Sin of the Month • Abby Bardi
	Volvos

Buying the Volvo seemed like a great idea.   It had been owned by my husband's friend's elderly,

fastidious mother and had been a luxury car in its day, with automatic windows, a sunroof, and heated leather seats.   It had a special engine with umpteen valves, and this made it even more desirable, according to my husband.

My husband is partial to Volvos; at one time or another, he has owned 28 of them.   When we got married, he had three, only one of which ran.   He bought a fourth from the guy who married us, so you might say we were married in the Church of Volvo.   My husband fixed that Volvo up and "sold" it to a woman who had lived down the street for several years in a large white van.   I put "sold" in quotation marks because he told her she could pay him later, and I was not at all surprised when she skipped town.

According to my husband, when he went to his friend's mother's house to buy the Volvo, people were lined up outside, clutching their checkbooks, and when he drove away in it, a cry of anguish arose from the crowd.

Our first step was inspection: $500.   The meter was now running.

The plan was that my husband would drive the new Volvo and sell his Saturn for the same bargain price.   We would break even.   Unfortunately, the Saturn didn't sell.   When it became apparent that it would not be possible to unload it except by paying someone to take it away, I suggested that we sell the new Volvo.   Sure, it was nice, and I liked the heated seats, but it used premium gas, got lousy mileage, and was showing signs of being, frankly, kind of a diva.   (It had already insisted on new tires.)

My husband looked morose.   "I've always wanted a Volvo like this," he said.   He has a way of saying the word "Volvo" as if it contained more than two syllables, suffusing it with longing, reverence, regret.

"I know, but--"   I supplied him with some practical financial information about the relative values of his two cars, our economic state, etc.  

He sighed and stared into space, as if seeing a parade of all 28 of the Volvos he had loved and lost.   Then he turned to me.   "It has umpteen valves," he said.  

I decided to quit arguing.   The Volvo sat outside our house with a smug glint in its headlights, having won this round.

The Volvo is a bottomless money trap, and this shows no sign of improving.   It's going to keep bleeding our resources with no end in sight.   We've got to pull our troops out.

However, after the next few repair bills, I brought it up again.   The Volvo had decided that it needed a new cable that had something to do with the transmission.   It wanted a new tie rod.   It demanded brake work.   Each time the Volvo insisted on some new, unexpected repair, I said, "Okay, but this is the LAST TIME."   I said this numerous times.

But every time I talked to my husband about selling the Volvo, he would get that same sad look on his face, as if contemplating the profound tragedy of human existence.   Clearly, it would be hard for him to get up and face another day without a Volvo.   My husband is not a Saturn person; he is a Volvo person.   When I heard on NPR that according to Bush's campaign manager, Democrats drive Volvos and do yoga, I was driving our Volvo to a yoga class.   In the language of cars, a Volvo means something, though I'm not sure what.  

I, however, am a Toyota person.   Toyotas are small, fuel-efficient, well-designed, and cheap, and they almost never need repairs.  

Whereas the Volvo seemed bent on sucking us dry.

Back in the early 1980s, my first husband and I owned a hideous Plymouth sedan, the kind with seats so large you could lie flat in them (and people had).   I hated it.   When we left the country, we couldn't sell it, so we decided to give it away to my ex's friend Neil, who had just gotten married and needed a car.  

Some months later, we received a letter from Neil, berating us for the marital problems the car had caused him.   The letter contained a list of all the things that had gone wrong with the car and all the fights Neil had had with his wife.   I'm sure they're divorced now, and I'm sure both of them still blame the Plymouth.

Over the years, I hadn't thought much about Neil until our Volvo situation began.   When I suddenly recalled his irate tome, I vowed that I would be a good sport about the Volvo and not allow the diplomatic situation in my household to deteriorate because of a mere vehicle.

One day, I was driving the Volvo down 16th Street when the engine suddenly died.   You may wonder why I was in the Volvo and not in my reliable Toyota.   Or, at this point, you may not care one way or another.   In any case, I had lent the Toyota to my daughter Hortense.   (It was returned to me with its right side and tail-pipe bashed in, reeking of cat pee.)

When the Volvo stalled, I managed to coast into the driveway of one of those apartment buildings with twenty-five doormen who come out and yell at anyone who parks there.   "You're in our fire lane," they shrieked, threatening to tow me.   I told them I had called AAA and they were on their way.   They assured me that their tow-truck would get there before mine would.   I shed a few tears, and they stomped away, yelling, "What if there's a fire?"

A short time later, there was a fire.   The firefighters pushed my car out of their way and into a parking space.   The doormen came out and yelled at me some more.

Finally, AAA showed up and towed me to a Shell station near my house, which I chose because they had let my husband put giant Kerry signs on their lawn, and I felt I should Give Back.

I did Give Back.   Apparently, despite everyone's alleged careful maintenance of the Volvo, its timing belt had broken.   When I, as well as several of the yelling doormen and the AAA towing guy, had tried to re-start the engine, we had sheered off all umpteen of the special valves in the special engine.

As I handed the Shell guy my Visa card, still burning hot from the last repairs we had put on it, I realized something.   "You know," I said to my husband, who had the decency to feel something resembling buyer's remorse by this time, "this is just like the war in Iraq.   It's costly, it's pointless, and it's destroying our infrastructure.   Programs will have to be cut.   The Volvo is a bottomless money trap, and this shows no sign of improving.   It's going to keep bleeding our resources with no end in sight.   We've got to pull our troops out."

"It will probably work perfectly from now on," he said, but his heart wasn't in it.

"Stop the Volvo," I said.   "Now."

He agreed, and said he was sorry we'd ever bought the damn thing.   "It was a mistake," he said.   I resisted the urge to point out to him that I had said this all along, since he might feel it was prematurely anti-fascist of me, as it were.

But you will not, perhaps, be surprised to learn that the Volvo is still sitting outside our house, smirking.   Our Visa bill is gigantic, and a new bankruptcy bill has just been passed by Congress.   If you would like to buy an aging luxury Volvo with umpteen brand-new valves, let me know; I'll throw in some yoga classes.

Of course, thinking about this, I realize that there are several key ways in which the Volvo and the war in Iraq differ: our initial investment in the Volvo was not founded on prevarication and greed.   Thousands of people were not killed in the Volvo purchase.  

The Volvo is nothing like the war in Iraq--just forget I said that.