Dad loved clothes too much. He loved every part of the process: the browsing, the trying on, the holds and layaways, and of course, the buying. He sometimes returned what didn't fit right, but mostly, he kept. He searched, bid, ordered, tracked, unboxed. Dad accumulated clothes and filed them in towers of dustproof boxes labeled “Straw fedora” or “Mossimo dress shirt.” His collection consumed our attic, the unfinished parts of the basement, three closets, and spilled into miscellaneous space—layers of sweaters on the backs of kitchen chairs, jeans laid still warm on sofa arms. The ratty running sneakers he no longer used took up three-quarters of the shoe basket. Paper shopping bags lined our upstairs hallway like storefronts along empty streets.Daddy had a credit card but Daddy didn't seem to pay. He did not open his mail, especially when it said Last Call Important Notice, but he stored every unopened letter we did not secretly throw away. Vis-à-vis plausible deniability: if creditors came calling, he'd never opened the bill.Dad actually really liked clothes. They were his biggest interest, he, a savvy dresser since high school or before. He researched the meaning of “bespoke” and watched documentaries about selvedge. His purchases were not indiscriminate. He had style. He understood fit and fabric and how to accessorize. Strangers complimented his outfits, and he was mistaken for a local in any European country. He looked forward to a fancy event solely for the excuse to dig through his drawers of ties and cufflinks. These things allowed us to drape compulsion with the veil of hobby.The Macy's menswear section was as large as any other department, but Dad's efforts concentrated in Polo Ralph Lauren casualwear. The square footage where he passed the hours was just inside the store perimeter, lush green carpet opening out onto the sterile white tile of our local mall. On the upper level above Auntie Anne's, sometimes the tantalizing scent of cinnamon sugar soft pretzels wafted up with the reminder that it was five o'clock, approaching dinner, and if he stayed much longer, the two young daughters occupying themselves in the clearance racks were going to need to be bribed with a snack.As children, my sister and I had no choice in the matter. We got dragged along for “a quick detour” on the way back from being taken places or picked up. He let us stay in the car while he popped in, leaving it running to keep music playing. Anything longer than a return or preplanned purchase was called “doing errands.” But make no mistake, “doing errands” with my dad meant shopping.My sister and I were experts in waiting. Like any kids, we got squirmy, but it was familiar. Neither of us wore watches, and retail stores avoid the threat of windows and clocks as reminders that people could be elsewhere. Ten minutes would drag on for an hour. We played games. We played so many games with the maze of aisles and the banality of objects that I can't remember them all. We guessed prices on ugly coats. We people watched. We narrated our father's actions like a nature documentary and wagered which items he'd buy. “Here Dad,” we'd smile innocently, handing him madras shorts to see if he did not realize he already owned them. We found ways to distract ourselves from the fact he was spending money we didn't have on things he definitely didn't need.He browsed methodically, fanning through the hangers with a practiced touch. He moved from rack to rack to table display like a pollinating bee. He waited in line for a dressing room or simply held a polo to his torso in front of a mirror to decide. He used to let my sister and me choose between two similar shirts, and we would point at the cheaper one. I felt complicit against my will, old enough to recognize the betrayal but not wise enough to hold my tongue. We begged him not to buy things, even right at the cash register as he paid. I see in retrospect why this drew color to his cheeks, but at the time I aspired to vigilantism. Occasionally, he was convinced to drop an item. He'd give it to us—a hat, a pair of socks on super sale—and we'd run to put it back, gleeful and proud.He bought baseball caps, rugby shirts, sweaters, sweatshirts, preppy chino shorts, dress shirts, dress socks, sneakers, patterned boxer briefs, tie clips, belts, jean jackets. Too much, too frequent. During the act, outwardly dispassionate. On the walk back to the car, he'd push his most recent purchase to the bottom of the bag, wrap it tightly, and toss it in the backseat.Packages arrived daily on our front stoop. He sorted them into piles without opening them. He acquired duplicates, triplicates. A golf ball monogrammer. A shelf of clearance DVDs. Endless squeeze bottles of yellow mustard. And clothes, of course. Mostly clothes. Even he didn't know why he needed to have, to hold onto, but he did.I convinced and unconvinced myself it was not normal. Hoarding meant trash piles and moldy food. Real hoarders were agoraphobic, uncouth, irrational. He was meticulous about laundry and dishes, obedient to “hand wash only.” He made his bed daily. He flossed. He held down a white-collar job for stretches of time. He went to movie theaters and parent conferences; espoused logic and evidence; liked to read pop psychology. Real hoarders wrecked their environments, relationships, and lives with their disorder. We vacuumed and dusted what we could. We argued and loved in regular middle-class intellectual ways. My mother quietly refinanced the house every time the debt got too heavy. She sold heirlooms to pay for my braces. No one in my family mentioned a goddamn thing.We went on like this until I graduated college, and my mom asked him for a divorce.Think of it like an earthquake. Deep within my father, a tectonic plate shifted. If I say what he's done, it will be hard to understand. It is hard for me to understand. There are aftershocks.Ten months later, my dad moves a couple hours west to live with my aging grandmother. He brings very little with him, the first act of combat in a long war. His only ammunition is inertia, leaving his objects at rest. My mother must move them.For one last time, she cleans up his mess, stacking plastic bins in my childhood bedroom nearly to the ceiling. They are primarily clothes new-with-tags and shoes still in their boxes, carefully tried on, refolded, and tucked away. Nice brands, good labels. Mint condition Air Jordans, not his size. He could never pass up a sale.It's been a year, and he still won't take his stuff.If I had to guess, he is afraid to face the magnitude of his volume. The court decides he has ceded his ownership, so we make arrangements to donate it all. The final count: 5,000 pounds spread across 181 boxes. The movers tell my mom it's the girth of a four-person home, and I think: We were once a four-person home.He has been carting household items away in foolish one-off trips, tearing through piles and excising objects he thinks he deserves. “He took the router,” she says. “I had to go to the cable company.”My father sweeps through like a cyclone, leaving things strewn in his wake.My mother: “I just want it all gone, so I can see what remains.”In the weeks before we get rid of his things, I make it my task to open each bin, see what it contains, and loot the good stuff. Knowing the extent of his collection, I hope maybe I'll unearth some clothing from when he was my age and closer to my size.Going through a box, I grab any fabric or pattern that catches my eye and heap them in a pile on my bed. I like stripes and bright colors. I tear through in a double-speed try-on session, and it's kind of fun—like shopping without agonizing over fit or price. If it doesn't look right (and many of the proportions are wildly wrong for my body), I fold the item with a few flicks and set it aside. I roll my eyes at the more garish pieces; no wonder the neon orange sweater was half price. But there is a dark undercurrent to the way I am tenderly picking through, for all the world looking like we are post-funeral, and I am deciding on mementos. Afterward, the chronology of his artifacts will go back no further. His archive is in my hands. I have trouble giving up certain things. A distressed v-neck—he loved that shirt.Among the boxes that do not contain clothes, I find a basket of return labels and price tags, saved just-in-case. An Applebee's voucher that expired sixteen years ago and receipts from even earlier. All that junk mail he squirreled away before we could toss it. I open a small wooden treasure chest. At first glance it appears he has saved some sentimental papers, postcards from a distant friend and early correspondence with my mom, until I uncover a complaint letter he wrote to a hotel, long before I was born, alleging they enticed him with a low rate and then charged something else. There is an eviction notice from his young adulthood nestled alongside a photo of me as a surly preschooler. I don't know what it means that he saved these. I am just glad to have a tangible record of his behavior. My memories of him are hard to hold onto, slippery and unwilling as I grip tighter and tighter, trying to comb through for the truth.As I paw through his stuff, I remember eras, even if I can't pin down ages or dates. I pull out the graphic tee with pinup ladies on it, still puzzled by the intended tone, and recall being mortified and affronted as a high school girl: Dad, you can't wear that in public. Of his dozens of flannels, I recognize certain patterns more than others. I can link a particular brown linen blazer to a photograph of him and me on the beach. The clothes look like him, they smell like him; they have a conversation with me in his stead.In the end I keep a marled cotton sweater, mesh basketball shorts, a couple of soft cashmere scarves, three polos, a bunch of short- and long-sleeved t-shirts, some socks, a braided leather belt, a resistance band for exercise, a thermal running turtleneck. I am thrilled with my haul in ways I'm starting to untangle.The freebies cost nothing, but I weigh the responsibility of owning them. I know that once I have an item, I value it more. It becomes harder to get rid of. Economists call this the endowment effect. From my dad, these boxes are an endowment: Here is its effect.I window shop online for hours and buy nothing. I research any item I'm considering for weeks or months before I get it. I do not know how to consume without worrying about the buying. I do not know how to consume without worrying about what happens if I don't buy: I have already imagined the perfect outfit. Trying it on with all the rest in my closet. Wearing it on a date or to a farmer's market. I tell myself it's okay because I don't have any olive green pants and surely those would be useful? I remember similar justifications from my dad: that this navy raincoat is fleece-lined for cold weather while the navy raincoat he already has is not.I download images onto my laptop from product pages and fashion blogs, tagging them by style and brand. It feels like a good compromise. Better a cluttered hard drive than closet.Late at night, I sometimes realize I've passed the last few hours mired in e-commerce. Frantically exhausting every page of listings for a given search term. Comparing prices and reviews across different stores and checking if it's worth it to go secondhand. I rarely spend any money in these sprees, but I'm awash in guilt all the same. It's as if the depth of desire itself is a sin.I'm no longer a child; my measurements are essentially stable. I'm active, but not rough enough on my clothes that I get holes in anything but socks. My style is converging on something adult. I own many items. They fit me well. My drawers are full. When do I have enough?My mom finds a pair of my boxer briefs in the laundry. “Are these . . . yours?” she says, holding up the gray cotton with pinched fingers. They are too small to be my dad's. I blush and grab them away. “They're good to sleep in.” I see a flash of something across her face. I wonder what she sees of him in me.I find a picture of me as a toddler: long curly hair, a rugby shirt, and corduroys. I confront my mom and ask her why I got put in the hardy stuff, all denim and primary colors, when my sister at the same age was in twirly pink and purple dresses. She waves this off. “Oh, I always liked to put you in boys’ clothes,” she says, which is not actually an answer.I want to be angry with her as if she routed me onto another destiny, flipped some switch. Or worse, she saw something inherent in me, something boyish and queer, before I saw it in myself. I want to be angry, but I don't have a case. I did look cute. I looked happy. What difference does it make if I found it again in the end?My dad doesn't know I'm a lesbian, although maybe he does. He tied my necktie at age fourteen and sent me off to middle school with the compliment that I wore it well. On our joint trips to the mall, rare and voluntary by adolescence, he wondered aloud don't you want to check out the women's stuff? but was unperturbed when I stayed with him. Sometimes I ducked into the adjacent lingerie changing rooms with the smallest sizes of men's clothing I could find. My dad would not question me about what I did in the intimates section. To avoid the suspicion of sales associates, I hid my pile with a silk nightgown draped on top. This probably looked worse.When I bought my first menswear in late high school, I was by myself. In the thrift store dressing room, I shrugged into a Gap button-down, size small, slim-fit. I worked my way up the front placket, then fiddled at the cuffs, suddenly understanding the necessity of each quintessentially dapper movement. I saw my reflection and felt a surge of euphoria. With a French braid and men's shirt in my proper size, I yielded to multitudes. I kept the shirt folded in my bottom drawer until I moved out for college.In undergrad, I was out to everyone from the start. It was easier there, freed of prior conceptions, to dress how I wanted. I was no longer compelled to soften a masculine outfit with earrings. I got rid of my low-cut shirts. I felt I had stopped running from something. Or maybe it had finally caught up.I grew bold enough to wear some of these things when I went home. My dad was once taken aback when I came downstairs in a green plaid button-down. It came from the boys’ section, so it was unmistakably male but sized appropriately for my arms and shoulders. He has a similar one, he said warily, skeptical that it could fit me so well if I have stolen it from his closet. “No,” I told him, “it's mine.”My dad has a way of never looking at people directly. Our relationship is marked by unspoken contemplation of the other, by pauses and second takes. I used to live for those rare moments I could feel his sideways glance. I held my breath to see if he'd ask a question.It's a mild January night in the city, two years since the divorce. My sister and I communicate with our dad sparingly, the bare minimum to set up visits with my grandmother and placate his barrage of email. Otherwise nothing. This is the first time I will see him one-on-one since our family unraveled. I'm feeling at home in myself and my clothes: dark jeans and a loose purplish t-shirt (his, formerly) and brown leather boots. The boots are the nicest item of clothing I've ever bought, but I do not want to talk about them with him. I consider the risk and reward, ultimately convincing myself of the unlikelihood he will notice anything in the dim restaurant.We get dinner in a French bistro, sitting at the bar but neither of us drinking. It feels like a fumbling one-act. He tells me about his problems, the way the world is wrong and he is right, and I nod sympathetically. When we don't talk, I can ascribe nuanced feelings and motivations to the man who had a hand in raising me. As soon as he opens his mouth, or clicks “compose,” or taps out a text, the illusion is gone.I take a secret pleasure in wearing the boots to dinner and escaping unremarked. I scuff my heels on the sidewalk as I wait for the bus, relieved in the cool air.My dad is not dead. He is just inaccessible to me. The person he is right now is not the father I grew up with; he is judgmental, paranoid, unrelenting. If this is who he always was, I didn't used to know.I think about the rest of the clothes, shipped off to Goodwill. I don't know how far they spread—whether some lucky gent in his size hit the jackpot in New Jersey or Oklahoma or if they crisscrossed the country in tractor-trailers. Sometimes I feel queasy when I imagine a stranger in his clothes. Sometimes I feel fine.A few years ago, I considered shopping for a suit, thinking maybe eventually I'd wear it to a nice meal with him, just us two. He could see me grown up into comfortable butch womanhood. I have never really dressed this way around him. Maybe I'd wear it to my wedding.I did not end up buying a suit.He cannot know me like that. He does not get to.When I video chat my grandmother, my dad picks up. Once, he greets me with “You look tired.” He has time for only a few words before handing her the laptop.“Thanks, Dad,” I say, unsure whether to take it as an expression of concern or a barb.There is only one voice I hear when I try on clothes. He likes the pattern. He thinks my outfit is interesting in a good way. He thinks I should get it, of course, and if I'm considering two, get them both. He reminds me I can always return one later. For all the clothes I buy that my dad has never seen, I know what he'd say about them. He would have liked my boots, those Goodyear welt lace-ups I splurged on one December. He thinks a band tee has a cool design. I want my dad to love my clothes. I realize this now.The hand-me-down I reach for over and over is a reversible t-shirt, super soft and double layered. One side is cream colored with an embroidered logo; the other, gray with faded branding. The neck is strangely wide and the torso is short. I can only vaguely recall my dad wearing it, but it's just right for a tomboy. Now, I pull it on to putter around the apartment or cozy up before bed. My associations with this shirt are for its own sake: It came from my dad, but I made it mine.I rummage through my drawers in the morning. I think: I cannot wear this shirt today because I cannot have my dad too close right now, because the wounds of our recent interaction are still stinging; because I need to focus on the lecture and I'll end up watching my own Zoom screen instead; because I'm going to visit my mom and I don't want to make her feel sad.I cannot wear shorts because I will measure the proportion of my muscular calves and hear my mother's voice saying, as I sat stretching after a run, “You have your Daddy's legs.” He took me on my first run.I cannot even wear my own wool sweaters anymore without rubbing the fabric between my fingers to feel the quality. This trademark gesture of his when handed a garment for inspection.So I put on something neutral. A college t-shirt. Jeans.Ever since I started writing this essay, I keep a mental catalogue when I get dressed. There are days it's only the socks that were his. Otherwise it's every single thing. I am grappling with how to interpret and explain him. How to explain me in relation to him. It is an act of love and also of necessary self-preservation. I am making a choice to tell these things, and he may never speak to me again.He and I have matching baseball caps and hoodies from my college sports team. My sweatshirt bears my name and class year embroidered on the sleeve. His says Fencing Dad. He came to nearly all my meets wearing the hoodie and hat. My dad, notorious for stowing clothes away for years at a time, kept these within easy reach. Would even put them on as regular weekend wear. He was so proud. It breaks my heart.He can't wear the sweatshirt without thinking of me. I am glad he knows what that's like.I put on a soft vintage-wash orange polo to meet my mom and sister for lunch. They notice immediately, ask if it was Dad's. I tell them yes. “It looks good,” my mom says. “Fits you well.”How does a size medium fit both me and my dad? It fits in different ways.Some days I wear dykey muscle tanks and spandex shorts and work boots. I have a favorite pair of overalls and a crimson jumpsuit. He wouldn't be caught dead in that stuff. This is how I dress when I need to excavate myself. Ever since I cut my hair short, there are candid photos where the resemblance in my expression stuns me. My reflection: a superposition.Right before we got rid of all his clothes—when I was still trying to convince him to take them—my father came to visit me in grad school. I wouldn't let him buy a t-shirt with the school name. We had ambled into the bookstore per his request, and he predictably started thumbing through the apparel. Very gently, I said I would rather he didn't jinx anything before I got my degree. An honest reason, if convenient. I suppose he heard the vulnerability in my voice because he stepped back from the racks. He frowned slightly but acquiesced.The fault lines between us have widened since then, but I do think, if I make it through my graduate program, I will send him a shirt. I don't know what I could possibly write in the note. He will remember, though. The shirt will say enough.Nowadays, I am almost always wearing something of his. It's been a long time since he was in my vicinity in any other way. He is with me through my day, top of mind when I rise and when I sleep. It's an inheritance, a burden, a privilege. I get dressed, and I feel like I am waiting for a sign. Sometimes it's too much, but there is no alternative.We have never been further apart.