Drives Like a Dream

by Porter Shreve

  Now the guy with the ponytail was reading the display copy out loud. He had somehow gotten closer to Lydia, and she took a step back. "It's a damn shame," he said. "What this doesn't mention is that the Big Three conspired to run Tucker out of business. There's the real story for you."

  Before Lydia could decide if it was worth it to respond, he continued. "You think GM and Ford wanted to see a car like this on the market? It was cheaper, better in every way. They would have been playing catch-up for years." A few strands of hair fell over one eye, and he tucked them behind his ear. She couldn't tell how old he was, probably in his fifties. But his clothes and his enthusiasm made him seem younger. "GM didn't care about safety. They knew they had to run Tucker out of business or spend a fortune to get up to speed. So what do you think they did but put spies on him? They paid people off to rat him out."

  Lydia had heard this version before. It was the grassy knoll theory of automotive conspiracies, and most car historians she respected dismissed it. Lydia herself was plenty critical of the Big Three—she had made a career, in fact, of pointing out their offenses. Even though her father had worked for GM for fifteen years, she knew the company had cynical policies—out with the old, in with the new—and had contributed vastly to sprawl and scattered families. Her father had been just another moving part in that massive machine, and she didn't blame him any more than she blamed herself for owning a car. That same day at breakfast as he read Tucker's obituary, she'd asked her father if GM had helped destroy Tucker's company, and he told her that those theories were "nothing but applesauce." She had always believed him.

  Remembering this now, she said at last, "The government certainly beat up on Tucker, but there's no proof that his competitors were involved." She didn't want to get into an argument, but it turned out the man was so impressed with how much she knew about cars that, when she finished debunking the conspiracy theory he backed off, quite literally stepping aside to give her room.

  "Wow," he said. "Are you the curator or something?"

  "No. I thought maybe you were the curator." She was suddenly conscious of the grease stain on her skirt. "I'm from Detroit. I have family in the industry."

  The man introduced himself. "Norman Crawford." He extended his hand. "Norm. Pleased to meet you."

  "Lydia," she said, and left it at that.

  They talked casually about other car museums around town—GM World, the Walter Chrysler and Henry Ford Museums. Norm seemed friendly enough, and Lydia was getting ready to mention the automobile archives at the Detroit library, when an angular, gray-faced man appeared from behind a nearby door. "We're getting ready to close, folks," he said.

  "Jeez, what time has it gotten to be?" Lydia asked.

  "I don't wear a watch," Norm said.

  "Five o'clock," the curator announced.

  As they went outside, she stopped, still holding the door. "Shoot, I forgot something in there."

  Norm, trailing close behind, almost stepped on her heels. "Sorry." He touched her shoulder. "Well, it's been nice talking to you, even if you're not buying my Preston Tucker theory." He laughed, then dug into his pocket and handed her his business card. "I'm just now putting up my web site. There's a lot about cars. You might be interested."

  "I'll be sure to take a look." Lydia smiled and slid the card into her purse, then shook his hand goodbye. He waved over his shoulder and headed up the sidewalk. Strange bird, Lydia thought.

  She went back into the museum and retrieved her laptop. Leaving her computer in Ypsilanti would have been the ultimate cap on this day. She thanked the gray-faced man and put a few dollars in the donation box.

  Outside the streets were mostly empty. She walked over to a nearby bench and sat down. A few people clustered in the deli window across the street, while a tall man in an apron stood smoking in the doorway of a tavern down the block. It was still pleasant out. The warm air, the fading sun on her face, the knowledge that her children would soon arrive made her relax.

  She opened her computer and returned to the book she'd been working on. She had done a great deal of research about the GM design team and its role in planned obsolescence, but she had yet to decide on the central figure around whom to organize the history. She had assumed at first that she would focus on Harley Earl, the master designer who had been her father's boss at GM. But after looking into his life over the years, Lydia had finally found him an unsuitable subject. Unlike Henry Ford and the Interstate designer Norman Bel Geddes, the focus of her last two books, Earl did not appear particularly complex. He knew what he wanted and acted on those desires, with seemingly few regrets. The letters and memos Lydia had seen revealed no great secrets or crises of conscience over the world he was setting into motion. She'd thought all along that she would need someone who was a struggle to understand, a sinner and saint wrapped into one fine contradiction.

  But for all her searching she hadn't discovered that dark knight. Instead, she'd found herself thinking more and more about her father. He had worked for Preston Tucker and Harley Earl, two of the most influential figures in car history. He'd spent ten years at Ford, two at Tucker, and fifteen at GM. He'd arrived at the moment when planned obsolescence became institutional policy, and as much as anyone in the business, had contributed to the boom of the fifties. It could be one of those stories, in many ways emblematic of the transformation and transformative power of the automobile. For the first time in her career, Lydia allowed herself to consider her own personal stake in car history.

  Like many men who rose in the auto business, Lydia's dad had come from a rural, working-class background. His father was a dairy farmer and sometime contractor who lived in the northern Michigan town of Oak Grove. Before going to school every morning, he milked the family's thirty cows. In the summers he sold Ford tractors, eventually saving enough money to buy a used 1918 Model T, his prized possession. After graduation, he took the advice of his tractor distributor and drove his Ford south to Grand Rapids, an important supply center at the time for the automobile industry. For five years, he worked for different auto body and parts suppliers, ultimately becoming a top designer at Peterson Coach & Body, the most successful custom car shop in town.

  Lydia remembered the story her father loved to tell about meeting her mother. At an annual Christmas party, "in the blink of an eye," he'd said, he had fallen for his boss's only child, Ginny Peterson. She was a sophomore at Calvin College, nearly six feet tall, rich and beautiful, and so far out of his league that for the rest of his life he would tell people that pursuing her was his most daring act. Ginny had the stiff-necked self-assurance that came from her particular variety of Midwestern privilege, but as Lydia would later learn she had always dreamed of escape—out of the stifling confines of Grand Rapids society, out of what she believed to be the false promise of the Christian Reformed Church. She didn't intend to live by a set of impossibly strict rules for the reward of eternal heaven; her escape would be to an actual place.

  "Your father went through hell to get me," Ginny would tell Lydia one evening over dinner at the Amberson Hotel in Farmington Hills. They had gone to the finest restaurant in town to celebrate Lydia's acceptance into the University of Michigan. Her father, who had promised to join them, had not yet arrived. He'd been finishing last-minute preparations for the GM Motorama, the traditional unveiling of the "cars of tomorrow." Over oysters Rockefeller, Ginny Warren was once again turning nostalgic as a way of forgetting her husband's absence.

  "Imagine the nerve he had." She lit a Pall Mall and arranged her Scotch and ashtray in front of her. "Grandpa Peterson was no pushover, you know. Your father would deliver a dozen tulips each day to my dormitory, but your grandpa had tipped off the housemother. She'd intercept the flowers and send them to the school infirmary."

  "So why didn't Grandpa Peterson fire Daddy?" Lydia asked.

  "He couldn't fire him. Your father was a prodigy. Others knew more about engines, but no one before Gilbert had such a knack for marrying the machine to the body
. Contracts doubled when your dad was there." Ginny inhaled from her unfiltered cigarette and lifted her glass. "Yes, your father was a great romantic."

  "That's a little hard to believe." Lydia pushed aside the plate of oysters that her mother had offered her.

  At the time, Lydia could not understand what she knew now: that her father was a romantic. Besides the flowers, he sent mash notes and countless drawings of young lovers driving down country lanes in long black cars of his own design. The best of these pictures had hung in Ivan's bedroom ever since he was a boy. At Peterson Coach & Body, Gilbert had suffered the wrath of his would-be father-in-law: longer hours, subtle acts of sabotage, public criticisms about his work. Only a true romantic would have continued to believe that a short, jittery, out-of-nowhere swain could win the heart of someone so seemingly unattainable. He must have known somehow that Ginny was a dreamer, too.

  Ginny liked to tell the story about their secret marriage at the Grand Rapids courthouse, a week after Gilbert received a call from Preston Tucker, a salesman and engineer who had talked Ford into financing race cars for him to build. When Tucker invited Gilbert to move to Detroit and work under his guidance, Ginny, in particular, jumped at the opportunity. She left her family, her religion, and the social circle she had come to disdain, and never turned back. Four years later, Peterson Coach & Body would shut down, one of the countless casualties of Ford's and GM's decision to manufacture their own chassis and bodies. Lydia was not surprised to learn that her grandfather, who died at the height of the war with half a million dollars in debt, never forgave his daughter for marrying the country boy who had once been his star employee.

  Ginny might have explained that her husband had just as much ambition as Peterson did, and that they had gone to the motor city not to spite him but to make the best for their family. But instead she hid away in a series of houses, in Dearborn when her husband worked for Ford and Tucker, in Indian Village and Farmington Hills when he moved to GM. And she drank. And smoked. She played bridge and took on civic projects with the wives of other executives.

  It was as if, Lydia thought now, her mother had been too terrified to admit that something had gone wrong. She hadn't meant to marry an executive. She had married an agnostic, the son of a dairy farmer. Out of love? Out of rebellion? It didn't matter. All that mattered was her unwillingness to make peace with her past. And when her parents died within eighteen months of each other, any opportunity to do so vanished. As a result, Lydia had always thought that her mother lived out her days in a kind of perpetual mourning—for her parents, for the life she had imagined but never got to lead.

  Lydia promised herself that night at the Amberson that she would not allow such sadness to descend upon her family. She would have more than one child, and those children would rally around their parents, and if they ever left home, they would go without anger or resentment. To Lydia, the past was sacred, as precious as any living thing. She would attend to it always. She would make it her life's work.

  She was staring off into the bronze-lit afternoon when she felt a pair of hands cover her eyes.

  "Guess who?"

  Lydia started. "I know those clammy fingers." She bit her bottom lip, regretting her choice of words.

  "Emergency rescue," Jessica announced. She took Lydia's laptop and helped her to her feet. "Will you be needing medical attention, ma'am?" She gave Lydia a hug.

  "I think I'll be all right." She was still a bit dazed from snapping out of her memory.

  "Sorry I was so obnoxious on the phone," Jessica said softly. "I've had better days."

  "I know." Lydia had not received such affection from her daughter in what seemed a long time. "To what do I owe this?" She smiled.

  "You're my mother. An old sage told me today that we ought to be good to our mothers, so look: I'm being good."

  Davy and Ivan walked up behind their sister.

  "I hope we're not too late," Davy said.

  "No, no. The museum closed only a few minutes ago."

  They were all still dressed in their wedding clothes. Jessica had on a green suit that Lydia hadn't seen before. Not the most flattering outfit, she thought, but she was not about to make a comment.

  "So, how are you doing?" Ivan asked. He looked worn out.

  "You know, I've actually had a wonderful time here. I got to do a lot of thinking." She followed them to the car.

  For the first time all weekend, her three children walking beside her, Lydia felt as if her family was truly together.

  "You're sure you don't want me or Davy to drive?" Jessica asked Ivan.

  "I'm fine," he said a little brusquely, and unlocked Cy's car.

  Jessica opened the door for her mother, then slid into the back seat next to her. "Ivan's not in the best mood today."

  As Lydia reached for her seat belt, a sharp pain shot across her rib cage and into her stomach, like an arrow finding its target. "Ouch," she said out loud.

  "What's wrong?" Jessica asked.

  "I've been having some pain," she said, though she'd only just now gotten a stomachache.

  "Have you seen a doctor?"

  "I'm sure it's nothing." Lydia massaged beneath her rib cage, but the little arrow stayed in its place.

  "You should get it checked out, Mom. You're nearing the age-"

  "I know, honey. Don't worry, I'll see a doctor." Lydia felt foolish for wolfing down a fast-food lunch, but she wasn't going to admit it. "So how was the wedding?" she asked, the question she'd been thinking about for much of the day.

  Ivan headed east on Washtenaw. Davy turned around and glanced at Jessica. "Just what you'd expect." He looked at his mother, then quickly away. "I told you about the guitar. Luckily, I managed to avoid a jam session. The karaoke guy took care of the entertainment."

  "And people had a good time?"

  "They were drunk," Jessica said. "It could have been a funeral and they'd have had a good time."

  "It was a funeral," Ivan added.

  "Yeah, we don't need to talk about it." Jessica rubbed her mother's arm, a gesture that seemed not quite patronizing, nor entirely honest, either.

  "Don't feel you have to protect me." Lydia looked in the rear-view mirror at Ivan's eyes, but they gave nothing away. "I've let your father go, don't worry. I wouldn't mind having this car, however." She forced a laugh.

  She wondered what had really happened at the wedding. Perhaps Cy and Ellen had fought or the reception had been filled with mishaps. The kids' behavior did seem funereal: respectfully calm, too sober and restrained. Jessica held her hand—so out of character these days. Davy seemed shifty—he was a peace broker, to be sure, but was usually up-front. And even Ivan, who couldn't stand his father and made no secret about this, seemed unusually quiet.

  Lydia started to ask what was wrong, but stopped herself. There was something about driving in silence in this luxury car, cocooned with her children in the waning hours of a late spring day, that she didn't want to ruin. Nobody spoke as they passed Ford Lake, Romulus, Metro Airport.

  Jessica squeezed her mother's hand. "Sorry it's been such a short visit."

  "Well, at least we have tomorrow," Lydia said.

  "Not much of tomorrow. My flight leaves at eight A.M. I won't get to Eugene until dinnertime. When are you guys leaving?" she asked her brothers.

  "I tried to get an afternoon flight but couldn't. So I'm on your heels," Ivan said. "I wish we could stay longer, Mom."

  "I'll be around through the morning, anyway," Davy put in.

  Lydia sighed. "I guess it was your father's weekend, after all."

  "We'll be back before you know it," Davy said.

  Lydia leaned forward and patted his cheek. "I'm sure you will."

  When she sat back, she felt the arrow again, a sharp pain this time driving up to her ribs. She took Jessica's hand and pulled it toward her. "Here," she said, and placed her daughter's palm against the ache in her middle.

  8

  JESSICA KNEW that her mother could have rented
a car in Ann Arbor and driven home herself. But who could tell how she would react to Cy's picking up and leaving, not just out of metro Detroit, but clear across the country? Jessica had never been to Arizona, only knew of the Southwest from her ex, the ersatz Buddhist. Now she and her mother could commiserate: they'd both lost a man to the desert.

  Blane had moved down to sell his amulets—Egyptian ankhs, Druid symbols, feathered necklaces, crystal-drop "energy" earrings and pendants. He had tried to make a go of it in Eugene, renting a kiosk in the Springfield mall, but he'd had more stuff stolen by doped-up teenagers than he probably ever sold. And the weather got to him, the unrelenting gray of winter, the slick and constant mist. Jessica was accustomed to demoralizing climates, but Blane, a North Carolinian, had to move to the far extreme to snap out of his daze.

  Phoenix, of all places. A city of millions with no downtown that, thanks to the automobile and air conditioning, had metastasized into scores of exclusive communities that more or less governed themselves. In Oregon, people looked down on the Southwest and Southern California, with their vulturelike water policies and desperate overdevelopment. Jessica would not follow a man down there, not to the so-called city of rebirth where retirees did anything but rise from the ashes. But now the Spivey-Modines were joining the mad rush for land. Their sprinkler systems would run all day to keep the desert blooming.

  It had been Jessica's idea to say nothing about it to their mother. "She's not ready for this," she'd said during the car ride from the reception to the museum. "She'll chase after him, I'm telling you. Either that or she'll move in with me."

  "She has to find out somehow," Davy said. "Shouldn't we tell her in person?"

  "I think we should give it some time. Don't you find it strange that today of all days the Escort broke down? She's in Ann Arbor, for God's sake. Are you such a believer in accidents, Davy?"

  "In this case, yes. It was only a matter of time for that car."