Driving In Vans With Men

I’ve been meeting men all over Cleveland – in Parma, in Fairview, Mentor and Willoughby.  I know them only by first names:  Mo, Nick, Sam, Ron.  We meet in parking lots and BP stations, after work and on Sunday mornings.  They are for the most part attractive and virile.  They are also married, but I don’t care.

They’ve come to sell me their minivans, and in the world of used vehicles and private sellers having a wife indicates a higher level of responsibility that can make a buyer feel more secure.  If you’ve ever been married you know how little truth there is to that, but it is some comfort when a guy tells you “This is a great van, my wife loves it, we just need something bigger.”  He leaves out the part about her breaking down on the interstate.

The men and I sit side by side as I take their vans for a test drive.  Talk is kept to a minimum, totally superficial but absolutely necessary as I find the silent intervals too intimate to bear.  I drive carefully, way more cautious than I would normally be, afraid of the insurance complications if there were an accident and how that might affect the potential purchase.  In addition to gauging the reliability of each vehicle, I’m auditioning as worthy driver, trying to impress upon the current owner (and myself) that the family van would indeed be going to a fully competent, functioning individual.  But the men seem disinterested, their neutrality most likely the best way to keep from blurting out things like “The timing belt should be replaced immediately!” or “If you get another hundred miles out of this transmission you’ll be lucky.”

One man brings along his two-year old son, who beams at me from the backseat.  At a stoplight I wonder what the people in the car next to us see through the windows of this 1997 Plymouth Voyager – just your average American minivan family with a slightly older wife, whose husband prefers to let her drive?  Meanwhile, since I know practically nothing about cars, I look desperately for clues - Does the fact that the radio is tuned to NPR make him more trustworthy, or perhaps a bit lax in the auto maintenance department?  Is the child in fact an actor hired to further the illusion that this is a worthy family vehicle?  I pull out onto the highway, accelerate for a few minutes and hit cruise control, then exit and loop back around over the interstate.  Telling him I’ll think about it, I pull into the parking space next to my rental car.  As my temporary husband and little boy drive off I try to remember anything specific about the van, anything at all.