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Literary magazine. |
 The Lost Lexus
February 23, 2009
 The Lost Lexus was originally featured in The Secret Currency of Love: The Unabashed Truth About Women, Money, and Relationships and is reprinted here by permission of the author. Lexus, Lexi: I wanted the Lexus. For Christmas, my husband had given me a card on which he had written Hybrid—a replacement for my ancient Toyota RAV4. I was newly enchanted with the phrase carbon footprint and the idea of lightening mine. Temperamentally, I’ve never been a light-liver: when I wear clothes they wear out quickly; downstairs neighbors complain of my heavy tread. But I was enamored with the effortlessness of a hybrid—of purchasing one’s way into a superior relation to the planet. All I had to do was pick the hybrid. It was the eve of our first wedding anniversary, and I was still trying to understand my husband’s financial philosophy and the extent to which it was a philosophy. I was hoping it was more a matter of habit because one thing was plain: it was different from mine. Michael was frugal. By chance, I discovered that the Lexus RX hybrid was the same price as the Toyota Highlander Limited hybrid when configured similarly, with GPS. Both had similar reliability ratings, since, in fact, both cars are manufactured by Toyota. But the Lexus was prettier, with a comelier snout, a curvier body, and superior interior decoration. If Michael’s thriftiness was simply about saving money, then he would be fine with whichever car I chose. But I had a feeling it wasn’t. “A Lexus!” he exclaimed with dismay. I harped on the similarity of the price and—since it is also manufactured by Toyota—reliability rating. “I’d be embarrassed to drive it.” There was a Lexus or two in the parking lot at work, he acknowledged—and Acuras and Infinitis—but he was “glad they didn’t belong to me.” His was a magnetic gray Toyota Camry with an ash interior: nice, but not too nice, and that was the way he liked it. “It’s a neutral car—it doesn’t make a statement,” he explained. “But I wouldn’t want to influence you. If I have to drive it to work sometime, I can park inconspicuously,” he said glumly. “I guess, I just didn’t see us as a Lexus kind of family.” When we had gotten engaged, we were financial equals. To be precise, Michael had six times the savings I did—but since six of not very much is still not very much, we were, to my mind, roughly in the same financial category. There was no particular reason to expect this would change. But shortly before our wedding, it became clear that the business he founded—a small, “emerging” software company, as they call it in the business world, or “struggling startup” as he often described it to me—was going to be acquired by a giant computer company. When that happened, we would become distinctly, dramatically unequal. The unhappily paired in his circle counseled him to make a prenuptial agreement. In relating his rejection their advice, I understood that Michael wanted me to feel that this money would also belong to me—that we would be financial partners. The first time he referred to the share of the buyout that went to “us,” I assumed he was referring to his board, and I caught my breath when I realized he meant me. Our share, us. He had worked for many years to build the product and the company—years during which he had been with other women—and I met him just when all his efforts had come to fruition. And suddenly—without my so much as having grasped what scalable, highly-available file serving, or database consolidation was—it was all “ours.” Or even ours. “Of course, we’re not going to change our spending habits, anyway,” he said. “We’re not? Why not?” “Because that would be bad.” “Be serious.” “What about what I’m saying aren’t you taking seriously?” Perhaps he only wanted me to be his financial partner in the same way that I wanted him to be co-owner of our blue-point Balinese kitten, Crumpet: to share responsibility, certainly, but to do so in the way I saw fit which meant—for example—not just leaving her food when we went away for the weekend, but arranging for a live-in professional pet-sitter to keep her from being bored or lonely, even if he was of the opinion that she could amuse herself because “the species survived for thousands of years without humans to amuse them and she will survive the weekend.” She is our cat, to be sure, as long as he is with the cat-care program. But if there is dissent, she is my cat. I wasn’t with the financial program. “Our income has changed,” I said. “Our income has not changed. I’ve explained this before. This was a one-time financial windfall.” “Okay, okay, fine, our assets have changed. Our bank balance has an extra zero! Our financial situation has improved by an order of magnitude.” “That’s not relevant.” “It’s not?” Was it a dim anxiety that we’d need this windfall someday—that we would irritate the gods with frivolity and they’d show us how swiftly fortunes can reverse? Did luxuries strike him as unseemly, in the face of poverty and increasing financial inequity? Or was his attitude the product of a small town New England upbringing by the kind of serious-minded academics who refinanced their house to send their children to private schools because education is important—but who bought cars second-hand, clothes on markdown, and checked videos out of the library? Was Michael afraid that if he bought things his parents wouldn’t buy, he’d be rejecting their values—or them? I had also grown up in an academic family, but with parents who were far less thrifty. My Lexus-driving mother is, however, prone to fits of guilt about extravagances—a problem she likes to solve by taking my father shopping with her. He’ll settle into a chair in Saks or Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdales, reading, munching on cashews, and looking up from his thriller from time to time to nod approvingly at everything she tries on. “Well, I don’t know,” she’ll say, pursing her lips, “maybe it’s too expensive.” “Nonsense,” he replies, right on cue: if she wants it, she must have it. When I coyly suggested to Michael that something I coveted was too costly, he simply concurred. When I talked about want, he refocused the conversation on need. When we first moved in together, I thought we should become a two iPod household; he thought we should share mine. “Come on—” I argued, “everyone has their own iPod. Kids in ghettos have iPods.” “Kids in ghettos have automatic weapons and satellite TV,” he said. “Do we need those too?” Log in to comment freely Comments: 18 Get an avatar |
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