Home Field (14 page)

“It is,” Stephanie said. “I just don't know anyone there.”

Laird nodded. “My new school sucks. Everyone is snobby. They say I have a hick accent. The coach isn't half as good as your dad.”

“Maybe you just don't know him that well.”

“No,” Laird said. “You can tell. He's a yeller. Your dad isn't like that. I can't believe he's not coaching anymore. I didn't find out until tonight. I was like—what? All the guys are so bummed.”

Stephanie shrugged. “You guys won tonight without him.”

“That's Beech Creek,” Laird said, dismissively. He fixed his gaze on her, suddenly seeming less sleepy. “Do you even
know
how good a coach your dad is? He has a football mind.”

“Isn't that an oxymoron?”

“You don't get it, your dad can work with any team, it doesn't matter how good they are. He'll come up with plays to match the players. If he'd been coaching Beech Creek tonight, they would have beaten us. That's a fact.”

“A verifiable fact.”

“Basically, yeah.” Laird grinned at his hyperbole. Behind him, his teammates were bellowing the lyrics to a Garth Brooks song. “I don't miss that,” he said.

“What's on your necklace?” Stephanie asked.

“It's my number.” He pulled on the silver chain to reveal a silver
12
.

Stephanie reached out to touch the charm. It was warm from his body. “So it's a football thing. Everything's a football thing for you guys.”

“Not everything,” Laird said. He took a step closer to her.

Stephanie kept hold of the number for another moment before letting it go. “Did you drive here?”

“Yeah, why?” He grinned.

“Because maybe we could drive somewhere else.”

A
FTER THE GAME,
Joelle volunteered to let the boys sleep over so that Dean and Ed could go out. Ed took Dean to Coach's, a new sports bar that was owned by one of his friends. “Thought you'd get a kick out of it,” Ed said when Dean commented on the blinking neon sign, shaped like a football. Inside, it was busy, with the Orioles game playing on all the TVs. The staff
wore baseball caps and team jerseys, and the walls were lined with salvaged trophies and old sports posters. The overall effect was cluttered and casual, as if you were in someone's disorganized basement—wholesome and easygoing. Not the effect, maybe, that Ed's buddy was going for, but more appealing than the seedy places along the dual highway.

Ed got the first round and a basket of salted peanuts, which he began to shell methodically, amassing a pile of nuts before devouring them in one quick handful. They watched the baseball game for a while, Dean marveling, as always, at how relaxed baseball players seemed as they stood at the plate, waiting for a ball to be hurled at them at ninety-plus miles per hour. They reminded him of cows, the way they chewed their cud and calmly regarded the cars whizzing by. Maybe that was why Ed liked the game so much.

In between innings there was a commercial for Nike shoes, featuring a long-legged girl running through the woods. Ed started talking about “air ponies” again, unable to get the name right even when it was right in front of him. He said he was thinking of buying Megan a pair anyway.

“She's such a good kid,” he said. “And she never asks for anything.”

“They'd be better for her feet,” Dean said. “You ready for another round?”

“Yeah—and some more of these?” Ed held up an empty peanut basket.

Waiting at the bar, Dean glanced around the room. The crowd skewed younger than he'd expected, everyone around Garrett's age, in their late twenties to early thirties. He checked for his assistant coach and was relieved not to find
him. He'd congratulated Garrett after the game, shaking his hand on the field, but he didn't go to the locker room to see the players, afraid he would be called upon to say something about the game—a victory despite Garrett's rearrangements.

A woman was waving to him from a table in the back. Laura, he realized. He waved back with a tentativeness that made her laugh and say something to her companion, a dark-haired woman Dean vaguely recognized.

“I'll be right back,” Dean said to Ed, dropping off their round. “I just need to say hello to someone.”

“Sure.” Ed's eyes were fixed on the game as he started in on the new peanut basket.

“I thought you'd never see us,” Laura said as he approached her corner table. “We were waving for, like, ten minutes—this is my friend Abby. She teaches music at the middle school.”

“Your son Robbie is in one of my classes,” Abby said. “Chorus.”

“You probably hear his voice more than I do, then,” Dean said.

Abby looked at him like he was pretty much the asshole she'd expected, but Laura smiled.

“Sit down with us,” she said.

“I would, but I'm here with my brother-in-law.”

“Invite him over, too.”

“I don't want to spoil your ladies' night.”

“You're not spoiling anything! Come on, one beer.”

Dean allowed himself a grin after he turned away from them to check in with Ed. He assumed Ed would decline, but Ed was more than happy to meet two young women. He followed Dean to their table and immediately engaged them in
conversation, asking what subjects they taught and what they thought of the new principal.

Upon learning that Laura was not a teacher but a therapist, he grilled her about homeschooling.

“I need to know the long-term effects,” he said, pushing his empty beer glass toward the center of the table as if to clear away all distractions. “For girls,” he clarified. “Two girls.”

“That's hard to say,” Laura said. “It depends on a lot of different factors.”

“Let's say, one year of homeschooling, for religious reasons—what does that do?”

“Um, I guess that could be fine. In a lot of cultures, it's traditional for children to devote some time to religious studies.”

“So it doesn't mess them up for life?”

“It takes a lot to mess up a kid for life,” Laura said, with a quick glance in Dean's direction. “They're pretty resilient. That's why I like working with them.”

Ed nodded sagely, as if he had suspected as much, and then began to ask Abby about her life, one question after another, like he was shelling his peanuts. It amused Dean to see this side of Ed, who rarely initiated conversation at family gatherings, maybe because he knew everything already. Or maybe it was easier to let Joelle take charge.

Laura turned to Dean. “That was awkward at the game. I'm so sorry. I got nervous. There's no reason we can't still be friends.”

“You were just trying to do right by Robbie,” Dean said.

The mood between them relaxed, but then neither of them knew what to say next, so they let themselves be drawn into Ed's conversation. He was telling Abby about his latest side
venture, a cardboard-shredding operation he had set up using an old wood chipper. According to Ed, there was a market for shredded cardboard among alpaca farmers. Dean couldn't tell if this was actually true or one of the many lines of bullshit that had earned Ed his Cowpie nickname.

“There's a ton of people raising alpacas on the Eastern Shore,” Ed said. “A whole sheep and wool community. You should see their hairdos; everyone has white-and-gray dreadlocks, like they're trying to be sheep. You know how people say dog owners start to look like their dogs?”

“Does that mean dairy farmers look like cows?” Dean asked.

“What do you think, could I pass for a bull?” Ed flared his nostrils and made horns above his head with his fingers.

“Maybe if you got a ring through your nose,” Laura said.

Ed's laugh, a deep bellow, made everyone else laugh, too.

They drank quickly, amid increasingly vulgar jokes about farming life, but when Laura made a move to get the next round, Ed insisted that he had to go.

“Sorry,” Ed said. “I have to be up early to milk the ladies.”

“Yeah, I should get going, too,” Dean said. But he was disappointed.

“I could give you a ride if you want to stay,” Laura said.

Dean declined, but Ed interrupted, saying he could drive Dean's car back. “Just have Laura drop you at our place.”

“That works for me,” Laura said.

“It's settled, then,” Ed said, with a wink that didn't even try to approach subtle. “I'm going, you're staying.”

Abby left, too, to Dean's surprise.

“She never stays out late,” Laura said. “I can't seem to find a
drinking buddy around here. Not that I'm a huge drinker. But sometimes you need to let loose.”

“Sure,” Dean said. “Especially with all the delinquent kids you have to deal with.”

“Oh, let's forget about that!”

“Wait, did you think I was talking about Robbie?”

Laura smiled at him, fondly, like they were old friends. “How did you end up here, anyway? I mean, in Willowboro?”

“I got a job, and then I fell in love with someone who lived here.”

“But why did you take
this
job? You could have worked anywhere.”

“Not really. Willowboro was the only place small enough to give me a head coaching position at twenty-five—or wait, twenty-six. I was twenty-six when I moved here. Before Willowboro I was on staff at a Div I school in Virginia.”

“But you didn't like that?”

“I did, but I wasn't going to wait ten years to get promoted. I wanted my own team. They basically let me start from scratch here. There was a football program in place, but it was still pretty new. Not what it is today.”

“So the football team is your baby.”

“I wouldn't put it that way. I have actual kids. The boys on the team, they're not my sons.”

Laura smiled. “Okay, let me ask you this: Was there any point when you thought twice about staying here?”

“Not really,” Dean said. “I guess you think I should have, though.”

“No, of course not! It's just that Tim and I have been talking about, well, marriage. And where we'd like to live if we get
married. A lot of his family is here. They would think I was crazy if I moved him away, especially if it was to no place in particular. I mean, if it wasn't to be closer to my family. Which it wouldn't be.”

“You don't get along with your family?” Dean asked. He realized he knew very little about her upbringing.

“We get along fine, but we're not close. We're not like Tim's family. They see each other all the time, and all the little cousins play together. Not that we're planning on kids yet. But he does want a big family.”

“That's good, right?” Dean said.

“Yeah. It's just . . . a lot.” Laura picked at the label on her beer bottle. “I think Tim thought that as soon as I got offered a full-time job, I'd be ready to talk about the future. And that was definitely a factor. But it's not the only thing I'm thinking of.”

“What else are you thinking of?”

“Oh, stupid things. Superficial things. I guess I never thought of myself as the kind of person who would settle down in a small town. You should have seen my boyfriend before Tim. We were going to travel the world together.”

“You mean the goat farmer who brought you to this godforsaken place?”

“Yeah, him. He was a very alternative guy, lots of tattoos, lots of, um, political views. Tim isn't like that. With him,
I'm
the wild one.”

“He sounds like a good guy.” Dean wondered where he landed on Laura's spectrum.

“Yeah, he is.” Laura stood up. “I never got us that drink, did I? Last round, okay?”

Her jeans rested loosely on her hips, and when she walked, her T-shirt rode up, revealing the smallest glimpse of her waist above her thick belt. Dean thought of the one time he'd held her, but then pushed the thought out of his mind, willing himself not to be attracted to her. He tried to think of her as a daughter; he imagined himself describing her to someone that way:
She's like a daughter to me
. But that only made him think of Stephanie, who had left the game without saying good-bye. He wished she would go to college, stay there, let herself be spirited away to adulthood on a raft of books and high-flown ideas.

Laura returned to the table with two glasses of whiskey. “I decided I was tired of beer.”

Dean took a sip of the amber liquid, savoring its warmth. He thought of his sons, sleeping cozily at Joelle's, probably tucked into the twin beds in the guest bedroom, the one with the shaggy carpeting that smelled vaguely of breakfast foods (it was right above the kitchen). He and Nicole used to sleep there, on Christmas Eve, when the farmhouse was still occupied by Nicole's parents and they all lived by the fiction that Santa Claus made just the one stop. Dean wondered how well the boys remembered those days and whether they missed them. He was a bad father to leave them alone without warning, thrusting them onto their Jesus-freak aunt. He was shirking his responsibilities, he was a shirker, he was behaving just as Joelle said he would. Joelle had never trusted him, not really. When he and Nicole announced their engagement, Joelle made him promise never to move her away. And Dean had promised, because he was in love, and what did he care where he lived, as long as he could coach his own team and be
near this beautiful, melancholy woman and her eager, chatty toddler. His life came into focus after he met them.

“I did worry about living here,” he said. “Now that I think about it. Not because I didn't like it here. But I thought maybe, one day, after I got some experience, I'd want to coach a bigger team, at a bigger school. A place with more money. More talent.”

“What changed?” Laura asked.

“I don't know. I became a father. Life got busy. I stopped thinking about what else might be out there. Or maybe it's that people started to accept me.”