Drives Like a Dream Read Online Free PDF Page B

on the window.
    M.J. rolled down the glass. The light turned green.
    "May I please get in the back? I'd like to ride with you." The drivers behind Davy began leaning on their horns. M.J. hit the unlock button, and as Jessica climbed into the back seat of a car driven by a man with failing eyesight and no driver's license, she felt the most profound sense of relief.
    "Beautiful day for a wedding, wouldn't you say?" Casper turned his head.
    "Perfect," she said, and fastened herself in.

3
    A FTER LEAVING her note for the kids, Lydia sat on the front steps, car keys in her hand, trying not to wallow in self-pity. A couple of months ago Cy had asked her if she'd like to go to the wedding, but she never received a formal invitation, and she knew that his offer was nothing more than a gesture. Lately when he called her it was always on his cell phone at odd hours, as if Ellen didn't approve of their keeping in touch. As curious as Lydia was about the wedding—she wondered what kind of dress Ellen would wear, wondered how it would feel to see some other woman walking down the aisle toward Cy—she knew she had no place there.
    It was odd, she thought now, that she spoke to her ex-husband nearly as often as she talked to her kids. Jessica called the most, but seemed to know when Lydia was not around and would leave messages on the machine that sometimes sounded obligatory. Ivan called every Sunday evening. "So, what's for dinner?" he liked to say, which made Lydia feel as if he were nearby. Davy called sporadically, depending on how his relationships were going. When lovey-dovey he could disappear for a month; when frustrated, as he was recently, he called all the time.
    But the phone wasn't enough. She hadn't seen the children together since her sixtieth birthday in Chicago, well over a year ago. Davy had reserved a table at the Mashed Potato Club, a restaurant that served comfort foods like carved roast beef and chicken pot pie. After finishing off their chocolate cake and ice cream they walked to Davy's apartment, broke out a bottle of champagne, and Lydia opened her gift. The kids had pooled together to buy her a laptop to replace her old computer. Ivan raised a toast. "To finishing your new book."
    Lydia had been overcome. "It's too much," she exclaimed, knowing that the laptop had cost far more than the kids could afford.
    "This'll get you out of the house," Jessica added. "You can plug in at a coffee shop. You'll have divorced men eating out of your hand."
    "Just what I need." Lydia laughed.
    Then Davy handed her another gift—a carrying case for the laptop with a large patch sewn onto the middle. Stenciled on the patch in red block letters was the word "Mamarama."
    "I saw that in a vintage store—had your name all over it," Davy said.
    Lydia loved the Mamarama bag because it reminded her of the Motorama, the old car convention her father used to prepare for every year. It made her think of her mother, too, and she imagined a huge convention hall strung with bright ribbons and filled with mothers of all kinds.
Welcome to the Mamarama.

    Her '84 Ford Escort had a hundred and eighty thousand miles on it. Jessica had theorized that Lydia drove the car for attention, as a way to keep her children worried about her. She wanted them to picture her broken down on the shoulder on a winter night or stuck on a darkened street after staying too late at the library. The car did rattle a little, but as far as Lydia was concerned, it ran just fine.
    She was driving down Woodward Avenue, the great thoroughfare running through the heart of Detroit, from the boarded-up buildings downtown all the way north to the wealthy suburbs of Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, and beyond. She loved to take this street, the world's first paved highway, where Charles King drove Detroit's first car a whole three blocks before the engine gave out. The length of Woodward, from Cadillac Square to the edge of Pontiac, covered an entire spectrum of