Beloved Bother
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Some of the clothes are still around. In the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there are bright orange trousers, Technicolor ringer tees, and dress shoes stitched with rainbow flames; eBay searches yield a pink sequin dress and a Victorian-style nightgown that ties at the neck. Synthetic materials, ’70s polyester. The clothes will outlive everyone.
Then there are the drawings, the plans for things that did not or could not be made. To be a clothes designer is to have 1,000 imaginary friends. My great-uncle Ronald’s world was full of women with slicked boyish hair and ornate evening gowns; men with pompadours and cummerbunds over bare chests. In other boxes, in other rooms, the men wore no clothes at all, every ligament rendered by a steady hand in pen and ink.
When Ronald went into the hospital in the summer of 2010, he left all these designs behind in the shed he called his “studio.” Afterward, his brothers and sisters filed, shell-shocked, into the little room, trying not to disturb stacks of paper.
There had once been nine of them. Ronald was seven in birth order and only the second to die, after Two was shot in 1972. For weeks, the rest of the siblings lived among his cardboard boxes and garment bags. Five took a block-print cotton kimono that hangs in my closet now, missing its belt. Three’s son went to throw away the nudes. Six’s daughter rescued them. What the hell are you doing? It’s art!! Ronald left no children. When the San Antonio Express-News published his obituary, they made a typo: “beloved brother” became “beloved bother.” The family retrieved their copies from the ends of dusty driveways, flipped to Deaths, and smiled.
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Excellent!
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Some of the clothes are still around. In the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there are bright orange trousers, Technicolor ringer tees, and dress shoes stitched with rainbow flames; eBay searches yield a pink sequin dress and a Victorian-style nightgown that ties at the neck. Synthetic materials, ’70s polyester. The clothes will outlive everyone.
Then there are the drawings, the plans for things that did not or could not be made. To be a clothes designer is to have 1,000 imaginary friends. My great-uncle Ronald’s world was full of women with slicked boyish hair and ornate evening gowns; men with pompadours and cummerbunds over bare chests. In other boxes, in other rooms, the men wore no clothes at all, every ligament rendered by a steady hand in pen and ink.
When Ronald went into the hospital in the summer of 2010, he left all these designs behind in the shed he called his “studio.” Afterward, his brothers and sisters filed, shell-shocked, into the little room, trying not to disturb stacks of paper.
There had once been nine of them. Ronald was seven in birth order and only the second to die, after Two was shot in 1972. For weeks, the rest of the siblings lived among his cardboard boxes and garment bags. Five took a block-print cotton kimono that hangs in my closet now, missing its belt. Three’s son went to throw away the nudes. Six’s daughter rescued them. What the hell are you doing? It’s art!! Ronald left no children. When the San Antonio Express-News published his obituary, they made a typo: “beloved brother” became “beloved bother.” The family retrieved their copies from the ends of dusty driveways, flipped to Deaths, and smiled.
