245: Allure of the Mean Friend

Ira Glass

In a way, the story is always the same. There was this kid. She was mean, she was popular. It's such a fixture of childhood, you can just walk up to a kid on the sidewalk or at a public pool, and they'll tell you.

Ira Glass

We talked to a high school sophomore about all this, Lillie Allison, 15, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And she said, in high school anyway, it's kind of like the laws of nature. Someone will always wind up on top.

Ira Glass

In Lillie's class, the girls like that-- the popular ones-- had been her best friends.

Ira Glass

Lillie got kicked out at the beginning of this summer. She made a mistake. She didn't do what the other girls wanted at some party. So they called up to kick her out.

Ira Glass

Of course it doesn't always end in high school. And this isn't just about teenage girls. There are popular bullies in business and politics-- very successful ones in politics. Our movies and TV shows are full of them. There's an entire industry of gangster rap. Today on our show, the allure of the mean friend, and what is so alluring about them in the first place, explained. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass. Our show today in four acts.

Act One, Return to the Scene of the Crime. In that act, Jonathan Goldstein interrogates the girls, now grown up, who terrorized him and his classmates years ago in school, and finds that they can be just as scary as ever.

Act Two, Does Niceness Pay? In that act, we conduct a little scientific experiment on tape with hidden microphones about whether niceness can triumph and be rewarded in a normal business setting, a setting that will surely be familiar to you.

Act Three, And What's Going On with You? A case study in every word out of a friend's mouth meaning its exact opposite.

Act Four, Keeping It In the Family. In that act, Bernard Cooper's amazing story about the bill that he got from his own father for, well, the entire cost of his childhood. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, Return to the Scene of the Crime. It wasn't hard for Jonathan Goldstein to find the girl who terrorized him in high school. Up until a year ago, they were roommates.

Jonathan Goldstein

Sometimes when I'm talking with my friend Jackie Cohen, I will suddenly stop and just look at her. I look at her as though I've only just then realized who it is I am sitting there talking with. "Jackie Cohen," I will say, shaking my head in disbelief. "Jackie Cohen." For you see, Jackie Cohen was the meanest, most popular girl in our junior high, a shepherd among sheep. Nowadays, Jackie Cohen and I are friends, good friends. In fact, for two years we were roommates, during which time she was a very nurturing figure in my life, cooking for me, taking care of the bills, and doing most if not all of the cleaning. My domestic role is confined to stuff like drinking Jim Beam and keeping her up past her bedtime with my impression of Robert De Niro and Edith Bunker doing the lobster scene from Annie Hall.

"Alvy, a lobster crawled into my purse."

Just the same, sometimes when I feel like it, I can see her through the eyes of my grade seven self. And when I do that and say the words, "Jackie Cohen," it is as though it is no longer just the name of the woman before me, but a name for something famous like a soft drink or a rock band. If I could go back in time and tell the young Jonathan Goldstein that one day he would be friends with the most popular girl at Western Laval Junior High, that young Jonathan Goldstein, taking in the utter absurdity of such a proposition, would laugh convulsively until his nose produced mucus and his eyeglasses needed adjusting.

Let me explain to you the power that was Jackie Cohen's. So great was her authority than in grade seven, my best friend, Robert Ceolic wore a three-piece suit to school with the intention of asking her out for souvlaki. I'll never forget the exhilarated look on his face as he ran back to our locker bank to tell me that, while Jackie Cohen had turned him down, she did say that they could be "hi, bye" friends. This meant that when they saw each other in the halls, they could nod to each other, hi and bye. Robert loosened his necktie like a middle-aged ad exec who had just closed an important account.

Another thing was that Jackie Cohen didn't like bad smells. She liked nice smells, like perfumed fancy erasers or freshly mimeographed sheets of paper. So if someone's smell was not to her taste, she would leave a note on their desk. The note would read, "You smell. Use deodorant." Jackie Cohen would call it being honest.

Jackie Cohen was also the only 13-year-old girl in school who could actually pull off a successful withering look. There was a month where I sat behind her, and one time during a French dictation, I was seized with an uncontrollable attack of coughing. It would later be diagnosed as a whooping cough that would leave me in bed for a week with a fever of 103, but at that moment, it was nothing more, nothing less, than a nuisance to Jackie. She let me know this by whipping her head around, her straight brown hair lashing about like a thousand throwing stars, and witheringly looking me straight in the eye. Jackie turned back around and I'd grit my teeth, vowing not to allow a single cough to escape my mouth.

My eyes tearing, I clenched my fists and I trembled. I knew, objectively speaking, that Jackie Cohen's dictation was more important than my own health. I knew that.

The teacher, finally seeing my condition, send me out to get some water. At the fountain, just as I was about to drink, my knees buckled and I began to throw up. I wasn't the kind of kid who vomited much, and the experience felt very personal, sort of like crying in your underwear. The Special Ed teacher in the room next to the bathroom came out and walked me back to my class.

Jackie, who sat beside the door, as was the wanton responsibility of the most popular, let me in. Seeing me, she gave me this look-- not the withering look I'd grown accustomed to, but another look, a look then until then I'd only seen on the face of adults. It was a look of profound pity. I saw in that look a sorrow for everything she had ever put me through, and for years I held that look close to my heart.

Jonathan Goldstein

This is Marie-Claude. She was Jackie's best friend all through school, and they're still best friends now.

Jonathan Goldstein

OK, first of all-- the new kid. The party Marie-Claude is referring to was in grade six. I had been going to that school since grade three. I was in the same school as them, evidently completely unnoticed, for three years. And second of all-- dirty. Although my boyhood toilette was second to none, and although I was facially hairless, for some strange reason I gave off the distinct impression of having a 5 o'clock shadow all over my body. So I decided to confront these slanderous accusations at their source. Ladies and gentlemen,

Jonathan Goldstein

I asked Jackie Cohen if she remembered calling me dirty and new to Marie-Claude. And she said she did. I then asked her to repeat the very line to me, right to my face.

Jonathan Goldstein

Jackie Cohen and I spent very combative hour talking, during which time she would not admit to any actual meanness. The furthest she would go in making any kind of concession was in acknowledging that back then, she, quote, "took care of business." A whole lot of business.

No, Jackie Cohen did not think she was mean in school. Take the whole story of Robert Ceolic asking her out in junior high. You know, Mr. "Hi, Bye." And she stood firmly behind her actions.

Jonathan Goldstein

Feel the way that laugh shivers you down to your toes? The way it taunts as it entices? That is the effect of a popular mean girl's laughter. The truth is that Jackie Cohen is no longer a popular mean girl at all. She's actually a doctor who works with the homeless. She's a really good person. But I still can't help relating to her as though the old Jackie Cohen is still somewhere buried inside of her.

Jonathan Goldstein

You see, this was the Jackie Cohen that I never got to talk to anymore. She's never like this. I mean, sure, she's always eager to let me know when someone in the room smells better than me, and she's quick to point out that my pasty white gut jingles when I play air guitar. But it always feels like a mere taste of the greatness that once was. So we continued to parry and thrust our way along.

Jonathan Goldstein

And eventually the subject came around to Jackie's older sister, Maureen. Now let me just explain to you Maureen. As mean and popular as Jackie Cohen was, Maureen Cohen was more mean and more popular.

Jonathan Goldstein

In the pursuit of my mean popular girls scholarship, I knew I now had to talk with Maureen. I was not in the same city as her, so I asked my friend Joshua Carpatty if he would be good enough to go to her house and hold a mic to her while we talked on the phone. Josh has been scared of Maureen for years, and here he was sitting with her in her living room while her seven-year-old played on the floor at their feet.

As Maureen provided a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of her thoughts and actions, Josh sat just a few inches from her, a microphone gripped in his sweaty nervous hands. And as I talked with her, Maureen acknowledged that she'd been mean in high school. She made no bones about it, and to her, there was nothing to regret. It was high school and that's just how people acted.

Jonathan Goldstein

At this point I started to get worried for Joshua. He had been reluctant even to go to Maureen's house, so I knew that at that point, as Maureen spoke his name, he was a shaky disoriented mess.

Jonathan Goldstein

When I was finished speaking with Maureen, I called Josh up on his cell phone and he talked with me from his car.

Jonathan Goldstein

Jackie Cohen. Jackie Cohen. Do you miss that person that was able to do those kinds of things?

Jonathan Goldstein

Is the sky that unleashes a bolt of lightning into the forehead of a friendly woodsman mean? Is it mean of the ravenous lion to devour the frightened zebra? As the first terrible bites sink into his legs and stomach, does the zebra look into the lion's eyes as though to say, why are you doing this to me, friend? And why, by my very nature, have I demanded it? When I bring all this up with Jackie, I realize that only the zebra would do a story like this. The lion could care less.

Ira Glass

Jonathan Goldstein's a contributing editor to our program and host of Wiretap on CBC Radio One, and also available now on some public radio stations in this country.

Ira Glass

Act Two, Does Niceness Pay? OK, sure, niceness might not get you the most friends in high school. Niceness might not help your career in the NFL, or on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, or in any super-competitive line of work. But you'd think that there might be a place for somewhere, like, for instance, waitressing. The whole point of the job is to help somebody else.

Well, consider this story. A waitress in Chicago named Troy Morris was working a Friday night shift with another waitress, Amy Rigali. Here's Troy.

Ira Glass

This is Amy.

Ira Glass

We can actually quantify exactly how much niceness was costing Amy. The difference between 15% tips and 20% tips works out to around $50 per shift. Is it possible that any waitress could make more money by being less nice? We decided to do a little experiment to find out. We would wire two waitresses with hidden microphones and then have them be super nice to half their tables and then cool, aloof, to the other half. They'd give equally good service to both tables.

We did our experiment in the restaurant where Troy and Amy work, Lula Cafe in Chicago's Logan Square. It's the kind of place that everybody always wants to have in their neighborhood. Small, wonderful food that is also very cheap. Half the entrees cost $6 or so. There's Moroccan couscous, there's vegetarian sushi, there are lots of carefully made sandwiches, and then there's this whole menu of higher-end specials every day, so it's possible to drop $20 on a grilled sea bass or organically raised lamb.

Amy had no interest in being wired for sound, but Troy was game. Like most of the staff, she's young-looking. She wore a neon zebra skirt and calf-high boots to work. Her arms were bare so you could see her tattoos.

Ira Glass

Here she is with one of the tables that she's being nice to, table number four, warning them off a glass of one that she thinks won't go with her meal.

Ira Glass

In two minutes, Troy has their whole story. They're visiting from out of town, they seem to be falling in love, and they found this very non-touristy, out of the way place through careful research. She praises them on their homework.

Ira Glass

Nice is her usual style as a waitress. She recommends specials. She chats. She's a sweetheart. Being aloof is a little more effort for her.

Ira Glass

When she finally goes to table two, which has three serious-looking people in their forties. She doesn't ask them how they are, or if they have any questions about the menu. She doesn't recommend the sturgeon, which is her favorite, or anything else. These are her first and practically only words to table two.

Ira Glass

When they ask her to recommend a wine, she swallows and tells them:

Ira Glass

And then there was the guy sitting at the bar alone, noticeably good-looking, reading the New York Times. Troy gave me the rundown.

Ira Glass

Perfect for the experiment. Usually, Troy liked talking with him. If she played it aloof, would her tip go up? She walked over and he asked her what she was up to these days.

Ira Glass

Did you change your hair, he said. Is it different?

Ira Glass

And so hours pass. People finish their meals, and when Troy starts collecting their money, the early results all seem to point in one direction. Take table two, the table she barely spoke with. Troy handed me their check.

Ira Glass

OK, doing a little math here. Table two, 17.6% is what they tipped.

Ira Glass

And yet--

Ira Glass

Table five was her hardest table by far, very demanding. And she was very attentive.

Ira Glass

But the biggest revelation of the night came when Troy retrieved the check from that guy who was sitting at the bar.

Ira Glass

By the end of the first night, it seemed pretty clear. Aloofness pays. But then when I came back a second night and hooked up a second waitress with a hidden wireless microphone, I got very different results. The second waitress, Callie Roach, was 23 with super-short hair. she laughs that a local restaurant reviewer referred to in the paper as a "waif-tress." And on her night, everyone tipped 20% or even a touch more. That was true of the regulars who she was aloof to. It was true of the man who Callie doted on who was taking his grown daughter out to dinner. It was true of the couple who Kelly joked around with about their difficult-to-open bottle of wine.

Ira Glass

Even the other waitress working on Wednesday, Natalie, who does not have an aloof bone in her body, was getting 20% and more from every table. And the more I talked to Callie and Troy and Amy and the rest of the staff, the more everyone agreed. The majority of their customers are just set in their ways. They'll give whatever they always give in any restaurant like this to any server. Sure, you get a handful of customers like the guy Troy waited on at the bar, who you can nudge this way or that through force of personality, but it's just a few tables every shift. And that's all Troy and I were seeing that first night. This is Natalie.

Ira Glass

Here's Callie.

Ira Glass

Because of this, she says, she has a policy-- and she's only half-joking as she says this-- that she tries to limit the number of times that she smiles at customers or shows her approval to exactly two times. Two times. First time, when they place their order, she always tells them what a very fine choice they made, and then she smiles. And then at the end of the meal, she drops off the check and she smiles a second time, as if to say, you see? I do like you. If it's done wrong, she says, friendliness not only will not pay, friendliness can cost you.

Ira Glass

Troy and Amy have also decided that niceness has its limits. For the first time in their years of waitressing, because of these discussions in the last two weeks, they have both stopped knocking themselves out running around for their most demanding tables. They're efficient. They're pleasant, but that's it. This is what they've learned. It's not that aloofness pays, it's that niceness doesn't pay.

Thanks to the owners of the Lula Cafe. That first waitress, Troy Morris, and one of the owners of the cafe, Lea Tshields, were in the band Tallulah. This song is from the band's album, Step Into the Stars. [MUSIC]

Coming up, if you seem so nice, why do I feel so bad? And more. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we bring choose some theme, and bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, the allure of the mean friend. What is it about? We've arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three, And What's Going On With You? We have this from Mike Albo.

Mike Albo

You're here early. Oh my God, do you have my scarf? Did you bring it? No, that's OK. No, it's just that I got it in India when I was there, and it's just this really beautiful thing, and I really treasure it. It's just really important to me. It's not like the cheaply-made Barneys CO-OP stuff that you buy. I don't mean "you buy," I mean "you buy." Oh, I wish you would have remembered. No, that's OK. You're so flaky.

Are you sick? You look sort of tired. Is there something wrong? Oh, you went out drinking last night? It's so great how you can still do that. You're so crazy. Did you throw up? Oh, no, I just mouth-threw-up for a second.

OK, so I didn't want you to hear this from someone else, but I just made $2 million. Yeah. So I'm pretty happy about it. My agent's pretty happy about it. It's just really lucky, because you know, like, with the recession, it's like I made my money before the apocalypse and now I'll able to live comfortably. It's just sort of locked in. And I can't tell you about the details of the deal, but if you could just do me a huge, huge favor and just don't mention it to anyone? I know you have sort of a problem being discreet.

Oh, order something? Oh, no. No. No, I'm not drinking anymore. Oh, no, go ahead. Have fun. I'm just not drinking anymore. I just realized there's a little bit more to life. But go ahead, have fun. You're so crazy.

So what's up with you? Oh, my God, when was the last time I saw you? I am totally hanging out with Tobey Maguire and Reese and Ryan and David Blaine. We jokingly call it the "Millionaire's Club." Oh, you know that children's book I wrote really fast for no reason? It's a Funny Sunny Day? Well, I just found out it's selling like crazy and can barely stay on the shelves. And I got another voiceover gig. It's weird, they just like my voice. I don't even have to leave home. I just call it in. Oh, no, it's-- I just sort of fell into it. You should try it. But it's really hard to get into. But you should try it.

You're looking for a place? Good luck. God, it's so hard to find a good place right now. This guy called me and begged me to take his beautiful 4,000-square-foot loft space. It's $300, but he's actually paying me to live there forever. So what's going on with you?

I think your body looks good. It's normal. It's a normal body. Really? Well, that's too bad. Well, I just feel like you need a little more confidence in yourself, you know? Like, I feel like I'm a direct person. I say what I feel. You're more-- you're more-- I don't know what you are. But I have to say I don't know how you do it. I'm so glad I'm not single. It looks so hard.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I just ran into Carl. No, he looks good. He's good. He's good. Yeah, he says he hasn't talked to you. No. He seems like he's moving forward and you guys broke up and he's just sort of moving on with his life. He's in this really good relationship right now, and they just bought this huge beautiful place upstate and they're fixing it up together. We just had a really good time talking. And you know what? He's been working out. His body looks amazing. You know, when you and Carl were going out, I never really understood why you liked him. But now I totally do.

So nothing's going on with you? [LAUGHTER] No, I'm sorry. I'm just remembering a funny joke that Carl told me. No, I'm listening.

Ira Glass

An example from Mike Albo's short story, "The Underminer." Mike Albo also has a longer work, a book called The Underminer that he co-wrote with Virginia Heffernan.

Ira Glass

Act Four, Keeping It In the Family. Of course you can evade a mean friend. A mean relative, however, is forever. This next story is an excerpt from a much longer work by Bernard Cooper. This story follows Cooper's father as he eventually goes to a psychiatric hospital. But what happens in this part of the story takes place well before that. The actor Josh Hamilton read it for us.

Josh Hamilton

When I was 28 years old, my father sent me a bill for his paternal services. Typed on his law firm's onion-skin stationery, the bill itemized the money he'd spent on me over my lifetime. Since he hadn't kept tabs on the exact amounts he'd doled out over the years, expenditures were rounded off to the nearest dollar and labeled "Food," "Clothing," "Tuition," and "Incidentals." Beneath the tally, in the firm but detached language common to his profession, he demanded that I pay him back.

The total was somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million, an especially hefty sum in 1978. I remember being impressed by the amount. What an expensive life I'd lived. I was shocked and insulted too, of course, not only because my father had made such a calculation but because my life could be added up or reduced to a single figure. To see your existence in the form of a bill gives all your loves and fears and struggles, the cumulative tumult of being human, about as much poignancy as a check for a cup of coffee.

It read, "Your obligations to your father, the party of the first part, are considerable. And the only way to impress upon you, the party of the second part, the necessity of compensating him for the fiscal burdens he bore in your behalf is to make his sacrifices evident in the form of the following, recorded herein as a legal and binding document. Should you fail to make payment in full, this matter will result in actions for which I advise you to hire counsel." I double-checked his signature. It was his, all right. The letters rich with loops and convolutions.

Go ahead, I thought. Let him dun me. See if I pay. No parent in his right mind asks his child to reimburse him for that child's life. I didn't ask to be born, I thought melodramatically. Besides, had I known I'd be charged for my boyhood, I might have eaten fewer snacks, been easier on my shoes, more frugal with my allowance.

I couldn't help but dream up a doozy of a counterclaim, its itemizations even more preposterous than my father's. Chronic insecurity-- $90,000. Narcissistic wound-- $75,000. Oedipal complex-- $7,000.

Since, of course, these damages were psychological in nature, it was both difficult and whimsical to assign them a monetary value. But the punitive spirit of this counterclaim was gratifying, for awhile at least. Then the whole petty endeavor depressed me, and I thought, is this what we are to each other? A flurry of demands that can't be met? Hurts for which there's no restitution?

During the restless days and nights that followed, I couldn't settle on a convincing or comprehensible reason to explain why my father had sent me the bill, though I suspected the catalyst might have had something to do with his offer, a few months earlier, to buy me a new car. He'd made the offer on a day I'd come to visit him at his Spanish house in Hollywood, the house in which I'd grown up. As I pulled into the driveway, he was busy watering birds of paradise in his front yard, sturdy orange flowers that he'd cultivated, to his constant astonishment, from a bed of drab gravel.

Back then, I drove a Fiat whose paint had oxidized to the overall color and texture of rust. The car sputtered as I shifted into park and the sagging tailpipe, which I'd had to bind to the cars undercarriage with electrical tape, coughed a cloud of noxious exhaust. Just a year I'd purchased the car with money from a small inheritance left me by my mother, it fell apart with an almost vengeful rapidity. The vinyl upholstery of the bucket seats began to rub off on passengers' hands and thighs in sticky black patches. Soon the seats were nothing but lumps of raw foam, and even those were crumbling like sponge cake. One of the rear windows no longer rolled up, the pane trapped within the door. On cold nights, a stray dog made the back seat its home, leaving behind a legion of fleas to feast on my ankles as I drove around town.

It was humiliating to be seen inside the car, especially in Los Angeles. When idling at a stop light beside a purring sports car with rear stabilizers, anodized hubcaps, and a leather interior, I had to force myself to remember that an automobile does not a man make, and that I was a writer who placed a higher value on words than on material possessions, which is to say that I cultivated a hollow sense of superiority around new cars.

My father sauntered toward the Fiat as I got out, peeking through the perpetually open window despite my attempt to block his view. Stocky and balding, in a state of continual agitation, my father was also capable of a tenderness that seem to light him from within and that stirred me like daybreak stirs a bird.

"Hey," he said. "Look like you could use a new set of wheels."

"I can't afford a new car," I told him. I distinctly recall facing my father, his gardening clothes stained with grass and darkened by perspiration, and shaping my tone so that I sounded neither pitiful-- "I'm too poor"-- or petulant-- "I'll never be able to buy a new car."

Before I knew it, my father and I were ensconced in his white El Dorado, gliding with the frictionless speed of a dream toward a Toyota dealership in West Covina, whose ads he'd seen on TV. He pointed a stubby finger at his chest. "Let me handle this," he said. "I've bought plenty of cars in my life and I know how to deal with these bastards. You watch. I'll beat them at their own game. They won't know what hit them."

On one hand, Dad's braggadocio made me feel invincible, as though I were in the company of a seasoned pro. On the other hand, it relegated me to the role of admiring onlooker, and suggested that I was too incompetent and naive to buy my own car, which was entirely true. I floundered when it came to the treacherous etiquette of negotiating a major sale, a feat which required-- it seemed to me-- a keen mistrust of one's fellow men, coupled with a barely sublimated bloodlust. As far as I was concerned, getting gypped out of a few bucks was simply a built-in fee for avoiding confrontations with strangers.

I'd watched my father often enough to know that such transactions excited him into what can only be described as a rapture of antagonism. He didn't mind yelling threats and pounding desks and generally hurling himself bodily into the arena of commerce. Still, if a new car required me to be embarrassed by his aggression, bring on the blushing. And so I let myself relax into the plush bucket seat, cradled and safe as the Caddy whizzed past slower traffic, huge and unassailable, as regal as a motorized mansion.

As we walked across the asphalt lot of the Toyota dealership, triangular plastic pendants rippled and snapped in the breeze. I thanked Dad in advance and told him that I didn't need whitewalls, an air conditioner, or a radio. Basic transportation would be just fine. He nodded and forged ahead, his stride martial, his shoulders squared. Secretly, I hoped my modest expectations might endear me to him even more. Maybe he'd close the deal that very day before his mood changed, before I said something that would inadvertently set him off. Before he said "crap" or "bastard" to the dealer.

My excitement was indistinguishable from panic. I wanted a beautiful new Toyota more desperately with every step. I wanted an end to the self-consciousness I felt on the road, an end to the shameful sense that the thunderous rumbling and rank exhaust were coming from my person rather than my car.

The showroom felt bracingly cool after the heat of West Covina. Highlights glittered in the flawless paint jobs of the display models. In the center of the room, a sleek new convertible turned around and around on an enormous platform, as if swooning to the muzak. The second we entered, salespeople sensing prey rose from their desks and converged. It occurred to me that we would be the prize for the fastest walker, the one whose handshake or hail greeting reached us first. The victory was a skinny man whose snug black suit lent him an eel-like iridescence. Or perhaps I was just seeing him as my father might-- slippery, unctuous, not to be trusted.

Dad shifted his weight to meet the man's gaze, his posture erect. He kicked a tire as if to gauge, through his knowing toes, the vehicle's overall quality. He squinted at the sticker price. "John," said my father, reading the salesman's name tag. "Firstly, I'm an attorney. Secondly, when it comes to cars, I'm not some idiot off the street. A cousin of mine is fleet manager of a Cadillac dealership in San Bernardino." A complete fabrication, as far as I knew. "If we cut through the crap, you just might make yourself a sale. My son here-- I'm buying the boy a car-- doesn't need any bells or whistles."

"I'm Bernard," I said to the salesman.

He shook my hand without taking his eyes off my father. "Well, Mr--?"

"Cooper. Edward. Attorney at law."

"I've got to hand it to you, Mr. Cooper. It's nice to meet a customer who knows what he wants and comes prepared to do business. Makes my job a whole lot easier."

My father shot me a sidelong glance, as if to say, watch and learn.

"I'm going to make this painless," said the salesman. He spun on his heel and walked toward the glass door that led to the lot. We followed him outside to a veritable poppy fields of new Corollas, till we reached a red two-door that John claimed was the least expensive automobile on the lot.

"This is the cheapest?" asked my father. Though it pains me to do so, I must add that my father's gold Star of David had loosed itself from the mid-interior of his shirt to glint conspicuously in the afternoon light, the sight of which, given my father's unabashed haggling, caused a chord of shame to vibrate inside me. I felt compelled to explain to the salesman how my father had worked hard for everything he owned. He was a hoarder, a scrimper, a seeker of bargains who could never take his solvency for granted. And in this respect he was like thousands of people who'd grown up poor and endured the Depression, Jewish or not.

But that was a lot to explain to a salesman, especially on the cusp of a deal that would change my life. And to put it bluntly, if my father was conforming to the cliche of the cheap Jew, I was that cliche's beneficiary. I peered at the car, feigning disinterest, quite a performance considering how I coveted that little red Corolla.

"Mr. Cooper," said the salesman. "I know a shrewd man when I see one. And I'm going to do something that could put my job on the line. But before I tell you what it is, Mr. Cooper, I want you to promise that you won't say a word to my boss."

I'd once heard that repeating a person's name was a way to make them feel important, to win them over, and John it seemed had heard the same. "Mr. Cooper, I'm going to let you drive out of here for a mere $200 over the factory price. I'm going to scratch my commission on this. Frankly, I need the sales points more than I need the money, and if we can lock up this deal pronto, it'll be worth my while, and of course worth yours."

Here, metabolism obscures memory. My heart was running on all cylinders. My mouth went dry.

"You've got to be [BEEP] me, John," said my father. "I know you can give it to me under factory. I'm not paying a penny more than factory. Period."

"As I said, Mr. Cooper, I don't mind giving up my commission, but I can't lose money on the deal. I'm giving you the best price you're going to find in LA county, in the state of California."

Other customers were milling uncomfortably close to my Corolla, trying out driver's seats, adjusting rearview mirrors. I wanted to turn to my father and blurt, "Why would he lie?"

"I'm not buying it," my father said sternly. It took me a second to realize he met the dealer's story, not the car itself. "I know how this game is played, and I'll play along up to a point, but we've reached that point. So let's see what kind of deal you can give me."

"Shop around if you don't believe me, Mr. Cooper. Then come on back. The offer still stands. Better act quickly, though, because this baby isn't going to stay on the lot much longer."

"I guess you didn't hear me," said my father.

"Look at me, Mr. Cooper. I have no reason to lead you on."

My father gave John the once-over, then turned to me. "Let's go," he said. "We're taking our business elsewhere." Before we took a step, the salesman curtly thanked my father and walked away. The two of us waited a moment with the tacit understanding that his retreat might have been a strategy to provoke my father into giving chase. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky, asphalt softening beneath our feet.

"I think he's basically an honest man," I mumbled.

"Honest my ass." My father looked at me with something like pity. I'd never catch on. I would forever remain a sucker, a rube. Muzak faintly wafted from the showroom as the salesman swung the door open and walked inside. "Well," Dad announced. "Show's over." And we trudged across the lot toward his Caddy.

The drive back to Los Angeles took a good 40 minutes. My father still fumed from the encounter with the salesman, his ears and neck flushed with blood. Dad insisted that the deal was far from over. "The guy's playing hardball, but you watch. The phone will be ringing when we get back to the house. It'll be him, and he'll say--" My father launched into an imitation of John cooing, "Mr. Cooper this and Mr. Cooper that." My father promised that when the call finally came, John would apologize for being too hasty and lower the price. I'd have my car before I knew it.

One day passed. Two. Three. Each day, I called my father on various transparent pretexts and attempted to find out whether he'd heard anything from the salesman. On the fourth day, I steeled myself and asked him outright.

"Keep your pants on," grumbled my father. "I said he'd call, didn't I?"

By the end of the week, however, my pants were sagging. The car had probably been sold. In the meantime, I'd researched the prices at other Toyota dealerships around town and discovered that John's offer was the best of the bunch. And so I called my father in a last-ditch effort to own the car.

"Dad," I said. "I've done some comparative pricing."

"So?"

"I think we should go for the Corolla before it's sold. And if it's a matter of not wanting to pay more than the factory price-- and who can blame you?-- I'd be happy to contribute the extra $200 myself." The proposal had about it the pleasing hue of teamwork, and I wished I'd thought of it days ago.

"It's not about the $200," shouted my father. "It's a waiting game. He's holding out so I'll come running back and throw my money at him. If you can't sit tight for a while, if you have to have everything you want right when you want it, you might as well forget the whole damn thing." Before he hung up, he said, "And don't pester me anymore. I'll call you when the car is ready."

The bill arrived after a month of silence. By then I had given up on the car, resigned to drive the Fiat until it broke down completely, or until I could afford to make payments on a new car, whichever came first. I suspected my father might brood about our day at the dealership, but I wasn't prepared for the extremity of his reaction, if in fact the bill was a reaction. Whenever I tried to make a connection, the machinery of cause and effect began to break down. Perhaps in the intervening month, my father had become more offended by my offer to supplement the cost of the car, thinking I'd implied he couldn't afford it, couldn't pull off the deal on his own. Who was I, he must have wondered, to have offered him money?

And yet, even taking into account the full force of my father's volatility, it seemed unlikely that my offer of $200 would result in him suing me for $2 million.

As the days wore on, my longing for the car grew dimmer, while my father's, no doubt, deepened-- my plan should have worked, that car should be ours-- thrusting him back to the deprivation he knew as a boy. The salesman's refusal to call must have undermined his notion of how the world worked, how bargains were struck by men like himself, men possessed of wile and nerve.

What had happened, or failed to happen, defined his every paternal assurance, his promise that the phone would ring, the salesman buckle, the car become mine. How humiliated he must've been to know that I awaited his call. That he'd asked me to wait must have made it worse. My father's refusal to be in the wrong meant that I'd have to wait forever.

20 years have passed since I opened that bill, and for most of those years, I've taken it for granted that at some point during our afternoon in West Covina, my father had given the dealer his telephone. But I've sifted through that trip a dozen times, squinting against the glare of new cars, breathing the icy air of the showroom, and I can't recall my father handing over one of his business cards or filling out a form of any sort. Even if my father had been right after all, the salesman wouldn't have known where to reach him, what number to call.

Ira Glass

Josh Hamilton, reading an excerpt from a story by Bernard Cooper, which first appeared in the LA Weekly and is now part of the book The Bill From My Father.

Ira Glass

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Ira Glass

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