Drives Like a Dream

by Porter Shreve

  Which was why she had an impulse now to fetch a brush, sit Jessica down on the bed, and comb her mass of black hair until it fell long and straight. Jessica had always been a beauty, with her thick hair and wide-set brown eyes. At five foot nine, she was taller than Lydia, but she still had an adolescent slouch. From an early age, Jessica had never paid much attention to how she looked. A standout basketball player, sweats and running shoes had been her high school uniform.

  "I think maybe your father cares more than you think he does."

  Jessica pulled back her hair and turned to check her profile. She had shaved her underarms—a welcome development since yesterday, Lydia noted.

  "If Dad has a problem with the dress I'm sure he'll let me know. We're going out for brunch before the wedding."

  "But I've made breakfast downstairs." Lydia felt her perfectly planned morning slipping away. Cy had said nothing about branch.

  "Well, we're eating in less than an hour. But thanks, anyway."

  Ivan, in a black suit and silver tie, came into the room and kissed his mother good morning. His hair had been clipper-cut so short that he looked like a Secret Service agent. Lydia wished he would grow it long and curly again, as it had been when he was young, to soften his strong features.

  "You look nice, honey." She stood up and smoothed his lapel.

  "I am the best man in my father's wedding. Tell me if that's not every boy's dream." Ivan stood behind his sister at the mirror and adjusted his tie.

  "Where's Davy?" Jessica asked.

  "Sewing a button on one of my old blazers. He didn't exactly come prepared."

  "So, how was the rehearsal dinner?" Lydia tried to sound nonchalant, though she'd been waiting all morning for a full report. Last night she'd even offered to drive the kids to the restaurant, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ellen. Instead, Jessica had asked to borrow her car.

  "My speech was brilliant. There were tears—" Ivan began, before Jessica clapped her hand over his mouth.

  "It was fine," she said.

  Lydia wondered how she could have such different children. From temperament to interests to where they had chosen to live, they had spun off in all directions. Out in Oregon, Jessica had discovered radical politics, and her phone calls home had become increasingly tense. She talked down to Lydia now, as if speaking to the unenlightened. Ivan, on the other hand, worked for the International Trade Administration; he was a government man, but Jessica never turned her hostility on him.

  "Did Dad tell you he's shaving his beard?" Jessica asked her brother.

  "For the wedding?"

  "Yeah, this morning. It's probably headed down the drain as we speak."

  Lydia realized that this news was meant for her. Cy had always worn a beard. For as long as they'd been married, he had groomed it every day with an electric razor that he kept at the same low setting. She hadn't seen him with a clean-shaven face since well before they were a couple. As he had aged—his hair and beard going from brown to grizzled to fully gray—he looked increasingly distinguished. People had often said they made a handsome couple. She favored long skirts and crisp blouses; he had worn his wire-rimmed glasses and the clothes that Lydia picked out for him. "The Mennonites step out on the town," Jessica used to joke. But during the separation Lydia realized how two people could put a lot of extra miles on a marriage if they looked as if they belonged together.

  "Don't tell me he's going to dye his hair, too," Ivan said.

  "No, he's been reading some men's movement book. It told him that the beard was a mask."

  "Ah, yes. Of course." Ivan always responded badly to his father's soul-searching. Nothing infuriated him more than Cy's earnest talk about spontaneous healing, the God within, and random acts of kindness. And though Lydia would later laugh about this too—much later, after the tightly wound spring of her would at last uncoil—Cy's shaving his beard stood for something final.

  "I should let you two finish getting ready. I'll be outside with the camera," she said quickly and headed back downstairs.

  During one of his incarnations Cy had been an amateur photographer, and though he soon tired of lighthouses and freighters, he had continued to take pictures of the children. The result was a series hanging on the kitchen walls: of the kids on the front steps, a chronicle of their shifting hairstyles and demeanors, from the time Davy was five to just a few years ago. Lydia had decided this week to keep the tradition going. She'd bought film for the camera yesterday, and now she went outside to load it and wait on the porch swing.

  She remembered when Jessica had sat here with her brooding friends or when the children had lined up with their duffel bags before leaving on trips: Davy to music camp at Inter-lochen, Ivan to college in D.C.—the only one in the family not to go to the University of Michigan.

  All three kids came out at once, crisply dressed. Ivan sat on the third step down, Jessica in the middle, Davy on the top step.

  Lydia knelt on the front walk and tilted the camera. "Look at these matinee idols!" she called out, and caught Jessica rolling her eyes.

  After Lydia snapped a few frames Davy stood up. "Can we get you in here, Mom? Let me take over."

  "That's okay." She waved him off.

  He sat back down, cleaning his glasses with his tear drop-patterned tie.

  "The groom will be here any second, you know," Jessica said impatiently.

  "Just a couple more shots, then. How about some smiles?"

  Jessica sighed.

  "C'mon Jess," Davy said. "It's Mom's weekend too. She made us a nice breakfast and everything."

  Thank you, Lydia wanted to say. It was about time someone noticed. Nobody had said so much as "The place looks great" or "Don't you look nice this morning." She did look nice, as a matter of fact. And it was her weekend, too.

  She had clicked off half the roll, her hands shaking a little, by the time Cy pulled up in front of the house. The kids stood up, looking almost solemn as their father got out of his car.

  Cy's cheeks were pink, his small chin newly revealed, a hint of the face Lydia remembered from long ago. She should have known that without the beard, behind the so-called mask, he would resemble an overgrown boy: bright-eyed like Davy, ruddy like Ivan.

  "Sorry I'm late. Got caught up with the endless details. So you took some pictures?"

  "I did," Lydia said emphatically, though she wasn't sure why.

  He leaned forward to kiss her chastely on the cheek, and as she felt for the first time, after more than thirty years of marriage, his shaven face touching her skin, flesh to flesh, a peculiar regret washed over her: she wished that she had been the one to shave him.

  When Lydia was a girl, her father used to send her on errands to a tailor in Hamtramck. He was an ancient rheumyeyed Polish immigrant, and often when she walked into the shop early, before school, the tailor would be sitting on a stool by the cash register with a towel around his neck. His face would be covered in shaving cream, and hovering over him, a bone-handled straight razor in her fist, would be his wife. She would shave him with quick, adept strokes, slapping the spent lather against a towel in her hand, lifting his skin and drawing the razor down. The tailor would sit there, waiting out the daily ritual until his face was smooth and clean. Then he would rise to his feet and gather Lydia's father's suits. His wife would put the razor away, neatly fold the towels. Then she would ring up the sale. And as Lydia turned to wave goodbye, the tailor would say, "Remember, young lady. Don't fall in love."

  That was marriage, Lydia thought—every morning a straight razor shave, routine and precarious at the same time. The domestic trinity of care, trust, and repetition all contained in that simple tableau. How long had the tailor and his wife been married? Fifty years? A hundred and fifty? Lydia half believed that if she were to drive across town to Hamtramck right now, she would find the two of them still holding down the shop. "Don't fall in love," he would say. And Lydia would answer, "Maybe I never did." Or, "I never will again."

  She stood on the fro
nt porch as the kids piled into their father's new Infiniti sedan.

  "Well, bye," she yelled out. "Have a wonderful time." And, as the doors closed, "Congratulations."

  But Cy must not have heard her because he didn't look back, just gave a quick wave. They drove off and Lydia stood staring down the street as the car turned the corner. "Well," she said, then realized that no one was around to hear her. "Well."

  She went back into the house and looked at the uneaten breakfast. Granola, grapefruit, zucchini bread, English muffins, even the jam that Jessica had brought—all of it went into the trash. Lydia poured the coffee, milk, and juice into the sink, put the dishes in the cupboard, wiped down the table, and turned off the light.

  Then she climbed the stairs to her office and gathered her manuscript papers and laptop for the library. "Back when I am," she wrote on a white note card.

  She put the note on the kitchen table, then locked the front door behind her.

  2

  TOO LATE FOR a sit-down brunch, Jessica, Ivan, Davy, and Cy decided to go to a coffee shop in Bloomfield Hills, land of the ladies' lunch. With their cappuccinos and scones they clustered in the window on high skinny chairs, looking out at the shoppers. Jessica was wondering if her father would quit his job at Michitel, since he seemed to be marrying into some family money. Or so he had hinted. The new Infiniti he was driving had been an early wedding gift from Ellen. He had always talked about retirement, even when the kids were young and he was making fairly modest sales commissions. But seeing him now, with his fresh face and newly whitened teeth, Jessica felt grateful—at least he was not on his own.

  "So, let's talk about what everyone's going to wear today," he said, looking directly at Jessica.

  She fingered her choker, surprised that her mother had been right. "This is all I brought, but I'm happy to get something else."

  "Aren't we running late?" Ivan asked. "It's already after ten."

  "We'll be okay if we hurry." Cy licked a spot of foam from his lip. "The bridesmaids will be in lavender, so we should find a nice complement. Maybe something celadon or sage green. I think it would mean a lot to Ellen."

  Jessica glanced across the table at Ivan, who raised his hand to his mouth either to cover a smile or stop himself from saying something caustic.

  "She'll only wear the dress once," Ivan said after a moment. "I don't see what the point is."

  Davy ran his hand through his hair. He had let it grow long, so that it now flopped over his black-rimmed glasses. "I think a new outfit makes sense."

  "Why?" Ivan asked.

  "It's what Dad wants."

  "Look, it's no problem," Jessica jumped in. "I'll get a new dress."

  She was not in the wedding party, which relieved her considerably. She hated the idea of buying clothes that tomorrow would end up in a dark corner of her closet. But at the same time she didn't want to upset her father, who, without his beard, looked lost this morning. He kept rubbing his hand across his chin as if to see what was there—a fresh skin for his wedding day. He seemed nervous and fidgety, and once again Jessica understood why she forgave him, perhaps irrationally, for his considerable faults. While her mother, who despite her occasional dramas seemed the very picture of solidity, Jessica had always harbored a vague fear that she might lose her father. Invariably when she had nightmares about her family, they were about Cy slipping from view, disappearing off the edge of her screams. Not that he lived dangerously, but sometimes it seemed that he was more of a visitor, a ghostly figure in her life. She often had an impulse to reach out and grab hold of him.

  She remembered the first time she had felt this way. She must have been ten or eleven, and up to that moment she had thought of Cy as an ordinary dad who left for work in the morning in his suit and tie and came home late—a successful businessman, perhaps. In truth, he had just switched jobs for the third time in as many years and was selling cars at Bobby Szoradi's Ford dealership. Bobby and Cy had been college roommates, and since Bobby's marriage had recently broken up, Lydia invited him over for Thanksgiving dinner. Ivan had just brought a pumpkin pie to the table when Bobby asked Lydia how sales were coming for her latest book, a history of the assembly line.

  "I don't care much about sales," Lydia said. "I'm just happy to see it reviewed."

  "So sales don't matter?" Bobby asked. "They sure matter in my business. My business is all about sales."

  "Don't I know it," Lydia said, and though her tone was probably more joking than critical, Bobby took it the wrong way.

  "I don't read many books. I'm too busy for books." He shifted in his seat. "But I did read yours, Lydia. You're a fine cook, but you're not so hot at getting your facts right. You've got some nasty things to say about some good people."

  Jessica had looked across the table at her father. He seemed to be biting the inside of his cheek.

  Lydia cut into the pie. "Like who?" she asked.

  "Henry Ford, for one." Bobby raised his voice. "I don't care what you write. He was a great man."

  "Henry Ford was a terrible anti-Semite. And I'm by no means the first to say that." Lydia put a piece of pie on a plate and passed it to Cy, who immediately began eating. "He wrote a tract against Jews in the twenties that Hitler said was his greatest influence. The Führer had a picture of Ford hanging on his office wall."

  Jessica had never seen her mother in a confrontation like this. Lydia spoke in calm, measured sentences, which only made Bobby more agitated.

  "I'm not talking about the man's beliefs," he said. "The world is a better place because of the assembly line. That's my point."

  Lydia picked up a plate. "How about some pie?"

  Bobby took his piece of pie and began to have a bite, then put his fork down. His face glowed in the candlelight. "Ford did a lot of good for a lot of people, Lydia. My grandfather came to this country without a pot to piss in, and Ford gave him a job in tool and die with a decent salary and put him through language school, where he learned to speak English. He and my grandmother raised six great kids and my father was one of those, and by God he worked for Ford. You have a lot of nerve living in this city and writing the things you write."

  "Look, I just tell what happened," Lydia said. "Some of the stories are nice, some not so nice. Do you know what Ford did at graduation from that language school? He put a replica of a melting pot onstage, a huge vat that he wheeled out for all the graduations back then. The immigrant workers would walk into it wearing their old-world clothes, the English instructors would stand above them stirring the pot with giant spoons, and a couple of minutes later the new graduates would emerge in American suits waving American flags. That actually happened, and it says a lot about Henry Ford's 'good' intentions. It didn't matter to him that these people were leaving a culture behind in order to become his worker bees. We live in a world where certain people seem to know what's best for the rest of us."

  Bobby pushed his plate away. "Look, my grandfather had no regrets. He was a full-blooded American and proud of it. I don't know where I'd be without Ford—or where you'd be, either. Your husband is a Ford employee, need I remind you?"

  "And you're his boss," Lydia said. "Which is why you feel entitled to launch into this speech at dinner at my house and insult me in front of my children. You might have chosen a different time to air your complaints. This is hardly my idea of a family Thanksgiving."

  Jessica had watched Cy lower his head and finish the rest of his dessert without comment. He sat between his wife and the man who paid his salary, and Jessica saw that he would do nothing to stop their dispute. Cy took a large mouthful of coffee, ran his finger over his plate collecting what crumbs remained of his piecrust, then licked his finger. He had a sheepish look on his face. He couldn't defend his wife because she didn't need defending, nor did he have the ability to finesse the argument to a peaceful end. By the time it was over, Cy had retreated into his own secluded space. Jessica had wanted to reach across the table and pull her father back into the conversation. Bu
t Ivan cleared the dessert plates and asked their mother if he should make some more coffee. "None for me," Bobby said, and stood up to go.

  Out on the front porch, Jessica heard her mother apologize, but Bobby told her not to worry. "I've been awfully irritable lately," he said. "The marriage and all."

  "Well, see you at work," Cy called from the hallway, as cheerfully as he could. Later, Jessica overheard her father tell Lydia that his future at the dealership might never recover from this. And, in the end, he was right. Self-fulfilling prophecy or not, within the year he was back in the job market.

  Today, hours before his second wedding, Jessica was looking across a different table at her father, but he was the same man. His cloudy green eyes, the way he retreated, the sight of him licking crumbs from his finger—all made Jessica realize why she couldn't be angry even on this weekend, when she had every reason to be. His life, she couldn't deny, was a series of clichés. He was marrying a woman who could have been her older sister. When the kids had needed him just to be around, he was forever chasing some new rainbow. And he'd run off with someone new within six months of separating from their mother, as if thirty-three years had meant nothing. And yet, amazingly, when she boiled over, Jessica turned her fury not on Cy but on Lydia. Perhaps for no better reason than that she knew her mother was strong enough to take it.

  "So, where's Ellen?" Jessica asked.

  "Getting ready. I'm not supposed to see her until we're in the church." Cy smiled, pink half-moons appearing in each cheek.

  Though Ellen had never been married, Jessica and her brothers had expected a low-key wedding. But the rehearsal dinner had been a frilly affair, and this afternoon promised to be more of the same. Last night's crowd had looked like time travelers from the cocktail generation: chain-smoking, Scotchswilling veterans of the Big Band era. And Ellen, who had been a sorority secretary at Michigan State, fit the part: thirty-five going on sixty-five, a string-of-pearls and brass-buttons type with an inborn solicitous manner. Facing the American nightmare of a stepmother nearly as young as herself, Jessica had planned to despise the woman. But after meeting her at the rehearsal dinner and seeing her steer Cy from table to table, gently drawing him into the conversation, Jessica admitted this might be a suitable match after all.