By the time we finished editing Breeder both of my wrists were thrashed. I literally could not turn the wheel on my Honda, which had a tendency to stop running in the rainy season anyway, and finally had to get rid of the thing.
Normally the money from the book advance would have gone to cover critical bills since we were a family living on a graduate stipend designed to support a single adult.
But while I was shuffling papers around Byron went to a conference in Texas and started dancing with these Swedes who offered him a job over the thumping beat of the music. They said he could live wherever and finish his PhD while drawing a salary – a deal that could not in fact have been any better. He accepted and when my book advance turned up I had already paid the overdue utility bills.
I petted my check for awhile and then set off to find a car with power steering. I located it parked on Hawthorne: a powder blue 1984 Volvo 240 with ski racks, wonky doors, and a dubious title. I haggled the guy down to fifty percent of his asking price and then drove home in the not-very-luxurious new ride with blue cloth seats.
One day during carpool my daughter slammed her hand in the door, gouging the skin completely off and breaking a finger. This would not have happened with the Honda; the door would have simply bounced open again.
The cloth seats figure prominently in this story because at some point during a picnic someone left a bag of recycling and garbage in my car without notifying me, and since I lacked a sense of smell the car was putrid before a passenger gasped and pointed out the problem.
From that point on we fondly referred to the vehicle as Skanky and I drove it with pleased affection until we were packing to move to Seattle. The week before we left I was running errands and turned a corner and the door that broke my daughter’s finger fell out of the frame with a loud clunk..
The car needed more investment in mechanical work than I originally spent on the vehicle. We debated the veracity of bringing it with us, but didn’t think it would actually survive the trip.
In the end we left the car parked next to our house, turned over the keys to the friends renting the place, and waved as we drove off in our (new to us) marginally less decrepit 1994 Volvo 240 station wagon.
Gabriel wrote this week to say that Skanky has suffered what might be the final illness.
I’m sending good wishes to the intrepid old car and the wildly optimistic people who are trying to get it running again.