It was Sunday, a day for sleeping in, but when Dean closed his eyes, his just-shed dream netted him again, Nicole’s soft voice in his ear. He flung it away, swung his feet to the floor, and pushed back the curtain on the window. The sun was rising, its pale light beginning to fade the stars.
He checked on the boys. They both slept on their stomachs. Bryan still had a lovey, a stuffed giraffe whose long neck got into odd positions at night. This morning the giraffe was pushed off to the side, lying facedown near the edge of the mattress. Nicole used to say it was keeping watch for monsters.
Stephanie’s room was empty, untouched. Her bed was still neatly made with the sheets Dean had washed before her arrival. She’d never even slept on them.
He’d called her dorm room yesterday night, but she wouldn’t talk to him. Her roommate, a meek-sounding girl who addressed him as Mr. Renner, picked up. There was a muffled pause after Dean asked for Stephanie and then the same soft voice said she was sorry, Stephanie wasn’t around after all. Dean didn’t push back against the lie. Now that she’d seen him in the bar, she had a reason for her anger, a point to focus on. Dean hated to think of the stories she was concocting.
When it came to Laura, he wasn’t even sure what the real story was anymore.
It was too early to wake up the boys, so he decided to go for a jog. He had to get in better shape if he was going to keep attending races. Outside the air was cool and soft. In the dim light, everyone’s backyard gardens were abundantly and deeply green, with their tall rows of corn and sunflowers, and their bean plants and tomatoes climbing chicken-wire cages. Small piles of freshly pulled still-green weeds lay around the perimeter of each garden, evidence of industrious Saturdays. Dean felt virtuous just looking at them.
His heart was beating hard to match his foot strikes. He was going fast, maybe. Or maybe he was tired. He decided to run all the way to Iron Bridge, or rather, the ugly cement thing that had replaced it. Dean’s thighs burned as he made his way up the hill that preceded the bridge. His thoughts burned away, too. When he reached the top, he was breathing with a ragged intensity that reminded him of being young. Holding on to that glimmer, he ran hard down the hill, toward the creek, letting gravity lengthen his stride. The pain increased, and by the time he reached the bridge he had to stop. He looked down at the water flowing past and then checked his pulse, timing how long it took for his breath to return to normal. He recalled the agony of running when he first started training in the summers, as a teenager. The sharp stitches at the side of his waist. The weight of his lungs. He used to smoke then, taking a dizzy hit of nicotine after workouts. Then he would douse his face and hair with the garden hose, the water warm at first and then icily cold. In the nearby fields, his father would hose down the horses until their short-haired bodies gleamed like metal. Looking back on that time, it was like his life was one physical sensation after another, with time stretching to contain them all in one unbroken chain. And yet he was impatient to break free, to move away, to become a man, whatever that meant.
He hurried home, worried that the boys would wake up and find him gone.
But they were still asleep when he got back. He stretched on the living room carpet, listening to the radio, some nuts-and-bolts news analysis, a weekend roundup. They played a clip of President Clinton speaking at a campaign rally, hoarsely and vaguely, asking voters to consider the historical consequences of various presidencies: “Think how different this country would be if Abraham Lincoln had not been president when the states said, ‘Well, hey, we formed this country; we’ve got a right to get out.’ And then to face the next question: ‘Well, if we’re going to stay together, don’t we have to quit lying about who we are?’” The words hit Dean’s conscience like stealthy arrows. His marriage — it was built on. . what? Not lies, exactly. But not the truth, either. One of the commentators was saying that peace and prosperity were the president’s greatest assets. Dean liked Clinton but he didn’t trust him completely; he reminded Dean of the silver-haired big spenders who came to the track with their girlfriends, the ones who gambled as a way to show off how much they could afford to lose.
After a hot shower, Dean felt almost normal. The boys woke up and he fixed a big breakfast of pancakes and bacon and fruit. Although he had been planning to take them to church, he decided at the last moment to take them to the Antietam Battlefield, which was closer than church, and for Dean, more sacred.
The park was busy with tourists, as well as the runners and cyclists who took advantage of the empty, paved roads that snaked through the quiet battlefield. Dean made the boys read aloud a few of the plaques. He realized it was close to the day of the actual battle. The bright sky, the clear light, the slight hint of autumn on the breeze — all of it was just as it might have been on the morning of what turned out to be the single bloodiest day in American history. Twenty-three thousand men dead in one day. God knew how many horses. Dean couldn’t get his mind around the number. It was a Union win on paper, but there were historians who had devoted their lives to the study of what actually occurred. How it affected the history of the war. The history of the country. Shortly after the battle, President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It was as if he had to acknowledge what the war was really about.
Driving home, Dean felt calmed. Battlefields gave him perspective. It was their peacefulness that awed him. As if the ground itself had absorbed the violence and confusion of war and made it disappear.
Dean spent the afternoon cleaning. The house needed it, but he was also feeling guilty. About Stephanie. About Laura. About Nicole. He made the boys do the bathrooms before they could play outside, as if they needed to do penance, too.
He cooked dinner again — pork chops with baked apples, one of the few dishes he’d learned from his mother. The boys wanted to watch The Wizard of Oz to celebrate Robbie’s part and Dean let them, even though it was a long movie for a school night. After the scary parts were over and Dorothy was safely on her way down the yellow brick road, Dean excused himself to call Stephanie. No answer. He tried again later, during the poppy field scene, but he got the roommate again. He left a message, giving up for the day. If she didn’t want to talk to him, so be it. She would come around. Still, he felt addled and uncertain.
After he put the boys to bed, he craved bourbon, but instead he pulled out the file of notes and articles about running that he’d gathered from his office. He wanted to plan some real practices for the week. An hour slipped by as he worked on a training strategy and then it was midnight and he was exhausted. For the first time in weeks he went to bed without the aid of booze or late-night television.
“YOU KNOW WHAT’S great about cross-country?” Dean asked the girls. It was Monday afternoon. They didn’t seem quite as forlorn or lacking in athleticism as they had on the first day he met them. And now he had an actual pep talk prepared, the kind he used to give his players. He’d never delivered one to such a small crowd and in such a low voice.
“In cross-country, your past record doesn’t matter. You get a clean slate for every race.” He paused to let this sink in. “You understand what that means? That means the only race that really matters is States. That’s the big dance, right? You get to States, you’ve got yourself a race.”
“But you have to qualify for States,” See-See said.
“Yes!” Dean pointed at her, like she’d won a prize. “So the race before States matters, too. Okay. But that’s not for another six weeks. Do you know how many practices we have before that?”