Oblivion_ stories - By David Foster Wallace Page 0,75

brought home to me in spades what an empty, fraudulent person I’d basically been ever since at least the time I was four and lied to my stepdad because I’d realized somehow right in the middle of his asking me if I’d broken the bowl that if I said I did it but ‘confessed’ it in a sort of clumsy, implausible way, then he wouldn’t believe me and would instead believe that my sister Fern, who’s my stepparents’ biological daughter, was the one who’d actually broken the antique Moser glass bowl that my stepmom had inherited from her biological grandmother and totally loved, plus it would lead or induce him to see me as a kind, good stepbrother who was so anxious to keep Fern (whom I really did like) from getting in trouble that I’d be willing to lie and take the punishment for it for her. I’m not explaining this very well. I was only four, for one thing, and the realization didn’t hit me in words the way I just now put it, but rather more in terms of feelings and associations and certain mental flashes of my stepparents’ faces with various expressions on them. But it happened that fast, at only four, that I figured out how to create a certain impression by knowing what effect I’d produce in my stepdad by implausibly ‘confessing’ that I’d punched Fern in the arm and stolen her Hula Hoop and had run all the way downstairs with it and started Hula-Hooping in the dining room right by the sideboard with all my stepmom’s antique glassware and figurines on it, while Fern, forgetting all about her arm and hoop because of her concern over the bowl and other glassware, came running downstairs shouting after me, reminding me about how important the rule was that we weren’t supposed to play in the dining room. . . . Meaning that by lying in such a deliberately unconvincing way I could actually get everything that a direct lie would supposedly get me, plus look noble and self-sacrificing, plus also make my stepparents feel good because they always tended to feel good when one of their kids did something that showed character, because it’s the sort of thing they couldn’t really help but see as reflecting favorably on them as shapers of their kids’ character. I’m putting all this in such a long, rushing, clumsy way to try to convey the way I remember it suddenly hit me, looking up at my stepfather’s big kindly face as he held two of the larger pieces of the Moser bowl and tried to look angrier than he really felt. (He had always thought the more expensive pieces ought to be kept secure in storage somewhere, whereas my stepmom’s view was more like what was the point of having nice things if you didn’t have them out where people could enjoy them.) How to appear a certain way and get him to think a certain thing hit me just that fast. Keep in mind I was only around four. And I can’t pretend it felt bad, realizing it—the truth is it felt great. I felt powerful, smart. It felt a little like looking at part of a puzzle you’re doing and you’ve got a piece in your hand and you can’t see where in the larger puzzle it’s supposed to go or how to make it fit, looking at all the holes, and then all of a sudden in a flash you see, for no reason right then you could point to or explain to anyone, that if you turn the piece this one certain way it will fit, and it does, and maybe the best way to put it is that in that one tiny instant you feel suddenly connected to something larger and much more of the complete picture the same way the piece is. The only part I’d neglected to anticipate was Fern’s reaction to getting blamed for the bowl, and punished, and then punished even worse when she continued to deny that she’d been the one playing around in the dining room, and my stepparents’ position was that they were even more upset and disappointed about her lying than they were about the bowl, which they said was just a material object and not ultimately important in the larger scheme of things. (My stepparents spoke this way, they were people of high ideals and values, humanists. Their big ideal was total honesty in