Art of Racing in the Rain, The

by Garth Stein

  27

  Six 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: dolls and toys and frilly bed skirts and clouds painted on the ceiling. She was immersed in her dollhouse and didn’t notice me enter.

  I spotted a sock ball on the floor, which must have fallen when the clean clothes were being loaded into her dresser, 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 in the air, batted them with my snout, retrieved them for myself, and dropped them again at Zoë’s feet, and downwardly I faced. I was all prepared for a fun game of Enno-Fetch. She wasn’t. 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 tender 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. Perhaps she was committing them to memory because she hoped they would hold the key to her uncertain future.

  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 who spent her breaks obsessively knitting with metal needles that drove me mad with their scraping and scratching 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 freshwater pearls from Japan that Denny had given her for their fifth anniversary, and her makeup and her hair, which had grown enough so she could arrange it into some kind of a hairdo, was done that way, 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 separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. 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 with such conviction that we all were convinced. 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, while 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. 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.

  “I shouldn’t have allowed it to be this way,” she said regretfully. “I should have insisted on going home so we could all be together. That’s my fault; I could have been stronger. But Denny would say we can’t worry about what’s already happened, so…Please take care of Denny and Zoë for me, Enzo. They’re so wonderful when they’re together.”

  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.”

  Not everything. But I knew she had been right about her situation: while doctors are able to help many people, for her, they could only tell her what couldn’t be done. And I knew that once they identified her disease for her, once everyone around her accepted her diagnosis and reinforced it and repeated it back to her time and again, there was no way she could stop it. The visible becomes inevitable. Your car goes where your eyes go.

  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 and seeing 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.

  If I ever find myself before a firing squad, I will face my executors without a blindfold, and I will think of Eve. Of what she said. It is not the end.

  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 exhaled, and then she had no more needs, no more reason; she was released from her body, and, being released, she continued her journey elsewhere, high in the firmament where soul material gathers and plays out all the dreams and joys of which we temporal beings can barely conceive, all the things that are beyond our comprehension, but even so, are not beyond our attainment if we choose to attain them, and believe that we truly can.

  28

  In the morning, Denny didn’t know about Eve, and I, having awakened in a fog from my dream, barely suspected. He drove me over to Luther Burbank Park on the eastern shore of Mercer Island. Since it was a warm spring day, it was a good choice of dog parks, as it afforded lake access so Denny could throw the ball and I could swim after it. The park was empty of other dogs; we were by ourselves.

  “We’ll move her back home,” Denny said to me as he threw the ball. “And Zoë. We should all be together. I miss them.”

  I swam out into the cold lake and retrieved the ball.

  “This week,” he said. “This week I’ll bring both of them home.”

  And he threw the ball again. I waded over the rocky bottom until my body gained buoyancy and then I paddled out to the ball, bobbed for it in the lake, and returned. When I dropped the ball at Denny’s feet and looked up, I saw that he was on his cell phone. After a moment he nodded and hung up.

  “She’s gone,” he said, and then he sobbed loudly and turned away, crying into the crook of his arm so I couldn’t see.

  I am not a dog who runs away from things. I had never run away from Denny before that moment, and I have never run away since. But in that moment, I had to run.

  There was something about it. I don’t know. The setting of the dog park, perched on the eastern bank of Mercer Island like that, so ready. The split rail fence, not a containment fence in any way. The entire scene begs for a dog to run, to flee from his captivity, to lash out against the establishment. And so I ran.

  Off to the south, I burst off down the short path through the gap in the split rail and out onto the big field,
then I broke west. Over the asphalt path and down the other side to the amphitheater I found what I was looking for, untamed wilderness. I needed to go wilding. I was upset, sad, angry—something! I needed to do something! I needed to feel myself, understand myself and this horrible world we are all trapped in, where bugs and tumors and viruses worm their way into our brains and lay their putrid eggs that hatch and eat us alive from the inside out. I needed to do my part to crush it, stamp out what was attacking me, my way of life. So I ran.

  The twigs and vines whipped my face. The rough earth hurt my feet. But I ran until I saw what I needed to see. A squirrel. Fat and complacent. Eating from a bag of Fritos. Stupidly shoving chips into its mouth, and I found in the darkest part of my soul a hatred I had never felt before. I didn’t know where it came from but it was there and I charged that squirrel. It looked up too late. It noticed me long after it should have if it had wanted to live, and I was on it. I was on that squirrel and it had no chance. I was ruthless. My jaws slapped down on it, cracking its back, my teeth ripped into its fur, and I shook it to death after that, for good measure, I shook it until I heard its neck snap in two. And then I ate it. I ripped it open with my fangs, my incisors, tore into it, and blood was on me, all the blood, hot and rich, I drank its life and I ate its entrails and pulverized its bones and swallowed. I crushed its skull and ate its head. I devoured the squirrel. I had to do it. I missed Eve so much I couldn’t be a human anymore and feel the pain that humans feel. I had to be an animal again. I devoured, I gorged, I gulped, I did all the things I shouldn’t have done. My trying to live to human standards had done nothing for Eve; I ate the squirrel for Eve.

  I slept in the bushes. Sometime later I emerged, myself again. Denny found me and he said nothing. He led me to the car. I got in the backseat and fell asleep again immediately. With the taste of blood from the squirrel I had murdered fresh in my mouth, I slept. And while I slept I dreamed of the crows.

  I chased them; I caught them; I killed them. I did it for Eve.

  29

  For Eve, her death was the end of a painful battle. For Denny it was the beginning.

  What I did in the park was selfish because it was about satisfying my basest needs. It was also selfish because it prevented Denny from going to Zoë right away. He was angry with me for having delayed him in the park. But to postpone, even for a short time, what he was to find at the home of the Twins might have been the most merciful thing I could have done for him.

  When I awoke from my slumber, we were at Maxwell and Trish’s house. In the driveway was a windowless white van with a fleur-de-lis insignia on the driver’s door. Denny parked in such a way as to not block the vehicle, and then he led me around the side of the house to the hose bib in back. He turned on the hose and rinsed the blood from my muzzle in a rough and joyless manner; it was not a bath, it was a scrubbing.

  “What did you get into out there?” he asked me.

  When I was cleaned of dirt and blood, he released me and I shook myself dry. He went to the French doors on the patio and knocked. After a moment, Trish appeared. She opened the door and embraced Denny. She was crying.

  After a long time, during which Maxwell and Zoë also appeared, Denny ended the embrace and asked, “Where is she?”

  Trish pointed. “We told them to wait for you,” she said.

  Denny stepped into the house, touching Zoë’s head as he passed. After he disappeared, Trish looked at Maxwell.

  “Let him have a minute,” she said.

  And they, with Zoë, stepped outside and closed the French door so that Denny could be alone with Eve for the last time, even though she was no longer living.

  In the emptiness that was all around me, I noticed an old tennis ball in the plantings; I picked it up and dropped it at Zoë’s feet. I didn’t know what I was doing, if I had a specific intention. Was I trying to lighten the mood? I don’t know, but I felt I had to do something. So there the ball bounced to a stop at her bare feet.

  She looked down at the ball but did nothing with it.

  Maxwell noticed what I had done, and he noticed Zoë’s lack of reaction. He picked up the ball and, with a mighty heave, threw it so far into the woods behind the house that I lost sight of it and could only barely hear it crash through the leaves of bushes on its way back to earth. It was quite an impressive toss, the pale tennis ball sailing through the air against the clear blue sky. What amount of psychic pain was expended on that ball, I had no idea.

  “Fetch, boy,” Maxwell said to me sardonically, and then he turned back to the house.

  I didn’t fetch, but waited with them until Denny returned. When he did, he went to Zoë immediately, picked her up, and held her tightly. She squeezed his neck.

  “I’m so sad,” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  He sat on one of the teak deck chairs with Zoë on his knee. She buried her face in his shoulder and stayed like that.

  “The people from Bonney-Watson will take her now,” Trish said. “We’ll bury her with our family. It’s what she wanted.”

  “I know,” he said, nodding. “When?”

  “Before the end of the week.”

  “What can I do?”

  Trish looked at Maxwell.

  “We’ll take care of the arrangements,” Maxwell said. “But we did want to speak with you about something.”

  Denny waited for Maxwell to continue, but he didn’t.

  “You haven’t eaten breakfast, Zoë,” Trish said. “Come with me and I’ll fix you an egg.”

  Zoë didn’t budge until Denny tapped her shoulder and nudged her off of his lap.

  “Go get some food with Grandma,” he said.

  Zoë obediently followed Trish into the house.

  When she was gone, Denny leaned back with his eyes closed and sighed heavily, his face lifted to the sky. He stayed like that for a long time. Minutes. He was a statue. While Denny was immobile, Maxwell shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back. Several times Maxwell began speaking but stopped himself. He seemed somehow reluctant.

  “I knew it was coming,” Denny said, finally, his eyes still closed. “But still…I’m surprised.”

  Maxwell nodded to himself.

  “That’s what concerns Trish and me,” he said.

  Denny opened his eyes and looked at Maxwell.

  “Concerns you?” he asked, taken aback.

  “That you haven’t made preparations.”

  “Preparations?”

  “You have no plan.”

  “Plan?”

  “You keep repeating the last thing I’ve said,” Maxwell observed after a pause.

  “Because I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Denny said.

  “That’s what concerns us.”

  Denny, still sitting, leaned forward and screwed up his face at Maxwell.

  “What exactly are you concerned about, Maxwell?” he asked.

  Then Trish was there.

  “Zoë is eating an egg and toast, and watching TV in the kitchen,” she announced. She looked at Maxwell expectantly.

  “We’ve just started,” Maxwell said.

  “Oh,” Trish said, “I thought…What have you said so far?”

  “Why don’t you take it from the top, Trish,” Denny said. “Maxwell is having some difficulty with the opening. You’re concerned…”

  Trish glanced around, apparently disappointed that their concerns hadn’t already been resolved.

  “Well,” she began, “Eve’s passing is obviously a terrible tragedy. Still, we’ve been anticipating it for many months. Maxwell and I have discussed at great length our lives—the lives of all of us—in the aftermath of Eve’s death. We discussed it with Eve, as well, just so you know. And we believe that the best situation for all parties involved would be for us to have custody of Zoë, to raise her in a warm and stable family situation, to provide her with the kind of upbringing and, well, not to be gauche, but privileges we can provide for her. We think it will be best
. We hope you understand that this is in no way a commentary on you as a person or your fathering abilities. It is simply what is in Zoë’s best interest.”

  Denny looked from one of them to the other, a perplexed look still on his face, but he said nothing.

  I was perplexed, too. It was my understanding that Denny had allowed Eve to live with the Twins so they could spend time with their dying daughter, and that he had allowed Zoë to live with the Twins so she could spend time with her dying mother. As I understood it, once Eve died, Zoë would be with us. The idea of a transition period made some sense to me: Eve had died the previous night; to spend the following day—or even few days—with her grandparents made sense. But, custody?

  “What do you think?” Trish asked.

  “You can’t have custody of Zoë,” Denny said simply.

  Maxwell sucked in his cheeks, crossed his arms, and tapped his fingers against his biceps, which were clad in a dark polyester knit.

  “I know this is hard for you,” Trish said. “But you have to agree that we have the advantages of parental experience, available free time, and fiscal abundance that will ensure Zoë’s education through whatever level she might choose to pursue, and a large home in a safe neighborhood that has many young families and many children her age.”

  Denny thought for a moment.

  “You can’t have custody of Zoë,” he said.

  “I told you,” Maxwell said to Trish.

  “If you could just sleep on it,” Trish said to Denny. “I’m sure you will see that what we’re doing is right. It’s best for all. You can pursue your racing career, Zoë can grow up in a loving and supportive environment. It’s what Eve wanted.”

  “How do you know that?” Denny asked quickly. “She told you?”

  “She did.”

  “But she didn’t tell me.”

  “I don’t know why she wouldn’t have,” Trish said.

  “She didn’t,” Denny said firmly.

  Trish forced a smile.

  “Will you sleep on it?” she asked. “Will you think about what we’ve said? It will be much easier.”