Beloved Stranger

by Joan Wolf

  “I knew your name.”

  He drained his coffee cup. “But not my face.” He got up, went over to the refrigerator and took a piece of paper from the top of it. “These are my addresses,” he said. “I’ll be in Florida for spring training until April.” He pointed to the Fort Lauderdale address. “The rest of the year I live in Stamford, Connecticut.” He looked at her soberly. “Let me know if you need any help.”

  She stared at him blankly for a moment and then brilliant color stained her cheeks. Her eyes fell. She couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “Come on,” he said, “and we’ll go get your car.”

  “Yes,” she answered, and jumped to her feet. “Just a minute and I’ll get my coat.” Two minutes later she walked out the door with him and it slammed behind her, slammed forever on her night of magic.

  Chapter Two

  Susan reached her mother’s house in Fairfield, Connecticut, by early that evening. Mrs. Morgan was surprised to see her. “You shouldn’t have traveled in all this snow, dear,” she said after Susan had kissed her at the door. “If I had known you were on the road, I would have been extremely worried.”

  “The highway was plowed all the way down,” Susan said with a smile. “It wasn’t bad at all. But I could use something to eat.”

  “Of course. Come into the kitchen.” Susan followed her mother and watched as she efficiently prepared a cheese omelet for her daughter. “Did you enjoy your skiing?” Mrs. Morgan asked as she sat down across from Susan at the kitchen table.

  “Yes. The Fosters are very nice people. I felt a little guilty about leaving you, though.”

  Her mother made a gesture of dismissal. “You mustn’t worry about me, dear. I’ve been very busy. The Talbotts had a dinner the other evening and then there was a meeting of the university women I had to attend.”

  Susan ate and listened to her mother chatter on. Apparently she had resumed her old busy schedule of meetings and lunches and teas and dinners. She was indomitable, Susan thought. The uncharacteristic lethargy of Christmas week that had so worried her daughter had quite disappeared.

  “Are you teaching a full load this semester?” Susan asked.

  “Yes.” When working, Mrs. Morgan was Dr. Helen Morgan, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Bridgeport. Susan’s father had also been a professor at the university before his death a few years ago.

  They moved into the living room and Susan curled up on the sofa. “I was so pleased to hear of your acceptance into the Honor Society, Susan,” her mother said warmly. “I’m proud of you. You worked hard for it.”

  “I know.” Susan made a face. “I may be just a member and you and Sara were presidents, but I’m pleased with myself. It took me so long to finally get the grades.”

  “I don’t see why,” her mother said briskly. “You’re a bright enough child.”

  Susan sighed. “I have such a hard time finishing a test, Mother. I’m always still there when the time has run out and usually I’m only half done. I think too much and write too little.”

  Mrs. Morgan smiled abstractedly, her mind obviously elsewhere. “I’ve gone through Sara’s clothes,” she said after a minute, “and there are a number of things that should fit you. The dresses will all be too big, but the sweaters should be all right. And the suits could be altered. And her new black coat. I’ve packed a bag for you to take back to school with you.”

  “Oh Mother,” Susan said weakly, “how can I wear Sara’s clothes?”

  “She would want you to. I want you to.” A shadow crossed Mrs. Morgan’s face. “I don’t want to just give them to the Salvation Army, Susan.”

  Susan had a brief vision of her sister’s beautiful, vital face. She had loved clothes, loved shopping. “Of course you can’t give her things to the Salvation Army,” she said quickly. “I hadn’t thought. I’ll take them. They’ll remind me of Sara.”

  For a brief moment it seemed as if Mrs. Morgan’s eyes went out of focus and Susan knew it was not she that her mother was seeing. “It doesn’t seem possible that she’s gone,” the older woman said at last in a low voice.

  “I know.” Susan sat still, helplessly watching her mother. There was nothing she could say, nothing she could do to comfort her. Sara was gone, killed instantly by an out-of-control trailer truck on the New England Thruway, and no one could fill her place.

  Mrs. Morgan forced a smile. “You must be tired, dear, after that drive. Don’t let me keep you up.”

  “I am rather tired.” Susan rose slowly and went to kiss her mother’s smooth cheek. “Good night, Mother.”

  “Good night, dear. Sleep well.”

  “I’ll try,” murmured Susan; the memory of how she had slept last night flashed into her mind. She wrenched her thoughts back into the present and slowly, resolutely, climbed the stairs to her bedroom.

  * * * *

  Susan looked out the window of her dorm and sighed. It had been raining for five days and the new leaves on the trees looked heavy and green and limp. The weather was a perfect reflection of her mood. She stared blankly for a few more minutes at the paper she was trying to write for a poetry course and then reached into the desk drawer and drew out, once again, the lab report. There it was, clear and inescapable, the unwelcome news: she was pregnant.

  Her first reaction had been anger. How could she have been so stupid? Her second reaction had been self-pity. Why me? I only did it once. From self-pity she had progressed to her present state of mind, which could be summed up by one question: what am I going to do?

  Ricardo had foreseen this possibility. He had told her to get in touch with him, and given her his address. The regular baseball season had opened a few weeks ago. Susan, who had never followed baseball in her life, had taken to reading all she could get her hands on about the New York Yankees and about Ricardo Montoya in particular. Consequently, she knew that he had signed a multimillion dollar contract in February and that he had had a sensational spring. The Yankees were universally expected to win the American League Pennant this year.

  Ricardo would be home in Stamford. Should she write him?

  She took out a fresh sheet of loose-leaf notebook paper and began to compose a letter. After three sentences she stopped, looked at what she had written and tore it up. “I sound like an idiot,” she muttered disgustedly. She stood up. “I am an idiot.” She got her raincoat from the closet and ran down the stairs. She needed to get away from her own company.

  The student lounge was more filled than usual due to the rainy weather. Susan spotted a group of friends and went over to join them. One girl had a copy of a national news magazine on her lap and Susan felt a jolt of shock when she looked down and saw the picture on the cover.

  “May I see that for a moment, Lisa?” she asked rather breathlessly.

  “Sure,” the other girl answered. “You can join in the general drooling if you like. We’ve all just decided that that is the man we would most want to be stranded on a desert island with.”

  “Would you?” asked Susan, and stared down at the picture. Ricardo was wearing his baseball uniform but not the hat. His thick, straight, dark brown hair had fallen slightly forward over his forehead. He looked lean and brown and his smile was the irresistible grin that she remembered so vividly. But it was the eyes that caught and held you, the large, beautiful, thick-lashed brown eyes.

  “You could travel halfway round the world and you wouldn’t find another man like that,” one of the girls was saying.

  Susan cleared her throat. “Where is he from? I mean, he’s not American, is he?”

  “He’s Colombian. Or his parents are Colombian. He was born in the States, so that makes him an American citizen. It’s all in the article.”

  “May I borrow the magazine. Lisa? I’ll give it back to you.”

  Lisa grinned. “Susie! Now we know why you find all your dates so uninteresting. You’re holding out for Rick Montoya.”

  Susan could feel herself flushing and the other girl reach
ed over to give her hand a quick squeeze. “Of course you can borrow it. But I do want it back.”

  “Lisa wants to hang Rick’s picture over her bed,” one of the other girls teased, and everyone laughed. About ten minutes later Susan made her escape, clutching the magazine securely under her arm. Up in the solitary shelter of her bedroom she read the cover story through. Then she went to lie on her bed and stare out at the rain. Rick Montoya. It was impossible to make herself believe that the man she had just read about was the same man who had given her shelter from the storm and had made such tender and rapturous love to her.

  She couldn’t write to him. Everything the article said had removed him further and further from her. He was wealthy from baseball, she knew that, but according to the article, he had been born wealthy. His father was a director of Avianca Airlines and he had grown up partly in Bogota and partly in New York. He had been drafted by the Yankees after college and had consistently been one of the best hitters in baseball ever since. He averaged thirty-eight home runs a season and had a lifetime batting average of .320. Susan didn’t know much about baseball but she gathered from the article that these were highly impressive statistics. He was twenty-eight years old. He was unmarried, but according to this article, he never lacked for feminine companionship. The names of two or three of the world’s most beautiful models were listed as his frequent companions. No, she couldn’t write to him. She felt sure that all he would do—all he could do, really—would be to offer her money for an abortion.

  Susan closed her eyes and blotted out the view of the rain. An abortion. The temptation was so great. It would solve all her problems. No one would ever have to know. It was so easy, she thought, to be opposed to abortion in general. It was so hard when the particular case was you. She thought of her mother. How could she hit her with this? And after Sara. It wouldn’t be fair. It was, in fact, unthinkable. Morgans just did not have babies out of wedlock. Period.

  But she knew, too, deep in her soul, that she would not have an abortion. It would solve all problems except one. She would have to live with the knowledge of what she had done.

  She remembered then having seen an advertisement in the Bridgeport Post for an organization called Birthright. It was a group set up to help girls like herself. Susan got up off her bed and washed her face. She would get the number from information and call Birthright, she thought. She’d make an appointment and go home this weekend. It was time to slop bemoaning her fate and do something about it.

  * * * *

  Susan relaxed gratefully in the cool air conditioning of the small restaurant and sipped her iced tea. Outside the downtown Hartford street shimmered in the heat of August, but inside it was pleasantly cool and uncrowded. It was two-thirty in the afternoon, well past the regular lunch hour. Once she had finished her drink she could go home.

  Home. Well, it was home, she thought, for two more months at least. She could only feel gratitude toward the middle-aged single woman who had provided a shelter home for her for the duration of her pregnancy. The people at Birthright had found her the home and a part-time job that enabled her to give Elaine something toward her board and room.

  The baby inside her gave a kick and she shifted a little on her chair. She glanced up as the door opened and then froze in her seat. There was no mistaking that tall, lean figure, that shock of very dark brown hair. Almost instantly she bent her head and gazed furiously at the table, trying to hide her face. Consequently she didn’t see the man notice her, frown and then start a leisurely but purposeful approach toward her table.

  “Susan?” said a low, deep, mellow voice that was unnervingly familiar. And she had to raise her head.

  “Yes,” she said. “Ricardo. What a surprise to find you here.” She was surprised to hear how composed she sounded.

  “I had to see someone in the immigration office about a friend of mine.” He gestured. “May I sit down?”

  “I suppose so.” She made her voice distinctly unenthusiastic but he didn’t appear to notice. He pulled the chair out opposite her and sat. She stared resolutely at the saltshaker. She didn’t have to look to know that those shrewd brown eyes were assessing the bulkiness of her stomach, if it had been winter, if she were wearing a coat, then she thought she might have hidden it. But in a light cotton dress she didn’t have a chance.

  He reached out and caught her left hand as it moved restlessly on the table. They both stared for a long minute at the slender, delicate hand, so conspicuously bare of rings. He raised his eyes to her face. “Is it mine?” he asked tensely.

  She bit her lip. “Yes.”

  “Bios! I told you to let me know if this happened. I knew there was a chance of it.”

  His hand was still grasping hers and she tried to draw away. He didn’t let go and she stared once again at the strong tan fingers that were gripping her wrist so efficiently, remembering the last time they had touched her. “There was really nothing you could do for me, Ricardo,” she said, she hoped calmly. “I’m managing quite well on my own, thank you. There is no need to concern yourself about me.”

  He smiled at her words and it was not a smile of good humor. “How are you managing, querida?” he asked.

  She pulled her hand again and this time he let it go. She flattened her back and said evenly, “I went to an organization called Birthright. I didn’t want to tell my mother what had happened. She would have been terribly upset.” She put her hand up, from long habit, to push back her hair but it was already neatly tied at the nape of her neck. She let her hand fall again. “My older sister Sara was killed last year in a car accident,” she explained flatly, “and Daddy died of a heart attack three years ago. So, you see, I’m the only one Mother has left. I’ve never been as bright as Sara, or as pretty and vivacious, but still I’m all Mother has left now, I just couldn’t come home pregnant.”

  “Your mother would have been angry?” he asked noncommittally.

  “No. Not angry. She would have been marvelous. But, underneath, she would have been so disappointed.”

  “You would be a failure in her eyes.”

  Startled, she looked up at him. Those remarkable brown eyes had a very understanding look to them. She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. “I suppose so,” she said ruefully. “I suppose it wasn’t just Mother’s feelings I was sparing.”

  “So you went to this Birthright,” he said. “Why did you not get an abortion?”

  “I just couldn’t.”

  He nodded. “And so?”

  “And so the people at Birthright were absolutely marvelous. I couldn’t stay around home, for obvious reasons. They found me a shelter home here in Hartford. I came here after graduation.” She smiled a little painfully. “I made it through graduation all right. I didn’t start to really show that much until the fifth month. After graduation I told Mother I had an opportunity to go to Europe with a family as a combination nurse-tutor for two children. That’s where she thinks I am. A friend of mine, who is in Europe, is periodically mailing postcards I wrote in advance. So there it is.”

  “Not quite.” He looked at her levelly. The lines of his cheek and jaw looked suddenly very hard. “What are you planning to do with the baby?”

  This was the hard part. A look of strain crept across her face, tightening the skin, making her nose look more prominent. She was very pale. “I’m going to give him up for adoption,” she said in a very low voice.

  There was a long silence during which she refused to look at him. Then, “Why?” he asked in a clipped kind of voice.

  “Because it will be the best thing for the baby. It may not be the best thing for me, but it’s not my interest I’ve got to look out for in this.” Now she did look at him. “My best friend in high school was adopted. Her parents were two of the greatest people I’ve ever known. It is not possible to love a child more than they loved her—and her two adopted brothers as well. A child needs a stable loving family. He needs a mother and a father—not a full-time day-
care center, which is all I could offer him. The agency I’m going through has a list as long as your arm of couples who are just longing for a baby.” She compressed her lips. “I’ve thought about this long and hard, Ricardo, and it hasn’t been an easy decision, but I know it’s the right one. I’m going to give him up for adoption.”

  “You keep saying ‘him.’ Do you know it is a boy?”

  “Yes, actually I do. I had an ultrasound and the way the picture came out you could tell.”

  He leaned across the table toward her and took her hand once more in his. “Susan.” No one else, she thought, made her name sound as it did when Ricardo said it. “If you could keep the baby,” he was going on, “would you?”

  “Of course I would,” she answered instantly. “I don’t want to give him away, you know.”

  “Then marry me,” he said.

  Her eyes flew wide open in shock. She stared at his face. It looked perfectly serious. “What?” she said.

  “You heard me. Marry me. Surely it is the obvious solution.”

  “To you, maybe, but not to me,” she got out. “I hardly know you.”

  He laughed, a sound of genuine amusement. “You know me well enough,” he said, and she felt herself flushing furiously.

  “Don’t be clever,” she muttered. “You know what I mean.”

  “Listen, querida,” he said patiently. He was very obviously the reasonable, intelligent male dealing with an unreasonable and very silly woman. “You said yourself that it is not your interest that concerns you. It is the welfare of the child. Well, I am the child’s father. I am wealthy. I will take good care of him.” He stared into her eyes and his own were suddenly commanding. “I do not want my son to be brought up by another man.”

  She felt the force of his will, of his personality, bearing down on her and, instinctively, she resisted. “I don’t know,” she said.

  He sat back a little in his chair. “I could simply take the child and let my mother raise him,” he said. “She would be delighted to have a grandchild to live with her. And, unlike your mother, she would not think I had disappointed her.” His dark stare was unwavering, almost inimical. “Would you prefer that?”