Home Field

by Hannah Gersen

  “Not really,” Robbie said. “Everybody sticks with the people they already know.”

  “What about joining an intramural team? You could try out for soccer,” Dean said. Soccer was the only sport Robbie had ever mentioned.

  “Actually, I tried out for The Wizard of Oz. They had auditions in my chorus class because they need a bunch of kids to be munchkins.”

  “Wait, you tried out for the high school play?” Dean said.

  “Yeah, and I got the part!” Robbie couldn’t help grinning as he spoke. “I’m going to be a munchkin—and a flying monkey and a poppy flower. And I’m singing in the chorus.”

  “Okay,” Dean said. The parts sounded silly to him, more suited to Bryan, but Robbie was obviously proud.

  “What’s the matter?” Robbie said. “You don’t want me to be in the play?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “You think I should play a sport.”

  “I think you should be with people your own age,” Dean said.

  “They don’t do a play in middle school,” Robbie said. “And I like older kids. I don’t like kids my age.”

  “You might if you got to know them.”

  Robbie shrugged. “I don’t want to play soccer. I’m not good at it. No one’s good at it. It’s boring to do something that no one’s good at. And everyone’s bad at everything in middle school. I’d rather be around older kids who know how to do things. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing,” Dean said. He worried that Robbie’s longing for older kids had to do with Stephanie’s absence, and that his desire to playact, to live in fantasy, had to do with Nicole’s death.

  “The rehearsals are pretty much every day after school,” Robbie said. “So I’ll be out of your way.”

  “You’re not in my way.”

  “The stage is so big,” Robbie said. “My friend Mark was in The King and I in fourth grade. He was Anna’s son. Do you remember that? He stood on the side stage, and they made it look like a boat.”

  Dean had no memory of this performance. He’d accompanied his children through the world, and yet sometimes it seemed to him as if he had no way of knowing what really mattered to them.

  He stood up and brushed the grass off his shorts. “Come on, let’s go home—okay?”

  Back at the car, they found Stephanie and Bry listening to the radio with the windows down. Stephanie was flipping through the folder of running stuff he had taken from his office.

  “You left this on the roof of the car,” she said, handing it to him.

  “Thanks.” He stuffed it under his seat.

  “I’m going back to school as soon as we get home.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Dean said, starting the car.

  He exited campus the back way, behind the middle school, so he wouldn’t have to go past the football field. He didn’t want to see the team practicing. And he couldn’t bear to observe local etiquette, honking his horn as he drove past. They would recognize his car and wonder where their old coach was going. Or maybe they wouldn’t wonder. Maybe they would just wave, and get back to their training.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning Dean awakened early from a disturbing dream. He and Laura were on his bed, which was strewn with Nicole’s clothes. She undressed, revealing breasts that were like Nic’s. “You’re too young,” Dean said. He meant she was too young for breasts like that, breasts that had borne the weight of three pregnancies, but she thought he was trying to push her away. She began to cry and then she became Nicole, who put her hands on his face and said, “Didn’t you want her all along?”

  It was Sunday, a day for sleeping in, but when Dean closed his eyes, his just-shed dream netted him again, Nicole’s soft voice in his ear. He flung it away, swung his feet to the floor, and pushed back the curtain on the window. The sun was rising, its pale light beginning to fade the stars.

  He checked on the boys. They both slept on their stomachs. Bryan still had a lovey, a stuffed giraffe whose long neck got into odd positions at night. This morning the giraffe was pushed off to the side, lying facedown near the edge of the mattress. Nicole used to say it was keeping watch for monsters.

  Stephanie’s room was empty, untouched. Her bed was still neatly made with the sheets Dean had washed before her arrival. She’d never even slept on them.

  He’d called her dorm room yesterday night, but she wouldn’t talk to him. Her roommate, a meek-sounding girl who addressed him as Mr. Renner, picked up. There was a muffled pause after Dean asked for Stephanie and then the same soft voice said she was sorry, Stephanie wasn’t around after all. Dean didn’t push back against the lie. Now that she’d seen him in the bar, she had a reason for her anger, a point to focus on. Dean hated to think of the stories she was concocting.

  When it came to Laura, he wasn’t even sure what the real story was anymore.

  It was too early to wake up the boys, so he decided to go for a jog. He had to get in better shape if he was going to keep attending races. Outside the air was cool and soft. In the dim light, everyone’s backyard gardens were abundantly and deeply green, with their tall rows of corn and sunflowers, and their bean plants and tomatoes climbing chicken-wire cages. Small piles of freshly pulled still-green weeds lay around the perimeter of each garden, evidence of industrious Saturdays. Dean felt virtuous just looking at them.

  His heart was beating hard to match his foot strikes. He was going fast, maybe. Or maybe he was tired. He decided to run all the way to Iron Bridge, or rather, the ugly cement thing that had replaced it. Dean’s thighs burned as he made his way up the hill that preceded the bridge. His thoughts burned away, too. When he reached the top, he was breathing with a ragged intensity that reminded him of being young. Holding on to that glimmer, he ran hard down the hill, toward the creek, letting gravity lengthen his stride. The pain increased, and by the time he reached the bridge he had to stop. He looked down at the water flowing past and then checked his pulse, timing how long it took for his breath to return to normal. He recalled the agony of running when he first started training in the summers, as a teenager. The sharp stitches at the side of his waist. The weight of his lungs. He used to smoke then, taking a dizzy hit of nicotine after workouts. Then he would douse his face and hair with the garden hose, the water warm at first and then icily cold. In the nearby fields, his father would hose down the horses until their short-haired bodies gleamed like metal. Looking back on that time, it was like his life was one physical sensation after another, with time stretching to contain them all in one unbroken chain. And yet he was impatient to break free, to move away, to become a man, whatever that meant.

  He hurried home, worried that the boys would wake up and find him gone.

  But they were still asleep when he got back. He stretched on the living room carpet, listening to the radio, some nuts-and-bolts news analysis, a weekend roundup. They played a clip of President Clinton speaking at a campaign rally, hoarsely and vaguely, asking voters to consider the historical consequences of various presidencies: “Think how different this country would be if Abraham Lincoln had not been president when the states said, ‘Well, hey, we formed this country; we’ve got a right to get out.’ And then to face the next question: ‘Well, if we’re going to stay together, don’t we have to quit lying about who we are?’” The words hit Dean’s conscience like stealthy arrows. His marriage—it was built on . . . what? Not lies, exactly. But not the truth, either. One of the commentators was saying that peace and prosperity were the president’s greatest assets. Dean liked Clinton but he didn’t trust him completely; he reminded Dean of the silver-haired big spenders who came to the track with their girlfriends, the ones who gambled as a way to show off how much they could afford to lose.

  After a hot shower, Dean felt almost normal. The boys woke up and he fixed a big breakfast of pancakes and bacon and fruit. Although he had been planning to take them to church, he decided at the last moment to take them to the Antietam Battlefield, which was closer than chur
ch, and for Dean, more sacred.

  The park was busy with tourists, as well as the runners and cyclists who took advantage of the empty, paved roads that snaked through the quiet battlefield. Dean made the boys read aloud a few of the plaques. He realized it was close to the day of the actual battle. The bright sky, the clear light, the slight hint of autumn on the breeze—all of it was just as it might have been on the morning of what turned out to be the single bloodiest day in American history. Twenty-three thousand men dead in one day. God knew how many horses. Dean couldn’t get his mind around the number. It was a Union win on paper, but there were historians who had devoted their lives to the study of what actually occurred. How it affected the history of the war. The history of the country. Shortly after the battle, President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It was as if he had to acknowledge what the war was really about.

  Driving home, Dean felt calmed. Battlefields gave him perspective. It was their peacefulness that awed him. As if the ground itself had absorbed the violence and confusion of war and made it disappear.

  Dean spent the afternoon cleaning. The house needed it, but he was also feeling guilty. About Stephanie. About Laura. About Nicole. He made the boys do the bathrooms before they could play outside, as if they needed to do penance, too.

  He cooked dinner again—pork chops with baked apples, one of the few dishes he’d learned from his mother. The boys wanted to watch The Wizard of Oz to celebrate Robbie’s part and Dean let them, even though it was a long movie for a school night. After the scary parts were over and Dorothy was safely on her way down the yellow brick road, Dean excused himself to call Stephanie. No answer. He tried again later, during the poppy field scene, but he got the roommate again. He left a message, giving up for the day. If she didn’t want to talk to him, so be it. She would come around. Still, he felt addled and uncertain.

  After he put the boys to bed, he craved bourbon, but instead he pulled out the file of notes and articles about running that he’d gathered from his office. He wanted to plan some real practices for the week. An hour slipped by as he worked on a training strategy and then it was midnight and he was exhausted. For the first time in weeks he went to bed without the aid of booze or late-night television.

  “YOU KNOW WHAT’S great about cross-country?” Dean asked the girls. It was Monday afternoon. They didn’t seem quite as forlorn or lacking in athleticism as they had on the first day he met them. And now he had an actual pep talk prepared, the kind he used to give his players. He’d never delivered one to such a small crowd and in such a low voice.

  “In cross-country, your past record doesn’t matter. You get a clean slate for every race.” He paused to let this sink in. “You understand what that means? That means the only race that really matters is States. That’s the big dance, right? You get to States, you’ve got yourself a race.”

  “But you have to qualify for States,” See-See said.

  “Yes!” Dean pointed at her, like she’d won a prize. “So the race before States matters, too. Okay. But that’s not for another six weeks. Do you know how many practices we have before that?”

  Jessica raised her hand. “Are you counting Fridays?”

  “Fridays count,” Dean said. “From here on out, every day counts. Every day is practice. You know how many miles you can run in six weeks? Over a hundred. Easily. In fact, we’ll probably hit a hundred and fifty. And for those of you who choose to run on weekends, you’ll get up to two hundred. But mileage isn’t even what matters most. What matters most is speed. Pacing. Having a kick. I guarantee, if you have a kick in your pocket, you’re going to take down competitors. So let’s get out there and run fast.”

  They looked bewildered but obediently jogged to the track, where Dean led them through an interval workout of six timed half miles with thirty-second rest periods in between. By the end of the third half mile, they began to complain.

  “I can’t run fast anymore,” Aileen said. “I’m too tired.”

  “Good,” Dean told her. “I need to know how fast you can run when you’re tired.”

  The following afternoon they joined the boys’ team on the nearby C&O Canal, where Philips liked to bike. They ran as a big group on the flat, shaded towpath, with See-See and Aileen eventually breaking off to run with the slower boys. The miles slipped by without anyone noticing. When they arrived at the canal, the sun sparkled lazily on the Potomac, and when they ended, an hour and a half later, it was a fall evening, the sun low and golden in the sky and the air smelling faintly of campfires.

  Dean was in a good mood that night, and when he picked up the phone and it was Laura’s voice on the other end, he felt even better. She said she’d been thinking about him. He said he’d been thinking of her, too. But before he could go on, she interrupted and said that she thought they should keep things professional. And then she told him that Robbie had gotten into trouble again at school. With the aid of a forged note, he had lied to his English teacher and told her that he was needed at the high school for a special choral rehearsal. And then he had walked over to the high school and hung out backstage with the woodshop kids who were helping to design the sets. When his lie was discovered (by the woodshop teacher) and he was returned to the middle school, he had been sent to Laura to confess.

  “His teachers want to pull him from the play, but I’ve discouraged that course of action,” Laura said.

  “Good. He’s excited about it,” Dean said, surprised to find himself defending the play.

  “I’m glad you understand that.”

  “He’s my son,” Dean said, testily. He was annoyed by her “professional” tone. A few nights ago they’d shared drinks, confidences, near-kisses.

  In the same careful voice, she proposed a meeting, and Dean lost all patience and just said what he had to say to get through the conversation and off the phone. Laura was confusing him. His dream of her, of her turning into Nicole, of Nicole’s hands on his face, of Laura’s breath on his neck, had stayed with him.

  Upstairs, he found Robbie and Bryan in Stephanie’s room, watching MTV on her little black-and-white TV, the 1970s model that had once been Dean’s. The TV downstairs was much bigger, but he could see why the boys preferred to hang out in Stephanie’s cozy room, sitting cross-legged on her double bed with its bank of pillows and, above, a moody collage of CD covers and flowers cut from seed catalogs—mostly blue and violet flowers, no pink roses for Stephanie.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Bryan said. “Will you tell Robbie to put on Jeopardy!? He promised I could pick a show at seven thirty.”

  “Why don’t you go downstairs and watch it,” Dean said. “I have to talk to your brother anyway.”

  “Is this about today?” Robbie said. “Because I want Bry here if you’re going to yell at me.”

  “Nobody’s yelling at you.”

  “What did you do?” Bryan asked, his bright little face at once eager and nervous.

  “Nothing. My teachers just freaked out when I went over to the high school to help out with stuff for the play.”

  “That’s not the whole story,” Dean said. “Now will you please go downstairs, Bryan?”

  “It is the whole story,” Robbie said. “Everyone treats me like I’m psycho.”

  “Do you want to get pulled from the play?” Dean said. “Because you could just as easily come with me after school and go to cross-country practice, like Bryan does.”

  “That would be so fun!” Bryan said.

  “Oh my God, why are you always such a dork?” Robbie said.

  Bryan frowned suddenly and tearfully, like he used to do when he was a baby, and Dean had to get him out of the room fast, taking him downstairs and setting him up in front of the TV with a bowl of pretzels. When he came back upstairs to Stephanie’s room, Robbie had turned off the TV and was lying on Stephanie’s bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  “You need to be nicer to your brother,” Dean said.

  “I’m sorry, but he’s, like, always around,” R
obbie said. “I have no privacy. At school all the teachers spy on me.”

  “You created that situation.”

  “I don’t see what the big deal is. I should be able to go places. I’m not some little kid.”

  Dean hated that Robbie saw himself that way, as no longer childlike. He remembered feeling the same way when he was Robbie’s age, after his mother left his father. It had given him comfort to think that he was more grown-up than others, and that he was somehow well suited to the difficult circumstances he found himself in. But as an adult he saw what a delusion it was. And he thought there was something pathetic about a deluded child. Delusions were for adults to cling to; children were supposed to be innocent scientists, peeling back the layers of the world.

  “Look, I know you’re responsible, but other people don’t,” Dean said. “Your teachers don’t want you having special privileges.”

  “And you don’t, either.”

  “Actually, I vouched for you. And so did Ms. Lanning.”

  “You told them I should do the play?”

  “Yes, I did. I want you to be happy, and I want you to do the things that make you happy. So don’t mess that up, all right?”

  “All right.”

  Dean headed back downstairs and watched the rest of Jeopardy! with Bryan, grateful for his company but also horribly lonely. He had mixed feelings about Robbie going to the high school every day for the play. On the one hand, it wasn’t that big a deal; on the other, it was further evidence that Robbie wasn’t going to grow up to be someone he could easily relate to. He’d always imagined his children would be his comfort, his companions.

  It stormed that night, and the next day it rained on and off all afternoon, the beginning of bad weather. Dean drove the girls to the junior college, where there was an indoor track. Something about being indoors—the novelty, the cooped-up feeling, the sound of the rain on the skylights—helped the girls to run faster. At one point the rain was very heavy, and the muffled sound of the wind seemed to drive the girls. They had energy to burn at the end of practice and wanted to try the hurdles that were set up in the far lane. But Dean said no, they might get injured. That was when he realized he believed in them.