my aunt pattie drove me up to natchitoches at the beginning of my senior year in high school. my mom was out of town for work, so she couldn't take me; my dad, as one of the conditions for signing the permission form for me to go to lsmsa, had said he would not, under any circumstances, drive to natchitoches.
so aunt pattie, my godmother, my mom's eldest sibling, loaded up mimi and grandpa's car and made the five-hour drive. we talked the whole time. my mom says aunt pattie is like a dog with a bone. she's relentless. sometimes she's right. often she is inappropriate. my family thinks she's insane. she is a little insane. she always means well.
when i was in fifth grade, aunt pattie came over to our house to borrow something from my mom, it was something makeup-related, and my mom wasn't home but i showed her where mom kept her makeup stuff in the bathroom. when i opened the makeup drawer, aunt pattie gave a little gasp and started laughing. i asked her what she was laughing at. she pointed to a tube of something and explained that it was for a diaphragm. i didn't know what a diaphragm was. she explained that, too. my mother hadn't told me she used a diaphragm. she'd told me that they used the rhythm method. i felt like she'd lied to me. it turned into this whole ordeal where i confronted her about her 'lie,' very uncomfortably, and we had this awkward conversation about birth control. this is the kind of trouble we get into because of aunt pattie, who doesn't give a shit about anyone else's boundaries.
it's not so much that she's brutally honest as she is tactless and compulsive. on the drive up to natchitoches she told me a lot of stories about our family, things you could file under 'family secrets you never wanted to know.' some of it still sickens me to think about. nothing particularly illegal or immoral. just hard to hear.
there was this one story, though, about my uncle steve. he's the second-born, right between aunt pattie and my mom. there are eight kids total, and my grandparents were militantly strict. all of the kids felt compelled to sneak out of the house at some point or another to have a little bit of unsupervised fun. if they were caught and questioned, they lied their asses off. except for uncle steve. he stood straight up and told the truth, every time, and every time he got a beating for it. the other kids cringed to hear it and waited for him to learn his lesson. not the one about sneaking out. the other one, about lying when you get caught. but he never did. he just kept taking the beating.
aunt pattie said, "i guess it was noble, or something. mostly i thought stephen was stupid."
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i, unlike my uncle steve, will lie to get myself out of trouble. i forgive myself for this by saying that sometimes the trouble you would get into by telling the truth is disproportionate to the delinquent act you performed. it is an excuse. i do not have the courage of uncle steve, who fucked around and accepted the consequences. also i am a terrible liar, and plagued by a pervasive sense of guilt even under normal circumstances. thus, as a cowardly, incompetent, guilt-stricken liar, i try to avoid any situation that might get me into trouble. i am, for the most part, a pathogical rule-follower. there is nothing noble about this, because it is entirely motivated by fear.
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my car got totalled a few weeks ago and i bought a '99 corolla to replace it. it is my first car, the first car that is mine. the other one was in my dad's name. my dad had been making noise for a while about how run down the old corolla was. i thought maybe he would help me buy a new car. my mom isn't in a position financially to help me out at all. my dad, on the other hand, just bought an airplane.
so it's the day after christmas. michael and i are on our way to dad's house to open presents. at this point i'm not sure if i'm going to repair the old corolla or buy a new one. either way it's going to cost money, which my mom doesn't have. also, the night before, on the drive to new orleans, an eighteen-wheeler passed me on the interstate and threw a rock, which hit the windshield of the rental car. i heard the rock hit, and looked for a mark in the glass, but didn't see anything--but now, in the daylight--on the way to my dad's house--a crack about twelve inches across and curving downwards. i hadn't taken out the rental car insurance, because i'm cheap.
i walk into my dad's house and tell him about the windshield and he says, did you take out the insurance? and i say no. and he says, you just bought yourself a windshield.
he and michael babble on about how it's about time that i got a new car, the only thing dad liked about the old corolla was that it was so ugly he never worried about me getting carjacked.
and none of my christmas presents are car keys.
i realize that whatever happens with this car business, it is coming out of my pocket, and mine alone.
i cry for an hour. then i realize that i now have total control over what happens to my car. i cry for four more hours, but also tell my mother to stop talking at me about the car stuff, because it doesn't matter, because she's not going to pay for it, because she can't, and dad's not going to pay for it, because he won't. so i'll pay for it, so it's my decision. so just stop. and let me cry.
she says, i don't know, it sounds like dad might help.
and i said, no, he won't.
and he doesn't buy me a car.
instead, he is on the phone. he is offering advice. it's not the usual advice i get from him, like "garbage in garbage out" or "choose to be happy" or "the truth will set you free" or "you are emotionally scarring your brother for life." instead it's how to buy a used car, which is all i can reasonably afford. and it's not even 'how i think you should buy a car' but objective information on the process. what to say on the phone when you're cold-calling someone about an ad in the paper, questions to ask, what to look for, what to believe, what to avoid. the third time i called him, i asked him, "are you sick of me yet?" and he said, "no."
so he is on call, always picking up the phone on the first or second ring, always willing, always patient. when it comes time to ask this guy from the houston craigslist about coming to look at his car, my dad says to haggle with him over the price. i don't want to. he says, "it's your money, and your decision. if it were me, and a thousand dollars out of my pocket, i'd try to haggle. the worst he can say is no."
i tell him, "i don't know what to say. i'm scared." and he says, "let's practice."
we rehearse the conversation, and i feel sick, and i say, "i might cry."
he says, "and then--what would happen?"
i'm tearing up already. i don't know, what.
"your face would be wet. that's what would happen."
and he told me, you're doing the best you can do, or anyone else, you're doing a good job. if you keep on just like you've been, you'll be doing very, very well.
and i already knew that i didn't want him to do it for me. but i hadn't realized, until he said it, that i wanted reassurance. and coming from him.
at some point in the middle of everything i think i am grateful that i am being forced to buy this car myself. that this is part of being a grown-up and my dad is doing me a favor. it's good that i have to pay a $250 deductible towards a new windshield for the stupid fucking rental car. i have all sorts of backwards gratitude like this towards my parents. i'm grateful to my mom for being a working mom while all my friends' moms stayed at home and baked cookies. even though she was always too busy. i'm grateful to my parents for hiring a housekeeper from nicaragua, who kept me in her house like i was her own kid. who else gets that kind of opportunity to live between class and cultural boundaries. even though i hated it at the time. and in college i paid my own rent and my own bills. and hired my own moving trucks. other kids' parents pay their rent. other kids' parents help them move. but i do it myself.
other kids' parents buy them cars as graduation presents.
my dad gave me a hundred dollars cash for graduation. in one dollar bills. and that card about the mouse pushing elephants up a hill. that was for college. he left my high school graduation early. and then we didn't talk for four months.
i am grateful and angry.
mostly grateful.
or, i shove the angry part down and live with it.
finally i found my car, the '99 corolla. i bought it from this guy out in prairieville who had just gotten a new truck for his family. it was $5250, which put it within my 'comfortably affordable' price range, with low mileage, and a CD player. it hadn't been flooded in the hurricane, unlike the 2003 mazda protege they tried to sell me at lakeside toyota. it hadn't been bought at an auction by an auto broker. it had never been a rental car.
really my criteria was: an affordable, not-old corolla, with a CD player.
the guy i bought it from is a state farm agent named david. he is buddies with my uncle mike. uncle mike is my insurance agent, also with state farm. he and david are state farm best friends. uncle mike stayed at david's house for the hurricane.
but i didn't know any of this. i found the guy's ad in the sunday advocate, new year's day, and called him up.
when i went to david's house to sign the bill of sale, he told me he'd left the purchase amount blank. he explained that a lot of people claim on their bill of sale that they paid much less for their used car than they actually did. this saves them money on taxes for the car. i knew it already, the houston craigslist guy had told me, but i thought it was kind of sketchy so i didn't tell my dad about it.
david says, it's totally up to you. pretty much everyone does it. but if you tell me to write $5250, i'll write it.
and i hesitated. and i explained to him about being a pathological rule-follower. or, as my mom likes to say--although i really hate it--a weenie.
he said it was fine, and he wrote in the full amount.
so i called my dad afterwards and told him all about it and told him that david had offered to write in less but because i am pathetic i said to write the full amount.
and my dad was quiet for a minute.
and he said, "you told the truth. there's nothing pathetic about that. how much money would you have saved if you had written in '$1' for your car? maybe you would have saved five hundred dollars in taxes. but is your conscience worth five hundred dollars?"
he said, "i'd been wondering what you were going to do when that situation came up. you told the truth. you did the right thing. i'm proud of you."
i can't remember the last time my dad was proud of me.