Drives Like a Dream (10 page)

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.

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.