Beloved Stranger (11 page)

“Perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad idea,” she said softly.

From upstairs there came the sounds of a baby crying. Ricardo rose. “I’ll see to him,” he said. Left to herself, Susan collected the plates to bring them out to the kitchen. The crying upstairs stopped and she began to load the dishwasher. Ricardo came downstairs with the baby and sat down with him in a big chair in front of the fire. From the kitchen Susan could hear her husband talking to Ricky in Spanish. When she went into the family room, Ricardo was dancing the baby on his knees and Ricky was beaming. Susan laughed and went over to sit next to Ricardo on the ottoman. They played with the baby for almost an hour and then put him to bed. Susan and Ricardo then followed their son’s example, but unlike Ricky, they did not go to sleep for quite some time.

* * * *

Two days before they left for Florida Ricardo took Susan to the theater in New York. She was aware of the stir his presence caused as they walked through the lobby and could feel herself tightening up, self-conscious and nervous. Ricardo seemed completely at ease, and when a few people said things to him like, “Good luck this season, Rick,” or “Are we going to win another series, Rick?” he would smile good-naturedly and make a brief, pleasant response.

“It’s a little daunting, being out with such a celebrity,” she said to him as they settled into their seats.

He was reading his program. “It’s no big deal,
querida
. People in New York just like to wish me well. They are Yankee fans, you see.”

The show was a Chekhov revival that had gotten rave reviews. At the intermission Susan turned to her husband and asked curiously, “How are you enjoying it?”

He was looking a little puzzled. “I am enjoying it very much, but it doesn’t seem to have a plot. Am I missing something?”

Susan’s large gray eyes danced. “Chekhov is short on plot and long on character,” she said.

“Oh, I see.” The puzzled look left his face and she laughed.

The play was marvelous and the acting superb. At the end, when Sonya was comforting Uncle Vanya with the words: “We must go on living! We shall go on living, Uncle Vanya! We shall live through a long, long chain of days and weary evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials which fate sends us; we shall work for others, both now and in our old age . . .” Susan glanced at Ricardo and saw tears in his eyes.

It was raining when they retrieved their car from the garage and started through the city streets toward the East Side Drive. They were turning down Ninetieth Street when Susan noticed two men on the sidewalk. They were bending over a third man who was lying on the pavement in the rain. “Something’s wrong!” Susan said, and Ricardo stopped the car.

“Wait here,” he ordered tersely and got out, locking his door behind him. As Susan watched he approached the group. She couldn’t hear and so she rolled down her window halfway. They were all speaking Spanish. Then Ricardo knelt on the sidewalk and Susan could see him feeling for a pulse. He spoke sharply to the other two, who Susan could see now were only boys. One immediately ran off up the street like a deer. On the pavement Ricardo began to apply CPR.

Susan reached into the backseat for her umbrella and got out of the car. She went over to stand next to Ricardo and tried as best she could to shelter the man’s face with her umbrella. The rain was coming down hard and it was cold.

Ricardo was working very hard. “I don’t know CPR, but can I help?” Susan murmured after a minute. He shook his head and kept on counting. The boy knelt next to Ricardo and his young face looked stricken. The second boy came running back. Susan understood him saying that he had called 911 for an ambulance.

It was fifteen minutes before the ambulance arrived and all during that time Ricardo worked ceaselessly over the unconscious man. After the ambulance workers had taken over, Susan heard Ricardo giving one of the boys their phone number. The ambulance pulled away and Susan and Ricardo got back into their car.

Ricardo started the engine and glanced at her in concern. “You must be freezing, Susan. I’ll get the heat going as soon as I can.”

She was shivering and her feet, clad in thin dress shoes, were icy. She looked at Ricardo. His hair was soaked and there was rain still dripping from the tips of his lashes. His coat looked sodden. He had gotten the least benefit of the umbrella.

“Do you think he’ll be all right?” she asked after they had driven in silence for a few minutes.

“I doubt it. I couldn’t get a pulse going. And I’m not sure how long he was lying there before we came along.”

“A lot of other cars went by,” she said slowly, “but nobody stopped.” He shrugged and said nothing. “Who were those boys?” she asked.

“His sons. They were all walking home from work. Evidently he had been complaining of chest pains all evening.”

“Oh dear. It doesn’t sound good.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

The heat began to come through and Ricardo turned the blowers on full blast. They were at the Larchmont tolls before he said, “What an ending to our evening out! And I thought I would give you such a treat tonight.”

“It was a treat,” she said quickly. “I adored the play. And the dinner. And I’m very glad we saw that man when we did. Even if he dies, at least his family will have the comfort of knowing that everything that could be done was done. At least they’ll know that someone tried, that they didn’t just have to stand helplessly by and watch their father die in front of them.”

“I suppose so,” he murmured.

“It’s true. Why else didn’t you give up on him? You said you thought it was hopeless.”

After a pause he answered, “As you said,
querida
, one has to try.”

She watched the windshield wipers in silence for a few minutes. Then, “I heard you giving one of the boys our phone number.”

“Yes. I’m sure they are a poor family. The loss of a father will probably hit them hard.”

That was all he said on the subject, but Susan knew he would help the family financially. They pulled into the Greenwich tolls and she turned to look at the suddenly illuminated face of her husband. He was like no one else she had ever known. On the surface he appeared so uncomplicated, so easygoing and casual. But under that surface geniality, he was a very complex man. He could be hard and demanding. He had a temper that frightened her when he was obviously holding it in check. She didn’t like to think what he would be like if he were ever really angry. He had enormous magnetism and charm, yet he was a very private man. What he thought and what he felt he kept to himself. Yet he had had tears in his eyes tonight for Uncle Vanya.

He was an enigma to her, a stranger whom she lived with on the most intimate of terms. She loved him— deeply, irrevocably. But aside from liking to sleep with her, she had no idea of how he felt about her. After all, love had not been the reason for their marriage. The rain beat down against the windows of the car and Susan sighed and closed her eyes.

“We’ll be home soon,
querida
,” he said.

“Yes.” The very cadences of his voice did strange things to her insides. He was so splendidly, competently male. Whatever the situation, she could always rest secure in the knowledge that Ricardo would handle it. He had known he might be walking into danger tonight. He had locked her safely into the car before he went to investigate. But he had gone, unhesitatingly. And if there had been danger, she was sure he would have handled that as well. She opened her eyes and looked at his shadowy profile. He was so self-sufficient. He seemed to need no one—certainly not her. The only solid achievement of her life was Ricky. And Ricky was what had brought her Ricardo. He had not even married her for her personal charms.

She closed her eyes again. How was it possible, she wondered, to be so happy and yet so miserable and all at the same time?

Chapter Nine

It was almost impossible to rent a house for only six weeks, so when they went to Florida Ricardo took a large suite in one of the best hotels in Fort Lauderdale. They had two bedrooms, a living room and a small kitchen area with a refrigerator and a hot plate. When they arrived Susan quickly made arrangements for a baby-sitter. “We’re going to have to eat dinner out,” she told Ricardo firmly, “and I do not want to have to drag Ricky into a hotel dining room every night.”

He grinned. “True. His manners leave something to be desired.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Susan replied. She did not anticipate finding it easy to take care of a four-month-old baby in a hotel suite, but she forebode to press the point. They had had this out before. And difficult though it was probably going to be, she was glad she was here with Ricardo.

She accompanied him the following day when he went to report to the Yankee camp. The sun was shining, it was eighty degrees, and as she pushed Ricky along in his umbrella stroller, she felt the festive mood of the occasion.

They hadn’t been at camp for five minutes before Ricardo was surrounded by reporters. He stood courteously, answering their questions with absolute patience and good humor. Susan came in for a small share of the attention but she found the reporters to be polite and their questions had to do with Ricardo and not with her.

“What’s Rick been doing all winter?” a wire-service man asked her first.

“Chopping wood,” she replied a little shyly. “Building a new garage.”

“He looks in great shape.”

“Yes. He’s been very active.”

“Is this the pennant baby?” another reporter asked.

Susan looked startled and then she smiled. “Yes, that’s right. He was born on the day Ricardo won the pennant, wasn’t he?”

The reporter grinned. “It was the Yankees who won the pennant, Mrs. Montoya.”

Susan laughed, “It all depends on your point of view, I suppose.”

The reporter laughed back, his eyes bright with admiration. “I see what you mean. And you’re probably not far from the truth. Rick had an awful lot to do with winning that pennant. And the series as well.”

She smiled and didn’t reply, and shortly afterward Ricardo moved away from the reporters to go change and she and Ricky walked over to where the other wives were sitting to watch. This had been Susan’s first encounter with the press and it left her feeling more comfortable than she had dreamed possible. It was the nature of Ricardo’s celebrity that protected her, she thought. His personal life was a minor adjunct to his fame. It was what he did on the field that counted.

There had never been a breath in any of the papers about their hasty marriage or the quick arrival of Ricky. The TV announcers had proudly imparted the news of Ricardo’s son’s birth, but no one had ever mentioned the fact that his parents had only been married for a few months. She had been enormously grateful for their reticence.

And yet Ricardo was one of the most famous men in America. Wherever they went in Florida, people came up to him, for his autograph, to shake his hand, to wish him well. Men and women, teenagers and young boys and girls: the whole world knew Rick Montoya. It knew him—and it admired him. Again and again Susan was struck by the regard in which Ricardo appeared to be held by all the fans who crowded to see him. And she was struck as well by the grace and the courtesy with which he accepted the pressing admiration of so many strangers. Her husband, she thought, was that rarest of all things—a hero deserving of the name.

* * * *

The change of scene and of routine made it almost impossible for Susan to write. She did try, in the intervals when Ricky was napping, but she had a hard time finding the proper concentration. After an hour’s work she would reread what she had written and it would seem terrible: stilted, awkward, childish. When Ricky woke up, she would take him down to the beach and wait for Ricardo to return. He didn’t like the idea of her being “cooped up,” as he put it, all day in a hotel room. He was such an active, outdoor person himself that he regarded any indoor, sedentary activity as a punishment.

She didn’t know why she persisted in her fantasy that she could write. There was nothing to encourage her to continue; everything seemed to say give it up, be content with what you’ve got. Yet for her, not to write was not to be fully alive. Writing was the door into her deepest self. And so, though discouraged and feeling foolish, she struggled on.

Florida may not have been good for her writing but it proved to be beneficial in most other ways. Ricardo was happy and that was important to her happiness. And she made a new friend.

His name was Martin Harrison and he was a writer for a very respected literary magazine with a large national circulation. He was not a sports reporter, but he was, as he himself told her, a “baseball nut,” and he had come to Florida to do an article on the Yankees for the National Monthly. He was in his early thirties, the kind of literate, intelligent, thinking man that Susan had always admired.

She met him about a week after camp opened. She had been sitting in the stands, rocking Ricky with one hand and holding a book with the other, when he came up to her and said in his soft voice, which held just the suspicion of a southern drawl, “Mrs. Montoya?”

Susan looked up from her book and saw a nice-looking man with brown hair and very clear hazel eyes. “Yes?” she said pleasantly.

“I’m Martin Harrison,” he explained, “and I’m writing an article about the team for the National Monthly. I wonder if I could talk to you for a little?”

“Of course.” Susan closed her book and gestured for him to sit down. The warm Florida weather had been good for her this last week. She had been feeling run-down and the sun and the beach had worked wonders. Her skin was tanned to the color of golden honey and her pale hair shone with the texture of spun silk. She was wearing a yellow sun dress and espadrilles and her wide-set gray eyes regarded him with charming gravity. “I’m afraid I’m rather a novice about baseball, Mr. Harrison. Talking to me is likely to prove a dead loss.”

“I doubt that,” he said, the drawl more pronounced now. Then his eyes lit on her book. “Merlano!” he said. “Do you like him?”

“Yes. In fact,” Susan said a little shyly. “I got to meet him last month in Colombia.”