I explained. He listened with his head a little on one side. When I told him what I wanted, a new suit, made to the old one's measurements, as a surprise, something classic, something that would not look out of place on the thirty-first floor of the Huntington Center, he made a small noise in his nose.
"Let me see the old one."
I unzipped the dry cleaner's bag and laid the suit out on his cutting table, on the brown paper, and he put his glasses back on.
For a long time he did not say anything. He touched the lapel. He turned it over between his finger and thumb and looked at the underside, where the lapel rolls, and ran his thumbnail along the line of it. He opened the jacket and looked at the lining, which was a dark gray satin, faded at the armpits to the color of dishwater. He looked at the label at the inside neck: a brand I did not recognize, MADE IN U.S.A., 100% WOOL. He turned the sleeves inside out.
"Who did this?" he said.
"Did what?"
"The alterations." He held up the trousers by the waistband and turned them so I could see the inside of the seat, where the back seam came down. "This suit was made maybe 1988, 1989. Very good factory, Hart Schaffner, maybe, or somebody who made for them. Off the rack. Department store. Lazarus, maybe. For a much bigger man than your father. This was made for a man, I would say, forty-four long, forty-six. Big belly. Your father is what, forty regular?"
"I don't know. He's not big."
"He wasn't big when this was done either." He laid the trousers down. "Somebody took this whole suit in. Not a dry cleaner. Not a mall tailor with a machine. By hand. Look." He pointed with the tip of his little finger at a row of stitches running along the inside of the back seam, tiny, even, slanted, almost invisible in the gray wool. "Every seam. The back seam of the jacket, the side seams, the sleeves. Took in the waist four inches. Took in the seat. Let down the sleeves all the way, because the arms are long, look, see there, where the old crease was, that line. You can't get that out. That's the old hem showing. That's why it shines there. She let the hem out all the way and turned it with a facing so he'd have the length. That's what you do when there's no fabric left. You borrow it from somewhere else." He turned the cuff of the sleeve inside out and showed me a strip of a different gray, slightly bluer, sewn inside the end of the sleeve. "This is from the trouser pockets. She cut pieces of the pocket bags to make the facings, and made new pocket bags from something else. Muslin. Like a dishcloth."
"She?"