It Happened on Maple Street

He’d called me that only once before. Half an hour earlier.

I was not a stupid bitch.

“You stayed there and finished,” I said, though I had no idea why. It’s not like I cared anymore. It’s not like I really thought Chris had been celibate for ten years. But he’d been discreet. He’d never brought his sexual exploits to our home. Because he respected me.

Or so I’d thought.

“Of course I finished,” his voice raised a couple of octaves as he approached me. I backed up a step. “Jenny drove all the way over here from Santa Fe. And we were right in the middle of things.”

Right, and God knew, Chris wouldn’t stop once he’d started. He just hurried up and finished. Or rather, I knew. A long-ago memory surfaced. And then faded.

“Did you pay her?”

“That’s none of your goddamned business.”

His pupils were pinpoints of anger. And I was the one who’d walked in on my spouse, in our home, while he was having sex with someone else. The dichotomy struck a note someplace that preserved me.

“You are the most selfish, insensitive woman I have ever met.” He took another step forward. “What in the hell is the matter with you?”

I didn’t know. But I agreed with him. Something was definitely wrong with me. I drove men to hate me.

“Why are you trying so hard to hurt me?” He screamed. “Just because you’re an unhappy person, you have to drag me down with you? You have to make me miserable, too? You can’t even let me have an hour’s worth of pleasure?”

He advanced another step. I backed up again.

And met the wall.

“I’m done with you, do you hear me?” He was yelling so loudly I was afraid the neighbors across the street would hear. “I don’t even want to be friends with you. I don’t ever want to have to see your face or hear your voice again, do you understand? You make me sick.” I nodded, hoping my acquiescence would calm him.

I knew for certain that if I spoke, it would just incite him further.

“I never thought it was possible to hate a person. But I hate you. Do you get that?” His chest jutting forward, he came right up to me, his fists clenched and down at his sides.

I nodded again.

“You’re nothing, Tara. Nothing. You’ll never be anything. I pity any man who ever comes into your life. You don’t know how to be a woman. You don’t know how to love. You’re worthless. You couldn’t even do a simple thing like get pregnant. I can’t believe I wasted twenty-two years of my life with you.”

He was up against me. Holding me to the wall. I raised my hands up, ready to cover my face, only then noticing the little angel figurine I held. One from the collection on my nightstand.

Chris had never hit me. I didn’t really think he would now. But I was scared.

He grabbed the angel, cutting my finger with the force of his yank. I heard the helpless little figure shatter against the wall to my right. I didn’t look at it. I couldn’t.

Chris did, though. And the sight did something to him. Still clearly angry, he stepped back, turned, and strode from the room, closing the door softly behind him.

I sank to a shaking puddle on the floor, sobbing. Wondering how my life had become such a confusing mess when all I’d ever wanted was to love and be loved. And be a good person.

My tears finally subsided. All I felt was an exhausted numbness. I started to move mechanically. I had my alter ego, Tara Taylor Quinn, now. As I stood there in my bedroom, facing the rest of my life, she was there, taking over where Tara Gumser could not. She put one foot in front of the other. She opened drawers and made choices.

I finished packing what I could gather up that night. With Chris sitting in his chair in front of a football game, I carried everything out to my car, one step at a time, drove to a hotel out by the highway, and checked into a room.

I had no plan. No sense of what I was going to do, other than to take a couple of aspirin and go to sleep.

I’d left my signed divorce papers in the middle of Chris’s unmade bed.

Tim hated Sunday nights. They were too quiet, especially now that he was the only person in the house. That third Sunday in January of 2007 was one of the worst. He’d run into an old friend at the department store in town that afternoon—and heard that Denise was having a son.

It was frigid outside. He was restless and lonely and avoiding regrets. Why he went to the attic, he had no idea, or at least he wasn’t owning up to it. He knew the box he wanted. It was rectangular. Tin. Locked. And had multiple BB holes through it.