Beloved Stranger

by Joan Wolf

  “Congratulations,” Susan said when Ricardo arrived home the following day. “I almost had heart failure half a dozen times and Maria was even worse. Couldn’t you have won in a less dramatic fashion?”

  He grinned. “It wouldn’t have been as much fun.”

  “Fun,” Susan said faintly. She thought of the dreadful pressure of all those screaming fans. “You call that fun?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Oh, Señor Montoya,” came a high-pitched voice from behind Susan, and Ricardo laughed.

  “Oh, Maria,” he mimicked, and catching her in his arms, he kissed her soundly. Maria’s worn face glowed with pleasure. Ricardo had not kissed his wife. “Where’s my son?” he asked.

  “Upstairs asleep,” she answered slowly.

  “I won’t wake him, then.” He took off his jacket and threw it on a chair. Maria hurried to pick it up, “Did the paper come?” he asked.

  “Sí, Señor Montoya.” Maria picked the Times up from a table and handed it to him. Ricardo sat down in a comfortable chair, stretched his long legs in front of him and opened the paper. “I’ll have some coffee,” he said from behind the sports page.

  “Sí, Señor Montoya,” said Maria again, and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

  Susan stood in the middle of the room and stared at the paper that concealed her husband. The baseball season was over, she thought, and here he was—home until spring. Maria returned with the coffee, which she set on a table at his elbow. He grunted a thank you. Quite suddenly she was furious.

  “Perhaps if I knelt down in front of you, you could rest your feet on my back,” she said in a voice she had never used with him.

  He lowered his paper and stared at her in astonishment. “What did you say, querida?”

  “You heard me.” She stared back at him steadily, clear gray eyes like slate under the surprisingly dark and level brows.

  “But why are you angry?” he asked in genuine bewilderment.

  “You’re so wonderful,” she said acidly. “You figure it out.” And she stalked from the room.

  Chapter Five

  A week after the World Series was won, the Yankees’ owner threw a dinner party for his team. It was held at a very elegant New York hotel and Ricardo told Susan he expected her to attend with him.

  “But I can’t leave the baby,” she protested feebly.

  “Nonsense. Maria will stay with him for the evening. I’ll drive her home when we get back.”

  “But what if he gets hungry?”

  “He can drink a bottle. Or he can wait.” He cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t want me to invite someone else, do you, querida”?”

  Susan lifted her chin. “I’ll come,” she said.

  “Good.” He smiled at her engagingly, willing her to be pleased. “You’ll have a good time. You need to get out more.”

  It wasn’t that she wouldn’t enjoy going out to dinner, Susan thought as she went through her wardrobe in search of something to wear. It was just that she quailed at the thought of meeting all those people who knew, who had to know, that she and Ricardo had been married only two months before Ricky was born.

  She closed the closet door on her schoolgirl clothes and went over to look down into the bassinet at her sleeping son. Ricky’s face, she thought with a flicker of extreme tenderness, was the surest proof of his paternity. He was a miniature of his father. Not that Ricardo had ever, in any way at all, even hinted that he might wonder if the baby she had been carrying was really his. She had always felt immensely grateful to him for that trust. She still did. It was one of the things she always remembered when she found his lordly masculinity getting on her nerves. He had believed her word, and on the basis of that word he had married her. She doubted there were many men—particularly men in his position—who would have done the same.

  She settled a light cover on her sleeping son and sighed. She would have to buy a dress. And have Sara’s black coat altered. Her old camel hair would not do for the St. Regis. She was going to have to talk to Ricardo about money.

  Ever since she had come to live with him, Ricardo had continued the same financial arrangements he had always had. He gave Maria a housekeeping allowance and out of it she bought the groceries and took care of the laundry and the dry cleaning. Over and above that, of course, she got her salary. A salary that was extremely generous, Susan realized, when Maria told her what it amounted to. Ricardo had also bought his housekeeper a car so she could drive from her home in Norwalk to his in Stamford and so that she could do the errands. Maria thought that God was simply another name for Ricardo.

  He certainly had never grudged his wife money either, but Susan didn’t enjoy playing the beggar maid to his King Cophetua. The purchases she had made—which consisted mainly of furniture and clothing for the baby—he had agreed to immediately and generously. “How much do you want, querida’?” he would say, and unhesitatingly hand over to her the amount she requested. The problem was, she hated having to ask.

  She hated having to talk to him about this, too, but it was going to have to be done. She arrived downstairs just as he was coming in from raking leaves. “Dios!” he said to her humorously. “I think half the leaves in Connecticut have found a home in my yard. The more I rake, the more leaves there seem to be. At least I can dump them in the woods. I’d hate to have to bag them all.”

  “We used to burn them,” Susan said nostalgically. “I loved the smell of leaves burning in the fall. It seemed like such a big part of the season.”

  “Well, if I burn them now I will get a summons,” Ricardo said practically. He took off his down vest and dropped it on a chair.

  “Ricardo,” Susan said with exemplary patience, “there is a closet right behind you. Do you think you could hang that up?”

  He looked surprised. “It doesn’t go in that closet,” he said simply. “It goes upstairs.”

  There was a short silence and then Susan decided to fight this particular battle another day. She cleared her throat. “I have to talk to you, Ricardo. Could we sit down for a minute, please?”

  “Of course.” He followed her into the family room. There was a chill in the air and he said, “I think we could use a fire.”

  She sat down on the sofa and watched as he expertly stacked wood in the stone fireplace. The shoulders under his plaid flannel shirt looked so wide, so strong, so—impervious. Could she possibly make him understand how she felt? He sat back on his heels and watched as the fire grew. Then he turned and looked at her. “So?” he said. “What do you want to talk to me about?”

  “Well—I need a dress for the dinner on Saturday, for one thing,” she began.

  “Naturally.” He sounded surprised that she should need to mention this obvious fact.

  “Ricardo,” and now her voice began to sound tense, “can’t you see that I hate to have to come and ask you every time I need money? It isn’t that you aren’t generous—you’re only too generous—it’s just that, well, it’s just that I hate it.” She looked at him a little desperately, a mute appeal in her large gray eyes.

  He looked back at her and his own face became very grave. “Susan,” he said, “forgive me. Of course you should not have to come and ask me for every penny. I am sorry. I should have made you an allowance long ago.” He gave her a faintly rueful, utterly charming look. “I was preoccupied with other things,” he said. “Shall I give you a monthly allowance for you and for Ricky? How about . . .” and he named a sum that made her blink.

  And that was it. It had been so easy. He had, surprisingly, understood. “Thank you, Ricardo,” she said a little breathlessly. “Honestly, I don’t mean to be a millstone around your neck forever, but I am rather tied down with the baby at present. I just don’t think I can get a job right now.”

  “A job!” He looked utterly thunderstruck. “What are you talking about, Susan? You are not a millstone around my neck. You are my wife. The mother of my son. Of course I expect to support you. I won’t hear of you getting
a job.”

  She stared back at him, startled by his vehemence, even more startled by his point of view. Her own mother had always worked outside the home. She herself had always assumed that was what educated women did. “Not now, of course, while Ricky is still little,” she began tentatively.

  “Not now, not ever,” he said firmly. “You have a job. You are a wife and a mother. You are a very good mother, querida. I always knew you would be. And we will have more children. You’ll be busy enough, I promise you.”

  Susan felt her heart lurch a little at that mention of more children. She ran her tongue around suddenly dry lips. “Ricardo.” She spoke very gently, very carefully, “I am twenty-two years old. I have a college degree. I had—I have—plans for my life that involve something more than being just a housewife.”

  Ricardo’s mouth set in a line that was not at all gentle. “And what are these plans?” he asked in an abrupt, hard voice.

  “Well,” said Susan weakly, pushed to the wall and forced to admit out loud and to someone else what she had scarcely dared admit to herself, “I’ve always wanted to be a writer.”

  The set of his mouth got even grimmer. “On a newspaper?”

  “No. Oh, no. I’ve wanted to write—novels.” The last word came out as barely a whisper. She was desperately afraid that he would laugh.

  His face relaxed but he did not laugh. “Oh novels,” he said. He smiled at her, his good humor restored. “I have no objection to your writing novels, querida. That is something you can easily do at home.”

  “Yes, I suppose I could,” she said slowly.

  “We even have a library for you to work in,” he said magnanimously.

  She stared at his splendid dark face. He was humoring her, she thought. He did not take her at all seriously. “Thank you,” she said, her voice expressionless.

  “Not at all.” He waved his hand in a gesture of magnificent dismissal. “And what is all this foolishness about being ‘just a housewife.’ You aren’t a housewife, you’re my wife.” His eyes glinted at her and his voice became softer. “I realize we have been somewhat delayed in starting a normal married life,” he went on, “but that should be over with soon. When do you see the doctor again?”

  She could hear her heart hammering way up into her head. “In three weeks,” she got out.

  “So long. Ah well.” He leaned back in the armchair and closed his eyes. “I’ve waited this long. I suppose another three weeks won’t kill me.” There was absolute silence in the room. Susan couldn’t think of a thing to say. He opened his eyes a slit. “I’m thirsty after all that raking. Could you get me something to drink?”

  It was definitely not the time to take up a feminist stance. Susan stood up. “What do you want?”

  “Some ginger ale would be nice.”

  She nodded and left the room, shaking her head ruefully.

  * * * *

  The dinner party turned out to be a very enjoyable evening. Susan had bought a pale gold dinner dress in Bloomingdale’s and was conscious of looking really smart for the first time in almost a year. Her shining, fawn-colored hair, so fine that it wouldn’t hold a curl, fell, sheer and glistening to her shoulders. She wore high-heeled gold sandals and Sara’s black coat and she felt pretty as well as smart. It didn’t hurt either, she thought as they went in through the doors of the hotel, to have an escort as impressive-looking as Ricardo. Even if he had never played baseball in his life, his tall, broad-shouldered figure would have commanded attention.

  It was the first time that Susan had ever met any of Ricardo’s teammates, with the exception of Joe Hutchinson, and it was fun actually seeing in person the people she had been watching so assiduously on TV. They sat at a table with Joe Hutchinson, Bert Diaz, Carl Seelinger and their wives. The conversation, after the first few minutes, drifted away from baseball and Susan found herself talking to the quiet, shy wife of Bert Diaz. Sonia Diaz’s English was halting, so Susan, who had been getting in a lot of practice with Maria, spoke with her in Spanish. The Diazes had a six-month-old daughter, and the two women happily talked babies during the appetizer and soup courses. Susan’s attention was wrested from this fascinating topic, however, when she heard Carl Seelinger ask Ricardo, “And what are you going to do this winter, Rick? If you do any more skiing, George will have a heart attack. He does not want you reporting to spring training with a broken leg.”

  Ricardo looked amused. “George is a worry wart.” He sipped his wine. “We’ll be leaving for Bogota before long. I don’t want to delay Ricky’s christening forever and my mother and sisters are dying to see him.”

  “Are you having the baby christened in Colombia, Rick?” asked Jane Hutchinson.

  “Of course. That’s where my family is.”

  All of this was news to Susan. They hadn’t even discussed the subject of Ricky’s baptism. Susan had assumed that Ricardo would want him baptized Catholic and she didn’t plan to object. She herself was Congregational, but her family had never been churchgoers. She hadn’t noticed that Ricardo was much of a churchgoer, either, but he had made a point of their being married by a priest.

  He might also have made a point of discussing his plans with her, she thought now as she watched his oblivious profile. Her chest felt tight, the way it always did when she was upset. “You never told me we were taking Ricky to Colombia,” she said in a low voice to him a little later in the meal.

  He looked surprised. “Of course I did, querida. I said we would go to Bogota for Christmas. Don’t you remember?”

  “For Christmas. Not for a christening.”

  He shrugged and gave her his charming, boyish smile. She was getting to know his expressions very well. This one meant, Oh well, I didn’t think it was important, but if you want to make an issue of it, I’ll humor you. “I didn’t think it mattered to you,” he said patiently. “Would you like your mother to be there? I’ll give her airplane tickets.”

  That wasn’t the issue at all. The issue was that she wanted to be consulted before plans were made that involved her and her baby. It wasn’t that she objected to Ricardo’s plan; she just wanted to be part of the decision-making process.

  “That’s not it,” she said softly. “We’ll talk about it later, at home.”

  He looked a little surprised but then his attention was claimed again by Jane Hutchinson. In a few minutes the conversation had become general.

  “You’re different from the girls Rick used to date,” Bev Seelinger said to Susan as they freshened their makeup in the ladies’ room after dinner. “Somehow I knew you would be.”

  Susan fought a brief battle with herself and lost. “What kind of girls did he date?” she asked.

  “Oh, the tall, sultry model type. But I never for a minute thought he’d marry any of them. In fact, I sometimes wondered if he’d ever marry at all.”

  Susan put her comb down and looked curiously at her companion. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” the other woman answered slowly. She flashed Susan a quick grin. “It’s not that he doesn’t like women. God, when I remember how those model types used to be all over him.” Bev frowned. “It’s odd, now I come to think of it, that I never pictured him as married.”

  “Perhaps he was too much the playboy type,” Susan said with an effort at lightness. She felt guilty discussing Ricardo like this. She felt almost that she was betraying his privacy. But she couldn’t help herself. She knew so little, even now, about this man she had married.

  “No,” Bev was saying decisively. “That’s not it. He certainly had a lot of girlfriends, and he certainly has a sex appeal that would knock over your eighty-year-old maiden aunt if he turned it on her, but that’s not it. It’s just that—somehow, one always sees Rick as essentially alone.”

  Susan stared at Bev’s healthy, outdoor face. It was not the face of a deeply perceptive woman but, Susan suddenly realized, that was what she was. “Yes,” she said softly after a minute, “I know what you mean.”

  Bev smiled at
her gratefully. “I don’t know what got me started on this topic. I hope you don’t feel I’ve been out of line.”

  “No, of course I don’t.” Susan put her comb back in her purse. “Are you ready? Shall we go?”

  Susan thought about what Bev had said as the evening progressed to after-dinner drinks and a three-piece band for dancing. As she had watched the World Series on TV and read the ecstatic press reports, she had tried to comprehend, to analyze, the astonishing popularity of her husband. It was not just his baseball talent—other men were equally talented, she thought. It was something about him, something inherent in his character, that made him what he was: Rick Montoya, American idol.

  She watched him now, relaxed and laughing among his teammates, and even here he stood out. He was one of them but he was still, always and incontestably, his own man, invincibly private behind all the outward good cheer. Susan, always deeply sensitive to the vibrations of another spirit, had long apprehended this solitariness in her husband. It was the thing in him that most frustrated and fascinated her.

  “Dance with me?” Ricardo’s voice broke into her reverie and she looked up into his dark eyes.

  “Of course.”

  He took her hand and they moved out onto the floor. The band was playing “Moon River,” and Ricardo’s arms came around her and held her close. She had not been this close to him since that night in the blizzard, the night Ricky had been conceived. His body felt so strong against hers, so big. The music was slow and dreamy and she relaxed against him, supple and light, following his slightest move effortlessly. When the song was over he looked down at her, his eyes warm and very dark. “That was nice,” he said softly. She didn’t answer and the band began another slow song. “Again?” he asked, and she nodded and moved back into his arms. “What a shame we have to wait three more weeks,” he murmured against the silky softness of her hair. And at that moment, seduced by the intense magnetism of his nearness, Susan had to agree.