The Expensive House

One year, my father paid me $7,000 to buy my first house. It had been a weekend home my grandfather built on the Pearl River Reservoir across the street from where he had built a similar house for the Jackson Club. He and his brother-in-law, Tom Hederman, purchased several lots on that street before Ross Barnett got involved. My grandfather left the house to his grandchildren, so I paid my siblings and my cousins $12,000 each to buy out their interest. My career as a real estate magnate had begun in earnest.

Three years later, my father spent over $100,000 on two weddings. When they were over, as we had a sip at the end of a long day, he said he would give me some money to fix up my fixer-upper when the new fiscal year began, and he had recovered some from the weddings. I said it wasn’t necessary, because I hoped to rent the house when I moved to California, a plan only he and I knew about.

“How do you plan to finance that?” He asked.

“I have some ideas,” I said.

“Let’s start talking about that part of it after the first of the fiscal year,” he said.

Three weeks later, he was dead.

My unstated, but I hoped obvious goal, was to be the least expensive child. There were no allowance payments for me, no expensive weddings, no expensive trips to Europe or other places unless I paid for them. My hope was to prove that time with my father was its own reward. I was reclaiming my lost birthright, stolen by his rocketing career and the constant time drain of a growing, but troubled, Mississippi. All I wanted was to be with him. No money. No promises. Just time.

When I started working every day, my grandfather invited me to go with him to the Walthal hotel for his weekly haircut, shave, and shoe shine. I jumped at the chance. My brothers had worked out a deal where he would pay them each $50 every time they got their haircut. He tried to pay me. I said no. He insisted. I insisted back. Finally, he put it in my pocket and went to the bathroom.

While he was peeing, I put the money in his coat pocket, hanging from his chair. When he discovered this, he put it in my coat pocket hanging on the door. Finally, we agreed to use the money to take Bubba (my grandmother) for supper. The deal we finally struck was that he would buy me lunch at the Walthal when we got our haircut. They had really good soup and tuna sandwiches.

Two years later, he would be the first member of the family to take a ride in a helicopter. It happened after he had a heart attack playing Gin Rummy with Toby Trobridge of Van Tro Oldsmobile at the Country Club of Jackson. He probably would have thought it was one of the coolest things, except I’m pretty sure he was already dead. Leaving me as a child, then leaving me again when I was a man, seemed to be the way things went with the men in my life.

My family was accustomed to me not including myself in things. One year, my mother wanted to pay for everyone to go on a family Caribbean cruise. Since the brother who tried to murder me when the voices told him to was included, I asked not to be included.

“It’s time you got over this.” My mother insisted.

“Maybe you should have thought about that at the time,” I responded.

I realize this was Sophie’s choice for her. My brother was remarkably mentally ill, and I knew that, and I wasn’t without sympathy, but Sophie’s choice is an entirely different matter when you’re the child Sophie didn’t choose.

I loved my mother, but she never understood me, and she had other priorities. I loved my father, but just as we began to get to know each other, God called him home. When I was a child, he had other priorities too. I don’t hold grudges. I’m just one person, and not a very sociable one. Now that there will never be any more, I appreciate the time I had. That’s about all you can ask for.

I never spent the money I made selling that little house. My sister believed I should move back to Jackson and get involved in the world again. I moved back to Jackson, but it would be fifteen years before I got involved in the world again.