He walked in the bright kitchen with his bare feet sticking to the cold linoleum. Coffee was the only thing on his mind until he saw her, standing there, at the kitchen table, in her fur coat. An image he could never get used to. He shook his head in an automatic reaction of disapprovement.
‘Morning!’
She looked up from her phone a bit startled, as if she did not expect anyone else to be in the house.
‘Morning lovely!’, she jumped off her chair and came to give him a good morning kiss and a fury hug.
He hugged her back trying to not let the coat bother him. Still, he could not help himself.
‘Why do you wear that thing? It is August, early Sunday morning, and you are inside the house in your pijamas. Makes no sense!’
She looked at him with big questioning eyes and instinctively touched the coat and caressed it.
‘You know why! I love it! I adore it! I cannot wear it outside though, what would people think? That I am an animal killer, that is what they would think, I am telling you!’
Her voice was irritated and determined at the same time.
‘Whatever!’ he said and went back to making his coffee.
This is the kind of thing that annoyed him sometimes at her, this freaking coat thing was the perfect example. She loved that coat, but she would never wear it out of the house for fear of what people will think. It went even further than that. She really believed, or at least seemed to truly believe, in sustainable clothing. By which she meant buying preloved clothes or from charity shops. He was not sure though that this was prompted by such high ideals as saving the planet, sometimes he felt that it was just a good-sounding justification of the fact that she liked nice clothes, but she, they, could not afford them brand new so she had found an alternative way of getting access to them.
All the clothes in their price range were plastic, single use clothes, that smelled bad and felt horribly against the skin. She was very convincing, he had to give her that, and her arguments did ring true. Paying 200 euro for a dress was out of the question, they just could not afford it, but paying 10, that was not a problem. She was happy, he was happy, but from time to time one of those made up dramas would take place, and she would just annoy him to the extreme.
This coat thing was going on for almost a month now. She first saw it on eBay, preloved, as new, worn twice, 20 euro plus transport, the add said.
She came into his office excited and jumping with joy, her pupils dilated and her face beaming.
‘Oh! My! God! You have to see this, the most amazing coat in the world! Just 20 euro! Can you imagine?!’
He barely got to look up from his laptop that she shoved her tablet in his face. He was very conscious to make sure and not say anything wrong, at this level of excitement she was very volatile and could get upset easily, he did not want that, he loved her.
He quickly saved his work while putting his laptop down and looked at the coat.
It was a black shimmering fur coat.
‘A fur coat Clara?’ he did not know what else to say.
‘Yes! Look at her, isn’t she gorgeous?’
She touched her shoulder as if she already had the coat on and was stroking it.
‘Just 20 euro! Can you imagine? For a fur coat!’ her voice was high pitched and he could see she was waiting for him to agree with her and share her excitement.
He couldn’t care less about the coat, but he did care about her, so he tried to find something positive to say.
‘That is unbelievably cheap for a fur coat indeed. Looks like good condition too.’
‘Doesn’t she!’
Clara had taken her tablet back and was flicking through the photos at a rapid pace.
‘I love her! I must have her! What do you think? Should I get it? I have so many coats... I really don’t need another one... But she is so pretty, and I do not have any fur coats...’
She seemed to ask for his opinion, but she was not, the decision had already been made, this was just the dance before taking out the card and paying for it. He had been here before, he knew his input was only valued as long as it supported her wish. It was her money, she worked for it, if having that coat made her happy, he truly had nothing to say. He did feel the need to point out that it was fur though and rather big.
‘Yeah, I know, but it is not very big, see?’ and she showed him again the photos. No acknowledgement of the fur statement and the purchase went ahead as had been planned even before coming to see him.
The next week was so long, they always were when she was expecting something she bought off the internet. Most days he got home before her, and although she was only 30 minutes away she would call him and ask if the postman had left the notice to go pick it up. They followed this routine until it finally came and she went flying to the post office to get it.
Oh the joy when she was about to open it. He looked at her a bit amused and a bit jealous, she had this capacity for joy and happiness that he missed, he would have liked to be able to get as worked up about things as she did, but he did not, he rarely got worked up about anything.
The coat was indeed stunning! It came in this huge white box, nicely wrapped and it did not smell bad, it only smelled like closed and lavender. When she put it on she seemed like flying. Clara skipped at the mirror and hopped back beaming with joy.
‘Feel it! It is so soft! And look at how the light makes it shine! See the lining? Oh my God, the fastening! Aaaamazing!’
She was overjoyed, and that made him happy.
The joy lasted for a few days an then something happened. One evening, he went to see what she was doing in the living room and he found her sad, all wrapped up in her fur coat, watching TV. He was convinced the coat would only come out for special occasions and now she was watching TV in it? It was not right.
She looked up at him with sad eyes.
‘Are you ok?’ he asked sitting next to her.
‘No! I am not.’
He knew she will tell him all about it, he just had to give her a bit of time. He sat there with her watching a weird game show with big coins falling down.
‘I cannot wear my coat...’ and she started sobbing uncontrollably.
That really was weird.
‘Why can’t you wear your coat? You’re wearing it now. I don’t understand...’
She looked up at him and started crying even harder. He could not but admire the intensity with which she felt everything, she really was in pain.
‘It is a FUR coat, I cannot wear FUR, people will say I am an animal killer, all my friends will judge me. I cannot even mention it online, it has to be a secret.’
She was dead serious.
‘Wait! Hey! But you did not kill any animal, you bought it online, this reasoning makes no sense!’
She stopped crying and was listening to him.
‘It does not have to make sense, it is not about being reasonable or fair, it is about what others think and how they perceive you. Right now, if I wear the coat, it would be like I killed those minks myself in the back garden, it does not matter this happened ages ago. If I wear the coat I will be thrown out of all the groups, people will unfriend me. Disaster.’
‘Oh Clara!’ he hugged her and he felt bad for her, it was clear that she cared so much of that online life she had that it had transgressed into her offline one. She knew them, she knew how they would react, but it was beyond him why she would let them control her life.
‘Clara, look at me! These people do not matter, they are online ghosts, if you disappeared tomorrow they would not even notice. They do not know you, they do not care for you. Oh Clara!’
It did not matter. She was adamant that she can never wear the coat outside the house and that it must be kept a secret.
And this is how the coat became her breakfast outfit.
Sean was annoyed with it, but when October came and Clara would still wear the coat inside the house, would clean it and lovingly take care of it he understood that she really did love that fur coat. She was so hurt that she cannot wear it outside that she would overcompensate with taking care of it.
One evening when he went into the living room the coat was carefully laid on the couch where Clara would usually sit. She was in the kitchen cooking and the coat could not be in the kitchen with all those smells, so she watched TV in the living room.
Sean picked it up and looked at it. It was indeed a most stunning garment. Light and soft, beautiful. He looked at it carefully and at one side on the golden lining there was a tiny label on which little gold letters said the dreaded words, mink coat. He got an idea.
Clara had bought him sometime back a most beautiful rain jacket, one of those fancy ones that lords of the manor wear. It had a very similar label, only that one said 100% Polyester.
He went fetched the coat and Clara. He sat her down on the couch and explained his idea.
‘Replace the label. Nobody will know. They have no idea what mink is supposed to be like, and they make such nice plastic things today, they will believe anything you tell them.’
Clara looked at him stunned, he was so excited, she could not remember the last time he got so worked up abut anything. She did not know what to say, somehow inside her she had gotten used to the pain of not being able to wear the coat outside, that now it almost seemed impossible.
Sean had brought her sewing kit, she was an amazing craftsperson, and he jumped off the couch.
‘I will finish dinner. You get on with it!’
Which she did. The label looked perfect, as it had always belonged there. She took some photos of it and with the coat on and very nervously put them online with the text: ‘Faux fur not faux pas!’
Her wittiness did not go unrewarded and everybody loved her Polyester coat.
The next day the coat went out and it was received with much enthusiasm after her credentials were presented, preloved polyester. Clara was over the moon, she sent Sean a photo of her having a drink with her friends, she was wearing the coat and a cheeky smile brightened her face.
‘That is how you do it!’ he told the loved woman in the photo, and a cheeky smile brightened his face.
Thanks, Alina!
The thing of having almost no followers, like me, protects me from a random, probably big and interesting discussion with other people about this matter. Not that I’m afraid of. On the contrary, I would like to have it! but you know, thinking about algorithms and those kinds of things that decide stuff for us but we don’t see😊, this discussion will stay on hold in the cyberspace of a server somewhere in this earth. For the time being it has been only between you and me and I have had the pleasure to comment on it!
Look forward to your next post which actually reminds me that it is time to write one myself!😉
Nice story! I have two fur coats which I wear when there is very, very cold… which by the way, means, almost never anymore. The wearing of fur coats is a discussion subject that can use a ‘lot of ink’.
I personally don’t agree on killing animals to make things, whatever they are, but if they are dead already you’d better use what you can to make something else. This has been done since humankind exists. It is true that we developed ourselves and we got more ‘human’ and more kind to other animal species that are not human but, we still kill animals for a purpose and will actually continue to do it.
Would someone go to an Inuit or to a Saami and tell them that they cannot use a fur coat made of a reindeer, an attic fox or an arctic wolf? I don’t think so. The thing is that if you want to apply a principle to something (in this case wearing a fur coat) you have to apply it also to a lot of things such wearing leather shoes or bags, eating meat, buy a rug made of pieces of cow’s skin and so on and so forth.
To close my point, fake fur really looks like true fur so, if you walk on the streets with a truly fur coat nobody gives a damn because the ordinary person cannot see the difference. As you say in your text, the truth is in the label! 😉