Home Field

by Hannah Gersen

  Upon learning that Laura was not a teacher but a therapist, he grilled her about homeschooling.

  “I need to know the long-term effects,” he said, pushing his empty beer glass toward the center of the table as if to clear away all distractions. “For girls,” he clarified. “Two girls.”

  “That’s hard to say,” Laura said. “It depends on a lot of different factors.”

  “Let’s say, one year of homeschooling, for religious reasons—what does that do?”

  “Um, I guess that could be fine. In a lot of cultures, it’s traditional for children to devote some time to religious studies.”

  “So it doesn’t mess them up for life?”

  “It takes a lot to mess up a kid for life,” Laura said, with a quick glance in Dean’s direction. “They’re pretty resilient. That’s why I like working with them.”

  Ed nodded sagely, as if he had suspected as much, and then began to ask Abby about her life, one question after another, like he was shelling his peanuts. It amused Dean to see this side of Ed, who rarely initiated conversation at family gatherings, maybe because he knew everything already. Or maybe it was easier to let Joelle take charge.

  Laura turned to Dean. “That was awkward at the game. I’m so sorry. I got nervous. There’s no reason we can’t still be friends.”

  “You were just trying to do right by Robbie,” Dean said.

  The mood between them relaxed, but then neither of them knew what to say next, so they let themselves be drawn into Ed’s conversation. He was telling Abby about his latest side venture, a cardboard-shredding operation he had set up using an old wood chipper. According to Ed, there was a market for shredded cardboard among alpaca farmers. Dean couldn’t tell if this was actually true or one of the many lines of bullshit that had earned Ed his Cowpie nickname.

  “There’s a ton of people raising alpacas on the Eastern Shore,” Ed said. “A whole sheep and wool community. You should see their hairdos; everyone has white-and-gray dreadlocks, like they’re trying to be sheep. You know how people say dog owners start to look like their dogs?”

  “Does that mean dairy farmers look like cows?” Dean asked.

  “What do you think, could I pass for a bull?” Ed flared his nostrils and made horns above his head with his fingers.

  “Maybe if you got a ring through your nose,” Laura said.

  Ed’s laugh, a deep bellow, made everyone else laugh, too.

  They drank quickly, amid increasingly vulgar jokes about farming life, but when Laura made a move to get the next round, Ed insisted that he had to go.

  “Sorry,” Ed said. “I have to be up early to milk the ladies.”

  “Yeah, I should get going, too,” Dean said. But he was disappointed.

  “I could give you a ride if you want to stay,” Laura said.

  Dean declined, but Ed interrupted, saying he could drive Dean’s car back. “Just have Laura drop you at our place.”

  “That works for me,” Laura said.

  “It’s settled, then,” Ed said, with a wink that didn’t even try to approach subtle. “I’m going, you’re staying.”

  Abby left, too, to Dean’s surprise.

  “She never stays out late,” Laura said. “I can’t seem to find a drinking buddy around here. Not that I’m a huge drinker. But sometimes you need to let loose.”

  “Sure,” Dean said. “Especially with all the delinquent kids you have to deal with.”

  “Oh, let’s forget about that!”

  “Wait, did you think I was talking about Robbie?”

  Laura smiled at him, fondly, like they were old friends. “How did you end up here, anyway? I mean, in Willowboro?”

  “I got a job, and then I fell in love with someone who lived here.”

  “But why did you take this job? You could have worked anywhere.”

  “Not really. Willowboro was the only place small enough to give me a head coaching position at twenty-five—or wait, twenty-six. I was twenty-six when I moved here. Before Willowboro I was on staff at a Div I school in Virginia.”

  “But you didn’t like that?”

  “I did, but I wasn’t going to wait ten years to get promoted. I wanted my own team. They basically let me start from scratch here. There was a football program in place, but it was still pretty new. Not what it is today.”

  “So the football team is your baby.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way. I have actual kids. The boys on the team, they’re not my sons.”

  Laura smiled. “Okay, let me ask you this: Was there any point when you thought twice about staying here?”

  “Not really,” Dean said. “I guess you think I should have, though.”

  “No, of course not! It’s just that Tim and I have been talking about, well, marriage. And where we’d like to live if we get married. A lot of his family is here. They would think I was crazy if I moved him away, especially if it was to no place in particular. I mean, if it wasn’t to be closer to my family. Which it wouldn’t be.”

  “You don’t get along with your family?” Dean asked. He realized he knew very little about her upbringing.

  “We get along fine, but we’re not close. We’re not like Tim’s family. They see each other all the time, and all the little cousins play together. Not that we’re planning on kids yet. But he does want a big family.”

  “That’s good, right?” Dean said.

  “Yeah. It’s just . . . a lot.” Laura picked at the label on her beer bottle. “I think Tim thought that as soon as I got offered a full-time job, I’d be ready to talk about the future. And that was definitely a factor. But it’s not the only thing I’m thinking of.”

  “What else are you thinking of?”

  “Oh, stupid things. Superficial things. I guess I never thought of myself as the kind of person who would settle down in a small town. You should have seen my boyfriend before Tim. We were going to travel the world together.”

  “You mean the goat farmer who brought you to this godforsaken place?”

  “Yeah, him. He was a very alternative guy, lots of tattoos, lots of, um, political views. Tim isn’t like that. With him, I’m the wild one.”

  “He sounds like a good guy.” Dean wondered where he landed on Laura’s spectrum.

  “Yeah, he is.” Laura stood up. “I never got us that drink, did I? Last round, okay?”

  Her jeans rested loosely on her hips, and when she walked, her T-shirt rode up, revealing the smallest glimpse of her waist above her thick belt. Dean thought of the one time he’d held her, but then pushed the thought out of his mind, willing himself not to be attracted to her. He tried to think of her as a daughter; he imagined himself describing her to someone that way: She’s like a daughter to me. But that only made him think of Stephanie, who had left the game without saying good-bye. He wished she would go to college, stay there, let herself be spirited away to adulthood on a raft of books and high-flown ideas.

  Laura returned to the table with two glasses of whiskey. “I decided I was tired of beer.”

  Dean took a sip of the amber liquid, savoring its warmth. He thought of his sons, sleeping cozily at Joelle’s, probably tucked into the twin beds in the guest bedroom, the one with the shaggy carpeting that smelled vaguely of breakfast foods (it was right above the kitchen). He and Nicole used to sleep there, on Christmas Eve, when the farmhouse was still occupied by Nicole’s parents and they all lived by the fiction that Santa Claus made just the one stop. Dean wondered how well the boys remembered those days and whether they missed them. He was a bad father to leave them alone without warning, thrusting them onto their Jesus-freak aunt. He was shirking his responsibilities, he was a shirker, he was behaving just as Joelle said he would. Joelle had never trusted him, not really. When he and Nicole announced their engagement, Joelle made him promise never to move her away. And Dean had promised, because he was in love, and what did he care where he lived, as long as he could coach his own team and be near this beautiful, melancholy woman and her eag
er, chatty toddler. His life came into focus after he met them.

  “I did worry about living here,” he said. “Now that I think about it. Not because I didn’t like it here. But I thought maybe, one day, after I got some experience, I’d want to coach a bigger team, at a bigger school. A place with more money. More talent.”

  “What changed?” Laura asked.

  “I don’t know. I became a father. Life got busy. I stopped thinking about what else might be out there. Or maybe it’s that people started to accept me.”

  “How long did that take?”

  “Longer than I thought it should. People around here are friendly, but they’re not as friendly as they think they are.”

  Laura nodded. “Most of them have never had to start over. They don’t know.”

  Dean remembered a secret wish to start over with Nicole. To move to a place where people would assume he was Nicole’s only love and that Stephanie was his biological daughter. There were times when he almost had Nicole convinced, when she and Joelle had one of their minifeuds or when her father, Paul, was being especially rigid. But then she would worry about leaving her mother alone, or about taking Stephanie from her grandparents. And Dean would see that these were excuses, that she was too scared to go someplace new. He might have coaxed her, but his own fears intervened. The last thing he wanted was to get stuck someplace where they knew no one and she was pregnant and resentful and borderline depressed. He didn’t think their marriage was strong enough for that. Or maybe he wasn’t strong enough for it. Same difference.

  “Maybe I’m having a midlife crisis,” Laura said. “I’m getting it out of the way early.”

  “You would know if you were having a midlife crisis,” Dean said. “Trust me.”

  “Oh, Dean,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Here I am, talking about my stupid life and you have real problems.”

  “I like talking about your stupid life,” Dean said. “You know that.”

  THE BARTENDER KNEW Laird, and they bought drinks without any trouble. They sat in the back where no one would notice them, a corner booth that afforded a glimpse of everyone in the bar. Stephanie had never really seen Willowboro’s nightlife and on some level she assumed there was none, that everyone did their socializing at football games or church. She associated bars like this—wood-paneled and sports-themed—with movies and TV shows, and so its very banality struck her as exotic. She felt almost glamorous sitting with this good-looking boy, a boy who was trying to impress her by bringing her to a place he considered adult. They drank rum and Cokes, and Stephanie felt the booze hitting her in a floaty, festive way.

  “I knew we would see some teachers from school,” Laird said. He nodded toward a woman standing at the bar. She wore a cap-sleeved tee and jeans with a beat-up old belt that Stephanie admired. Her hair was in a low ponytail from which wispy strands had escaped, framing her face. She looked familiar but Stephanie couldn’t quite recognize her in the dim light. Stephanie wondered how you got to be like her: young but grown-up. She wished she could leap over the next ten years and just be an adult with a job and a boyfriend and a vintage belt.

  “Is she new?” Stephanie asked. “I don’t remember her.”

  “That’s because you’re not a guy,” Laird said.

  “You think she’s sexy?” Stephanie was surprised; she thought this woman’s appeal was too subtle for teenage boys.

  “Definitely,” Laird said. “Especially for a teacher. She talks like us and she has this leather jacket she wears.”

  “Oh my God, you totally know all about her.”

  Laird shrugged, unembarrassed. “I would see her in the halls. I wonder if she has a boyfriend. She wasn’t married.”

  They both watched as she carried two drinks across the crowded room. A man was waiting for her at one of the small square tables against the wall, a graying older type, but Stephanie barely glanced at him; she was more interested in this woman. She tried to picture her walking down the hallways at school, wanting to remember how she knew her.

  “Uh-oh,” Laird said. “We better get going.”

  “Why?” Stephanie said, unnerved by Laird’s tone.

  He looked confused. “Isn’t that your dad?”

  Stephanie looked back at the woman, now sitting at the table with the older man. Her first split-second thought was that Laird was mistaken, that her father was not as old as the man she’d glimpsed, but all at once she realized he was right. Her heart began to pound, as if her blood was actually pulsing with this new information. And she had gathered so much more information than she realized: In those objective seconds, before she recognized her father, she had seen a portrait of two people who were more than acquaintances or even friends. They had the kind of physical attraction that you could see across a room, like someone had drawn a circle around them, bringing them together.

  “We have to go,” Stephanie said. But she didn’t make a move to leave. She couldn’t stop staring at the woman. She recognized her now; she was the lady from church, and before that, the lady in the cafeteria. Stephanie had never given any special thought to her, but it was as if some part of her mind had detected something amiss and held on to the memory of her.

  “Come on.” Laird guided Stephanie out the back door. Outside it was unexpectedly chilly, as if autumn had arrived while they were inside. Stephanie shivered in her thin cardigan and jean skirt, and Laird put his arm around her as they walked to his car. When he pulled away to get his keys, she wouldn’t let him and instead put his other arm around her. He laughed and said, “Okay,” even though she hadn’t said anything, and he kissed her softly, their lips barely touching because his head was bent awkwardly. Stephanie leaned back against his car, and they began to kiss in earnest. He was calm at first, deliberate, but as their kisses deepened, his breathing got heavier and he took a step away from her. “What?” she said, feeling her cheeks redden. Her whole body felt like it was blushing. All she could think was more. Nearby they heard someone getting out of their car, the doors slamming shut, laughter.

  “I was just thinking—we could go to my old house. No one bought it. I still have the key.”

  DEAN THOUGHT IT would be exciting to be in Laura’s car, this small, intimate space, but instead he felt cramped. He was disappointed to learn that she was messy, to see the empty soda can in her cup holder and the backseat cluttered with papers and binders. She was a good driver, but she drove fast, especially considering how much she’d had to drink. The familiar countryside spooled past, everyone’s house lights out, everyone’s lawn full of dark, innocent shapes: hedges, lawn ornaments, picnic tables. Sheetz loomed in the distance, an alien, neon-lit structure. If Dean were alone, he would stop and get something to eat. A slushie, a sub, a chocolate-frosted doughnut. Anything to extend the night. That was the problem with staying up this late. Something happened after midnight; he lost his strength, the tiny bit of willpower he needed to get through those chasm minutes alone in bed before he fell asleep.

  Laura almost missed the turnoff that led to Ed and Joelle’s farm, swerving at the last minute. The farm’s long driveway, which snaked behind the town, parallel to Main Street, was a mixture of gravel and dirt, deeply rutted by tractor wheels. Laura struggled to fit her little car’s wheels into the ruts and they bounced uncomfortably. “Sorry, sorry.”

  “I hope you can find your way home,” Dean joked. But he was actually a little bit worried.

  “This is good, it’s sobering me up.”

  She had her high beams on, and to Dean’s relief she turned them down as they approached the farmhouse and barn. Still, her headlights caught the night-shining eyes of some little animal—probably a cat—and she lurched to a stop. “I don’t want to hit a skunk,” she said. “I did that my first week here. Oh my God, it was disgusting. I had to take it to a mechanic to get the smell out.”

  “You can pull in over there,” Dean said, pointing toward the barn.

  Laura came to a surprisingly smooth and quiet stop, shutting th
e lights and engine off. The music cut out abruptly and all at once it seemed very dark inside the car.

  “So here we are.” Laura kept her hands on the steering wheel, her bare arms looking slender and pale in the darkness. She turned toward him. “I shouldn’t have bombarded you with all my issues. I’ve ruined any chance of helping you. Or Robbie.”

  “You haven’t, I promise,” Dean said. He wanted so badly to touch her. But her mention of Robbie was a jolt to his conscience. He slid his hand into the door handle, cracking the passenger door. Cool air rushed in.

  “I guess I’ll see you around,” she said.

  “Yeah, soon.” Dean’s leg was out the door now; it was as if his body was coaxing him out of the car, away from the fantasies his mind was spinning.

  Dean watched as she drove slowly down the lane, the brake lights flashing every few seconds. After a few moments, the landscape was dark again. Dean walked over to his car. Ed had left his keys on the seat. The last thing he wanted was to drive home. In the distance, he could hear Laura’s car making its way down the driveway; but it was odd, it sounded as if she was getting closer. His heart began to beat more quickly as he saw headlights swinging toward him. They cut two silver paths down the lane, illuminating swaths of gravel and leaves. But it wasn’t Laura’s car; the headlights were too square, too wide apart. It was Geneva, Dean realized, in her shitty old Ford sedan. He couldn’t help smiling, even though he was disappointed.

  Geneva came to a stop and leaned out the driver’s-side window. Her gray hair was slicked back, held in place by a puffy cloth headband, and she wore bright earrings. “Get in,” she said. “Come have a nightcap with me.”

  “I’ve already had a lot.”

  “Come on, I want someone to celebrate with. I won fifty bucks tonight!”

  He got into her car, which smelled like her lilac perfume. Geneva had stopped the car in second and it stalled when she pressed the gas. “Whoops!” She shifted back to first and gunned it. The road became less defined the farther they went. By the time they reached the end of the lane, it wasn’t much more than a cow path. Geneva pulled to a stop beneath a sycamore tree. “Here we are.”