And, as much as designing cars, her father had loved to please his boss. The legendary Mr. Earl—as everyone, perhaps even his wife, was expected to call him—stood six foot four, towering over his immediate staff. He had originally come from Southern California, and Lydia remembered that he was always suntanned, with a winning smile and a perfect shave. His polychromatic linen suits always matched his two-tone shoes, and he looked as if he'd spent an hour each morning choosing which one to wear. In his office, which Lydia had once visited as a teenager, she'd caught a glimpse of the duplicate wardrobe he kept in his closet—on hand, no doubt, to keep him unwrinkled throughout the day.
GM chairman Alfred Sloan had hired Earl to realize his vision of offering a car "for every purse and purpose." Unlike Ford, who simply improved the existing model each year, Sloan and Earl would provide cars of unlimited color, style, and possibility. And GM, which had long held the second position, accelerated so far ahead of Ford in sales and profits that Henry Ford himself, after much resistance, adopted Sloan's "annual model" policy. Or what Lydia thought of now as planned obsolescence.
When the waiter returned, he took her mother's dinner order. Ginny managed to steer the conversation back to Lydia's acceptance into the University of Michigan. Neither of Lydia's parents had completed a degree, so Ginny had plenty of opinions on the subject. "Don't commit to a man before you've got your ducks in a row," she said. The waiter had brought her a second Scotch. Her mother had a poor tolerance for alcohol, but that never stopped her from drinking.
"You mean like you did?" Lydia asked.
"I'm not saying don't make my mistakes. I had choices. I made decisions. I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about you." She swept her hand in front of her. "Leave Michigan if you need to, but don't follow someone out of here. Find your own way, that's all I'm saying."
Lydia backed off because she knew where this was going. Her mother once again teetered on that balance between pride and regret. She had not been wrong. No, ma'am. No decision she had ever made had had bad consequences. Yet what would have happened had she not gone to that Christmas party, had she not met the small, nervous man whose talents her father had praised? How would her parents have handled it had she finished Calvin College, one of the few to survive into graduation unpinned, unattached? Perhaps over the years they would have given up, loosened their hold on her. She could have left, and who knew what she might have found in the world beyond Grand Rapids, Michigan? She was a striking beauty. She had intelligence, ambition. Who knew what might have been?
Lydia's father never did make it to dinner that night. When they got home he was asleep on the living room davenport, the Glenn Miller Orchestra playing on the hi-fi. As they approached he still didn't stir, fully dressed in a gray suit and a thin silver-and-blue-striped tie, his top button undone. Lydia's father lay there, soundlessly, his hands clasped over his stomach.
"There's the corpse," Ginny said.
Lydia laughed uncomfortably. In that moment, she felt terrible for her father. His small body fit so easily into the midsize couch, one of his hands clutching the other, as if frozen in the act of pulling himself to safety. His face in repose, he looked like family photographs of the farm boy from Oak Grove. Lydia pictured him speeding home, perhaps minutes after she and her mother had left for the restaurant. With time to spare, she imagined, her father had decided to unwind, put on a lively record so he wouldn't fall asleep on this night of celebration. He lay down, telling himself only for a minute, and then, in spite of his promise to his wife and daughter, he drifted off.
The next year, 1959, Harley Earl would retire, and with that the era of the dream machines would be over. Though her dad did not believe in economy cars—where was the beauty in these transport cases of reinforced plastic?—he would stay on and assist with the final stages of design for the Chevy Corvair. The sixties would mark a shift from styling back to engineering, from romance to functionalism. Lydia remembered how her father seemed to lose his passion for the work he had loved for so long. He grew thin, pale, and forgetful, as if some heartsickness were eating away at him. With the compacts came muscle cars—the Impala SS, the GTO, the Corvette Sting Ray—340 horsepower with grilles like bared teeth. Gilbert had retired in the midst of all this, in the fall of 1963.
Lydia recalled her parents' wistful conversations about buying a house up north, out in the tall woods, across the Mackinac Bridge into the mysteries of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Her mother liked the idea of going far away, of living in nature, which she had never had a chance to do. Her dad spoke vaguely of the fishing. But in the end he would make it no farther north than Oak Grove, to be buried beside his parents and his parents' parents.
It still saddened Lydia that her father never knew that she would spend much of her life writing about cars. Her mother, who did live to see Lydia's first book published, in 1976, had suggested around that time that she write about her father. "There's a story there. I'm sure you'll want to tell it one day," she'd said. Lydia didn't make much of it at the time. She had figured that her mother, like anyone, considered her own family more than worthy of a book. Lydia had thought of her father as just another man who got up at dawn and returned home exhausted, his dinner hardening on the stove. A company man. No great paradox. But now here she was, after all these years, trying out her mother's advice.
When Lydia looked up, she saw someone walk into the room and take his place at the reference desk. To her delight, she realized that it was her friend Walter Hill. Over the past few years she and Walter had shared the occasional lunch in the art museum cafeteria. Mostly they talked about their kids. His daughter and son both worked at Henry Ford Hospital, and lived nearby.
She closed her laptop and went over to see him.
"Lydia! What can I do for you?" He acted as if they'd just had coffee yesterday. In fact, she hadn't seen him in nearly a month.
"I've been thinking about Preston Tucker, actually," she said. "I wonder if there's anything new on that front. I ran into a guy a couple of days ago who gave me the grassy-knoll theory." She thought about telling Walter that her father had become the focus of her book, but at the moment she still wasn't sure enough about her decision.
"Let me take a look." Walter went back into the archives and a few minutes later returned with a folder. "I doubt if anything in here will be news to you," he said. "But I'll make you a copy just in case."
"That would be great." While Walter ran off copies Lydia talked about her kids visiting for the weekend. "Not under the best circumstances," she added. She'd told him all about Cy's marriage plans. Walter's wife had died two years ago, so she was careful not to sound too sorry for herself. She didn't mention the Escort's breaking down, either.
"So where have you been lately?" she asked.
"I was out sick awhile."
She noticed that he did look a little ashen and seemed to have lost weight off his broad frame. Lydia wanted to ask what had happened, but she knew that he played his own life close to the vest. Every Friday after work he drove over the Ambassador Bridge to Canada to wager ten percent of his paycheck—never a dime more, he'd told her—at the Windsor Casinos. "You've got to have a vice," Walter liked to say. "Just as long as you keep it a hobby and not an occupation."
"As soon as I got back they sent me down to the new computer lab," he continued. "They're short-staffed." He placed a document on the glass and the light flashed. "I'm working half time here and half time there."
"I haven't seen the lab yet," Lydia said.
"Oh, that's where all the action is. You want to take a look?"
"Sure, if you have time."
Walter finished the copying and handed the pages to Lydia.
She went back to her laptop and slid the materials into her bag.
In the computer room, Lydia saw that there were as many people in this small space as in the entire rest of the building. Two kids in the back corner were laughing at something on their screen. Walter walked over to one of the t
erminals where a woman was standing up to leave. "Here you go, Lydia. Why don't you take station 8? And if you need any help, I'm always at your service." He spoke expansively now, returning to his official role.
"As a matter of fact," Lydia said quickly. "I do need some help." She remembered the address from the business card—www.nuplan.org—but she wasn't used to computers besides her own.
Walter helped her pull up a browser and type in the web address. The NUPLAN logo appeared at the top. A yellow daisy sprouted out of the letter u, followed by "think green." Under the logo was a link: Click here to join me on a message board.
"What's this all about?" Walter asked.
"It's the web site of a friend of mine. Well, not really a friend. Someone I met." Lydia clicked on the link and another web site—drive.com—came up.
"I've been to this one." Walter leaned over her shoulder and pointed to a section of the screen. "Is that your friend?" he asked.
The top message was from [email protected]. The subject heading read: Wake up and smell the gasoline.
"He just posted that this morning, I see. Looks like your friend may be a troll."
"Excuse me?"
"First you have to admit you're impressed with my lingo. Do I keep up or do I keep up?"
"I'm impressed. What's a troll?"
"A troll is a gate-crasher," Walter said. "Goes to a site and tries to stir up trouble."
I'm not here to talk about polluting the earth, Norm wrote. You've heard that story before. But what about polluting yourself ? Every time you get in your car you're inhaling benzene, carbon monoxide, toluene, and formaldehyde, at ten times the concentration.
Norm's post had generated a page of replies:
Who is this asshole?
Is this how you ride out your unemployment?
"Your friend is definitely a troll," Walter said. "But I've seen a lot worse."
"He's not my friend."
Walter gave her what seemed like a knowing look. "Well, I should get back upstairs," he said, before she could fully gauge his reaction. He showed her how to refresh the page to see new responses and what to do in case she wanted to post a message. "Not that I would, what with all the crackpots out there. Just make sure you don't use your real name and don't give out your e-mail address," he added, then left the lab for the archives.
As Lydia read the replies and Norm's rebuttals, she saw that he held his ground against the herd of car fanatics. He cited statistics about runaway sprawl and misguided spending on highway projects—adding more lanes is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt. All the while, his enemies lined up to get into the fray.
How's the weather under your rock?
This isn't Greenpeace, dude.
But Norm was undeterred. I'm not telling you to junk your cars or saying it's time to go back to the 19th century. We're stuck for a lifetime with the horse that never tires. But this needless waste is killing the earth and it's killing us as well.
No, you're killing us with your bullshit.
Lydia had to admit she enjoyed the immediacy of this. She felt a little on edge, like a spy, and wondered about this missionary out in cyberspace. Was he really looking for converts? Or was Norm just a saboteur, a grown-up kid who rang the neighbors' doorbells, then ran away?
Let me tell you what's possible, he continued. A car that would never be obsolete but eternally recyclable, with a supercharged hydrogen engine. It would run on solar energy, far more efficient than fuel cells, and every bit as fast as a standard V-6. It would use sunflower oil as a lubricant, and nearly all the components—roof dash, seats, body panels—would be made of biopolymers: corn-based or soy-based foams and plastics. The new car of tomorrow would look just like the ones you're driving now, only most of the materials would come from the earth. Everything on the planet should be green or reusable, cars included. I want to see a day when you can plant a hubcap and it'll grow into an herb garden.
Norm carried on in this manner, talking about eco-friendly buildings and closed-system roads. And though others continued to give him a hard time, their language softened a bit. Not that they seemed convinced. But over the course of his spiel he had managed to disarm them somewhat.
Let me leave you in peace, my friends, he wrote. I didn't mean to interrupt your board. But if we're going to turn things around we have to let the car companies know that this is a new century and we deserve a whole new way of thinking. If you want to find out more, go to www.nuplan.org or write me at my e-mail address: [email protected].
And with that he was not heard from again. The insults faded and new subjects turned to upcoming auto shows.
Lydia had read more than her share of articles about emissions and environmental waste, and much of what Norm had written was no different from the current literature. She found it a bit bizarre that he would take his case to an Internet message board. But his earth-to-earth idea did have a certain grass-roots appeal.
She left drive.com and typed in www.nuplan.org. But the message on the screen read "Web site not responding." She tried again, and still the page came up the same. It crossed her mind that she could send Norm a note of support. Neat ideas, she might say. Or You really know how to stir up a crowd.
But just as she was trying to figure out how to access her e-mail, Walter returned to the lab to check on her.
"So how's your friend?" he asked as he approached.
She closed the window on the screen. "They chased him away," she said. "Just as well. I ought to be getting back home."
10
THE CAR ARCHIVES closed early, so Lydia thought she'd spend the afternoon at the house, sorting through the Tucker articles and her father's papers. But when she pulled up to 309 Franklin she was surprised to see, parked right in front of her walkway, as if the hours had wound back to the weekend, Cy's new Infiniti sedan. Thinking that it must be Ivan, though she knew perfectly well that she had driven him to the airport yesterday, she got out of her car and walked toward the Infiniti.
The driver's side door opened and out stepped Cy.
"Lydia," his voice slid down to a melancholy register. "It's good to see you."
"What are you doing here?" she managed. "Aren't you supposed to be on your honeymoon?" And in that suspended moment, as Cy brought his hand to his face and clasped his jaw, her heart jumped as she wondered if perhaps he had abandoned his new wife, if the marriage had combusted within the span of a day. Or maybe Ellen had left him standing at the altar. Could that explain the children's curious behavior when they returned from the wedding?
"We leave tomorrow morning." He rubbed his chin. "I wanted to ask you a favor."
"Of course." Lydia looked at the ground. A root system from the large oak tree in front of her house had pushed up on the sidewalk, leaving a jagged edge where one block of concrete connected to another. "Would you like to come in?"
"I don't have much time. I know this is awkward."
Lydia noticed that Cy's shirt was open at the collar. A gold cross lay halfway visible beneath the loose, silky fibers. He'd never worn a cross before. "You left some things in the basement, you know. I haven't touched any of them." As she said this, she focused on his neck, which looked sunburned. She couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye.
"Yeah, it's been a while. I don't remember what's down there." He followed her up the walk to the front porch, held open the screen door while she rummaged in her purse for her keys.
Even now, Lydia realized that she'd never been angry with Cy. Hurt, yes. Exasperated, constantly. But never truly angry—because she had not allowed herself to care for him with the same intensity that she reserved for her children. Yet she could imagine now, as he stood there holding the door for her, his voice in perfect control as if tuned to the sympathy channel, that as the months and years accumulated, as he drifted away and became unrecognizable, she could become angry, even bitter. She told herself never to let this happen, not to become one of those divorcées.
"Well, there's som
e exercise equipment down there, for starters. Plus books and various things you've probably lost interest in." Hobbies, she might have said, that you took up for five minutes then ditched at a ridiculous cost. When he moved out he took almost nothing, and though she had mentioned these things to him a dozen times before, he had never wanted them back. "And there's that expensive camera I used the other day."
"That other stuff you can probably chuck," he said as they walked into the house. "I'm not going to have time to go through it before we take off. But I think I would like that camera."
For a moment Lydia regretted mentioning it, but then she thought of Cy's developing the roll and seeing the photographs of the kids lined up on the front steps of her house, the house they had bought together. "Here." She picked the camera up from the table in the front hall.
"How old is this thing, anyway?" He took it from her.
She had bought the camera for him for Christmas maybe twenty years ago, when Cy was interested in lighthouses. "Pretty old, but it still seems to work perfectly well." They crossed through the dining room into the kitchen. "I'll just grab the zoom lens from the basement," Lydia said.
She was glad that she'd cleaned the place again after the children left. My house is in perfect order, she thought. Take a look around in case you're wondering whether I'm doing okay. She had mopped the kitchen floor, even swept the basement stairway. Cy would find all of his old hobbies arranged along a shelf in the small room at the bottom of those stairs. His fishing rods were in cases; books upright and neatly arranged; rowing machine and stationary bike dusted and pushed to the wall.
Drives Like a Dream Page 10
