Hannah Gersen - Home Field

Laura almost missed the turnoff that led to Ed and Joelle’s farm, swerving at the last minute. The farm’s long driveway, which snaked behind the town, parallel to Main Street, was a mixture of gravel and dirt, deeply rutted by tractor wheels. Laura struggled to fit her little car’s wheels into the ruts and they bounced uncomfortably. “Sorry, sorry.”

“I hope you can find your way home,” Dean joked. But he was actually a little bit worried.

“This is good, it’s sobering me up.”

She had her high beams on, and to Dean’s relief she turned them down as they approached the farmhouse and barn. Still, her headlights caught the night-shining eyes of some little animal — probably a cat — and she lurched to a stop. “I don’t want to hit a skunk,” she said. “I did that my first week here. Oh my God, it was disgusting. I had to take it to a mechanic to get the smell out.”

“You can pull in over there,” Dean said, pointing toward the barn.

Laura came to a surprisingly smooth and quiet stop, shutting the lights and engine off. The music cut out abruptly and all at once it seemed very dark inside the car.

“So here we are.” Laura kept her hands on the steering wheel, her bare arms looking slender and pale in the darkness. She turned toward him. “I shouldn’t have bombarded you with all my issues. I’ve ruined any chance of helping you. Or Robbie.”

“You haven’t, I promise,” Dean said. He wanted so badly to touch her. But her mention of Robbie was a jolt to his conscience. He slid his hand into the door handle, cracking the passenger door. Cool air rushed in.

“I guess I’ll see you around,” she said.

“Yeah, soon.” Dean’s leg was out the door now; it was as if his body was coaxing him out of the car, away from the fantasies his mind was spinning.

Dean watched as she drove slowly down the lane, the brake lights flashing every few seconds. After a few moments, the landscape was dark again. Dean walked over to his car. Ed had left his keys on the seat. The last thing he wanted was to drive home. In the distance, he could hear Laura’s car making its way down the driveway; but it was odd, it sounded as if she was getting closer. His heart began to beat more quickly as he saw headlights swinging toward him. They cut two silver paths down the lane, illuminating swaths of gravel and leaves. But it wasn’t Laura’s car; the headlights were too square, too wide apart. It was Geneva, Dean realized, in her shitty old Ford sedan. He couldn’t help smiling, even though he was disappointed.

Geneva came to a stop and leaned out the driver’s-side window. Her gray hair was slicked back, held in place by a puffy cloth headband, and she wore bright earrings. “Get in,” she said. “Come have a nightcap with me.”

“I’ve already had a lot.”

“Come on, I want someone to celebrate with. I won fifty bucks tonight!”

He got into her car, which smelled like her lilac perfume. Geneva had stopped the car in second and it stalled when she pressed the gas. “Whoops!” She shifted back to first and gunned it. The road became less defined the farther they went. By the time they reached the end of the lane, it wasn’t much more than a cow path. Geneva pulled to a stop beneath a sycamore tree. “Here we are.”

Dean breathed in the damp, sweet, faintly rotten smell of the pasture that was Geneva’s front yard. At night, in the dark, it seemed especially expansive, a lake that kept the entire farm at bay. He could see why she preferred to live down here instead of in the farmhouse up by the main road.

“You stay on the porch,” Geneva instructed. “I’ll bring out our drinks. I think I have some of Paul’s old liquor.”

Dean sat down in the rocker his father-in-law used to inhabit, up on the farmhouse porch. It creaked as he leaned back. He looked up at the night sky, watching as the half-moon slid out from behind the clouds, casting its cobweb light across the field. Dean didn’t know how Nicole could stand to leave the world behind.

Geneva emerged from the house with two neat whiskeys.

“So guess how I’m going to spend my winnings?” she said, settling into her chair.

“Filet mignon for the buzzards?”

“Ha, no, I’m buying lingerie! Joelle leaves her Victoria’s Secret catalogs in my mailbox now; she doesn’t want the girls seeing them. I told her, it’s Ed you have to worry about. Which she did not appreciate. I told you, she has no sense of humor anymore.”

“Did she ever?”

“You’d have to have one to marry someone like Ed.”

“He’s not so bad,” Dean said, thinking of how Ed had left him alone at the bar with Laura.

“He came down here the other day with this hangdog expression. He says, ‘Geneva, I have to talk to you about those buzzards. It’s against the natural order of things for you to feed them. They’re supposed to eat dead things, not cat food.’ I said, ‘I know, that’s why I’ve started feeding them roadkill.’ He gives me this look like he doesn’t know what to think, so I go on, I say, ‘What do you think I do in the mornings when I take my car out?’ And he turns pale and says, ‘Geneva, please tell me you’re not picking up dead animals.’ I said, ‘I wear gloves, don’t worry.’ And he gets all concerned. And then I start laughing and he’s so nervous he has to wait a minute, to be sure I’m kidding. Oh, you should have seen his face!”

“You shouldn’t pull his chain like that. Or Joelle’s. They’re going to think you’re losing it.”

“They already do!” Geneva’s bright earrings bobbed as she laughed. “I have to admit, I like having those buzzards around. I don’t know why; maybe it’s because they’re not afraid of death.”

“I can see that.”

“Can you?” Geneva said. “I wonder about you, Dean. You’re so self-contained. The way I see it, when something bad happens to you, you either button up and batten down, or you go a little crazy. Obviously, I chose the crazy route. But you? I’m not so sure.”

“I’m battening, I guess.”

“I couldn’t do that,” Geneva said. “I don’t have the self-control.”

“I don’t know that I do, either.”

“Oh, please. I’ve never met anyone more disciplined.”

“That’s the problem. I need something to be disciplined about. Something to do. I can’t go to another football game and sit in the stands and eat hot dogs. And I can’t go to work every day, come home, and be with my kids. I can’t. I’m not built that way. I have to have some sort of goal, some sort of fight. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why Nic, if that’s why she — if she didn’t have a sense of purpose. And maybe that’s my fault, maybe I should have given it to her.”

“Dean, you could have given her the world. I can’t make sense of it, Jo can’t make sense of it, and if Paul were alive, he wouldn’t be able to, either.” She paused. “Actually, maybe he would. He had his dark days. Nicole always took after him. Joelle takes after me. Not that it’s that simple. Paul was happy when he was old. He turned a corner after he had grandchildren. Life has many phases. That’s what I would say to Nicky if I could talk to her now.”

Dean looked toward the southern end of the pasture, trying to see if he could make out the little cemetery just beyond it.

“Have you gone to Nic’s grave?” he asked.

“I go every Sunday.”

“I haven’t gone back yet.”

“Well, she’s not there.”

“I know,” Dean said. He returned his gaze to the sky. “She used to say I’d be happier without her.”

“She didn’t mean that,” Geneva said. “But don’t be afraid to prove her right.”

LAIRD’S HOUSE WAS furnished sparsely with rental furniture, some of it blatantly fake, like a large gray plastic television without any wires connecting it to the wall, while other items were uncanny, like a mantel of gold picture frames, all with the display photos still inside, so that the family in absentia seemed to consist of multiple wives and a dozen children. In the kitchen, a variety of cereal boxes were lined up in the cupboard, Seinfeld style. When they first arrived, Stephanie and Laird toured the downstairs, commenting, letting their eyes adjust to the dim light. There were no shades or curtains on the windows, and light from the waxing moon filled the rooms.