Mark Millhone - The Patron Saint of Used Cars and Second Chances

M Y WIFE AND I had an open marriage.

Rose understood that I had certain automotive needs, and I didnt ask questions about all the strange shoes she brought home. For me, eBayMotors was like online porn you could talk about around the water cooler the next day. My kink was grandma cars. Cars driven only by little old ladies to church on Sundays. Cherry. Mint as new money. Like new. Thats what Im talking about. Every car starts off new, like a baby, but only cars that the fates have smiled upon, to whom life has been truly kind, can remain like new, ever young, untouched by the ravages of time.

My obsession with finding this Platonic ideal of a used car on eBay began after a year from hell put far too many miles on my family: Our youngest, Benny, nearly died because of birth complications, my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer, my mother had a heart attack and passed away, and, finally, our family dog gave our older son, Sam, an object lesson in why you let sleeping dogs lie in the form of a jagged two-inch scar down the center of his face. It averaged out to a major crisis every five weeks or so, almost like a subscription to a tragedy-of-the-month club.

We want to think of crisis as a thing that brings us together. And most dofor as long as the crisis lasts. When things are reduced to life and death, its much easier to know who you are, what you should do, what life means. Theres a certain painful magic to it. And its true what they say about crisis showing you what youre really made of; what they dont tell you is that you may not always like what you find out. Or that its after the worst is over that the fun really begins.

Post-traumatic stress: the gift that keeps on taking.

I just kept telling myself we were fine. So Rose was having a few issues. Nothing to get excited about, just your run-of-the-mill post-traumatic stuff: difficulty sleeping, panic attacks, agoraphobia, killer migraines, whiplash mood swings, that sort of thing. But the kids were fine. I mean, Benny was having some speech delays because of his time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, but we were pretty sure there wasnt any irreversible neurological damage. And yes, Sams nose scar was still quite noticeable a year after the dog bite, but that was no biggie because who was lucky enough to know the best plastic surgeon in the city? Thats right, us. Why wait for puberty to make him self-conscious about his scar when we could have a crack medical team poke and prod him next Thursday at one oclock?

Anybody who tells you that denial isnt a real way of dealing with things has never had to deal with anything real.

Soon after our troubles started, an uninvited houseguest showed up in our home. He ate my food, wore my clothes, played with my children, and even slept with my wife. He was my spitting image, but he wasnt meat least not the me my wife had fallen in love with. I had become my father. My family needed me to be strong, and the only indelible image of manhood I had was that of my father, a classic 50s model: stoic, rational, dutiful, physically present but emotionally absent. Somebody had to wear the daddy pants.

As an angry young man, I had been quite adept at telling my father to go to hell. But now that the shoe was on the other foot, now that I was the dad, it was very hard for me to banish our uninvited houseguest, this emotionally withdrawn stranger that I had become. He saved my life. Theres no way I could have soldiered through our year from hell without his quiet strength.

In family pictures taken in the wake of our year from hell, Rose and I actually have the thousand-yard stare of young soldiers made old by combat. Post-traumatic stress turns your world upside down: When the end of the world becomes your comfort zone, each new crisis is actually a relieffrom the stress of worrying about what will befall you next, from all the difficult emotions that threaten to overwhelm you whenever you get a quiet moment to yourself. Just because youre not making time for your feelings doesnt mean they take the hint and go away.

When life-and-death conflicts become routine, routine conflicts become life-and-death. Who should leave work early to pick up the kids, whose fault it was the DVDs never made it back to the video store, which in-laws got which holidaysall became fights to the death. Arguing became the new sex. We could get it on anywhere, anytime, even in public places; wed have shouting matches in the street. Yeah, we became those people. Even though the only real explanation for what happened to us was just the fine print about life not being fair, when bad things happen, you want someone, something, to blame. God wasnt returning our calls, so we turned on each other.

Me vs. my wife had always been a pretty fair fight. Rose is the irresistible force to my unmovable objectshe attacks with the ear-biting, guilt-tripping ferocity of a Jewish Mike Tyson, while my tactic is to slowly wear her down with my passive-aggressive rope-a-dope like some corn-fed Muhammad Ali.

The brutal elegance of the passive-aggressive way is that you make your enemies fight themselves. Rose, with all her Jewish guilt, never stood a chance. I would attack at night, wielding my laptop with the devastating force of Bruce Lee spinning his nunchucks. Rose would wake to find that I had left our bed. All she could hear were my fingers on my laptop:

Clickity-clack clickity clack

Her insomnia would tag-team with her guilt, torturing her for hourswas I up late working because taking care of the kids during the day didnt leave me enough time to get my work done? Or was I on some porn site to make up for our nonexistent sex life? Was she a bad mother or a bad wife? Both?

Clickity-clack clickity clack

Most nights, I was just on eBay.

eBay accepted me the way I was. All I needed to feel adequate was my laptop and a PayPal account. To avoid that last argument of the day, I would generously offer to get Benny down to sleep each night, snuggling up with him and my laptop until heand, more importantly, Rosewent to sleep.

It was on one of these nights that I found THE car:

eBAY LISTING #4620111528: LOW, LOW, LOW MILESAmazing 1994 BMW 740i in Orient Blue Metallic over ParchmentLeather. An absolutely impeccable example of a trulyfine luxury car

It was a one-owner car kept in a climate-controlled garage in Dallas for the CEO of a large corporation in case he ever felt like driving himself to the golf course when he was in town. Never driven in the snow. Never smoked in. Never crashed.

Like new.

I knowit takes a real man to think that the answer to all our problems was buying a car. I spent hours staring at the twenty-three pictures of it posted online until I knew every inch of it, could almost feel the steering wheel in my hands. It was more than car lust, more than early-onset midlife crisisthis car became my Holy Grail, my Field of Dreams, my prayer to Saint eBay, patron saint of used cars and second chances, that my family could emerge from our time of trial like new. What happened to that brave couple Rose and I used to be, who wagered our lives on the fleeting magic of our first kiss? How could I find my way back to them? As I stared at this car on eBay, a voice in my head told me:

If you drive it, you will know.