A Song for the Road by Kathleen Basi (classic literature books txt) 📕

For the past nine months, since coming to Curtis, church music had been her “me” time, her refuge from the pressures of living up to her free tuition and housing scholarship. She’d rigorously kept her two lives separate; until this moment, she hadn’t realized Teo was the person she trusted most in the world.

The directory inside the lobby pointed her to the fourth floor, where an administrative assistant waved her to a row in the center of a hive of cubicles. “Teo,” she said, and when he swiveled in his chair, she knew by the look on his face she didn’t have to face this alone after all.

He found a crisis pregnancy center where she could get checked over, and he didn’t bat an eye when the staff assumed he was the father.

When they said “twins,” Miriam’s whole life passed before her eyes. She’d always thought that phrase melodramatic, but now she understood. It was like viewing it all from a great height: every moment she’d spent sitting at the piano, every yard she’d mowed to pay for lessons, every Mass she’d played, and all the nights she’d lain awake with the music churning in her brain. Somewhere in her subconscious, she’d cherished a fantasy of a well-behaved baby sleeping peacefully in a bassinet beside the piano while her real life chugged merrily alongside.

She couldn’t possibly do it with twins.

Teo didn’t speak as they walked out of the clinic and into the noise of squealing brakes and roaring engines. He had his hands shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket. The May afternoon had grown too warm for it, but he didn’t seem to notice the sweat popping out on his forehead.

They walked around Washington Square in silence. The heavenly scent of spring struggled against the stink of diesel. “What am I going to tell my parents?” Miriam said.

He had a strange look on his face, one she couldn’t interpret. “Not sure that’s the part I’d be worried about.”

He had a point. She wasn’t yet twenty, and she could only remember fifteen of those years. How could she envision being a mother?

She understood now the temptation of termination. Just erase it all. Hide your screw-ups from the jerks who participated in the process and then revealed their true selves—selves you’d never want around your children.

Children.

She clenched her fists, but she could still feel them shaking. “I can’t do this, Teo.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “What can I do?”

“Help me find a place to give them away.”

He took her hand. His skin warmed the shaky chill of her own. “Of course,” he said.

Yes, that was it. Give the babies to someone who could give them a better life, away from her, and go on with her own. She just had to get through the next nine months.

But—nine months! Maternity clothes! “Everyone will know.” She sat down on the edge of the fountain, the single plume jetting upward behind her. Teo put an arm around her shoulders. “Everyone. Even Gus.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead. “I can’t go back to school. I don’t know what to do, Teo. I can’t face him again.”

Teo’s arm tensed, but his voice remained quiet, measured. “You’re sure you don’t want to …” He hesitated, swallowed, went on. “To give this … Gus? … a chance to do the right thing?”

Miriam paused a long moment. Pining for Gus, living for the crumbs of notice he’d bestowed on her over the past few years, had been a roller coaster: the anticipation, the swoop in the stomach as the car crested the hill and began the drop, the thrill of being out of control. But nothing cleared a girl’s head like good old-fashioned humiliation. “He hates kids,” she said. “You should hear the names he calls them. ‘Snot monster,’ ‘shriekling’—words I’ve never even heard. ‘Spermlette.’ And his family is rich. They’ll think I did it on purpose. He’ll think I did it on purpose. They might try to force me to … get rid of them.” She rested her head on Teo’s shoulder.

Teo’s grip tightened briefly. She could feel his pulse against her ear; oddly, it seemed to be pounding. This had to be as awkward for him as it was excruciating for her.

“I can’t believe I was so stupid,” she whispered.

He swallowed three times in quick succession. “Mira,” he said, “are you sure, when the time comes, you’re going to be able to give them up?”

Her shoulders hunched. She stared at the ground. “What choice do I have? I can’t raise two kids on my own.”

Teo rubbed his fingers across his mouth and chin. “What if …” He cleared his throat. “Maybe there’s another way.” He swallowed again, as if his next words would change everything.

And they did.

“We could get married,” he said.

She lifted her head, certain she’d heard wrong. Not because he wasn’t the marrying type; she was certain he was. But because he would never say such a thing flippantly. “What?” Miriam said, hoping a couple more seconds might help her decipher the tiny spark that had suddenly materialized in the murky despair within her soul.

He took his arm from around her shoulder and turned to face her on the bench, clasping her hands in his. And then he said again:

“Marry me.”

 33

MIRIAM MADE IT TWO blocks from the Gathering Haus before she heard someone calling her name. She picked up the pace. She was still furious, but now that the shock was past, the pounding of her heart had more to do with the fear that Gus might figure out her secret. After his revelation, she’d carry that secret to her grave without a twinge of remorse.

She’d hoped his overinflated opinion of his own dignity would prevent him following her, but the multiple repetitions of her name indicated otherwise.

“Miriam!”

At the touch on her shoulder, she wheeled, swinging her arm back in preparation for the second punch she’d ever thrown in her life,