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November 16, 2007

Renal Advice

Written by Girth McDürchstein on November 16, 2007 1:17 PM
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Renal gave me a hard stare. “Why do you let her treat you like that?”

We were sitting in the minivan, in a parking space outside the Target at the Empire Center in Burbank. Margo had gone inside and forced us both to wait in the car.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“She treats you like total shit.”

I shrugged.

“Are you trying to tell me you haven’t noticed?” She put a soft arm around me. “Come on, Dad, she’s using you.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Remember what you told me? About Iowa?” Renal smiled. “She’s full of shit, man. She said she came there because she loved you, then she said she came there to help you nab that other chick, and it was all just to make you feel guilty about leaving her, so you’d not only take her back but finally marry her. Think about it: was anything that happened on that trip, after she showed up, your idea? What you wanted?”

“You don’t understand,” I snapped. “It’s like a yin and yang thing. She’s good for me, I’m good for her.”

“I’m not trying to be mean,” Renal said. “It’s just…you can’t expect somebody from a family of con artists to treat you like anything besides a mark.”

“Like you would know.”

Renal shrugged.

“I love your mother—”

“She’s not my mother!” Renal barked.

“Be that as it may,” I said, “you will treat her with respect.”

Still, I couldn’t help thinking… It did seem like an awful lot of the decisions made by me were actually decisions Margo made; she just made me feel like I agreed with her, even though usually I started out disagreeing. I couldn’t deny that she came from a family of grifters; however, she was a state-champion debater. She was very good at arguing. That’s why she always wins, right?

Right?