Drives Like a Dream (29 page)

"Shiitake happens?" He gave her a hug. His shirt was damp and sweat beaded at his temples.

"You look like you could use a cold drink." Jessica held on to Bedlam's collar.

"And a shower. The AC in the Taurus is shot."

She let go of Bedlam, and as Ivan kneeled down to pick up a box, the dog licked his face. "Yuck. Is this your beast?"

"Bedlam, Ivan. Ivan, Bedlam. You asked for a shower," she said.

"He's a scraggly son of a bitch, isn't he? There, there." He patted the dog. "I think I'm going to call you Dirty Harry. So what can I do?" he asked. "I want to make myself useful."

In the attic Jessica showed him the stuff that she'd set aside, but he wasn't much interested in lingering over his old toys. He had clearly come here for one reason—to finish the job where Norm had failed. He skipped the shower and went straight to work.

Too tired to do any more today, Jessica joined her mother for a glass of wine on the front porch. "So Norm didn't look at all as I'd pictured him," Jessica began. She went out to the end of the front walk to see how far the painters had gotten with the house. They'd finished half of the front now and had taken most of their ladders away.

Lydia sat on the top step and sipped her wine. "The house should be done by Friday," she said, ignoring Jessica's comment.

"I had hoped to meet him, you know. And Davy did too. When are we going to have a chance?"

"It shouldn't be long. He just got back, so we had lots of appointments today."

"But he should be
here,
Mom, helping us out. I mean, what exactly happened this morning?"

"Do you really want to know?" Her mother stood up. "Wait here." She set down her glass of wine and went back inside. A minute later she returned with a marker and a red and white sign:
FOR SALE BY OWNER.

Jessica's heart sank.

"We saw a real estate lawyer today and we've had this sitting around just in case." Lydia wrote her phone number in the white rectangle and held out the sign. "Would you like to do the honors?"

Jessica sat down on the steps and crossed her arms. No, she wasn't going to do the honors. So they had been thinking about this all along. "And where are you moving to?" she asked.

"We're working on that," Lydia said. "I'm not worried. We'll find something."

"You're sure you want to go through with this? It's a huge step, you know. I hope Norm's not pushing you into it."

"
We
want to do this. Can't stay here forever."

"Well, it's your house." Jessica turned away.

Lydia planted the sign under a dogwood tree on the corner of the front lawn. As she returned to the porch a van pulled up to the house. The side read, in large letters,
MIKE "CHICKIE" PATERAKIS
. Wasn't this the same van that had been here a couple of weeks ago?

A cheerful, gaunt man came up the walk. He had a "Chickie" patch on his beige workshirt and the pallor and shape of an El Greco martyr. "Hallo," he stopped in front of Jessica and bowed. "I've seen
your
picture around the house. You must be the daughter. What brings you around?"

Before Jessica could answer, Lydia rushed toward him. "Chickie," she said. "How's the Nomad working out?" She turned to Jessica. "He's the guy who bought it."

"True enough. That's one reason for my visit. And here's another." He reached into his workbelt and pulled out a book. "Have you read this one, by the way?" It was a copy of
Together on the Line.
"I found it at The Browsery. Wanted to get your Jane Hancock."

"I'd be glad to," Lydia said, taking the book.

"Hey, the yellow looks great. I told you those painters were fast. I bet they've finished up the kitchen, too. I'd love to take a look."

Jessica wondered why Chickie seemed to know so much about the house.

"We'll only be a minute," Lydia said, already opening the front door. "You can wait outside."

"Why?" Jessica asked, but her mother didn't answer. She went down to the curb and inspected Chickie's van. The sign on the side said he was a general contractor. The back was covered with bumper stickers, and when she looked in the windows she saw a mess of books, newspapers, wood scraps, fixtures, electric wire, piping, and tools.

As Jessica walked slowly back to the house, her mother and Chickie reappeared. "How's the garage looking, Jess? Chickie needs some missing parts to the Nomad. What are they, again?" she asked him.

"A couple of fender skirts." He wiggled his finger in his ear. "I know I saw them when I was looking the car over. But I realized I drove off without them."

Jessica told him that the garage was packed at the moment and she'd have a difficult time finding anything there. "If you'd like, you could come by our yard sale on Saturday. By then we'll have everything cleared out of the garage."

But before Chickie could answer, Lydia said, "Oh, no. I'll just bring you the fender skirts when they turn up. I have your address."

"I don't mind coming by. I'm a junker from the old school." Chickie started down the steps. He stopped and did a double take at the
FOR SALE BY OWNER
sign. "Wait a minute. You didn't tell me you were selling," he said. "I wouldn't have done such a thorough job if I'd known you were planning to move. We could have cut corners, you know."

"What are you talking about?" Jessica asked. Lydia answered for him. "Oh, nothing. He just did some touchup, a little here and there."

Chickie stopped at the bottom of the steps. "Touchup? You're joking, right?"

"Just joking," Lydia said and gave Jessica a wink.

"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.

S
O 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."