Summary
A few days after Eve’s death, Denny takes Enzo on a long walk through the drizzling rain. Enzo explains why he loves Seattle more than anywhere in the world for its soft rains. He loves the way the rain feels on his muzzle. In the days after Eve’s death, Enzo and Denny stay shut up in their house, so at first, Enzo is thrilled by their long walk. But then, the walk becomes especially long. Maybe the longest they have ever taken. Enzo starts to get tired and wonder where they are going when he realizes that they are at a cemetery, and they have been walking to Eve’s funeral.
When they arrive at Eve’s funeral, Maxwell and his two sons block Denny and Enzo from approaching the ceremony. Maxwell repeatedly tells Denny he is not welcome there. He calls Denny a child molester. Meanwhile, Zoë cannot contain herself any longer and runs over to her father. Denny holds her for a moment and then, deciding it would be best not to cause a scene, tells Zoë he is going to watch the funeral from a special place. He and Enzo walk to the back of the cemetery and watch the funeral from afar. They watch until the end of the ceremony. They watch everyone leave, they watch the gravediggers cover Eve’s grave with dirt, and they stay watching until the sun sets. Then, Denny and Enzo walk to the spot where Eve is buried and privately mourn. After they’ve wept, they start the long walk home.
The morning after Eve’s funeral, Enzo can barely stand up. He can barely even move. He explains that he has known about his bad hips for years, but that he does not trust medical professionals because of a traumatic experience he had at the breeder’s farm when he was still a puppy. This activates a flashback, and Enzo describes a scene of being held down by his breeder while a vet stood over him with clippers. The vet urged the breeder to pay for anesthetic, but the breeder did not want to pay for a dog he was just going to turn around and sell. He told the vet to go ahead without anesthesia, and before Enzo even knew what was going on, the vet snipped off his dew claws. Enzo felt a blinding pain before they wrapped his legs.
Back in the present narrative, Denny takes Enzo to the vet, who diagnoses Enzo with hip dysplasia. Enzo compares his diagnosis with when Eve received her diagnosis. He finally understands first-hand why Eve so strongly resisted seeing medical professionals about her condition—because once the diagnosis is handed down, the consequences become real. Enzo believes that his hip dysplasia will eventually lead to his slow but unstoppable death.
In the meantime, Maxwell and Trish have been granted a temporary restraining order against Denny, which prevents him from seeing Zoë for many months. Mark Fein, Denny’s lawyer, advises Denny against telling Zoë about the legal proceedings, so Denny tells Zoë that he is racing cars in Europe for a while to explain his absence. During this time, Denny and Zoë exchange letters and drawings, which as a part of the restraining order Maxwell and Trish’s lawyers have the right to read and censor. The Twins successful keep Denny isolated from his daughter, but they run into a problem when Zoë asks to see Enzo.
Maxwell and Trish finally agree to allow Enzo to visit their home on Mercer Island. Denny’s co-worker, Mike, chauffeurs Enzo to and from The Twins’ house. For Denny, this is a big win. Even though he, himself, cannot visit Zoë, he feels connected to her through Enzo. After Enzo’s visits, Denny asks him all kinds of questions about Zoë. He asks what kinds of games they played and about how she seemed to be feeling. Denny’s questions make Enzo sad, because he wishes he could fully communicate with him. Because while Mike tells Denny that Zoë seems to be doing great, Enzo knows that she is far from doing great. Enzo feels that if he could only speak, he would be able to tell Denny everything he needs to know about Zoë.
The ongoing criminal investigation restricts Denny from leaving the state, which prevents him from accepting a lot of lucrative racing jobs he has been offered since he drove on the Aston Martin commercial. Most of the jobs are located in California. But one day, Denny receives an offer for a teaching job in Spokane. Since he will be gone for the whole weekend, he thinks it would be a nice surprise for Zoë if Enzo spent the weekend with her on Mercer Island. The Twins agree to let Enzo stay. Zoë makes space for Enzo in her bedroom, surrounded by her stuffed animals. To Enzo’s horror, among the stuffed animals sits a replacement of the demonic zebra from earlier in the novel. Enzo is sure that he sees a glimmer in the stuffed zebra’s eyes, as if it were mocking him.
To escape from the zebra, Enzo wanders out by the porch, where he overhears a tense conversation between Maxwell and Trish. In the conversation, Trish suggests that perhaps the criminal trial against Denny has gone too far, and that maybe Annika is not telling the truth. Trish suggests that the timing of the charges seemed awfully suspicious—Annika’s father called the authorities only after Maxwell complained to him about Denny not giving up custody of Zoë. The discussion clearly makes Maxwell uncomfortable. He responds to Trish by dismissing her suspicions and saying that even if Denny was innocent, he is not good enough for Zoë, and it was all for the best.
Enzo cannot believe his ears. Before, he only suspected that The Twins set Denny up. But now, after all but hearing Maxwell confess to it, Enzo feels the need to take action. In Enzo’s eyes, The Twins have become The Evil Twins. Later that evening, Enzo finds Maxwell eating pepperoncini peppers from a jar. Maxwell offers one to Enzo. Trish warns him that peppers probably are not good for Enzo’s stomach, but Maxwell insists that he likes them. The last time he fed Enzo a pepper, it was extremely painful and gave Enzo diarrhea. But Enzo accepts the pepper, because he plans to use his gastrointestinal distress as a weapon. Later that night, when Maxwell prepares to let Enzo out, Enzo instead stops right before the door and defecates on the Berber carpet.
By September, things are looking up for Denny and Zoë. Although the criminal investigation continues, Denny has been granted visitation rights with Zoë every other weekend, from Friday to Sunday night. During this time, she stays with him in Seattle. The restraining order has been dissolved. And even though a hard fight still lies ahead, gaining visitation rights is a huge step in the right direction. During Zoë’s visit, Mark stops by and tells Denny how proud he is of him.
Analysis
At this point in the novel, Stein explicitly establishes Maxwell as the primary antagonist. By having Enzo change Maxwell and Trish’s nickname from The Twins to The Evil Twins, Stein draws a clear line in the sand for the reader, leaving nothing up for interpretation, indicating that this is where Maxwell and Trish become full-on antagonists. In Chapter 36, Maxwell denies Denny access to his own wife’s funeral. If we assume here that Maxwell actually believes that Denny is a child molester, then the cruelty of blocking his path to the funeral is admittedly more complicated. However, when we learn in Chapter 39 that Maxwell knows Denny is innocent, the undeniable cruelty of his actions becomes clear.
Maxwell resorts to Machiavellian tactics in order to win Zoë from Denny; in other words, from Maxwell’s point of view, the ends will always justify the means. He does not care if he ruins Denny’s life unjustly, as long as he ultimately gets what he wants, which is custody of Zoë. Maxwell frequently justifies the custody battle with the notion that Zoë is better off being raised by him and Trish; however, he often reveals his true motivations when he talks about Denny’s status in society. For example, in Chapter 39 when Trish suggests that perhaps accusing Denny of child molestation takes things too far, Maxwell says, “He wasn’t good enough for Eve, and he’s not good enough for Zoë. And if he’s stupid enough to get caught with his pants down and his pecker in his fist, you’re going to be damn sure I’m going to seize the moment. Zoë will have a better childhood with us. She will have a better moral raising, a better financial raising, a better family life, and you know it, Trish. You know it!” (228).
This is a pivotal scene to the novel, because here, Maxwell definitively reveals himself as the villain. It becomes obvious that Maxwell is more concerned with his personal family pride than what is actually good for Zoë. Ironically, he claims that Zoë will have a better moral upbringing with him and Trish, when the fact of the matter is that he is the one who is morally wrong by framing Denny for raping Annika. This moment also presents Trish as a possible future ally of Denny’s. By showing that Trish has serious doubts and moral qualms about Maxwell’s plans, Stein gives the reader hope that she may, at some point, change her mind and do the right thing.
This section also draws a parallel between Eve’s diagnosis and Enzo’s gradual decline in health, which contributes further to the recurring theme of lived experience versus intellectual knowledge. In Chapter 37, the vet diagnoses Enzo with hip dysplasia, and Enzo laments the diagnosis because he knows that now that his condition has been identified, it will continue to get worse. He repeats the phrase, “The car goes where the eyes go,” (218), first introduced in Chapter 14, when Enzo explains the phrase as “simply another way of saying that which you manifest is before you,” (83). The idea testifies to the power of the mind, the way positive or negative thinking influences reality.
Enzo’s flashback in Chapter 37 refers back to the theme of evolution—in the beginning of the novel, Enzo proposes a theory that dogs are closely related to humans due to the existence of vestigial thumbs called “dew claws.” So by showing the reader a traumatic scene from Enzo’s days as a puppy in which he has his dew claws painfully cut off without anesthesia, Stein partly affirms Enzo’s false theory that he is, at least symbolically through the existence of thumbs, more closely related to humans than other animals without dew claws.
