It Happened on Maple Street Page 12

  “You’re hurting your mother.”

  I couldn’t help that. This was my soul we were talking about. My mother, in her seeming refusal to allow me the freedom of religion that my country allowed, was hurting me.

  My father didn’t stand. He didn’t even sit up straight. In a quiet but very determined voice, he said, “Your mother and I have talked, and it’s either your church or your home, young lady.”

  I’d already lost my heart. My love. I couldn’t lose my God.

  “Then I choose my church.”

  James was the first person I saw when I got back to Alabama that summer. I was early. I’d flown in instead of catching a ride. I was the first of the girls I was rooming with to show up. We had an apartment, campus housing for seniors, out by the railroad tracks.

  Running from the silence, from the fact that I’d spent the summer staying with the woman I worked for, from the fact that my mother and father were still estranged from me, I went for a walk along the railroad tracks.

  “Hi!” The lilt in James’s voice was nice. Familiar. Welcoming. Here was someone who was glad to see me.

  “Hi.” I was glad to see him, too. He was easy to be with. We liked each other.

  “How was your summer.”

  “Rough. How about you?”

  “Worked like a dog, but it was good. I saved a lot of money. What was wrong with yours?”

  “My folks kicked me out for joining the church.”

  We were walking then, side by side along the tracks. He didn’t touch me. His hands were in his pockets. I liked that.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  “You okay?”

  “I guess.”

  “You want me to call them? Maybe if I talk to them . . .”

  “No!” They’d never even heard of James. And anyone from the church calling them would probably set off a major explosion. They’d still sent me to school. Paid for my plane fare. Were paying my tuition. They still cared at least a little bit.

  I couldn’t take the chance of losing what little bit of them I had left.

  “They’ll come around.”

  “I hope so.”

  “They will. They love you.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Well you aren’t alone. You know that.”

  “I guess.”

  “Hey,” he stopped me, took me by the shoulders, and looked me in the eye. “You always have me. I love you. I mean that.”

  He loved me? He was talking about the love in Christ that was so freely expressed on campus. Part of me knew that. But we weren’t even dating, and he’d told me he loved me.

  “We’re friends. You can come to me anytime.”

  Tears filled my eyes, I nodded, and we walked on.

  He was still seeing Emily. His heart was in it. Almost all the way. As much as his heart could be into any woman.

  The first cut was the deepest, and he’d been cut. Bad.

  His little blonde girl was gone, but she was not forgotten. He’d accepted the fact that a part of him would always yearn for her.

  “Hi, Cowboy, you ready to go?” Emily was a couple of years older than him. A teacher in the local elementary school. He’d gone to school with her brother.

  “Yep. Got your helmet?” She’d bought it when he’d bought the Suzuki 250—the motorcycle he’d had his eye on for more than a year.

  “Of course.” She pulled it out of the trunk of her new little Pacer. Emily wasn’t the most beautiful woman in town with her ordinary brown hair and lack of fashion sense, but she had a pretty face, a great figure, and most important, she was like him. She’d grown up in Eaton. Liked country music. And didn’t need expensive things to be happy.

  She was grounded. Had a steady income.

  She fastened the shiny red helmet under her chin and leaned toward him for a kiss.

  Tim held his lips against hers for a long time. Enjoyed her taste.

  He mounted the bike, already feeling the power between his legs. She climbed on behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. He gunned the engine and sped off into the sunset.

  Thanksgiving 1979 was a strange time.

  “I can’t believe your folks still aren’t talking to you,” James said a couple of days before students began leaving campus for the four-day holiday break. Some, the ones who had too far to travel, were going to stay with friends. Most were going home. Shuttles were scheduled for the students who had to make it to Little Rock to catch a flight out.

  “My dad wrote,” I told him. We were sitting in a white picket fence-type swing extended from one of the trees on the huge grassy quad in the middle of campus. Dressed in white shorts and a long-sleeve white T-shirt, James had just come from a scrimmage tennis match. I was supposed to have made it out to watch him, but I’d been writing a paper that was due the next day.

  His piercing brown eyes pinned me, his dark bushy brows coming together as he frowned. “He did?”

  “Yeah.” I should have told him. But . . .

  Rubbing my hands along the jeans I’d changed into after class, I hugged my arms, wishing I’d added a jacket to the orange and beige sweater.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. A week or two ago.” Make that three or four. The letter had come shortly after Mom’s almost daily notes had stopped.

  “He wants me to come home for Thanksgiving.”

  “What about the church?”

  “He didn’t say anything about it.”

  “He didn’t apologize? Didn’t say he was wrong?”

  “No.”

  “Did he tell you that you could go to church while you were there?”

  “No.” Dad hadn’t mentioned church. He’d talked about love and family and duty and nothing about the rift between us. Which made me nervous.

  “So he isn’t backing down.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think if you go it’ll be like agreeing to his dictates from the summer? Like you’ll be agreeing to choose your family over your God?”

  The question irritated me. “I don’t know.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I wanted to go home so badly. And yet . . . my faith in God, and in my church, had sustained me through the worst year of my life. It was only with God’s help that I could endure the loss of Tim and still be happy.

  “I don’t think I can go home. Not until I know that I don’t have to give up my God to do so. Besides I haven’t heard a word from my mom in weeks. If she wanted me home, she’d have written. My dad only deals with me when I’m in trouble, which has been about once in my whole life. It’s always Mom and me who arrange everything.”

  “What are you going to do then?”

  “Rachel asked me to go with her. She’s going to her grandma’s in Mississippi. Her mom and little brother are meeting her there.”

  Rachel Bowman was in my social club. We’d been friends since my first week on campus the year before.

  “You can come home with me. It’s going to be just me most of the time. My mom’s babysitting all weekend. But we’d have fun.”

  “I really want to go with Rachel. She’s my best friend. And I like her mom a lot.” I’d met Mrs. Bowman, a divorced mother who I respected, on campus when she’d brought Rachel to school, but I’d also been to their house for a weekend visit once.

  “Do you guys have a ride yet?”

  “I don’t know. Rachel was going to check with some kids going to Florida to see if they could drop us off.”

  “I’ll drop you off.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to Atlanta. I can take you.”

  “You’re sure it’s not too far out of your way?”

  “I’m sure.” He smiled and my heart warmed. We’d been dating on and off all semester. James wasn’t like the other boys at school. He hadn’t grown up in the church, either. He was a convert li
ke me.

  And he’d suffered. He understood heartache.

  “You really don’t have to take me to the family gathering,” Emily said, climbing in Tim’s car on Thanksgiving morning. “I’m perfectly fine here with my mom and dad.”

  She’d asked him to join them, but Tim always spent the family holiday at his older brother Mike’s house. Two years ago he’d taken Tara.

  Emily had that look in her eye again. One he’d seen a lot lately. Like she was hurting. They’d been sleeping together for a while, and he knew she wanted more.

  So did he. He wanted a wife. A home. Kids.

  He just didn’t want to get married.

  Running his fingers through her hair, he cupped the back of her neck. “I want you there,” he said, and kissed her softly. When they broke apart, Tim looked her straight in the eye. “I really do,” he said.

  And meant it.

  Rachel had a meltdown on Thanksgiving Day. Torn between the man she loved with all her heart—a reprobate who’d sinned and left the church—and the man who loved her with all of his heart—a law student whose parents held ranking in the church—she needed some time alone with her family. Time alone with her mother and grandmother.

  Sitting in the back bedroom of her grandmother’s home where I’d slept the night before, I tried not to think of my family at home, my mother busy in the kitchen doing four things at once, my father carving the turkey. My brother Scott picking all of the cucumbers out of the salad and eating them before the bowl ever made it to the table. Chum’s wife sitting silently, saying nothing. And Chum lying on the floor chewing on a pen while he watched football.

  I missed them all so much.

  I’d never felt more alone in my life.

  And I thought of James, all alone on Thanksgiving Day. Not for the first time in his almost twenty-one years of living.

  Mom and Dad knew where I was. They hadn’t called.

  I picked up the phone on the table by the bed. Dialed a number.

  “This is collect from Tara,” I said when the operator came on the line.

  James picked up on the second ring. “Will you accept a collect call from Tara?”

  “Of course!” His voice sounded good. He really cared about me. And I cared about him, too. I didn’t want him there all alone. “Hi, Sweetie Pie. I didn’t expect you to call.”

  He’d asked her to, though.

  “I know.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I just . . . you said you’d come get me . . .” He’d told her when he’d dropped them off the afternoon before that if she needed him, she should call. He could make it back to Rachel’s in Mississippi in no time.

  “You want to come here?”

  “If you really don’t mind driving all the way back.”

  “Are you kidding? I’d love to have you here.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “She’s not going to be here—she’s babysitting on the other side of town—but she’ll be thrilled to know you are. I’ve told her all about you. She wants to meet you.”

  I’d be alone with him in the two-bedroom apartment he shared with his mother, who was currently a student at a local community college. But James was a good man. A member of the church. Spiritual leader to my social club. He’d never do anything to get either of us kicked out of school.

  He cared about me. Respected me.

  We didn’t do physical things. We’d kissed maybe ten times since I’d known him.

  The thoughts chased themselves around my mind. Colliding with emotions that were quickly escalating out of control. Thoughts of past Thanksgivings. With my family. And with Tim.

  I had to get out of there.

  “Okay, come get me.”

  “I love your family.” Emily’s voice was soft, husky. Still full from the huge Thanksgiving buffet his sister-in-law had put on, Tim had suggested a drive out to Houston Dam. They’d walked a bit and were lounging along the backseat of his car, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder.

  Tim was content to sleep off the beer he’d consumed with his brothers.

  “They’re so different from mine,” she continued talking, and he tried to stay alert to what she was saying. “At my house it’s always just been me and my brother and Mom and Dad. Dad and John would watch sports and Mom would read, or sit with Dad and doze, and while I liked the peace and quiet of the day, I see now that we missed a lot. There was so much life there today. You’re so lucky you have such a big family.”

  He had a lot of family members who gathered for holidays, but at home it was just him and Jeff and their mother. Except for the time Harry had been there, too. Harry, the man Tim’s mom had married when Tim and Jeff had reached puberty and were presenting more of a challenge than a fifty-five-year old woman felt she could handle alone.

  They hadn’t been married long.

  “Do you guys always go downstairs like that?” He’d left Emily upstairs with the women while he went downstairs with his brothers to play poker.

  “Yeah.”

  “The women, I couldn’t keep up with them, but . . .”

  He tried to listen. He really did. The air was cool but not yet cold. His stomach was full of good food and equally good beer, and Emily’s weight against him coaxed him into a state of relaxation that he couldn’t resist . . .

  I watched for James’s car from the front window. And I wondered about the weekend ahead. The choice I’d made. I fully trusted that nothing untoward would happen. But I couldn’t help comparing the time ahead with time in the past. And I wished that it was Tim I was going to spend the weekend with. I would spend the entire weekend in bed with him.

  And be thankful.

  The thought brought shame, and I asked God for forgiveness.

  I thought of Tim’s family, all gathered together at his brother’s house. And I wondered if he’d taken Emily there with him. If they were still together. And when tears pricked the backs of my eyelids, I quit thinking about Tim.

  Alone in Rachel’s grandmother’s living room, I stared at my watch. And when I saw the gold Honda pull up in front of the house, I ran out the front door.

  James had his arms open by the time I reached him. I threw myself against him. Right then he was as close as I got to family, and I was falling apart.

  He held my hand as he drove. A new thing. It was nice, though. I needed the connection. I needed a place to belong. And I loved how happy I made him just by being there. I was glad I’d called him.

  “Mom wants us to stop over there tonight.”

  “Oh, good.” His mother’s approval made what we were doing that much more appropriate. I relaxed more, trying not to feel as though I were leaving purgatory for hell. I was going to spend the weekend alone in an apartment with a man.

  But he was a man I could trust.

  And the place had two bedrooms.

  We chatted some more. I asked him if he’d had any turkey. He hadn’t. But he didn’t much care. I gathered that a big dinner on the table for Thanksgiving hadn’t been a common occurrence for him growing up. I felt sorry for him. And wanted to change that for him.

  I wasn’t sure how I’d go about doing that. I didn’t have a family to invite him home to anymore. But maybe by next year I would.

  By next year, I’d be graduated from college and probably wouldn’t ever see James again. He was from Atlanta. I was from Ohio. And he had another year of college to complete.

  “I want to talk to you.” His words were kind of ominous, but they needn’t have been. His tone was as gentle as always.

  “Sure.” I turned to face him. Thankful that he’d come all that way to get me. I didn’t deserve such loyalty. While James had been spending his holiday alone on the road, coming to get me, I’d been thinking of Tim. Yearning for Tim.

  “I was thinking . . . you and I . . . we’re a lot alike. We’re both converts to the church. We like the same things . . .”

  We did? I wasn’t sure what those were. We we
re both involved in the same social clubs, and those obligations and activities kept us busy, but . . .

  “We’ve been dating for a while now and, with you graduating in the spring and having nowhere to go . . .”

  I had nowhere to go? I’d be a college graduate. I’d get a job. And a place of my own and . . .

  I was graduating with a degree in English because I was going to write for Harlequin someday. I hadn’t certified to teach. I hadn’t minored in anything that could sustain me.

  Where on earth was I going to find a writing job in enough time to support me the second I had to move out of student housing the day after graduation?

  James had been talking. I’d missed what he said. But I tuned back in time to hear, “So I was thinking we should get married.”

  Married.

  “I love you, Sweetie Pie, so much. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  I’d just had a proposal of marriage.

  Once, a long time ago, I’d wanted nothing else.

  “Just think about it,” James said, his voice filled with excitement. “You don’t have to answer me right now, but think about it. We could get married next summer. We could go back to Armstrong next year, live in married housing, and you could get one of the jobs on campus that they save for wives of students.”

  An office job.

  But I’d be at Armstrong. Could still attend the college church. And would have plenty of time to write.

  “And you’d be married in the church,” he added, tapping into another of my worries. At Armstrong we were encouraged, voraciously it seemed to me, to pick a mate because once we got out into the real world, into the work world, the secular world, our chances of meeting an eligible member of the church diminished greatly.

  I was a convert. I already didn’t have family in the church. I couldn’t bear the thought of a mixed marriage as well.

  Nor could I bear the thought of living my life all alone. Heck, I couldn’t even seem to survive Thanksgiving alone.

  Marrying James would solve a lot of problems.

  But did I love him enough to marry him? I cared about him.

  I remembered how happy I was to see him.