Invincible 4: Indiscretions and Fancy Cars

This is part four in a seven-part serial that will run every Tuesday and Thursday for the remainder of March. This piece was included in full in our recent collection of spiritual writing, Spiritus Oppidum, Vol. 1. Past and future online installments can be found here.

I made it through school. My class wasn’t big by today’s standards, but I still graduated fifth overall, with a degree in chemical engineering. My folks were so proud of me, they drove me around town, calling on friends and neighbors and introducing me as “The College Grad” or “The Scientist”. Serious employment offers were made to me, some on the table before my degree was even in my hand. You may have heard of some of my suitors: Dow? DuPont? Upjohn? Parke-Davis? Ring a bell? Christ, everyone was after me, it seemed. Overwhelmed? Does a bear shit in the woods? Who the hell was I, anyway? Nobody, that’s who. I was what some of my schoolmates referred to (with a sniff of the upturned nose) as “shanty Irish,” living on Table Talk pies through school, only the second generation born on US soil. No friends in high places. No trust funds. I (and my folks) had worked and sacrificed for some of the money that got me through college – thank God for that scholarship.

The salary numbers they were tossing around back in those days were beyond my wildest dreams, money that it took my parents, combined, years to earn, even as hard as they worked. Ultimately, I went with the company that I wound up staying with until I retired, one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical manufacturers. You’d recognize the name if I said it, if only from seeing them all over the news some years back. They had offered me the most generous and comprehensive package, the one that went the furthest beyond those aforementioned Wildest Dreams. And I bit, my friends – hook, line, and sinker. To my eternal shame, I bit. And as time went on, my wildest dreams grew even wilder.

For many years after my hire date, it was business as usual. I was learning the ropes, and while doing so, was able to have a hand in a number of significant developments in the pharmaceutical world. Again, you can fire up the internet and research all you want about those things. My dedication and work ethic (at such a time as I had one, that is), combined with what was, prior to a significant raise, described to me as my “unparalleled quality of work”, meant rapid advancement. Even for a veteran overachiever like myself, the rise from Newbie to Up-and-Comer to Whiz Kid was, frankly, meteoric. I was given more and more responsibilities, and time after time showed myself to be worthy of them. I only screwed up bad once, but of course it was a doozy. Fortunately, I have alcohol to blame for it.

Came a Christmas party in the late eighties – no, wait…better make that the early eighties. Christ, it has been a while, hasn’t it?

I had helped myself to one or three too many dirty gin martinis (Bombay Sapphire with extra olives, of course) and wound up in the coatroom of the function hall the company had rented with a coworker of mine, a young lady who was many years my junior. At the time, she was an intern from a nearby university, and we had been working together on a project – something having to do with blood pressure, if memory serves – so we knew each other. A little too well, was the feeling of my superiors. In the aftermath, she wound up keeping her internship and getting transferred to a different department. I, being the Golden Boy, received a scolding from my supervisor, whose mouth may have been lecturing me on the dangers of Shitting Where You Eat, but whose eyes were saying give me all the juicy details. Not that I blame him, she was a fucking fox. 

That slip-up caused me, after so many years, to dig through some boxes in the attic of the house I was living in at the time and pull out that doll father had schooled me with at the dump. With part of me still smarting from that reprimand (and another part of me aching for what I wasn’t getting anymore), I held that thing in my hands, thinking about Dad’s words: keep smiling and let it all roll off. I even said it out loud, and not just once, but three times. Like a charm. It may sound corny, but to my surprise, it made a big difference. I felt, well…renewed. Re-armored against the world’s bullshit. My lady friend would be in her sixties by now, assuming she’s still upright and sucking wind. Now and then I wonder what became of her. I hope she fared well.

It was also around this time that I had successfully justified to myself the purchase of an exotic automobile. A dark, subtle green it was, and equipped with a mid-mounted twelve cylinder engine and leather seats so soft it required all a man’s willpower to exit the vehicle, “Suzy”, as I named her, was a beautiful piece of equipment. Rolling art. Hand-built in Europe, with a lot of vowels in her manufacturer’s name (which I’m sure you would recognize if I mentioned), I paid more for her than I ever, as a boy, would have imagined I would pay for a car.

Shortly after I bought her, I brought her back to the home place when I went to visit my family, foolishly thinking my folks would approve. Rather than asking for a ride, they just stood there, nodding their heads and sneaking sideways glances at each other that I’m sure they thought I didn’t notice. My mother made a neutral comment on the color of her interior as she wrung her hands on her apron. I lifted the bonnet to show Dad the engine, thinking that might pique his interest. I was wrong. The majority of the comments I was able to coax out of him came at the end of my all-too-brief visit.

“Car musta been a pretty penny.” This time there was no hat brim to obscure his eyes. Or the unflinching and somehow suspicious way they looked at me.

I shrugged. “Dad, it’s only money. But the car’s gorgeous, don’t you think?”

“Only money, huh?”

“I get paid really well, Dad. That whole going to college thing? Remember?” I looked for a sign that told me he considered the former justified by the latter, and found none. He just looked at me in that unsettling way, as if I were a dog of unknown temperament, one which may bite. “Don’t worry about it, Dad. I can afford it. Besides, I always wanted one.” I shrugged again, not sure whether I was doing it to show my father it was No Big Deal…or to reassure myself.

“Never heard you mention anything about wanting one of these,” he said, making no effort to hide the distaste on his face. Or in his voice.

Eons passed while I groped for a retort. “Well, I did,” was all I could come up with. His eyes never left mine, and he never blinked.

“Money changes things, Moe, it changes people – “

“Dad, would you just s – “

“ – and rarely for the better.” By this time it was just father and I out there, standing by Suzy’s driver door. Mother had found her way back into the house somehow. She must have forgotten to say goodbye.

“Are you honestly giving me a ration of shit right now for being successful? For buying myself a fucking car?!” Anger – or was it shame? – hit me like an open palm. I could feel the blush climb out from under my collar. Here I was, a guy who finished fifth in his Ivy League college class, now making hundreds of thousands of dollars, in his motherfucking forties, being (successfully!) made to feel an inch tall by his own stooped, arthritic, paisley-suspenders-wearing father. My subconscious cried out how dare he!

“I want you to be careful, Moe. That’s all. Be careful.”

“I will. Don’t worry about it. It’s all good. Everything’s fine.”

My folks raised no fools, my friends. I know when I’m not wanted. After making brief conversation about my siblings and their respective relationships and families, I left. On the drive home I remember repeating those words to myself as I watched the tachometer climb, listened to the engine growl, felt the wind rip at the modicum of hair I had left: “Everything’s fine. Fine. Just…fine.”

It wasn’t, though.

Not then. Not down the road a piece, either.

Not even close.