Hannah Gersen - Home Field

Stephanie was still homesick, but she’d learned to bury the feeling, piling new experiences on top of it. And something funny was happening to the passage of time. It had to do with how much she was drinking, how alcohol made the nights race by and the mornings disappear. During the summer, her days had passed slowly, like she was stuck in the molasses of childhood. But even though her days were slow, the summer itself had gone by quickly. It seemed like one day she was sitting in the front pew, listening to Pastor John deliver her mother’s eulogy, and then a few days later it was summer’s end and she was back in church, watching her father talk to a strange-yet-familiar woman with dangly earrings.

College was the opposite. Although her days went quickly, it was hard to believe that only a week had passed since she’d stood in her high school’s parking lot, watching her father walk away from her.

Stephanie was back in her dorm room, now, getting clothes for the next few days. She hadn’t been to her room since Thursday, and she had timed her return to avoid her roommate, Theresa, whom she didn’t exactly dislike, but who had an annoying habit of presenting Stephanie with all her phone messages as soon as Stephanie entered the room, as if she, Theresa, were Stephanie’s secretary and Stephanie was the beleaguered and neglectful boss. Stephanie had no idea how this power dynamic had developed, since, in her opinion, she was the subordinate, the one who felt like she had to sneak into her own room.

Stephanie quickly dropped some dirty clothes in the hamper and packed some clean ones into her backpack. She gazed at her closet, uncertain of what else to take. She and Raquel were heading into Philadelphia tonight, to a club Raquel knew about. Stephanie had no idea what to wear to a club. Something black, she guessed. Something short.

She heard the door open and there was Theresa, carrying her dinner in a fogged-up take-out container.

“Oh, hi,” Theresa said. “You have, like, ten messages from your dad.”

“Thanks, I saw them.”

“Are you ever going to call him back?”

“Maybe.”

Theresa sat down at her desk and opened her container after putting her napkin on her lap. She was going to sit there and eat tofu stir-fry in front of her computer, like college was a desk job.

The phone rang. Theresa gave her a look.

“I’m not here,” Stephanie said.

“I’m not getting it.”

They both stared at the phone, a beige clamshell touch-tone that Theresa had brought from home. It was exactly like the phone mounted on the wall in Stephanie’s kitchen, the phone that she and her mother would sometimes let ring on lonely school nights when her father was out. Stephanie picked up the receiver and then dropped it back down in its cradle, shutting it right up. She wasn’t trying to be aggressive, but she succeeded in shocking Theresa, who acted as if Stephanie had killed something living.

“That might have been for me!”

“They’ll call back if it’s important.”

“I don’t understand what I did to offend you,” Theresa said. “You’re never here.”

“It’s easier to stay over at Raquel’s,” Stephanie said. “You don’t want me waking you up in the middle of the night, do you?”

“I’m just confused because you said on your housing forms that you weren’t a partyer,” Theresa said. “I mean, that’s why we got put together—”

The phone interrupted them. Theresa grabbed it so quickly it was almost slapstick.

“Hello. .? No, she’s not here. Okay — who? Robbie?”

“I’ll take it!”

“Oh, she just walked in the door—” Theresa managed to say. As if Robbie cared.

“What is it?” Stephanie said. “Why are you calling? Did something happen?”

“No. .” Robbie’s voice was tentative. “Steffy, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Is Dad there? Did he put you up to it?”

“I’m at Aunt Joelle’s. I told her I needed to call you and she said okay.”

“Where is Dad? Did he go out?” Stephanie imagined her father sitting in a candlelit restaurant with that woman from the bar — that Laura .

“He went to a Boosters party at Mr. Schwartz’s,” Robbie said.

“He’s still doing football stuff?”

“Just this,” Robbie said. “It seemed like he didn’t want to go, but he had to because Mr. Schwartz has been so nice. He brought us Redskins T-shirts the other day. But I would never wear them because we learned in school that it’s rude to say redskins. None of the drama kids wear sports stuff, anyway. I like hanging out with high school kids better than middle-school kids. I think I’m mature for my age.”

“You are, ” Stephanie said, settling into the call. She asked about Bryan, who, Robbie reported, was downstairs playing Sorry with Megan and Jenny. That meant Robbie was upstairs on the extension in their grandparents’ old room, probably lying on their old bed, with its faded paisley comforter.

“Bry is turning into a Jesus freak,” Robbie said. “We have to go to church with Aunt Joelle tomorrow and he’s so excited—”

“ Have to?”

“Because Dad’s staying out late at the party, so it’s easier.”

“You don’t have to go to church.” Stephanie glanced at her roommate, who was eating her dinner and pretending to read her e-mail, not getting the hint that maybe she should step out of the room for a few minutes. “Don’t worry about Bry. It’s just a phase.”

“Yeah, but now he wants to hang out with Aunt Joelle and do church things. And then Dad is with the cross-country girls every day, and on the weekends we have to go to races. I never get to do anything I want.”

“What about the play?”

“I love the play. But I don’t have any friends. They all think I’m strange because I have to go see the guidance counselor. I have to miss class.”

“Is it during a class you don’t like, at least?”

“It rotates.”

“Well, it’s good to see a counselor. I told you I saw a counselor.” Stephanie caught Theresa looking at her, like she knew it was a lie. Well, she probably did know; she probably had to field calls from the health center, too.

“I have to go,” Robbie said. “Aunt Joelle is calling me.”

He hung up before she could set a time to call again.

“Was that your brother?” Theresa asked.

“No, my eleven-year-old boyfriend,” Stephanie said. Bitchy. For no reason. Something about Theresa’s vulnerable desire to please reminded her of her mother. She turned her attention back to her closet and found the black dress with yellow sunflowers, the one that used to be her mother’s, the one she had altered to make her own. She quickly changed into it, pairing it with black tights, her jean jacket, and black lace-up boots that Mitchell had outgrown after just two months.

Raquel was waiting for her downstairs in the lobby, by the phone booths. She wore a 1960s-style wiggle dress, made of some awful/fabulous synthetic fabric. Stephanie had never known anyone with so many cool vintage clothes.

Raquel ran her fingers through her burgundy Manic Panic hair. “Come on, let’s get out of here already.”

GARRETT LIVED IN one of the brand-new condos plopped down in a cornfield near the school. Their architecture mimicked the design of the clapboard row houses in town, and they looked odd in the middle of the empty field, the awkward first guests at a party.

The cul-de-sac street was lined with cars, parked and double-parked, almost all of them trucks and SUVs — big, shiny vehicles for the big, shiny-faced ex — football players who drove them. Dean checked his reflection in the rearview, procrastinating. He’d tried to make an effort, shaving and putting on a sports coat, but he was in a sour mood. The morning’s meet had gone badly. Missy had stopped running halfway through the race. Just stopped and started walking. He worried she was hurt and ran across the field to help her. But nothing was wrong. She was tired, she said. Her feet hurt, her legs hurt, and even her lungs hurt. Dean told her it was supposed to hurt, that if it didn’t hurt she was doing it wrong. She wasn’t even breathing very hard.