It Happened on Maple Street

And if he did stand by me in the beginning, how long would it be before he resented me? Blamed me? Started to hate me?

Left me at home with a child to raise while, driven by the need for freedom, he went out and found other things to do?

“Why are you up so early on a Sunday morning?”

“My parents are up, and I didn’t want you down here alone with them up and around.”

I was in the room, beside the bed, but I was afraid to sit down next to him. I fought the urge to open my robe and take him inside.

And I couldn’t quit picturing him under those covers. His jeans were hung over a chair with a sweater. I couldn’t see, without doing something obvious, like lifting the jeans, whether or not his underwear was with them or with him.

“Why are you acting like such a stranger? After all the things we’ve done, all the places I’ve touched your body, it’s a little late for shyness, don’t you think?”

I felt the heat rising up under my robe. And shrugged. If I told him I was afraid I was pregnant it would all be over.

He’d be scared. And tense. And it could all be for nothing. I might start that day. Or the next. It hadn’t been a full month yet.

“Sit on the bed with me.”

“I can’t. You aren’t dressed and my parents just came downstairs.”

“What’s that matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why don’t you want to be close to me?”

“I do. It’s just . . . it would be too tempting.”

I was starting to feel sick to my stomach and prayed that it was just a sleepless night. Nerves. Or even an ulcer.

I prayed I would start my period and that Tim would tell me that he couldn’t live without me and ask me to marry him.

Ten

TARA SEEMED TO BE UNHAPPY A LOT. ANYTIME HE ASKED her if something was wrong, she’d tell him no, and he tried to believe that everything was fine. If she was getting tired of him, he wished she’d just say so.

Yet when she told him they had to talk, he clammed up, afraid she was going to break up with him.

“What are you doing tonight?” he asked her one Tuesday in early February. They were in the student union, staying warm by the fire.

“I’ve got the Vandalia city council meeting.”

She went every month. He knew that. She covered the city’s business for the Dayton Daily News. And in all the months they’d been going steady, he’d never shown any interest in that part of her life at all.

“Can I come with you? Drive you?”

“Sure.”

She sounded so happy with the idea, he was happy, too, though even the thought of sitting through a city business meeting bored him to tears. Probably wouldn’t be any windows there to escape through, either.

Still, he’d be with Tara and that was enough for him. More than enough for him.

I have to admit, I was proud as I walked into the Vandalia city building Tuesday night, knowing that I had the credentials to be there. I hoped Tim was impressed. I knew the room where the council met and headed toward it like I owned the place. Maybe he’d think I was important enough to marry.

I had my own seat. It was in the front. Inside the courtroom-like area, I made a beeline for my place, indicating that Tim should sit down next to me on the wooden bench. He sat close. His hip touching mine.

I wondered if the city manager would call the paper and complain. If someone would decide I was a kid who was inappropriate and not mature enough to handle the job of reporting city business to one of the state’s major newspapers.