Transparent Man

I asked Gene if he’d ever tried it on. “It was too small,” he said. But it wasn’t the size that mattered. It was the idea of the suit.

—Roger Ebert

The garment bag was black like any other, but through the plastic window I could see

a square of white fabric. Before I saw Saturday Night Fever, that’s how I knew

the polyester suit, whose wide lapels opened onto a slick-black shirt, sewn deep

into the pants. I would have never pictured bell-bottoms on a man, but there they were

on Tony Manero (John Travolta), staring into an iridescent light,

pointing his right index finger toward the ceiling as the dance floor changed colors.

My father saw the movie seventeen times, and bought that suit, the exact one, at auction.

I asked my mother why he kept it shut in cedar, hanging on a rack with all

our winter coats, and not inside his closet, where, later, I buried my face inside

his jackets. Why didn’t we display it? That’s not who he was, my mother said,

besides it almost stood up by itself. It had to, no one ever tried it on.

Once, I opened the garment bag and peered inside to see a different actor, one

who seemed to play my father, full of light, a young transparent man dressed up in white.