Hannah Gersen - Home Field

He hated to think of the stories people would tell about Nic: the girl who was widowed too young. The girl whose broken heart had never quite healed. The girl who tried in vain to replace her football star husband with the high school football coach. People were already acting as if she were destined to be some perfect ghost, putting her alongside Sam in heaven, under the banner of First Love. It was offensive to Dean, the way it overlooked his and Nicole’s fourteen years of marriage — somehow four years with Sam surpassed that. People were invested in Sam because they’d watched him grow up. Dean understood that. But he’d thought that the town was invested in him, too. He’d become a father to Sam’s daughter, he’d taken care of Nicole, he’d coached a championship team. Everyone had seemed so grateful; he had felt so grateful. Those early years were easy, busy years. He could still remember the piles of gifts when Robbie was born: the baskets of food, the bouquets of flowers, the boxes of homemade fudge. He felt as if people were paying him homage, as if he were a minor king.

The heron was still standing there, glowing more whitely now that the light was fading. Dean called to the boys, and they started, as if they’d forgotten he was with them. The heron was startled, too, and stretched its wings. Suddenly it was in flight, sailing low, just a few feet above the water. Its white form was like a streak of fresh paint against the muddy creek.

Robbie and Bry waded back to shore, where their shoes and socks were waiting for them. Together, the three of them climbed the steep bank and walked across the meadow that led to their house.

There was an aluminum-foil-wrapped pie pan sitting on their front step. People were still dropping off baked goods. Dean didn’t know how to make it stop.

“Peach,” said Robbie, sniffing.

“I wish it was chocolate cake,” Bry said.

Dean brought it inside and found a note tucked beneath the foil. It was from Julie Frye, a woman from church. Most of the baked goods he received were from church ladies. Joelle said they were “on the prowl.” Dean couldn’t help thinking that each of these little offerings was meant to make him feel guilty for skipping services, week after week. He stuck it in the fridge with all the other leftovers, wedging it so tightly that he ended up knocking over something in the back. It was one of Nicole’s bottles of sunscreen. She liked it to be cool when she put it on her face. He gazed at the white bottle with its orange cartoon sun, little bits of the sun’s rays chipped off with use. The boys were staring up at him.

“Can we watch TV?”

“If you get ready for bed first,” Dean said.

“But it’s still light out!”

“Just do it.” Dean chose not to remind them that they fell asleep every night in front of the TV, a habit he hadn’t meant to foster but had stopped trying to resist. TV, along with snacks, worked like a sedative to get them past the precarious border between waking and dreaming. It worked for Dean, too, although his snack was beer or bourbon.

“Can we have microwave popcorn?” Bryan asked.

“Sure, sure,” Dean said. Outside, someone was pulling into his driveway. His first thought was Stephanie, but when he checked the kitchen window, it was Garrett’s shiny white Geo. He probably got it washed every week.

“Garrett,” Dean said, meeting him at the side door.

“Hey, Coach. I just wanted to drop off the playbook, like I said.” Garrett held up a manila envelope.

Dean opened the envelope and flipped through the book. There were notes on almost every page. Dean couldn’t believe so many plays were going to be affected by Laird’s departure.

“I got a little carried away and ended up staying late,” Garrett said. “And then Brett Albright stopped by.”

“What did he want?” Albright was his QB and team captain. He was one of Dean’s favorites, a smart kid who had learned the game from his older brother, borrowing his playbook and memorizing it for fun. Dean had taken him out of JV his sophomore year even though he wasn’t quite physically ready.

“His right shoulder is acting up, but we can talk about it later. I gave him some stretches. And, uh, I told him about Laird. I told him not to mention it.”

“Okay.” Dean didn’t really feel like being annoyed with Garrett. “You want to come in for a beer?”

“I would,” Garrett said, “but I have plans with Connie.”

In the spring Garrett had begun dating a tennis instructor, a woman Dean had inadvertently introduced him to when he gave Garrett free passes to the country club where Nicole worked. Secretly Dean felt that Connie, who was fit and young and innocently pretty, was out of Garrett’s league.

“Another time,” Dean said. As he watched Garrett leave, he felt jealous, not only of Garrett’s night ahead, but for the entire phase of life that Garrett was in — the beginning phase, when everything was still unknown, but your goals were clear. If someone had told Dean last fall that he would be envious of his excitable assistant coach, Dean wouldn’t have believed it. But here he stood, in his own yard, wishing he were the one driving away in that spotless little white car.

STEPHANIE STARED UP at Robert Smith, tacked to Mitchell’s ceiling. His pale face seemed to glow in the dim light of the room. Mitchell’s room was always dark and gloomy, the windows draped with layers of gauzy scarves from Goodwill and the lights turned down low. When Mitchell’s parents were gone, he burned incense and played music that his father did not approve of, bands like Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana and, if Stephanie was visiting, Tori Amos. The incense was purely theatrical; Mitchell wasn’t trying to cover the smell of anything. He didn’t smoke pot or drink, although everyone assumed he did, with his laid-back persona and baggy, patchouli-drenched clothes. It used to be that only Stephanie knew how smart and driven he truly was, but getting into MIT had changed that. Now everyone called him Doogie Howser.

“You going to take all your posters with you to school?” Stephanie was trying, for what seemed like the tenth time, to get a conversation going. They usually talked easily, but they were having trouble tonight.

“Nah, I’m starting fresh,” Mitchell said. “Maybe I’ll be a minimalist.”

“Yeah, right.” Stephanie nodded to his dresser, crowded with a zoo of Tetley tea animals he’d inherited from his grandmother. Hung above them was his collection of black velvet paintings, scrounged from yard sales. “You’re like the king of kitsch in here.”

“And you’re the queen in that dress.”

“It was my mother’s,” Stephanie said, with an awkward laugh. Her dress was kind of Holly Hobbie — ish, but she liked the simple print of yellow sunflowers on a black background.

“Sorry,” Mitchell said. He looked at her dolefully but without pity. He was the only person in her life who hadn’t treated her like a fragile flower after her mother’s death.

“You think it’s strange that I’m wearing her dress?”

“A little,” Mitchell said. “So what? You should do more strange things.”

Stephanie took this as a jab at her conventionality — one she would have welcomed before her mother’s death, but which now felt like a criticism. Lately she felt overly sensitive. She couldn’t handle Mitchell’s or anyone’s wisecracks; it was as if they put real cracks in her.

“It’s a little bit long,” Mitchell said. “Maybe you should shorten it.”

“You think so?” She and Mitchell often altered items they bought at thrift stores, usually with help from Mitchell’s mother. But this wasn’t the same thing, exactly.

“Definitely. I’ll go get my mom’s scissors.”