Page 22 of Wild Hit
We agreed to see each other again casually until she was supposed to travel abroad for a semester, except that the morning sickness started hitting pretty early.
That changed everything. I considered giving up my baseball career, and the reason that didn’t happen is because I’m not very good at anything else. There was a better chance of me being able to support my new family if I stuck to it.
Meanwhile, Lauren made the difficult decision to stay home rather than pursue her assignment abroad, and we settled into asomewhat domestic life for roughly a year, through the delivery, and the first few months of Marty’s life. We had to start on the rotation of nannies since then so Lauren could return to med school in Denver, and so I could travel with with team.
Everything seemed to be working at first. Yes, we were chronically tired from bad sleep, my performance at games wasn’t the best, and Lauren was exhausted all the time. We started considering marriage, even though I was just twenty-one and Lauren three years older, and we probably would’ve gone through with it if it wasn’t for a big elephant in the room.
Lauren’s post-partum depression.
She hid it from me at first, which was probably a sign that a marriage between us wouldn’t have worked. The truth outed itself gradually—or perhaps I was too dense to notice it quickly enough. We had to call it quits when it became clear that she couldn’t carry on with this life that she hadn’t chosen.
Anyone would argue that I also hadn’t, but I did recognize that I had it easier. I was still doing what I did best, traveling with the team and growing my career—even getting a lucrative first chance at the majors. Lauren was just as ambitious, but all her plans were stalling. She wasn’t a silver spoon and all the debt she had already accumulated at med school was going to sit on her shoulders unrewarded.
So the marriage plans fell through, I let Lauren go for her own health. I figured that would be a better example of caring about others for our daughter down the line.
I became Marty’s only parent, and my support system has consisted of a steady rotation of paid nannies and occasional visits from her grandparents from Venezuela.
I don’t really regret being irresponsible during a night at a club where I met the mother of my daughter, because otherwise I wouldn’t have the best thing in my entire life. But I do constantly beat myself over the fact that I alone am not enoughfor Marty. I can’t fill Lauren’s hole. And I can’t spend as much time with her as she deserves when I’m too busy making sure that she lacks nothing. I’m simultaneously a decent father and a failure.
Right now, the pendulum swings hard toward the second one.
I try to temper myself and not show any reaction, but on the inside all I feel is a cold hand squeezing my stomach and pushing my breakfast up my throat.
“What if I go as your mom?” I ask with a thick voice.
She shakes her head, eyes cast down. “It’s supposed to be girls only.”
“And Consuelo?” I insist with a smidge of hope.
Marty shrugs. “Maybe? But she’s just my nanny. I’m still going to be the only one without a mom.”
I doubt it. I’m sure there’s at least one more kid who is an orphan or with divorced parents and a mom who lives across the country. But even when that can be true, it doesn’t negate my daughter’s hurt.
What I’m about to ask is just a Band-Aid, but that’s all I can offer her. “Isn’t that better than missing out altogether?”
A.k.a.isn’t settling better than nothing?
That’s not one of the life lessons I ever wanted to pass along to my daughter. I don’t play at the top of elite big leaguers just for my own self satisfaction. Yet it’s not like I can produce a new mom for Marty out of the woodwork.
She lifts her little shoulders again and they stay quite high the whole time as I walk her to the bus. “I’ll call the school and make the arrangements, okay?” I promise her as we wait by the curb, her tiny hand in mine. I pat it with my other hand, like I’m making an arepa.
“Okay…” she says, her usual grumpiness missing in action. I give her a big, sloppy kiss on the top of her head that wouldnormally send her kicking and shrieking away from me, and she even lets me stay with her until she climbs aboard the bus.
I watch as it drives away, my heart hammering painfully just as I pull out my cellphone to call the school.
It takes a while to connect with someone, maybe because it’s still too early, or simply because I’m being impatient, or simply because one can’t always get what one wants.
But my mood comes crashing down even further when, instead of hearing an easy yes, what I get instead is, “I’m so sorry, but our policy for safety reasons is that only women with a proven kinship can join this event.”
CHAPTER 11
AUDREY
There comes a time in every woman’s life where she has to spend all her patience putting up with one man’s shit.
That might as well be my biography, except this time around the culprit isn’t my dad directly—indirectly, yes. He’s the one inflicting me with this pain deep down. However, I’m specifically referring to Henry Vos here.
Now that the sponsorship contract has been signed, Henry has been coming to the Orlando Wild facilities like he has an employee ID, and Dad has allowed it. I’m currently trapped in a meeting room with him and my boss, and Karen is positively salivating about being in the presence of a guy whose face and other body parts have consistently been in tabloids since before it was legal for him to be photographed that way.
