“You’ll be sitting down the whole time,” he said, throwing a reassuring arm around her shoulders. He was already guiding her across the floor toward the doors. Before entering, he dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head. “C’mon, beautiful, let’s knock ’em dead.”
It was the longest forty minutes of her life. While waiting for Buck to make his excuses after the speech, she’d gone again to the powder room and found fresh spotting. Although it was still minimal, she was scared. Desperate to leave, she caught his eye across the ballroom and something in her face must have told him she was nearing the end of her rope. With a last quiet word to Gene Winston, he started toward her. She had to admire his skill in avoiding the many attempts to hail him in passing. Finally, he reached her and, with a flash of his famous smile, slipped his arm around her waist and whisked her away.
“You okay?” Buck said, as they pulled away from the hotel.
“I’m not sure. I just need to get home.”
“You can recline that seat,” he told her.
At least she was now in a prone position, she thought. Buck was quiet, winding his way toward the interstate ramp. Once on a straight stretch, he opened up the Porsche with a roar. He liked speed and tended to exceed the legal limit, especially when he was upset. “How could you be pregnant? Did you forget to take the Pill?”
“No, it was nothing like that.”
Hearing something in her voice, he glanced at her. “Then what?”
She thought about asking him to wait until they got home, but maybe it was best to get it behind them now. “It isn’t an accident that I’m pregnant, Buck,” she said quietly. “I quit taking the Pill.”
In the muted glow of the dash, she saw his features darken in a fierce frown. “You quit? Just like that?”
“Not just like that.” Her hand rested protectively on her abdomen. “I didn’t do it on a whim. I thought about it a long time.”
“I wish you’d thought to consult me.” Not quite openly sarcastic, but close.
“I’m not proud of the way I went about it, Buck ,and for what it’s worth, I apologize. We’ve gone round and round about this forever and you always come up with a thousand reasons to put off having a child. I knew what your answer would be if I told you.” With both her hands cradling her abdomen, she longed to make him understand. “I’m thirty-four years old, Buck. The longer we wait, the harder it’ll be for me to conceive.”
“I thought we agreed to put off having kids.”
“For how many years? Another four or five? Eight? Ten?” She swallowed disappointment. She’d so longed for a joyous reaction from Buck, but she now had to let that wish go. “It was your idea to wait, Buck, not mine.”
“So you just decided to ignore my wishes and go ahead with your idea.”
She turned away. They were in open country now and she was looking at total darkness. “I guess that’s one way to put it,” she said quietly.
“I don’t see any other way to put it,” he said, shifting restlessly in his seat. “This is something we should have decided together, Anne. Having a baby isn’t like going to the pound and picking out a puppy. A baby changes everything in a couple’s life.”
“And would it be such a bad thing to change our life, Buck?”
He gave her a quick look. “Does that mean you think something is missing?” When she took too long to answer, he added, “I guess you do. And you think having a baby will make it all better? Don’t you think that’s a bit naive?”
“Maybe to you, but not to me,” she said, bracing as he down-shifted and shot past a huge semitrailer truck. If she’d been uncertain about his state of mind, she now had no doubt that he was angry. “You should slow down, Buck,” she cautioned.
He did…barely. “I didn’t realize you were so miserable,” he said after a moment.
She thought about that, trying to fix on her feelings before deciding to get pregnant without telling him. Slightly bored? Somewhat unfulfilled? She’d had an interesting and successful career as a television journalist when she first met Buck at a Special Olympics event. She’d asked for that assignment when her research had revealed that Buck Whitaker was from Tallulah, Mississippi. During the civil rights struggle, her father, a journalist, had spent a summer in Tallulah with a PBS crew from Boston filming a documentary. Anne had grown up listening to him tell about his experience, which had so influenced him that he’d later written a book about it. She’d been thrilled at a chance to meet someone from Tallulah.
She studied Buck’s profile now, sternly set. So unlike that day at the Special Olympics when he’d smiled constantly at the kids. He had been so kind, so natural and at ease with them. She’d thought then what a great father he’d make. And within six months of that meeting, they’d been married.
Deep in her thoughts now, she was blind to the view out her window. She supposed other people might look at her situation and say she had it all. She was married to a pro baseball superstar who was generous and loving. He never forgot her birthday or their anniversary. He was outgoing and sociable on the surface—few people knew Buck was actually an extremely private man—so they had a busy life. Off season, they traveled extensively to interesting and exotic places. As a result of his incredible contract as the Jacks’ star pitcher, they had a fabulous home in St. Louis, condominiums in Vail and Palm Beach. But sometimes—more and more frequently of late—Anne had begun to wonder if she weren’t one of Buck’s possessions, too. Arm candy to his sports hero image. To her way of thinking, the prospect of a baby promised to give some measure of reality to their bizarre lifestyle. Children had a way of grounding a marriage.
In an attempt to make him understand, she said, “We live in a fishbowl, Buck, you posing for fans, me playing the adoring wife and smiling when I don’t always feel like smiling. And yes, I admit it. I haven’t found all that so fulfilling.” She paused, searching for words. “To me, a constant round of fun and games has become sort of…I don’t know…empty, I guess. Maybe I’ve outgrown it.”
“I didn’t hear all these complaints when I signed that last multimillion-dollar contract. And I didn’t see any misery when I bought you that sweet little Mercedes for your birthday. I also didn’t notice any pain on your face when we paid cash for the condo in Vail.” His foot was heavy on the accelerator again.
“I’ve never denied enjoying the things your job makes possible for us,” she said quietly. “But they’re only things, Buck. They don’t take the place of a baby. At least, not for me. I want us to be a real family.”
“What’s a real family? I can tell you from experience that mine is a dysfunctional, screwed-up bunch. You and I don’t need a baby to feel like a family.”
“I know you don’t have a good relationship with the Whitakers, but that doesn’t mean you won’t make a good father. You’d have a chance to change the things your parents did that were wrong.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “I couldn’t live long enough to do that.”
“Just think about it, Buck. Already you’ve endowed a program for inner city kids and almost every year you participate in Special Olympics. You make time to talk to high school athletes about avoiding drugs and getting a diploma. You do any number of things that show you’ve got a good heart. You sell yourself short when you say you wouldn’t make a good father.”
As an adopted only child, Anne’s childhood had been lonely. In spite of having very loving adoptive parents, she’d longed for brothers and sisters. When she married Buck, she’d dreamed of having her own babies, her own family. Buck’s heritage as the son of a “gentleman planter” in the Mississippi Delta was intriguing, so different from her rather ordinary roots in New England.