Racing in the Rain (8 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

F
or the first few weeks of our new arrangement Denny and I lived in our house, while Eve and Zoë lived with the Twins. Denny visited them every single evening after work, while I stayed home alone. By Halloween, Denny's pace had slowed, and by Thanksgiving, he visited them only twice during the week. Whenever he came home from the Twins' house, he reported to me how good Eve looked and how much better she was getting and that she would be coming home soon. But I saw her, too, on the weekends, when he would take me to visit, and I knew. She wasn't getting better, and she wouldn't be coming home any time soon.

At times that winter, all the extra driving around to make sure Zoë was where she was supposed to be at the correct time was very confusing to me. And I wasn't the only one confused, I assure you. For while Zoë was sleeping with the Twins and Eve, they often called upon Denny to shuttle her to and from soccer practice or ballet or birthday parties. Sometimes, Denny would receive a reminder call before the pick-up time. Sometimes, he received the reminder call after the scheduled pick-up time, and that was never good. He would leap to his feet, throw on his jacket, and run out of the house at full speed, only to return later, scratching his head. “I'm sure they told me five o'clock,” he would say. “I could have sworn they said five.”

I know that sometimes his tardiness was due to his forgetfulness, as he was always very tired and sad, but it was also because of the extra hours he was working to make up for all the time he had to take off in order to attend to Eve.

One incident in particular drew the ire of Maxwell and Trish above all others. Denny was supposed to pick up Zoë from her ballet class, which was taught at a dance studio located in a strip mall near Coal Creek, which, as you can imagine by its name, was not a particularly scenic place. That evening, Denny's car decided to stop working. He called Maxwell and Trish many times to alert them to his predicament, but, alas, he could not reach them. Denny grew more and more frantic as the hour grew late. Finally, he called an Orange Taxi, which was able to come to our house immediately, and together we drove across the lake to retrieve Zoë. I went too, at the insistence of the driver, who was particularly fond of dogs, though he didn't own one himself due to the allergic disposition of his wife.

We arrived at the dance studio over an hour late, and when we got there, Zoë was sitting on the pavement outside of the building with an older man. Both of them wore jackets that were too light for the weather.

“The teacher had to leave,” the man said. “I'm the custodian. I told her I'd wait.”

Denny thanked the man, and as we three returned to the taxi, a dark SUV squealed into the parking lot. Trish jumped out of the car and ran toward us.

“I got a call from another parent who drove by and saw Zoë sitting out on the curb,” she snapped at Denny. “Oh, you poor dear, you're absolutely freezing!”

She wrapped her own coat around Zoë, enveloping her, and she guided Zoë to the waiting car, where she helped her into her booster seat in the back.

“What on earth do you think you're doing?” she hissed at Denny after the car door had closed.

“My car broke down,” he said. “I tried to call.”

“Well, you didn't try hard enough, did you? She is a little girl, Denny. She should not be left to sit in a dark, cold parking lot with a janitor! You should be ashamed!”

“My car—”

“Then you should get yourself a new one. I don't know what's less dependable, your car or you. I am finished asking you to help with Zoë. Finished.”

She climbed back into her very large car and drove away quickly; we returned to our taxi and went home.

This incident affected Denny very much, not because it wounded his pride, but because it interfered with his relationship with Zoë. You see, Denny missed Eve tremendously, but he missed Zoë even more. I could see it most on those days when he kept Zoë overnight and we got to walk her to her bus stop. On those mornings, our house seemed filled with electricity so that neither Denny nor I needed the alarm clock to wake. Instead we waited anxiously in the darkness until the hour came to rouse Zoë. We didn't want to miss a single minute we could spend with her.

On those mornings, Denny was a different person altogether. The way he so lovingly packed her sack lunches, often writing a note on a piece of notepaper, a thought or a joke he hoped she would find at lunch and might make her smile. The way he took such care with her peanut butter and banana sandwiches, slicing the banana so that each slice was exactly the same thickness. (I got to eat the extra banana on those occasions, which I enjoyed. I love bananas almost as much as I love pancakes, my favorite food.)

I knew it was never Denny's intent to be late to pick up Zoë. But, as on a race track, the reasons why matter less than the facts at hand. And, really, Trish was right: a little girl should not sit in a cold, dark parking lot for an hour with a janitor. Even Denny would admit that.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I
n February, the black pit of winter, we went on a trip to north-central Washington, to an area called the Methow Valley. It is important for United States citizens to celebrate the birthdays of their greatest presidents, so all the schools were closed for a week; Denny, Zoë, and I went to a cabin in the snowy mountains to celebrate. The cabin was owned by a relative of Eve's whom I had never met. It was quite cold, too cold for me, though on the warmer afternoons I enjoyed running in the snow. I much preferred to lie by the baseboard heater and let the others do their exercises—skiing and snowshoeing and all of that. Eve, who was too weak to travel, and her parents were not there. But many others were, all of whom were relatives of some kind or another. We were only there, I overheard, because Eve had thought it was very important for Zoë to spend time with these people, since she, Eve, someone said, would die very soon.

I didn't like that whole line of reasoning. First, that Eve would be dying soon. And second, that Zoë needed to spend time with people she had never met because Eve would soon die. They might have been perfectly pleasant people, in their puffy pants and fleece vests and sweaters that smelled of sweat. I don't know. But I wondered why they had waited for Eve's illness to make themselves available for companionship.

There were a great many of them, and I had no idea who was connected to whom. They were all cousins, I understood, but there were certain generational gaps that were confusing to me, and some of the people were without parents but were with uncles and aunts instead, and some might have just been friends. Zoë and Denny kept mostly to themselves, but they still participated in certain group events like horseback riding in the snow, sledding, and snowshoeing. The group meals were convivial, and though I was determined to remain aloof, one of the cousins was always willing to slip me a treat at mealtime. And no one ever kicked me out from under the very large dining table where I lingered during dinner even though I was breaking my own personal code; a certain sense of lawlessness pervaded the house, what with children staying awake late into the night and adults sleeping at all hours of the day like dogs. Why shouldn't I have partaken in the debauchery?

Conflicted though I was, each night something special happened that I liked very much. Outside the house—which had many identical rooms, each with many identical beds to house the multitude—was a stone patio with a large hearth. Apparently in the summer months, it was used for outdoor cooking, but it was used in the winter as well. I didn't care for the stones, which were very cold and were sprinkled with salt pellets that hurt when they got wedged between my pads, but I loved the hearth. Fire! Crackling and hot it blazed in the evenings after dinner, and they all gathered, bundled in their great coats, and one had a guitar and gloves without fingertips and he played music while they all sang. It was well below freezing, but I had my place next to the hearth. And the stars we could see! Billions of them, because the night was so intensely dark, and the sounds in the distance, the snap of a snow-burdened tree branch giving way to the wind. The barking of coyotes, my brethren, calling each other to the hunt. And when the cold overpowered the heat from the hearth, we all shuffled into the house and into our separate rooms, our fur and jackets smelling of smoke and pine sap and flaming marshmallows.

As the end of the week drew near, everyone had settled into their routines: certain cousins went skiing, others to the snowmobile park, and so on. Denny and Zoë preferred to go on leisurely snowshoe walks together, and they always took me. They had purchased little dog booties for me at the local lodge, and though I felt them unbecoming for a durable dog such as myself, I appreciated that they protected my paws from freezing or getting cut from the rough snow and frozen branches that lay hidden underneath.

On the final day of our stay, we went for a special walk at a place called Sun Mountain, which we drove to in Denny's car. It was a bit far and tricky to find; some of the cousins drew a map for Denny. But it was supposed to be a spectacular and glorious walk with tremendous views all around the valley.

We began our walk easily enough, finding the small parking lot, bundling up, strapping on our shoes, and heading off along a low trail. The area was quite remote and didn't seem to have been traveled recently, and so our isolation was somewhat idyllic. Eventually, the path began a switchback pattern and climbed a low mountain, leveled off, and then began a switchback again. Higher and higher we climbed, and yet, since we were in a thick forest and entirely surrounded by trees, we had little sense of our altitude. Up and up we climbed; deeper and deeper into the woods we delved, until we were quite exhausted.

“We should be getting close,” Denny said to us, but he seemed unsure.

“I'm tired,” Zoë complained.

“Let's just get to the top of the mountain,” Denny urged. And so we continued on.

When we finally reached the mountaintop, it was all that Denny had hoped for. The view was stunning, as we could stand in one spot and turn completely around to see the entire Methow Valley spread out below us. But there was little time for enjoyment: in the distance, we could see very dark clouds forming, growing, blotting out more and more of the sky as we watched; and Zoë was crying softly, her face etched with pain.

“What's wrong, Honey?” Denny asked.

“My toes won't move,” she said.

“Sure they will,” he said. “Just wiggle them.”

But when we looked down at her feet, Denny and I realized the problem: Zoë wasn't wearing her insulated boots. She was wearing her normal street shoes. She had forgotten to change her shoes when we left the car.

Denny became very quiet, and I knew he was thinking of all the terrible possibilities: frozen toes, frostbite, chilblains. And he was likely probing his own mind for wilderness survival tips he had picked up along his life's journey. Suddenly, he swooped Zoë into his arms and headed off down the hill.

It was not an easy trip, down a steep and snowy, little-used path. But Denny was determined to get his daughter to safety. Down we plunged, back into the valley, as the sky above our heads grew more ominous and Zoë's face registered her pain, though her words did not betray her. When we reached the car, Denny started the engine right away to get the heat going. He peeled off Zoë's shoes, and she cried out.

“That's good,” he said. “If they hurt, that's good. That means they're going to be okay.”

We drove the rest of the way down the mountain in great haste, and dangerously so, as the car slipped mightily on the hard-packed snow. When we reached the main road, which was bare and wet, Denny hesitated. To get us back to the cabin, he should turn north, but he turned on his blinker for a right hand turn, which was south.

“Chelan has a hospital,” he said, explaining to me his actions. So we turned south toward Chelan.

I waited in the car while Denny rushed Zoë into the emergency room. It was my lot to wait in cars outside emergency rooms, I suppose. I'm not sure what good I would have been inside, anyway. So I waited and I watched as the dark storm clouds first engulfed the entire sky and then began to pelt our car with a freezing rain the likes of which I had never experienced. It was frightening, the force of this storm, with its high winds and icy bits of hail being flung about. I feared for my own life, being locked in the car as I was.

After they had been in the hospital for over an hour, suddenly, Denny emerged carrying Zoë. They ran to our car and opened the door. Denny laid Zoë on the backseat, strapped on her seat belt, and tucked her in with blankets he had taken from the hospital. Her feet were covered with many layers of socks, so they looked oversized and incapable of carrying her. Denny told me to sit in the backseat with Zoë and keep her warm, which I did. We stopped at a gas station as we left Chelan to purchase chains for our tires. And before we started our journey again, Denny made a phone call on his cell phone.

“We're in a bit of trouble here,” he said tensely. “Zoë has frostbitten toes—”

He stopped talking for a moment to allow the person to whom he was speaking—Eve, I assumed—to express herself in loud exclamations.

“Please listen,” he said. “She's going to be fine. They gave us some ointment, and they gave her some pain medication; she'll be fine. But there's a terrible storm moving in and we're going to try for home. We won't even go back to the cabin to get our things. Please ask one of the cousins to bring our stuff home with them. If we don't get over the mountains right now, we could be stuck for more than a week on this side. Please don't call me; I have to concentrate on the road. I'll call you when we get home. I love you and I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry.”

He hung up the phone and off we drove.

The drive south was horrific. The freezing rain accumulated on the windshield faster than the wipers could push it away, and every few tedious miles Denny would stop the car and get out to scrape away the icy glaze. It was dangerous driving and I didn't like it at all. From the backseat with Zoë, I could see Denny's hands were gripping the steering wheel far too tightly. In a race car the hands must be relaxed, and Denny's always are when I see the in-car videos from his races; he often flexes his fingers to remind himself to relax his grip. But for that excruciating drive down the Columbia River, Denny held the wheel in a death grip.

I felt very bad for Zoë, who was clearly frightened. The rear of the car moved more suddenly than the front, and so she and I experienced more of the slipping and sliding sensation generated by the ice. Thinking of how scared Zoë must have been, I worked myself into a state of agitation, and I let myself get carried away. Before I knew it, I was in a full-blown panic. I pushed at the windows. I tried to clamber into the front seat, which was totally counterproductive. Denny finally barked, “Zoë, please settle Enzo down!”

She grabbed me around the neck and held me tightly. I fell against her as she lay back, and she started singing a song in my ear, one I remembered from her past, “Hello, little Enzo, so glad to see you. . . .” She had just started preschool when she learned that song. She and Eve used to sing it together. I relaxed and let her cradle me. “Hello, little Enzo, so glad to see you, too. . . .”

I would like to tell you that I am such a master of my destiny that I contrived the entire situation, that I made myself crazy so Zoë could calm me on this trip, and thus, would be distracted from her own pain and agitation. Truth be told, however, I have to admit I was glad she was holding me; I was very afraid, and I was grateful for her care.

The line of cars trudged steadily but slowly. Many cars were stopped on the side of the road to wait out the storm. The weather men and women on the radio said waiting would be worse, however, as the weather front was stalled, the ceiling was low, and when the warm air arrived as anticipated, the ice would turn to rain and the flooding would begin.

When we reached the turnoff for Highway 2, there was an announcement on the radio that Blewett Pass was closed because of a jackknifed tractor-trailer rig. We would have to make a long detour to reach I-90 near George, Washington. Denny anticipated faster travel on I-90 because of its size, but it was worse, not better. The rains had begun and the median was more like a spillway than a grassy divide between east and west. Still, we continued our journey because there was little else we could do.

After seven hours of grueling travel and still two hours away from Seattle in good driving weather, we stopped at a McDonald's and Denny purchased food for us to eat—I got chicken nuggets—then we pressed onward to Easton.

Outside Easton, where snow was piled on the sides of the highway, Denny stopped his car alongside dozens of other cars and trucks in the chain-up area and ventured into the freezing rain. He lay down on the pavement and installed the tire chains, which took half of an hour, and when he climbed back into the car, he was soaking wet and shivering.

“They're going to close the pass soon,” Denny said to me and Zoë. “That trucker heard it on the radio.”

It was nasty and horrible, snow and ice and freezing rain, but we pushed on, our little old BMW chugging up the mountain until we reached the summit where they have the ski lifts, and then everything changed. There was no snow, no ice, just rain. We rejoiced in the rain!

Shortly, Denny stopped the car to remove the chains, which took another half hour and got him soaking again, and then we were going downhill. The windshield wipers flipped back and forth as quickly as they could, but they didn't help much. The visibility was terrible. Denny held the wheel tightly and squinted into the darkness, and we eventually reached North Bend and then Issaquah and then the floating bridge across Lake Washington. It was near midnight—the five-hour drive having taken more than ten—when we finally pulled into our driveway at home.

Denny carried Zoë to her room and put her to sleep. He turned on the television and we watched news reports of Snoqualmie Pass—where we had just been!—being shut down because of a rock slide that had destroyed the westbound lanes. Denny went into the bathroom and shed his wet clothes; he returned wearing sweat pants and an old T-shirt. He pulled a beer from the refrigerator and opened it. He took out his cell phone and pressed a button.

“Maxwell,” Denny said after a moment. “I assume Eve is asleep?”

He paused.

“Tell her we're fine. We're back home. She should call first thing in the morning.”

There was a great deal of shouting I could hear on the other end of the phone, but I couldn't make out the words. Denny let the shouting go on for quite some time before he said, “Maxwell, I am far too exhausted for this right now. Yell at me tomorrow.”

He hung up the phone, and when it buzzed again, he refused to answer. It buzzed again and again, relentlessly. And when his landline rang, he refused that, too.