Home Field (34 page)

Dean found a large walk-in closet, but it was full of scientific equipment: scales, magnifying glasses, microscopes, water-testing kits, rubber gloves, and a variety of measuring instruments. On one of the lower shelves there was a box of compasses. Next to it was a pile of laminated maps. Dean took one out and unfolded it. It covered only a small portion of the mountain: the school, the fire tower, and the nature and fitness trails. The markings were cartoonish and not drawn to scale; it was more like the map you might find at the beginning of a children's story. Dean traced its borders with his finger, then pointed to a spot in midair, high above the map. That's where his son was. Out in the nothingness.

Stephanie was fast asleep when he returned to the great room. She had draped her coat over her, like a blanket. Dean imagined Robbie in the same prostrate position, somewhere in the woods. Fear gathered in his chest; it was a kind of tightening, a kind of pain. He went outside onto the deck where he could see the mess hall, the windows still lit. There was no news, no point in going over there unless he wanted the distraction.

He didn't want the distraction.

He noticed a telescope at the far end of the deck and went over to it. He knew nothing about the constellations, so he just looked at the moon.

Robbie had once asked him why the moon didn't fall out of the sky. That was one of his first big questions. Robbie asked more “why” questions than Bryan. Or maybe it was that he asked more specific ones. Bryan accepted life's constants more easily. You couldn't just say “the law of gravity” to Robbie. Dean had to set up a miniature solar system on their kitchen table. The moon was a blueberry. Earth was a Golden Delicious apple. The sun was the basket that held all the fruits. It took forever to explain how the moon could reflect the sun's light even as it was surrounded by darkness. Dean had to demonstrate how the moon could orbit the earth while at the same time the earth was turning.

“The moon is showing us that it's sunny somewhere else,” Robbie eventually said. And then Dean knew he understood.

Now, as Dean gazed at the moon, he imagined that it held captive all the sunny moments of his life, starting with his childhood, when his mother was young and wore her hair long, tied back in a handkerchief when she was working in the yard and he would play nearby, bouncing his rubber ball against the walls of his small, sturdy house. And then, elementary school, catching the bus at the end of his dusty lane, playing flag football at recess with his friends, running home on the long dusty lane, talking to his father, helping him to brush the horses, carrying buckets of water to him and small hay bales, too, the twine cutting into the flesh of his palm in a satisfying way. Years and years of these wonderful hours of purely physical happiness, hours that began to break down during his high school years when a kind of willed determination crept in, hardening everything. But still, the sun beating down, the pain in his limbs, the excitement of growing up.

And then Nicole, a woman he remembered as doused in sunlight even though she was the saddest person he'd ever known.

Dean stepped away from the telescope. The moon was small and simple again, without contours, just a silver misshapen disc that looked like it could fall from the sky.

Where,
thought Dean,
where, where, where? Where is my son?

W
HEN
R
OBBIE WAS
feeling bored, or alienated, or out of his depth—when he was in gym class, playing soccer, for instance—he would narrate his circumstances, putting himself in the third person.
Robbie Renner stood near the goal in the fullback position, watching as clouds drifted by. He wasn't cut out for soccer, his thoughts were elsewhere . . .
It helped him see his life as a story, and he liked stories; you could hold a story in your mind in one piece.

When night first began to fall in the woods, when the moon came out and the shadows got darker and more mysterious, Robbie turned it into the setting of a story. He wasn't scared, or rather, he was scared, but he would appreciate his own bravery and nerve. He had done it! He was out late at night, on his own, in the world.

But as the night wore on, Robbie's sense of exhilaration faded. Fatigue and hunger began to creep in, and he couldn't be a narrator anymore. All he could think of was how hungry he was and how sore his legs were. He had eaten his other Snickers and two boxes of raisins. He had chewed all his gum and drunk the small apple juice he'd saved from lunch, earlier in the day. He was tired of sweet. He wanted something salty now—a grilled cheese sandwich or a plate of scrambled eggs. French fries.

Above, the tree branches creaked. Occasionally he saw the glowing eyes of a small nocturnal creature. He liked seeing them. He wasn't scared of animals.

He was going to be in so much trouble when this was over.

He could never explain himself to his father. Certain events would come back to him, and he would feel shame spreading through his body. Like the time his father caught him wearing his mother's clothes. Why had he done that? He couldn't say. But when he was crouched under his parents' bed, wearing his mother's clothes, feeling like the weirdest person in the world, he had heard his father say his mother's name out loud. And he clung to that.

He told Ms. Lanning about it. Not what his father said, but that he didn't think it was fair that Stephanie could take and wear his mother's clothes and no one said anything about it, because she was a girl. If it were the other way around, if his father was gone, not his mother, Robbie knew it would be okay for him to wear his father's old T-shirts. It would be encouraged, even. Sometimes he wished his father had died instead of his mother. Ms. Lanning said it was okay to have that as a wish. That it was normal, since he had been closer to his mother. Robbie thought it made him evil. Ms. Lanning said she didn't believe in evil, that it was a theological word. Robbie said it didn't matter to him if she believed it, he was the one who had to live with the word in his mind. Ms. Lanning asked him what he thought it would be like if his mother had lived, but not his father. But Robbie couldn't imagine his father dead. It was like his father was more alive than other people. Ms. Lanning said,
Yes, I know what you mean
.

Robbie's original plan was to walk until he reached the
main road, and then he would find a farm and sleep there, in a shed or a barn. But he had underestimated the distance. Or he had gotten off course. He wasn't sure at this point.

Ahead, the woods appeared to be getting darker, but he couldn't be sure. Probably a patch of underbrush. Maybe briars. He could usually walk around them, but at night it was hard to see where they began and ended, even with his flashlight.

A sharp, familiar odor reached his nose. Pines. There was a stand of white pines near his house; he liked to lie beneath them on hot days and listen to the branches whispering above him.

These pines were not white pines—they were something taller and hardier—but Robbie still felt protected as he sat down beneath them. He lay down on his side, resting his head on his arm. Then he changed his mind and gathered some pine needles and leaves into a pile, which he then covered with his scarf. His hands were cold and the tip of his nose was cold, but otherwise, he felt warm enough. He thought,
I'll never fall asleep like this
. He remembered his mother telling him it was okay to just rest on the nights when you couldn't fall asleep. And she would also say,
Joy comes in the morning
.

Robbie closed his eyes. Sleep broke over his exhausted body like a wave. When he woke up, six hours later, the sun was rising, a pale fragile light drifting through the trees. Birds sang noisily. So much more of the landscape was visible in daylight. He realized there was a field close by; he could see a break ahead in the trees. He hurried over to it; his legs were energetic again, and his body felt light. He was so hungry.

When he reached the edge of the forest, he found him
self staring at a large, rolling field, freshly hayed with square bundles of straw deposited at regular intervals. In the distance was a line of telephone poles. The moon hung above the horizon, white in the pearly sky. Robbie checked his compass. Yes, he was heading west. That was good. The road he wanted was right ahead.

S
TEPHANIE WOKE UP
to the sound of children's voices. She was completely disoriented; she couldn't remember falling asleep, or where she was or even what day it was. Large square cushions were scattered across the floor in front of a limestone fireplace with blackened logs in its hearth. A phrase floated into her head:
Death is the black door you walked through
. She didn't know where it came from, unless it was the residue from a dream.

Then it was as if some window was opened and reality could enter: she was at the Outdoor School, she had driven here last night, Robbie was lost.

“Dad?” She thought she smelled coffee brewing somewhere. She stood up and looked out the window and saw a group of kids lined up to go somewhere, their hats and coats bright against the fading autumn landscape. They couldn't stand still even as they quieted down; they kept shifting, touching each other, adjusting their clothes, scuffing the ground, and bending down to pick up pebbles, dried leaves, pine needles, clumps of dirt. Stephanie felt so full of longing as she watched them, it was as if she could reach out and touch her childhood. She didn't want to be a kid again, though. She just wanted her mother back.

She found a bathroom and washed her face and hands. She
took her braids out and pulled her hair into a ponytail. Her skin was pale, lusterless, her nose red around the nostrils, and there was acne emerging on her chin and in the space between her eyebrows. Her mascara had rubbed off beneath her eyes.

Outside the air felt especially cold on her damp face. The campus was empty of people, the trees bare of leaves. The children who had stood outside the window were gone, headed off to wherever they went on the last day. It was so quiet that she could hear the flags flapping and the little metal rivet banging against the flagpole.

“Stephanie! You're awake! I was just coming to get you.” Her father was running toward her. He was coming from the mess hall. “They've seen him. Someone saw him!”

“Where?” Stephanie hurried to meet him. “When?”

“He was at a gas station—a Sheetz. About an hour ago. The guy working behind the counter saw his photo on TV.”

“Robbie was on TV?”

“He was on the morning news.”

“What time is it?”

“It's not that late, honey. Not even nine.”

“I don't understand, why did he go to a gas station?”

“He was hungry.” Her father smiled. “He bought powdered doughnuts.”

“That has to be Robbie! Where is he now?”

“We don't know. But it wasn't that long ago that he was at that store. We'll find him.” Her father kissed her forehead. “Come on, let's go get your brother.”

W
hat seemed easy was difficult. The police had assumed Robbie was walking along Route 35, because that's where the Sheetz was, but he wasn't—or he was, but he somehow eluded notice. It was as if he didn't want to be found. Either that or something terrible had happened. He had hitchhiked and it had gone wrong. Or he'd stepped into oncoming traffic. Or he'd been bitten by a dog or hit by a combine or he had slipped, somehow, and fallen into a ditch. Or, or—what? What else? Dean tried not to let his mind go there, but it was hard when his house was full of worried family, and when the phone kept ringing with reporters, teachers, colleagues, and even two different lawyers who wanted Dean to know that their services were available should he choose to take legal action against the school system. Unbelievable. Dean felt assaulted by the world, with all its logistics, its pettiness, its demands and complications. He should have stayed up at the Outdoor School, up on the mountain, where it was nature and memories and waiting.

The kitchen phone rang again. “Goddammit!” Dean said.

“I'll get it, Dad,” Stephanie said. She gave Joelle an apol
ogetic look, but Joelle kept her eyes on the ham-and-cheese sandwiches she was preparing.

“I got it,” Dean said. “Hello?” he barked into the phone. “Unless you're calling to say you've found my son, I really don't have time to talk. Okay?”

“Dean, it's Laura.”

“Oh, God. Hi.” He glanced at Stephanie, who he knew was watching him, and gave her a vague nod before taking the phone into the living room. Not that he could be alone there. Jenny, Megan, and Bryan were sitting on the floor, playing Parcheesi while they waited for lunch.

“Sorry,” Laura said. “I know you need to keep the line open.”

“No, no, I'm sorry. I'm glad you called.”

“I wasn't sure if I should.”

“You should, believe me. You wouldn't believe the scum that have been calling—reporters and lawyers. All the bottom-feeders.”

“So there's no news of him yet?”

“Somebody saw him in a gas station around eight, and that's the last we've heard of him.”

“You're sure it was him?”

“He was wearing the right clothes. It sounded like him.”

“Well, look, how far could he get, right?” Laura said. Her voice was even, but Dean could tell she was scared. “He won't do anything stupid.”

“I don't know,” Dean said. It was such a relief to talk to her. “Even the smartest kid is a little bit stupid.”

“Even if he did do something dumb, even if he hitchhiked, what are the chances—”

“I don't know, I can't think about that. I really can't.”

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“You warned me,” he said. “I should have listened to you.”

“It's nobody's fault.”

“No, it isn't. But people only say that when they wish it was somebody's fault.”

“I'm not trying to blame you.”

“I know you're not.” Dean looked up at the ceiling, trying to get a feeling of privacy in his house full of people.

“Can you think of a place he might want to go?” Laura asked. “He usually goes somewhere specific when he leaves school. Has he mentioned any place in particular?”

“He hasn't been talking to me much,” Dean said. “Not that I noticed.”

“Don't beat yourself up. Now is not the time.”

“Laura, I need to change.” It felt good to say her name. He didn't care who overheard.

“You need to find Robbie. That's all you need to do.”

“I mean it. Nicole is gone. That's the truth. If Robbie comes home—”

“Don't say
if;
are you crazy? Of course he's coming home.”

“I hate just sitting here, waiting.”

“Is there anything I can do to help? Could I bring over some lunch?”

“Joelle's making lunch.” Dean glanced at the kids. Megan was stretching, her legs in hurdler's position. Tomorrow was Regionals. He hadn't forgotten, but its importance had faded.

“Actually, there is something I need to do, but I might not be able to,” Dean said. “The girls have a meet tomorrow. It's a big one. I'm supposed to be there.” He glanced at Megan,
who was openly listening. “Do you think you could go in my place? You would be a chaperone, you could leave all the meet logistics to Philips. I mean, if we don't find—”

“Of course,” Laura interrupted. “Of course.”

“You don't actually have to do that much,” he said. “You just let the girls run.”

A
UNT
J
OELLE STARTED
talking about dinner while she was cleaning up the dishes from lunch. Stephanie stood next to her, drying plates. Meal planning was clearly her aunt's way of getting control of the situation, but Stephanie couldn't think of a better subject of conversation. She stacked the plates and put them away. Uncle Ed came into the kitchen.

“I'm headed home, hon,” he said. “Page me if you hear anything, okay? I'll come back as soon as I can.”

“Okay, bye, sweetie.” Aunt Joelle gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Where's he going?” Stephanie asked.

Aunt Joelle gave her a look like she was playing dumb. “He has to do the milking in a couple hours.”

“Oh, right.” Stephanie glanced at the clock. It was barely two. The afternoon was dragging. “I guess it gets dark early.”

There was nothing else to clean in the kitchen. Stephanie went upstairs to use the bathroom and to wash her face. She should have taken a shower as soon as she got home, but she kept putting it off, afraid of missing out on news.

What she really needed was a nap. She went into her bedroom and lay down on her quilt. She could tell her brothers had been using her room. Her television, her father's old black-and-white, was in a slightly different position, still perched on
the windowsill but now closer to the bed. There were candy wrappers and an empty water glass on her bedside table.

“Stephanie?”

It was Bryan in her doorway.

“Hey, Bry. Come sit.” Stephanie sat up and arranged pillows against the headboard for both of them. “Where's Dad?”

“He's on the phone with someone. I don't know what about.”

Stephanie considered picking up the extension on her bedside table but decided against it. She was starting to feel hopeless. It had been six hours since anyone had heard news of Robbie. She kept trying to be rational, reminding herself that child abduction and kidnappings were extremely rare, that Robbie was sensible, that the police were good at their job, but it was getting harder and harder as the day went on. And yet she couldn't really go to the other side, she couldn't imagine the worst.

“Where are Megan and Jenny?”

“Jenny's watching
Brady Bunch
on Nickelodeon. Megan went for a jog. Dad told her to.”

“Right, there's some big race tomorrow.”

“We were supposed to go.”

“Maybe you still will.”

“Maybe.” Bryan leaned against Stephanie. “I wish you lived here.”

“Oh, buddy.” Stephanie held her brother close. His legs looked long stretched out next to hers. He had on a pair of hand-me-down corduroys that she clearly remembered Robbie wearing.

“It's okay, I know you have to go to college.”

Stephanie heard someone pull into the driveway, and her first thought was that somehow it was Robbie. Someone had found him and was bringing him back. She went to the window.

“It's Pastor Owen!” Bryan said happily. “He's from Aunt Joelle's church.”

“Oh.” Stephanie doubted her father had approved of or was even aware of this visit.

Stephanie reluctantly followed Bryan downstairs to the kitchen, where Aunt Joelle was welcoming Pastor Owen inside. He was younger than Stephanie had expected, probably in his late twenties. He had a broad face, large ears, ruddy skin, and short reddish-brown hair. His large, dark eyes radiated emotion. She couldn't help liking him. He reminded her of a big friendly farm dog.

He gave Aunt Joelle and Bryan long hugs and shook Stephanie's hand, holding it between his own two hands like it was a precious thing. His sincerity was almost overbearing.

“Jenny!” Aunt Joelle called. “Megan's out for a jog,” she added apologetically. “I told her to be back by now . . .”

“I'm not in any rush,” Pastor Owen said. “Is Mr. Renner around too?”

“He's on the phone,” Stephanie said quickly. “Let me go get him.”

Stephanie went up to her father's study, an alcove off the dining room, but he wasn't there. Then she checked his bedroom, but that was empty, too. The room had a slightly harder, cleaner look; it was missing all the fussy niceties her mother attended to: the runners on the dresser, the liners in the trash can, the flowers in the bud vase. Soon only the particular ar
rangement of the furniture would bear her mother's fingerprints.

Stephanie heard loud voices downstairs. Tension filled her body as she remembered what it had been like to live here when her mother was lost to herself. At the beginning of high school Stephanie would sometimes sit on the back stairs and listen in, monitoring the emotional weather, but eventually she grew to dislike the role of spy. It made her complicit, somehow. She learned to put on headphones and ignore.

She felt dread hardening in her chest as she descended the stairs. She heard her father saying, “What gives you the right?” And then Joelle saying, “I thought it would help!” A quieter voice intervened. Pastor Owen. Stephanie felt sorry for him. He was still talking when she entered the living room. Everyone was staring at him. Megan sat next to her mother and sister on the sofa, her bare legs mottled from running in the cold. Stephanie's father was in his chair, a worn-out lounger, while Pastor Owen sat in what was unofficially the guest seat, a semicomfortable velvet wing chair. Stephanie knelt on the floor next to Bryan, feeling helpless, like a little kid. But she couldn't interrupt a minister.

“. . . and I don't want to intrude, Mr. Renner,” Pastor Owen was saying. “I'm happy to lead a prayer for your family or simply to sit with you, or to go. I won't be offended, whatever you choose.”

“The issue is not with you,” Stephanie's father said. “I'm not opposed to prayer. But you've walked into a situation with some history to it. To put it simply, my sister-in-law has been pressuring my family to worship in a certain way and it's led
to a lot of conflict. And as you may know, my wife passed away earlier this year.”

“You make it sound like the two things are related!” Aunt Joelle said.

“That's just your guilty conscience.”

“So you admit it.”

“What am I admitting? That you try to control everything? That you put your nose in everyone's business? Who invited you to come here today? Who told you to come into my house and invite strangers?”

“Pastor Owen is an important person to my family, he's an important person to your son.”

“Don't tell me what's important to my son. I entrusted him to you and what do you do? You indoctrinate him in your pushy Christianity.”

“You're rude and you're a bully, Dean. You always have been. Talk about trust. I gave my daughter to you!”

“Megan is fourteen years old. Like it or not, she's on her way to becoming an adult. She came to me, I did nothing to recruit her.”

“Oh, you did nothing, of course, you're perfect, nothing touches you. Everyone loves you, everyone thinks you're so good. You walk on water because you're
Coach
and you
change lives
. But I know how selfish you are, I know how miserable you make people. I gave my
sister
to you. And now she's gone and you're letting her kids go. I'm trying to find a safe place for them. Pastor Owen is a good person, he has God with him, he could help you. But you don't want help. You want to do everything on your own.”

“Mom, Mom.” Megan put her arms around her mother and stroked her hair.

“I did the best I could with Nicky.” Aunt Joelle was crying now. “I miss her so much, oh God in heaven, I miss her. I just want her to come back.”

Pastor Owen looked stunned, his youth shining through. He reached out his hands, offering one to Stephanie's father and the other to Bryan, who was sitting closest to him.

“Let us bow our heads in prayer,” he said. “But let it be a silent prayer.”

Stephanie closed her eyes and listened to her aunt cry. She said a prayer not to God, but to her mother.

R
OBBIE HADN'T ACCOUNTED
for the wait at the bus station. He sat on a bench with molded plastic seats that were like the chairs at school. His seat was missing an armrest, as were many of the seats nearby. He was bored. At first it had been a relief to sit and rest his legs after so many hours of walking but now he was getting restless. He still had a half hour until his bus arrived.

He got up and did another lap around the station. He knew everyone who was waiting, or at least he felt as if he knew them, because he'd been staring at them for so long. Sometimes people would return his gaze, but most ignored or just plain didn't notice him. Periodically a group of three or four people would get up and go outside to meet their bus. Robbie was surprised at the variety of Pennsylvanian destinations on offer. There was a large group gathering for a Philadelphia departure, and it crossed Robbie's mind that he could change
his ticket and meet Stephanie instead. But he couldn't give up his original plan.

There was time, he decided, to go outside. And it was late enough in the day that no one would ask why he wasn't in school. He left the station and walked down the street to a toy store that he used to go to with his mother whenever they made trips into Hagerstown. It was a very small toy store, not part of a chain, and his mother liked it because they carried old-fashioned chapter books, like the ones she'd read as a girl. Sometimes Robbie would ask her to buy him one, not because he really wanted one but because he knew she liked it when he asked for them. He always read them and usually enjoyed them, but they weren't the kind of books he preferred. They were too formal, with their hard covers and thick pages, the ends of the pages left raw so that they seemed to be torn from a large, grand sheet of paper. Sometimes the top and bottom edges of the pages were dusted with gold powder and it would get on Robbie's fingers when he first started reading them. Robbie preferred books that were small and portable—paperbacks that he could carry in his jacket pocket or in the back pocket of his jeans. He liked reading to feel a little bit secret.