a secret life in 1960's Alachua, Fla., outside Gainesville. She hated
all sports, even football, and loved to read Dickens and ancient
history, particularly the Greeks and the Romans. She was interested
in computers. She wanted to go to a good state college and become an
archeologist.But Arlene was the oldest of six children of a churchgoing Southern railroad man. She was packed off to a bible college and pointed toward elementary education. Her rebellion was traditional, too; she married at 19, to a man nine years older, and quickly had four daughters, including twins. She attended a state college for a while, studying history and biology, but the demands of the children were too great. She divorced. She was 30, living in Batesville, Ark., when a local store owner named Glinda tried to set her up on a blind date with her brother Mark.
"I was not particularly interested in a man who'd never been married, never had children, didn't live in town, was six years younger and was a racecar driver," Arlene said. "Grown men driving around in circles? Why?"
Eighteen years later, she was perched on a banquette in the dinette of a million-dollar motor home at the Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway. She was wearing beige shorts, a pink sweater set and red polish on the toenails of her bare feet. Her husband was out driving around in circles to qualify for the Pepsi 400 two weeks ago, and she was puzzling over the phrase "Nascar wife."
While Nascar wives are officially presented as attractive, outgoing soccer moms who pray before races and keep dinner warm, they tend to fall into three main categories, much like corporate wives, medical wives and athletes' wives in general.
There are the high school sweethearts like Kim and Jeff Burton, who have their prom pictures, and Pam and Hut Stricklin, who dated for eight years before they married 16 years ago.
There are superstar couples, best represented by Brooke and Jeff Gordon, who married as Nascar's glamour boy was topping the charts.
And there are trophy wives, the newer, more aerodynamic models a top driver trades in for as he makes his way to the lead. The best known at the moment is Teresa Earnhardt, who was Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s third wife.
Arlene Martin, married to a driver who has been a focus during this year at speed, does not quite fit any of the categories, although she went through tough times with Martin and looks like a trophy wife. She shares, however, the concerns of all the wives of the 40-odd regular Winston Cup drivers, who compete at the highest level of stock car racing. They worry about maintaining some sort of "normal" family life, of helping their husbands hold on to the only job for which they may be qualified, and keeping at bay those "pit lizards" trolling for drivers with wandering eyes.
The traveling road show is at the New Hampshire International Speedway today, where Adam Petty died in a minor league practice run last year. Would this heighten the concern that causes the most denial: the fear of injury and death?
"I am not in denial," Arlene Martin said. "Anybody with a lick of common sense knows there's an element of risk in racing, but there's risk in other things, too, being a fighter pilot, a policeman, a firefighter. Mark was racing when I met him, he had a passion for it. It's not for me to say don't do it."
As she spoke, Mark materialized, suddenly and silently, which is
typical. He does not announce his presence so much as he appears,
then slowly takes the focus of attention. At Daytona, he moved
quickly, eyes darting, flopped down on the couch and began poking
the remote of one of the motor home's three big screen television
sets."Did you qualify?" Arlene asked.
"I did." His legs jiggled. He could not sit still. His eyes burned.
"And?"
"Did good, I think." He dropped the remote and said, "The preoccupation in racing is about not being successful."
What?
"You were talking about risk," Mark said, clipped, precise. "The real race wives, the ones who shared the life from dream to reality, who came up with their husbands on dirt tracks, short tracks, they share the fear of not making it, blowing an engine, losing a job, not getting a sponsor."
But he was already a star when he got married. Right?
"We were making $19,000 the first year, $40,000 the second year," Mark said. "Some star."
He poked the remote and their 9-year-old son, Matt, appeared on the large screen. The buzz-cut cutie who had been raiding the motor-home refrigerator for water for himself and his pal all afternoon was now a serious-looking quarter-midget racer on the network news, telling a CBS correspondent, "This is my sport, what I was born for."
While the short network feature showed the obligatory clip of Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash at Daytona last February, the story was upbeat: Mark and Matt will be featured on 15 million boxes of Life and Cap'n Crunch cereal in August. Matt's quarter-midgets are sponsored by the two brands, which are owned by Quaker Oats, which also owns one of Mark's sponsors, Gatorade.
Matt wasted no words. "It's pretty cool to be on cereal boxes with my Dad," he said.
Mark exhaled when the TV feature was over. He had been afraid that it would be another shot at the danger of racing and the morality of sending a child into that world. He hurried off to a drivers' meeting.
Arlene, who had been silent, rebooted the conversation. She and
Mark were married in 1984 at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, then went
off to live in Wisconsin because Mark was driving in the Midwest
American Speed Association circuit. She hated the cold and the way
people made fun of her accent. She felt isolated."I was clueless about racing," she said. "I knew the names Cale Yarborough and Richard Petty, but for all I knew they might be golfers. And when Mark took me to a race I couldn't get over the tires, so big, no treads. And it was all so loud, smelly, greasy."
Life was better when they returned to the South, although it still revolved around making a home for Mark and the four girls, and then Matt. She slowly became conscious of the racing world and its dangers.
Eventually, they settled in a fly-in community near Daytona Beach so Mark could park his plane in a hangar behind the house. For many top drivers, the plane is the family car, and the key to the ritualized and isolated lives they lead, flying to the next track a few days before the race to live in a motor home on the speedway grounds, flying out right after the race to spend a few days at home, unless there are test runs or meetings with sponsors.
Mark, driven and always in motion, starts his day at dawn with heavy exercise, then plunges into projects and race preparation.
Arlene starts her day later, and slowly.
"Despite the way he is, Mark is not a controlling man," she said. "I have a life. I'm reading books when I can. I'm eager to start the new Grisham. I see what Oprah recommends although I don't like them all. Sometimes I think about going back to school, but it would be hard right now.
"If Matt goes on to become a racecar driver, I'll support that. But lately he's gotten interested in history, the Civil War and World War II. Maybe he has those genes of mine. The other day he said he might like to be a lawyer since he likes to argue. That would be just fine."
