Davy continually surprised Jessica. She never would have pictured him talking about profit margins and how to reach the consumer. She had assumed he would stay in Ann Arbor after college, working at Schoolkids Records and picking up gigs in town or around Detroit. He loved recording sounds—creaky doors, truck horns and passing traffic, the Huron River after a thaw. As an undergraduate in the school of music, he had used these recordings to texture his compositions, and ever since high school, he had played drums for local bands.
Jessica's favorite of these was Queen Bee and the Drones, an R & B quintet more progressive than its name implied. Davy played with them his first two years in college before the gospel-trained lead singer of the group grew pregnant with twins. More than a year later, when it became obvious that Queen Bee would not be returning, Davy and the remaining Drones transformed themselves into a rockabilly band: two guitars, drums and a standup bass. Davy renamed the group the 57 Nomads after the beat-up station wagon in the Modine family garage. Jessica didn't much like the music, but Cy was the Nomads' number one fan, never missing a show and even proposing that the group take him on as manager. "They're playing my songs," he liked to say. "I remember when all the guys had pompadours."
Like everything else that was popular in the late nineties, rockabilly appealed to nostalgia, so the Nomads had gotten as many gigs as they could handle, and with a bit of organization could have probably toured. But just as their reputation was growing, Davy abandoned the group, moved to Chicago, and joined the Internet gold rush when nearly all the gold had already been found. Jessica wondered if her brother was not so much drawn to the siren call of wealth as he was unable to deal with his wannabe "manager."
Cy first took an interest in his son's music when Davy was fifteen and playing with his first group, a grunge band called Silent Thunder. They covered Pearl Jam and Nirvana at high school dances and wore the standard uniform of the day: flannel shirts, baggy jeans, and Caterpillar boots. Cy caught them at the Huntington High talent show, and over the next several months began to appear at all of their gigs. Davy would call Jessica in Aim Arbor and wonder out loud why Cy kept showing up, since their father's taste in music tilted toward the easy listening end of the dial. Jessica said some parents were late bloomers. "He's trying to bond with you, that's all. Better late than never." And for a while Davy agreed.
But soon Cy was subscribing to Rolling Stone, Billboard, Modern Drummer, Entrepreneur, and Opportunity World. He sound-proofed the garage, bought Davy a new drum set for Christmas, and recited over dinner the rags-to-riches stories of bands old and new. Davy, in turn, spent less time around the house. He moved the band's practice sessions from Franklin Street to the lead guitarist's basement. But for his sixteenth birthday, Cy gave him a four-track recorder. He said that if Silent Thunder made a tape, he would fly to L.A. to shop it around.
Even at sixteen, Davy was far more of a realist than his father. "Thanks, Dad," he said. "But we're just a cover band, you know. We're still in high school."
"Look how many groups got their break in high school. Frankie Lymon, the Osmonds. What about Green Day?"
It took the mother of the standup bassist of the 57 Nomads to bring Cy down to earth. At a dance they were chaperoning together, she told him that her son had joined the band for fun. He didn't want to be a rock star, and really, who was Cy kidding with his talk about recording contracts? "The woman tore into me," Cy had told Lydia, who immediately called Jessica at college. "She accused me of being a Svengali. I couldn't believe it. I just wanted to see the band succeed."
When neither Lydia nor Davy could muster a defense of him, Cy got the message, licked his wounds, moved on to new interests. Jessica remembered calling Ivan to give him the full update. "Dad's only out for himself," he'd said. "Quite a paradox, isn't it? He's out for himself, even though he has no self."
Though Jessica understood Ivan's anger at their father, she refused to place all the blame on Cy. That seemed too easy. All of the kids were complicit in allowing his misguided fantasies to continue. But to Jessica, nobody was more responsible than Lydia. She set the tone. Without saying anything, she made it clear that the family would not interfere with their father's business. They'd handle his pursuits with politeness and his defeats by looking the other way. Jessica knew she should be furious on Lydia's behalf about the end of the marriage. But in fact, she couldn't help feeling that her mother's approach had been self-serving. Maybe Lydia had allowed Cy to stumble, even welcomed his failures as a way to maintain control. Cy was the bad parent; she was the good one. He was the prodigal; she soldiered on. And so she ruled the empire.
As the waiters cleared the tables, Jessica came back to reality.
Rick Stoker tapped her on the shoulder. "Are you ready?" he asked. He picked up the microphone. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, the groom will dance with his daughter."
Before she knew it, Jessica was on her feet, with all eyes upon her, and her father was snapping his fingers, moving his arms back and forth as if drying his back with an invisible towel.
Soon the floor filled up again, and Davy mercifully broke in and danced Jessica back to the table. Between songs, Rick leaned over. "Hey, you're a good dancer."
"Thanks," she said, reaching for her glass of wine.
By the end of the set, Cy had taken off his tux jacket and vest, his back imprinted with a large sweat stain in the shape of a capital I.
Ivan returned, folding his speech into his pocket. M.J. and Casper were finishing their chicken, having arrived late to the meal after making their rounds. Davy leaned across the table and asked Casper if he had written a toast.
"It's all up here." Casper pointed to his head.
"Here would be better." M.J. put her hand over her chest. "But my daughter isn't making that easy. It would have been nice if we'd had some say in this wedding."
Before Jessica could consider M.J.'s comment, the waiters rolled out two cakes: the traditional three-tier white cake with buttercream frosting, and a cake shaped like a cactus, complete with green icing and black candy stipules.
"Why are there two cakes?" Jessica wondered out loud.
"It's a groom's cake," M.J. explained. "Ellen read about it in one of her wedding magazines."
The Rick Stoker Experience lifted his microphone out of its holder, smiled at the crowd and said, "Now the groom would like to make an announcement." He handed the microphone to Cy.
"Thank you, Rick, and thank you all for coming," Cy began. "Is this a great party or what?" He clapped his hands, causing loud thuds in the amplifier. The crowd, well into its cups, replied with a resounding, "Bravo!"
"Before we move on to toasts, there's a little secret that Ellen and I want to let you in on. What's the range on this thing?" he asked Rick, pointing to the microphone and beginning to walk around the first table.
Rick gave a thumbs-up.
Cy continued. "Perhaps you're wondering why we decided to hold our wedding at a Scottish church and our reception at a Southwestern restaurant. In fact, I'd like to personally apologize to those of you who had your hearts set on haggis for dinner. Nothing pleases the stomach quite like stomach." He laughed at his own joke and was quickly joined by the inebriated.
Cy stood over Casper Spivey, who glanced up and smiled politely. M.J.'s cheeks looked heavy, her expression flat as a horizon. Cy seemed to enjoy walking around with a microphone. He flicked it between two fingers like a fat cigar. Watching him, Jessica grew apprehensive.
"Maybe you're also wondering why this cake is shaped like a cactus and why the theme of the reception is Desert Southwestern." Cy moved from the front tables toward the middle of the room, touching people on the shoulder, giving a wave here and there. He looked more like Phil Donahue combing the studio audience than Jessica's father, his hair whiter without the beard, his features more bland.
"We chose the Casual Cactus to give the people we love—dear friends and family—a glimpse of the life Ellen and I are about to embark on together." Cy st
ood at the far side of the room now. "Ellen, honey—" He wandered back toward the wedding cake. "Come give me a hand with this."
Ellen floated toward him, and Jessica began to feel alarmed. She knew they were going to the Grand Canyon for part of their honeymoon, and assumed most of the guests were aware of this, too. Cy had never done surprises very well, and he had a remarkable way of de-dramatizing significant events. Jessica saw that her brothers looked worried.
Ellen took the microphone and held it chest high with two hands, an eager-to-please look taking over her face. She wasted no time. "Cy and I would like to announce that we're moving west," she said. "My maid of honor and best friend, Gisele, has found us terrific positions with Southwestern Cellular, and we're thrilled to tell you all that beginning next month our address will be Phoenix, Arizona."
The applause began slowly, a few hands clapping in the back of the room, and gradually moved toward the front. Davy clapped the loudest at table two. M.J. dabbed at her eyes. With a sinking feeling, Jessica wondered what her mother was going to think of this.
Ivan sat square as a soldier, one hand on the table, the other softly patting his chest, either to calm himself down or, more likely, to acknowledge that the best man's speech that he had worked himself into a dither over had become, with this latest news, obsolete.
7
ONLY ONE OTHER person was browsing in the converted showroom at the Ypsilanti Automobile Museum. Across the room, he held his glasses behind his back as he peered into a display case. No docents were in sight. Lydia had left her laptop on a desk near the back, and she turned around every so often to check on it. The "Heritage Collection," as the museum's neon sign announced, celebrated what its curator called the "orphaned car." No Chevy Bel Airs or Corvettes here. No Ford Thunderbirds or Mustangs, Chrysler Airflows or Lincoln Zephyrs—none of the classics from the Big Three automakers. The cars on display at this tiny museum had rolled hopefully off the line, only to be cut loose when the companies that had dreamed them up died.
She had been meaning to come here since the place had opened three years ago, but because her book was about GM, the trip hadn't been a priority. The cool darkness, the quiet buzz of the air conditioner, even the room's acrid smell of vinyl and Pine Sol were oddly soothing on this chaotic day. Lydia admired the plaid upholstery of a 1952 Henry J, the compact car made by the fleetingly solvent Kaiser-Frazer Company. Like the squat, orbicular 1946 Crosley, which hunkered next to it, the Henry J had gone on the market more than a decade too soon, well before the country showed any concern about emissions or fuel efficiency. In the 1950s, people had wanted styling and power, and GM had found a way to make them feel as if these features were indispensable: two-tones, tailfins, high-compression V-8 engines—each year's model a little different from the one before.
Lydia had always been fascinated with the period in the 1940s when the American car industry converted from a consumer market to a war supplier, then back again. She'd devoted several chapters of her assembly line book to this very subject, and she still wondered what might have happened had one or two of the smaller companies survived beyond that moment when the Big Three were shifting back from planes and tanks to cars.
When she looked up from the window of the Henry J, she realized that the man holding his glasses now stood beside her. He didn't smile or say anything, just put on his glasses, and followed her to the next display—a row of sedans from the forties and early fifties made by various companies like Nash, Hudson, Packard, and Studebaker. The struggling Nash and Hudson had agreed to a merger in 1954, creating the American Motors Corporation. AMC would update the economical Rambler, add the Ambassador, the Metropolitan, and later such seventies emblems as the Pacer, Hornet, and Gremlin, before being absorbed by Chrysler in the late eighties. Nineteen fifty-four could have been the year that Packard and Studebaker joined Nash and Hudson to create a powerful family of American Motors cars, with a full range of makes and models that might have even rivaled GM. But competition and clashing interests had barred the way. Packard and Studebaker held on too long to their independence, and eventually, unable to make it on their own, went the way of the Marvel, the Miller, the Flanders, the Hupp, the many thousand orphaned cars.
The man now turned to Lydia. She noticed he had gray hair pulled back in a short ponytail. Over his purple T-shirt he wore a vest the color of birch bark, and his sandals were made of hemp or some ropelike material. "These are beauties," he gestured. "But the prize of them all is over there."
Lydia followed him to another corner of the museum, where under the banner "Preston Tucker: American Dreamer" sat a shiny blue rocket on wheels, perfectly preserved from 1948, when it was billed as the original "car of tomorrow."
"The Tucker," Lydia said.
"The Tucker '48,'" he corrected her. "Now this is the ultimate. It's got an aluminum engine, in the rear so it held the road better. One of the first to do that, well before Volkswagen." He spoke as if he were giving a lecture or trying to sell the car. Lydia knew more about the Tucker than this guy could possibly realize, but for now she did not interrupt him.
At first she wondered if he worked for the museum, but he seemed too earthy to be a car fanatic. "And inside. Here, look." He peeked into the window, then stepped aside so Lydia could do the same. "See those crouch spaces under the dashboard? That's for when you're about to crash. Everything in there is padded—the dash, floors, doors, and steering wheel. It was the first car with seat belts, and that was just the beginning. It had disc brakes, a shatterproof windshield, side windows that popped out on impact. In terms of safety and engineering, this car was decades ahead of its time."
Lydia was used to men assuming that she knew nothing about cars. She'd been to scores of conventions and auto shows, had endured the double takes, patronizing voices, and predictable jokes about dangerous women drivers. They didn't understand that her interest had little to do with horsepower or intake manifolds, but with consequences, with the world the car had created.
"My favorite feature is the pilot ray headlight." The man knelt in front of the Tucker and explained how its third headlight, directly between the other two above the grille, moved in sync with the front wheels.
Lydia knew this, of course, and had it been any other day she might have spoken up sooner. The Tucker—called the "Torpedo" in its early stages and later the "48"—had pop-up taillights, an independent suspension, and a sticker price that would have made it one of the most affordable family sedans on the market. She knew, too, that by 1948, Tucker had raised millions in shares, bought a massive assembly plant in Chicago, sold more than two thousand Tucker franchises across the country on no more than a promise, and was on the verge of mass-producing his car when the government intervened and took him to court. For the next three years he was tied up defending himself against the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had charged him with stock fraud. By the time he had proved himself innocent, in 1950, his company had gone bankrupt. Only fifty-one Tuckers were ever made.
Car historians still talked about the idealist who had tried to challenge Detroit. Tucker's rise and fall was such a classic tragedy that Hollywood even made a movie about him. But Lydia had a special connection to this car because her father, Gilbert Warren, had worked for Tucker twice. It was Tucker who had first brought him to Detroit in 193 5 to build race cars for Ford. Then ten years later, when Tucker started his own company, he'd persuaded Gilbert to leave Ford and help him design a brand-new car, a "torpedo on wheels" that would drive comfortably at 110. Lydia's father, not much of a risk taker, still felt a certain obligation to the man who had given him his first big break. He did many of the original sketches for the car and designed the lifelike one-quarter scale model that was used in the early promotions. "More like a Buck Rogers special than the automobiles we know today," read one of the ads Lydia had hanging on her office wall. "The Tucker Torpedo is scheduled to hit the road sometime in '47."
But by '47 the car had yet to be produced, and had begu
n to morph from the speedy rocket on wheels into the more practical "48" now on display at the museum. As Lydia's father had told the story, he'd grown frustrated with the project. He rarely discussed this chapter in his life, but Lydia still remembered the time around Christmas 1956, when Preston Tucker died of lung cancer and her father had sat at the breakfast table reading the laudatory obituary. "I felt bad for Pres, but if you say you're producing a car, at some point you've got to pull the curtain. Problem was, he couldn't make up his mind about whether he wanted speed or safety. He kept tearing up my plans and switching gears on me, all the while making a big ballyhoo and selling stock. I wasn't going to be under that house of cards when it all came crashing down."
There had been more than a touch of regret, even guilt perhaps, in her father's voice that morning. He'd repeated what Lydia already knew from talking to her mother—before re-signing from the Tucker Corporation, her father had handpicked his own successor, Alex Tremulus, to carry out the final design. "I had a wife and young child. I couldn't risk staying there. So I quit." And it was a good thing, in the end, he'd added, since soon afterward Harley Earl at GM came calling.
Tucker was his own worst enemy, her father had said. A great salesman, bright and charismatic, but he had angered people in the government; he could be arrogant and uncompromising, railing against regulators and the "suits" at the big car companies. Tucker had won over the public by promoting his car tirelessly, taking out ads in newspapers and magazines, creating a swell of popular support and excitement. At the same time, he refused to work within the system. Gilbert Warren believed that what happened had been Tucker's own creation. Lydia had sympathy for Tucker—he was a visionary—but she understood that his project had more than likely been doomed to fail. It was one thing to start a small business in the "free enterprise" system, quite another to launch a car company.
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