Admittedly, I had been very distracted that whole week. We were full-bore with the new race cars. Ayrton had to build new cars for 6 total teams, and these weren't stock cars. They were Ferraris and BMWs. Ferrari was counting on us to make their 575 chassis as competitive as the 550 chassis. Didn't she realize how important this was? Maybe it wasn't about that. Maybe that was part of the problem.
And now, I’m doing nothing but qualifying my mistakes. Shit.
I had to find somewhere to stay. Where the hell was I? In a day and a half, I got all the way from Southern California to Minnesota without sleeping a wink. I was too wired to sleep. It started snowing. It was the most pristine sight I'd ever seen. I was just outside the Twin Cities, it felt like I was standing in a snow globe. I had stopped to check out the city from afar, it was quickly disappearing in the snow. I glanced down an adjacent street and saw a beautiful brick house. It had a for sale sign out front of it. I drove to it, the owners still lived there.
I knocked on the door and a lovely young mother answered. “Hi, may I help you?”
“Your house is for sale, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, you're welcome to call our realtor and set up an appointment to --”
“How much are you asking?”
“Three hundred thousand.”
“I'll give you a million dollars if you can be out in 48 hours and if I can stay in a guest room in the meantime.” She looked at me like I was nuts. I was nuts. I am nuts.
“Are you serious?”
“I can have a wire transfer completed in an hour.”
“Well come on in!”
That was the beginning of the Minnesota House. Yes, our team named all of our houses and locations. The SoCal Beach House you've already heard of. We also had the Rock House which was right down the road from the Beach House. I mentioned the Montana Mansion, a recently acquired property in Bozeman, Montana. I also bought up a duplex in Belgrade, a small town just outside of Bozeman, as a hideaway in case I needed to escape. That was known as the Yellowstone Pad. A couple of the guys invested in a flat on the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, we called that one the Baltimore Pad. Now, we had the Minnesota House. Oh yeah, and we had a G5 and were going to be buying the first A380 to come off the assembly line in 2005... But we don't need to discuss aircraft here.
I found my way to the guest bedroom and laid on the bed. What the hell was I doing? What could I say to get Mary-Margaret to realize what it feels like to be behind that wheel? A race car driver is nothing without his drive, I am nothing without racing. That feeling I get when I close my eyes just before I take off, that elation, that gratitude to be in the position I am, living my dream. Death is one thing that cannot be considered while behind that wheel. We all know it can happen, but none of us would ever admit to it while at the track. It always affected us, no doubt about that. But we'd never admit it could happen to us.
Racing is about one thing – Winning. A feeling that nothing else in life can give you, defeating so many individual opponents in one sudden moment... There is nothing that compares. The reason why our girlfriends and families don't exist behind that wheel is very simple – It's in their own best interest. One momentary lapse in judgment is more likely to kill a driver than a driver who runs toward a fire.
Every driver at some point has a choice. Lift, or don't lift. Lift and you will live, but you will also finish second. You will lose. Don't lift and you will die, but you will also win the race. Nothing exists but you and the car. No wife, no family, no kids. It’s the most insanely selfish dynamic one could ever fathom. Whoever said that discretion is the better part of valor clearly never knew what went on between the white lines of a race track.
For six months, Mary-Margaret and I didn't speak once. For six months, I didn't lift once. Metaphorically speaking of course. I pushed as hard as I possibly could. In many ways, it was my effort to get back to Mary-Margaret faster. The next chance I had to see her was during the summer break. I knew time wouldn't move any quicker the faster I drove, but it made me feel better about the situation. We were dominating both series we had entered and I was convinced that by the middle of the year, Mary-Margaret would be back in my arms.
June 30th, 2004. We finally returned to the States and I was riding high. The season had been great, and that gave me plenty of confidence to get Mary-Margaret back. I knew what I had to do. I had to go get my lady back. I needed to figure out what to say or do to get Mary-Margaret back in my arms once and for all.
And I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do.
We headed for the Beach House first. We had to drop our stuff off and figure out where Mary-Margaret was. Ayrton put in a call to Jimmy to get him on the case. Turned out, we didn't need his help. My timing always had been a thing of beauty. Mary-Margaret was already at the House. No Hermann though, I noticed that as soon as we got there. She was in my bedroom, packing up her things.
“Mary – What are you doing?” I asked her.
“I'm leaving. I'm packing my stuff, and I'm leaving,” she responded. She said it in such a matter of fact tone. She was so lifeless in how she worked around the room and gathered her things. She wasn't the same girl.
“I don't want you to leave. I don't want to be apart from you,” I returned.
“I'm not giving you a choice, Ryan.”
“What the hell happened? I mean, I know I screwed up bad, but you're so different. What happened? Is there someone else?”
“I can't believe you would ever even ask such a stupid question. There will never be anyone else, Ryan. Never.”
“Then what the hell happened?”
She took her time formulating her response. “All you need to know is I'm not ready to be the person you need me to be.”
I stood there like a fucking mute. I had no words. I am a professional writer, and I had no words. You'd think there has to be something, some words or phrases to make this right, to make her understand how terribly I needed her in my life. She brushed past me.
I had to come up with the one thing that could be said to keep her with me.
“Mary-Margaret – I love you,” I said.
“I love you too, Ryan,” Mary-Margaret responded. She exited the bedroom, and soon after the front door closed.
That wasn't it.
Ayrton ran into the bedroom, I was so stunned that I couldn't move.
“Dude, she just got in a cab. She's got to be headed for the airport,” Ayrton said.
“I know. She's – She's gone.”
“What the fuck are you standing there for? Come on, let's go after her!” Ayrton was right. We ran out the door and jumped in Ayrton's truck. Ayrton drove me to the airport. I had to jump from the truck and run after her for the last mile because of all the traffic. She was going through screening by the time I caught up. What the hell? What happened while I was gone? I ran inside, got to her as quickly as I could.
“Mary-Margaret -- Mary what are you doing?” I asked as I picked up her hand while desperately trying to catch my breath.
“Ryan, I'm done. I'm leaving. I need to focus on myself. It's what you've been doing for years.”
“What do you think I'm doing here, Mary? I want to focus on you, I want to be there for you! I realize what I did wrong, you've got to believe me. There's got to be something I can do.”
“It's too late. You take care, okay?” And that was it.
Mary-Margaret continued through screening. I stood there, motionless, emotionless, watching her all the way through. She never looked back. I knew I should have kept fighting, but she seemed so set on what she wanted. I had lost her. I had lost my perfect girl. I had lost my Mary-Margaret.
The only other thing I remember after seeing her disappear was Ayrton putting his hand on my shoulder. And that was it. My mind completely checked out.
Four days had passed. Normally, Ben stayed at the Rock House in SoCal since that’s where we developed the cars. I kicked him out and made great friends with the house. To say I was in
a rough spot doesn't exactly get the point across. No amount of alcohol was going to be enough to soothe me, but that sure as hell didn't stop me from trying.
Chase came over to check on me. I had no lights on, no entertainment. Just the natural light from a cloudy day and my single malt. Scotch glass in one hand, the bottle in the other.
“Hitting it kinda hard, huh?” he asked.
“Oh fuck off, Chase. Your lectures aren't needed here,” I told him.
“How much have you had?” he asked. I held the bottle up to him. “Half a bottle of top shelf scotch? That's a lot.”
“Sumpter men can hold their liquor. What do you want?”
“You gotta talk to us, man. Let us in. Let us help you.”
“She's out there fucking someone else, and I'm here alone.”
“You're hammered, I get it. But you know in your heart Mary-Margaret isn't with anyone else.”
“Like shit I do. Why else would she leave me? I've fucking got the world on a string. And she's out there riding some other cock as if he can do something for her. And I'm alone.”
“Gee, I wonder why? I mean with an attitude like that, what woman wouldn't want you?”
“Fuck you.”
“No, seriously. You're every woman's dream.”
“You know what, Chase? You are – an asshole. You come in here thinking you can help me. You think you can help me? All right, okay man. Yeah. Because you've opened your heart to so many women. Let me tell you how many women you've opened your heart to. Answer? Exactly fucking none. You are an asshole for thinking you can help me. You don't even know what I'm going through. You – are a fucking coward.” And he left.
That wasn't the only spat I had with my fellow team members. Every one of my closest friends stopped by, and one by one I alienated each of them. I turned into a monster. What Ayrton went through after Bryan died in 2001, that didn't even compare to my meltdown. I wasn't the same person. And just when I thought I couldn't get worse... I reached a new level of suck.
Mary-Margaret wrote me a letter. How long ago it was supposed to be delivered, I didn't know. I stormed into the Montana Mansion and headed for Ayrton's office. It was in the glove box of my truck. How the hell did it end up there? Why did it end up there? I wanted answers, and I knew Ayrton was the only one who could give them to me. He's the only person who had sat in the passenger seat of that truck all year.
I threw open the door to his office, he barely flinched.
“What the fuck do you think you're doing?” I asked him.
“Looking over some stats for the 24 hour race. Gotta make sure our strategy is sound. We're only going with two cars, after all.”
“Fuck you, you know what I mean,” I said as I threw the letter at him. He glanced at it, flattened it out on the table in front of him.
“I was going to tell you,” he said.
“Slipped your mind?”
“You had just told me that if you heard from her, it would break your heart. It might render you unable to go on. You remember that?”
“That isn't why you held this from me, Ayrton. That is bull shit! You held this from me because, as usual, you couldn't leave well enough alone. Shit went down with you and whatever useless whore you were with and you didn't want to see me happy.”
“One of these days, when you're sober, I'm going to let you take that back.”
“Oh piss off! When did she even send this letter? Damnit Ayrton, this could have been fixed! I could still have Mary-Margaret! And now I don't. Because of your sorry, two-faced ass, I've lost her.”
“You lost her because you were too damn arrogant to realize you didn't pay her any mind in your private life!”
I jumped at Ayrton, grabbed him by the shirt and we wrestled each other to the ground. Punches were thrown, all landed. He threw me around. I threw him around. His office was all but demolished by the time we were finished. I found one of his crystal clocks and rifled it across the room at him, barely missing his head. It shattered against the wall. Everything stopped. He looked at me, knowing very well that I could have killed him if that clock had landed. I looked at him knowing the same thing.
“I would advise you to get the hell out of this house right now,” he said.
“I'm gone,” I responded as I threw my hands up in the air. It was the end of the worst fight I'd ever had with Ayrton. With anyone, really. Our team, we always held it together. We rarely had intra-squad struggles. I was tearing us completely apart. Before long, if I didn't make any changes, everything we had built would be completely destroyed.
Ayrton came to find me the day after our fight. I was sitting in front of the couch at the Yellowstone Pad. I wasn't moving. Ayrton unlocked the door, walked in. I had given away all of the electronics in the Pad. There was nothing but a couch, a workbench, and the kitchen appliances. Nothing else.
Ayrton sat down against the wall across the room. We sat in utter silence for a good while. I didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to say. We were both hit hard by this entire situation. I wasn't making it any easier on him, either. I knew I'd alienated everyone on the team. Every single one of them tried to help, and I'd shot my mouth off over and over again. I didn't doubt that none of them wanted me back at that point.
The silence ensued until one of us finally broke it.
“I don't know how to do this,” I said. “I don't know how to be just me. I don't know how to do this alone. I am Mary-Margaret's boyfriend, she is my girlfriend. That's what I know. That's all I know. Anything else is foreign to me. I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. It feels like I have no purpose in life anymore.”
Ayrton took a deep breath. “Look man, I'm not big on talking about my feelings or whatever. You know that. But the team, man, we all love you. We don't understand what you're going through. We're never going to get it, I'm not gonna lie about that. None of us have ever had a Mary-Margaret. None of us have felt that. But we are all here for you. We all want to help you through this. You've got to let us in.”
“I don't know how. I let Mary-Margaret in and she left me. Or I left her. I guess it doesn't matter how we lost each other. How am I supposed to let anyone in after that?”
“She didn't leave you. I never told you this before, but I've never met anyone with as caring a heart as Mary-Margaret has. When things were tough with Seratti and me, she was right there, man. She helped me, she talked to me. She made me believe that I could find love too. She was so kind. She meant so much to me, to the whole team. You two, neither of you left. It just wasn't meant to happen like this, man. There's got to be something better for you out there. We are all in this together, Ryan. You taught us all that. We win as a team, we lose as a team. And it's still hard for us to believe just a few weeks ago, we all lost everything,” Ayrton continued.
“You know I've never been huge on faith or anything. Mary-Margaret made me believe that there's something out there,” I responded.
“I don't even know what to say to that. I'm at a loss. I've got nothing. Any of us on the team, we'd do anything for you. The question is, are you really gonna make us do it? You remember who first said that? You. You told me that years ago,” Ayrton said. I'd never heard him so distraught. It became clear how much this entire situation had worn on him.
“What happened after she said goodbye?” I asked.
Ayrton took in another deep breath and sighed. “You turned to me, and the look on your face... It was like nothing I'd ever seen before.”
“What was it like?”
“Terror. Pain. Misunderstanding. Incomprehension. Unimaginable loss. I'd never known anyone to love someone as much as you loved her. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear Mary-Margaret had died or something, man. It was like time stopped. Everything had stopped. I swear, you two were the only ones left in the room. The rest of us were ghosts of spectators. She walked away, and you were staring at our car sitting in the fire lane outside the door. I put my arm around you and led you to the car. You weren't there
though. You had checked out.” Ayrton told the story with such grace, grace I never realized he had. I never knew him to be poetic or a story teller. He was always such a jackass, always smiling and having fun. He never knew how to be serious. Or at least, I never knew him to be serious at all.
“So what happens next?” I asked him.
“You sober up, peel yourself off the floor, and come to Portland with the team. Let's get out of here, man. Let's go, escape to another world and prepare to indulge in the sport we both know and love. If Mary-Margaret is meant to happen, it'll happen. One way or another, it will happen. But if it's not meant to happen, remind yourself why you are where you are in your life. Race. Go out there and pour everything you've got into racing.”
I nodded. He continued, “I'm not gonna lie, I never realized you could punch that hard.”
“I just wanted to try to rearrange that pretty fucking face of yours,” I said. He and I shared a familiar chuckle. We stood up, left, and soon headed for Portland.
After a successful race in Portland, we were off to Belgium for our first 24 hour race. It was an interesting experience and our young but talented team came out on top with a clutch performance.
The win gave us an enormous points lead. The team was too wired to sleep. I was lounging by the hauler watching the festivities alone. I couldn't bear the thought of being without Mary-Margaret that night. But a surprise dropped into my lap.
“Hi. – Hello? Are you okay?” I was awakened by an angel. A very tall angel, but an angel nonetheless. I would guess she was about 5'11”, platinum blonde hair, gorgeous brown eyes.
The Legend: The Love of Ryan Sumpter Page 8