Be My Baby Tonight (26 page)

Tim wasn’t shy. He’d never been the reticent
sort. If he wanted her to know that he knew about the baby, he
would have come right out and told her. He hadn’t, and he must have
a reason.

Just as she had a reason for not telling
him.

The same reason: their marriage had to be a
real marriage first, based on real love and real commitment, and
then and only then could either of them see this baby as anything
else but a reason to stay married.

Not that he wouldn’t have to give up the
pretense of not knowing soon, even if she didn’t tell him the
news.

Lord, but she was blossoming, much faster
than Keely had, to hear her friend tell it. Her slacks were way too
tight, so that she’d bought new ones, with elastic waists, and even
those were getting snug. She’d have to buy more, in a larger
size.

She could do that when she bought some new
bras, also in a larger size.

Still, she felt good. Remarkably good, as a
matter of fact, while Tim was getting worse.

He’d had to leave one game, Mort had reported
to her, with stomach cramps. He’d had two nosebleeds, which didn’t
make a bit of sense to Suzanna, but a check on the Internet—
everything was on the Internet—told her that, yes, nosebleeds were
also common with men experiencing “male pregnancy symptoms.”

The article she’d read had termed the
phenomenon “sympathy pregnancy,” also noting that psychiatrists
called it
couvades
syndrome, which was from the French word
for “hatching.”

And Tim, poor Tim, was textbook.

Maybe if she told him she knew.

But what good would that do? She’d never
know, not really, if he was having the symptoms because he felt
guilty, or if he was just doing what the article said that
twenty-two to seventy-nine percent of all American dads-to-be did,
at least to some degree.

The reasons given had not included guilt, but
had only mentioned that the symptoms could come from sympathy for
the mother, temporary, unexplained hormonal changes in the father,
or feelings of displacement, which meant that the father felt the
wife was getting all the attention and wanted some for himself.

That didn’t sound like Tim, but when she’d
read the words “make people know that he is a
major player
in the pregnancy,” well, that one had definitely worried her.

But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered,
not tonight. Tonight, her big bad warrior was coming home, a loser.
There would be no World Series against the Yankees.

No trophy, no ring. No “Hey, Tim Trepan, now
that you’ve been named MVP of the World Series, what are you going
to do next?”

“Who wants to go to Disney World anyway? Seen
one mouse, you’ve seen ’em all,” Suzanna muttered, then blinked as
she thought she saw headlights approaching through the tree
branches that still held so many leaves this late in the fall.

She ran to the front door, waited until she
heard the beep of Tim’s car’s alarm system engaging, and then
opened the door, praying she’d know the right thing to say, now
that he was here.

He had his head down as he approached the
steps, then stopped, looked up at her, the rain rapidly turning him
into a drowned rat.

“Hi, Suze. I’m late, I know, but I had to
stop for gas. You want to hear something? Something Dizzy Dean once
said? You remember Dizzy Dean, don’t you?”

“I remember, Tim. A famous pitcher, and a
very quotable man. You and Jack were always testing me with famous
baseball quotes. Come inside, and you can tell me what he said that
you thought about tonight.”

Inwardly, she was hoping it wasn’t one she
remembered: “The good Lord was good to me. He gave me a strong
body, a good right arm, and a weak mind.”

“No, that’s okay, Suze. I kind of like being
in the rain. I’ve been in it so much lately, I think I’m growing
fins. Anyway, I stopped to get gas, and I thought about Dizzy Dean.
You remember now?”

“No,” Suzanna said, blinking back tears. He
was being so brave. Her heart was breaking for him. “You’ll have to
tell me, Tim.”

“Okay. He said, and I think I’ve got this one
exactly: ‘It puzzles me how they know what corners are good for
filling stations. Just how did they know gas and oil was under
there?’ Isn’t that a riot?”

“It’s very, funny, yes,” Suzanna agreed,
twisting her hands together, fighting the impulse to run down the
steps, into his arms. “Tim...?”

“We lost, babe,” he said after a moment,
lowering his head. “We lost.”

“I know,” she half whispered, not caring that
he’d called her babe. “I’m so, so sorry.”

He looked up at her, and his smile flashed
white in the light from the lamps on either side of the door. “Hey,
no big deal. Somebody has to lose. Besides, I’ve just saved Jack
ten bucks. He bet me we’d lose to his Yanks in the Series.”

Suzanna tried to wipe at her wet cheeks as if
the rain had hit her. “Ten bucks, huh? Well, it’s nice to know
Candy and the baby won’t have to go without new shoes. Tim? Please,
come inside.”

“I won’t be good company,” he told her.

“I wasn’t planning on asking you to
entertain. But you’re getting very wet, and you’re going to drip on
the foyer floor. Now come on, come inside, get a hot shower, and
then I’ll make you some soup or something.”

Finally, he walked up the steps and into the
foyer. “I’m not hungry.”

“I am,” she said. “I’m thinking chicken
noodle, and then I can show you the kittens. You’re going to just
love them, Tim. The biggest one? He’s already starting to open one
eye.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, heading for the stairs.
“Maybe in the morning, all right? I’m beat.”

She looked after him, watching as he held on
to the banister, seemed to have to half pull himself up the
stairs.

“Are you sure?” she asked him, feeling as if
she’d just been rejected, deserted, proven useless to help him.
“Because I could make something else. Ham and bean soup?
Chili?”

“Night, Suze,” he said, rounding the
second-floor landing, heading for the back bedroom.

“Night, Tim,” she said quietly, then walked
into the kitchen, because the box of tissues was in the kitchen and
she was pretty sure she was going to have herself a good cry.

* * *

Suzanna picked up the newspaper Tim had left
on the kitchen table, and read the headline on the sports section
one more time: CHAMPS AGAIN; YANKS IN FIVE.

Jack had to be so happy. With Keely due in
only another six days, the last thing he’d wanted was for the
Series to stretch to the full seven games.

Tim had sat with her to watch the away games,
and he had driven to the Bronx to sit in the booth with Jack for
the home games. How he had done it, Suzanna would never know, but
Tim had been great, helping with the commentary on radio,
complimenting the National League Champs, all that good stuff.

He smiled for the cameras, talked to all the
reporters, answered all their asinine questions.

And then he came home and went straight back
into his mummy act.

How long was the mourning period for losing a
ball game? Suzanna was darned if she knew, but she was getting
pretty tired of tiptoeing around Tim as if his best friend had just
left him and his dog had died.

He slept, all the time, and when he wasn’t
sleeping, he was playing tapes of the playoffs. Watching himself
catch, watching himself hit, watching himself strike out.

Keely had told her that Jack had been pretty
much of a basket case when she’d met him, having just had to retire
from the game because of a career-ending injury. She’d said he’d
sulked, been snippy—yes, she’d said snippy—a general pain in her
hindquarters.

Hey, why not. They were identical twins.

But enough was enough. Tim’s career wasn’t
over, far from it. Mort had called Tim to Philly only five days
ago, to ink a new contract with so many zeroes in it that Suzanna
got dizzy trying to count them.

He still had next year. He had lots of next
years before he retired.

So, hey, get over it!

Suzanna stepped outside for some fresh air,
saw the mailman turning around at the dead end, and headed down the
drive. She walked back up the hill after collecting the Saturday
mail, sorting through it as she walked.

Three of the envelopes intrigued her. One had
a local postmark and was handwritten, obviously by a child, and the
other two were from the two Philadelphia children’s hospitals, CHOP
and Saint Christopher’s.

“Tim?” she said, dropping the rest of the
mail on the kitchen table and heading into the den, where he was
just sitting, the television set off, staring at nothing. “What are
these?”

“Hmmm?” he said, as if just waking up and
trying to rouse his mind.

“I said, what are these?” she repeated,
waving the envelopes in front of him.

He reached for them, and she kept the
handwritten envelope, handed him the other two.

“Oh, they’re nothing,” he said, tossing them
on the coffee table.

“Requests for donations?” she asked, sitting
down beside him.

“No, not donations. Aunt Sadie handles that
end. These are different requests. Now that we have the schedule
for next year, everyone wants to get their dibs in. I’ll look at
them later.”

“No, I’ll look at them now. Dibs? What sort
of dibs?”

Tim sat back, sighed. “For my private box,
Suze. I keep that Tiger’s Den in right field for the kids groups,
PAL, stuff like that, but the sick kids, well, sometimes they need
to be somewhere more private. That’s all.”

Suzanna opened the first envelope and
unfolded the letter, quickly scanning it. “You mean you loan out
the box to sick kids? I knew about the Tiger’s Den, and I think
that’s wonderful; but I didn’t know you did this, too. That’s
really sweet of you, Tim.”

“Yeah, well, it was Aunt Sadie’s idea. We
went to one of the hospitals one year, to see the kids, sign some
autographs, and I came home pretty jazzed. I mean, those kids were
so sick, and yet we could make them smile. I wanted to do more,
more than just go there once in a while, or just send a check for
new toys for the playroom or something. This is what Aunt Sadie
came up with.”

“You’re a good person, Tim,” Suzanna said,
folding the letter that had been effusive with thanks even while
requesting certain dates for the use of the box next season.
“Sometimes, when I want to slap you silly for moping around here, I
forget that.”

He turned to her, grinning, and put his arm
around her shoulders, surprising her straight down to her toes. It
was the first time he’d touched her since before that awful night
of their final loss. “As long as you’re feeling so warm and fuzzy
about me, what do you say we go upstairs?”

“How romantic,” she said, pulling away from
him before she could give in. Sex was the one absolute no-no. They
were living together, coexisting, but not because they had great
sex. They had to get to know each other again, know each other
better, as grown-ups. Love each other. Then, and only then, was
there going to be any sex.

He knew. She knew it.

“What’s in this one, I wonder,” Suzanna said,
trying to make it look as if she was only reaching for the envelope
and not trying to avoid him. “May I open it?”

“Sure,” Tim grumbled, slouching against the
back of the couch once more. “Knock yourself out.”

The letter was filled with horrible
misspellings, so that Suzanna knew no parent had seen it. “I wonder
how he got your home address? Oh, here, he explains it. He’s our
paperboy. And he wants to know if you’ll sponsor his baseball team
next year.”

She kept reading. “Oh, dear. It seems that
Hardcastle Plumbing has decided not to be a sponsor anymore, and
Scott—that’s our paperboy—thought you’d like to do it, since it’s
your old team.”

“You’re kidding,” Tim said, grabbing the
letter from her. “Jack’s and my old team? Yeah, here it is, he says
so—they play on that old field behind the Fire Hall, just like we
did. Man, when that alarm went off, we had to stop the game until
the noise died down. My dad started that league. Hey, this is
great. I’ll bet they need new uniforms. We always needed new
uniforms. You remember, Suze, right?”

“I remember the year you all got head lice
because nobody ever washed out the batting helmets,” she said,
grinning at him, knowing he was only half listening to her.

“Yeah, that, too. And we had to share our
gloves, and there were never enough bats or balls. Look, he put his
phone number at the bottom,” he said, standing up. “I’m going to go
call him, okay?”

“Sure,” Suzanna said as he headed for the
phone in the kitchen and the scratch pad and pencil she kept there.
“I think that’s a great idea.”

One step forward, she thought, resting her
head against the couch cushions. Bless Scott. And bless baseball.
Because baseball may taketh away once in a while, but then it
always giveth again.

* * *

Tim eased himself into the seat between Jack
and Suzanna, shaking his head. “It’s a madhouse back there,” he
said, having just returned from backstage in the Whitehall High
School auditorium. “A palm tree fell down, the female lead has a
frog in her throat—I heard her talk, and I mean that literally; I
think she swallowed one—and Mrs. B. is having one of her dictator
on a rampage moments. Remember those?”

“You mean, when she starts warning everybody
that if they don’t shut up and shape up, she’s walking straight out
the door, and they can all just fall on their fannies by
themselves?” Jack asked. “That kind of moment?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tim said, grinning at Suzanna. “I
remember you trying to calm her down before
Oklahoma.
I’ve
always privately wondered if you have some sort of death wish.”

“She’ll be fine,” Suzanna said, rolling her
program into a log, then gripping it with both hands. “She just
gets a little... emotional.”