“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.”
“How long did that take?”
“Longer than I thought it should. People around here are friendly, but they’re not as friendly as they think they are.”
Laura nodded. “Most of them have never had to start over. They don’t know.”
Dean remembered a secret wish to start over with Nicole. To move to a place where people would assume he was Nicole’s only love and that Stephanie was his biological daughter. There were times when he almost had Nicole convinced, when she and Joelle had one of their minifeuds or when her father, Paul, was being especially rigid. But then she would worry about leaving her mother alone, or about taking Stephanie from her grandparents. And Dean would see that these were excuses, that she was too scared to go someplace new. He might have coaxed her, but his own fears intervened. The last thing he wanted was to get stuck someplace where they knew no one and she was pregnant and resentful and borderline depressed. He didn’t think their marriage was strong enough for that. Or maybe he wasn’t strong enough for it. Same difference.
“Maybe I’m having a midlife crisis,” Laura said. “I’m getting it out of the way early.”
“You would know if you were having a midlife crisis,” Dean said. “Trust me.”
“Oh, Dean,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Here I am, talking about my stupid life and you have real problems.”
“I like talking about your stupid life,” Dean said. “You know that.”
THE BARTENDER KNEW Laird, and they bought drinks without any trouble. They sat in the back where no one would notice them, a corner booth that afforded a glimpse of everyone in the bar. Stephanie had never really seen Willowboro’s nightlife and on some level she assumed there was none, that everyone did their socializing at football games or church. She associated bars like this — wood-paneled and sports-themed — with movies and TV shows, and so its very banality struck her as exotic. She felt almost glamorous sitting with this good-looking boy, a boy who was trying to impress her by bringing her to a place he considered adult. They drank rum and Cokes, and Stephanie felt the booze hitting her in a floaty, festive way.
“I knew we would see some teachers from school,” Laird said. He nodded toward a woman standing at the bar. She wore a cap-sleeved tee and jeans with a beat-up old belt that Stephanie admired. Her hair was in a low ponytail from which wispy strands had escaped, framing her face. She looked familiar but Stephanie couldn’t quite recognize her in the dim light. Stephanie wondered how you got to be like her: young but grown-up. She wished she could leap over the next ten years and just be an adult with a job and a boyfriend and a vintage belt.
“Is she new?” Stephanie asked. “I don’t remember her.”
“That’s because you’re not a guy,” Laird said.
“You think she’s sexy?” Stephanie was surprised; she thought this woman’s appeal was too subtle for teenage boys.
“Definitely,” Laird said. “Especially for a teacher. She talks like us and she has this leather jacket she wears.”
“Oh my God, you totally know all about her.”
Laird shrugged, unembarrassed. “I would see her in the halls. I wonder if she has a boyfriend. She wasn’t married.”
They both watched as she carried two drinks across the crowded room. A man was waiting for her at one of the small square tables against the wall, a graying older type, but Stephanie barely glanced at him; she was more interested in this woman. She tried to picture her walking down the hallways at school, wanting to remember how she knew her.