Racing in the Rain (9 page)

He didn't even get under the covers. He lay back on the bed, his knees hanging over the end and his feet dangling to the floor, and he fell into a fast, long sleep and didn't wake up until morning.

Chapter Twenty-Five

T
hat year we had a cold spell in each winter month. Then when the first warm day of spring finally arrived in April, the trees and flowers and grasses burst to life with such intensity that the television news had to proclaim an allergy emergency. The drugstores literally ran out of allergy medicine. But while the rest of the world was focused on the inconvenience of hay fever, the people in my world had other things to do. Eve continued with the unstoppable process of dying. Zoë spent too much time with her grandparents, and Denny and I worked at trying to ease the pain we felt in our hearts.

Still, Denny allowed for an occasional diversion, and that April, one presented itself. He had gotten a job offer from one of the racing schools he worked for. They had been hired to provide race car drivers for a television commercial, and they asked Denny to be one of the drivers. The racecourse was in California, a place called Thunderhill Raceway Park. I knew it was happening in April because Denny talked about it quite a bit; he was very excited. But I had no idea that he planned to drive himself there, a ten-hour trip. And I had even less of an idea that he planned on taking me with him.

Oh, the joy! Denny and me and our BMW, driving all day and into the evening like a couple of banditos running from the law. Like partners in crime. It had to be a crime to lead such a life as we led, a life in which one could escape one's troubles by racing cars!

The drive down wasn't very special. The middle of Oregon is not noted for its scenic beauty, though other parts of Oregon are. And the mountain passes in northern California were still somewhat snowy, which made me nervous. Luckily, the snow of the Siskiyous was confined to the shoulders of the highway, and the road surface was bare and wet. And then we fell out of the sky and into the green fields north of Sacramento.

The track was relatively new and well cared for. It was challenging, with twists and elevation changes and so much to look at. The morning after we arrived, Denny took me jogging. We jogged the entire track. He was doing it to familiarize himself with the surface. You can't really see a track from inside a race car traveling at one hundred fifty miles per hour or more, he said. You have to get out and
feel
it.

Denny explained to me what he was looking for. Bumps in the pavement that might upset one's suspension. He touched the pavement at the midpoint of the turns and felt the condition of the asphalt. Were the small stones worn smooth? Could he find better grip slightly off the established racing line? And there were tricks to the slope of certain turns, places where the track appeared level from inside a car but were actually graded ever so slightly to allow rainwater to run off the track and not puddle dangerously.

After we had traveled the entire track, we returned to the paddock—the infield of the track, where the cars get worked on. Two large trucks had arrived. Several men in racing-crew uniforms erected tents and canopies, and laid out an elaborate food service. Other men unloaded six beautifully identical Aston Martin DB5 automobiles, the kind made famous by James Bond. Denny introduced himself to a man who carried a clipboard and walked with the gait of someone in charge. His name was Ken.

“Thanks for your dedication,” Ken said, “but you're early.”

“I wanted to walk the track,” Denny explained.

“It's too early for race engines,” he said, “but you can take your street car out if you want. Just keep it sane.”

“Thanks,” Denny said, and he looked at me and winked.

We went over to a crew truck, and Denny caught the arm of a crew member.

“I'm Denny,” he said. “One of the drivers.”

The man shook his hand and introduced himself as Pat.

“I'm going to take my BMW out for a few easy laps. Ken said it was okay. I was wondering if you had a tie-down I could borrow.”

“What do you need a tie-down for?” Pat asked.

Denny glanced at me quickly, and Pat laughed. “Hey, Jim,” he called to another man. “This guy wants to borrow a tie-down so he can take his dog for a joyride.”

They both laughed, and I was a little confused.

“I have something better,” the Jim guy said. He went around to the cab of the truck and returned a minute later with a bedsheet.

Denny told me to get in the front seat of his car and sit, which I did. They wrapped the sheet over me, pressing me to the seat, leaving only my head sticking out. They somehow secured the sheet tightly from behind.

“Too tight?” Denny asked.

I was too excited to reply. He was going to take me out in his car!

“Take it easy on him until you see if he has a stomach for it,” Pat said.

“You've done this before?” asked Denny.

“Oh, yeah,” said Pat. “My dog used to love it.”

Denny walked around to the driver's side. He took his helmet out of the backseat and squeezed it onto his head. He got into the car and put on his seat belt.

“One bark means ‘slower,' two means ‘faster,' got it?” I barked twice, and that surprised him and Pat and Jim, who were both leaning in the passenger window.

“He wants to go faster already,” Jim said. “You've got yourself a good dog there.”

The paddock at Thunderhill Raceway Park is tucked between two long parallel straights; the rest of the course fans out from the paddock area like butterfly wings. We cruised very slowly through the hot pit area and to the track entrance. “We're going to take it easy,” Denny said, and off we went.

Being on a track was a new experience for me. No buildings, no signs, no sense of proportion. It was like running through a field, gliding over a plain. Denny shifted smoothly, but I noticed he drove more aggressively than he did on the street. He revved the car much higher, and his braking was much harder.

Around the turns we went. Down the straights we picked up speed. We weren't going very fast, maybe sixty. But I really felt the speed around the turns, when the tires made a hollow, ghostly sound, almost like an owl. I felt special, being with Denny on the racetrack. He had never taken me on a track before. I felt sure and relaxed; being held firmly to the seat was comforting. The windows were open, and the wind was fresh and cold. I could have driven like that all day.

After three laps he looked over at me.

“You want to try a hot lap?”

A hot lap? I barked twice. Then I barked twice again. Denny laughed.

“Sing out if you don't like it,” he said, “one long howl.” He firmly pressed the accelerator to the floor.

There is nothing like it. The sensation of speed. Nothing in the world can compare.

“Hold on, now,” Denny said, “we're taking this at speed.”

Fast, we went, hurtling, faster. I watched the turn approach, scream at us until we were practically past it and then he was off the accelerator and hard on the brakes.

And then he cranked the wheel left and he was back on the gas and we were pushing through the turn. The force of gravity shoving us toward the outside of the car but the tires holding us in place. They were not hooting, those tires, no. The owl was dead. The tires were screeching, they were shouting, howling, crying in pain,
ahhhhh
!

He relaxed on the wheel at the midpoint and the car drifted toward the exit and he was full on the gas and we flew—
flew!
—out of that turn and toward the next and the next after that. Fifteen turns at Thunderhill. Fifteen. And I love them all equally. I adore them all. Each one is different, each with its own particular sensation, but each so magnificent! Around the track we went, faster and faster, lap after lap.

“You okay?” he asked, looking over at me as we sped at nearly one hundred twenty miles per hour.

I barked twice.

“I'm gonna use up my tires if you keep me out here,” he said. “One more lap.”

Yes, one more lap. I live my life for one more lap. I
give
my life for one more lap! Please, God, please give me
one more lap
!

And that lap was spectacular. I lifted my eyes as Denny instructed. “Big eyes, far eyes,” he said to me. Those reference points he had identified when we walked the track moved by so quickly it took me some time to realize that he was not even seeing them. He was
living
them! He had programmed the map of the racecourse into his brain and it was there like a GPS navigational system; when we slowed for a turn, his head was up and looking at
the next turn
, not at the turn we were driving.

But his attention—and his
intention
—was far ahead, to the next turn and the one beyond that. With every breath he adjusted, he corrected, but he did it all instinctively; I saw, then, how in a race he could plot now to pass another driver three or four laps later. His thinking, his strategies, his mind; all of Denny unfolded for me that day.

After a cool-down lap, we pulled into the paddock, and the entire crew was waiting. They surrounded the car and their hands released me from my harness and I leapt to the ground.

“Did you like it?” one of them asked me, and I barked,
Yes!
I barked and jumped high in the air.

“You were really moving out there,” Pat said to Denny. “We've got a real racer on the set.”

“Well, Enzo barked twice,” Denny explained with a laugh. “Two barks means ‘faster!'”

They laughed, and I barked twice again. Faster! The feeling. The sensation. The movement. The speed. The car. The tires. The sound. The wind. The track surface. The exit. The shift point. The braking zone. The ride. It's all about the ride!

I floated through the rest of our trip. I dreamed of going out again at speed, but I suspected that more track time for me was unlikely. Still. I had my memory, my experience I could relive in my mind again and again. Two barks means “faster.” Sometimes, to this day, in my sleep I bark twice because I am dreaming of Denny driving me around Thunderhill, and I bark twice to say “faster.” One more lap, Denny!
Faster!

Chapter Twenty-Six

S
ix months came and six months left and Eve was still alive. Then seven months. Then eight. On the first of May, Denny and I were invited to the Twins' for dinner, which was unusual because it was a Monday night, and I never went with Denny on a weeknight visit. We stood awkwardly in the living room with the empty hospital bed while Trish and Maxwell prepared dinner. Eve was absent.

I wandered down the hallway to investigate, and I found Zoë playing quietly by herself in her room. Her room in Maxwell and Trish's house was much larger than her room at home, and it was filled with all the things a little girl could want. Lots of dolls and toys and frilly bed skirts and clouds painted on the ceiling. She was busy in her dollhouse and didn't notice me enter.

I spotted a sock ball on the floor and I pounced on it. I playfully dropped it at Zoë's feet, nudged it with my nose, and then dropped down to my elbows, leaving my haunches tall and my tail upright: universal sign language for “Let's play!” But she ignored me.

So I tried again. I snatched up the socks, flung them into the air, and batted them with my snout. Then retrieved them for myself, dropped them again at Zoë's feet, and faced downward. She pushed the socks aside with her foot.

I barked expectantly, one last attempt. She turned and looked at me seriously.

“That's a baby game,” she said. “I have to be a grown-up now.”

My little Zoë, a grown-up at her young age. A sad thought. Disappointed, I walked slowly to the door and looked back at her over my shoulder.

“Sometimes bad things happen,” she said to herself. “Sometimes things change, and we have to change, too.”

She was speaking someone else's words, and I'm not sure she believed them or even understood them.

I returned to the living room and waited with Denny until, finally, Eve emerged from the hallway where the bedroom and bathrooms were. The nurse was helping Eve walk. And Eve was brilliant. She was wearing a gorgeous dress, long and navy blue and cut just so. She wore the lovely string of small pearls from Japan that Denny had given her for their fifth anniversary. And someone had done her makeup and her hair, and she was beaming. Even though she needed help for her runway walk, she was walking the runway, and Denny gave her a standing ovation.

“Today is the first day I am not dead,” Eve said to us. “And we're having a party.”

To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life, as Eve felt the joy of life. To say, “I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am.” That is something to aspire to. When I am a person, that is how I will live my life.

The party was festive. Everyone was happy, and those who were not happy pretended that they were. Even Zoë came alive with her usual humor, apparently forgetting for a time her need to be a grown-up. When the hour came for us to leave, Denny kissed Eve deeply. “I love you so much,” he said. “I wish you could come home.”

“I want to come home,” she replied. “I
will
come home.”

She was tired, so she sat on the sofa and called me to her; I let her rub my ears. Denny was helping Zoë get ready for her bedtime. The Twins, for once, were keeping a respectful distance.

“I know Denny's disappointed,” she said to me. “They're all disappointed. Everyone wants me to be the next Lance Armstrong. They want me to be cured of this cancer. And if I could just grab it and hold it in front of me, maybe I could be. But I can't hold it, Enzo. It's bigger than me. It's everywhere.”

In the other room we could hear Zoë playing in the bath, Denny laughing with her, as if they had no worries in the world.

She shook her head to rid herself of her sad thoughts and looked down at me.

“Do you see?” she asked. “I'm not afraid of it anymore. I wanted you with me before because I wanted you to protect me, but I'm not afraid of it anymore. Because it's not the end.”

She laughed the Eve laugh that I remembered.

“But you knew that,” she said. “You know everything.”

We took our leave, Denny and I. I didn't sleep in the car on the ride home as I usually did. I watched the bright lights of Bellevue and Medina flicker by, so beautiful. Crossing the lake on the floating bridge, I saw the glow of Madison Park and Leschi, the buildings of downtown peeking out from behind the Mount Baker ridge, the city sharp and crisp, all the dirt and age hidden by the night.

She died that night. Her last breath took her soul; I saw it in my dream. I saw her soul leave her body as she breathed out and then she had no more needs. She was released from her body and, being released, she continued her journey elsewhere. High in the heavens where soul material gathers and plays out all our dreams and joys.