Home Field

by Hannah Gersen

  AUNT JOELLE STARTED talking about dinner while she was cleaning up the dishes from lunch. Stephanie stood next to her, drying plates. Meal planning was clearly her aunt’s way of getting control of the situation, but Stephanie couldn’t think of a better subject of conversation. She stacked the plates and put them away. Uncle Ed came into the kitchen.

  “I’m headed home, hon,” he said. “Page me if you hear anything, okay? I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

  “Okay, bye, sweetie.” Aunt Joelle gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Where’s he going?” Stephanie asked.

  Aunt Joelle gave her a look like she was playing dumb. “He has to do the milking in a couple hours.”

  “Oh, right.” Stephanie glanced at the clock. It was barely two. The afternoon was dragging. “I guess it gets dark early.”

  There was nothing else to clean in the kitchen. Stephanie went upstairs to use the bathroom and to wash her face. She should have taken a shower as soon as she got home, but she kept putting it off, afraid of missing out on news.

  What she really needed was a nap. She went into her bedroom and lay down on her quilt. She could tell her brothers had been using her room. Her television, her father’s old black-and-white, was in a slightly different position, still perched on the windowsill but now closer to the bed. There were candy wrappers and an empty water glass on her bedside table.

  “Stephanie?”

  It was Bryan in her doorway.

  “Hey, Bry. Come sit.” Stephanie sat up and arranged pillows against the headboard for both of them. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s on the phone with someone. I don’t know what about.”

  Stephanie considered picking up the extension on her bedside table but decided against it. She was starting to feel hopeless. It had been six hours since anyone had heard news of Robbie. She kept trying to be rational, reminding herself that child abduction and kidnappings were extremely rare, that Robbie was sensible, that the police were good at their job, but it was getting harder and harder as the day went on. And yet she couldn’t really go to the other side, she couldn’t imagine the worst.

  “Where are Megan and Jenny?”

  “Jenny’s watching Brady Bunch on Nickelodeon. Megan went for a jog. Dad told her to.”

  “Right, there’s some big race tomorrow.”

  “We were supposed to go.”

  “Maybe you still will.”

  “Maybe.” Bryan leaned against Stephanie. “I wish you lived here.”

  “Oh, buddy.” Stephanie held her brother close. His legs looked long stretched out next to hers. He had on a pair of hand-me-down corduroys that she clearly remembered Robbie wearing.

  “It’s okay, I know you have to go to college.”

  Stephanie heard someone pull into the driveway, and her first thought was that somehow it was Robbie. Someone had found him and was bringing him back. She went to the window.

  “It’s Pastor Owen!” Bryan said happily. “He’s from Aunt Joelle’s church.”

  “Oh.” Stephanie doubted her father had approved of or was even aware of this visit.

  Stephanie reluctantly followed Bryan downstairs to the kitchen, where Aunt Joelle was welcoming Pastor Owen inside. He was younger than Stephanie had expected, probably in his late twenties. He had a broad face, large ears, ruddy skin, and short reddish-brown hair. His large, dark eyes radiated emotion. She couldn’t help liking him. He reminded her of a big friendly farm dog.

  He gave Aunt Joelle and Bryan long hugs and shook Stephanie’s hand, holding it between his own two hands like it was a precious thing. His sincerity was almost overbearing.

  “Jenny!” Aunt Joelle called. “Megan’s out for a jog,” she added apologetically. “I told her to be back by now . . .”

  “I’m not in any rush,” Pastor Owen said. “Is Mr. Renner around too?”

  “He’s on the phone,” Stephanie said quickly. “Let me go get him.”

  Stephanie went up to her father’s study, an alcove off the dining room, but he wasn’t there. Then she checked his bedroom, but that was empty, too. The room had a slightly harder, cleaner look; it was missing all the fussy niceties her mother attended to: the runners on the dresser, the liners in the trash can, the flowers in the bud vase. Soon only the particular arrangement of the furniture would bear her mother’s fingerprints.

  Stephanie heard loud voices downstairs. Tension filled her body as she remembered what it had been like to live here when her mother was lost to herself. At the beginning of high school Stephanie would sometimes sit on the back stairs and listen in, monitoring the emotional weather, but eventually she grew to dislike the role of spy. It made her complicit, somehow. She learned to put on headphones and ignore.

  She felt dread hardening in her chest as she descended the stairs. She heard her father saying, “What gives you the right?” And then Joelle saying, “I thought it would help!” A quieter voice intervened. Pastor Owen. Stephanie felt sorry for him. He was still talking when she entered the living room. Everyone was staring at him. Megan sat next to her mother and sister on the sofa, her bare legs mottled from running in the cold. Stephanie’s father was in his chair, a worn-out lounger, while Pastor Owen sat in what was unofficially the guest seat, a semicomfortable velvet wing chair. Stephanie knelt on the floor next to Bryan, feeling helpless, like a little kid. But she couldn’t interrupt a minister.

  “. . . and I don’t want to intrude, Mr. Renner,” Pastor Owen was saying. “I’m happy to lead a prayer for your family or simply to sit with you, or to go. I won’t be offended, whatever you choose.”

  “The issue is not with you,” Stephanie’s father said. “I’m not opposed to prayer. But you’ve walked into a situation with some history to it. To put it simply, my sister-in-law has been pressuring my family to worship in a certain way and it’s led to a lot of conflict. And as you may know, my wife passed away earlier this year.”

  “You make it sound like the two things are related!” Aunt Joelle said.

  “That’s just your guilty conscience.”

  “So you admit it.”

  “What am I admitting? That you try to control everything? That you put your nose in everyone’s business? Who invited you to come here today? Who told you to come into my house and invite strangers?”

  “Pastor Owen is an important person to my family, he’s an important person to your son.”

  “Don’t tell me what’s important to my son. I entrusted him to you and what do you do? You indoctrinate him in your pushy Christianity.”

  “You’re rude and you’re a bully, Dean. You always have been. Talk about trust. I gave my daughter to you!”

  “Megan is fourteen years old. Like it or not, she’s on her way to becoming an adult. She came to me, I did nothing to recruit her.”

  “Oh, you did nothing, of course, you’re perfect, nothing touches you. Everyone loves you, everyone thinks you’re so good. You walk on water because you’re Coach and you change lives. But I know how selfish you are, I know how miserable you make people. I gave my sister to you. And now she’s gone and you’re letting her kids go. I’m trying to find a safe place for them. Pastor Owen is a good person, he has God with him, he could help you. But you don’t want help. You want to do everything on your own.”

  “Mom, Mom.” Megan put her arms around her mother and stroked her hair.

  “I did the best I could with Nicky.” Aunt Joelle was crying now. “I miss her so much, oh God in heaven, I miss her. I just want her to come back.”

  Pastor Owen looked stunned, his youth shining through. He reached out his hands, offering one to Stephanie’s father and the other to Bryan, who was sitting closest to him.

  “Let us bow our heads in prayer,” he said. “But let it be a silent prayer.”

  Stephanie closed her eyes and listened to her aunt cry. She said a prayer not to God, but to her mother.

  ROBBIE HADN’T ACCOUNTED for the wait at the bus station. He sat on a bench with molded pla
stic seats that were like the chairs at school. His seat was missing an armrest, as were many of the seats nearby. He was bored. At first it had been a relief to sit and rest his legs after so many hours of walking but now he was getting restless. He still had a half hour until his bus arrived.

  He got up and did another lap around the station. He knew everyone who was waiting, or at least he felt as if he knew them, because he’d been staring at them for so long. Sometimes people would return his gaze, but most ignored or just plain didn’t notice him. Periodically a group of three or four people would get up and go outside to meet their bus. Robbie was surprised at the variety of Pennsylvanian destinations on offer. There was a large group gathering for a Philadelphia departure, and it crossed Robbie’s mind that he could change his ticket and meet Stephanie instead. But he couldn’t give up his original plan.

  There was time, he decided, to go outside. And it was late enough in the day that no one would ask why he wasn’t in school. He left the station and walked down the street to a toy store that he used to go to with his mother whenever they made trips into Hagerstown. It was a very small toy store, not part of a chain, and his mother liked it because they carried old-fashioned chapter books, like the ones she’d read as a girl. Sometimes Robbie would ask her to buy him one, not because he really wanted one but because he knew she liked it when he asked for them. He always read them and usually enjoyed them, but they weren’t the kind of books he preferred. They were too formal, with their hard covers and thick pages, the ends of the pages left raw so that they seemed to be torn from a large, grand sheet of paper. Sometimes the top and bottom edges of the pages were dusted with gold powder and it would get on Robbie’s fingers when he first started reading them. Robbie preferred books that were small and portable—paperbacks that he could carry in his jacket pocket or in the back pocket of his jeans. He liked reading to feel a little bit secret.

  A bell on the toy store’s door jangled when Robbie entered, and a man in a sweater vest came out from a storeroom in the back. He waved to Robbie and then took a seat behind the cash register. Robbie made his way through the little shop, starting with the cascade of stuffed animals in the front, which spilled over into the window display, past the games and sports-related gear, past the dolls, past the Legos, past the drawers of plastic animals, rubber balls, erasers, stickers, and other doodads, and into the small room in the back that was devoted completely to books. Robbie was starting to feel too old for toys. It was as if he’d lost an appetite. Just last Christmas he had spent an hour circling Lego sets in the JCPenney catalog, but he couldn’t imagine doing that again this year. He would rather circle items of clothing or books or video games.

  The old-fashioned books his mother liked were in a special section called “Collector’s Editions.” Robbie already had several of them: Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and The Sword in the Stone. Most of the other titles sounded too girly to him.

  “Need any help?”

  Robbie was startled by the voice behind him. He turned and there was the owner, watching him.

  “No,” Robbie said. He quickly took a book off the shelf, Black Beauty. “This is the one I wanted.”

  “Can’t go wrong with a classic.” The man smiled. “You look so familiar. Did you used to come here with your mother?”

  Robbie nodded uncertainly. He didn’t know what to say. He was so stupid to have come in here. He couldn’t get caught now.

  “I thought so! Where’s your mother today?”

  “She’s shopping,” Robbie said. “She told me I could come here while she shopped. This is actually a present for her. For her birthday. It’s her favorite book.”

  “How nice of you! Would you like me to wrap it up?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Robbie followed him to the register, where he stood awkwardly, fingering the bills in his pocket, praying the book wouldn’t cost more than fifteen dollars, which was all he had left. If he didn’t have enough money, the man would be annoyed. He might even charge for the wasted wrapping paper. It was fancy paper, a glossy blue with a gold, ribbonlike pattern. Robbie couldn’t help thinking that his mother would have appreciated it. She always noticed if something was nicely wrapped.

  “Twelve ninety-five,” the man said when he was finished. He placed the book in a red paper bag with the store’s logo on it.

  Robbie handed him his money, feeling relieved even though he now had only two dollars left for bus snacks. He hurried out of the shop after promising the man that he would say hello to his mother and then cut through an alley to get back to the station. As he walked, he realized it was getting very close to the departure time, so he headed straight to the depot to look for his bus. He found it and boarded. He was worried the driver would not take his ticket, because he was so young, but the driver only examined the ticket, checking for the correct date and time. Maybe I’m more grown-up than I realized, Robbie thought as he headed toward the back of the bus. He’d just had two exchanges in the adult world and no one had questioned him, no one had told him to be careful.

  As the bus pulled out of the depot and onto the street, Robbie noticed two police cars parked outside the station. He wondered if someone had committed a crime while he was in the toy store. The idea frightened him, but in a thrilling way that made him feel like he was really, truly in the adult world.

  The bus drove through the poorer neighborhoods as it made its way out of Hagerstown. Bedraggled-looking row houses were tucked right up against the sidewalks. There was a church without a steeple or a cemetery or even a proper yard, only a large cross hanging above a regular-sized door in a plain, square building. As they drove farther out of town, the buildings were more and more degraded until suddenly they weren’t; it was as if they’d passed over some invisible border and now the houses were new or semi-new or, at the very least, old with a new addition tacked on. These houses led to rolling suburbs with new construction, the houses all perfectly centered on their plots. Many of them had aboveground pools in their backyards, covered over with black tarps for the winter. Robbie began to doze off as they passed the views he liked best: the wide, open fields and split-rail fences that reminded him of his grandfather’s farm.

  GENEVA BROUGHT OVER dinner around six, knocking on the side porch door. “Joelle sent me,” she said. “She said she’s sorry she couldn’t come over herself.”

  “I’ll bet,” Dean said, letting her inside. “Did she tell you what happened?”

  “I got the gist.” Geneva began to unpack everything she’d brought: green peppers, pepperoni, shredded cheese, tomato sauce, and a large premade pizza crust.

  “Has there been any news?” she asked. “Any word from the police?”

  “Nothing. Nada. Zilch.”

  “Don’t lose hope, Dean,” she said. “They’re going to find him.”

  “They’ve fucked up two perfectly good leads,” he said. “Excuse my language.”

  “No excuse needed.”

  “Someone calls from the bus station, says he’s sitting right there, and then suddenly he’s not sitting there? Where did he go?”

  “Maybe he got on a bus.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. He could be halfway to D.C. or Baltimore by now. What the hell is he going to do there?”

  “Take it easy.” Geneva rubbed his shoulder. “You can’t start panicking now.”

  Dean sat down at the kitchen table. “It drives me crazy that he’s out there and no one can find him. What do they do when someone breaks out of prison?”

  “Robbie’s smarter than a criminal,” Geneva said. “Here, help me with this pizza. It’s a Boboli, I had a coupon.”

  Dean obeyed, finding a cookie sheet for the crust and heating up the oven. He wasn’t hungry, but he recognized that food was something they could do. He spread the tomato sauce on the cold crust and then he called Bryan into the kitchen to distribute the pepperoni, because he knew Bryan would enjoy the task. And Bryan’s presence would
also force him to be optimistic.

  “Stephanie fell asleep on the sofa,” Bryan reported.

  “Good, she hardly slept at all last night.”

  The three of them made the little pizza, assembling it quickly and putting it in the oven. Stephanie came into the kitchen while it was cooking. She seemed annoyed that she had been allowed to nap. She was obviously still tired; she had wrinkles around her eyes, the kind that emerge temporarily on the sleep-deprived. Dean got a glimpse of what she would look like when she was older, and for the first time, he could picture her in the world, the adult world, the one he sometimes felt he’d never lived in because he’d always worked in schools.

  The pizza was tasty and Dean ate more than he thought he would. At the end of the meal the phone rang and Dean jumped to get it. But it wasn’t the police. It was See-See.

  “Hi, Coach. I’m sorry to bother you. I know you’re dealing with a lot.”

  “It’s okay, I was actually going to call you. Is everything okay?”

  “I’m just wondering about tomorrow. We’re still competing, right?”

  “Of course. I’m sending over a teacher from the middle school to help out—Ms. Lanning.”

  “I know Ms. Lanning. I had her for English last year.”

  “Okay, good, good.”

  There was a silence, and Dean realized he had to say something coachlike. He felt depleted of advice, of the kind of optimistic and borderline-delusional things a coach had to say to get an athlete ready for a big event. And he felt self-conscious because his family was listening.

  “Do you think I’m going to qualify for States?” See-See asked, finally. “Sorry, I know that’s the last thing you’re thinking of.”

  “See-See, I am always thinking about you girls,” Dean said. And as he spoke, he realized it was true, that the girls had been running through his mind, pulling him along all these weeks.

  “I’m nervous,” See-See said.

  “You should be. It’s a big race. But you have the training for it.” Dean struggled to find something else to say. A few words of encouragement were all that she needed. But they couldn’t be generic.