Measurements 
by Melissa Ostrom


Mattie works at Chandler’s in the Franklin Mall and has for over a year, ever since she turned sixteen. The store, across from Gram’s Cookies and in between Beauty Essentials and Santa Claus Classics, sells conservative men’s apparel: oxfords, polos, slacks, jeans, and sweaters, all well-made, blandly colored, and predictably patterned. The complicated sizing confounds her. Specific in arm length, inseam, neck circumference, and waistline, it strikes Mattie as an unnecessary and stupid sham, like a boring person with a fancy name, the kind with a number attached at the end. The Third.

Mattie thinks a pervert must have devised the sizing system. It makes sure men, old enough to be her father, sometimes hairy enough to be gorillas, get to be handled personally. She is brisk as she measures the scratchy necks and the beer guts. She stands as far away as she can while she runs the tape from the middle of the backs, over the shoulders, and down to the wrists.

No, Sir. I do not measure inseams.

Thanks, but I’m already seeing someone.

Excuse me, but I think the manager should help you.

She deals with nonsense on a regular basis. And just to make life worse, every so often, a man sidles out of the dressing room with his fly down. On purpose.

Since starting at Chandler’s, she has saved almost all of her earnings for college. There is nothing for her to buy at Chandler’s, and her shift ends at the mall’s nine o’clock closing, so she can’t escape to the stores with fun clothes, sensibly sized and interesting.

Instead, she gets her purse from the backroom, says goodbye to Judy or Deb, whoever is in charge that night, and leaves, at once encountering outside Chandler’s the cinnamon scent of Santa Claus Classics then passing the lily perfumes of Beauty Essentials and finally entering the sugared vanilla zone of Gram’s Cookies.

Some nights, Tina at the cookie counter calls Mattie over and offers her a small bag of free treats, leftovers from the evening’s baking. Mattie thanks her and goes to the exit doors to wait for her father to pick her up. The cookies, still warm from their heated glass cases, are very small and chewy. She eats them then licks the chocolate from her finger and thumb. With her tongue, she checks her lips for crumbs.

She wishes she had a glass of milk, thinks about the homework she has to finish before bedtime, and waits for her father’s car to appear in the emptying lot. The tall-poled lamps shine over the numbered aisles, spot by spot, row by row, in a precise illumination. The lights are like stars that could be beautiful, if only they weren’t organized in such a tedious constellation.