When it came time to order another round, he told her that he couldn’t drink any more and still drive. She said she felt the same way.
“But I’d like to keep talking,” he said. “Do you want to have a beer at my place? I have a nice porch.”
She laughed and said, “I like porches.”
Chapter 12
The next morning, Dean drove to Joelle’s house to pick up his kids and Megan for the meet. But when he arrived, only his boys were ready to go. Megan was still in bed. She was sick.
“I am so sorry, Dean, but she’s running a fever,” Joelle said. “Whatever it is, I want to nip it in the bud.”
“Uncle Dean?” Megan called down from upstairs. “I think I could run if you really needed me. Maybe I could sleep a little more now and run later—”
“You can’t run in the cold! Are you crazy?” Joelle yelled upstairs. She turned to Dean, irritated, as if he’d infected her daughter with athletic ambition.
“I don’t want her to run if she’s sick,” Dean said. And he didn’t. But it was as if something had been taken from him when his back was turned. In an irrational way, he felt he was being punished for his dalliance with See-See’s mother.
Karen and See-See were waiting at the school when Dean arrived. Karen was dressed in a zip-up sweatshirt and jeans. She had brought a cup of coffee for Dean, but nothing in her demeanor gave away their new intimacy. Beside her, See-See looked sleepy and childlike without her usual heavy eyeliner and jewelry. Her bleached hair was growing in naturally now, the same sandy blond as her mother’s. Dean had been nervous about seeing them, but now he felt nothing but relief. He told them about Megan, and they both frowned in the same way.
“We still have enough to score,” See-See said.
The meet was at St. Luke’s Academy, a small private school near the Pennsylvania-Maryland border. It reminded Dean a little of Stephanie’s school, with its winding sidewalks and brick buildings. She hadn’t called to say she’d gotten the jacket. FedEx said it had been delivered. So he had to assume she’d gotten it and decided not to respond.
All the girls’ parents attended. They stood in a small crowd near the tarp, drinking hot cider and commenting on the beautiful weather and the changing leaves. Dean had sent the girls off on a warm-up run with Robbie and Bry tagging along. Meanwhile, he busied himself with the racing bibs.
Karen came over to him. “Would you like me to take splits again? I can stand at the second mile.”
“If you don’t mind,” Dean said, catching her eye, trying to read her mood. She’d been so discreet up to this point, barely even smiling at him.
“I really don’t,” she said, taking a stopwatch from his box. “I’m feeling pretty single right now, with all these married couples.”
She said it confidentially, as if he in particular would understand, and it threw him off balance.
“Even with me here?” He meant that he was single, too, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized they could be taken another way.
“Especially with you here.” She held up her stopwatch. “I better get to my post.”
The girls came back from their warm-up and stripped down to their uniforms to pin on their bibs. Dean gave them a racing strategy as they jogged toward the starting line. Missy would lead on the first mile, then See-See and Aileen would run as a twosome for the reminder of the race.
“What happens to me?” Missy asked.
“Hopefully you’ll keep running,” Dean said, lightly sarcastic. He turned to Lori and Jessica. “You two are my snipers. You stay together for the first mile. Don’t go out too fast. Stay in the back of the pack. Relax, enjoy the scenery. Okay? But when you hit mile two, I want you to start picking people off. You’ll flank them on either side, and then you’ll pass them at the same time. You know how demoralizing that is?”
They had reached the starting line. The other teams were gathered there, many from private schools they’d never raced against before, large teams that were two, three, and four times the size of theirs. One team with green-and-white uniforms formed a ring, the girls holding hands and laughing, the ring getting larger and larger as they stretched their arms to their full length. The girls kicked their long legs into the center. They all seemed to be long-limbed, with long ponytails. They were like horses.
Aileen said what they were all thinking: “I wish Megan was here.”
“You’ve run without her before. You can do it again.” Dean gathered them together into a huddle. “Treat this like a practice, okay?”
The girls nodded without saying anything.
“Can I get a hell yeah?” Dean asked, now desperate to loosen them up. Other teams were beginning to chant and yell their pep-talk slogans. They were surrounded by jittery energy. Over by a tree, a girl was holding her side, throwing up. Dean recognized her as Adrienne Fellows, one of the top competitors.
“Look!” Dean said, pointing. “She’s nervous, too, okay? Harness those nerves and get out there and run hard. It’s a beautiful day. You’re a strong team. You’ve got everything going for you.”
He had to leave them at the line so he could get to the first mile in time. St. Luke’s was basically an out-and-back, and the first mile was at the end of a long dirt road. Dean heard the starting gun go off while he was still jogging toward it. He was barely in place with the other coaches when he saw Missy coming down the lane. On either side of her were Aileen and See-See. They were in the top twenty, better than he’d expected. He called out their splits and they quickly glanced at him, barely turning their heads. He could hear them breathing, the soft thuds of their feet hitting the ground.
Jessica and Lori came by two and a half minutes later. They were several yards behind a big group of runners. “Go get them!” Dean pointed. They looked ahead warily and then Lori accelerated. Of all the runners, she had improved the most. He watched as she passed one girl and then another. Jessica lagged behind. They rounded a curve and disappeared behind a stand of pine trees.
That was it. His runners were gone, off to finish the race on their own. He began to jog toward the finish, cutting diagonally across an open field. He was struck by the silence. He recalled going to horse races with his father, the way the horses seemed so far away when they were on the backstretch. His father stopped going to races after his mother left. Dean never asked him why. He was too busy being angry with his parents for splitting up. A few years after their divorce was finalized, he’d had a choice of moving to Ohio with his mother and starting over in another high school. Or he could stay in Pennsylvania with his father. He chose to stay because he’d made varsity as a sophomore. He hadn’t wanted to prove himself all over again at a new school. It was such kid reasoning. Sometimes Dean wondered how much that one decision had set the course of his life.
The draft ended a year before he turned eighteen. He wondered about that, too. During her junior year, Stephanie had visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on a field trip to D.C. Before she left she asked Dean for names to search for. She said her teachers had told her to ask. How morbid, Nicole said. But Dean was moved when Stephanie brought home a piece of paper with the name of one of his old teammates — a rubbing showed the etched letters. Dean remembered his friend’s big hands, how they held the ball so casually. At the end of every practice he would take off his socks and cleats and lie on his back with his legs up in the air; he’d heard this was the best way to recover after a hard workout. Sometimes Dean would lie next to him, the two of them looking up their outstretched legs, their bare feet foregrounded against the sky’s expanse, their bodies relaxing into the grass. It doesn’t get any better than this, his friend would say. He was named Bruce, after his father, but everyone called him Dash because he was so fast.