Home Field

by Hannah Gersen

  “That’s crazy; she won’t be able to play sports,” Dean said. Megan was the older of Joelle’s two daughters. She was a petite girl, and Dean still thought of her as a little kid around Robbie’s age. But now she was moving into Stephanie’s world.

  “Of course sports are the first thing that comes into your head!” Geneva laughed.

  “They give you confidence. I always told Stephanie that. She got her confidence from her grades, but that’s not available to everyone.”

  “Most people would see it the other way. They think sports take away confidence.”

  “Those people are overly competitive. They can’t enjoy something they aren’t winning.”

  “Aren’t you that way?”

  “I’m a coach,” Dean said. “I’m supposed to want to win. But I don’t say you can’t enjoy yourself if you don’t. Maybe it’s harder to. But you still get the physical benefits.”

  “I’ve touched a nerve.”

  “I’m just tired of my PE classes getting cut. Or I see a girl who looks athletic and it turns out she’s a cheerleader. I told Stephanie I’d break both her legs if she became a cheerleader.”

  “Maybe it’s good Megan’s not going to high school. She won’t risk getting her legs broken by her fanatical uncle.”

  Dean smiled. “I shouldn’t be so hard on cheerleaders. They raise their own money. They can do what they want.”

  “I shouldn’t be so hard on Jo,” Geneva said. “All this Holy Roller stuff started after Paul passed on.”

  Dean took his mother-in-law’s hand. It was cool, despite the mugginess of the afternoon—like Nicole’s used to be.

  “There goes one of my buzzards.” Geneva watched a bulky-looking bird take flight from the pasture adjacent to her little house.

  “Are you still encouraging them?” Dean asked.

  “I left scraps out this morning.”

  Geneva’s vulture fixation had started when she noticed the birds were eating the dry mix that she put out for the barn cats. She began leaving meat scraps for them—gristle and poultry gizzards. After a few months, the vultures got accustomed to her treats and would hang out in her yard, waiting. No one could understand why she fed them, and Joelle thought she was just plain losing it. But Dean trusted she had her reasons.

  More guests had begun to arrive, mostly Ed’s family and people from Joelle’s church. Stephanie emerged from the farmhouse to greet an older couple that Dean didn’t immediately recognize from a distance. Their white-gray hair was cut in similarly short styles and they were dressed somewhat formally in khaki and white, as if they were on safari.

  “Is that the Shanks?” Dean said. Even though Stephanie had been spending a lot of time with her grandparents, Dean rarely socialized with them. They usually didn’t come to Willowboro. Instead, Stephanie drove to Frederick or Baltimore to meet them. They had stores in both cities and lived outside Baltimore.

  “I told Joelle not to invite them but she insisted,” Geneva said. “I’ve never understood those people. The way they left Nic high and dry after Sam passed on. I think they blamed her. Like he wouldn’t have gotten sick if he’d married someone else.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Dean said. “They probably just needed someone to blame.”

  “Aren’t you forgiving.”

  “They got Stephanie into a good college.” Dean wasn’t in the mood to hate the Shanks. He got up out of his chair. “I’m going to see if the boys are in the barn.”

  “You are avoiding the Shanks,” Geneva said, pointing a finger. “The Shanks and Joelle.”

  He was avoiding everyone. He didn’t know what to say about his life anymore. He patted his front pocket, where he’d placed the napkin Laura had given him. She’d written down her number and handed it to him at the end of their conversation about physical therapy (for her boyfriend, who seemed perfectly healthy). She said to call her if he ever needed someone to talk to. And then she said she was sorry she hadn’t gotten in touch after Nicole died, that she didn’t know right away, and then when she did know, she didn’t know if she should contact him, because what could she say, she hadn’t even known Nicole, and anyway it wasn’t as if they’d ever had that kind of friendship, the kind that entailed phone calls, and then she had blushed and said again that she was sorry, really so sorry, and Dean had finally interrupted and said it was okay, because it was; in fact, it was a relief to know that she still thought about him, and even more of a relief to know that she wanted to talk to him.

  The gravel driveway that led from the farmhouse to the barn and down to the fields was flecked with sharp bits of hay. Dean picked one up and stuck it behind his ear, knowing it would make the boys laugh. But when he got to the barn, there was no sign of them. He stood in the darkened, cool space, savoring the dusklike feeling. Sunlight filtered in where the door was ajar, sending a stripe of gold across the beams. He became aware of the sadness inside him, an ancient, placeless feeling, and at the same time he felt marvelously alive. It had something to do with the smell of the barn, of the hay and the animals that slept there at night. It reminded him of his childhood and of his father, of the sweet through line connecting him to his past and extending to some unknown point in the future.

  Dean heard someone behind him and turned to see Joelle standing in the doorway. Her jeweled tunic was even more out of place in the barn’s soft light.

  “I’m just trying to find my girls.” She began to head back outside.

  “Wait, Joelle, I wanted to ask you something.”

  “If you’re wondering about the Shanks, Stephanie’s the one who wanted to invite them, not me.”

  “I don’t mind the Shanks.” He wanted to say something conciliatory, something to bridge—or at least start to bridge—the divide that separated them. But now that he was face-to-face with his wife’s younger sister, he could only think of how old and set in her ways she seemed. There was a hardness to her, a toughness. Maybe that was why Nicole had tried so hard to please her. It was as if Joelle were the older sister and Nicole the vulnerable young one. Their dynamic was such that when they had gone out together, people often assumed that Nicole was the baby of the family. “It’s because I have such big boobs,” Joelle once said, to Dean’s amusement. But over the years, she had wielded an influence that Dean often resented. Nicole always sought her advice first, weighing it against everyone else’s as if it were the sensible standard. She’d even tried to believe in Joelle’s version of God.

  “Steffy says you’re looking for a babysitter,” Joelle said. “I can watch them if need be.”

  “Thanks, but we’ll be okay.”

  “You can’t ask my mother, you can’t put that on her.”

  “I wasn’t planning to.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “For now, the boys can come with me to practices. When school starts, I’ll have Monica come over on weeknights when I have to work late.”

  “Monica graduated.”

  “I’ll find a new Monica.”

  “That’s not going to work.”

  Dean shrugged. “Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.”

  “Dean. I know what your schedule is like in the fall. You’re never home. You can’t get a babysitter every night. Kids need consistency, they need routine—especially now, with their mother gone.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “I’m trying to help. Tell me honestly, do you really think it’s the best thing to drag them around with you?”

  “Do you think it’s the best thing to take Megan and Jenny out of school?”

  “My decision to homeschool is between me and my pastor. I don’t need to defend it to you.”

  “And I don’t need to defend my life to you.”

  “Why don’t you take a season off? You know you could. People would understand.”

  “I don’t want to take a season off,” Dean said.

  “You know, I used to stand up for you. I used to say to Nicole, ‘He loves his job,
nothing wrong with that.’ But now I see that she was right, you’re obsessed.”

  “I do love my job,” Dean said. He wasn’t about to explain that he needed to coach right now, that football was all he had left, it was the only place he felt at home. The players were like his sons, except they were better than sons because they listened to him, and he understood them—unlike his own sons, who were becoming more mysterious to him with each passing day.

  “I’m not going to let you do this to my nephews,” Joelle said. “Nicole wouldn’t approve. She’d be up in arms.”

  “Nicole doesn’t have a say anymore!” Dean was angry now.

  Joelle crossed her arms. “I can take them after school. Megan’s old enough to babysit.”

  “You don’t get it,” Dean said. “I don’t want you to take them.”

  “That’s funny, because Nic dropped them off all the time last year.”

  “Leave Nic out of it,” Dean said. “This isn’t about her.”

  “I think it is. I think you’re still angry with me. But that’s no reason to punish Robbie and Bry.”

  “This has nothing to do with you, Joelle.”

  “You blame me. I know you do. I never told her not to see a psychiatrist. All I ever said was that she should be careful about taking medications.”

  “Look, I told you I didn’t want to go down this road, and I meant it.”

  “This is where every conversation is going to end up until you forgive her—and me. Not that I did anything wrong.”

  “You told her she was depressed because she didn’t have faith. You didn’t support her.”

  “You want to talk about support? You know what she told me? She said, ‘Jo, I never knew marriage could be so lonesome.’ She must have called me practically every night last fall. I don’t think you even knew how bad off she was. She’s always been sensitive. After Sam died, she was a wreck. She couldn’t even dress herself. Who do you think took care of her? Of Stephanie? I was the one. Not the Shanks, not Mom and Dad, and certainly not you.”

  “I didn’t even know Nic then.”

  “That’s right, you waltzed in after the dust cleared. You think you saved her but you have no clue. I’ve always told her to put her trust in God because that’s what I believe in. You’re the one who told her she would feel better if she exercised more.”

  “Exercise does make people feel better. It’s scientifically proven. If you take care of your body, your mind will follow.”

  “Is that what you told Nicky?”

  “I told her lots of things. I told her to see a doctor, I told her to get a new job, I told her to make new friends. Maybe they weren’t the best ideas. Maybe you’re right, maybe I didn’t understand how unhappy she was. But I don’t think you did, either. Tell me honestly, Joelle, did you have any idea she would do this?”

  “Of course not! But I’m not married to her.” Joelle turned to leave. She was tearing up. “I can’t talk about this anymore. I came in here to find my kids.”

  Dean stayed in the barn after she left. Whenever he talked to Joelle, he had the feeling she was trying to give Nicole’s suicide back to him, like it was a mess that only he could clean up. Like it could be cleaned up. He hated the way she made everything seem so straightforward, the way she took words like marriage and forgiveness and acted as if they were transparent and uncomplicated. He couldn’t believe she was actually that smug and simpleminded. She had to be pissed off to be left alone with her widowed, buzzard-loving mother. She had to be in pain, big pain. And she had to be angry about it. She just wasn’t that good a person.

  He was too riled up to return to the picnic and make small talk. He sat down on the bottom row of a pyramid of hay bales. But then some old instinct took over and he felt the need to climb to the top. The bales were arranged like stairs and as he made his way up he recalled boyhood summers when he was allowed to roam through the stables where his father worked.

  Now, when he visited his father, he would think of what she’d done. She must have known that, she must have known and decided she didn’t care. Or maybe she thought it would be better than doing it at home. She knew how much he loved their house. Then again, maybe it had nothing to do with that. Maybe she saw the rope swing and thought, This is my chance. Maybe she had the swing in mind the whole time they were planning their vacation, maybe that was why she had been so eager when he suggested it. Going to his father’s farm was supposed to be a kind of last hurrah for Stephanie, a chance to visit with the horses she had grown up riding. And a chance, too, for Stephanie to return to a sweeter, more girlish phase of her adolescence.

  Nicole had waited until he and Stephanie were out on a trail ride together. Robbie and Bry had been swimming with their grandfather. She was supposed to go with them but had begged off. Dean remembered her saying that she needed a nap. He remembered thinking that it was nice that she had time to take a nap. That she should take more naps. He hated his innocent, optimistic thoughts. He wondered how long she had waited. She’d probably assumed he would find her, when he brought in the horses after the ride. It probably never occurred to her that Robbie and Bry would come back early, that Robbie would race ahead in his wet bathing trunks, wanting to swing on the rope she’d knotted—and where did she learn to make a slipknot? More planning that Dean didn’t want to think about. He had tried so hard to understand her state of mind in those days leading up to it. She had seemed fine, even better than fine; he had thought she was finally returning to normal. He specifically remembered the relief he felt as he watched her swim across the lily pond, the swimming hole of his teenage years, the first place he ever skinny-dipped, the first place he ever saw a girl naked. She seemed so graceful and whole in her yellow bathing suit. And then she’d performed her old trick of swimming underwater for a full minute or two, emerging unexpectedly at some random point in the pond. When the boys were little, they would stand worriedly at the water’s edge, waiting for her to appear. She would burst out of the water, out of breath and exhilarated. A show of athleticism, Dean had always thought, but now he wondered if there wasn’t something ominous in her performance.

  Dean lay back on the straw bale, looking up at the barn’s peaked roof. He was so tired of remembering that week, trying to decide if her good mood was faked or authentic. He felt doubly betrayed as he tried to calculate her motives, wondering if she’d faked her mood in order to leave them with good last memories, or if it was a way of convincing him that she was okay so he wouldn’t suspect what she was plotting. And if she had the self-control, the wherewithal, to put on such a good show, then why did she not have it in her to get well? Or was it darker than that? Was she genuinely happy that week because she knew she was at the end of her life? Was the vacation actually her last hurrah? He hated to think of her secret thoughts; he felt almost jealous of them, as if she’d been having an affair with death. They’d had sex that week, sex like they hadn’t had in months, maybe years, if he was honest. He’d made some crass joke, implying that all she had needed were a few good orgasms. He hadn’t really meant it. He was just teasing her, feeling high off her high, happy to see her appetite restored. The memory made him sick now, because he’d felt close to her and maybe it was a lie. And there was shame because if he’d known it was the last time, he wouldn’t have been crude for one second. He would have memorized her, he would have told her again and again how much he loved her. Not that professing his love had ever helped. He’d tried that. He’d tried many times.

  He heard the barn door swinging on its hinges and sat up. Bryan was walking down the wide center aisle, his small figure half-illuminated by the uneven light. Dean called to him, taking pleasure in his surprised smile. “Come on up!”

  Bryan climbed up quickly and sat next to Dean on the bale, leaning back as if they were on a sofa. “Guess what? Robbie fell in the creek. He was trying to catch a crayfish.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s totally fine,” Bryan said, sounding like Stephanie. “He’s wea
ring one of Uncle Ed’s shirts with cow shit on it.”

  “Don’t say the S-word.”

  “With cow crap on it. You should see it; it’s so big that it covers his shorts. It’s like he’s wearing a dress.”

  Dean sucked in his breath, thinking that Bryan was going to bring up the cross-dressing incident from the other day. But instead he began to talk about his mother. How she would have enjoyed going to the barbecue and what she would have brought to eat and did Dean remember the time that she made “dirt,” the dessert that was layers of chocolate pudding and crumbled Oreos and then she put gummy worms in, too? He chatted so happily, as if Nicole were not dead but just on a trip somewhere, that Dean wondered if he should say something to bring home the reality of the situation, but then Bryan asked if Mommy was watching them from heaven, able to enjoy the barbecue from afar.

  “Maybe,” Dean said. “I don’t know for sure.”

  Bryan frowned. “That’s what Aunt Joelle said, too. She said God might have kept her out because it’s cheating to kill yourself.”

  “I doubt that’s what she really meant,” Dean said, too shocked to come up with a counterargument. This was Joelle’s version of forgiveness?

  “So she’s definitely in heaven?”

  “I don’t know. And neither does Joelle.”

  “So she might not be?”

  Dean paused; he didn’t believe in heaven, at least not in the sense that Joelle did, and he didn’t want to encourage Bryan in beliefs that were anything like Joelle’s. At the same time, he didn’t want to take away Bryan’s fantasy of his mother living somewhere, happily.

  “If there’s a heaven, I’m sure your mother’s in it, waiting for you.”

  “I just want to know if Mommy’s looking down on us,” Bry said. Tears began to pool in his brown eyes. “That’s what Pastor John says.”

  “Then that’s who you should listen to. He’s the expert.” Dean didn’t know why he couldn’t tell his son yes, there was a heaven, and yes, his mother was in it. He knew it was a flaw of his, this inability to give simple comfort. He was better at telling people to buck up, at getting them to push through pain.