"You almost had me there." He saluted. "Well, Godspeed, Lydia. And good luck with your new life." He climbed into his van, tapped the horn, and drove away.
21
SO WHAT WAS that about?" came Jessica's inevitable question.
Lydia continued to surprise herself with how easily she had spun false stories—and how quickly the stories turned on her. She wondered if she'd ever get a moment of peace. Each time she left the house she worried that her whole scheme would fall apart in her absence. But it was almost worse to stay here. She couldn't sit on the porch and enjoy a summer evening without stepping into another trap that she'd set herself. And now, with the Spivey-Modines on their way and a yard sale with a bunch of strangers nosing around—probably Cy himself would be there—she began to feel the walls closing in.
"Chickie is nuts," she said. "Did you see those bumper stickers on his van? 'Honk If You Think I'm Jesus.' He probably does think he's Jesus. So it's better just to go along."
Jessica was looking at her skeptically. "What work did he do in the house, Mom?"
"Like I said. A little here, a little there. He was the first to answer the ad, and he test-drove the car the same day Norm left. We agreed on a price but he couldn't afford it, so I let him put in a few fixtures and do some touchup where Norm hadn't finished. A couple days' work, that was all."
Jessica leaned against a pillar and crossed her arms.
"He'd like to think he did a lot more. You could see he's delusional."
"He didn't seem delusional to me."
"Well, you live in a town of eccentrics."
"How would you know?"
To put an end to the interrogation, Lydia said, "I can't wait to be free of the rowing machine, all those fishing rods, and specialty tools. What use do I have for a home brewery kit, I'd like to know? Do you think I've been listening to your dad's Grand Funk Railroad albums?" Jessica did not crack a smile so Lydia continued. "Why stop with your father's things? We're having a yard sale—might as well make it a big one. I know I have some old clothes I'd love to get rid of, too."
The air-conditioning repairman arrived at the beginning of the week, and the cool house seemed to give everyone a shot of energy. While Jessica put prices on her father's things and Ivan went through his own closets and boxes, Lydia trimmed her wardrobe. Boiled wool cardigans followed scuffed and worn loafers into yard sale boxes. She picked through books in the living room, pulling out Cy's thrillers and self-help titles and dry history texts that she'd shelved without finishing. She asked Ivan to haul down old furniture from the attic that she'd never thought of parting with: her first dining room table, wobbly and loose-hinged, seatless chairs with broken arms, her mother's formica dinette and folding tables that had long depressed Lydia; even now she could almost see Ginny eating a Swanson dinner while watching Walter Cronkite. She'd even kept the old Zenith, her father's RCA Victor, and 78s of Big Band music.
She hadn't realized that she owned some of the ugliest wicker furniture in the world, pink and white patio sets from her mother's porch in Farmington Hills. She had a metal sign from the Detroit Zoo—PLEASE DON'T FEED THE ANIMALS—maybe stolen by Jessica's scavenger boyfriend and hidden in the attic for safekeeping. There was an old chandelier, chests and boxes of rusted car parts that might have belonged to Cy, Cy's father, or even Gilbert Warren.
Lydia kept Jessica and Ivan so busy there was hardly time for them to catch up, or so she hoped. But after glimpsing her kids working together in the attic or pausing for sandwiches, she realized that Ivan could be a good influence. Like Davy, he didn't seem too bothered by the idea of Lydia selling the house; maybe he was telling Jess to look on the bright side. Her sons, Lydia realized, trusted her without question. She had to push away the feeling of guilt, for it was too late to do anything but carry on.
Now was the time to hint at trouble spots in her relationship with Norm, and when Lydia told her kids that Tracy had had another crisis and that Norm had already flown back to Minneapolis, she lowered her eyes and said, "It's causing some stress between us." She felt Jessica staring at her, not saying a word.
By the middle of the week, the living room and dining room overflowed with furniture, books, and records for Jessica to sort and price. Ivan set aside his grandfather's tackle box. Jessica saved her grandmother's art deco lamps, prairie-style stained glass windows, and painted plates from Spain.
Ivan had transformed into a man on a mission, lugging all the heavy boxes to the curb. So much unsaleable junk had piled up that they had to call a truck to take it away. "Does Chickie Paterakis do hauling?" Jessica asked sarcastically. But Lydia just laughed this off.
On Thursday evening, two days before the yard sale, Lydia was sweeping the front porch and Jessica was getting ready to take Bedlam for a walk when a small U-Haul pulled up to the curb and out stepped Davy, unannounced. He waved and went around to the back of the truck as Jessica tied Bedlam to one of the porch columns.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Lydia asked.
"Don't worry. He's not going to tear the house down."
But Lydia wondered if the house actually could fall down. She headed to greet Davy, excited and nervous at the same time, wishing she felt better to finally have all of her kids home.
To her surprise, Teresa appeared from the other side of the truck. She wore a dark suit and stacked heels, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. With her little glasses, she looked like the star of the debating club all dressed up. "Hello," she said, setting her bag down by the curb and giving Lydia and Jessica stiff hugs.
Davy slid open the gate of the truck to reveal office chairs, desks, filing cabinets, even cubicle partitions. "It's the Lowball closeout," he announced, mock cheerfully. "Everything must go."
"This is going to be a pretty big yard sale," Jessica said in what Lydia was beginning to think might be the understatement of her life. She reached over to help Teresa with her bag.
"No. I've got it," Teresa said and bent down, her ponytail twisting like a tight little fuse.
The next morning, the kids posted yard sale signs around the neighborhood, in coffee shops and grocery stores, while Lydia hid in her office with the door closed. Walter called to ask how the Corolla was working out and Lydia told him just fine, though in fact she'd barely driven it since Jessica had arrived.
"I haven't seen you at the library lately," he said. "Everything okay?" Something in Lydia's voice must have prompted such a question.
"Of course," she said, and, perhaps to prove that all was well, told him about the yard sale.
"I'd love to stop by," he said. But after hanging up she wasn't sure why she had invited him.
At some point during the week she had lost any resistance she might have had to selling off her things. She had only herself to blame for the way this "move" had accelerated. Only a day before the sale, and she couldn't remember what she'd kept, what she'd thrown away or let go of. Every item that came down from the attic might as well have been a memory. She felt lightheaded, almost amnesiac. A great weight had been lifted, but she had no way of calculating the loss.
Later, Lydia looked outside where Jessica, Davy, and Teresa were gathered on the front lawn. She overheard Davy wondering out loud whether Norm would ever grace them with his presence. She pulled away from the window and asked herself how much longer she could go on pretending—she didn't think she could bear seeing him again.
In his speech at the Green Car Convention Norm broke every promise he'd made. He said that a single coward had cut down one of the great industrial visionaries of the twentieth century General Motors had a clear hand in Tucker's undoing—information that had been verified by a notable automobile historian. "I can't divulge her name," Norm told the crowd. "But I can say that she's written some very well-received books and lives right here in the area." Lydia had sat there humiliated, looking around to be sure that she didn't see anyone she knew. This time she was too bewildered to summon the energy to fight. When Norm's presentation was over
, she walked off while he went around the convention squeezing the hands of corporate reps and bathing in the light of his friends' admiration.
She had watched the launch of the solar car race and late in the afternoon met up again with Norm, who drove her back to 309 Franklin. She was furious but knew she couldn't alienate him further. After miles of silence, just as he was turning onto her street, she said, "Interesting talk. I'd hoped you wouldn't say who I was or that I'd confirmed the conspiracy." He began to explain, but she shrugged and stepped out of the convertible. "It's water under the bridge now. So I guess we'll be in touch."
She hadn't heard from him since and wished more than anything that she could announce to the family tonight that she and Norm were breaking up. "You were right," she could say to Jessica. "It all happened too fast." Lydia could say that they'd had a terrible fight, perhaps in the aftermath of Norm's flying off again to Minneapolis. She'd seen a side of him, she could say, that made her seriously doubt their future. Looking out the window, she saw how much work her kids had done preparing for the yard sale. "I just decided things weren't right," she could say and leave it at that. But then Lydia caught a glimpse of the FOR SALE BY OWNER sign, and knew she had gone too far.
Ivan called from the stairway, interrupting her train of thought. She opened her office door.
"This you've got to see, Mom." He was holding an old crate. "I think it's one of Grandpa Warren's designs." He set the crate on the floor and opened the top, scattering dust and flecks of old newspaper.
"Where did you find this?" Lydia exclaimed.
"In a corner of the attic, partly covered with insulation." Carefully Ivan pulled out a clay model car, built to one-eighth scale, unpainted but sealed with shellac to keep it from cracking.
Back in the fifties, Lydia's father had shown her the whole process of car design. He began with sketches and renderings, then created small-scale models, shaping and reworking the clay. Eventually, with Harley Earl's approval, the best of these smaller models would be made into full-scale clay prototypes. Then a whole team of designers, with Earl at the helm, would mold and perfect the life-size car, painting and adorning it so that even up close it looked like a production model.
The clay car Ivan held up was a two-door, more streamlined than those her father would have designed at GM. Lydia had never known him to keep any models. She would have been surprised if Mr. Earl had allowed one to leave the GM studio. Ivan turned the car and before Lydia even saw it she knew it would be there—right in the middle—the third headlight, the "cyclops" eye, trademark of the Tucker car.
"Isn't this cool? I've never seen an actual clay model," Ivan said. "There are tons of boxes from Grandpa and Grandma Warren's house up there." Lydia had moved all of her parents' boxes to her own attic after her mother died, but had managed to look through only a fraction of their belongings. The car had been up there all these years.
"There was an old portfolio sitting under this box, too. Want me to bring it down?"
Lydia traced her finger over the hood of the car.
"Mom?" he asked again.
"Of course," she said, only vaguely aware of Ivan stepping away.
Here was the Tucker Torpedo, engine in the rear, all-hydraulic drive, "more like a Buck Rogers special than the automobiles we know today." Lydia could hardly believe that she was holding in her hands the very source of her father's dispute with Tucker. She took the model into her office to compare it to the advertisement on her wall:
Now! FLOWING POWER!
Sure as a mighty stream, moves from engine to wheels
for a ride as free as a seagull's glide.
The year after this advertisement had run, drumming up support for "The Car You've Been Waiting For," Tucker's emphasis had changed from power to safety, from the Torpedo to the Tucker "48," and Gilbert Warren was out the door. Lydia hadn't yet looked through all his papers. After talking to Walter outside the library, she'd lost heart.
Ivan returned from the attic with an old carrying case under his arm. The zipper was rusted, so he pulled it open slowly. The smell of dust and old cloth kicked up in the air, and Lydia felt vertiginous, wanting at once to rip the portfolio open and close it forever, not seeing what was there. Inside were sketches of the Torpedo from a dozen different angles. With its sharp nose, tapered back, and art nouveau shape, the car was the very picture of built for speed.
"Looks like the Batmobile," Ivan said.
"I think these are his early drawings." Lydia laid them out gently around the office. "The car got more practical later." She had read in a design book once that her father had originally wanted the steering wheel in the middle, in line with the "cyclops" eye. Passengers would sit in movable seats on either side, and the car would have T doors like the later DeLoreans.
"We should get these framed." Ivan studied each picture closely. "Can you set them aside?"
Lydia was lost in thought. She barely even noticed when Ivan left, taking the clay model downstairs to show Jessica and Davy.
She gathered the sketches into a pile and opened the portfolio. As she was about to slide them back in, almost relieved not to have found anything there, she changed her mind and put her hand in the pocket of the portfolio. She pulled out a manila envelope. Clasped and sealed, it had no name or address on the outside.
She cut the envelope open and spilled its contents onto her desk: the same ad that hung on her office wall, some of the same articles in the Chicago Tribune and New York Times that Walter had copied for her. An actual transcript of the radio broadcast by Drew Pearson, another copy of Tucker's "Open Letter," and the newspaper photograph of Tucker emerging from the courthouse in 1950, cleared of all charges.
Underneath all the clippings she found a letter, folded into an unsealed number-10 envelope and addressed, in her father's crabbed hand, to Preston Tucker, Ypsilanti, Michigan. The return address was the Warrens' house in Indian Village, Detroit. But the letter had no stamp or postmark, no indication that it had ever been sent. Lydia's pulse quickened as she opened the envelope and began to read the typed words:
January 25, 1950
Dear Pres,
I am writing to congratulate you on your victory. It's been a Pyrrhic one, we all know. But justice, at least in court, has prevailed. And I'm happy for you.
I feel I need to clear the air on a few matters now that this thing is over. First I want you to understand that I had nothing to do with the leak to Drew Pearson that started this whole mess. He was fed that trumped-up story by someone at the SEC and not, as I've heard in certain quarters, by me or others formerly in your employ who might have had an ax to grind.
I have read in the papers that you believe certain "spies" or "traitors" conspired with the government to cook your goose. I wish to make it known to you that I am neither spy nor traitor, and to my knowledge nobody at General Motors has so much as lifted a phone to hasten your undoing. I have spoken to no one here or in the press about your methods and have said not a single word against you. At the same time, when you might have needed a friend in court, I have not spoken up for you either. Mine has been the silence of the one cast out, something I have chosen to live with.
The truth is, I had expected more of you. When I left Ford to work with you, people told me I was foolish hitching my wagon to the bumper of a used car salesman. The press has called you brash, careless, a charlatan. But I believed that we could make the first truly new automobile in a generation and I maintain today that my design could have been that car. You disagreed. We call that a difference of opinion. But you didn't have to give Alex all the credit after I left. You didn't have to say that I represented the old design. You actually pointed your cane at the door. I'll never forget it. There was no conversation. Everyone in the shop heard your voice that day.
Now I thought I should let you hear mine.
Sincerely,
Gilbert
22
BY THE MORNING of the yard sale, Jessica was amazed at how much everyone had a
ccomplished in the past week. The painters had finished yesterday, and with the boxes and furniture all out of the house, she saw how beautiful the place looked, with the new paint, fixtures and crown molding repaired, the ceiling fans in the bedrooms gendy spinning for the first time in years.
When Davy and Teresa had climbed out of the U-Haul the other night she'd figured, Here comes trouble. But instead they'd gone straight to work, unloading the truck, running to the store for cleaning supplies, making themselves so busy that they didn't have time to argue. Teresa dusted the entire house and polished the brass lamps in the living room, while Davy washed windows and set up tables on the lawn. On Friday morning, Teresa got up early and made brunch for everyone, roasted potatoes and egg frittatas so oversalted that Jessica's heart went out to her.
Jessica realized that in the past three years of Davy and Teresa's relationship, she had never gotten to know this thoughtful, determined woman Davy had fallen in love with. In a way, she had never considered Teresa beyond the label of Davy's girlfriend, and now Jessica had to admit that both she and her mother had been guilty of enforcing that sense of distance. For the first time, Jessica saw that Davy and Teresa were more than just a bickering couple, and she found herself genuinely saddened when he drove her to the train station later in the afternoon. Jessica pictured Teresa looking out the window of the Amtrak train as she headed to Cleveland to stay with her family for a while; Teresa's father and brothers would pick her up at the station, asking "So, how's Davy?"
Ivan had marched in here like a mad general, and in the past few days he'd been on a charge. He'd cleared out the attic almost by himself, put yard sale posters all over the neighborhood, and moved the FOR SALE BY OWNER sign closer to the curb, so people could see it more easily from the street. He'd persuaded Jessica, still uncomfortable with selling the house, to pretty the place up for potential buyers. Jessica had cut black-eyed Susans and zinnias from the back yard, arranging them in vases in the living room. Part of her was curious to see what her mother would do if she received an offer.
Drives Like a Dream Page 23
