The Natural

Such thoughts occupied him much of the time as he sat in the armchair, thumbing through old magazines, or resting in bed. He sometimes considered suicide but the thought was too oppressive to stay long in his mind. He dozed a good deal and usually woke feeling lonely. (Except for Red, once, nobody from the team had come to see him, though small knots of fans still gathered in the street and argued whether he would really be in Monday’s game.) Saturday night he awoke from an after supper nap more gloomy than ever, so he reached under his pillow for Iris’ letter. But just then Memo came into the room with an armful of flowers so he gladly let it lay where it was.

Despite how attractive she usually managed to keep herself (he could appreciate that in spite of a momentary return of the nausea) she appeared worn out now, with bluish shadows under her eyes. And he noticed, as she stuffed the flowers and red autumn leaves into the vase, that she was wearing the same black dress she had worn all week, a thing she never did before, and that her hair was lusterless and not well kept. She had days ago sorrowed it was her fault that this had happened to the team. How stupid not to have waited just a day or two more. (Pop, she wept, had called her filthy names.) She had despaired every minute — really despaired — up to the time she heard he was going to be in the playoff. At least she did not have it on her conscience that he would be out of that, so she felt better now. Not better enough, he worried, or she wouldn’t be so lost and lonely-looking.

After she had arranged the flowers, Memo stood mutely at the open window, gazing down into the darkening street. When he least expected it, she sobbed out in a voice full of misery, “Oh, Roy, I can’t stand it any longer, I can’t.”

He sat up. “What’s wrong?”

Her voice was choked. “I can’t go on with my life as it is.” Memo dropped into the armchair and began to weep. In a minute everything around her was wet.

Tossing aside the blanket he swung his legs out of bed. She looked up, attempting to smile. “Don’t get up, hon. I’ll be all right.”

Roy sat uneasily at the edge of the bed. He never knew what to do when they cried.

“It’s just that I’m fed up,” she wept. “Fed up. Pop is terrible to me and I don’t want to go on living off him, even if he is my uncle. I have to get a job or something, or go somewhere.”

“What did that bastard shrimp say to you?”

She found a handkerchief in her purse and blew her nose. “It isn’t his words,” she said sadly. “Words can’t kill. It’s that I’m sick of this kind of life. I want to get away.”

Then she let go again and looked like a little lost bird beating around in a cage. He was moved, and hovered over her like an old maid aunt trying to stop a leak.

“Don’t cry, Memo. Just say the word and I will take care of you.” In a cracked voice he said, “Just marry me.”

She sobbed for the longest time. So long he grew jumpy with doubts about their future relations, but then she stopped crying and said in a damp voice, “Would you have me, Roy?”

He swayed with emotion as he got out thickly, “Would I?” To keep from hitting the ground he hopped into bed and sprawled out.

She came to him, her white hands clasped, her wet eyelids like sparkling flowers. “There’s one thing you have to understand, Roy, and then maybe you won’t want me. That is that I am afraid to be poor.” She said it with intensity, her face turning dark at her words. “Maybe I am weak or spoiled, but I am the type who has to have somebody who can support her in a decent way. I’m sick of living like a slave. I got to have a house of my own, a maid to help me with the hard work, a decent car to shop with and a fur coat for winter time when it’s cold. I don’t want to have to worry every time a can of beans jumps a nickel. I suppose it’s wrong to want all of that but I can’t help it. I’ve been around too long and seen too much. I saw how my mother lived and I know it killed her. I made up my mind to have certain things. You understand that, don’t you, Roy?”

He nodded.

“We have to face it,” she said. “You’re thirty-five now and that don’t give you much time left as a ball player.”

“What d’ye mean?” he asked, deadpan.

But it wasn’t his blood pressure she was referring to. For a minute he was afraid she had found out.

“I’m sorry to say this, Roy, but I have to be practical. Suppose the next one is your last season, or that you will have one more after that? Sure, you’ll probably get a good contract till then but it costs money to live, and then what’ll we do for the rest of our lives?”

It was dark in the room now. He could scarcely see her. “Turn on the lights.”

She smeared powder over her nose and under her eyes, then pressed the button.

He stared at her.

She grew restless. “Roy —”

“I was just thinking, even if I had to quit right now I could still scrounge up about twenty-five grand in the next few months. That’s a lotta dough.”

She seemed doubtful. “What would you do with it?”

“We’d get hitched and I would invest in a business. Everybody does that. My name is famous already. We will make out okay. You will have what you want.”

“What kind of business?” Memo asked.

“I can’t say for sure — maybe a restaurant.”

She made a face.

“What do you have in mind?” Roy asked.

“Oh, something big, Roy. I would like you to buy into a company where you could have an executive job and won’t have to go poking your nose into the stew in a smelly restaurant.”

A jet of nausea shot up from his gizzard. He admitted to himself he wanted nothing to do with restaurants.

“How much dough do we need to get in on one of those big companies?”

“I should think more than twenty-five thousand.”

He gulped. “Around thirty-five?”

“More like fifty.”

Roy frowned. Talk of that kind of dough gave him a bellyache. But Memo was right. It had to be something big or it wouldn’t pay back enough. And if it was a big company he could take it a little easy, to protect his health, without anybody kicking. He pondered where to get another twenty-five thousand, and it had to be before the start of the next baseball season because as soon as everybody saw he wasn’t playing, it wouldn’t be easy to cash in on his name. People had no use for a has been. He had to be married and have the dough, both before next spring — in case he never did get to play. He thought of other means to earn some money fast — selling the story of his life to the papers, barnstorming a bit this fall and winter, not too strenuously. But neither of these things added up to much — not twenty-five grand. Roy lay back with his eyes shut.

Memo whispered something. His lids flew open. What was she doing with an old black dress on, her hair uncombed, looking like Lola, the Jersey City fortuneteller? Yet her voice was calm…

“Who sent you,” he spoke harshly, “— that bastard Gus?”

She turned flame-faced but answered quietly, “The Judge.”

“Ba

“He said he’d pay you fifteen thousand now and more next season. He says it would depend on you.”

“I thought I smelled skunk.”

“He asked me to deliver the message. I have nothing to do with it.”

“Who else is in on this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Pop?”

“No.”

He lay motionless for an age. She said no more, did not plead or prod. It grew late. An a

“I was thinking of all the years you would be out of the game.”

“What does he want me to do?”

“It’s something about the playoff — I don’t know.”

“They want me to drop it?”

She didn’t answer.

“No,” he said out loud.

She shrugged. “I told them you wouldn’t.”