A letter from a reader

At 63, I found out the sweater most people saw me in was the one I kept on the back seat for the air conditioning

The only official thing I have written in years is my name and address on a jury summons, and I went so blank at the courthouse that I had to think twice about my own zip code. So I am not a writer, and it has never been my place to tell another woman what she ought to put on.

But three different women asked me about my cardigan at jury duty on Monday, and I have now explained it so many times since that it seemed easier to write it all down once.

It started with my daughter, back in September. We had been to lunch, and it was ninety-four degrees in the parking lot. I reached into the back seat of the car on the way into the pharmacy, pulled on my old cardigan the way I have done a thousand times, and she stood there on the sidewalk and looked at me.

Mom, you always look so nice. Right up until you walk inside.

I laughed, because she was laughing. Then I caught myself in the pharmacy window. The cardigan was the color of dishwater, it had stretched nearly to my knees, and the cuffs had gone baggy years ago. I had kept that thing on the back seat for nineteen years, purely for the air conditioning, and I had never once thought about what it looked like. It was not for looking at. It was for being cold in.

Here is what she meant, and what I had not worked out. In Texas, nobody sees you in your nice blouse. They see you in whatever you put on over it the minute the doors close behind you.

How it happens

Anybody who has lived down here knows you need a sweater more in August than you do in January. Every doctor’s office, every church, every grocery store and every movie theater in this state is kept cold enough to hang meat.

So we all have one. The air conditioning sweater. It lives in the car or on the back of the chair at church, and because it is only for the cold, nobody ever buys it on purpose. You buy it in a hurry, in beige or oatmeal, the week you get a chill in the eye doctor’s waiting room. Then you keep it for twenty years.

And the stores do not help. Go and look at what they put out for a woman my age who just wants to be warm indoors. Shapeless throw-ons in the same three sad colors, long enough to sit on, all of it described as easy, which I have come to understand means nobody thought about you very hard.

It is not your fault you have one. It is not mine either. It just happens, one cold waiting room at a time.

What I had wrong

Here is the part I had most wrong.

I thought a cardigan for the air conditioning and a cardigan to be seen in were two different things, and that the first kind did not matter. Warm, or nice. I had picked warm without ever noticing I was picking.

My friend Carol set me straight without meaning to. We had lunch at the cafeteria the next week, which keeps its dining room about as cold as the inside of the pie case. She never took her cardigan off the whole time, a soft gray one with little gold hearts for buttons, and it looked like part of the outfit, not something she had grabbed from the car.

I sat across from her in my dishwater one and asked where she had found it. She said, Peggy, it does the exact same job as yours. It just does it nicer.

It had honestly never occurred to me that the cold-weather sweater was allowed to be the nice one.

The cardigan is called the Elsie

It is from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now. Carol had bought hers there, and I went and looked that same evening.

It is called the Elsie. A soft gray knit with a deep V at the neck, a tall ribbed hem that sits at the hip, ribbed cuffs, and four little gold hearts running down the front for buttons. It comes in black, white, red, pink and purple as well, which I will come back to.

It is soft and cozy without any bulk, so it goes over a blouse without making me look like I am wearing two of everything. The fit is relaxed but it hangs straight down the front instead of drooping, and it stops where a cardigan ought to stop, not halfway to my knees.

Those four little hearts are what everybody notices. They are small, they are not fussy, and they turn a plain gray cardigan into something that looks like you chose it.

There is nothing complicated about it. It is just a cardigan somebody thought about.

What happened at jury duty

The summons came in September, and I will be honest, my first thought was not about justice. It was about that courthouse. It is a grand old building downtown, and it is kept so cold that people bring blankets.

I wore the Elsie for the first time that Monday, over a white blouse with my gray slacks. We sat in the jury room from eight in the morning, a hundred and some of us on rows of wooden chairs, waiting for our numbers to be called.

The woman next to me asked about it before the coffee had even gone around. A young woman across the aisle asked at the lunch break. And the third was the bailiff, who has stood at that door for twenty-six years and, as far as any of us could tell, had not enjoyed a single one of them. She looked me up and down while she checked my name and said, Ma’am, you look like you came to swear the rest of us in.

From her, that is a verdict.

What I noticed more than the compliments was that I sat in that cold room for seven hours and never once wished I had worn something else. They sent us home at three without picking me, and I walked out into the sunshine still wearing it, which I would never have done with the old one.

I had it on again Tuesday morning at the grocery store, in the frozen aisle of all places, and felt exactly like myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. Buy the size you are now. It goes from a small right up to a 5XL, and it is the same relaxed cut the whole way up, not a different shape once you pass a certain number. I took my usual large and there is room for a blouse underneath and nothing else, which is the point.

Two. It goes over everything. A white blouse and slacks for the courthouse, a plain T-shirt and jeans for errands, and over my navy dress for church on Sunday. I have not had to buy one new thing to go with it.

Three. The car sweater is not just for the car. I keep the Elsie on the back seat now, the same as the old one, but I put it on before I get out of the car instead of after I start shivering. Nobody has seen me in dishwater since.

About the price

I will be straight with you, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Elsie is $47.95. It was $96.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that at the department store for a cardigan that pilled before Thanksgiving.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no big store taking a cut in the middle, and they have a sale on right now while the first of the fall stock comes in.

I do not trust a perfect score, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which is exactly why I kept reading. One woman from Hondo had written, “I wear it in every cold building in town and I have stopped grabbing the ugly one from the car.”

Then I ordered the black one as well, for church.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you were sitting on my front porch with a glass of iced tea, this is what I would tell you.

Go out to your car and look at what is on the back seat. If the sweater you keep for the air conditioning is one you would never wear out the front door, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look at this one.

Not because a cardigan will change your life. It will not. But you spend more hours indoors in that sweater than in anything else you own, and I would rather you looked like yourself in all of them.

Two practical things. The sale is on right now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first, which I found out because the large in black was gone the first time I went back. And the first of the fall stock is already going, and once this stock is gone, it is gone.

I look the same on both sides of the door now.

Peggy