Drives Like a Dream by Porter Shreve

basement. But for his sixteenth birthday, Cy gave him a four-track recorder. He said that if Silent Thunder made a tape, he would fly to L.A. to shop it around.
    Even at sixteen, Davy was far more of a realist than his father. "Thanks, Dad," he said. "But we're just a cover band, you know. We're still in high school."
    "Look how many groups got their break in high school. Frankie Lymon, the Osmonds. What about Green Day?"
    It took the mother of the standup bassist of the 57 Nomads to bring Cy down to earth. At a dance they were chaperoning together, she told him that her son had joined the band for fun. He didn't want to be a rock star, and really, who was Cy kidding with his talk about recording contracts? "The woman tore into me," Cy had told Lydia, who immediately called Jessica at college. "She accused me of being a Svengali. I couldn't believe it. I just wanted to see the band succeed."
    When neither Lydia nor Davy could muster a defense of him, Cy got the message, licked his wounds, moved on to new interests. Jessica remembered calling Ivan to give him the full update. "Dad's only out for himself," he'd said. "Quite a paradox, isn't it? He's out for himself, even though he has no self."
    Though Jessica understood Ivan's anger at their father, she refused to place all the blame on Cy. That seemed too easy. All of the kids were complicit in allowing his misguided fantasies to continue. But to Jessica, nobody was more responsible than Lydia.
She
set the tone. Without saying anything, she made it clear that the family would not interfere with their father's business. They'd handle his pursuits with politeness and his defeats by looking the other way. Jessica knew she should be furious on Lydia's behalf about the end of the marriage. But in fact, she couldn't help feeling that her mother's approach had been self-serving. Maybe Lydia had
allowed
Cy to stumble, even welcomed his failures as a way to maintain control. Cy was the bad parent; she was the good one. He was the prodigal; she soldiered on. And so she ruled the empire.
    As the waiters cleared the tables, Jessica came back to reality.
    Rick Stoker tapped her on the shoulder. "Are you ready?" he asked. He picked up the microphone. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, the groom will dance with his daughter."
    Before she knew it, Jessica was on her feet, with all eyes upon her, and her father was snapping his fingers, moving his arms back and forth as if drying his back with an invisible towel.
    Soon the floor filled up again, and Davy mercifully broke in and danced Jessica back to the table. Between songs, Rick leaned over. "Hey, you're a good dancer."
    "Thanks," she said, reaching for her glass of wine.
    By the end of the set, Cy had taken off his tux jacket and vest, his back imprinted with a large sweat stain in the shape of a capital I.
    Ivan returned, folding his speech into his pocket. M.J. and Casper were finishing their chicken, having arrived late to the meal after making their rounds. Davy leaned across the table and asked Casper if he had written a toast.
    "It's all up here." Casper pointed to his head.
    "Here would be better." M.J. put her hand over her chest. "But my daughter isn't making that easy. It would have been nice if we'd had some say in this wedding."
    Before Jessica could consider M.J.'s comment, the waiters rolled out two cakes: the traditional three-tier white cake with buttercream frosting, and a cake shaped like a cactus, complete with green icing and black candy stipules.
    "Why are there two cakes?" Jessica wondered out loud.
    "It's a groom's cake," M.J. explained. "Ellen read about it in one of her wedding magazines."
    The Rick Stoker Experience lifted his microphone out of its holder, smiled at the crowd and said, "Now the groom would like to make an announcement." He handed the microphone to Cy.
    "Thank you, Rick, and thank you all for coming," Cy began. "Is this a great party or what?" He clapped his hands, causing loud thuds in the amplifier.