Surrogate Child

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Yes. And no.”

  “What?”

  Audra just stared for a long moment again. This time Sally was patient.

  “I never told anyone, but there was nothing really going on between Solomon and me,” Audra said softly.

  “I don’t understand,” Sally said. Her voice was almost a whisper, as though Audra’s tone was infectious. “What do you mean by ‘nothing’?”

  “Nothing . . . sexual. Oh, we kissed, but it was always like friends kiss, do you know what I mean?”

  “Uh huh.” Sally did know because that was basically the only kind of kissing she had done.

  “He seemed to be restrained all the time, distracted.”

  “Always?”

  “There were times when I was at his house that I thought something might happen. I suppose I was a little aggressive about it, too; but nothing ever did.”

  “You didn’t even kiss him on the lips?”

  “Yes, but he always seemed so far off. It didn’t lead to anything more, and I wanted it to. I wanted him to touch me. I wanted . . . you understand?” Sally didn’t speak. She simply nodded slightly. She wanted to swallow, but she didn’t even do that. “I kept thinking that eventually he would . . . we would get closer, but we never did. Not that way, at least.”

  “Well, how come you stayed with him so long?”

  “I don’t know. Yes, I do,” she added quickly. “Solomon was so superior, so perceptive. There was something magical about him. I couldn’t just walk away from him because he didn’t pursue me the way I wanted him to. And besides,” she said sadly, “I kept expecting that eventually he would.”

  “But nothing happened?”

  Audra just stared again. Sally sensed that what she had heard so far, as exciting as it was, was just the surface. She bit down on her lower lip in anticipation.

  “I got impatient,” Audra began. It was clear that what she was remembering was something so vivid it nearly took her out of the present completely. Her voice was low again, soft and low. “It was at his house when there was no one home. His mother had gone somewhere with one of her friends, and his father was out on a job as usual.

  “It was a warm spring day,” she went on, “an unusually warm spring day. Maybe a month before he killed himself,” she added. “We had decided to go on a hike down the path behind his house. We were both acting kind of stupid, running through the bushes, charging up the hills, acting like a couple of young children. But it was fun, you know what I mean? It was so carefree. I guess the pressure of upcoming exams . . . I don’t know. Anyway, it felt good to be like that.”

  Sally nodded quickly, afraid now to utter a sound.

  “We got back to his house, and I decided to take a shower.”

  “In his house?” Sally couldn’t resist the question and immediately chastised herself for asking it.

  “Yes,” Audra said. Sally saw that nothing was going to stop her now. “As I said, his parents weren’t home and weren’t going to be for quite a while. So I took a shower, and after I was finished, I came out with just a towel wrapped around me and went to his room.”

  Sally’s face was flushed. She held her breath again and waited.

  “He had gone into his parents’ bathroom and taken a shower, too, and when I entered his room . . . he was naked.”

  Sally released some air through her teeth, but she didn’t take another breath.

  “For a moment, we looked at each other, and I thought this is it, this is finally it. He didn’t come toward me, but I thought that he wanted to, so I went to him and we kissed. It was the best kiss we ever had. My towel dropped. We kissed again, only this time . . .”

  “What?”

  “He wasn’t kissing back as hard. Here I was naked, and he was naked . . .” She stopped and put her hands over her face a moment. Sally thought she wouldn’t go on, but she lowered her hands and, looking directly at her, said, “He wasn’t even excited.”

  “Pardon?”

  “He wasn’t excited. He didn’t even have an erection. You know what that is, don’t you?” Audra asked impatiently. Sally nodded quickly. “I could have just as well been dressed,” she said, but she sounded more sad than angry about it.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. That’s the point. I went back to the bathroom and got dressed. Afterward, we met downstairs, and he acted as though nothing different had occurred between us. He made chocolate milk shakes,” she added, and grimaced.

  “Didn’t you talk about it?”

  “Not right then. I was confused and frightened. I felt so strange, like my existence had been denied. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes,” Sally said, even though she wasn’t sure what Audra meant. “When did you talk about it?”

  “A week or so later. He apologized. He said he had things on his mind, and it had nothing to do with me. He said all sorts of nice things about me, but things became different and not long afterward . . .”

  “He hanged himself,” Sally said, providing the conclusion.

  “Yes.”

  “But that couldn’t be why . . . I mean, you’re not blaming yourself in any way.”

  “No. I’m not blaming myself.”

  “Wow,” Sally said, and started to lie back.

  “Then came Jonathan,” Audra continued, and Sally shot back up as quickly as she would had she been stuck with a pin.

  “Don’t tell me the same thing has happened.”

  “Quite the contrary,” Audra said, her face finally breaking into a smile. The realization of what she meant settled in on Sally immediately.

  “Audra! So quickly?” Sally thought for a moment. “Then, why did you say yes and no when I asked you if you like him?”

  “Because sometimes I get this weird feeling that he was there before, watching Solomon and me, and he knows just what has to be done. He knows what excites me, what I like, but most importantly, what I want . . . maybe even need.” She looked at her friend. “Does this make any sense to you?”

  Sally’s face turned serious as she thought. Then she nodded.

  “It’s something you’re imagining because of the resemblances and because you’re seeing him in Solomon’s house, even in Solomon’s room. It’s your imagination, that’s all.”

  “That’s what I thought. That’s what I thought you would say,” Audra replied. She looked disappointed by the confirmation.

  “But you know differently,” Sally said. Audra and she locked their gaze for a moment. For Audra it was as though she were exposing her innermost self to someone she truly trusted, and for Sally it was as though she had suddenly found the power to look behind words and uttered thoughts.

  “Yes,” Audra said. “I know differently.”

  One of the results of Sally and Audra’s tête-à-tête was Sally’s promise to be more observant and perceptive when it came to Jonathan. She didn’t really have to promise to do it; she thought the agreed-upon assignment was one of the most exciting things to happen to her this school year and maybe even her entire high school senior’s life. She couldn’t have been more anxious to participate, even vicariously, in Audra’s love life.

  And, she had been somewhat less than revealing herself that night she slept at Audra’s. She didn’t tell her about the number of times Jonathan had sought her out to talk to her privately, because during a few of those occasions, she thought she might have told him things about Audra that Audra might not have appreciated being told.

  For instance, he was very interested in what Audra had been doing since Solomon’s death. Jonathan knew about Steve Salvio, too, and was very inquisitive about Audra’s relationship with the New York guy. Since she hadn’t told Audra about these discussions immediately after having them, she was sure Audra would be very upset and might even feel betrayed. Right now, Sally didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize her exciting new assignment, and, as far as she could see, the information she had given Jonathan was common knowledge anyway. If he didn’t get
it from her, he would have gotten it from someone else in the crowd.

  And then there was something else, something she definitely didn’t dare tell Audra—she had begun to believe that Jonathan might have some romantic interest in her. A few times during the week, she caught him staring at her in class, and when he spoke to her privately, he always managed to touch her in some way, whether it was by taking her hand, or placing his hand on her shoulder, or just brushing up against her. Also, he never spoke to her without complimenting her on something—her hair, her eyes, even her posture. Couldn’t this mean something more?

  Right from the beginning of the week, Audra managed to work things out so that she, Jonathan, and Sally would spend more time together. They sat together in the lunchroom; Sally was always nearby when Jonathan stopped to talk to Audra in the halls, and twice during the week, Audra had Sally over when she and Jonathan got together to study something.

  If he sensed being under observation, he didn’t show it. On the contrary, he looked amused and flattered by all the added attention. He even went so far as to invite Sally over to the Sterns’ the night he had asked Audra over. She accepted, of course. This was something Solomon had never done, even though he had been almost as friendly. There were times when she felt he might, but it never came to anything. Jonathan had done it and had done it so quickly and so nonchalantly, she wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  But Audra had her suspicions, suspicions Sally was beginning to believe were definitely manufactured in Audra’s imagination. They nearly had an argument about it right after Jonathan had invited her to join Audra and him at the Sterns’ house. Both of them remained in school and went into one of the audiovisual labs in the library.

  “He knows what we’re doing,” Audra concluded. “He’s deliberately being very cooperative.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I don’t see that,” Sally said.

  “Why else do you think he invited you over, too?” Audra asked, not realizing how cruel the question sounded. Sally blanched.

  “I think he just likes me,” she said, her voice humble and small.

  “Solomon liked you, too,” Audra said, “but he didn’t play with you like this.”

  “He’s not playing with me,” Sally said indignantly. Audra was so wrapped up in her own perceptions, she didn’t see Sally’s reactions.

  “He is very different, isn’t he?” Audra asked. “You see that now, don’t you?”

  “Why shouldn’t he be? He’s a different person.”

  “But you heard some of the comments he made about the others. We talked about them. He says so many of the things Solomon said. Look at his evaluation of Gary Kaufman. He called him a latent homosexual.”

  “I told you, he’s not the first to say that about Gary. Kirk Michaels said he wouldn’t catch himself alone with Gary in the boys’ locker room, didn’t he?”

  “Solomon told him that, and he never forgot it. All they know about each other, Solomon taught them,” Audra said, “and now Jonathan is telling them the same things.” She stopped talking and took a closer look at Sally. “I thought you would be able to see these things. That’s why I asked you to be more observant.”

  “I see them,” Sally said. She looked down at her notebook. On the other side of the big glass window, Mrs. Bobchick, the librarian, glared at them. She was very suspicious about why students remained after school whenever they did. The fifty-four-year-old librarian didn’t trust any teenager, no matter how well he or she did in school and no matter what the other members of the faculty said. Even a valedictorian was not above doodling in a library book or using the library to slip someone drugs or be handed drugs.

  Sally cleared her throat and began writing notes quickly. Audra looked up and smiled at the librarian, who did not smile back. She hesitated and then moved on to check on some students near the card catalog.

  “Mrs. Bobchick, the academic paranoid,” Sally said, and Audra seized her wrist.

  “There,” she said. “That’s another example.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What Jonathan said at lunch today when I told him I was staying after school to do research on my economics paper . . .” Sally didn’t say anything. “He said he heard the academic paranoid was having the school buy her one of those X-ray machines used in airports so she could check students on the way in and out of the library.”

  “I remember,” Sally said, smiling.

  “But don’t you see . . . he called her ‘the academic paranoid’; that was Solomon’s name for her.”

  Sally thought for a moment.

  “So what? He probably heard one of the others call her that and just picked up on it. I don’t know, Audra; I think you’re getting carried away with your own paranoia,” she said. Audra thought for a moment and then relaxed in her chair.

  “Do you?”

  “So far, I must say, I do.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said. She stared out the window for a moment and then turned to her selection of filmstrips and cassettes. “I guess I’d better get the research done,” she said.

  “Okay,” Sally said, gathering her things together. “I’ll see you later at Jonathan’s.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Of course,” Sally added, “I won’t be able to make too many comparisons while I’m there because I was never there before with Solomon. He never invited me,” she said.

  Audra looked up at her, getting the first inkling that perhaps this conscription of Sally into the scene was not a good idea after all. Jonathan, just like Solomon, was too much for her. He was just as clever, just as shrewd, just as manipulative. Maybe it was even dangerous for her to be so involved. He might end up taking unfair advantage of her naive friend, she thought, and it would be all her fault.

  “You haven’t said anything to him that might have given him any ideas, have you, Sally?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just very confused right now,” she added quickly, and then looked up again and smiled. “Just be careful,” she said.

  “My God, Audra, you make him sound like Jack the Ripper or someone.”

  “I can’t help it,” Audra whispered, but Sally had already turned away and started for the door of the audiovisual lab. She didn’t hear what Audra had said.

  Audra looked into the monitor of the personal filmstrip and cassette machine and put on her earphones, but when she turned the knob and brought up the first slide, she didn’t see the picture from the filmstrip, she saw Jonathan’s face merging with Solomon’s face.

  The same thing had happened in the back of Gary Isaac’s car. She had been pleasantly surprised by Jonathan’s aggressiveness. Unlike Solomon, he didn’t hesitate to put his arm around her and draw her closer to him as soon as she was beside him in the backseat.

  Gary was with Paula Simon. They had been dating for four months or so, and Audra knew that they would be quite intimate with each other rather quickly because she knew Paula as a rather sensuous and forward girl who had been sleeping with boys since the ninth grade. Audra was one of the few people, probably the only other high school girl, who knew that Paula had had an abortion last year.

  Audra thought that when someone went on a double date, especially someone who didn’t know everyone that well and that long, it would be expected that he would be tentative and unsure of what the other couple would be like. But right from the start, Jonathan was not like that. He seemed to know immediately that Gary and Paula were not the types to be embarrassed by the passionate contact of their companions.

  It was he who suggested they forget about the movie and go right to Paula’s house. He picked up on something she had said during the day and knew her parents weren’t going to be home. She had an older sister in college, so they would have the house to themselves. Audra couldn’t remember Solomon once making such a suggestion. She was both surprised and excited by it, and Gary and Paula were more than amenable.

  “I thought you might want
to wait until after the movie,” Gary said.

  “It’s not important to me,” Jonathan said. He brushed his lips over Audra’s left temple and kissed her softly on the forehead while his hand moved up her waist. She tightened up, and he didn’t go further. They continued down the highway and reached the outskirts of the village, where they picked up the illumination of streetlights. As the car passed from the darkness to the light, Audra looked into Jonathan’s face, and that was when his face began to merge with Solomon’s.

  Of course, she attributed it to her imagination, but as the marriage of physical characteristics continued, she found herself drawn closer and deeper to him. She was fascinated and mesmerized by the evaporation of time. Was she in the present? Was she in the past? Or was she caught in some magical moment when past and present vanish and one lives only in what one feels during those seconds, during those minutes, during those hours? Whatever it was, she felt inebriated. Her head was spinning, but she wasn’t dizzy; she was light, carefree, like the time she and Solomon had gone running up the hill behind his house. Her body tingled with the memory of what could have been, and Jonathan seemed to sense it.

  He was at her again, kissing her with more demand, his hands moving over her breasts as he turned her toward him. It turned out that they were the couple, not Paula and Gary, who couldn’t wait to get into the empty house. Jonathan didn’t opt for any preliminaries. Paula suggested they drink some of her parents’ booze, but Jonathan wasn’t interested in that. They split up immediately, she and Jonathan taking the den and Paula and Gary going to Paula’s room.

  Jonathan turned on the little reading light that was on the desk in the far corner. It cast just enough illumination to put a glow over his face and cut the shadows out of the darkness, delineating shapes on the walls and the ceiling, creating an audience of faceless spirits, voyeurs from another world, perhaps the world into which Solomon had entered that fateful day.

  As Jonathan stepped toward her, he seemed to emerge from this darkness. She had the vague understanding that he came from out of the darkness of her own mind, where dwelt all her erotic fantasies and lived all her erotic dreams. He wore Solomon’s shiny black jacket with the wool cuffs and the silver zipper. She always had thought he looked dangerous and handsome in that jacket.