaded.’

‘And I clearly want to be persuaded?’

‘I’m not going to answer that question.’

‘Four hundred dollars for a pair of glasses. I never thought. ’

‘What?’

‘That I could be so self-indulgent.’

‘Glasses are hardly indulgent.’

‘Designer glasses are.’

‘And let me guess — you had a father who told you that. ’

‘A father and a mother who counted every penny. And, wouldn’t you know it, I married a woman who also thinks that thrift is one of the more profound virtues. And since she is my bookkeeper and sees all my credit card statements. ’

She’s not your mother I suddenly wanted to tell him, simultaneously wondering why so many men turn their wives into mothers, and why so many women seemed more than willing to play that emasculating role. And this thought connected to another one: how Dan himself had, in his ongoing resentful moments, talked to me as if I was the actual disapproving woman who had raised him and who had always let him know he was a disappointment to her. Knowing so well the pain that he had carried with him from childhood, I had always tried to tack away from the criticism that so haunted him. And yet, ever since all went wrong with his career, he’d cast me in that mother role. A role I certainly didn’t want.

‘When she sees the designer glasses,’ I said, ‘tell her—’

‘“I needed new glasses. and, by the way, I’m moving to Boston.”’

‘That’s pretty definitive,’ I said.

‘So where do we find a leather jacket around here?’

We wandered up several blocks, all lined with the big designer label boutiques. Stopping in Burberry, there was an amazing black leather jacket in the window which looked like something a modern Byronic figure would wear. and with a list price of over $2,000.

‘Even if I had that sort of money I don’t think I could carry that jacket off,’ Richard said. ‘Too Errol Flynn for me.’

A few shops later he also passed on something that — as he interestingly put it — ‘looks a little too Lou Reed for me’.

‘You know Lou Reed?’ I asked.

‘Personally? Can’t say that he ever bought a policy from me. But Transformer? Great album. Can’t say I’ve kept up on his career since New York. And Muriel’s always been more Neil Diamond than the Velvet Underground. ’

Richard Copeland: secret Manhattan demimonde wannabe! Or maybe just a fan. No wonder he wanted to get rid of those golfing clothes he had worn assiduously for all those years. Like the suit I first saw him in at the hotel check-in. The same flat style that his father had undoubtedly worn. The uniform of the strait-laced American businessman. Clothes are a language. So often we don’t like the language that we’ve forced ourselves to speak. Look at me. At the hospital, my white lab coat is my daily uniform. Around the house and in downtown Damariscotta I have always dressed soberly. But in my closet there are a few items that hint at another me — like my leather jacket and this black, very Continental raincoat I’m currently wearing, and even a wonderful fedora that I found in a vintage clothing store during a trip to Burlington. But these clothes — including a pair of black suede cowboy boots that I stumbled upon at a yard sale in Rockland (they fit me perfectly and only cost $15) — stay largely out of sight. Were I to walk around town dressed as I am now, nobody would say anything. That’s the Maine way. But everyone would notice. Comments would be passed when I was out of sight. So this somewhat Left Bank wardrobe stays locked away unless I’m heading down to Portland for something cultural. And when I recently put on the leather jacket and the suede boots to hear a jazz concert with Lucy, my daughter caught sight of me getting ready. Surveying my sartorial choices for the evening she said:

‘Are you going to a costume party, dressed as a hipster?’

I wanted to tell her that, quite frankly, this is the way I would prefer to dress most of the time — but felt constrained by small-townness and my own innate sense of decorum (which, in uncharitable moments, I thought was also a form of cowardice). Now seeing Richard trying to mask his tenseness as we went into another high-priced boutique in search of the leather jacket he was so fearful of wearing, I couldn’t help thinking: He too is someone who has kept so much of what he’s wanted to express under wraps. And when he eyed, in a shop that sold hip military-surplus-style clothing, a reproduction 1940s Air Force jacket in a dark, somewhat distressed brown (it really was rather stylish) I could see that he was weighing up whether he could get away with wearing it.

‘That’s the jacket,’ I said.

‘People will look at me strangely back home.’

‘And I never wear this outfit around Damariscotta — because I fear the same thing. Anyway, Boston is going to be home soon.’

Richard tried on the jacket. It was a great fit — but his pale blue, very button-down shirt clearly didn’t work with it. So I walked over to a display table where a pile of stylish work shirts were stacked. I figured he would take a large and chose one in black with small steel buttons on its pockets.