by Garth Stein
Frustrated by Denny’s intractability, Maxwell offered to pay for Zoë’s schooling if she enrolled in a private school located on Mercer Island. Their conversations were frequent and intense. But even in the face of Maxwell’s persistence, Denny proved that he had a bit of the Gila monster in him—though I don’t know whether on his mother’s side or his father’s side—as his jaws never slackened. Eventually he prevailed, and Maxwell and Trish were forced to commute twice daily across the lake.
“If they’re really doing it for Zoë and Eve,” Denny said to me once, “it shouldn’t bother them to drive fifteen minutes across the lake. It’s really not that far.”
Denny missed Eve tremendously, I know, but he missed Zoë just as much. I could see it most on those days when he kept Zoë overnight and we got to walk her to her bus stop. Usually a Monday or a Thursday. On those mornings, our house seemed filled with electricity so that neither Denny nor I needed the alarm clock to wake, but instead 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.)
After Zoë drove away on the yellow bus those days, the other father with the three children would sometimes offer to buy us a coffee, and sometimes we would accept and we would all walk to Madison to the nice bakery and drink coffee at the sidewalk tables. Until once, when the other father said, “Your wife works?” Obviously, he was trying to explain to himself Eve’s absence.
“No,” Denny replied. “She’s recovering from brain cancer.”
The man dipped his head sadly upon hearing the situation.
After that day, whenever we went to the bus stop, the man made himself busy talking to other people or checking his cell phone. We never spoke to him again.
25
In 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! Cracking 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.
It was on one of the evenings while sitting around the fire that I noticed Denny had an admirer. She was young, the sister of someone, whom Denny apparently had met years earlier at a Thanksgiving or an Easter, because his first comment to her and the others was about how much she had grown since he had seen her last. She was a teenager who had a full set of breasts for milking and hips wide enough for childbirth and so was, for all intents and purposes, an adult, but who still acted like a child, always asking for permission to do things.
This girl-not-yet-a-woman was named Annika, and she was very crafty and always knew how to position herself and time her movements to force a meeting with Denny. She sat next to him around the fire. She sat across from him at meals. She always managed to be in the backseat of someone’s Suburban when he was in the backseat. She laughed too loudly at every comment he made. She loved his hair after he took off his sweaty ski cap. She proclaimed an extreme admiration for his hands. She doted on Zoë. She became emotional at the mention of Eve. Denny was ignorant of her advances; I don’t know if it was deliberate or not, but he certainly acted as if he hadn’t a clue.
Who is Achilles without his tendon? Who is Samson without Delilah? Who is Oedipus without his clubfoot? Mute by design, I have been able to study the art of rhetoric unfettered by ego and self-interest, and so I know the answers to these questions.
The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles—preferably of his own making—in order to triumph. A hero without a flaw is of no interest to an audience or to the universe, which, after all, is based on conflict and opposition, the irresistible force meeting the unmovable object. Which is also why Michael Schumacher, clearly one of the most gifted Formula One drivers of all time, winner of more races, winner of more championships, holder of more pole positions than any other driver in Formula One history, is often left off of the race fan’s list of favorite champions. He is unlike Ayrton Senna, who often employed the same devious and daring tactics as Schumacher, but did so with a wink and therefore was called charismatic and emotional rather than what they call Schumacher: remote and unapproachable. Schumacher has no flaws. He has the best car, the best-financed team, the best tires, the most skill. Who can rejoice in his wins? The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire a beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen. So. For me to relate the history of Denny, who is a true
champion, without including his missteps and failings would be doing a disservice to all involved.
As the end of the week drew near, the weather reports on the radio changed, and Denny became quite tense. It was almost time to return to Seattle, and he wanted to leave, get back on the highway and drive the five hours over the mountain passes to our house on the other side, which, though cold and dark and wet, was mercifully without six feet of base snow and subfreezing temperatures. He needed to get back to work, he said. And Zoë needed time to adjust to the school schedule. And…
And Annika needed to get back, too. A student at the Holy Names Academy, she needed to return so that she could consult with fellow students and prepare some kind of project they were working on that concerned sustainable living. She spoke of it with urgency, but only after she understood that Denny was planning on heading west before any of the other cousins. Only after she realized that if her needs and Denny’s needs coincided, she might win for herself five hours next to him in his car, five hours of watching his hands hold the steering wheel, five hours of seeing his tousled hat head, of inhaling his intoxicating pheromones.
The morning of our departure came, and the storm had settled in and the windows of the cabin were pelted with a freezing rain the likes of which I had never experienced. Denny fretted for most of the morning. The radios announced the closure of Stevens Pass because of the storm. Traction devices were required on Snoqualmie Pass.
“Stay! Stay!”
That’s what they said, the insipid cousins. I hated them all. They smelled rank. Even when they showered, they put on their same sweaters without washing them and their sour odor returned to them like a boomerang.
We ate lunch quickly and then we left, stopping at a gas station along the way to purchase chains for our tires. 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. I rode in the back with Zoë; Annika rode in the front. 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 badly 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 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 weathermen and-women on the radio said waiting would be worse, however, as the 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, Denny had Annika call her parents on her cell phone and ask them to find a place for us to stay somewhere near Cle Elum. But they called back soon and told us that all the motels were full because of the storm. 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 an hour, and when he climbed back into the car, he was soaking wet and shivering.
“You poor thing,” Annika said, and she rubbed his shoulders to warm him.
“They’re going to close the pass soon,” Denny said. “That trucker heard it on the radio.”
“Can’t we wait here?” Annika asked.
“They expect flooding. If we don’t make it over the pass tonight, we might be stuck for days.”
It was nasty and horrible, snowy and icy 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 Annika called her parents and told them we had made it safely to Seattle. They were relieved. They told her—and she related to us—that the news had reported flash-flooding conditions that caused a rock slide closing westbound I-90 near the summit.
“We must have just missed it,” Denny said. “Thank God.”
Beware the whimsy of Fate, I said to myself. She is a mean bitch of a lab.
“No, no,” Annika said into her phone. “I’ll stay with Denny. He’s too exhausted to keep driving, and Zoë is sleeping in the backseat; she should be put to bed. Denny said he’s happy to drive me home in the morning.”
This made Denny turn and look at her questioningly, wondering if he had actually said anything like that. Of course, I knew he hadn’t. Annika smiled at him and winked. She ended her call and slipped her phone into her bag. “We’re almost there,” she said, looking ahead out the windshield, her breaths shallow with anticipation.
Why he didn’t take action at that moment. Why he didn’t get right back on the freeway and drive up to Edmonds, where her family lived. Why he said nothing. I’ll never know. Perhaps, on some level, he needed to connect with someone who reminded him of the passion he and Eve used to share. Perhaps.
Back at the house, Denny carried Zoë to her room and put her to sleep. He turned on the television, and we watched the footage of Snoqualmie Pass being shut down by the authorities, only for a few days, they predicted hopefully, though possibly for a week or more. Denny went into the bathroom and shed his wet clothes; he returned wearing sweatpants and an old T-shirt. He pulled a beer from the refrigerator and opened it.
“Can I take a shower?” Annika asked.
Denny seemed startled. With all of the heroics he had been up to, he had almost forgotten about her.
He showed her where the towels were, how to
work the handheld shower temperature thing, and then he closed the door.
He got the extra sheets and pillows and blankets, unfolded the couch in the living room, and made the temporary bed for Annika. When he was done, he went into his bedroom and sat on the end of his own bed.
“I’m fried,” he said to me, and then he fell backward so he was lying on the bed, his hands on his chest, his feet still on the floor, his knees dangling over the edge of the bed, and the rest of him asleep even though the lights in the room were still on. I lay on the floor near him and fell asleep as well.
I opened my eyes and saw her standing over him. Her hair was wet and she wore Denny’s bathrobe. She said nothing. She watched him sleep for several minutes, and I watched her. It was spooky behavior. Creepy. I didn’t like it. She opened her robe, exposing a sliver of pale white flesh and a tattoo of a sunburst encircling her belly button. She didn’t speak. She shrugged off her robe and stood naked, her large breasts with their brown nipples pointing at him. Still, he was unconscious. Asleep.
She reached down and slipped her small hands into the band of his sweatpants. She pulled his pants down to his knees.
“Don’t,” he muttered, his eyes still closed.
He had driven for more than ten hours across a harrowing course of snow and ice and flooding. He had nothing left with which to fend off an attack.
She pulled his pants down to his ankles, then lifted one foot and then the other to remove them completely. She looked at me.
“Shoo,” she said.
I didn’t shoo. I was too angry. And yet I didn’t attack, either. Something was holding me back. The zebra keeps dancing.
