Home Field (20 page)

A bunch of blue and white balloons danced above Garrett's mailbox. Garrett greeted him at the door, opening it before Dean had a chance to knock.

“Coach! I'm so glad you came. What's this? Miller? Classic, just classic.”

Garrett's condo was very warm inside. It smelled like potpourri and onion dip, with a hint of Mr. Clean. The furniture was a mix of new, matching items and a smattering of painted wooden “country kitchen” decorations that had to have come from his girlfriend.

“There's plenty to eat,” Garrett said, guiding him toward the kitchen. “Connie made everything.”

“I didn't know you two moved in together.”

“Not yet. Connie's too traditional. But I made sure she liked this place before I bought it. It's going to be part of a new subdivision, with a pool and tennis courts and a playground. They're calling it Fox Knoll. I'm going to put your beer in the fridge, okay?”

Dean headed to the spread of food on Garrett's kitchen island. There were bowls of chips, dips, salsas, pickles, a platter of deviled eggs and crudité, and a make-your-own-sandwich station with honey ham and cheddar cheese. Garrett followed him, filling him in on the team's news, as well as his plan for the season. Dean half listened. He couldn't tell if Garrett wanted his approval or if he was talking to him out
of a sense of duty. Other people at the party were smiling in his direction, waving, and patting him on the shoulder as they passed. Dean knew almost everyone in attendance. He felt out of place.

“Oh, there's my friend Tim,” Garrett said, nodding toward someone behind Dean. “He's here with his girlfriend—actually, his fiancée now! They just got engaged. I can never remember her name.”

“Laura,” Dean said. Even before he turned to look, he knew it had to be her. She was so pretty, wearing a soft-looking light-blue sweater and jeans. Her hair was down in loose curls. He had to turn around before she saw him. Engaged. She'd gone and done it. He must have been her moment of doubt, her last night out.

“That sounds right,” Garrett said. “I'll be right back. I'm going to say hello.”

Dean looked for someone to talk with. He was rescued by See-See's mother, of all people. She walked right up to him, pointing a manicured finger toward his chest, like he was her target.

“I have to thank you,” she said. “My daughter has never been happier. And that's saying something, because she is one angsty little thing.”

“I'm not sure we're talking about the same See-See,” Dean said. “She's a real leader on the team.”

“Well, kids always show their mothers their worst.” She extended her hand. “I'm Karen, Karen Coulter—different last name from See-See, but I'm working on getting it changed back to my maiden name. Which will still be different from
See's, but so be it. Her dad isn't so bad, really. He even said he might make it to one of the meets.”

“That'd be nice,” Dean said, slightly overwhelmed by her sudden confidences. He'd only ever seen Karen Coulter in profile, when she dropped See-See off. Up close, she had a girlish prettiness, with her sparkly makeup and pink complexion, her cheeks flushed from the white wine she was drinking.

“It would actually be a miracle if he came! He hasn't been around much. And my second husband was no picnic. That's been hard on See. But now, with you coaching the team, it's like she has that father figure she's been needing.”

“I've only been coaching a couple weeks,” Dean said.

“According to her, it's made a world of difference. She's even starting to think you guys are going to win a meet.”

“Don't get your hopes up,” Dean said, and then he felt guilty. He would never say that about the football team. He was embarrassed, he realized. He had the sense that other people were beginning to eavesdrop on their conversation and he worried it would be misunderstood, that people would think—what? That he was no longer interested in coaching football? That he was overcompensating with this nothing girls' team? He wasn't used to this kind of vague, amorphous shame, and he didn't know what to do with the feeling.

“Oh, I don't care if we win or lose,” Karen said. “I'm not the sports type at all. I just date athletic guys. I'm here with James Price, who apparently you used to coach? He's right over there.”

A bulky, round-faced man came over, smiling widely like a child when he recognized his old coach. Dean returned the
smile but could barely find little Jimmy Price, the lithe, energetic running back he'd coached for just two years before he'd graduated and gone to college—Towson, if Dean remembered correctly. He'd been a part of Dean's first team. He had to be in his early thirties now, but his conservative clothing, combined with his weight gain, made him look older—though maybe still too young for Karen.

The next few minutes were spent catching up on the past decade of Jimmy/James's postcollegiate life. He'd gone into sales, his product was X-ray film, and his territory had been in New England, a region he liked at first but over time grew weary of. The long winters, the Yankee reticence. Now he was back home and getting settled. He was apparently settled enough to know not to ask after Nicole, Dean noticed. Then again, maybe he didn't even remember her.

Somewhere in Jimmy/James's reminiscences, Dean started to feel depressed. He had become the thing he never wanted to be: a fixture. He was a person that people came back to, a person people referred to in order to assure themselves that some things never changed. And it wasn't as if he ever got to decide that he wanted to be that person. Nicole had consigned him to it, first by being beautiful and kind, and then by being needy and vulnerable, and then by taking her life and leaving him with his sawed-off one—no, not sawed-off, that suggested a clean break, and his life didn't feel cleanly broken. It felt as if something had been ripped out of him, leaving him exposed. People felt sorry for his kids, and he felt sorry for them, too—of course he did—but sometimes Dean thought it was worse for him, in the long run, because Robbie and Bry were already on a trajectory away from their mother. Their lives were sepa
rate from her in some fundamental way, while his was intertwined with hers in a way that was impossible to put behind him. She was always going to be with him, his ghost that no one else could see.

Dean excused himself from the conversation with the pretext of getting more beer. He got one of his Millers, but instead of stepping back into the party's fray, where he would no doubt be called upon to recount some “classic” story, he headed to what he thought was a back porch. It turned out to be a short, steep flight of stairs leading to Garrett's backyard.

Dean walked down to the lawn, a small, neat kingdom of freshly mown grass that stopped abruptly at what Dean assumed was Garrett's property line. Beyond it was an open, barren field, its furrows illuminated by the waxing moon. One day it would be filled to the gills with swimming pools and playing fields and another conga line of condos. It made Dean feel a little sick. What was the point of living in the country, of getting pigeonholed and bored and old, if it wasn't at least going to be beautiful?

He heard someone on the landing and immediately ducked beneath the condo, which was raised up about six feet, on beams, to accommodate the small hill that the condos had been built upon—the “knoll” of Fox Knoll, Dean supposed. He felt ridiculous, like a kid sneaking a beer under the bleachers, and tried to come up with an excuse for his antisocial behavior. He used to invent excuses for Nicole. She would always want to leave too soon. Often he took the fall, especially at family events.

“Dean, is that you?”

It was Laura. He felt such relief. She hurried down the stairs when he answered.

“I saw you escaping. Is everything okay?”

“I needed some air.” He gazed at her, trying to see her differently now that she was engaged. But he still felt she was his, somehow. That he knew her better. “I never expected to see you here.”

“Tim's a Booster now, apparently.” She shrugged. “I didn't know
you
would be here.”

“Of course I'm here.”

“This may come as a surprise to you, but football, sports—that's not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of you.”

“What do you think of?”

“I don't know.” She started to turn away, embarrassed, and he reached for her arm, awkwardly grabbing her, at the elbow. She took a tentative step toward him and he made up the difference, kind of leaning into an embrace without even trying to kiss her, which he could tell surprised her, but he wanted the warm weight of her body more than anything.

“Sorry,” he said, releasing her. “I heard you're getting married.”

She stepped back, as if chastened. “I was going to tell you. He asked me on Thursday. It was my birthday. Everyone says it's the best present.”

“You don't sound too sure.”

“Well, I do feel like he kind of co-opted my birthday. The day was supposed to be about me and now it's about us.” She made a face. “That sounds so petty.”

“It sounds like you're looking for an excuse.”

“To do what?”

Dean took a step toward her to kiss her lightly on her lips, which were dry. She licked them quickly, and he put down his beer, which spilled immediately on the uneven ground. The smell of beer wafted up, mixing with the smells of new construction—wet cement, Sheetrock, sawdust. Dean was aware of the house just a few inches above their heads, the party above them.

“Let's go to my car.” Dean felt high, buzzy, excited by his transgression. He felt as young as he had felt old, minutes before.

“I can't,” she said. But she wrapped her arms around him and held him more tightly. He slid a hand beneath her sweater and touched her bare back. She shivered. “I have to get back to Tim.”

“No, you don't. Go make your excuse and meet me at my car.” He didn't know where this recklessness was coming from, unless it was Nicole's ghost.

“We actually drove separately,” she said thoughtfully. “Because I thought I would get bored and want to leave early.”

“You're bored,” Dean said, taking her hand. He kissed the inside of her wrist. “You want to leave early.”

T
he next two weeks were all about Laura. How to see her. When to call her. They met in the clubhouse, near the football field, and behind the concession stand. Once they unrolled a tumbling mat in the equipment room near the girls' locker room. Dean felt as if he was discovering the high school his students knew, a place full of secret sexual corners. He and Laura even happened upon a young couple once, a girl and a boy Dean recognized from freshman gym. Their lips were so red and swollen that it was as if they'd spent the entire class period kissing. Maybe they had. Dean thought he and Laura would, if they could. But they didn't have as much time.

One morning Laura met him in the parking lot with coffee and doughnuts. “Remember our old breakfasts?” she asked. “I liked you from the start.” He couldn't say he felt the same without sounding like a cheater. He felt like he was cheating now. He wasn't convinced that Nicole didn't know. Somehow she was watching him. And yet that sense that he was getting away with something, the idea that being with Laura was some kind of cosmic betrayal, made their sex all the more satisfying. This, he knew, was the particular pleasure of adultery, enjoyed
by many before him. For some reason, he'd thought he'd be immune to it.

Laura was cheating, too. She removed her engagement ring when she arrived at the middle school, putting it in her desk drawer. She told Dean she didn't want to see it on her finger. She hadn't broken up with Tim. It was complicated, she said. The complicated part, Dean guessed, was that she wasn't ready to throw over the promise of marriage for him. Once, when Dean embraced her outside the clubhouse, still vaguely in view of the school, she pushed him away, saying, “I could lose my job!” But he thought there was something gleeful at the edge of her voice. Like some part of her wished to blow apart her life, to detonate all her uncertainties about Tim, about marriage, about small towns. You didn't have to be a raging romantic to believe that love—or sex—could obliterate doubt. It could, for a time. Dean knew that from experience, from falling in love with Nicole for the first time—and for the second and third times, for all the times throughout their marriage that she was lost, and then returned to him.

He wasn't falling in love with Laura. Or at least, he didn't have romantic feelings about her; he didn't walk around imagining a future with her and the boys, the four of them living together as a family. His emotions weren't blurring his thoughts. His senses were sharper; he noticed more details: the subtle changes in Bryan's and Robbie's vocabularies, the variances in the strides of the cross-country girls, the moods of his students. The weather was changing, and the newly cold air seemed a piece of the sharpening, his alertness. Food tasted better. Laura looked more beautiful, the color high in her cheeks after they'd been together. And rosy from the cold, too.
Sometimes she stopped by practice, ostensibly to talk about Robbie. That was the excuse if anyone ever asked. But no one ever asked. And they never discussed Robbie. There was too much guilt there, on both sides, and it wasn't the kind of guilt that made things more exciting.

Worries about Stephanie faded. He let them fade. He stopped calling her. But he was reminded of her every morning during his second-period gym class, when he saw Missy. For a week, she refused to come to practice because she was so offended by the way he'd scolded her at the meet. But he didn't apologize. Instead he made her run during her gym period. The fact that she obeyed let him know he had a chance.

He was optimistic because of Laura. He was passionate because of Laura. It started to rub off on the girls during practice. They ran harder. On race day, Missy showed up. Dean wouldn't let her run because she had missed practice. She stood with him on the sidelines and watched as See-See and Aileen got personal records. Dean could feel her impatience.

The next week Missy came to every practice. Dean worked on pacing. He was trying to teach the girls what a 6:30 pace felt like, versus 7:00 versus 8:00 versus a slow-jogging 9:00. The only way to learn was to run the different paces. They went to the track and did quarters, one fast, one slow, one very fast, one very slow, one kind of fast, one kind of slow. He tried to get them to think in numbers, something abstract to distract them from the pain. It was hard to get them to go really fast because they were scared. He told them they had to feel the pain so they would know how fast they were running. How fast they could go. And so they would know how quickly pain could fade. He told them running was managing pain. He
wasn't sure this was true. He felt it was true of grieving. He thought you had to get close to the bone sometimes. And then you had to back off. He worried that Laura was a kind of drug for him. That he was using her to dull his sadness. He would remind himself that he knew her before, that there was real feeling involved. That it wasn't just sex and sensation. Other times he felt defiant—so what if it was just sex, just sensation. He wasn't married. He was alone. Nicole was dead; he could do what he wanted.

M
EGAN STOOD IN
the doorway of Dean's office. Her shoes were bright, toothpaste white, as if she'd scrubbed them that morning. Her hair was up in a tight, high ponytail, the hairstyle pulling at her temples, making her entreating gaze even more intense.

“What are you doing here?” Dean asked. It was barely eight on a Saturday morning.

“I want to race,” she said. “I'm dying to try.”

“Megan, I can't let you run, you're not on the team.”

“It's okay; I've been doing the practices,” she said. “Aileen has been telling me them. I do them the day after you give them. But I didn't run yesterday because I wanted to be fresh today. And Aileen's mom made us pasta last night so I'm all carbo-loaded.”

“Does your mother know you're here?”

Megan shook her head. “I stayed overnight at Aileen's.”

“I have to call her.” Dean picked up his office phone. Outside, in the parking lot, the bus was waiting for him. Today's meet was a big invitational in Langford, a large school in the next county over.

“Please don't,” Megan said. “She's going to say no. But it's not fair for her to decide.”

“She's your mother; it doesn't matter what's fair.”

“I just think if Aunt Nic was alive, Mom wouldn't be like this. It's not your fault you can't convince her.”

It startled him to hear his niece invoke the alternative world where Nic was alive, a world he thought only he inhabited. He looked into Megan's blue eyes, and it hit him that she looked like Nicole, she had the same intensity of expression. He had wanted, so many times, to see this kind of ambition in his wife's eyes, this desire to compete, to be a part of the world. He couldn't say no to it. Joelle would have to understand.

T
HE GIRLS RECEIVED
Megan easily—so easily that Dean wondered if they'd known about her secret training all along. They had good energy on the starting line. Dean warned them not to sprint too much at the beginning, to remember their pacing workouts. He told them that if they started to feel nervous to remember that this race was practice for the largest races, later on. In truth, the Langford Invitational was one of the biggest races of the year, with runners of a caliber they would not encounter in many other meets, including States.

The gun went off with a cloud of smoke, and Bryan, who was standing next to Dean, clapped his hands and yelled “
GO EAGLES!
” at the top of his lungs. Robbie was waiting at the finish with Philips. Dean looked for his runners, but it was too difficult with blue being one of the most popular school colors. The gold-and-white uniforms of the Middletown runners stood out, and Dean remembered that Adrienne Fellows
would be in this race. He wondered how she would do with some real competition.

The course began in an open field and then looped around eight serene tennis courts, bordered by gardens and chain-link fences that managed to look majestic rather than punitive. Public schools like Langford bugged Dean, even though he'd gone to a high school that was just as nice. But he'd felt like he had to earn his place there by being a good athlete, while other kids—kids who stabled horses in his father's barn—felt entitled to a beautiful education.

“Daddy, look, it's Megan!” Bryan pointed toward the courts, where the perimeter trail had forced the runners into a narrow line. But there was a blue-shirted figure running outside the line of racers, like a car driving in the breakdown lane, and she was steadily passing other girls, picking them off one by one. The girl—Dean couldn't quite believe it was Megan—was heading toward an open space near the front of the long, stretched-out pack.

“She's going to be first!” Bryan said.

“No, Adrienne's got the lead.” Dean looked beyond the courts to the next part of the trail, a footpath bordered by pine trees, where Adrienne's gold-shirted figure was pulling ahead.

“Come on,” he said to Bryan. They had stopped jogging toward the mile marker to gawk at the race. “We have to get Megan's split.”

There was a crowd of parents and coaches at the first mile marker, which was at the top of a slight hill near the high school's gym. They began to cheer when Adrienne's head appeared, cresting the hill. Everyone seemed to have affection
for her, regardless of school affiliation. Behind Adrienne was a small pack of three runners, each from a different school. They all clocked in with sub-six miles. A good fifteen seconds passed, and then Megan appeared, her gaze on the ground a few feet ahead of her.

“Holy crap, she's beating See-See!” Bryan said.

“She's going out too fast,” Dean said. He hadn't even thought to warn her about the adrenaline rush at the beginning of a race. He ran ahead to an open space just beyond the mile marker, where he could talk to her. She saw him then and gave a little smile.

“You're looking good,” he said, calling to her as she ran toward him. “It's okay to slow down here if you need to, okay? You need to finish strong, that's the main thing.”

He started to run alongside her, but she was concentrating so deeply that he wasn't even sure she'd heard a thing he'd said. “Finish strong!” he said again, before falling back. He turned and saw that See-See and Missy were coming his way. He checked his watch: 6:02. He had three runners in the top fifteen, which was as good as any of the big schools. There was no way it would last and he didn't have the depth to back them up, scoring-wise, but it was so far beyond what he had imagined that he felt a little manic. He wanted to sprint ahead to the second mile marker to see if Megan would hold on to fifth place, but Robbie and Philips were already there. And anyway, he wasn't in good enough shape. There was no way to do that and also make the finish line.

The mile clock hit seven minutes, and then Lori and Aileen appeared, running together, with Lori pulling ahead slightly, buoyed by the crowd's cheering. With just a few weeks of prac
tice, soft blond Lori had become more muscular and, it seemed to Dean, more confident.

“Good steady start!” he called to them. “Good steady start! Now it's time to kick it into a higher gear, you've only got two miles left. That's eight laps on the track. You do that every day in practice, eight laps, two miles, fifteen minutes, that's it, fifteen minutes and it's all over.”

“You sound like an auctioneer,” Bryan said.

“It's called patter,” Dean said. “C'mon, let's get to the finish line.”

“No! We have to wait for Jessica.”

Jessica passed the first mile marker at eight minutes, twenty seconds, her French braid still stiffly in place. She managed a nod when she saw Bryan, but her face was flushed with exertion, as if she'd just run a sub-six. As soon as she was out of sight, Dean ran toward the finish, which was on the track, inside the football stadium. Willowboro's football team played Langford every year, and at night, when the white lights shone down on the stadium, with the surrounding unpopulated darkness, it seemed majestic and important, a minor city. Today, in the midday sun, the tall lights and tall silver bleachers were still impressive, but now Dean was paying attention to the red rubberized track and the long finishing chute that was lined with fluorescent pink and yellow flags. The runners would enter the track at the far end, opposite the scoreboard, and then they would run almost a full lap before they crossed the finish line. A crowd had gathered in the bleachers, and a couple of reporters and photographers were waiting near the finish.

The crowd began clapping and whistling when Adrienne
entered the small stadium, her white-and-gold uniform shiny in the sun, her stride quick but not lengthening, her shoulders relaxed, her chin lifted, her body a model of efficiency and form. When she passed Dean, he was surprised by how fast she was going, how labored her breath was.

Adrienne had a clear, unshakable lead, with the next group of three runners coming into the stadium about thirty yards behind her. They had their own miniature competition for second place, each runner trying to get the inside lane, a negotiation so interesting that Dean did not notice Megan's arrival. She had held fifth and was gaining on the minipack.

“Dean, you didn't tell me she was this fast!”

It was Philips, his lean face clean-shaven. He was slightly out of breath, having run from the two-mile mark. Robbie was at his side, dazed but happy. “Go, Megan!” he screamed. “Reel them in!”

She heard him; there was some micromovement on her face that Dean felt only he could see. He watched as she began to make up the distance between herself and the runners ahead, shortening the space as if she were manipulating time. It was as if she were doing it with her eyes, with Nicole's faraway gaze.

Adrienne had crossed the finish line, and the crowd was now following Megan's trajectory with greater excitement. Dean noticed one of the reporters directing the photographer to get a picture of Megan.