Drives Like a Dream Read Online Free Page A

But Ivan cleared the dessert plates and asked their mother if he should make some more coffee. "None for me," Bobby said, and stood up to go.
    Out on the front porch, Jessica heard her mother apologize, but Bobby told her not to worry. "I've been awfully irritable lately," he said. "The marriage and all."
    "Well, see you at work," Cy called from the hallway, as cheerfully as he could. Later, Jessica overheard her father tell Lydia that his future at the dealership might never recover from this. And, in the end, he was right. Self-fulfilling prophecy or not, within the year he was back in the job market.
    Today, hours before his second wedding, Jessica was looking across a different table at her father, but he was the same man. His cloudy green eyes, the way he retreated, the sight of him licking crumbs from his finger—all made Jessica realize why she couldn't be angry even on
this
weekend, when she had every reason to be. His life, she couldn't deny, was a series of clichés. He was marrying a woman who could have been her older sister. When the kids had needed him just to be around, he was forever chasing some new rainbow. And he'd run off with someone new within six months of separating from their mother, as if thirty-three years had meant nothing. And yet, amazingly, when she boiled over, Jessica turned her fury not on Cy but on Lydia. Perhaps for no better reason than that she knew her mother was strong enough to take it.
    "So, where's Ellen?" Jessica asked.
    "Getting ready. I'm not supposed to see her until we're in the church." Cy smiled, pink half-moons appearing in each cheek.
    Though Ellen had never been married, Jessica and her brothers had expected a low-key wedding. But the rehearsal dinner had been a frilly affair, and this afternoon promised to be more of the same. Last night's crowd had looked like time travelers from the cocktail generation: chain-smoking, Scotchswilling veterans of the Big Band era. And Ellen, who had been a sorority secretary at Michigan State, fit the part: thirty-five going on sixty-five, a string-of-pearls and brass-buttons type with an inborn solicitous manner. Facing the American nightmare of a stepmother nearly as young as herself, Jessica had planned to despise the woman. But after meeting her at the rehearsal dinner and seeing her steer Cy from table to table, gently drawing him into the conversation, Jessica admitted this might be a suitable match after all.
    "I like your bride-to-be," she said.
    "That's sweet of you. We're very happy." Cy patted her hand. "She lets me be myself."
    For a moment Jessica felt defensive on her mother's behalf, until Ivan asked, "And who is that?"
    Cy missed the insult in Ivan's question. As with most unpleasant things, he ran it through an internal filter that turned it sweet. "There's so much I've never had a chance to do. Promise not to laugh at your old dad, but Ellen bought me a guitar for my birthday—and I've been practicing."
    Ivan liked to call their father a serial hobbyist. One of the basement rooms in the house at 309 Franklin was a museum of Cy's abandoned projects. Half a dozen exercise machines shared space with dumbbells, fishing rods, camera equipment, a telescope, a radio-controlled biplane, a bread machine, a home brewery kit, woodworking tools and random pieces of a rocking chair that Cy had begun to build one summer. On the shelf above his workbench were books like
Plan B for a Better Life, So You Want to Be a Poet, How to Remember Everything That Ever Happened to You, 1951 Chevrolet Parts & Accessories, All You Need to Know About Birds,
and
Fluent French in Five Easy Weeks.
Jessica wondered if her mother had cleaned out the room since the split. Not likely, since Lydia threw nothing away.
    Ivan rolled his eyes and seemed ready to launch another insult. Jessica shot him a look and quickly changed the subject. "So what do you say we get going? I think I'm ready for my makeover."
    Cy took a last bite of his scone and got up