Hannah Gersen - Home Field

“I’m going to go.” He stood up. “Let’s take the weekend, okay?”

“Take the weekend and what?”

“Just be by ourselves. To think things over. I have to take care of my boys. And the girls have a race.”

She nodded without saying anything. Dean left her office carefully, barely opening the door. He gave the receptionist a big smile — not that it mattered, she was hardly paying attention — and he jogged back to the high school, letting the conversation, and the feelings it had provoked, fall away. He felt fine when he got back to his office, full of resolve to be a better father, a better teacher, a better coach. The feeling was ratified when the front office called to say he’d received a UPS package from Tri-State Sports. It was the new cross-country uniforms he’d ordered after the first meet, before he’d even realized he would be coaching the girls for the rest of the season. He opened up the large box as soon as he could, eager to see the clean new uniforms inside. It felt like a delivery from the most optimistic part of himself.

There was a short practice scheduled that afternoon, and at the end of it, Dean had Bryan hand out the brand-new shorts and singlets to both the girls’ and boys’ teams. Everyone was pleased with their new outfits, the blues so much deeper than the faded colors of their old uniforms.

Only Megan seemed uncertain about the change. She’d been coming to practice since her big win, and at first Dean thought it was a superstitious thing, that she wanted to wear the same jersey for every race. But it turned out she was worried about the length of the shorts, which were a few inches higher than the old ones.

“You can wear biking shorts underneath,” See-See suggested. “Or tights when it gets cold.”

“I won’t have time to get them before tomorrow,” Megan said. “Can’t I just wear the old shorts?”

“We’ll figure something out,” Dean said. He could see this was a Joelle issue, probably something to do with their new church.

Megan came over to him after he dismissed everyone. She apologized for being so picky.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get you some bike shorts tonight,” Dean said. “I was going to take the boys to the mall anyway.”

“We’re going to the mall?” Bryan said. “We haven’t been there since before Mommy died!”

Megan answered Bryan casually. “What did you get the last time you went?”

“Bathing suits. But we got a winter coat on sale, too. Do you remember, Dad? It was for me, for this year. I wonder where Mommy put it.”

“I don’t know, buddy, we can look for it tonight. C’mon, we have to go pick up Robbie. We’ll see you tomorrow, Megan. Get a good night’s sleep.”

They found Robbie sitting outside in the chilly air with the theater kids, as well as See-See, who was catching up with her friends. They were all dressed in layers of dark colors, a style Dean associated with Stephanie. It had been almost a month since he’d spoken to her, and he was starting to worry again, but he told himself not to, that he’d been exactly the same when he was her age. Especially those first weeks of college.

“You smell like cigarettes,” Bryan said when he and Robbie got into the backseat. Sometimes they sat together in the back, giving the car a feeling of expectation, as if they were saving the passenger seat for Nicole.

“Cory and Seth smoke,” Robbie said. “Seth is like my stage dad.”

“He’s a bad dad,” Bryan said. “Bad dad! Bad dad! Bad dad! Bad dad! Bad dad!”

“Will you knock it off?” Dean said.

“Say it!” Bryan demanded. “It’s like a tongue twister.”

Robbie began to chant: “Bad dad bad dad bad dad bada bada bada bada bada batta batta batta batta sa- wing !”

“That’s from Ferris Bueller!” Bryan said. “Can we watch it tonight, Daddy? With popcorn? Please?”

“After we go to the mall.”

“We’re going to the mall ?” Robbie leaned forward between the seats.

Dean hadn’t been avoiding shopping, exactly, but the Pleasant Valley Mall had to be one of the most ironically named places in the world. It was built on a wetland, and its low-lying buildings, planted in a field of asphalt, always looked as if they were sinking. It was Nicole who had first identified the specific nature of their ugliness, the way they resembled the nearby prison. At some point the bleakness got to be too much, and they stopped going. Instead, if they needed to do a big shop, they drove an hour and a half to a large mall in one of the D.C. suburbs.

Luckily, Robbie and Bry were far less particular, and only associated the PVM (as it was referred to by the locals) with fun and new clothes.

They went to Dick’s Sporting Goods first. Both the boys needed new winter boots. They got their feet measured and to Dean’s surprise, Robbie had gone up a size. Dean winced to think of him walking around in ill-fitting shoes and bought him two pairs of sneakers, one practical and the other a pair of blue Chuck Taylors that Robbie found fashionable. Passing the Nike display, Dean saw Megan’s “air ponies.” Nearby were thin-soled racing flats in fluorescent colors. Dean had noticed that Adrienne Fellows had a bright yellow pair that she always wore. He wished he had the girls’ shoe sizes; he would buy them new shoes to go with their new uniforms. Remembering Megan’s request for something to wear beneath her shorts, he asked a salesgirl for help. She sold him a pair of dark blue aerobics shorts made of thick spandex.

They had dinner at a popular chain restaurant of the boys’ choosing. The restaurant was lively, and the boys loved the novelty of eating at a place they’d seen advertised on television. The waitress doted on them, giving them plastic souvenir cups and extra french fries. Dean was glad to see them so happy, but, personally, he felt lost and uncomfortable in the world. He often felt this way on Friday nights — there was always the knowledge that the white lights were shining down on Garrett, not him — but tonight his regret went deeper. He felt as if he’d gotten marooned in the wrong life, as if his real life, not just his career, was going on somewhere else. It was a feeling of loss so diffuse he didn’t know how to pin it down.

After dinner he and the boys shopped some more. In a camping store, a display of polar fleece jackets caught Dean’s eye and he tried on a dark blue one with white piping. It was what the other running coaches wore. He decided to get one for himself and asked Robbie and Bry if they wanted them, too.

“Are we going to get one for Steffy?”

“Sure, why not?” Dean said. “Pick a color you think she’d like.”

Bry chose a lavender jacket, but Robbie said it was too pretty, that Stephanie would want black. They compromised and got dark purple.

Their last stop was JCPenney, for the very practical purchase of underwear, something the boys had not thought to tell him they needed but that Dean was sure was lacking. He sent the boys to the boys’ section to pick out the ones they wanted while he retreated to the men’s department to replenish his own stores. The perfume and cosmetics department lay between these two worlds and as Dean passed by the mirrored displays he caught a scent of whatever flowery essence Laura wore. The thought of her, of her warm skin, caught him. He was pulled back to her small, windowless office, to her tears, to the anger she’d provoked. He had to apologize. He couldn’t let things end — not yet. Because when he said good-bye to her, he would have to say good-bye to Nicole, too. Somehow the two of them were connected in his mind.

Hawk’s Peak was the smallest school in the district, nestled in the westernmost corner of the county, high in the foothills of the Appalachians. It was so small that the middle and high schools were combined in one building. Even more telling was the fact that it didn’t have a football team. Dean had never seen the campus, and when the bus began to ascend the bumpy corridor of a road that led to it, he joked with the girls that they should have done altitude training. He was actually somewhat concerned. Megan was the only one who had run regularly on trails and hills, on her family’s farm.