Ruby and her Man-Tailored Size 16 Petite Wedding Suit

My mother, Ruby, was widowed at 52.  Fifteen years later, in a barbershop where she had taken my sister’s sons to get haircuts, she ran into a high school classmate, Bill, a retired physician whose wife had died the previous year. Ruby and Bill, who hadn’t seen each other for decades, started talking about the recent 50-year reunion of their high school class, which mom had missed.

One thing led to another and six months later, to the surprise of their children, they announced they were getting married and set the date: January 1, 1982. “It’s going to be a small wedding,” mom said. “Just our families and a handful of close friends.”

My wife, Judy, and I were living in midtown Manhattan at the time. Mom, who had spent her life in small Missouri towns, was living in Columbia, Mo.

My parents were married in 1933, the height of the Great Depression. Back then, weddings in rural Missouri were, of necessity, simple affairs. Couples often went to their local pastor or justice of the peace to get married. There were no guests, other than a few people who were often pulled off the street to witness the ceremony and sign the marriage license. Mom and dad were married by his favorite college professor who was also a justice of the peace. After the ceremony, they stopped by the tourist camp her parents owned for homemade ice cream where, next to a gas pump, the bride posed for a picture.

Ruby on her first wedding day,
June 25, 1933

“When I married your father, I had no money. I ordered my wedding dress from the J.C. Penney catalog and paid $2.98,” mom told me over the phone. “This time around, I want something nice, something from New York, a man-tailored suit.”

“You’re gonna wear pants for your wedding?” I asked. “No,” she explained. “A skirt with a jacket made from the same fabric, like the suits men wear.”  My wife said she had never heard of a man-tailored suit either – it must be a term from the thirties or forties – but understood what mom was saying.

We settled on a date for mom’s shopping trip. Ruby’s sister Betty, who lived in suburban Washington, D.C., called and said she would take the train to New York and together, the two of them could have fun shopping for mom’s wedding suit.

Ruby and Betty arrived on a Thursday evening. I was surprised to see that mom, who was five feet one tops, had packed on a little weight since I had last seen her. “You’re not pregnant, are you?” Betty teased. Mom said she and Bill had been eating in restaurants a lot and that she wasn’t happy about the weight she had gained.

 “Well, what size are you?” Betty asked.

“Sixteen Petite,” mom replied.

The next morning before we left for work, my wife drew a map to show mom and Betty the locations of department stores that were within walking distance of our apartment – Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales and Bergdorf Goodman. “You’ll find exactly what you want,” Judy assured them.

But that night, we were surprised to learn that mom and Betty, who had grown up in a tiny town with fewer than 100 people, had come all the way to New York and bought only one thing between them, a bottle of nail polish remover.

“Nobody in this town has ever heard of a man-tailored suit,” mom complained with some bitterness. “The snotty clerks looked at me like I was from outer space. The few who did understand what I was saying said their stores don’t carry anything in Sixteen Petite. One of the Bloomingdale’s clerks asked where I was from. When I told her, she said, ‘I suggest you go back to Missouri to buy your suit if they have such things out there.'”

“Don’t worry,” my wife, an expert shopper, told her. “Tomorrow I’ll take you to Macy’s Herald Square. If you don’t find what you want there, we’ll go to Lord & Taylor. One of those stores will have the suit you want.”

The next morning, for some reason, I volunteered to accompany them. “You’ll find your suit then we can have a nice lunch,” I told them.

If you’ve read this far, there’s something you need to understand. Ruby and Betty didn’t talk in normal tones when they were in each other’s presence. They YELLED, but not because they didn’t like each other, they were devoted. Their mother had lost most of her hearing by the time she was in her forties and her daughters, when they were together with their mother, spoke LOUDLY to make sure grandma didn’t keep interrupting their conversation by asking them to repeat themselves. Grandma had been gone for nearly 20 years by the time Ruby and Betty got to New York but old habits die hard. All of us had grown accustomed to NONSTOP YELLING whenever the sisters got together.

The four of us took the subway to the world’s largest department store, Macy’s Herald Square. My wife, who knew the store like the back of her hand, guided us from floor to floor, to all the departments that sold women’s suits. While they didn’t find many Sixteen Petites, mom tried on probably a dozen skirts with matching jackets that fit and looked perfectly fine to us. But none of them were acceptable to her.

After lunch, we cabbed to Lord & Taylor where, on the first floor, my wife pulled off the rack a white wool suit she and Betty convinced Ruby to try on. Judy, Betty and I agreed it was, by far, the best-looking suit we had seen and told mom that she looked beautiful in it.  Ruby said no, it wasn’t what she had in mind; she wanted to continue looking.

And so we took the escalator up and up and up, stopping off at various floors where Ruby tried on suit after suit. There was a sale on winter coats on one floor. Mom and Betty both found coats they wanted to buy.

Standing at the cashier, Betty pulled out her Lord & Taylor credit card. “HOW ARE YOU GOING TO PAY FOR YOURS?” she yelled at Ruby.

“I’M GOING TO WRITE A CHECK,” Ruby screamed back.

“I BET THEY WON’T TAKE AN OUT OF STATE CHECK,” Betty bellowed.

“SURE THEY WILL,” mom shouted in her Missouri twang.  “WHEN I WAS VISITING JERRY IN LEAVENWORTH I FOUND A DRESS IN A STORE THERE AND THEY TOOK A CHECK.”

Jerry, my brother, was an Army career officer who attended the Army’s Command and General Staff College in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, which also happens to be the home of a notorious federal prison with which it is often confused. The clerk’s eyebrows shot up when she heard “Leavenworth.”

“Ma’am” she said firmly. “I can’t take your check.”

“I’ll put it on my Lord & Taylor card,” my wife told Ruby. “You can write me a check.”

Ruby and Betty handed me their coats to carry and the quest for Ruby’s Sixteen Petite man-tailored suit resumed.

Mom tried on more – many, many more – suits on the upper floors that my wife, aunt and I decreed were perfectly fine, but none of them worked for Ruby who, we were convinced, was looking for something that didn’t exist.

As we were riding the escalator back to the first floor, Betty asked mom, “WHY DON’T YOU DO YOURSELF, YOUR GROOM, TOM, JUDY AND ME A FAVOR AND BUY THAT WHITE SUIT WE SAW WHEN WE CAME IN? YOU LOOKED GREAT IN IT.”

“I’LL TELL YOU WHY,” mom yelled back. “BECAUSE WHITE IS FOR VIRGINS … AND HE (pointing at me) IS PROOF IS THAT I … AM NOT … A VIRGIN.”

Every sophisticated New York head going up the up escalator and down the down escalator turned to see the non-virgin and her spawn. If the escalator had collapsed at that moment and hurled us all to our deaths it would have come as a relief.

Once we reached the first floor, we exited through the revolving door, got into a cab and went back to our apartment where I downed several stiff drinks. The girls, after a short rest, went out to visit some neighborhood boutiques but returned empty-handed.

Mom never did find the suit she had come all the way to New York to buy. She found it, as the Bloomingdale's clerk suggested she might, when she got home, a blue suit that matched her eyes. And on her wedding day, all of us agreed she looked beautiful in it.

As beautiful as any 68-year-old bride can look wearing a Sixteen Petite man-tailored suit.

Ruby's second wedding day, Jan 1, 1982