Discuss and analyze how this story does or does not reflect American values and American preoccupations. Focus specifically on the marriage, the convertible, and the economic situation of Leo and Toni.

        A Convertible sports car, in red- that’s as American as the White picked fence around the little house with Apple Pie cooling on the windowsill.  They bought the car three summers ago and paid it off in a year, which must mean they were doing well financially for a while.  They spent all of their money instead of saving it and having security, now look at them.  Leo making Toni run out and sell the car for a few hundred bucks.  That is why if you are doing well with money for a while, save some because everybody has a time when money is tight.  Leo and Toni lived the life for a while I’m sure, but now they regret it.  Leo’s pride has been sold with that convertible; he feels a sense of failure, as if he does not hold up to his status of a man (who in those days were the main bread winner).

        I also feel that Leo was wrong for sending Toni out to sell the car if he was going to get mad.  She warned him “I’ll have to have dinner or something, I told you already, that’s the way they work, I know them.  But don’t worry, I’ll get out of it…I can handle it”.  But the catch was that she said she would get out of it, and she didn’t.  Although I think Leo was wrong for sending her out, she topped the charts of disrespect with her actions.  Not only did she disrespect herself and her husband, but also she put herself in danger.  She got intoxicated around a man she does not know from a hole in the wall.  He could have done anything to her that night.  Leo wouldn’t have even known where she was to be able to help her.   That also says a lot for their marriage.  They are so blinded by having money and not having money that they don’t really care about one another.  He’s willing to send her out to sell cars to men she doesn’t know over dinner.  And she is willing cheat? Flirt? Or whatever else she did, to sell the car.  That doesn’t sound right to me.
        I believe in true lasting love for the sole meaning of love, nothing more and nothing less.  It is a shame that things like this story have become normal in our country, and this is not even the worst of it.  With time people live more loosely than ever before.  Losing respect for themselves and their lovers.  That is why fifty percent of married couples get divorced.  I guess they are all doing something wrong, and I think we know what.