I spent more money today than I had planned.

I bought crisp black pants, a dress with a V-neck and 3/4 sleeves, a navy-blue suit with an adorable peplum jacket, and yet another cross-body bag.  I sat in the car hearing a disembodied voice, a memory really, saying, Get the damned hearing aids, I’ll help you pay for them.  But I never did; and the tinnitus still rages.

I’m that kind of person.  The kind of person that buys second-hand suits to dress like someone that I could never be, then puts tights and Doc Martens under the skirt.  I’m a woman who hears the voices of lovers past, saying over and over, If only you could. . . If only you would. . . if only you had.  I throw pennies into a jar and quarters on the floor and save the dead roses from the caskets of people against whose death I protest in the endless dark of night after night.

The suit came from Boomerang’s, a place so cool that I didn’t think they would take my debit card.  I last shopped there in 2009.  I bought a suit for my son which I shipped to his dorm along with a pair of black dress shoes that I found in his closet.  When I opened the door today, I asked one of the owners if the place was getting ready to close.  You’ve got 45 minutes, he assured me.  On the strength of his smile, I put my name on the mailing list and turned the corner towards the rack where they keep the hats.

A lady with hair much greyer than mine would be even if I didn’t get it colored stood before a mirror trying on black felt Homburgs.  That looks great with your hair, I told her, and she turned toward me in surprise.  But not bad surprise; not chagrin.  Instead, her face wore an expression which I recognized from the mirror.  Those of us who live alone sometimes go weeks without speaking except at our jobs or to the cop who stops us to ask if we knew we were speeding.  Of course, we don’t reply.  How else will I get any attention?

The lady told me that she needed a hat to go with the black suit hanging from a nearby stand.  She swapped the one on her head for a different style, and raised her eyebrows.  Uh, that’s too small, I ventured, and reached for another.  She told me that she had a part in a play, that she’d be the man who told Rosie the Riveter that she welded pretty well for a girl.  Then she asked me what kind of ties people wore in the 1940s, like she expected that someone good at selecting Homburgs would know.  I guessed “skinny”, but when we looked on the internet with her phone, that turned out to be wrong.

I found my suit, slung the handbag over my arm, and went to the counter where the two owners stood waiting to shoo us out the door so they could go home.  I opened the pocketbook and stared into its depths, trying to decide if I could pull off something so normal-looking.  I’m not much of an actress.  And the bag has brown leather trim with a gold-tone buckle.  But in the end, I bought it, because you can’t go to California with nothing but a back-pack and expect to be taken seriously.

I told the hat lady my name.  She gave me her card and a flyer about the play, and I promised that I would attend to see how she looked as a man.  We laughed, then; and the owners did too.  Outside the store, the sun had begun to set.  By the time I got home, night had fallen.

It’s the eleventh day of the thirty-ninth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.