Surrogate Child

by Andrew Neiderman

  Jonathan zipped it down slowly and peeled it away from his body. She was on the soft cushioned couch, and when he came to her, he knelt beside her to first lay his head on her thighs. She threaded her fingers through his hair, and when he looked up, his face was cloaked in darkness. He wore it like a mask. Who was behind it? she wondered. It was the last thought that had anything to do with hesitation, for when he rose and brought his lips to hers, she felt herself soften and lay back with an obedience that surprised even her.

  They didn’t make love like teenagers groping for new excitement, rushing into climaxes out of a fear that it might somehow be interrupted. They made love like a couple with years of sexual experience, touching each other knowingly, wisely, strengthened by an awareness of what was to come. Jonathan’s kisses were filled with confidence; his touch was assured. She couldn’t even remember the details of how her clothing was stripped away, but when they were naked together and her mind went back to that day in Solomon’s room when they had embraced after taking showers, she found herself picking up the memory where it had been disappointing and attaching these moments to it, as though it could be true . . . she could meld the two boys into one very satisfactory boy and finally celebrate the ecstasy of her own sexuality the way she had wanted to celebrate it.

  Later that evening they all went out for ice cream at the Old-Fashioned Shoppe in Monticello, and suddenly, as if he had been repossessed by his kindred spirit, Jonathan slipped back into an aloof demeanor more characteristic of Solomon. He sat farther away from her; he didn’t take her hand or embrace her in the back of the car. There was only what she would best describe as a perfunctory good-night kiss at the evening’s end. She felt terribly confused by it all, and that was when she had first gotten the idea that she had to share her experiences with someone and called Sally.

  Now, once again, she wondered if she had done the right thing. She even considered the possibility that it was too late anyway. She had this intense sense of dread, as though things that had been started could not be stopped, but she had no concrete idea why she should feel this way. She just did, and it made her sad and depressed. Worst of all, it was playing havoc with her imagination.

  Even now. Here in the library. Through the earphones connected to the audiovisual machine, she heard Sally Kantzler’s voice over the telephone that terrible day.

  “My father just told me he heard Solomon hanged himself. Is it true?”

  Is it true?

  Is it true?

  Mrs. Bobchick tapped vigorously on the window of the audiovisual lab because Audra, without realizing it herself, had just screamed.

  TEN

  The morning after what Joe considered to be Martha’s animated nightmare, he waited anxiously at breakfast for some further reference to it. She said nothing about it, not even when Jonathan wasn’t at the table with them. He decided to make no mention of it, hopeful that the gruesome image would not reappear in her memory.

  When he was doing all that reading about suicide, he read a number of psychological studies and theories, and one researcher claimed that the mind had a way of protecting itself during the conscious hours by repressing the uglier and more depressing images and thoughts. They were always there, but during the waking hours, the mind threw up blockers and prevented them from penetrating.

  It was a different situation after people fell asleep, for during sleep, those blockers were relaxed and those second-level thoughts could move freely out of what the researcher called “the dark corridors of the mind.” Joe, who always related things to some mechanical or electrical device or another, thought of the mental blockers the way he thought of a surge protector on a computer. Once that surge protector was turned off, the electricity could flood the mother board and damage chips as well as blow out the monitor. In his mind, something similar to that had happened to Martha the night before, and therefore it was understandable that she wouldn’t have any recollection of it now.

  It wasn’t until he left the house that morning that another, even more logical, reason for Martha’s gruesome nightmare occurred to him. Thinking about the date and planning out his work calendar, he realized that they were only five days away from Solomon’s birthday. It would be the second anniversary of his birthday since his death. The first time had been only months afterward, his death still stinging and still as ugly as an opened wound.

  Of course, they went to the cemetery. For the longest time while they were there, Martha did not cry. She stared at the tombstone; she walked around the gravesite, but she did not cry. It was a gray, cold day, and Joe remembered that the wind seemed to burrow in under his skin as well as under his clothes, yet Martha looked undisturbed and untouched. She had the top two buttons of her jacket undone and wore nothing on her head. He spoke to her, but she didn’t hear him. Finally he put his arm around her and drew her close to him, as much to keep himself warm as her.

  “I don’t feel he’s here,” she said. “I look at his name on the stone, but I don’t feel he’s buried under it. It’s just a stone stuck in the ground. Solomon’s somewhere else.”

  “I know,” Joe said. “It’s hard to accept the reality.”

  “I don’t accept it,” she said, but she put her fingers on the engraved words and the date, and soon afterward the tears came.

  He took her home and put her to sleep with a sedative. It was a terribly dark day. None of Martha’s family called, nor did any of their friends. He could understand their reluctance. When his mother called, she cried throughout most of the conversation. He was tempted a number of times to take a sedative himself, but he thought it would be better if one of them was alert, so he suffered through the silence, crying only when he recalled the early birthdays when Solomon sat on his lap and they both blew out the candles.

  Now, he thought, even though she had Jonathan to look after, she was certainly conscious of Solomon’s upcoming birthday, and that awareness was bringing on the nightmares. He expected there would be more, and he expected her to grow solemn and withdrawn as the birthday drew closer.

  But she didn’t. Instead, she kept very busy and was very energetic. She took Jonathan to the dentist and to the hairdresser, and that day she had her hair done herself. It was something she hadn’t had done since Solomon’s death. He was surprised when he came home from work on Wednesday and found her wearing her hair in a completely new style—cut short, the bangs straight, the color darkened. He didn’t like it, but he tempered his dissatisfaction because he suspected she had done it to ward off the impending blues.

  He was angrier when he discovered that apparently wasn’t the chief reason.

  “Jonathan likes it this way,” she said. “He showed me the picture of a model in a lipstick advertisement in a magazine, and I brought it to Barbara Jean when I brought him to get his hair done. She made time for me. Didn’t she do a good job?”

  “I was always fond of your hair on the long side,” he said. She grimaced.

  “So was Solomon,” she said. “Remember how he would never let me even think of cutting it. Long hair is a lot more work, you know. He never thought of that, though, did he? As long as everything was his way. Mindy Baker was right . . . I didn’t think enough of myself. I was too . . . sacrificing.”

  Joe didn’t respond. He stared at her, not sure he was hearing right. Martha, admitting she was too devoted to Solomon?

  “On the other hand,” she said, looking at her reflection in the glass door on the bookcase, “Jonathan is more understanding and far less demanding. He keeps chastising me for working so hard to please him.”

  “Is that right?” Joe asked dryly.

  “It is. Do you know what he said when I told him about my postponing my intentions to become a real estate agent?”

  “What?”

  “He told me to go to the community college and take that realtor’s course after all. He said it would make him prouder of me if I accomplished something like that.” She paused and smiled like someone about to divulge a major s
ecret. “I bet you don’t know I met Judy Isaacs for lunch twice and not only began to talk again about taking the realtor’s course at the community college, but brought home some of the books Judy wanted to loan me.”

  “Really? I didn’t notice any of those books.”

  “They’re in Jonathan’s room. He’s been helping me study. We have a pact,” she said. “If I take the course next semester and do well, he will be on the superintendent’s honor roll every quarter. I don’t doubt that he will anyway, but I let him make the offer.”

  “So you’re definitely going to take the course?”

  “It’s a matter of balance,” she said, like someone who had memorized it. “A woman today has got to balance the needs and demands of her family with her own needs and demands in order to remain healthy, both physically and mentally.”

  Joe laughed.

  “I don’t think that’s funny. Jonathan found it in an article in a magazine at school and brought it home for me to read.”

  “Jonathan brought it home? Why would a young boy be reading articles about women and their self-images?” he asked.

  “He’s like Sol—he has varied reading interests,” she said. “Anyway, I think it was a good article.”

  “I’m not saying it isn’t. I was just surprised Jonathan would read such an article.”

  “I’m not,” she said.

  He didn’t pursue it, nor did he say anything more that was critical of her new hairdo. Thinking more about the psychology of all this, he concluded that she didn’t realize herself why she was doing these things. It was part of her mind’s defense against the realization that Solomon’s birthday was fast approaching. As it drew closer, he anticipated it with dread.

  And then it came. He woke first that Saturday morning, but he didn’t get out of the bed. Instead, he lay there waiting for her to open her eyes, realize what day it was, and begin to cry. He expected they would go back out to the cemetery where they would relive the day of Solomon’s suicide and the funeral. Martha would close into a tight fist and spend the remainder of the day in bed.

  He wondered how Jonathan would react to the air of depression that would fall over the household. He would just have to be understanding, Joe thought. It might even be wise for him to go to one of his newly made friends’ homes for the day.

  Martha stirred and then turned over onto her back. He watched her open her eyes and stare up at the ceiling. He could almost read the thoughts on her face. When Solomon was only three, he would be conscious of his birthday and come running into their bedroom as soon as he woke up, anticipating the gifts and the party. There was no more important day in their lives, at least in Martha’s way of thinking. Usually, she did so much in preparation for it. Not his birthday, nor hers, nor their anniversary could compare.

  “Joe,” she said. “Do you know what today is?”

  “Yes,” he said softly.

  “It’s Saturday . . . Saturday, and tonight is Jonathan’s first school party.”

  “What?”

  She sat up abruptly.

  “And I forgot to pick up his slacks and sports coat at the cleaners!”

  He watched her get out of bed quickly and rush about like someone who had overslept and would be late for work. He didn’t get out of bed while she showered, and he didn’t get out while she dressed. All the while she was so intent on her purpose that she didn’t appear to notice or care about his loitering. Just before she left the room to go down to make breakfast, she turned to him.

  “Are you going to sleep all day?”

  “No,” he said, but he didn’t make any move to get up. She shrugged and went out.

  After a while he sat up and scrubbed his head with his fingers. He looked about the room like a man waking after a night of heavy drinking. He did feel the weight of a hangover of sorts. He wasn’t sure what he should do next.

  Should he go on and pretend, as she was obviously doing, that this was no special day? Was that the best way to get over the hump of sadness and depression? He could do that, and there would be no gray sky, no cold wind, no dark shadows. Of course, throughout the day he would wait, anticipating her realization. It would be like waiting for the falling of that inevitable second shoe. Could he stand the tension?

  Or he could force her to face it by reminding her that today was Solomon’s birthday. He didn’t have to say it in so many words. What he could do was simply ask her if she wanted to go up to the cemetery at any special time. At least that way, he would get it over with once and for all.

  He couldn’t explain all the reasons for his choice. In the back of his mind was the idea that Solomon was, after all, his son, too. He wanted to consider Martha’s feelings and Martha’s needs, but he had feelings and needs. He didn’t think he could face himself, knowing he deliberately ignored his son’s birthday. Joe thought there was still the real possibility that Solomon did what he did because he had ignored him too much. Joe couldn’t help wondering if he had given up sooner than he should have. How could he ignore him now?

  Joe was also driven by the conflict in his feelings about Jonathan. In one sense, he was happy that Martha was so involved with the boy that she would be able to avoid depression and sadness; but in another sense, he was indignant about the way Jonathan had so completely seized Martha’s attention and imagination that she would disregard the memory of her dead son.

  In the final analysis, it might have been the way she and Jonathan were carrying on at the breakfast table when he arrived downstairs that made him decide. She had made a big breakfast: bacon and eggs, grits, and muffins. Neither of them looked up at him to greet him when he stepped through the kitchen doorway. Jonathan had just said something under his breath, and Martha was laughing hysterically, pieces of the muffin caught between her lips, her body shaking, her eyes closed.

  Joe didn’t move. He stood there until she realized his appearance.

  “Hungry?” she asked. He couldn’t help but recall breakfast on this day last year. He could barely get her to take a sip of coffee, and when she returned from the cemetery, she drank only the water that she took with the sedative.

  “Not very, no,” he said.

  Jonathan turned around and looked at him. There was something immediately sly about his demeanor. His eyes were small and the left corner of his mouth was drawn up, giving him an expression closer to a sneer than anything else.

  “’Morning,” he finally said. Joe nodded weakly.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Martha asked. “Are you sick? You usually get up earlier than this, and you’re always hungry on Saturday and Sunday mornings.”

  “Not this Saturday,” he said, expecting the hint to be enough, but she either didn’t know what he was getting at or she was deliberately ignoring him. She turned to Jonathan.

  “Want more grits?”

  “Yes, please. They’re great.”

  “Solomon hated them,” Joe said. It came out like an involuntary burp or a hiccup. He couldn’t believe himself that he had said it. Martha and Jonathan paused and stared at him as though he were crazy.

  “Not everyone has the same tastes, Joe,” Martha finally said. “I, for one, always liked grits.”

  “I always liked it, but you never made it much.”

  “Well, I made it today. Do you want some?”

  “I . . . no, I’ll just have some coffee for now.”

  “Whatever you want,” she said. She got up to get Jonathan more grits, and Joe sat down. He poured himself some coffee and stared ahead blankly for a few moments. Martha sat down, but no one said anything. She watched Jonathan eat.

  Joe looked at him closer, drawn by the glitter around his neck. He hadn’t noticed it until now, because until now, he had worn his collars closed and the chain was hidden. But today his collar was open, and he wore no undershirt. The sight of it was the final thing to push him over the edge. He turned to Martha.

  “I was wondering what time you wanted to go up to the cemetery,” he said. Jonathan s
topped eating and looked at Joe, but Martha kept her attention fixed on Jonathan.

  “I’m not going up to the cemetery,” she said.

  “But . . . you know what today is.”

  “Today,” she began, and then smiled. “Today is Saturday,” she said, and Jonathan smiled.

  Joe looked from one to the other. The chill that climbed up his back felt more like an enormous hand carved out of ice, the thumb and pinkie clamping down on his ribs. He couldn’t breathe. He felt the blood rush into his face.

  “Saturday?” he said. It was all he could get out.

  “I don’t want anything to ruin the day; I don’t want anything to ruin our happiness,” she said. She turned to him, her eyes metallic and cold; determination and anger were woven together into a rope of intensity and purpose. “We don’t deserve any more unhappiness,” she said.

  He didn’t move. His elbow was on the table; the coffee cup was clutched in his hand and frozen in the air before him. After a beat, Jonathan tapped his fork on the plate as he scooped up the remainder of the grits, and Martha smiled.

  “He loves grits,” she said. “With lots of butter. Are you sure you don’t want any, Joe? I’m only going to throw it out.”

  “No,” he said. “Thanks.” He lowered his coffee cup to the table and got up slowly. “I’m going out for some air,” he said. Neither she nor Jonathan replied, but when he was halfway to the front door, he heard them both laugh. He moved quickly until he was outside and the door was closed behind him.

  For a long moment, he just stood there, grateful for the silence. Even the birds were respectfully quiet, and there was no traffic on their road.

  Then he went around to the rear of the house and stared dumbly at the tree from which Solomon’s body had dangled in death. It seemed to him that his son would punish him forever. He had even found a way to do it through the new boy. Perhaps he was reaching both of them through that damn computer, he thought. It would fit his sardonic sense of humor to do so. Joe resolved to go after the password to that file again, if for nothing else than to satisfy his curiosity.