Suspended Sentence

by Janice Morgan

  This reminds me of a story I once heard. It was about a mom in Ireland who had just moved with her children from Dublin to a remote place in the southwestern county of Kerry. One evening, she sent her young son out to get some twigs for the fireplace because it was fall and getting colder. Soon, he came back running to tell her, “Mom, Mom, quick, quick, quick, come out here!” And she went out, expecting a catastrophe. And when they went out into the pitch-black night, he shouted “Mom, Mom, look! Look at the stars!” He knew his mom loved the stars; she was an amateur astronomer who knew the names of constellations. And when she looked up, she was amazed: so many rivers and currents and swirls of stars against the inky darkness. She couldn’t even find the familiar constellations she knew so well. She had never seen a night sky like that one before.

  That mother’s name is Julie Ormonde. As her children grew up, she started a campaign to get formal recognition of Kerry, Ireland, as a “Dark Sky Reserve.” Of course, part of what makes the Dingle Peninsula such a good candidate is its proximity to the vast expanse of the north Atlantic. But another part of Kerry’s qualification comes as an unexpected legacy of poverty: the Irish farm families of the region subsisting on potatoes, the potato blights of the nineteenth century, then the terrible famines, the flight away across the sea, the land abandoned. This previously forlorn space has become, in our own century, a magnificent portal for visiting astronomers to observe the outer worlds.

  I love this story, and I’d like to think of my own son as my darksky child. That’s because he’s pointed out the stars to me in the same way, all the mysterious wonder of stars and fireflies that we forget to notice as we become adults and so full of cares. And it’s also because I sometimes need to remember to look up and see all the light in my son, too, even those times when the dark seems deepest.

  CHAPTER 26: WHEELS

  With everything going on, Dylan still hadn’t forgotten about his plan to get his license back and obtain a vehicle. He needed wheels to get around, and so he was ready to jump through any hoops necessary. He was just finishing his series of DUI classes, some of which had included terrifyingly graphic film clips of fatal collisions for the students to consider. Even Dylan was taken aback.

  “Our instructor told us it’s frequently the people who think they can drink the most and be the least affected by it who end up being the ones most impaired. They don’t even notice that their reactions are off the mark; often the alcohol just gives them more confidence and they drive faster,” Dylan remarked. “They did interviews of drunk drivers who survived after a crash, and that’s what they said.”

  Listening to Dylan, I hoped fervently it was all sinking in. Completing the course over the summer, after a year of not driving and not drinking, meant that soon he could apply through the courts to get his license back. He said he was ready.

  Meanwhile, I’d agreed to take him around to investigate vehicles to see what was available. He’d already spotted a car right here in town. It was a trade-in, a 2006 Infiniti G35 with sixty thousand miles on it for $13,500. He wanted to go see it with me; I could test drive it for him.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “We have to check into financing first. We need to go to the bank before we look at cars.” Time to put up a speed bump. “How about we make an appointment with the loan officer for next Tuesday afternoon?” We set the date.

  “Hey, we can still look at the Infiniti today,” Dylan said, never slow to jump on an opportunity at hand. “We’ve got time, and this is a real deal.”

  It was a bright sunny Saturday, perfect for admiring interesting cars, so why not? When we got to the lot, the amazing car in question had already been sold, but the dealer happened to have another Infiniti G35 sitting on the corner. That one was a beauty, but it cost about $15,500 and had 104,000 miles on it. Still, it was a car in gorgeous condition: flawless exterior, elegant interior with leather seats, adjustable amenities. On the test drive, it handled beautifully, almost like the BMW I’d tried out a couple of summers ago—just on a lark, with Dylan. Back on that other Saturday, he was trying to convince me that I should get a more upscale vehicle as befit my station in life, maybe a Beamer or at least a hip Mini Cooper. I agreed to test drive some models for fun, though in the end, I kept my modest hatchback.

  “Yep, this G35 is a driver’s car, like a BMW but more affordable,” Dylan confirmed. “And you can get a really good deal if you buy a nice used one. Usually people who have these are car lovers and they take good care of them.”

  So persuasive. Maybe he could be a car salesman someday?

  “You could get a simpler, more affordable car for now, then trade up for something better later on when you get a regular job,” I countered.

  Without a pause, he replied, “Oh, I am going to do that; but I want the nicest car I can get for now, at a good price. I mean if I’m going to be making payments for several years on a car, I want it to be something I really like.”

  He made it clear he wasn’t limiting himself to Infinitis but wanted a car with features: maybe leather seats, for example, because when he worked out, those would be much more comfortable and easier to clean. Before I could reply, the dealer returned to ask us how it went. Dylan asked for the Carfax sheet, and we saw this car scored a 91.

  “This is good, but let’s keep looking around,” I said. “Remember, there’ll be more to see in Parksville.” In retrospect, I likely would have saved much time and energy had we checked out the G35 further and, if it passed muster, purchased it on the spot. Ah, but then, the teacher part of me realizes we would have missed the bigger “learning experience.”

  By the time we went to People’s First Credit Union on Tuesday, Dylan had already found another vehicle online that interested him, a 2008 Honda Accord XL. This was his concession to practicality. He’d texted me to take a look at it, sending me the link. He knew that one would probably sell quickly, but the dealer there in Memphis had other comparable cars. Memphis?!

  “When I get my license, I can see us going there. I could test drive some cars, pick one, have a mechanic check it out,” he said optimistically.

  I wasn’t too keen on going that far away; we’d find something closer, I was sure of it. But at least he could use the Accord XL as an example to show the loan officer. Dylan laid out the case he was making. Ms. Clark showed Dylan how she checked out his credit score. Eyeing the figures, she stated that he wouldn’t qualify for a loan without a steady, substantial paycheck, which, as a part-time worker and student, he didn’t have. A loan would only be possible if yours truly co-signed. In Mom we trust. Not to mention, if they used my credit rating, not his, then the loan would have the most affordable interest rate. People’s First wasn’t about to take too many risks; this was the newly sensible attitude after the subprime mortgage crash of 2008. Dylan was getting a lesson in credit, and so was I. No way around it: if Dylan didn’t keep up the payments, I would be the poor schlub holding the bag.

  Dylan sounded confident through all this, even as I was second-guessing. After our talk with Ms. Clark, Dylan felt he could easily do a payment of $50 a week, even with just the part-time work Arlo had passed along to him over the last year. He looked up what his insurance payments would be: hefty, given his age, gender, and driving record. Ah yes, his driving record. Ms. Clark had been adamant he would need full coverage for the loan to go through. It was clear Dylan and I had two completely different attitudes toward acceptable risk—and toward money. Just by sitting there at the bank with my son and the loan officer, imagining my pen poised over the multiple documents yet to sign, I was already way over my risk threshold. In my mind’s eye, I caught sight of John, Mike, and Linda all riding by together in a long, ancient Oldsmobile, the kind with chrome and fins. They rolled down the windows and waved to me. “Good luck!” they shouted. Then the pack of them drove off in a haze of exhaust.

  When I asked him later, Dylan talked about how the different guys in Drug Court were handling the transportation situation. Some were making
car payments and building credit; others went the way of getting an old beater.

  “Will, he’s the king of the beaters; he just keeps an old car, throws everything on the floor, doesn’t want the extra expense of a nicer vehicle,” Dylan told me. “Now, his buddy, Tyler, he’s a ladies’ man, so of course, he’s going to have an attractive car.” I should have inserted, “Oh, and how does he pay for his car?” In fact, the two of us had several conversations about money, and there were two main attitudes presented. You could either save and then spend frugally like his dad, who—amazingly—always had money in his account. Or you could learn to use credit and play it skillfully to move up, a strategy Dylan loved to expound on. “Yeah, be a part of the modern world,” he remarked. Only that was riskier, and you still had to stay within your means. I wasn’t sure Dylan fully understood the part about risk. For him, there was no contest whatsoever between the two options: saving money to buy later or buying on credit now.

  So I was thinking “good buy for less,” and he was thinking “best bang for the buck.” Was buying a vehicle about practical transportation or was it about lifestyle, savvy, self-image? During the used-car search, I couldn’t help but notice that we moved from an Infiniti to a Honda Accord XL to, eventually, some kind of truck. Especially after Dylan’s sanction time in jail, he came around to the idea that a truck would be much more useful. He cited his time with his former housemate.

  “The problem with Connor,” he told me, “is that even though he had a truck, he wasn’t enterprising enough, didn’t feel comfortable with tools. I’d get jobs on Craigslist, but then Connor would back out on me. Me, I grew up with my dad’s tools. I saw him using them all the time. So now, if I had a truck, I’m pretty confident I could get a wider variety of side jobs.”

  Before classes started, we had to go to Parksville anyway to pick up Dylan’s computer, in for repairs. We could just swing by some dealers to look at what they had. I suggested a Ford pick-up, like a Ranger. One of my students drove one, and I thought it would be low-maintenance perfect.

  “No, that’s too small,” Dylan said. Besides, we didn’t see any used Rangers. Their owners were probably busy driving them into the sunset until they fell apart. Instead we looked at an old Chevy Silverado, the only used truck on the lot within our budget. Appearing upbeat, Dylan asked questions, checked under the hood. We took it for a test drive. As a passenger, he wasn’t impressed.

  “This truck is OK size-wise, but it’s got too many miles on it. Not only that but the gas mileage is really low—fifteen miles per gallon; it’ll need gas constantly. It won’t have good resale value either. I want a better deal than that.”

  Wait a minute, good resale value?

  Dylan had a lot of requirements for this proposed vehicle. It not only had to be a mode of transport, but it had to perform. It had to be fuel efficient; it had to have resale value. It not only had to get you to a job, but also generate jobs through its sheer capabilities. Little did I know then that the truck would have to do even more than that.

  After visiting a couple of dealers, we took a break and went to lunch. Despite the fact that I was clearly playing the role of fall guy, I enjoyed these relaxed times talking with Dylan. Our conversations were all part of the road trip we were on that summer, part of our adventure. In between bites of his sandwich, Dylan kept me apprised of truck stats from his smartphone: gas mileage, horsepower, Blue Book values over time. Then, eyeing me munching my Greek salad, he took it upon himself to give me dietary advice. He warned me I might not be getting enough testosterone eating so many vegetables; even women needed to attain the right levels to keep up their vitality.

  “Look, if you only eat plants, you probably need to supplement your diet with zinc. You can get that from pumpkin seeds or pecans to keep your hormones balanced.”

  “Hum, well maybe I’ll put some pumpkin seeds on my next shopping list,” I conceded. Before long, he turned to the topic of his workouts.

  “I can now bench press just under what LeBron James did: 250 pounds, ten reps.”

  I’m sure he could tell my eyes were glazing over—after they rolled.

  “If I keep this up, I can try out for professional football.”

  Now, he knew he was going to get a rise out of me. “What? And be a physical wreck at age forty? You have to learn to use your brain to make a living!”

  He laughed at my elder common sense.

  “Mom, you need to live a little on the wild side.” We both laughed at that one.

  “Well, if I lived as wild as you, we’d both be living in boxes under a bridge.”

  How did my son come to be such a high roller? It can’t be his parents’ influence. His dad is a confirmed tightwad who fully subscribes to his own father’s 1930s depression attitude toward money: you had to hold on to whatever you had because it was damn hard to come by. As for me, I wasn’t exactly a skinflint, but I had learned the value of not spending down to the last dollar. Grad school poverty taught me to keep back a stash for rainy days. There was always that next unexpected expense to be ready for. As for a car, I didn’t get one until I had a real job with a real paycheck—and even then, it was a hand-me-down from the family. That was fine with me.

  Then, too, Mike and Linda lived in a modest 1950s-style house with simple furniture from the same era. They mostly cooked at home and tended to curate their clothing by brand from thrift shops, all of it stored in a couple of small closets and two chests of drawers. They each drove cars that were at least twelve years old and counting. They traveled every year, but it was always for work, always a tax-deductible expense. And then there was John, Dylan’s other parental role model. He’d driven an old, red Beetle for years, stuffed to the roof with sports gear until he decided to get something larger but just as stingy with the fuel. His house was nice but old and rambling, full of heirlooms from long-lost relatives. As for clothes, he still wore tee shirts and sweaters he kept from twenty years ago. So the fact is that none of us could be held up as role models for Dylan’s extravagance.

  How did my son, surrounded by all these models of money management, become a high-rolling spendthrift? Well, it could be the influence of Grandpa—my dad, not Mike’s. My dad worked hard to get out of poverty, but once he had money, he found plenty of ways to spend it: travel, new furniture, nice things. Luckily, credit was tight back then, and my mom kept control in the bankroll department. “We have to pay off the mortgage first, before you retire,” she would say. Fortunately, he listened to her, but I bet my dad’s the culprit. He must have passed a few spendthrift proclivities to his grandson on the sly. Ah, but then there were the cousins on Mike’s side, especially Harris and his wife Chloe; they were high-earning professionals, and they could be big spenders, too. At family dinners, Harris always loved to talk about his latest investment coup.

  It was part of Dylan’s personality to want to identify more with that free-spending side of the family than with his parents, as if he’d grown up with this unspoken but firmly entrenched attitude: “Look guys, as seedy and tweedy as you all are, I’m going to be different. I’m going to be greedy. I’m going to be a millionaire!” Dylan always wanted the best he could get. As a little kid, he was always ready to trade up for a better bike. When he was into BMX, he roamed the aisles of the bike shop often. If anything went wrong, he’d take his bike in for repairs, then see if he could get me to spring for a better bike part: wheel hubs, brakes, tires, whatever caught his eye. Once, he had to get just the right blue and yellow banana seat for his low-riding BMX. He had to save toward getting it, too. And then one day he left his bike parked and locked at the schoolyard, planning to get it later, only to find that the prized seat had been stolen right off the post. He cried for the longest time. Later on, after his own actions caused him to lose the Camry in Cincinnati, he consoled himself by getting a special Kona dirt-jumping bike, one with built-in springs that could propel amazing jumps over the hilly course he constructed in Mike and Linda’s back yard.

 
; As for managing money, Dylan had the best intentions to be smart about it, build credit, act like an investor. But truth to tell, he was too much in the moment, acted too much on impulse—more like my dad, but further on the spending spectrum. The eternal question for the family: how much of this spendthrifting is due to his bipolar disorder? We may not have been asking that quite yet. But according to just about every book on the subject, bipolar and big spending go together like golden retrievers and flying Frisbees. When mania or hypomania kicks in, a person will spend down to their last cent and quickly max out any credit or debit cards in their possession, all through sheer exuberance. Standard advice to those in the know is this: when you see your retriever giving chase, CLOSE all accounts and HIDE any cards immediately until further notice! But stubborn me, at this point I was still convinced my careful coaching could surely lead Dylan to take the long view.

  All that being said, I did set boundaries. Earlier, the four of us parents and step-parents had been on the same page: it was wiser not to help Dylan get another car until he graduated from college. Now, however, I had moved into a different position because I was closer to the action, closer to how things were developing day by day. But if it was easier for me to skirt around Mike and Linda’s advice, it was less so with John’s. He was my reality checker.