Home Field

by Hannah Gersen

  “Yeah, okay.” Bryan was still moving the paper clips.

  Dean headed to the big gym, where he’d told the girls to wait. But it was too big a meeting place. Dean realized his error as soon as he saw the four narrow-shouldered girls sitting on the bottom row of bleachers with their backpacks balanced on their laps. When he gathered the football team here, they would sprawl across several rows of bleachers, shedding coats and backpacks. Dean would always have to wait a few minutes for them to settle down; it was as if they needed the space of the gym to absorb their energy. But the girls seemed dwarfed by the room’s expanse. With the exception of one very tall girl with long legs and square, sturdy knees, none of them looked like runners—or even athletes. In addition to the tall one, there was a blond girl whose skinny arms and pudgy middle seemed to come from two different bodies; a serious-seeming redhead with a skim-milk complexion; and finally, a small, wiry girl whose short, bleached hair made her look like a baby chick—not the look she was going for, Dean guessed, with her dark clothes and triply pierced ears. All were dressed casually for the warm day in shorts, T-shirts, and sandals.

  “You girls don’t have the tradition of dressing up on game day?” Dean asked.

  “Why would we dress up for the football game?” asked the tall one with the runner’s legs.

  “No, I mean for your team. Because you have a race tomorrow.”

  “No one really cares that we have a meet tomorrow,” the pierced girl said.

  “How can they care if they don’t know?” Dean said.

  “Even if they knew . . .” The pierced girl didn’t bother finishing her sentence.

  Dean scanned the ten names on his roster. A small team. But you didn’t need a lot for cross-country. It only took five to score.

  “I guess we should wait until everyone gets here to get started,” he said.

  “I think this is everyone,” said the serious-looking redhead. Her hair was pulled back into a tight French braid that clung to her skull and went straight down her back, as if keeping her posture in check.

  “Not according to this.” Dean held up his list.

  “Let me see,” the red-haired girl said. “You must have last year’s team. Those girls graduated.” She pointed to the first three names. “I don’t know about the others.”

  “Daria’s not coming, she quit over the summer,” the blond girl said. “And Tamara and Julie didn’t like practicing with the boys’ team, so they quit, too.”

  “Who cares, Tamara wasn’t any good anyway,” said the pierced punk duckling. “And Julie wanted to play soccer, she was just looking for an excuse.”

  “Tamara wasn’t bad,” the blond girl said. “She was faster than Jessica—no offense.”

  The red-haired girl—Jessica, apparently—waved away the remark, but her skim-milk cheeks went blotchy.

  Dean asked the girls to introduce themselves and learned that there was one from each grade. The tall girl was actually the youngest. Her name was Aileen and she was a freshman. The punk duckling was the senior. She went by See-See, short for Tennessee, a nickname bestowed upon her because she had been born there, on a commune, her mother having once been a sort-of hippie. (All this was explained to Dean very quickly and so efficiently that he understood she had been giving this spiel for many years.) The other two were Lori and Jessica. Lori, the blonde, was a sophomore. Jessica, the French-braided redhead, was a junior.

  “So which of you is the captain?” Dean asked.

  They looked at one another and started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “There are four of us,” See-See said. “It’s not, like, a situation in need of leadership. We all run the same race, the same way. Nobody’s calling any plays.”

  Dean heard the youngest girl, Aileen, whisper, “Wait, is he the football coach?”

  “Every situation needs a leader,” Dean said. He pointed to See-See. “You’re the captain by default, you’re the senior.”

  “Okay.” See-See turned to the other girls. “Hey, I’m your captain.”

  Dean was annoyed by her nonchalance, but he pushed on. “Tell me about your conditioning regimen.”

  No one said anything.

  “From this summer?” he pressed. “What did you do to prepare for the season?”

  “You mean how many miles did we run?” Lori asked.

  “Yes, exactly. Whatever your coach told you to do.”

  “She didn’t say much,” See-See said. “I think she was looking for another job already. She didn’t like it here.”

  “She was from Bethesda,” Jessica said, as if this explained everything.

  “Did you girls meet up during the summer?”

  There was another nervous silence. Dean got the sense they weren’t really friends. It was the opposite of the football team, where the players had been together since elementary school.

  “So you didn’t meet up,” he said. “You’re allowed to, you know—as long as it’s not with a coach.”

  “I ran on my own,” See-See said.

  “Me too,” Lori said. “I got up to twenty-five miles a week.”

  “You were supposed to get to forty,” See-See said.

  “Look who’s already captain!”

  “No one got to forty,” Jessica said.

  “I did—and so did Aileen.”

  “Okay, so it’s just the four of you tomorrow?” Dean said, interrupting. “There’s no chance that the others could be convinced to join us?”

  They stopped talking abruptly.

  “You’re coming with us to the meet?” See-See asked.

  Dean had been using the word us in the spirit of friendliness, but for the first time, the girls were looking at him with hope. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had looked at him that way.

  “Somebody should go with you,” he said. “It might as well be me.”

  STEPHANIE STOOD IN her aunt’s kitchen, stirring fresh mint into a pitcher of iced tea, the way her mother used to do. Aunt Joelle’s house had that subtle farm stink, a putrid yet not unpleasant mix of manure, milk, and wet straw. Back at school, her dorm mates were probably getting ready for a night out, drinking shots of vodka or sipping from plastic cups filled almost to the brim with sugary red wine. The last time Stephanie had touched a drink was the night she and Mitchell cut her mother’s dress. Her new classmates probably all thought she was uptight, boring, antisocial. Actually, it was more likely that they hadn’t noticed her at all. Maybe this was the real reason she’d come home: to be seen again.

  She brought the iced tea to the dining room table, which was set nicely, as if for a special guest, with a tablecloth, placemats, cloth napkins, and a bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace and bachelor’s buttons. An aluminum-foil-covered casserole of baked pork chops took pride of place in the center of the table, surrounded by smaller dishes of coleslaw, applesauce, potato salad, and Parker House rolls made from scratch. It was rich, heavy food, and Stephanie was hungry for it after three weeks of the salad bar at school. She always ate the quickest thing, not wanting to linger in the cafeteria.

  Stephanie counted up the places. “Isn’t Grandma coming over?”

  “It’s her bingo night,” Aunt Joelle said. “Don’t be offended, she’s addicted. I had the new pastor and his wife over last week and she still went. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Jesus Christ himself could be coming to dinner and she’d pick bingo,” Uncle Ed yelled from the living room.

  “Ed, don’t say that. What’s wrong with you? It’s time for dinner. Turn off the TV and come sit. Dean, you too.”

  Stephanie called out into the backyard, where Robbie and Bry and her cousins, Megan and Jenny, were playing on the steep hill that sloped up toward the dairy. Large limestone formations jutted out of it, steps and shelves to climb on. As a kid, Stephanie had always designated one rock as “hers” to arrange whatever treasures she’d unearthed: a smooth pebble, a turkey feather, or maybe something from the abandoned railroad tr
acks nearby—a piece of a rusted metal spike or old, cloudy glass.

  “I swear you got taller since I left,” Stephanie said to Jenny, who gave her a bored eye roll, like she expected something more original from someone who wasn’t quite an adult yet. But Stephanie was genuinely shocked by the speed of her cousin’s growth spurt, which was giving her body no time to adjust as it suddenly lengthened. Her older sister, Megan, had entered adolescence more gracefully, easing into her adult body like a woman slipping into an expensive silk gown. Then again, Megan was going to be beautiful, and Jenny was not. It hadn’t become apparent until recently, when everything that had made Megan’s face a bit severe, as a child, came into focus to reveal a young woman with serene, widely spaced blue eyes. She had a small, elegantly shaped head, and she wore her dark hair pulled away from her face in what Stephanie’s mother used to call a “half ponytail,” but that seemed too casual a description for Megan’s shining hair.

  Stephanie kept staring at Megan throughout the meal; she tried to be discreet but it was as if her gaze had gotten caught on her cousin’s face. She was halfway through her dinner before she figured out what kept pulling her back: Megan’s eyes were like her mother’s. The same color, the same intensity.

  “So Dean,” Uncle Ed said. “Let me ask you something, now that you’re a running coach—”

  “I’m not the coach. I’m just going to a meet tomorrow.”

  “And dragging us along with you,” Stephanie said. It bugged her that her father had volunteered for a coaching gig on the weekend she was visiting. She couldn’t help thinking he’d done it on purpose.

  “You don’t have to go,” her father said. “What was your question, Ed?”

  Uncle Ed jumped on his cue, eager to dissolve the tension. Probably that was his role in this estrogen-rich household. “Since you’re a running coach, tell me: Do you really need to pay a lot for running shoes? Because Megan wants these air ponies—”

  “Air Pegasus,” Megan said.

  “I’m sorry, but there’s no way a pair of shoes is worth sixty dollars,” Aunt Joelle said. “What’s wrong with your regular sneakers?”

  Stephanie’s father turned to Megan. “I didn’t know you were a runner.”

  Aunt Joelle stood up and began to clear the table. “There’s dessert.”

  Stephanie noticed that her father was still looking at Megan. She wondered if he was picking up on the eye thing.

  “How many miles are you running?” he asked.

  Megan shrugged. “I run for an hour in the morning, before Mom starts school.”

  “And you do that every day?”

  “She’s worn out two pairs of Keds,” Uncle Ed said. “That’s why I’m wondering about these pony shoes.”

  Aunt Joelle returned from the kitchen with a plate of brownies. “You’re paying for the brand when you buy those shoes. You might as well tape a fifty-dollar bill to the bottom of your foot.”

  “Megan, you should run for our team.” Stephanie’s father was excited, leaning forward. “You could even run in tomorrow’s meet. We actually need another runner. There’s only four girls. You have to have five to score.”

  “I would love that,” Megan said.

  “You can’t,” Aunt Joelle said. “You’re not a student at the school.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Dean said. “I’ve had a couple football players who were homeschooled.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Aunt Joelle said. The dessert plates clinked against each other as she passed them out.

  “But, Mom, I would learn good things. I would learn teamwork. And endurance.”

  “You want to learn endurance? Jesus, wandering in the desert for forty days, being tempted by the devil. That’s endurance.”

  Stephanie had to stifle a laugh. She didn’t know how her father kept a straight face. He was still so fixated on Megan.

  “Joelle, with all due respect, I think this could be an opportunity—”

  “Dean, if you want to respect me, drop the subject.”

  Stephanie watched her father absorb this reprimand. Behind him, a framed cross-stitch above the sideboard said TRY A LITTLE KINDNESS. Stephanie had stared at that thing for years before she realized it was an acrostic that spelled TALK.

  Uncle Ed reached for a brownie. “These look great, Jo. Come on, everybody, eat up. We have to get going soon.”

  “Yummy!” Bryan said, with an especially adorable smile. He had a way of turning up the cute when things were tense.

  In the car on the way to the game, her father was still annoyed. “Joelle really pisses me off. Here she’s got this daughter with God-given talent and she denies her. For what reason? It makes no sense.”

  “I guess she doesn’t want Megan involved with anything at the high school.”

  “I don’t get that. Maybe it’s not the best school academically, but it’s not the worst. Anyway, she doesn’t care about academics.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want Megan to be too into clothes or being popular or whatever. Maybe she’s against materialism. You heard her going off on those shoes.”

  “She’s controlling and narrow-minded. That’s what happens if you stay in one place your whole life.”

  Her father wasn’t exactly a world traveler, but Stephanie could see that he wasn’t in the mood to be tested. She had never heard this kind of bitterness from him. They were driving through town, past houses whose porches were level with the sidewalk, past the drive-through Tastee Freez in need of renovation, past the gas station that sold Swisher Sweets, past Mike’s Video Time (where she and Mitchell had once seen the home ec teacher going through the beaded curtain into the adult section), past the fire station, the bank, the Catholic church, the liquor store, the stoplight, past the town cemetery where her father, but not her mother, was buried. Night was falling quickly, darkening everything that was familiar to her.

  DEAN COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time he’d watched a game from the bleachers. They were playing against Beech Creek High, a small school that was traditionally an easy win. Beech Creek had never been known for its athletic program; it was considered an “artsy” school, with a year-round theater program and several choirs. Dean had a theory: Methodists founded Beech Creek, and Methodists liked to sing. Willowboro, on the other hand, was founded by Brethrens—a pacifist, agrarian people. Kids who grew up on farms were doing chores from the time they could walk; they naturally became strong and athletic.

  “How does it feel to be a fan? Takes the pressure off, right?” Ed handed Dean a fountain soda.

  The band marched in, and then everyone stood for the national anthem. Dean eyed his players. They still felt like his players, especially Brett Albright, who had not seemed like anyone’s idea of a football player when he started in ninth grade. Now he was QB! Dean had seen that he was not truly scrawny, just underweight. He had an eye for late bloomers, probably because he had been one. Those years of waiting for your body to catch up to your mind were difficult, but ultimately beneficial. You learned to be patient with your body, to let your mind pick up the slack. Maybe you also learned to be patient with your mind, to trust that your body would pull through. That was what he had been trying to explain to Joelle about Nicole, the life philosophy she had mocked. He glanced in her direction; her eyes were shut and she had a little smile on her face as she listened to the music. For a moment, he could see the sweet, sincere girl she must have been once, the girl Nicole admired.

  Ed nudged Dean to take the lid off his Coke and poured some Jack Daniel’s into the cup. The first sip reminded Dean of college, and of beach vacations on the Eastern Shore. The second sip was just sweet on sweet.

  Willowboro lost the coin toss, and Beech Creek chose to receive. As the players took their positions, Dean noticed a new player on the field. He couldn’t recognize him from a distance.

  “You see that kid? Devlin?” Ed pointed to the very player Dean was eyeing. “He’s from the baseball team. Apparently he joined this week! T
hey were desperate because Laird up and left without any warning.”

  “You shouldn’t put someone with no experience in the defensive unit,” Dean said. He couldn’t believe Garrett had gone behind his back. He’d clearly made an effort to hide his new recruit. Or maybe he hadn’t; maybe Dean hadn’t noticed a new name on the roster. It bothered him that some part of his mind had actually let his job go.

  “Here we go!” Ed said, as Willowboro kicked off. It was a good strong kick that angled left, moving the action toward Willowboro’s fans. Everyone cheered, but Dean was too worried about the baseball recruit to enjoy the pure drama of the scene. Beech Creek was quickly pushed out of bounds. In the next play, Willowboro intercepted a pass and gained possession. The offensive unit came out, to Dean’s relief—until he realized that Brett Albright was not lined up at QB. Instead Garrett had him at tight end, and Jimmy Smoot was QB. This made no sense; Smoot had good hands, yes, but he wasn’t the brightest.

  “Don’t run,” Dean said under his breath. Theirs should be a passing strategy. But Smoot ran. The others rushed downfield, slamming into the players headed toward Smoot. It was a mess, but it was working. Smoot had already covered enough ground to get a first down. He didn’t make it much farther, though; after a few seconds, a Beech Creek player tackled him from behind.

  “Not bad,” Ed said. “Not bad at all.”

  “He should have passed,” Dean said.

  Ed shrugged, and Dean realized he sounded sour. He told himself to sit quietly through the next few plays. But he couldn’t understand why his team had been rearranged. Maybe Garrett was having trouble managing the players and this was his way of showing them who was boss. Or maybe he’d always thought Dean was doing everything wrong. He winced as he watched the baseball player, Devlin, trot back out onto the field to try his hand at offensive tackle.

  “They could have scored by now,” Dean said, “if they would throw the ball.”

  “Take it easy, Coach.” Ed tipped a little more booze into Dean’s soda.

  “I’m going for a hot dog.” He couldn’t sit here any longer and pretend to be happy getting wasted and nostalgic.