Drives Like a Dream

by Porter Shreve

  Ever since Ivan's arrival, this closing out and moving had taken on a real momentum, and Jessica, like everyone, had been caught up in it. She'd been here three weeks and had gone through a century of keepsakes and heirlooms. It would be, by the end of the day, a retrenchment of the Empire of Lydia. As much as Jessica wanted to hold on to her childhood home, she knew that her mother probably ought to move forward, step beyond the borders she had drawn around herself.

  Norm, apparently, was much to thank for this progress, though they had done all the work without his help. Lydia had said he'd gone back to be with his daughter again, and had hinted that it was causing a rift.

  "Aren't you bothered that you haven't met Norm?" Jessica had said to Ivan."I haven't even met him. No one has."

  "Sure, it's odd," he agreed. "But Mom knows what she's doing. I swear, you worry about her almost as much as she worries about you."

  Jessica ignored this. "It seems that suddenly all is not well on Fantasy Island."

  "Relationships are hard. Just ask Davy."

  "Well," Jessica said. "I guess we'll wait and see."

  Among the early arrivals at the yard sale were the Spiveys, with the Spivey-Modines in tow. M.J. came up the steps first in a black linen tunic, black beads, and what looked to be a very large comb that she wore to one side of her hair. Even the cast on her wrist was black, all of which made her stand out on this bright summer morning.

  She gave Jessica a hug. "Lovely to see you," she said. "Now show me to the china."

  Just that morning, Jessica and her mother had argued about whether to sell Lydia and Cy's wedding china. Lydia said that as a gift from her mother it had sentimental value and besides, wouldn't Jessica want it for herself some day? "No thanks," Jessica said, and in the end Lydia decided to sell her own and keep her mother's china. Cy and Lydia's wedding gifts—silver and crystal, gravy boats, and soup tureens—sat out on a table next to the dogwood. Jessica pointed M.J. in their direction.

  "So where is your mother, dear?" M.J. asked.

  Lydia had opted to station herself out back and let Jessica and Davy work the front of the house. "She's running our furniture department," Jessica explained. "You'll find her on the back patio."

  She greeted her father and Ellen, who both looked fit and tanned. Cy, in a melon-colored shirt, wore wraparound mirrored sunglasses. Ellen had added light auburn highlights to her hair. Her cropped pants matched her pink sleeveless polo; her eyes had the cerulean look of colored contact lenses.

  "So how was the trip back from Saugatuck?" Jessica asked.

  "Slow," Ellen said. "We had to keep the folks in the back of the van. They're not much into motion right now."

  Casper limped up the steps, refusing any help. He wore a foam neck brace, his arm in a sling, and white gauze over one eye. Even limping and looking battered, he was still a charmer. He kissed Jessica's hand and whispered in her ear, "I understand you ordered our drivers. What do we owe you?"

  She smiled. "Nothing at all. But if you'd like a butter dish—"

  M.J. was admiring the china and showed some of the pieces to Cy. "It's similar to the pattern we gave you. That same blue floral. Are you using it?" she asked.

  If Cy noticed that this was the china from his first wedding, he didn't say so. "We had a dinner party just last week. The plates were a big hit." It was impossible to read his eyes with his sunglasses on. "Hey, while I'm standing here, Jess." He held up a shopping bag. "There's something I wanted to give you."

  Moving some of the china aside, he pulled out several photographs in eleven-by-seventeen frames and rested them on the corner of the table. "This one's from Sedona." He put his arm around Jessica. He was acting as if their argument had never happened. "You probably don't remember John Wayne's Angel and the Badman." He pointed to the mountain backdrop in the photograph. "That movie was shot here. The scenery is spectacular."

  It looked like a slightly out-of-focus postcard. "I love the reds and oranges," Jessica said.

  "I took it at sunset." He lifted up the next photograph. "Recognize any of these people?" It was Davy, Jessica, and Ivan lined up on the steps on their father's wedding day. Jessica had not remembered smiling—she'd felt rushed and annoyed with her mother for wanting to take pictures—but somehow she and her brothers all looked happy, almost serene. "I found it on an old roll," he said. "I think it's definitely the best ever taken of you guys."

  Which was true. Since the photograph was black and white, even the Lady Bird Johnson suit had a certain flair. Jessica couldn't get over how content everyone looked on a day that they knew was going to be miserable.

  "I love how this picture is from our special day," Ellen put in. "Drat. Did we leave our wedding album at Mom and Dad's?"

  "The kids will get a chance to see it later. But do you like the matting and frame? I did them myself."

  Jessica worried that her father was going to claim that he'd taken the picture, too; then Cy said, "Your mom has a great eye for her subject. There's one for each of you."

  Jessica was caught off guard. "Thanks." She hugged her father. "Your pictures are good, too."

  "They're okay," he said. "So where do I deliver these?"

  She led everyone to the right side of the yard, where Davy was making a transaction in Lowball's going-out-of-business sale. Whatever he sold today would end up covering a big check that he planned to write Teresa. Jessica knew that the money didn't matter to her, but it certainly meant something to Davy.

  Along with the office furniture and supplies, he had added his first drum set, the four-track recorder that Cy had given him for his sixteenth birthday, old copies of Rolling Stone and Billboard. Jessica thumbed through the milk crates full of tapes and albums: Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Eddie Cochran, the Stray Cats, and obscure Motown groups like the Velvelettes and the Fascinations.

  When Davy finished selling off a fax machine, Cy gave him a copy of the photograph. Davy seemed touched and looked a little guilty, perhaps for selling gifts that he'd gotten from his father. But Cy didn't seem to mind. As he headed toward the back yard, Davy popped a tape into a boom box he was selling. "Remember this one?" he asked. "Are you ready for some 'Hot Rod Boogie'?"

  He'd dug up an old 57 Nomads tape that his father had recorded. Cy laughed and told Ellen about his fleeting career as his son's band manager. "You never should have quit that group. You guys were going places."

  Davy took a pair of drumsticks from the table and did a quick riff on the drum set. "I still play sometimes," he said.

  A barrel-chested man called out, "Hey, champ, how old's this desk?" Davy turned the music down, and Jessica led her father and Ellen around to the back of the house.

  Lydia's parents' old furniture cluttered the patio, and already a good number of people were browsing, but Jessica couldn't find her mother anywhere. She must have gone inside.

  Ivan had temporarily removed part of the side fence so the patio flowed into the driveway and garage. Cy's museum of discarded projects was now an open bazaar.

  Ivan, who stood outside the garage door, waved them over. "Ellen, so glad you could make it," he said politely. He gave them quick hugs. "I wonder if you'd do me a favor, Dad, and spell me for a while."

  "You're putting me to work?" Cy seemed surprised but game.

  "I think you'll recognize a few things in here."

  Cy leaned Ivan's copy of the photograph against the garage wall and almost immediately was drawn in by his old stuff. He looked through his books and picked up the radio-controlled biplane. "I remember this," he said. "It used to drive your mother crazy. I flew it into the aviary once, had to call the zookeeper to get it. Remember that time I lost it on the roof and climbed out the attic window? I almost pitched over." After a few minutes of looking around, he said, "Hey, something's missing in here. Where's the Nomad?" He turned to Ellen. "Remember when I told you about that old engine I restored?"

  "Mom sold it," Ivan said.

  Cy seemed momentarily stunned. "Boy, your mother is moving
awfully fast."

  Jessica thought about Chickie Paterakis and glanced around the garage for the Nomad's fender skirts. She'd become almost certain that Lydia had exaggerated the amount of work that Norm had done. On this score her mother had not changed: she was still going out of her way to protect the man she was with.

  "Where is your mother's intended, by the way?" M.J. asked. She and Casper had made their way slowly to the garage.

  Ivan said hello to the Spiveys, then excused himself. "Someone needs to man the front tables," he said. "I better let my mother answer for her intended."

  Casper pointed with his good arm toward the kitchen door. "There she is now." Lydia was walking out of the house followed by a man with a beard, a woman in a poppy-print sundress, and their two young children.

  "You want us to hold down the shop?" Cy asked Jessica.

  "That would be great, Dad. Thanks." She went to the patio as the family of four moved toward the other side of the yard. "Who were those people?"

  "They were looking at the house. I took them on a tour."

  "Twenty-four hours and you're already getting bites. How about that?" She heard the tension in her voice. Her mother smiled uncertainly, and Jessica wondered if she weren't feeling the same doubts. "The Spiveys are here with Dad and Ellen."

  Lydia brightened. "They are? Terrific. Let's go see them."

  As they walked back to the garage Jessica thought it odd that her mother would be so excited when just yesterday morning she seemed to dread this reunion.

  Lydia greeted the Spiveys and began to shake Ellen's hand just as Ellen hugged her. They ended up in an awkward half embrace, Lydia patting her shoulder, saying in one long stream, "Lovely to meet you. Congratulations. Did you have a nice flight? How's Phoenix?"

  Ellen was remarkably poised, almost annoyingly so. She gave long, considered answers to Lydia's questions, as if she had rehearsed them. Jessica still couldn't believe that this was her stepmother. Thirty-five years old, and the bright outfit made her look like a woman in charge of a carpool. The possibility that Ellen and Cy would have kids—half-siblings—never seemed more real than it did at this moment. But somehow Jessica didn't mind the thought.

  "So we're all wondering about Norm," Cy said. "What can't this guy do. The house looks spectacular."

  "He didn't paint the house." Jessica stepped in. "Mom hired someone for that. She's hired a few people, in fact."

  "Casper, M.J." Lydia interrupted, and grabbed their hands. "I'm so sorry about your accident. You probably want to sit down."

  "I guess we'll go man the tables," Cy said with a little wave. "But we do want to hear more about Norm. You're not off the hook yet."

  Lydia led the Spiveys to the patio, while Jessica helped Casper and M.J. into their chairs.

  "Well, it was the damnedest thing," Casper began once they were settled, and he proceeded to tell the whole story of their accident. Jessica had already heard the details from her father. M.J. must have sensed this because she cut her husband off as he was talking about the nurses, and turned to Lydia. "So what are your plans, dear?"

  "My plans?"

  "You know, the future?"

  Just then Davy appeared, waving to Jessica; he and Ivan probably needed help. As Jessica excused herself she heard her mother say, "Actually, I have something I need to tell you."

  She paused to listen, but Davy grabbed her hand and led her to the family who'd been looking at the house.

  "So what do you love best about it?" the woman in the sundress asked.

  "Well, if you're outside you can always hear the zoo," Jessica said.

  "We're taking the kids over there today." Her two towheads were bouncing on Davy's office chairs.

  "It's a great zoo," Jessica said. "No cages. But don't worry. The animals almost never get out."

  The woman laughed but Davy shot Jessica a look. She glanced around for Ivan and saw through the small crowd that he was on the sidewalk talking to a man with a short ponytail. Parked just beyond was the green convertible that Jessica recognized from a week ago. Norm! she thought, and hurried toward them.

  23

  A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO, Lydia had not been looking forward to seeing the Spiveys at the yard sale, but now she couldn't have been happier to have them here. As soon as M.J. asked about her plans, she wanted to rush upstairs and bring her father's letter down. But she had to tell them the whole story first, from beginning to end: how she'd come to believe what M.J. had said, how Walter had confirmed that a spiteful former employee could have ruined Tucker, how Ivan had discovered the wooden box in a faraway corner of the attic, exactly what the clay model looked like and the way it felt-warm to the touch, as if someone had just finished working with it.

  Lydia described the sketches—the centered driver's seat and T doors, the art nouveau styling. "It would have been a beautiful car," she said. Then she told them how, on an impulse, she had checked the pocket of the portfolio. She explained how much of the Tucker's history was contained in that small package of clippings, from the ads to the bad press right up through the trial. "Finally, under the whole stack, I found a letter—" She paused, and in that suspended moment, something occurred to Lydia that took shape as she spoke. "It was a letter from my father to Preston Tucker," she said. "He wrote it just after the acquittal, and it completely refutes what Mickey Gibson told you."

  She summarized it now for Casper and M.J. "My father said he had nothing to do with Tucker's undoing and neither did anyone at GM, so far as he knew."

  M.J. seemed about to say something, but Lydia held up her hand and spoke first. "You were right about one thing, though: my dad was fired. And he was bitter about it, too. He said that Tucker had even pointed his cane at the door and humiliated him in front of the other workers."

  "Well, I'll be damned." Casper sat back in his chair. "I wonder how Mickey got it so wrong."

  Lydia had already been thinking about this. "My father was fired in a terrible way, soon he was working for GM, and not long after that someone was leaking secrets to the press. Maybe Mickey or someone else on the inside just did simple deduction. Who had a bigger vendetta than the designer whose plans were scrapped and was then so rudely shown the door?"

  "I'm still confused about something," M.J. said. "It seems odd that your father would have that letter. Where did he get it? How did he get it back?"

  "He didn't get it back," Lydia explained. "He never sent it. That's what makes the story so interesting." She had barely slept last night thinking about this, and now she told the Spiveys why she believed that her father had never mailed the letter. She knew him well enough to surmise that he thought it wasn't his job to "clear the air." He had been the injured party, and Tucker had never bothered to contact him and apologize. Gilbert had written the letter for himself more than anyone, and once he had finished it and read it over, he must have addressed the envelope, then decided, This is not my responsibility.

  In the back of her mind Lydia knew now that she would finish her book. All along she had wanted a subject she'd have to struggle to understand. Her father had lived the social history of the dream machines, when the rallying cry of the great designers had been out with the old, in with the new. He'd worked with Ford, Tucker, General Motors, had made cars "for every purse and purpose," all of which would cause the growth of the Interstate, the dislocation of families, and ultimately, for Lydia Modine, of 309 Franklin Street, Huntington Woods, Michigan—a good deal of sadness as well.

  Her family history had been marked by unsent letters. Her mother had never written her parents to resolve their bad feelings over Gilbert's and her departure from Grand Rapids. Her father, reading Tucker's obituary in 1956, had almost certainly regretted never sending the letter he'd written six years before. After all, his one-time mentor had likely gone to the grave believing that Gilbert had betrayed him, not the other way around.

  Lydia told the Spiveys to wait a moment while she went upstairs to grab the portfolio. "I want you to see the letter for
yourselves."

  Getting up from the table, she considered the secret she was keeping—her own letter as yet unsent—and knew she could not keep it for much longer.

  Lydia went into the house through the kitchen and stopped at the front door to check on the yard sale.

  As she stepped onto the porch and scanned the crowd, she spotted Jessica and Ivan on the front sidewalk. Framed against the Spiveys' van, in the same vest that he'd worn at the museum, was Norm.

  And he was talking to her kids.

  Lydia stared, as if by doing so she might make Norm disappear. But instead he only seemed to grow larger. "Shit!" she said, but she felt like screaming. She wanted to run down the steps and gag him.

  Was it already too late? Had he said too much?

  In her panic—she could think of nothing else to do—she stepped back into the hallway and set off the alarm.

  The noise in the house was piercing. She grabbed her purse from the table, then rushed outside, shutting the door behind her. People in the yard held their hands over their ears.

  Ivan, Jessica, and Davy were already on the porch.

  "I don't know what happened," Lydia yelled over the alarm. "Oh, no—I think I just locked myself out." She fumbled through her purse. "I can't find my keys!"

  "Calm down, Mom," Jessica said.

  Ivan tried the front door, but it had locked automatically behind Lydia. She couldn't look at her kids. Instead she kept yelling, "Go around to the kitchen! You need to get inside and turn this thing off!"

  Jessica and Davy jumped off the porch and headed for the back.

  Without another word Lydia flew down the stairs to where Norm stood frozen, watching the spectacle. "What are you doing here?" she hissed.

  "I saw the yard sale in the paper."

  "Well, you have to leave!" She grabbed his arm and led him to his convertible.