It Happened on Maple Street

The blockbuster movie ET had just come out that summer, and Chum and I had a date to go see it the day after he was killed. I went alone. And when Neil Diamond came to town, my parents and I went to see him. I sat through the concert with my eyes closed, hearing my brother’s voice instead of Neil’s, and mostly unaware of the tears streaming down my face.

Completely alone in Columbus, I spent the following year on a collision course with death. I drank too much. When I slept, which wasn’t much, it was on the couch in my apartment. I had a bed, but didn’t get in it. I took up cigarettes. When I wasn’t partying, I was crying.

I honestly didn’t care if I lived or died.

Neil Diamond came out with a new song, “Turn On Your Heart Light,” about the movie ET. I figured Chum was telling me something, but I was too lost to listen to his message.

I quit my teaching job and started selling furniture. And ice cream cones.

And then, eighteen months after my big brother’s death, while on vacation in Albuquerque, I met a man. He was calm. Stable. He had dark hair and a mustache, just like Tim’s, but was much taller. He was a banker. And he asked me to the movies.

Three months later, after weekend trips back and forth to Ohio, he asked me to live with him. There was no fire in his kisses, no tingle in his touch, but I didn’t expect there to be. James had killed any chance I’d ever feel those things again. I knew that now.

Chris didn’t mind. He was happy with our love life. He said I was everything he wanted and needed. I wanted to make a home for him. Raise his kids. And I knew how to dress, how to act, when he had clients to entertain. My keep-up-appearances upbringing fit him perfectly.

He was what I thought I needed, too. He was steady. Reliable. And loyal. He liked to work. And he was happy to support me while I wrote my Harlequin romance and tried to sell it.

He thought I was a lady. Not a slut. He treated me like a lady.

And in 1985 I married him.

Sixteen

“THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING THE 1998 SEMINAR ON hydraulic press specifications.”

No, thank you for letting me attend, Tim thought sarcastically. How many of these things did a guy have to sit through in a lifetime?

And why did they always seem to hold the damned things in September? Thinking of the school busses and their new routes, the parents lining up to pick up kids, all the traffic he had to fight to get out of the city at 3:00 PM before he could start the long drive home wasn’t improving his mood any.

He’d better call Denise and let her know that he’d be later than he’d expected. Chicago at rush hour wasn’t going to be easy. And he had another six hours after that before he was back in Eaton.

As soon as he was on the open road, Tim started to relax. He’d forgotten about the best part of the damned seminars he was required to attend. They gave him time alone on the road, listening to the radio and thinking about life. Time out to reacquaint himself with who he was and what he wanted. To put things into perspective. They also gave him a chance to have the radio blaring—something Denise complained about.

Just then a familiar song came on, and Tim cranked the volume up full blast.

“Hot August Night.” A Neil Diamond tune.

And he was back in Tara’s kitchen, holding her hand. Listening to Chum playing his guitar. Tim pictured Tara’s brother, sitting with the guitar perched on his knee, head back, eyes closed, and singing like he was in concert.

He wondered how Tara was doing. It had been eighteen years since he’d seen her. Was she still in the area? Had she become a journalist?

Did she have kids?

He thought about one of the letters she’d sent from Armstong. She’d gone on and on about two orphan girls she’d visited. She’d loved kids. His guess was that she had at least two of her own. And a houseful of poodles, too.

Tara was still on his mind when Tim rolled into the Dayton area later that night. He’d spent the whole trip with her. On a lark, he made a slight detour.

Once again, he made that familiar drive: Brandt Pike left to Brandt Vista and then right on Drywood. It was probably a good thing it was dark outside. He was nuts, some kind of crazy stalker, a thirty-eight-year-old man driving by an old girlfriend’s house so many years after the fact.

What was the matter with him? Why couldn’t he let go of the memory of his little blonde girl from Wright State?

The house looked the same: same brick, same driveway; the pine trees out front that Tara’s father had planted were much taller.

He sat for a bit. Remembering. And then put the Buick in gear.

Well, Gumser, he thought, Never say that I didn’t stop and say hi.

“Dammit woman, can’t you get anything right? Look at this counter. I work all day. I expect things put away when I get home.”