“Pretend you do not know. You sell lederhosen to that man and that man sell lederhosen to me. That way, there is no shame to your policy. Please, I beg you. I may never come back to Germany. If I do not buy lederhosen now, I will never buy lederhosen.”

“Hmph,” the old man pouted. He thought for a few seconds, then turned to the other old man and spoke a stream of German. They spoke back and forth several times. Then, finally, the large man turned back to the mother and said, “Very well, madame. As exception—very exception, you please understand—ve vill know nossink of ziss matter. Not so many come from Yapan to buy lederhosen, and ve Germans not so slow in ze head. Please find man very like your husband. My brother he says ziss.”

“Thank you,” she said. Then she managed to thank the other brother in German: “Das ist so nett von Ihnen.”

SHE — THE DAUGHTER who’s telling me this story—folds her hands on the table and sighs. I drink the last of my coffee, long since cold. The rain keeps coming down. Still no sign of my wife. Who’d have ever thought the conversation would take this turn?

“So then?” I interject, eager to hear the conclusion. “Did your mother end up finding someone with the same build as your father?”

“Yes,” she says, utterly without expression. “Mother sat on a bench looking for someone who matched Father’s size. And along came a man who fit the part. Without asking his permission—it seems the man couldn’t speak a word of English—she dragged him to the lederhosen shop.”

“The hands-on approach,” I joke.

“I don’t know. At home, Mother was always a normal sensible-shoes woman,” she said with another sigh. “The shopkeepers explained the situation to the man, and the man gladly consented to stand in for Father. He puts the lederhosen on, and they’re pulling here and tucking there, the three of them chortling away in German. In thirty minutes the job was done, during which time Mother made up her mind to divorce Father.”

“Wait,” I say, “I don’t get it! Did something happen during those thirty minutes?”

“Nothing at all. Only those three German men ha-ha-ha-ing like bellows.”

“But what made your mother do it?”