Home Field

by Hannah Gersen

  On Thursday, his niece showed up at practice. It was a sunny day, crisp, like the weather was trying to make up for the previous day’s tantrum. Dean stood at the gym door, waiting for the girls to arrive. He could see the football team jogging in the distance, doing their warm-up laps around the field. This weekend he was supposed to attend a Boosters’ fund-raiser at Garrett’s house. He’d asked Joelle to babysit as a way of forcing himself to go.

  “Uncle Dean?”

  He turned to see Megan standing tentatively near the gym bleachers, a pair of new sneakers on her feet. They were bright white with a teal swoosh and a kind of peekaboo window to showcase the air bubble within the thick soles. They looked like small appliances on her feet.

  “Aileen said to meet her here for practice,” she said. “She goes to my church? She says you need runners?”

  “Does your mom know you’re here?”

  “My dad dropped me off.” Megan glanced down at her new shoes. “He got me these.”

  “I don’t want to get in the middle of something.”

  Just then the other girls showed up, entering the gym together, not one at a time like they had the week before. When Aileen saw Megan, she sprinted ahead, waving. “You came!”

  Megan looked to Dean, expectantly.

  “Promise me you’ll tell your mother?”

  “As soon as I get home!” Megan said. “Thank you, Uncle Dean!”

  Dean had planned a fartlek workout, a training method he’d gotten from one of his old xeroxed articles. It was a long, untimed run, during which the girls would take turns setting the pace—fast or slow depending on how they felt. It was a team-building workout, and so it was slightly awkward to have his niece randomly in the mix, especially since she didn’t know her way around the high school campus. When it was her turn to lead, she made unpredictable turns, forcing the other girls to stay close to her. Her foot strikes were fast and even with her new shoes flashing white, teal, white, teal, back and forth, back and forth. It took Dean a moment to think of who she reminded him of: Adrienne Fellows, the championship runner. They had the same small, efficient build.

  When the workout was over, the other girls asked Megan the question that Dean wanted to know: Could she come to the race on Saturday?

  THAT NIGHT JOELLE called Dean. He assumed it was to chew him out for letting Megan attend practice, but instead she wanted to know if she could take the boys to church on Sunday morning. Since she was planning to babysit them anyway, they could stay overnight. It would be easier, she argued.

  “Okay,” Dean said. If he gave a little on this, maybe she would give a little on Megan.

  “Really? Oh, Dean, I’m so happy. I think they’ll like it. We have this new minister. He’s very young, very inspiring. You know, I think you might even like it, too.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Dean said. Give Joelle an inch . . .

  “How’s Stephanie?”

  “I haven’t heard from her since she visited.”

  “Oh. Well, maybe that’s good. She’s probably busy at school. It’s good she’s getting on with her life.”

  Joelle had said pretty much the opposite thing before Stephanie left, but Dean chose not to mention it. Instead he told her that Megan had shown up for practice. And that she was gifted. And that she wanted to run on Saturday.

  “She told me she was with Aileen this afternoon,” Joelle said.

  “Aileen’s on the team,” Dean said. There was no point in mentioning that Ed had dropped her off. She would figure that out on her own.

  “I can’t believe she would lie to me.”

  “Kids lie. They just do. But as far as lies go—”

  “This one is not going any further! She can’t run, I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to understand, but I’ve seen what happens with other families. One of the kids gets really into a sport and then all of a sudden they aren’t showing up at church on Sundays and they’re missing prayer groups during the week, and that isn’t what I want for my family.”

  “But this is just running,” Dean said. “And she’s doing it anyway. The meets are on Saturdays—”

  “Dean, stay out of this. All right?” Her voice was sharp.

  “All right.”

  He got off the phone. He had the urge to call Stephanie to complain. She was the only person in his life who would understand. But he’d been trying her room every day, and he always got the meek roommate. It was getting embarrassing.

  The next day, one of his students reminded him of Stephanie. He noticed her during the timed mile run, which he was required to administer every year, for the President’s Fitness Challenge. He liked to do it early in the semester because it helped him to learn names. The girl had Stephanie’s long legs and broad shoulders, but it was her attitude more than her physique that reminded him of his daughter. The way she held her large head high, her chin jutting forward, ever so slightly, in subtle defiance. She didn’t like the fitness test and when he called out to her that if she kept her fast pace, she would be in the 99th percentile, she gave him a look like What do I care? But she didn’t slow down. In fact, she went faster. That was like Stephanie, too.

  A group of boys who had finished their mile began to cheer for her. “Go, Missy!” She scowled, and all at once Dean remembered meeting her at Sheetz, before school started, when he was still the football coach. Smoot’s sister. Of course she was fast!

  “Did I make your ninety-ninth percentile?” she asked Dean, a few seconds after sprinting over the line.

  “Easily,” he said. “You should go out for cross-country.”

  “Yeah, right.” She raked her hair into a fresh ponytail.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “Come to the small gym after school. I’m meeting with the team. It’s not a practice; we’re just going over some stuff for tomorrow’s race. You can meet the other girls and see what you think.”

  Missy regarded him through smudged eyeliner. He felt certain she was going to turn him down.

  “All right,” she said. “I have to wait for my brother anyway.”

  “Great, we’ll see you then.” He felt like a salesman for how hard he had to work to hide his excitement.

  That afternoon, Dean told the girls about Missy, and when she didn’t show up, his disappointment hit hard and he felt foolish for saying anything. The girls seemed let down, too. They had dressed up for their meet the next day and looked older in their skirts and dress pants, their loafers and modest heels. Their proximity to adulthood stilled him. He could imagine them with jobs, marriages, children. He got the same feeling, sometimes, when the football players gathered on game days, clean-cut in suits and ties. And with this feeling, he always noticed, came a strong sense of responsibility.

  SATURDAY’S MEET WAS in Left Creek, West Virginia. Dean had to wake up early to meet the girls. The boys were late getting up and had a breakfast of graham crackers in the car. Outside the fog was heavy, floating above the pastures and soybean fields along Iron Bridge Road. The cows were like ghosts, visible if you looked for them.

  When they arrived at the school, the parking lot was empty. A girl was sitting on the curb and she stood up to greet them, waving. It was See-See; Dean recognized her bleached hair first, and then her muscular, ever-so-slightly bowed legs. She was wearing a faded blue baseball cap that did not quite match the blue of her uniform.

  “You took all your earrings out,” Bryan observed. He knew the girls well now, from going to practices.

  “You can’t race in them.” She tugged on her naked earlobe. “Hey, Robbie. Long time no see! How’s the play?”

  “How’d you know I’m in the play?”

  “I’m friends with the Cowardly Lion.”

  “You know Seth?” Robbie seemed to wake up for the first time that morning. “He’s really funny.”

  See-See smiled. “He likes to think so, at least.”

  The bus appeared, emerging from the fog like some big yellow dinosaur. Two other cars were hidden behind it, a
nd they pulled up to the school to deliver members of the boys’ team. A third car joined the line and then drove around the bus to pull right up to the curb, where Dean stood. It was Bill Smoot, Jimmy and Melissa’s father. He leaned out the window.

  “Coach! I had no idea you’ve been trying to recruit my girl. I told her, if Dean Renner wants you on his team, you say yes! Go on, Missy.” He nudged his sleepy daughter, who sat in the front seat with a gray duffel bag on her lap. She barely glanced at Dean as she got out of the car.

  “She’s a good runner, always has been. It never occurred to me to sign her up for cross-country. Can you get scholarships for that?”

  “Sometimes, sure,” Dean said. He couldn’t keep back his grin, even though Missy had clearly been dragged here against her will.

  “All right then,” Mr. Smoot said. “You have a good race, honey! Call me when you get back.”

  “I’ll get a ride,” Missy said. She shut the door and didn’t bother to return her father’s wave as he drove off.

  “How’d you know to meet here?” Dean asked.

  Missy nodded toward See-See. “She told my brother. He told my dad.” She shrugged. “I don’t have the right shoes.”

  She wore black low-top Chuck Taylors. She had drawn enormous eyes on the sneakers’ signature white toe boxes, so that her feet appeared to be staring up at her.

  “Those are fine for now,” Dean said. “I’ll get you a uniform.”

  Chapter 7

  Stephanie really had been planning to see a therapist. The school provided free counseling and there were signs in all the first-year dorms encouraging students to take advantage of it. But when she’d returned to school on Saturday, arriving ten minutes too late for dinner in the cafeteria, she had run into Raquel, who had also arrived too late for dinner. So she and Raquel had gone out for pizza. Pizza turned into drinks and then they had wandered into three different parties, all held in the basements of dormitories. The dimly lit, anonymously furnished rooms, so similar to Laird’s house, gave her life a sense of eerie continuity. The next day her hangover felt familiar and borderline luxurious as she and Raquel sat in the dining hall and drank burnt coffee and picked at stacks of syrup-drenched pancakes.

  On Sunday night she and Raquel stayed up until three, talking about all the students and professors they had met so far and what they thought of each of them. Stephanie apologized for giving such a bad first impression, and Raquel was forgiving in a way that let Stephanie know that her initial refusal had actually charmed her. And then on Monday morning, Stephanie overslept and missed her therapy appointment. And then she had just plain skipped her rescheduled session, which prompted the therapist—Jill was her name—to call and deliver a minilecture about the importance of keeping appointments, not only for her sake—Stephanie’s sake—but also for the sake of other students who might wish to take up Jill’s valuable time if Stephanie was going to throw it away. Stephanie apologized and then, too embarrassed to reschedule, and also rattled by her father’s obvious disapproval, lied and told Jill she’d found help elsewhere. “I get enough lectures from my father,” Stephanie said later to Raquel, who agreed with her that Jill sounded like a bitch, and that anyone practicing therapy at a liberal arts college instead of having her own private office was probably not that great anyway. “She’s probably used to way easier problems than what you would give her,” Raquel said. “Like, people with time management issues or alcoholics in training or whatever.”

  Stephanie had told Raquel most everything about her life, including her mother’s death, which fascinated Raquel in a way that made Stephanie feel slightly uncomfortable. Raquel seemed to be in the midst of her own suicide project of sorts, eating as little as possible and smoking unhealthy amounts of clove cigarettes (she called them “dessert”). She hoarded food in particular ways, carrying small paper cups of cereal to her dorm room and filling the pockets of her jean jacket with tiny single-serving containers of cream, which she would divvy up, ceremoniously, into cups of black coffee and Earl Grey tea. She never seemed to sleep. Whenever Stephanie wanted to talk, she was game for a drive to the all-night Dunkin’ Donuts, where she would torture a French cruller, tearing it into delicate pieces and perhaps letting a few flakes of sugar melt on her tongue. Stephanie knew there was something off about her new friend, but she recognized her as the kind of girlfriend she had wished for in high school, the rebellious, egotistical bad girl, the girl with impeccable taste, the girl who was a little bit spoiled, a little bit reckless, a little bit selfish. The girl who let you be her mirror.

  Their friendship was immediately intense. They stayed up late every night, talking, listening to Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco, smoking, and sometimes even studying for one of their two shared classes, Psych I and Evolutionary Biology. Without planning it, Stephanie began to spend most of her nights on the futon sofa in the common area of Raquel’s dorm room. The only break they took from each other was before dinner, when Raquel liked to work out at the campus gym. She always asked Stephanie to join her, but Stephanie’s rebellion against jock culture was too strong. Instead she used the time to study in the library, reading for her other two classes, a survey of medieval history and a Great Books course that all first-year students were required to take. The Great Books course was easy for her, mainly because her high school’s academic deficiencies had not impeded her study of literature, which she could supplement on her own. History was another matter. She had not, to her surprise, been given a textbook. Instead she had been assigned to read parts of nine different nonfiction books. They were difficult books, almost scientific in their presentation of historical facts. She was accustomed to a mode of history that was more theatrical. Her understanding of the Civil War was almost entirely gleaned from the reenactments at the Antietam Battlefield, where people came from all over the country to dress up as Union and Confederate soldiers and pretend to die in battle. It was such an odd hobby, Stephanie thought. Imagine going back in time and telling soldiers that in the future, people would relive their deaths every year.

  Stephanie was still homesick, but she’d learned to bury the feeling, piling new experiences on top of it. And something funny was happening to the passage of time. It had to do with how much she was drinking, how alcohol made the nights race by and the mornings disappear. During the summer, her days had passed slowly, like she was stuck in the molasses of childhood. But even though her days were slow, the summer itself had gone by quickly. It seemed like one day she was sitting in the front pew, listening to Pastor John deliver her mother’s eulogy, and then a few days later it was summer’s end and she was back in church, watching her father talk to a strange-yet-familiar woman with dangly earrings.

  College was the opposite. Although her days went quickly, it was hard to believe that only a week had passed since she’d stood in her high school’s parking lot, watching her father walk away from her.

  Stephanie was back in her dorm room, now, getting clothes for the next few days. She hadn’t been to her room since Thursday, and she had timed her return to avoid her roommate, Theresa, whom she didn’t exactly dislike, but who had an annoying habit of presenting Stephanie with all her phone messages as soon as Stephanie entered the room, as if she, Theresa, were Stephanie’s secretary and Stephanie was the beleaguered and neglectful boss. Stephanie had no idea how this power dynamic had developed, since, in her opinion, she was the subordinate, the one who felt like she had to sneak into her own room.

  Stephanie quickly dropped some dirty clothes in the hamper and packed some clean ones into her backpack. She gazed at her closet, uncertain of what else to take. She and Raquel were heading into Philadelphia tonight, to a club Raquel knew about. Stephanie had no idea what to wear to a club. Something black, she guessed. Something short.

  She heard the door open and there was Theresa, carrying her dinner in a fogged-up take-out container.

  “Oh, hi,” Theresa said. “You have, like, ten messages from your dad.”

  “Thanks, I
saw them.”

  “Are you ever going to call him back?”

  “Maybe.”

  Theresa sat down at her desk and opened her container after putting her napkin on her lap. She was going to sit there and eat tofu stir-fry in front of her computer, like college was a desk job.

  The phone rang. Theresa gave her a look.

  “I’m not here,” Stephanie said.

  “I’m not getting it.”

  They both stared at the phone, a beige clamshell touch-tone that Theresa had brought from home. It was exactly like the phone mounted on the wall in Stephanie’s kitchen, the phone that she and her mother would sometimes let ring on lonely school nights when her father was out. Stephanie picked up the receiver and then dropped it back down in its cradle, shutting it right up. She wasn’t trying to be aggressive, but she succeeded in shocking Theresa, who acted as if Stephanie had killed something living.

  “That might have been for me!”

  “They’ll call back if it’s important.”

  “I don’t understand what I did to offend you,” Theresa said. “You’re never here.”

  “It’s easier to stay over at Raquel’s,” Stephanie said. “You don’t want me waking you up in the middle of the night, do you?”

  “I’m just confused because you said on your housing forms that you weren’t a partyer,” Theresa said. “I mean, that’s why we got put together—”

  The phone interrupted them. Theresa grabbed it so quickly it was almost slapstick.

  “Hello . . . ? No, she’s not here. Okay—who? Robbie?”

  “I’ll take it!”

  “Oh, she just walked in the door—” Theresa managed to say. As if Robbie cared.

  “What is it?” Stephanie said. “Why are you calling? Did something happen?”

  “No . . .” Robbie’s voice was tentative. “Steffy, what’s wrong?”