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Labor Day weekend. The last big outside grill before the weather turned cold. Jim and Laurie had invited me over. I brought a cooler full of beer and soft drinks. And a new story for the jacket. As we sat around the table following the meal I delivered the new story.
"Laurie, you remember how you wanted me to track down the history of the mink jacket?"
"Oh, yes, what did you learn?"
"I'm a little embarrassed to tell it. It's not the first time I was swindled at an auction and I'm sure it won't be the last."
"You're telling me its a rabbit coat and not a mink?"
"No, it's a mink coat well enough. In some respects it is even better than what I thought I had bought. It's just that it was never worn by Marilyn Monroe or any other actresses. It was from the same batch as the jacket of Monroe but this one was in fact owned by a woman in Chicago. Her husband had a chain of dry cleaning shops. He bought the jacket new for her for their tenth anniversary when she was thirty-two. She wore it often but always took very good care of it. She had no children or other close family but many good friends in the area. Her husband had died years before so she was alone in a large house. Her friends finally convinced her that the large house no longer made sense for her. She could sell the house and buy a nice apartment in a condominium that offered support services for people with the money to pay for them. With the proceeds of the house sale she would be comfortable there the rest of her life. Many of her friends had already bought apartments there and were very pleased with the place. There was already an active committee of residents who arranged events and trips for all the residents. The niece said the only problem was all the things she had acquired with her husband over the years. The apartment was large enough to hold much of it but not everything. The niece sold or gave away the excess."
"Including the mink jacket?"
"No, your getting ahead of the story. She would still wear the mink jacket to special events with her friends, but after a few years there she was no longer mobile enough to leave the building for anything other than medical treatments. Then one evening while she was sitting with her friends in the community area the friends were discussing a television report of a poor young boy who had been badly burned in a fire in his tenement apartment. Much of the cost of his rehabilitation would be paid for by the local support bodies but there would still be additional expenses that some charity would have to pick up. The niece told me one of the friends said Nancy -- that was the lady's name, Nancy -- looked down at the mink jacket she was wearing and said, 'What do I need with this old jacket? I have plenty of sweaters to keep me warm. I'm not going to any more dress galas. Besides most of the events like that that Hank and I went to were meant to raise money for people just like this child. I'll have my niece sell it and give the money to the fund to help the boy.' She did just that. The niece apparently thought that a beautiful jacket deserved a more elaborate story and didn't feel bad about the falsehood because she knew the money was going for a good cause."
"She told you this?"
"No, not initially. But I guess she felt guilty because a couple months after I first talked to her she wrote me to apologize. She told me the true history of the jacket. She offered to refund the difference between the jacket's basic value and the premium I had paid for it. I told her that I was pleased to hear the money had gone for something useful. So you can wear it more often now since it was never worn by any celebrities. Or maybe you can get my lazy brother here to shape up and you'll be its first celebrity owner."
"Who knows, I feel like a celebrity every time I wear it. Now the jacket has an even better aura about it."
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About the Author
In his first life Max E. Harris was a computer system specialist living mainly in Houston but for periods in Scotland, Holland, Brunei and the even more remote wild lands of Sacramento, California. In his second life he moved to Como, Italy, where he walks in the woods with his dog Orso wondering what happens next. Harris wonders, Orso knows.
Harris can be contacted at
[email protected].
Other works by Harris are listed here.
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