American Housewife by Helen Ellis

Author:Helen Ellis [Ellis, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-54104-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

THE FITTER

The Fitter is mine. Myrtle Babcock can get her flabby pancake tits out of his face. He’s sizing her up in her ill-fitting turtleneck that’s off-white and thin because it’s been through the wash too many times. Her “nude” athletic bra shows through like she’s smuggling ferrets. Here’s what, sister: every woman needs underwire, and when you stuff two pounds of downed rounds into A-cups, beige ain’t invisible.

The Fitter doesn’t touch her. He shakes his head no when she offers to lift her top.

I say, “This ain’t Mardi Gras, Myrtle.”

The Fitter waves his hand for me to be quiet. He leans forward in his recliner.

My husband, the Fitter, looks like every other middle-aged man in this small Georgia town. Somehow skinny and fat. Always in khakis with a nice enough smile. He talks like everybody else. He says, “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir.” He mows his own lawn. He passes the collection plate at church. If you saw him at the gas station, you wouldn’t do more than say hello. But you’d be missing out. The Fitter is a wonder.

Like some men are born with an ear for music or a brain for math, the Fitter was born with an appraiser’s eye. Before he could crawl, he knew that square pegs belonged in square holes. In preschool, he packed his backpack so that it sat like a nut in a shell inside his cubby. A Little Leaguer, he worked his catcher’s mitt so that the ball stuck every time that he caught it. His mother had him stuff all her deviled eggs.

When the Fitter turned twelve, his father let him in on the family secret: his grandfather was a fitter; his great-grandfather was a fitter. The Fitter’s own father had bowed out of the business because he blushed like a fire hydrant. That and he would have taken over the family trade in the 1970s when bras were historically at their least popular. The Fitter’s father drove him to Atlanta and walked him through Macy’s bra department. The Fitter was shorter than the racks. Padding grazed his cheeks and salesladies raised their eyebrows, but he never turned red. He listened to his father talk about bras like they were nests in the woods. Every nest fits a couple. All couples are to be respected and admired from afar. No two pairs are exactly the same.

A female security guard was called to escort the Fitter and his father out of the bra department, and on their way out, the Fitter plucked a Playtex 18 Hour Original from a rack and offered it to her. They were still kicked out of Macy’s, but the guard later tried on the bra. Salesladies peered over the dressing room door, clutched the measuring tapes that draped their necks like ropes of pearls, and marveled. In the course of two minutes the woman had transformed from Lurch Addams to Jane Russell.

Word spread. An urban legend was born. There’s this kid who’s part good old boy, part miracle worker.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.