Beloved Stranger (8 page)

“Well, let us say rather you turned into a very pregnant unicorn,” he suggested, and she giggled. “But I’m not sorry we got married,” he was going on. “Are you?”

She was acutely conscious of his nearness, his maleness, his power and strength. He was the biggest thing that had ever happened to her. She knew that and she knew, too, in a sudden flash of intuition, that he always would be. Nothing else in her life would ever measure up to the importance of Ricardo. “No,” she said, low and steady, “no, I’m not sorry.”

“Good.” He burrowed comfortably deeper into the bed and in two minutes he was asleep. Susan lay awake for much much longer before she finally drifted into a dreamless slumber.

* * * *

The next few weeks slipped by for Susan, heavy with the haze of sensual fulfillment
.
All the minor discontents and irritations of the past weeks seemed simply to vanish. Her world both expanded and contracted and that world consisted of just one thing: Ricardo. Even the baby became somehow an extension of her husband. All of Susan’s intellectuality and feminism died, drowned in the absorbing, purely physical life she was leading. For the first time in her life she was profoundly conscious of the pleasures of being female. She wrote absolutely nothing.

“I got our tickets for Bogota today,” Ricardo said to her one evening in early December. They were sitting in the family room in front of the fire, Susan curled up on the sofa next to Ricardo, her head pillowed against the hardness of his shoulder. She stirred a little and looked up at him.

“What?”

“I got our tickets for Bogota. We leave in four days.”

She sat up and stared at him. The glow from the fire cast golden shadows on his warm olive skin and high cheekbones. “Four days?” she repeated.

“Um.” He looked at her and quite suddenly frowned. “You did update your passport, as I asked?”

She had done that months ago. “Yes. But, Ricardo, four days! I have to pack and get Ricky ready . . . Ricky! He doesn’t have a passport!”

“Oh yes, he does. I got him one a month ago.”

“You got him one. . . . But when?”

He looked a little impatient. “I had the photographer come to the house. Don’t you remember?”

“No.” She was quite definite. “I do not remember.”

He looked even more impatient. “Well, perhaps you weren’t home. As a matter of fact, now that I think of it, you were out getting your hair cut.”

She stared at him, utterly flabbergasted. “And you didn’t even think to tell me?”

He shrugged. “I forgot.” He raised an eyebrow. “But what is all this fuss,
querida
? Ricky has a passport. You have a passport. I am so important that I have two passports. You throw some clothes into a suitcase, and we go. Why are you upsetting yourself?”

She expelled her breath in a sound of mingled exasperation and defeat. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s utterly weird of me, but I would like to be kept a little more apprised of your plans for us, Ricardo.”

He looked surprised. “Don’t you want to go?”

“Of course I want to go.” She looked up at his splendidly masculine face and surrendered. “Why do you have two passports?” she asked.

He smiled, irresistible and charming now that she had given way to him. “I have both a Colombian passport and an American passport. When I am traveling to Colombia I use one and when I am returning to the States I use the other.”

“How convenient.”

“Isn’t it?” He looked down at her. “But then, I have always liked convenience. I find having a wife is very convenient. If I had known how much I would like it, I might have married years ago. Aren’t you lucky I waited?” He picked up her hand, turned it slightly and kissed first her wrist and then her palm.

“You mightn’t have found another wife quite as convenient as I am,” she said very softly. The touch of his mouth was causing her heartbeat to accelerate.

“That is true.” He shifted his grasp to her wrist and pulled her closer to him. “Let’s make love right here, in front of the fire,” he murmured.

Susan’s eyes widened with surprise. “Here?”

“Here.” He bent his head and began to kiss her, slowly, seekingly, erotically. He pressed her back against the cushions of the sofa and her hands came up to hold him. The muscles of his back and shoulders were hard under her palms. He kissed her throat, her collarbone, and his hand moved up under her sweater toward her breast.

“Ricardo,” she whispered. She kissed his cheekbone, his ear. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“No,” he said. “Here.” His fingers found her breast and his other hand began to move caressingly along her hip, her thigh. Susan’s body responded even as her mind hesitated, her New England conservatism slightly scandalized by his behavior. This wasn’t a ski chalet in New Hampshire; this was her home.

He sensed her indecision and pulled back a little to look into her face. He was so close he could clearly see the baby-fine texture of her skin. Her wide gray eyes were both unsure and voluptuous, her mouth was so soft, so inviting. . . . “Little puritan,” he said, and then his weight bore her back against the wide cushions of the sofa.

“Ricardo . . .” Susan said protestingly, but her hands closed on his shoulders and held him close.

“Carina,” he said. “Angelita.” Susan’s eyelids felt heavy as her body ripened under his touch. She helped him take off her clothes, conscious at last only of the rushing of her blood, the sweet melting desire that longed for him to take her and make her his. The fire was hot on her bare skin and he was deep within her. Her whole body shuddered with the intensity of the pleasure he gave her and she buried her face, her mouth, in the sweaty hollow of his shoulder. She said his name, and then she said it again. He rolled over onto his side, still keeping his arms around her, and they lay still. After a long while Susan raised her head and, bending, rained a line of tender kisses along his face, from temple to chin. Her hair swung forward, enclosing both their faces in a silken tent. She raised her head a little and he smiled at her, warm and peaceful in the glow of the fire. Later he carried her upstairs to bed.

* * * *

Susan spent the next three days doing laundry and packing. On the day before they were to leave she put Ricky in his car seat and drove up to Fairfield to visit her mother.

“Why don’t you come to Bogota for your Christmas vacation, Mother?” she asked as they sat over a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Ricky was sleeping next to them in the port-a-crib Susan had brought along with her.

“I’d love to, dear, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to,” Mrs. Morgan said. “There’s a whole calendar full of dinners and parties I’ve promised to attend.”

“But what will you do on Christmas?”

“The Slatterlys have asked me for the day.” Anne Slatterly was an old college friend of her mother’s and the two had always remained very close.

“Oh,” said Susan. She smiled and said lightly, “I can see I don’t have to worry about your being alone.”

“Of course not.” Mrs. Morgan smiled down at her sleeping grandson. “I’ll miss this little guy, though.”

“Yes. Well, we’ll be back sometime after the first of the year.”

“When exactly are you coming home, Susan? I forgot to ask you the other day.”

“I don’t know.” Susan sipped her coffee. “Ricardo hasn’t said. But I’ll call you when we get in.”

Amusement lit Mrs. Morgan’s face. “Ricardo doesn’t know how lucky he was to marry you, Susan. There are very few American girls today who would be as accommodating to his ‘lord of the manor’ style as you.”

Susan kept her eyes on her coffee. She tried very hard not to feel hurt, but she was. “That’s just the way he is,” she managed to say.

“I know. And you are—and always have been—a sweet, gentle and affectionate child. You’ll suit him perfectly.” Mrs. Morgan got up to take a coffee cake out of the oven. “What is Ricardo doing these days to keep himself busy?” she asked as she served her daughter a slice.

“He’s been going into New York these last few days, to film a camera commercial for television.”

“Oh? Good for him. There’s a great deal of money to be made in that sort of thing. Does he do it often?”

“Once in a while. For products he really uses and likes.”

“And what have you been up to, dear?”

“Well,” Susan said feebly, “the baby keeps me busy.” She looked down at her sleeping son. He didn’t look as if he kept anyone busy.

“But you have Maria to help?” Her mother was prodding gently.

“That’s true.”

“You ought to join a few local organizations,” Mrs. Morgan advised. “Stamford has some excellent civic groups.” Mrs. Morgan herself was a member of various professional, political and civic organizations.

All her life Susan could recall her mother going out to meetings.

“I’ll think about it,” Susan said with noticeable lack of enthusiasm. Her mother gave her a slightly baffled look and then, obligingly, changed the subject.

Driving herself home an hour later, Susan felt the old familiar sense of worthlessness sweep across her. She was bitterly hurt by her mother’s assessment of her and yet she didn’t know how to dispute it. All her life she had felt weaker, less vital, less interesting than the rest of her family. She had always seemed to be swept along in the bustle of their lives, trying desperately to reach out and touch them and never quite succeeding. She had touched people—a few high school and college friends, one or two of her teachers—but with her family, and in particular with her mother, she always seemed to fail. She had never doubted that the failure was her fault. And if she was so unsuccessful with her own mother, how on earth was she going to manage with Ricardo’s. She would never admit it to him, but she was really dreading this trip to Colombia.

Chapter Seven

They flew first-class to El Dorado International Airport in Bogota. Ricardo’s sister Elena and her husband were waiting to drive them to the family home in Chico, the elegant new suburb in northern Bogota. There was a great bustle of kissing and handshaking and Susan had the confused impression of a very attractive woman in her mid-thirties and a middle-sized, stout man with a gray mustache, before they were all in the car, a deeply cushioned Citroen, and on their way through the darkness. Ricardo sat in the front with his brother-in-law, who had been introduced to Susan as Ernesto Rios, and Susan, holding Ricky, sat in the back with Elena. Up to this point they had all spoken Spanish but now Elena turned to Susan and said, in very good English, “Did you have a pleasant trip? How was the airplane?”

“Very nice,” Susan said. Ricky began to fuss and she shifted him to her other shoulder.

“Flying bothers some babies,” Elena said sympathetically. “Fortunately, mine always seemed to like it. At any rate, they always slept.”

Susan patted Ricky’s back and he quieted. “How many children do you have?” she asked.

“Five. But they are no longer little. My youngest is eight.” Susan must have shown her surprise for Elena chuckled. “Ricardo is the family baby, did you not know? I am forty and Marta is thirty-eight.”

“I knew he had older sisters and nieces and nephews, of course, but that was all.”

Ricardo turned around and spoke to his wife in English. “That’s the university we’re passing, on the right,
querida
.” Susan obediently peered out the window but it was too dark to see much.

He smiled. “I’ll take you on a tour tomorrow. We can leave Ricky with Mama.”

“That would be nice,” Susan said faintly.

Ernesto suddenly honked and then rolled down his window to shout something unflattering at the car that had just cut him off.

Ricardo laughed. “Home again,” he said. He sounded very content.

* * * *

The Montoya home in Bogotá was a very large, relatively new Spanish-style house with a walled courtyard on the street that protected it from the gaze of passersby. Ricardo’s mother, Maria Montoya, was waiting for them in a beautiful, very formal living room. “Ricardo!” she cried joyfully at the sight of her tall son, and he scooped her up in his arms and hugged her.

When she was on her feet again, he said, “Mama, this is Susan, my wife,” and Susan found herself looking at one of the most elegant women she had ever seen in her life. Maria Montoya was a few inches taller than Susan, with graying dark hair worn in a simple chignon and the slim supple figure of a much younger woman. She smiled now at Susan, warmly, and said, “Welcome to Bogota, Susan.”

Susan smiled back. “Thank you, Señora Montoya.” She held out her arms, “And here is your grandson.”

A look of unutterable tenderness came over the face of the older woman, and very gently, very competently, she took the baby from Susan. She peered down into the tiny face and laughed. “
Dios
, Ricardo! He looks just like you!”

“So everyone says.” Ricardo took off his coat, and Señora Montoya said instantly, “Elena, go and get Francie.”

Elena nodded but, before she went, she took Ricardo’s coat from him. In a minute Elena returned with a maid who collected the rest of the coats.

“Julio has put your bags in your room,” Señora Montoya said to Susan, “and I have put up Ricardo’s old crib. Would you like to take the baby upstairs?”

“Yes,” Susan said gratefully.

“I will show you,” her mother-in-law said with a smile. Then, turning to her daughter, “Elena, see what your brother would like to eat and drink.”

“Yes, Mama,” said Elena, and as Susan left she saw Ricardo sit down on the sofa and stretch out his legs.

* * * *

When Susan awoke the following morning, she looked out her bedroom window and saw the mountains. They ringed the city, the peaks of the Cordillera Central, clear-cut and beautiful against the brilliant sky. On the plateau was the capital city, Bogota, with its curious mix of old Spanish and ultramodern architecture. But in the future, whenever Susan thought of Colombia, she would think of the mountains.

She enjoyed her stay in Bogotá very much. She found Ricardo’s mother to be a warm, lovely and utterly charming woman. At first Susan felt very young and gauche next to the elegant perfection of the elder Señora Montoya, but her mother-in-law’s quite genuine kindness soon had her feeling more comfortable. Both Elena and Marta were very like their mother and Susan spent many pleasant hours chatting with them about babies and child rearing.