Beloved Stranger (18 page)

She closed her eyes as his weight crushed her into the mattress. His mouth on hers was hard and hungry and his kiss drove her back hard into the pillow. She felt his terrible urgency, his barely controlled desperation. His hands hurt when they gripped her delicate flesh. He groaned and she could sense him making a terrific effort to get himself under control. She opened her eyes. She wasn’t ready but it was not her needs that concerned her at the moment. She loved him very very much. “It’s all right, darling,” she whispered. “You don’t have to wait.”

His dark eyes looked into hers for a very brief second and then he buried his face between her neck and shoulder. He held her close but his hands now felt more gentle. After a minute one of them slid down her shoulder to her breast and began, very lightly to caress it. Then he turned his head and began to kiss her throat. Her own hands moved slowly over his back. “Ricardo,” she murmured.

His hand moved down to her stomach and then moved again. She gasped, pressing up against him. He locked his mouth on hers and continued to caress her until she whimpered. His mouth softened and he said her name, cupping her breasts in both his hands. She opened her eyes and they stared at each other for a minute out of passion-narrowed eyes. Then she put her hands on his hips, pulling him toward her, over her. She arched up toward him, her breasts filling his hands as she urged him to fill her body, to complete her, to finish what he had started.

He drove into her and something in her answered to the hungriness in him, blazing up for him in a bonfire of wild sweetness and ecstasy.

“Do you know you always make love in Spanish?” she asked a long time later. Her head was pillowed on his shoulder and his hand was sifting gently through her hair.

“Well, it’s my first language, after all,” he replied. “It’s the language we almost always spoke at home— even when we lived in New York.”

She sighed with contentment and after a minute his hand left her hair and moved to her back. Susan’s eyes half closed and she rubbed against him a little, like a cat being stroked. His hand moved from her back down to her hip and delicious quivers of anticipation began to run through her again. “That was like manna in the desert,” he murmured into her ear.

“Shall we do it again?” Very gently his fingers caressed the delicate flesh on the inside of her thigh. “Mmm,” said Susan, moving slightly. “Let’s.” Ricardo did not get much sleep on his first night home, but he looked a great deal better as he left for the ball park the following day. Some of the strain at least was gone from his face.

Susan felt better too. It was ineffably sweet to her to know that Ricardo had refused to use her simply to slake his own need. Even though she had given him permission, he had held back and waited for her. He was such a wonderful man, she thought. If only he could break out of this ghastly slump!

Chapter Fourteen

It was Friday night and the Yankees were opening a four-game series with the Red Sox. Boston was four games ahead of them in the pennant race and this series could be crucial. If the Yankees lost, it would be very difficult psychologically as well as statistically for them to ever regain the lead.

Susan’s heart was heavy as she turned on the set at eight o’clock to watch. At this point she thought she knew what Ricardo’s problem was, but she didn’t know how to help him overcome it.

He had lost his confidence. It was as simple as that. He had had a few bad days, which everyone—even Ricardo—had to have once in a while, but because they came right after the accident, people had begun to doubt him. And so instead of simply shrugging and riding out the slump, as she was certain he would have done in any other circumstances, he had tried to prove that he was okay and he had tried too hard. The more he tried, the more tense he became. And the more tense he became, the more impossible it was for him to hit. It was a vicious cycle. The answer was to restore his confidence, but Susan didn’t know how to do that. She was the last person he would listen to on the subject of baseball. She had never even watched a game until she had married him.

There was quiet in the stadium as Ricardo came to the plate for the first time. The usual wild cheering his presence had always provoked was replaced this time by a distinctly uneasy silence. There were no boos, no catcalls as there had been on the road. Nor were there any cries of encouragement; just silence. The Yankee fans all seemed to sense the magnitude of what was happening. Ricardo took two strikes and then swung at a bad pitch and grounded it to the first baseman. There was still that eerie silence in the ball park as he returned to the dugout.

He struck out the second time he was up and popped out the third. When the Yankees came to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning, the score was tied at two-two. Joe Hutchinson was the first batter and he singled to center. Rex Hensel, the shortstop, sacrificed him to second. The third batter, Buddy Moran, hit a towering fly to left that was caught at the fence by Boston’s Hank Moore. It was two out, the winning run was on second and Ricardo was up. Susan watched him swing his bat and start to move from the on-deck circle toward the plate. Then he paused and looked back at the dugout toward the manager. Frank Henry was coming off the bench and picking a bat out of the rack. Astonishingly, the announcer’s voice came over the P. A. “Batting for Montoya, Frank Henry, number nineteen.”

A roar went up from the stadium and Susan could hardly see the set through the tears in her eyes and the ache in her throat. This was the final humiliation, being pulled for a pinch hitter in the kind of crisis situation Ricardo had always excelled in. She scarcely heard what the announcers were saying, but the TV camera picked up Ricardo as he sat on the dugout bench. Bert Diaz was beside him, looking upset. Ricardo’s face was unreadable.

“That’s gone!” the announcer cried loudly, and the camera followed the flight of the ball as it dropped about ten rows back in the right-field stands. The camera then swung to a grinning Frank Henry as he jogged around the bases. His teammates were waiting for him at home plate and the first man to shake his hand was Ricardo.

“Now, there is class,” the TV announcer said quietly. “Any other athlete I know would have gone down to the locker room. But not Montoya. I hope to God he can lick this slump. The game can’t afford to lose a man of that caliber.”

* * * *

It was after one o’clock when Susan heard Ricardo’s car come into the driveway. Ricky had woken up again with his tooth and she was upstairs, rocking his crib, trying to get him back to sleep. Ricardo didn’t come upstairs, and when Ricky finally went off some fifteen minutes later, Susan went quietly downstairs. She was wearing a thin summer nightgown and matching peignoir and her bare feet made scarcely any sound on the carpeting.

She found Ricardo in the family room. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his knuckles were pressed hard against his forehead. He was rigid with tension, Susan thought her heart would break. “Ricardo,” she said out of an aching throat. “Darling, I’m so sorry.” She crossed the room to him and he turned in his seat and blindly reached for her. His arms were clamped about her waist, his face pressed against her breasts. “Susan,” he groaned. “
Dios
, Susan. I am so scared.”

She held him tightly, her lips buried in his hair. “I know, darling, I know,” she whispered.

With his face still pressed against her, he began to talk. She had never seen him vulnerable before. She held him close and listened as he poured out his fears, his uncertainties, letting her inside his defenses where no one had ever been before. He held nothing back and in her heart was a strange mixture of pain and aching joy. “Maybe I am afraid of getting hurt,” he groaned at last in anguish. “I don’t know.
Dios
, Susan, I don’t know anything anymore!”

She rested her cheek against his smooth dark hair and closed her eyes. She had been right all along, she thought. He was suffering from a catastrophic loss of confidence. Somehow, she had to help him restore it. For the first time he had turned to her and she mustn’t fail him now. She took a deep, steadying breath and said calmly, “I know what the problem is, Ricardo.”

After a minute his arms loosened and he looked up at her. “You do?” he asked blankly.

“Yes. I haven’t said anything because—oh because I was afraid you’d think I was silly.”

“
Dios
,” he said. “But what is it?”

She looked him directly in the eyes, her own clear and steady and utterly truthful. “You’re taking your eye off the ball,” she said.

He sat up straight. “What!”

“It’s so elementary that I think it needed an amateur like me to pick it up, Ricardo. I thought a while ago that that might be the problem—simply because I know that was always my problem in tennis when I began to go off my game. And I’ve watched you for several weeks now. You’re so hung up with your stance and your feet and your swing that you simply aren’t watching the ball.”

He stared at her, a look of dawning wonder on his face. “Can it be?”

“Absolutely. I’ll bet you a million dollars that if you go up to the plate tomorrow, stand any way you like and simply watch that ball, you’ll hit it.”

“I’m not watching the ball,” he repeated slowly. “You know, you may be right.”

“I know I’m right. It’s what’s thrown your timing off. You had a little slump in Boston, which was perfectly natural since you hadn’t played for a while, but then you started fiddling around with your natural stance. And you got so hung up on fiddling that you began to take your eye off the ball. So of course the slump went from bad to worse.”

He sat back in the chair and stared over her head, obviously thinking hard, “I think you’re right,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “I think that’s exactly what happened.”

“It is,” she said positively.

His large brown eyes focused once again on her face. “You should have told me sooner,” he said.

“I would have, but I didn’t think you’d listen,” she said hesitantly. “After all, what do I know about baseball?”

“You know something more important in this case,” he said. “You know me.” He shook his head and laughed. “Taking my eye off the ball. I can’t believe it.”

Susan hadn’t seen that smile in weeks and her stomach clenched now at the sight of it. Dear God, she thought, he had actually believed her. She was still standing in front of him and now he reached up and pulled her down onto his lap. She put her arms around his neck and nestled to him. His body felt warm and relaxed against hers. “I’m a genius,” she murmured. “It’s time you appreciated that.”

“I have appreciated you for quite some time now,
querida
,” he said softly into her hair.

Susan closed her eyes. Please God, she prayed, let this work. She had no idea if Ricardo were watching the ball or not. She simply thought he needed to feel he would get a hit and then whatever it was that was wrong would correct itself. If this didn’t work, he’d never listen to her again. She couldn’t bear that, not now when for the first time she was beginning to think that perhaps he did love her after all. He had trusted her tonight. He had let her in. It simply had to work.

They stayed like that, peacefully, for a very long time. There was no need to talk, no need to make love even; it was enough that they were quiet and together. Later, upstairs in their bedroom, Ricardo did make love to her with a heartstopping tenderness and passion that drew from her a seemingly bottomless generosity of surrender and of love. She could give to him forever, she felt. There was no one else like him in the world. He fell asleep peacefully in her arms and it was Susan who spent a sleepless night, praying as she had never prayed before, for Ricardo and for their marriage. So much depended upon what happened that afternoon.

* * * *

Ricardo left for the stadium early to take batting practice. It was Saturday and the Yankees were playing an afternoon game. Susan put Ricky in for his afternoon nap and switched the TV on at two o’clock to watch. She felt sick with apprehension.

Ricardo was the first man to come to bat in the bottom of the second inning. The Red Sox had Paul Beaulieu, their premier pitcher, on the mound and he had retired the first three Yankees on strikes.

The announcer spoke as Ricardo came up to the plate. “I understand Murphy wasn’t going to play Montoya today—he thought perhaps what Rick needed was a break from the pressure. But Rick asked him for one last game.” Susan dug her fingernails into her palms. They had been going to bench Ricardo.

The first pitch was a strike. “That was a fastball on the outside corner,” the announcer said. “Beaulieu has very good stuff today,”

There was silence in the ball park as Beaulieu went into his windup. He delivered the pitch and Ricardo swung.

Crack!

Susan knew the sound and watched almost in disbelief as the ball arched into the upper stands. The stadium rose to its feet, screaming hysterically. The Yankee dugout emptied and the whole team was lined up at home plate waiting for Ricardo. “You’d think Montoya’d just won the World Series!” shouted the announcer over the din.

Ricardo’s face was serious as he shook the hands of his teammates. It wasn’t until Joe Hutchinson slapped him on the back and said something that a smile dawned. At the sight of that familiar grin the noise, impossibly, became even greater. “I think we’ve got the old Rick back,” one announcer said.

“I hope to God you’re right,” the other responded fervently.

By the time the game was over it appeared the first announcer had been right. Ricardo went three for four and doubled in the winning run in the bottom of the eighth. The slump was over.

Marv Patterson, one of the Yankee announcers, always had an after-game show when the Yankees played at home and he announced excitedly in the ninth inning that Ricardo was to be his guest. Ricky was crying for his dinner by now and Susan ran out into the kitchen for his high chair, plunked it down in front of the TV and fed him as she watched.

Patterson’s introduction was so laudatory it was almost embarrassing and Ricardo’s face, as he listened, held the look of faint amusement that was so familiar to Susan that it made her heart turn over. He hadn’t looked like that in months. Finally Patterson wound up his panegyric and turned to his guest. “What happened today, Rick?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone break out of a slump more dramatically.”