My Wife Asked Me to Pick Up Her Dry Cleaning and the Receipt Had a Man’s Suit on It

I mention this because when I picked up Vera’s dry cleaning from the place she uses on Monfield Drive, and the bag had four items in it instead of the usual two or three, I checked the receipt before I put everything in the car. Two of her work dresses. A blouse. And a tailored charcoal gray suit in size 42 long.

I wear a 38 regular.

I stood in the parking lot reading the receipt. Then I looked in the plastic-covered suit bag. Charcoal gray. High quality fabric from what I could tell, though I’m not exactly an expert. Monogrammed interior pocket with initials I don’t own.

I put it in the car.

I’m Robin, by the way. 44, high school PE teacher, been married to Vera for 16 years. Vera plans corporate events. She’s good at it, it’s a job with a lot of moving parts and she manages them well. We have two kids, Devon who’s 13 and Faith who’s 11. We live in a house that needs more work than we do to it. Normal life.

On the drive home I had about 20 minutes in the car to think about what the suit meant. I went through maybe five or six explanations. She’s handling dry cleaning for a colleague or a client. She’s doing a favor for someone. There’s been a mix-up. I went through all of them and none of them felt right compared to the other thing.

I got home. Kids weren’t there, they were at after-school stuff until 5. Vera wasn’t home yet.

I took the suit upstairs. I took off my own clothes. I put on the suit.

It was tight across the shoulders and the sleeves were too long and the pants were loose at the waist because whoever this was built differently than me. It didn’t fit. It absolutely did not fit. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror in this wrinkled too-big suit and I looked pretty stupid. But I went downstairs and I sat at the kitchen table and I waited.

Vera came home at 6:15.

She came through the door with her work bag and a grocery bag she’d clearly picked up on the way and she looked up and she just stopped. One hand on the doorframe. She looked at me in the suit for about four seconds. She said, and this is exact, she said: “Oh for god’s sake.”

Not a denial. Not “what is that.” Just oh for god’s sake.

Which was, I don’t know, on some level kind of funny and on another level was exactly the confirmation I’d needed without even asking.

We sent the kids upstairs after dinner to give us space and I said I needed to know who the suit belonged to and she told me. His name was Arthur. Someone she’d met through a client event. Had been seeing him for, she thought, about eleven months. She paid to have his dry cleaning done because his machine was broken and it had just stayed that way.

I paid for this through our joint account. For eleven months I’ve been paying to clean Andrew’s or Arthur’s or I don’t know what, his shirts and suits. More than the dinner thing, more than the rest of it, that was the part that stuck sideways for me.

The suit was returned to the dry cleaner the next morning. I dropped it off with a note that just had the name Arthur on it in case he came to pick it up. I don’t know if he did.

I want to tell you the conversation I had with Vera was clear and decisive and I said all the right things. What actually happened was we talked for about two hours and I said maybe a third of what I’d meant to say and she kept doing this thing where she’d start to explain something and then stop in the middle and the middle of her sentences were worse than the sentences themselves.

We are not together. That part is clear. She’s staying in the house right now because the logistics are complicated. I’m in the basement bedroom, which is a little absurd for a man my age but here we are. Devon told his friend’s mom something and now I keep getting these slightly too-knowing text messages from people we’re not close enough to for that.

The navy suit I own is staying in the closet for now.