Hannah Gersen - Home Field

At the edge of the creek a willow’s tapered leaves floated on the gentle current. The water was cloudy with mud from the previous day’s rain but Stephanie’s horse, Juniper, drank thirstily. Her father’s horse watched from a distance. Nearby there was a small pebbly beach where Stephanie and her younger brothers could launch canoes and inner tubes. Stephanie sometimes even went swimming, although yesterday she’d had a bad scare, one that she hadn’t been able to shake off. She had come down to the creek by herself, riding Juniper without a saddle. It had been hot, in the nineties, and the water was so clear she could see straight to the bottom. She didn’t have her suit with her so she went in wearing her clothes, a lightweight T-shirt and shorts. The swim was as refreshing as she’d imagined, but when she mounted Juniper, he reared up in surprise at her wet clothes and then bolted toward the woods, trying to throw her. It took less than a minute to subdue him, but as Stephanie realized what a fragile thing her body really was, time slowed down in a way that seemed almost supernatural, the seconds stretching to accommodate her fear. She didn’t tell her parents what happened, afraid they would stop letting her go for solo rides. She loved to go out on her own, loved the calm that descended as she meandered along the wooded trails that surrounded the farm.

But it was also nice to be with her father, to have him to herself for a while; it felt like it had been months, maybe years, since they’d spent time together, just the two of them. Stephanie had deliberately distanced herself, wanting to become more independent, needing to be more independent, in light of her mother’s dependence on her. She’d thought her father would take over after she left for college, but instead it seemed that Robbie would. He was at that age — the age when you begin to look offstage, to wonder what’s going on behind the scenes of family life.

Her father rode one of the newer horses, a palomino whose sandy silver mane matched her father’s graying blond hair. Beneath the black dye, Stephanie’s hair was as light as her father’s, though technically he was her stepfather; he had married Stephanie’s mother when Stephanie was four. Every once in a while it would occur to Stephanie that she and her father were not related and she would wonder what her life would be like if her real father had lived. But her real father was not so real to her. He was a man in a posed photograph in her mother’s frilly wedding album.

“That tree’s going to fall soon.” Her father pointed toward the willow whose trailing branches hung over the water. “It’s going to stop up everything.” Its trunk leaned at a forty-five-degree angle, the roots clinging like fingers to the banks.

“Robbie and Bry will like that,” Stephanie said. Her younger brothers loved to build dams on the little stream that ran through their backyard. It seemed to her a distinctly boyish thing: to want to manipulate the landscape. When she was their age, she made boats from feathers and bark and watched them float away. She would make wishes on the boats. How many dozens of boats had she sent downstream when her mother was pregnant, wishing that Bryan would be a girl? Sweet, gullible Bry. Her other wish, the one she’d chased with fleets of twig and leaf, was for her mother to feel better. To forget whatever special torment distracted her from life. There were months, even years, when that wish seemed to come true. But just when Stephanie would begin to relax, to believe that her mother had finally paid off her debt of sadness, it would return.

Stephanie was always the first to notice. It would take her father weeks to catch up. Sometimes Stephanie loved him for his obliviousness and sometimes she hated him for it. She was relieved to be going away to college. When she got her acceptance letters, her father told her about winning a football scholarship when he was her age, how proud and surprised he’d been that his hard work had actually paid off. He hadn’t grown up in an athletic family; no one had encouraged him to play sports or to spend his free time lifting weights and running laps around fields of grazing horses. Once, Stephanie asked why he hadn’t learned to train horses, like his father, but he only shrugged and said he wasn’t a horse person. Stephanie wasn’t a horse person, either, but she liked visiting her grandfather’s farm in Pennsylvania, liked being far from Willowboro, Maryland, where everyone knew her as the coach’s daughter.

Her mother seemed freer here, too. All week long she’d had energy for everything: for cooking, for riding, for hiking. Even for minigolf, which she typically hated because it reminded her of the country club where she worked.

“We should probably get back,” her father said. “Do you want to lead the way? Otherwise you’re stuck looking at a horse’s ass.”

“Dad, you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

He laughed and Stephanie smiled at how easy it was to make her father laugh — she barely had to attempt a joke — and how good it felt anyway.

The ride home was quiet and still, with just the sound of the horses’ hooves clopping on the mud-packed ground. The trees arched over the trail, the leaves glowing green in the summer sun. Stephanie thought dreamily that it was like the end of Sleeping Beauty, when the thorns that surround the castle magically rearrange themselves to form a tunnel directly to the castle door.

“Do you hear that?” her father asked. “Sounds like an ambulance.”

“I thought it was cicadas.”

“It sounds close, like it’s on the drive. I hope Grandpa’s okay.”

“What’s the matter with Grandpa?”

“Nothing. He’s just getting old. I get nervous, the way he climbs the rafters. I have to remind him that he’s almost seventy. But he doesn’t want to hear that.”

The mew of the sirens got louder and then stopped. Was that good or bad? Juniper picked up the pace.

The creek trail was a loop that began and ended at the far corner of the fenced-in pasture adjacent to the stables. The pasture was a long, narrow rectangle, the length of two football fields, at least. Stephanie came out of the woods and approached the wooden gate. She could see a white ambulance in the distance: it was parked outside the barn, the back of the vehicle pulled up to the door.

“Oh my God.” Her father dismounted to unlatch the gate and then climbed back onto his horse and galloped ahead without waiting for her or even looking back. Stephanie was so surprised by his wordless departure that she stood at the gate for a moment, uncertain of what to do next. The peaceful mood of the walk was gone, but her body hadn’t gone into panic mode, not like her father’s. He was acting on instinct; he was going after his father. Or her brothers. Oh God, her brothers. She thought of how reckless Robbie could be. How he would swing so high on the rope swing and then leap off to land on the gravel lane, instead of into the hay. Her mother was always telling him to stop, that he was going to hurt himself.

Stephanie led Juniper through the gate, trying not to startle her. But there was fear in the horse’s black long-lashed eyes. Stephanie wished for her grandfather’s gentle presence. What if he had fallen or had a heart attack? Dread rippled through her body.

Juniper raced across the field, going almost too fast for Stephanie, who had to lean forward and squeeze hard with her thighs to keep her balance. Her father had left the front gate open and Juniper slowed at its entrance but ran up to the barn, which was on a slight rise. Stephanie pulled hard on the reins. The ambulance was driving away. Her father and grandfather stood in the barn’s doorway, her grandfather holding on to the palomino’s bridle. Robbie and Bry were nowhere to be seen.