Drives Like a Dream (12 page)

On the wall next to the computer, her mother had hung the black-and-white photograph that used to be in Jessica's room: one of her parents' wedding pictures from 1965. In it, a young Lydia was tossing her bouquet from a balcony inside the Book-Cadillac Hotel. The bouquet hung in midflight, while the sea of faces looking on, even the bride herself leaning over the balcony, receded into a blur of black, silver, and gray. Only the bouquet was in focus, a tight spray of lilies of the valley in the center of the photograph. Jessica had always loved this image because the bouquet had seemed to be sailing toward her. But now Lydia was its recipient, as if by moving the picture to her office she hoped to recapture her younger self.

Closing the door behind her, Jessica suddenly felt sorry for her mother. She wished she could shake her, tell her that Cy was gone for good. Go downtown, she wanted to say. Take a look at the Book-Cadillac Hotel—thirty-two floors and twelve hundred rooms—for fifty years the jewel of Detroit, where presidents and movie stars once slept. Look at it now, its entrances and broken windows boarded up with plywood, furniture all sold at auction long ago, its lone security guard finally cut loose after keeping watch for a decade over an empty building. Sneak inside, as Jessica's high school boyfriend once did, to see where the murals and gilded moldings had been stripped by scavengers, the massive chandeliers denuded of crystal, the decorative doors and plaster details hauled away. The copper wiring, the plumbing, the galvanized pipe, even the radiators. All of it, gone.

Downstairs, Davy was talking to their mother about the wedding. "Just what you'd expect. Cheesy room, cheesy restaurant. They even put cheese in the chicken. We just wanted it to be over, Mom."

"What about Ellen's family?" Lydia asked.

"Oh, they're fine. The parents are cool," Davy said. Jessica gave him a sharp look to stop him from volunteering any more. "And Ivan had a thing for someone in the wedding party."

"One of Ellen's friends?" Lydia exclaimed.

"She's nobody." Ivan blushed. "The only sparks were between Jess and the wedding singer. Trust me, Mom. The whole thing was a nonevent."

"But your Dad must have been nervous."

"Yeah, I think he was." Ivan had carved the chicken and was spooning rice pilaf onto a serving plate.

"Anyway, it's over," Jessica said quickly, joining Ivan at the kitchen counter. "What can I do to help?"

"How about a vinaigrette?" Ivan suggested.

Lydia filled glasses with Chardonnay and brought the plate of chicken to the table. "I hear there's a new computer lab opening up at the library," she said. "I've been spending most of my time at the archives. The house is just too empty."

Here we go again, Jessica thought. Leave it to their mother to start talking about the empty house over the last dinner before everyone left. Jessica wasn't going to participate in this guilt ritual, not when she'd managed to avoid it all weekend. Instead she asked, "Have you seen that jam I brought from Oregon?"

Lydia looked startled. "Oh, that wonderful jam."

"I'd like to put a dash in the vinaigrette," Jessica said. "It gives it a nice balance."

Lydia started opening cupboards. "You checked the refrigerator?"

"Yes. I only just gave it to you."

They turned the kitchen over looking for the jam. "That's strange," Lydia kept saying. Ivan sat at the table. "Food's getting cold, ladies. Can't you make a dressing without the stuff?" He sniffed his wine, swirled it around in his glass. He had once taken a night class in viniculture.

"Maybe you've had a burglar, Mom," Jessica said. "That marionberry jam is gold to some folks."

Davy sat down next to his brother. "Come and eat."

"You know, I don't think I can. But you kids go ahead." Lydia held her stomach. "I don't feel so great. I've got to go in tomorrow and find out what's wrong. And, sweetheart, I still don't know where that jam is."

"Let's forget the jam, for Chrissake," Ivan said.

"It's just weird." Jessica whisked a dab of honey into the oil and vinegar and brought the salad dressing to the table. "Can I get you something for your stomach?" she asked.

Lydia sat down and seemed to force a smile. "Don't worry, darling. I can take care of myself."

But Jessica did worry, though at the moment she wasn't sure why.

More than anyone, Norman Bel Geddes was the true inventor of the Interstate. Visitors to his Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair took a tour of the America of tomorrow, a streamlined vision of broad highways, layered promenades, glass skyscrapers, and rooftop parks. At the end of the tour, spectators were given a pin that read "I have seen the future," not knowing how true this would turn out to be.

—From
The Magic Motorway: Norman Bel Geddes,
Maker of the Modern World
by Lydia Modine

L
YDIA LOOKED DOWN
Woodward Avenue from the huge windows of the public library's automotive history collection. The library was one of the few great buildings still habitable in Detroit, directly across the street from the Institute of Arts, and she had never grown tired of the place—so peaceful and majestic, almost ecclesiastical. Lydia sometimes thought a person could make a happy life between home and here.

It was Monday afternoon, and the children had all left. She knew she had to get back to her work. She sat down at the long table, took out her laptop and a pad of paper from her Mamarama case. As she rifled through her purse for a pen, a business card fell out on the table:

NORMAN CRAWFORD
www.nuplan.org

She had forgotten about the odd man from the Ypsi museum with his vest and ponytail, telling her about the Preston Tucker "conspiracy." Since she was here in the archives anyway, she figured she might as well leaf through the Tucker files. Eventually she'd have to do some research about her father's years with Tucker, though she was sure it was only a small part of the larger story of car design. But when she looked over to the reference desk no one was there. In fact, the whole room was empty.

For now she plugged in her computer and opened the fragments of her book that she'd begun to sketch out, each focused on a division of General Motors—Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac, and Chevrolet. In the Chevrolet section she moved her cursor to the top of the screen and typed her father's name, Gilbert Warren, then a line about him: "He always stayed late at the Motorama."

Again she remembered how she and her mother had waited for her father that night at the Amberson Hotel. Ginny had said that Gilbert was once a great romantic, and Lydia had thought about how different her parents were. Her father, the dedicated company man, her mother ever wavering between duty, desire, and guilt over the parents she had left so abruptly.

"We're not ready," Ginny had said sharply when the waiter came by to take orders for the main course.

"Shall I return when the rest of your party is here?" The waiter stepped back and bowed.

"Our party
is
here," Lydia said.

"No, it's not." Ginny brought her hand to her lips. Her deep red lipstick looked lurid, almost bloody against her pale skin.

"The third chair will remain empty for the rest of the evening," Lydia pressed.

"It will not," her mother said. She twisted her rings with her thumb.

"Yes, it will." Lydia opened her menu. "I would like the filet mignon, medium, with asparagus and baked potato. Butter on the side, if that's possible."

Ginny grabbed her daughter's arm. "That's not possible. Please stop."

"I can come back," the waiter repeated.

"Yes, come back," Ginny said, letting go.

Lydia shut her menu with a loud snap that caught the attention of people at nearby tables. "Why do you continue to protect him?"

"Your father works very hard."

"My father is married to the General Motors Corporation. If it's not the Motorama, it's a progress report that interrupts Christmas dinner. If it's not the progress report, it's a fishing retreat in Canada, off with the rest of the seven dwarfs."

"Don't call them the seven dwarfs. You know your father hates that."

"There's Sleepy, Dopey, Happy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Doc, and Daddy. There, that's seven."

"Lydia—"

"Seven little henchmen all working for the great dandy, Harley Jefferson Earl. I don't know why they put up with it. And whenever Daddy's home he's out in the garage taking apart the latest Ford, trying to keep a step ahead." Lydia reached over and slugged what was left of her mother's Scotch.

"What has gotten into you? Have you gone mad?"

"I guess you were right after all, Mother. He is a great romantic. He's in love. That's why he works so hard."

Why did Lydia keep returning to that night at the Amberson? Perhaps she had felt guilty about leaving her mother to go off to college, and was acting out in much the same way that Jessica tended to now. It was also one of the first times she had seen, with the clarity that comes with imminent departure, the true picture of her parents' marriage. Her father had not lost his romantic urgency—only the object of his affection had changed. He was in love with cars, had poured all of his restless energy into helping create what many still considered some of the finest unions of beauty and machine: the 1951 Buick LeSabre; the 1953 "Blue Flame" Corvette; the 1955 Bel Air convertible; and the 1957 Chevrolet Nomad, "the Beauty Queen of All Station Wagons."

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.