Chapter Six

The frightening rumblings coming from Europe were only mildly concerning until the mandate came down in September 1940 that every man between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-six needed to get himself registered for the draft. If the invasion of Poland hadn’t prompted this belated Selective Service Act, the bombing of London had. Every day, the news worsened and the newsreels portrayed a sickening disaster seemingly without end.

Rick and Francesca went together, hand in hand, Pax tagging along, as if registering for a peacetime draft was a lark, an excuse to get out in the fresh air and stroll the city streets. The worst, and Francesca agreed, was that his number would come up in the Selective Service’s lottery and he might have to spend twelve months in the service. It would take a year out of his professional life, but maybe he could still play ball or coach on whatever base he might find himself. Francesca teased that maybe he could plead conscientious objector status, as playing for the Braves was, after all, his religion. Rick wasn’t about to let Francesca know how terrified he was that he’d be drafted. Not because he didn’t want to serve, but the fact was that a missed season was much more than just not playing. He was twenty-nine now, and it wasn’t getting any easier to keep up with the younger guys. His arm was still good, but he was soaking it longer and longer. Not to play, even if doing some playground-level pitching, meant that he might never make it as starting pitcher. He was so close. Rick really loathed the idea of a setback.

Besides, this was the year when they were going to have a baby. Maybe Francesca was already pregnant. With a renewed contract with the Braves in hand, life was certain enough that they’d commenced trying. Trying. That sounded so, well, selfless. What they’d been getting up to could hardly have been called anything but self-indulgent. Francesca had been knitting up a storm, booties and caps, buntings and crib blankets, all given away to the other team wives and to their neighbor, who was in her seventh pregnancy. Yesterday, Francesca had shyly handed him a little capelet in the palest green, nearly white, satin ribbon threaded through the eyelets. “This one’s for ours.”

He took her heart-shaped face in his big hands and studied her amber-flecked green eyes and the way that her eyebrows arched over them, sooty lashes oddly dark against the fairness of her skin and hair. This was the face he held most dear. The look of hope, anticipation, and love all given away to him. How could he imagine leaving her for longer than a road trip?

*   *   *

By April, Rick’s number still hadn’t been called, and he’d packed up for spring training. By July, he was promoted to relief pitcher. By September, the season was over, and if the Braves had finished a lowly seventh in the standings, Rick had gone home nonetheless confident that the upcoming baseball season of 1942 would be his year as a starting pitcher for the Boston Braves.

*   *   *

“What if Roosevelt changes his mind. What if he decides we should go to war?” Francesca took the newspaper out of Rick’s hands and crumpled it up, throwing it to the floor, as if she wasn’t the one who would have to retrieve it. It seemed like the headlines only ever spoke of the increasing possibility the president would succumb to the pleas of Churchill to throw the weight and power of the United States at Hitler’s rapacious drive toward world domination. The political cartoons, the editorials, the talk on the street all pointed in one direction: the inevitable involvement of the United States in this global disaster.

“Sweetheart, we can’t worry about it. We can only worry about the things we have control over.”

“Like what?”

“Mmm, my batting average perhaps?” Rick pulled Francesca down onto his lap and smooched her, one eye on the big dog, who would very quickly come up with some distraction, like asking to go out, or for new water in his already half-full bowl, or dropping his rubber ball on their combined laps, begging them to stop and play with him.

“You get to worry about that, not me.”

Pax had suddenly found some latent retriever in his heritage and scooped up the crumpled ball of newspaper, gently placing it in Francesca’s hands.

“It’ll never happen” was the consensus of opinion in the clubhouse and the street corner and at the Totem Pole Ballroom, where they went to dance on gameless nights, always claiming the same settee where Rick had proposed. “Roosevelt will keep us out. If your number hasn’t been called by now, it probably won’t be.” Whistling in the dark.

By the end of November, Rick finally got word that the coming spring he’d be in the starting rotation. He’d finally be a starting pitcher.

“Maybe a move is in order. You know, to a place of our own, where Pax can run around and the kids—”

“Kids? Plural already?” They were lying in bed, fingers linked, still vibrating from their exertions.

“Yes. The kids can have a swing set and you’ll never have to worry about men urinating in your hydrangeas. Some neighborhood with a good school, a house with a big yard. The neighbors will say, ‘A ballplayer lives in that house, the one with the lily beds and rosebushes. The one with the beautiful wife and handsome dog.’ It’ll be the house where all the neighborhood kids congregate.”

“Three bedrooms and a den?”

“Four bedrooms. And a two-car garage.”

“Two cars?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll teach you to drive.”

It all sounded perfect, even if the gods of conception had been stingy with success. The doctor they’d consulted could find no reason they shouldn’t conceive. “Relax and give it time,” he’d said.

*   *   *

On December 7, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and all the best hopes for staying out of the war were blasted away, along with Rick’s dream of starting for the Boston Braves and their more private dream of a baby.