Home Field

by Hannah Gersen

  “He wants attention? That’s your great psychological advice?” Dean was trying to be lightly sarcastic, the way Laura sometimes was, but the words landed too hard.

  “I know it sounds trite. But I also know the lines of communication are, you know, not what they were, now that Stephanie is away at school. I’m sure she used to fill you in on stuff like this. And obviously with your wife . . .” She looked up from her notes. “Is any of this making any sense?”

  “Not really.” It bothered Dean that she hadn’t finished her sentence about Nicole. Wasn’t it her job, as a counselor, to state plainly what others shied away from? But what really bothered him was that she was evaluating him as a father, and this evaluation had not been shared with him; it was a secret sketch drawn with knowledge gleaned from his son and who knew what psychological theories.

  “I’m sorry,” Laura said. “I shouldn’t presume any of this stuff.”

  “I know I should talk with him more. It’s just a lot, Laura. I have a long day at work and then I get home and there’s the boys and I have to get them fed and into bed. And there’s errands and things to do around the house. I don’t even want to get into it because it’s not worth complaining about. It’s my life and I accept it. The point is I’m not their mother, and I’m not going to turn Outdoor School shopping into a big production.”

  “You sound angry,” Laura said.

  “You sound like a therapist.”

  She raised her eyebrows without saying anything, and he knew he’d proved her point, whatever it was.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m just tired of being told that I’m angry.”

  “Who else tells you that?”

  “Who do you think? Stephanie, Joelle, Nicole—” It was an odd slip, one he wouldn’t have made in front of anyone else. “In my mind, Nicole,” he corrected.

  “And why is she angry with you?”

  “I don’t know, because I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not saying our marriage was perfect, but it wasn’t something to kill yourself over.”

  Genuine alarm flashed in Laura’s eyes, her youth betraying her. “We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

  “You’re the one who brought it up.” It was such a charade, her talking to him like she knew nothing of his life. He tried to think of what she might know, what insights she might have uncovered from their cafeteria conversations, way back when. Had he complained about Nicole to her? He didn’t think he had; that was what a good husband he had been—he hadn’t even allowed himself that small betrayal. He should have made a move on Laura when he had the chance. She wasn’t above sleeping with a married man.

  “I know this is difficult,” Laura said. He could see she was right on the edge of tears, as if she could read his thoughts.

  “Just admit to me that you’re not objective. That you can’t be.”

  “I never said I was.”

  Dean stood up. “If you’re going to be Robbie’s counselor, we obviously can’t be doing what we’re doing.”

  “I know, I know.” Laura wiped away tears. “I’m sorry I’m crying. This is ridiculous, this is not supposed to go this way, we’re supposed to talk about Robbie.”

  Her naïveté shocked Dean even as he knew it was the very thing that had drawn him to her in the first place.

  “I’m going to go.” He stood up. “Let’s take the weekend, okay?”

  “Take the weekend and what?”

  “Just be by ourselves. To think things over. I have to take care of my boys. And the girls have a race.”

  She nodded without saying anything. Dean left her office carefully, barely opening the door. He gave the receptionist a big smile—not that it mattered, she was hardly paying attention—and he jogged back to the high school, letting the conversation, and the feelings it had provoked, fall away. He felt fine when he got back to his office, full of resolve to be a better father, a better teacher, a better coach. The feeling was ratified when the front office called to say he’d received a UPS package from Tri-State Sports. It was the new cross-country uniforms he’d ordered after the first meet, before he’d even realized he would be coaching the girls for the rest of the season. He opened up the large box as soon as he could, eager to see the clean new uniforms inside. It felt like a delivery from the most optimistic part of himself.

  There was a short practice scheduled that afternoon, and at the end of it, Dean had Bryan hand out the brand-new shorts and singlets to both the girls’ and boys’ teams. Everyone was pleased with their new outfits, the blues so much deeper than the faded colors of their old uniforms.

  Only Megan seemed uncertain about the change. She’d been coming to practice since her big win, and at first Dean thought it was a superstitious thing, that she wanted to wear the same jersey for every race. But it turned out she was worried about the length of the shorts, which were a few inches higher than the old ones.

  “You can wear biking shorts underneath,” See-See suggested. “Or tights when it gets cold.”

  “I won’t have time to get them before tomorrow,” Megan said. “Can’t I just wear the old shorts?”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Dean said. He could see this was a Joelle issue, probably something to do with their new church.

  Megan came over to him after he dismissed everyone. She apologized for being so picky.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get you some bike shorts tonight,” Dean said. “I was going to take the boys to the mall anyway.”

  “We’re going to the mall?” Bryan said. “We haven’t been there since before Mommy died!”

  Megan answered Bryan casually. “What did you get the last time you went?”

  “Bathing suits. But we got a winter coat on sale, too. Do you remember, Dad? It was for me, for this year. I wonder where Mommy put it.”

  “I don’t know, buddy, we can look for it tonight. C’mon, we have to go pick up Robbie. We’ll see you tomorrow, Megan. Get a good night’s sleep.”

  They found Robbie sitting outside in the chilly air with the theater kids, as well as See-See, who was catching up with her friends. They were all dressed in layers of dark colors, a style Dean associated with Stephanie. It had been almost a month since he’d spoken to her, and he was starting to worry again, but he told himself not to, that he’d been exactly the same when he was her age. Especially those first weeks of college.

  “You smell like cigarettes,” Bryan said when he and Robbie got into the backseat. Sometimes they sat together in the back, giving the car a feeling of expectation, as if they were saving the passenger seat for Nicole.

  “Cory and Seth smoke,” Robbie said. “Seth is like my stage dad.”

  “He’s a bad dad,” Bryan said. “Bad dad! Bad dad! Bad dad! Bad dad! Bad dad!”

  “Will you knock it off?” Dean said.

  “Say it!” Bryan demanded. “It’s like a tongue twister.”

  Robbie began to chant: “Bad dad bad dad bad dad bada bada bada bada bada batta batta batta batta sa-wing!”

  “That’s from Ferris Bueller!” Bryan said. “Can we watch it tonight, Daddy? With popcorn? Please?”

  “After we go to the mall.”

  “We’re going to the mall?” Robbie leaned forward between the seats.

  Dean hadn’t been avoiding shopping, exactly, but the Pleasant Valley Mall had to be one of the most ironically named places in the world. It was built on a wetland, and its low-lying buildings, planted in a field of asphalt, always looked as if they were sinking. It was Nicole who had first identified the specific nature of their ugliness, the way they resembled the nearby prison. At some point the bleakness got to be too much, and they stopped going. Instead, if they needed to do a big shop, they drove an hour and a half to a large mall in one of the D.C. suburbs.

  Luckily, Robbie and Bry were far less particular, and only associated the PVM (as it was referred to by the locals) with fun and new clothes.

  They went to Dick’s Sporting Goods first. Both the boys need
ed new winter boots. They got their feet measured and to Dean’s surprise, Robbie had gone up a size. Dean winced to think of him walking around in ill-fitting shoes and bought him two pairs of sneakers, one practical and the other a pair of blue Chuck Taylors that Robbie found fashionable. Passing the Nike display, Dean saw Megan’s “air ponies.” Nearby were thin-soled racing flats in fluorescent colors. Dean had noticed that Adrienne Fellows had a bright yellow pair that she always wore. He wished he had the girls’ shoe sizes; he would buy them new shoes to go with their new uniforms. Remembering Megan’s request for something to wear beneath her shorts, he asked a salesgirl for help. She sold him a pair of dark blue aerobics shorts made of thick spandex.

  They had dinner at a popular chain restaurant of the boys’ choosing. The restaurant was lively, and the boys loved the novelty of eating at a place they’d seen advertised on television. The waitress doted on them, giving them plastic souvenir cups and extra french fries. Dean was glad to see them so happy, but, personally, he felt lost and uncomfortable in the world. He often felt this way on Friday nights—there was always the knowledge that the white lights were shining down on Garrett, not him—but tonight his regret went deeper. He felt as if he’d gotten marooned in the wrong life, as if his real life, not just his career, was going on somewhere else. It was a feeling of loss so diffuse he didn’t know how to pin it down.

  After dinner he and the boys shopped some more. In a camping store, a display of polar fleece jackets caught Dean’s eye and he tried on a dark blue one with white piping. It was what the other running coaches wore. He decided to get one for himself and asked Robbie and Bry if they wanted them, too.

  “Are we going to get one for Steffy?”

  “Sure, why not?” Dean said. “Pick a color you think she’d like.”

  Bry chose a lavender jacket, but Robbie said it was too pretty, that Stephanie would want black. They compromised and got dark purple.

  Their last stop was JCPenney, for the very practical purchase of underwear, something the boys had not thought to tell him they needed but that Dean was sure was lacking. He sent the boys to the boys’ section to pick out the ones they wanted while he retreated to the men’s department to replenish his own stores. The perfume and cosmetics department lay between these two worlds and as Dean passed by the mirrored displays he caught a scent of whatever flowery essence Laura wore. The thought of her, of her warm skin, caught him. He was pulled back to her small, windowless office, to her tears, to the anger she’d provoked. He had to apologize. He couldn’t let things end—not yet. Because when he said good-bye to her, he would have to say good-bye to Nicole, too. Somehow the two of them were connected in his mind.

  Chapter 10

  Hawk’s Peak was the smallest school in the district, nestled in the westernmost corner of the county, high in the foothills of the Appalachians. It was so small that the middle and high schools were combined in one building. Even more telling was the fact that it didn’t have a football team. Dean had never seen the campus, and when the bus began to ascend the bumpy corridor of a road that led to it, he joked with the girls that they should have done altitude training. He was actually somewhat concerned. Megan was the only one who had run regularly on trails and hills, on her family’s farm.

  See-See and Jessica had run the course before, so they stayed back to set up the tarp that Dean had brought to stow everyone’s stuff. Lori had run it before, too, but she wanted to accompany the ones who hadn’t. She pointed out certain tree roots and rocks and muddy spots, as if Megan couldn’t see them herself. She was being protective, Dean realized, because Megan was so talented. All the girls deferred to her now, even See-See. Megan bore it lightly, in part because she didn’t go to school with the others, so she didn’t have a sense of her accomplishments beyond what happened on the day of the race. The other part was that Megan had that athlete’s way of shutting out the world. Dean saw it in all his best players; they could make their mind a field of nothing. It didn’t require a huge amount of intelligence, yet a lot of intelligent people couldn’t do it. Dean still recalled the bliss of it, when he was younger and deep into his training. He couldn’t remember what it felt like, though.

  Missy and Lori walked slightly ahead of him. The two had become friends, an odd pair, physically, with Lori’s rounded, soft limbs in direct contrast to Missy’s broad, blunt shoulders. But they were both strong, able to lift more than the other girls on the team. They’d started as weight room partners and now were pacing partners, although Dean expected Missy to pull ahead of Lori soon. She’d turned in a respectable 24:14 for her first race, finishing second to last for the team, but well ahead of Jessica, which had brought up their team score considerably. Still, Missy had run the race badly, going way too fast in the first mile and then getting crushed during the second and third miles, when dozens of runners passed her. Dean worried about her on this course, with its shrouded second mile. These woods were made for giving up. They were hilly, with difficult footing. You lost your sense of distance when you were inside them. Dean kept looking for landmarks to mark their progress, but every stand of dark-trunked trees was the same, and every craggy root was the same craggy root they’d stepped over two minutes before. When they finally emerged onto a large, weather-beaten field, Dean felt a visceral sense of relief. The final leg of the course took the runners on a long, sloping downhill, leading back to the school.

  Dean returned to the tarp to find Jessica and See-See playing cards with Robbie, Bry, and Jenny. Joelle and Ed stood nearby drinking coffee with some of the other parents, including Karen Coulter.

  Joelle tried to get Megan to eat some peanuts and raisins that she’d brought along in a plastic baggie, but Megan refused. “Not right before the race!”

  “You’re not running for another hour,” Joelle protested. “You need fuel.”

  “See-See’s the same way,” Karen Coulter said, patting her daughter’s spiked hair. “She hardly eats breakfast.”

  “Megan ate breakfast,” Joelle said definitively, like she didn’t want to have anything in common with See-See’s mother.

  “So, Dean, does our team stand a chance of winning?” Ed asked.

  “Hard to predict,” Dean replied. He had to get the girls away from this nonsense. He called for a warm-up, even though it was too early, and took the girls to a grassy clearing that he had noticed when they got off the bus. It was too small to be called a field, but large enough to give them a feeling of privacy and distance. Dean guided them through a series of stretches without saying much. Above, the clouds were moving across the sky, pushed by winds they could hear in the dry leaves just barely clinging to the trees. Time seemed to slow down. Dean thought of how strange it was that he was standing on this particular spot on the planet. It was a feeling akin to the malaise he’d encountered the night before in the mall. But this time there was no anger. Instead he felt a kind of disoriented wonder. Six months ago he never could have conceived of this moment.

  “We should get back soon,” See-See said, pointing toward the starting line, where other teams had begun to gather in warm-up gear.

  “You lead the way,” Dean said. He’d meant to give them some pointers for the race before they left, but it didn’t seem as necessary.

  The starting line stretched out across a puddled, bowl-shaped field. Dean told the girls to be careful of the mud, a warning they received with scorn.

  “I’m serious,” Dean said. “It’s October. One month until the big dance. You can’t afford to twist your ankle now. So play it safe!”

  See-See saluted him and then led the girls away to form a huddle.

  The boys’ team was heading off for their warm-up. Philips gave Dean a wave and promised to cheer the girls on at the end of the race. As he ran off, Dean realized he’d been counting on him to take the second-mile splits. He quickly recruited Karen for the job, handing her a clipboard and draping a stopwatch over her neck.

  “Sorry you’ll miss the start,” he said.
/>   “No problem.” She pulled her dirty-blond hair into a ponytail. “I’m glad I wore sneakers!”

  With Joelle, Bryan, and Robbie in tow, Dean headed to the first mile marker. A small group of coaches were waiting there. Dean positioned himself just beyond the marker so that he could run alongside the girls if he felt like it. Before he even had time to organize himself, Bryan started jumping up and down and calling Megan’s name. Dean looked up to see her small figure clad in bright blue, an echo of the sky above.

  “Is that really her?” Joelle said.

  “Daddy! She’s in first!” Bryan was still jumping.

  Dean’s stopwatch said 5:45. Way, way too fast a start. She was excited because her parents were here, maybe.

  “You’re too fast!” Dean yelled. “You need to stick with See-See and slow down in the woods. It’s okay if you lose first. This isn’t the big dance. You need to run smart, run smart! Don’t trip in those woods!”

  She nodded, giving him a quick darting glance. She seemed rattled, happy, high, a little out of control. Her leg turnover was so quick that Dean felt like he could see the adrenaline animating her muscles.

  The other girls passed by in order with their partners: See-See and Aileen, Lori and Missy, and finally, Jessica. The field of spectators fell silent as the runners entered the woods.

  “I can’t believe she was first,” Joelle said. She seemed shaken. “I knew she was fast, but I didn’t realize . . .”

  “Come on, we have to get to the third mile,” Dean said. He wanted to jog but settled for a brisk walk. Almost as soon as they made it to the marker, Megan popped out of the woods, still holding first. The clock ticked past nineteen. She was going to break her personal record and win the race. This was only the second race she had ever run. Dean wondered if Joelle and Ed understood how talented their daughter was. He wondered if he understood. She needed a real coach, someone who actually knew about running.

  “Here.” He thrust the clipboard and stopwatch toward Robbie. “Finish taking the splits.”