The Volvo 850

Annie Mesa

My dad is proud of the softness of his hands. He swears it's because he always wears gloves. His right hand I see gripping the gear shift of his deep green Volvo like a staff, power collecting in the shadows of his knuckles and swelling in the bulges of his veins.

Blue veins like roads, I want to follow them back. Back to the streets of Bogotá, to see him and his four older siblings under their respective mango trees, where they would patiently wait for the fruits to fall. I want to trace his vessels back to the subways of Queens and find him peacefully reading his copy of The New York Times on the way to school. I want to trail his arteries back to the basements of Madrid, and catch him with his medical school friends sneaking into the university's food pantry, using the master-key they created. Sometimes I forget that the only roads of his I do know are the curves of the Saw Mill Parkway.

For two years when my dad was working in the city, I went to an elementary school on the Upper West Side. We were closest during our daily drives together to Manhattan. Our biggest arguments were over who got domain of the radio. He insisted on listening to classical music, while I tried to inconspicuously turn the dial to the pop station any chance I could get. Whenever songs with unsubtle innuendos came on, which was frequently, he would shake his head in disgust and gruffly switch back to Bach. This always irritated and embarrassed me, even though I did not particularly like the pop station either. I just wanted to be able to sing along to the songs like my friends at school. If the classical station was playing a piece he particularly liked, the sounds would slowly take hold of his body. His bobbing head would follow the tempo as he ardently hummed or whistled along.

Sometimes before the ride home we would grab a bag of Russet potato chips: his weakness. We were both careful not to get any crumbs on the seats. Crumbs and anything sticky made him crazy. In between crunches I would tell him about school. He would let me sit in the front seat, even though I was not old enough. I relished being treated older than my age. If my mom was outside gardening or barbecuing as we pulled into the driveway, she would shoot us a disapproving stare when she caught me up there. “Not the look!” he would exclaim as we both giggled.

As soon as it was frog-catching-season, we would fill the Volvo's back seat with a tangle of nets and buckets and head over to the lake. Mud coated the soles of his brown leather dress shoes and my Converse sneakers. We must have been a funny sight, the white-haired man in khakis and a buttoned down shirt with a little dirty-blonde-haired girl in shorts and a T-shirt, both squatting at the swampy banks. People often mistook him for my grandfather, which always gave him a good laugh. He had the same amount of energy as I did when we were sloshing through the mud. Whenever he spotted one first, he would make broad miming motions, silently and eagerly calling me over. He always let me take the first pounce.

My dad and I both have brown eyes. We are both quiet. And we are both the youngest children of our families. As a result of being the youngest, I think he wanted me to learn from the “mistakes” of my siblings the way he claimed he did when he was growing up. Driving to the city he complained to me about how my sister never cleaned the dishes. About how her ripped jeans were too ragged and revealing. About how she lied when she said she did not break the shower handle. But it was never inherently about the dishes, or the jeans, or the shower handle, which took me awhile to understand.

He would jokingly make me promise not to become an “obnoxious teenager,” given this was before I knew what the word “obnoxious” meant. “What it all comes down to is respect. You have to respect yourself first, before you can respect others.” His forehead matched the creases of the Volvo's leather interior, his voice throaty as he studied the highway ahead of him. I would nod and fiddle with my shoelaces trying to repress memories of the yelling I heard downstairs the night before. I made a vow to myself not to hurt him that much when I was older. But at that time respect was a sound, a word teachers said when you talked over someone else in class instead of raising your hand. It was an idea too intangible for me to grasp. I tried to catch it, my mind pawing through the air, clenching its fists, but I only opened them to find emptiness.

The school in the city became too expensive, so I went back to my local public school for fifth through eighth grade. My dad left his job in Manhattan to work in a higher, more stressful position for a new company in Yonkers. I usually walked to school and only asked my dad for rides into town or to my friends' houses. He despised that I spent so much time in town. I always had to brace myself before asking,

“Dad? I was wondering if maybe I could please get a ride into town?” “Really? What are you even going to do there?” “I don't know...get pizza...hang out,” I cringed as I said the last two words, knowing what would come next.

“Ugh. I hate this 'hanging out' business. Such a waste of time. You should be going to museums or reading books.”

As he dropped me off, I would quickly close the door before waves of classical music could reach my friends' ears. I had difficulty fitting into the groups I hung out with in middle school, and desperately believed that I should. It was during these times that I wished I had a dad who watched football and could fix cabinets. Who wore jeans and liked Chinese food. One who would practice soccer with me in the backyard without hurting his back. Who I could chew gum around and would let me keep my elbows on the table. Whose name was John or Steve instead of Ricardo.

Despite my vows, I too began to forget to clean my dishes, to wear shorts he thought were too short, and to lie about not being the one who left the lights on in the house. He would approach me about my mistakes in the Volvo, conveniently a place with no escape. It hurt with a fresh layer of pain when he called me “princess” and “inconsiderate” the way he used to call my sister, because I knew all the distress that followed these statements. I remembered sitting in the same tan leather seat as the person he would take solace in, rather than the one inflicting this pain. I would stubbornly stare out the car window, not allowing him to see the glistening trails slide down my cheeks.

When I think of my father, one of the first images I see is his Volvo 850, which was created the year before I was born. I see its rich green color and its cracked tan leather seats. I see the straight contours of its frame and its box-like form. Sophisticated yet practical. Serious yet kind.

A couple years ago, his Volvo heaved its last haul up our driveway where it now lies empty—a mass that your eyes skim over from habit. The new company he was working for fell through the gaps of the recession, and so he no longer needs a car to drive to work. Presently we share the family station wagon. Unlike the green Volvo, the station wagon's seat is not molded to the scoliosis induced curves of his spine, so he has to use a pillow to ease the pain in his back.

Nowadays if he has to drive me somewhere because he needs the car, I do not change the music station. I try to appreciate the melodies as I listen to his stories.

“What are your most vivid memories of Colombia?” I asked one evening as he drove me home.

“Of Colombia? Hmm...Well, let me think.” He looked behind his shoulder before changing lanes. “I remember the house quite well. It was very open because there was no need for heating. In the back there was my mother's garden, which had a huge fig tree, but now come to think of it, it probably wasn't even that big—since I was so little I just saw everything as big back then!” We both laughed, “Oh and the house was situated near the church and 'La Mesa' which was the town square. I remember when I was around three or four years old I used to love spending hours sitting up on the balconies, or los balcones, holding on to the iron bars and peering down at the people below mingling in the square.”

I see him in a postcard from the 1940s, corners creased with white lines and yellow stains that sprawl across the printed black image. In the photograph there are men in bowler hats making women in ruffled white dresses laugh. Buildings surround the square, forming a border that meets at a large church. And up in one of those buildings there is the form of a young child perched in a balcony. The words ‘LA MESA’ ~ Bogotá, Colombia are printed across the bottom.

Presently he spends most of his time stationed in front of his computer analyzing the jagged slopes of the stock market. He does not talk about the possibility of another job. During our nightly dinners we never entertain the thought of him working somewhere else. He is past the age that most people retire, but I worry about his countless hours in the house alone. I worry that now his veins are mostly markers of past memories rather than future plans. Are there not many more roads ahead?

Late at night when I can't sleep, I quietly sneak out of the house, slowly turning the lock, to go outside and perch on the green Volvo's hood. I close my eyes and smell the indigo summer night or my raw winter breath. Silence hangs. Alone, I huddle on top of the car observing the dark neighborhood around me the way my dad looked through the iron bars of los balcones. I'm always afraid my parents might ask questions about my sneaker marks or butt prints mussing up the thin layer of dirt on the car's surface, but no one has seemed to notice yet. They never talk about the green elephant in the driveway.