Home Field

by Hannah Gersen

  Dean breathed in the damp, sweet, faintly rotten smell of the pasture that was Geneva’s front yard. At night, in the dark, it seemed especially expansive, a lake that kept the entire farm at bay. He could see why she preferred to live down here instead of in the farmhouse up by the main road.

  “You stay on the porch,” Geneva instructed. “I’ll bring out our drinks. I think I have some of Paul’s old liquor.”

  Dean sat down in the rocker his father-in-law used to inhabit, up on the farmhouse porch. It creaked as he leaned back. He looked up at the night sky, watching as the half-moon slid out from behind the clouds, casting its cobweb light across the field. Dean didn’t know how Nicole could stand to leave the world behind.

  Geneva emerged from the house with two neat whiskeys.

  “So guess how I’m going to spend my winnings?” she said, settling into her chair.

  “Filet mignon for the buzzards?”

  “Ha, no, I’m buying lingerie! Joelle leaves her Victoria’s Secret catalogs in my mailbox now; she doesn’t want the girls seeing them. I told her, it’s Ed you have to worry about. Which she did not appreciate. I told you, she has no sense of humor anymore.”

  “Did she ever?”

  “You’d have to have one to marry someone like Ed.”

  “He’s not so bad,” Dean said, thinking of how Ed had left him alone at the bar with Laura.

  “He came down here the other day with this hangdog expression. He says, ‘Geneva, I have to talk to you about those buzzards. It’s against the natural order of things for you to feed them. They’re supposed to eat dead things, not cat food.’ I said, ‘I know, that’s why I’ve started feeding them roadkill.’ He gives me this look like he doesn’t know what to think, so I go on, I say, ‘What do you think I do in the mornings when I take my car out?’ And he turns pale and says, ‘Geneva, please tell me you’re not picking up dead animals.’ I said, ‘I wear gloves, don’t worry.’ And he gets all concerned. And then I start laughing and he’s so nervous he has to wait a minute, to be sure I’m kidding. Oh, you should have seen his face!”

  “You shouldn’t pull his chain like that. Or Joelle’s. They’re going to think you’re losing it.”

  “They already do!” Geneva’s bright earrings bobbed as she laughed. “I have to admit, I like having those buzzards around. I don’t know why; maybe it’s because they’re not afraid of death.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Can you?” Geneva said. “I wonder about you, Dean. You’re so self-contained. The way I see it, when something bad happens to you, you either button up and batten down, or you go a little crazy. Obviously, I chose the crazy route. But you? I’m not so sure.”

  “I’m battening, I guess.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” Geneva said. “I don’t have the self-control.”

  “I don’t know that I do, either.”

  “Oh, please. I’ve never met anyone more disciplined.”

  “That’s the problem. I need something to be disciplined about. Something to do. I can’t go to another football game and sit in the stands and eat hot dogs. And I can’t go to work every day, come home, and be with my kids. I can’t. I’m not built that way. I have to have some sort of goal, some sort of fight. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why Nic, if that’s why she—if she didn’t have a sense of purpose. And maybe that’s my fault, maybe I should have given it to her.”

  “Dean, you could have given her the world. I can’t make sense of it, Jo can’t make sense of it, and if Paul were alive, he wouldn’t be able to, either.” She paused. “Actually, maybe he would. He had his dark days. Nicole always took after him. Joelle takes after me. Not that it’s that simple. Paul was happy when he was old. He turned a corner after he had grandchildren. Life has many phases. That’s what I would say to Nicky if I could talk to her now.”

  Dean looked toward the southern end of the pasture, trying to see if he could make out the little cemetery just beyond it.

  “Have you gone to Nic’s grave?” he asked.

  “I go every Sunday.”

  “I haven’t gone back yet.”

  “Well, she’s not there.”

  “I know,” Dean said. He returned his gaze to the sky. “She used to say I’d be happier without her.”

  “She didn’t mean that,” Geneva said. “But don’t be afraid to prove her right.”

  LAIRD’S HOUSE WAS furnished sparsely with rental furniture, some of it blatantly fake, like a large gray plastic television without any wires connecting it to the wall, while other items were uncanny, like a mantel of gold picture frames, all with the display photos still inside, so that the family in absentia seemed to consist of multiple wives and a dozen children. In the kitchen, a variety of cereal boxes were lined up in the cupboard, Seinfeld style. When they first arrived, Stephanie and Laird toured the downstairs, commenting, letting their eyes adjust to the dim light. There were no shades or curtains on the windows, and light from the waxing moon filled the rooms.

  “There are even beds upstairs,” Laird said, leading her up the carpeted staircase. In his other hand was a plastic bag with two tall boys and a bag of pretzels. They’d stopped at the Sheetz on their way over.

  “Why do they bring all this furniture in?”

  “My dad says it helps the house sell,” Laird said. “That’s what the Realtor told him. It’s bad that they didn’t sell it before we moved. But my dad had to start his new job. And they didn’t want me to start the school year here and then move.”

  “But you would have wanted to,” Stephanie said.

  “I don’t know anymore.” Laird reached ahead to feel where the wall was. It was darker in the upstairs hallways because there weren’t as many windows. “We should have gotten a flashlight, I guess—here, come with me.” He stopped feeling for the wall and took her hand.

  They turned into the master bedroom. A queen-size four-poster bed loomed in front of them. There were windows on either side, and the moonlight gave the quilted comforter a blue tint. Laird pulled back the quilt. There weren’t any sheets.

  They both looked at the bare mattress. Some of the intensity of their kiss had burned off during their car ride, but it was still there, beneath their conversation.

  “Let’s go to my room,” Laird said. “This is too much my parents’ room.”

  They both laughed when they saw what had become of Laird’s room: there was a crib, a child’s dresser, and an airplane mobile hanging from the ceiling.

  “This is actually mine,” Laird said, standing next to the little dresser, which reached his waist. “I keep one sock in each drawer.”

  They had better luck in what Laird referred to as the guest room. There was a platform bed there, a desk, and two chairs. Laird pushed the chairs together and moved them in front of the window so they could sit and drink their beers. It was light beer, and it had a thin flavor that Stephanie didn’t mind. She let it warm her as she looked out at Laird’s backyard, an unadorned lawn bordered by a split-rail fence. Beyond the fence was an overgrown field where orange construction flags seemed to indicate future development. But there were flags like that all over Willowboro. Most of the time, they were just wishful thinking.

  “It’s weird to be here,” Laird said.

  “I feel like we’re ghosts.”

  Laird laughed. “You’re so morbid! You and that guy you always hung around with—Catrell.”

  “You mean Mitchell?” Stephanie felt a twinge of longing. He still hadn’t written back to her e-mail.

  “Yeah, Mitch, that’s him. You guys were like the Addams family. We’d always be, like, ‘Where’s the funeral?’”

  “Yeah, I know,” Stephanie said. “I was there.”

  “Sorry, we were just kidding.” He touched the ends of her hair. “Is this your natural color?”

  Stephanie shook her head. “It’s blond—kind of.”

  “Why did you change it?”

  “I don’t know. To be different, I guess.” To Stephani
e’s surprise, she felt tears coming on. It was as if Laird was exposing all her various costumes. He was more sure of himself than she was, she realized; he had a better sense of who he was. Where had he gotten it, she wondered—from his parents? From the football team? From her father? It seemed unfair that this boy should have been given—and guilelessly accepted—the very thing she wanted most in the world.

  “Hey, don’t get down,” Laird said. “You know we only said stuff because we thought you were cute.”

  Before Stephanie could think of anything to reply, he took her beer out of her hand and placed it on the windowsill. Then he began to kiss her. Soon they were undressing. Stephanie’s jean skirt was a hand-me-down from her mother, and as Laird pulled it down, Stephanie had a disconcerting thought: her mother might have had sex wearing this skirt. She wanted to stop everything, to tell Laird that this was all new to her, that she’d never even seen a boy naked before, but at the same time there was the voice in her saying more, more.

  They paused to move to the bed. The cheap bedspread was scratchy on her back and she felt self-conscious about her body, but then Laird apologized for being “so hairy” and she relaxed. They figured things out. They had time, she realized, to figure things out. The silvery moonlight was forgiving, Laird was forgiving—the scratchy fake bedspread was not forgiving. They pushed it aside. Laird’s hands were shaking when he went to get a condom from his wallet, and Stephanie wondered if it was his first time, too. Having sex hurt and then it didn’t. She wondered if it would always be like this, a stinging feeling followed by warmth and sensation. It reminded her of swimming in cold water, that mixture of unpleasant and exhilarating.

  “Oh, I am so sore and this feels so good,” Laird said, his words murmuring together.

  He meant he was sore from practicing. Or maybe he was sore every day, with his muscles always tearing and repairing themselves. Maybe he was happy because his life revolved around his body. Stephanie wanted some of that happiness for herself and pulled him closer, leaning into him.

  Chapter 5

  The boys’ cross-country coach had the healthy yet grizzled look of a long-distance athlete, a body and face chiseled by extreme exercise and a lot of time spent alone. His name was Erik Philips and Dean had never talked to him at length, although he had always been impressed by his athleticism. His long legs were muscular, especially his skinny calves, which had been recently shaved for a cycling trip. He had a kind of pent-up energy about him, as if he might break into a sprint, and he spoke with intensity, a vein on his forehead bulging as he discussed the finer points of cross-country racing strategy.

  “It seems easy now, right, nice and flat?” Philips pointed to the soccer field, a pristine expanse that the runners had been instructed to circle twice. “But when you get in the woods, it’s uphill for a mile. One of those sneaky, slow-burning hills that doesn’t seem like a hill until you’re five minutes in and your legs are dying and you say to yourself, ‘Why am I so friggin’ slow?’”

  They were doing the course walk, a prerace ritual that Philips took seriously. Dean had hoped to convince him to take over the girls’ team officially, but the first thing he said to Dean was that he was so relieved he didn’t have to coach girls anymore. He didn’t know what to do with them; he worried about injuring them accidentally. “Girls have loose ligaments,” he told Dean. “It has to do with their hormones. And then their periods get synced up, that’s another thing you have to keep track of.”

  Philips was a true runner, a man who liked to start his day with “a six-mile jog.” On the weekends he biked, planning all-day road trips along the Potomac River where he could ride on the flat, shaded C&O Canal trail. Dean didn’t even have to ask to know that he didn’t have a family.

  “I gotta catch up with my men,” Philips said. “There’s a turn coming up that I want them to take note of. Tell the girls: it’s good to catch people before a turn.”

  He jogged ahead, disappearing as he passed a herd of Middletown runners. They seemed like royalty in their white-and-gold uniforms. Dean’s girls were trailing behind them in faded blue singlets. Dean noticed that Jessica had dropped back and was now walking a few yards behind Aileen and Lori. (See-See, who knew the course well, had stayed behind.) He approached Jessica cautiously; there was something stern and quiet about her, with her delicate body and her neat French braid going straight down her back.

  “So what do you think of the course?” he asked her.

  “Oh, I love it. I love trail runs. And I think this one is one of the prettiest. But it’s slow. No one’s going to get a PR.”

  “What’s a fast time?” Dean asked. “What does a first-place runner usually get?”

  “It depends on the course.” Jessica pointed to a runner ahead of them, a girl from Middletown. “See that girl over there? The one with the high ponytail?”

  “The short one?”

  “That’s Adrienne Fellows. She’s going to win the race. She wins every race.”

  “Does that mean Middletown wins every meet?”

  “Usually,” Jessica said. “But not always. They have a lot of runners, but none as good as Adrienne.”

  Jessica then began to explain the intricacies of cross-country scoring, which she likened to the scoring of card games. You could win a game of gin rummy even if you never won a hand, simply by playing smart and never getting stuck with a high card. Same with cross-country meets. Even if none of your runners cracked the top five, you could still win if your top five runners managed to beat the fourth and fifth runners of other teams.

  Clearspring’s coach, who was leading the course walk, interrupted them. “We’re going to make a sharp U-turn up ahead,” he said, yelling to be heard. “Then you’ll be going downhill for about a half mile, back toward the school.”

  “This is my favorite part,” Jessica said.

  “Seems like it would be everyone’s.”

  Jessica shook her head. “Some people hate going downhill. They get so afraid of falling that they slow down. And then they fall anyway.”

  Dean had a vision of Nicole and Stephanie running down the hill behind the farmhouse—before it was Joelle’s house, when Nicole’s parents still lived there. It was summer, and Stephanie was little, maybe four years old, with squat legs and arms that motored to keep up with her mother. Nicole was trying to run slowly, so as not to get too far ahead of Stephanie, but at some point she gave up and let gravity take hold. The joy in her body was obvious as she leaped across the last few yards of grass. Dean remembered feeling as if there was something eternal in that joy. As if it was some salient quality that would never leave his wife.

  LAIRD’S HOUSE WAS filled with morning light; it shone unimpeded through the bare windows. Stephanie woke up in a mellow, observant daze, faintly hungover and hungry. Laird’s broad back faced her, an amazing situation. She tickled the back of his neck. Then a flicker of urgent feeling prodded her to remember something about the morning.

  “Shit!” she said, sitting up. “The meet.”

  Laird rolled onto his back, rubbing his sleepy eyes with his big hands.

  Stephanie was already getting dressed, changing out of Laird’s Pearl Jam T-shirt and pulling on her skirt. She felt self-conscious changing in front of him, but when she turned away from him, she was facing the unadorned window. And there were houses nearby! Where had they come from? Last night, she and Laird had lived in their own moonlit world. She picked up their empty beer cans and tied them up in the plastic bag. She put the chairs back and rubbed the wall-to-wall carpeting with her foot, trying to erase the indentations the chairs’ legs had made. Everything seemed so sordid, the rental furniture dingy. She remembered her father at the bar, sitting at some flimsy table, with that Laura across from him. How long had he been seeing her? Had her mother known?

  She thought of her mother trying to cut the lemon in the morning light.

  “What meet?” Laird asked.

  “It’s nothing, I have to go. We have to fix the
quilt. What if the Realtor comes?”

  “I can drive you,” Laird said, pulling on his boxers.

  “I have to go to Clearspring. That’s, like, an hour away.”

  “You think I have someplace better to be?”

  She felt a wave of affection for him, this boy standing in the guest room of his old house.

  They stopped at Sheetz for doughnuts and coffee drinks from the cappuccino machine. The sugary brew cut through the fog of her hangover, as did Laird’s music, a worn-out mixtape of hard-edged rock bands like Korn and Nine Inch Nails, bands that would normally be too aggressive for her. But that was what she wanted to hear now, as she stewed over her father’s transgressions. Outside, the overcast sky was giving way to sunshine, and by the time they reached Clearspring, the place was an illustration of its name, seeming to exist in its own cloudless atmosphere.

  Laird wanted to come to the meet, but Stephanie didn’t want her father seeing her with him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She gave him a frugal peck on the cheek and then impulsively kissed his neck.

  “No, you’re right,” he said. “I just don’t want to go home.”

  The starting gun went off as Laird was driving away. The noise came from the soccer fields, where a horizontal line of runners was quickly becoming vertical as they headed toward the perimeter of the field. Stephanie stood at the edge of the school’s parking lot, uncertain of where to go. In the race, one girl was already pulling ahead of the others, her gold uniform like a little light for the others to follow. Stephanie had actually run cross-country her freshman year of high school, but only for half a season. She dropped out when she realized that the satisfaction she felt at the end of a race didn’t begin to make up for the pain she felt during it. And she couldn’t really relate to the girls on the team, who were true athletes beneath their nerdy, skinny veneer. They actually cared whether they won or lost, whereas Stephanie had just been looking for a sport that she didn’t hate. That was when she was still trying to want what her parents wanted for her, the simple things they thought would make her happy: health, popularity, routine. A wholesome ideal that would only work for someone who was already whole, who didn’t have big parts of her life missing. It had taken all of high school for Stephanie to stop pretending as if pieces of her past weren’t missing: her father, her grandparents, her mother’s happiness. Now, as she gazed at the long line of girls running around the empty field, it occurred to her that identifying the missing pieces was not enough, that she was also going to have to complete the picture of herself without them.