David Sedaris: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Some friendships are formed by a commonality of interests and ideas: you both love judo or camping or making your own sausage. Other friendships are forged in alliance against a common enemy. On leaving Thad's house, I decided that ours would probably be the latter. We'd start off grousing about my father, and then, little by little, we'd move on to the hundreds of other things and people that got on our nerves. "You hate olives," I imagined him saying. "I hate them, too!"

As it turned out, the one thing we both hated was me. Rather, I hated me. Thad couldn't even summon up the enthusiasm. The day after the meeting, I approached him in the lunchroom, where he sat at his regular table, surrounded by his regular friends. "Listen," I said, "I'm really sorry about that stuff with my dad." I'd worked up a whole long speech, complete with imitations, but by the time I finished my mission statement, he'd turned to resume his conversation with Doug Middleton. Our perjured testimony, my father's behavior, even the rock throwing: I was so far beneath him that it hadn't even registered.

Poof.

The socialites of E. C. Brooks shone even brighter in junior high, but come tenth grade, things began to change. Desegregation drove a lot of the popular people into private schools, and those who remained seemed silly and archaic, deposed royalty from a country the average citizen had ceased to care about.

Early in our junior year, Thad was jumped by a group of the new black kids, who yanked off his shoes and threw them in the toilet. I knew I was supposed to be happy, but part of me felt personally assaulted. True, he'd been a negligent prince, yet still I believed in the monarchy. When his name was called at graduation, it was I who clapped the longest, outlasting even his parents, who politely stopped once he'd left the stage.

I thought about Thad a lot over the coming years, wondering where he went to college and if he joined a fraternity. The era of the Big Man on Campus had ended, but the rowdy houses with their pool tables and fake moms continued to serve as reunion points for the once popular, who were now viewed as date rapists and budding alcoholics. I tell myself that while his brothers drifted toward a confused and bitter adulthood, Thad stumbled into the class that changed his life. He's the poet laureate of Liechtenstein, the surgeon who cures cancer with love, the ninth-grade teacher who insists that the world is big enough for everyone. When moving to another city, I'm always hoping to find him living in the apartment next door. We'll meet in the hallway and he'll stick out his hand, saying, "Excuse me, but don't I — shouldn't I know you?" It doesn't have to happen today, but itdoes have to happen. I've kept a space waiting for him, and if he doesn't show up, I'm going to have to forgive my father.

The root canal that was supposed to last for ten years has now lasted for over thirty, though it's nothing to be proud of. Having progressively dulled and weakened, the tooth is now a brownish gray color the Conran's catalog refers to as "Kabuki." It's hanging in there, but just barely. While Dr. Povlitch worked out of a converted brick house beside the Colony Shopping Center, my current dentist, Docteur Guig, has an office near the Madeleine, in Paris. On a recent visit, he gripped my dead tooth between his fingertips and gently jiggled it back and forth. I hate to unnecessarily exhaust his patience, so when he asked me what had happened, it took me a moment to think of the clearest possible answer. The past was far too complicated to put into French, so instead I envisioned a perfect future, and attributed the root canal to a little misunderstanding between friends.

MY MOTHER HAD A GREAT-AUNT who lived outside of Cleveland and visited us once in Binghamton, New York. I was six years old but can clearly remember her car moving up the newly paved driveway. It was a silver Cadillac driven by a man in a flattopped cap, the kind worn by policemen. He opened the back door with great ceremony, as if this were a coach, and we caught sight of the great-aunt's shoes, which were orthopedic yet fancy, elaborately tooled leather with little heels the size of spools. The shoes were followed by the hem of a mink coat, the tip of a cane, and then, finally the great-aunt herself, who was great because she was rich and childless.

"Oh, Aunt Mildred," my mother said, and we looked at her strangely. In private she referred to her as "Aunt Monie." a cross betweenmoaning andmoney, and the proper name was new to us.

"Sharon!" Aunt Monie said. She looked at our father, and then at us.

"This is my husband, Lou," my mother said. "And these are our children."

"How nice. Your children."

The driver handed my father several shopping bags and then returned to the car as the rest of us stepped inside.

"Would he like to use the bathroom or something?" my mother whispered. "I mean, he's more than welcome to. . "

Aunt Monie laughed, as if my mother had asked if the car itself would like to come indoors. "Oh, no, dear. He'll stay outside."

I don't believe my father gave her a tour, the way he did with most visitors. He had designed parts of the house himself, and enjoyed describing what they might have looked like had he not intervened. "What I've done," he'd say, "is put the barbecue pit right here in the kitchen, where it'll be closer to the refrigerator." The guests would congratulate him on his ingenuity, and then he would lead them into the breakfast nook. I hadn't been in too many houses but understood that ours was very nice. The living-room window overlooked the backyard and, beyond that, a deep forest. In the winter deer came and tiptoed around the bird feeder, ignoring the meat scraps my sisters and I had neatly arranged for their dining pleasure. Even without the snow, the view was impressive, but Aunt Monie seemed not to notice it. The only thing she commented on was the living-room sofa, which was gold and seemed to amuse her. "My goodness," she said to my four-year-old sister, Gretchen. "Did you choose this yourself?" Her smile was brief and amateurish, like something she was studying but had not yet mastered. The mouth turned up at the corners, but her eyes failed to follow. Rather than sparkling, they remained flat and impassive, like old dimes.

"All right then," she said. "Let's see what we've got." She received my sisters and me, each in turn, and handed us an unwrapped present from an exotic shopping bag at her feet. The bag was from a Cleveland department store, a store that for many years had been hers, or at least partially. Her first husband had owned it, and when he died she had married a tool-and-die manufacturer who eventually sold his business to Black and Decker. He, too, had passed away, and she had inherited everything.

My gift was a marionette. Not the cheap kind with a blurred plastic face, but a wooden one, each fine joint attached by hook to a black string. "This is Pinocchio," Aunt Monie said. "His nose is long from telling lies. Is that something you like to do from time to time, tell little lies?" I started to answer, and she turned to my sister Lisa. "And who have we here?" It was like visiting Santa, or rather, like having him visit you. She gave us each an expensive gift, and then she went to the bathroom to powder her nose. With most people this was just an expression, but when she returned, her face was matted, as if with flour, and she smelled strongly of roses. My mother asked her to stay for lunch, and Aunt Monie explained that it was impossible. "What with Hank," she said, "the long drive, I just couldn't." Hank, we figured, was the chauffeur, who raced to open the car door the moment we stepped out of the house. Our great-aunt settled into the backseat and covered her lap with a fur blanket. "You can close the door now," she said, and we stood in the driveway, my marionette waving a tangled good-bye.