Surrogate Child

by Andrew Neiderman

  He bit down on his lower lip and clenched his hands into tight fists, beating back all contrary thoughts. But he couldn’t hold them back for long. He felt like crying. His chest heaved, and his stomach ached from the tension.

  Like one being forced to turn his head against his will, he looked at the nearly closed venetian blinds and then he looked back at Martha. His heart skipped a beat.

  “No,” he said aloud. “Can’t be. I did all the right things. It’s going to be all right; it’s going to be all right.”

  He shook his head as though Martha had spoken. She didn’t move. The shower was pounding against the tile in the stall. The sun was rising faster. Darkness was being washed out of the room. Reality was insisting on being recognized. All dreams and hopes were being returned to the deeper recesses of the mind. He had to go to the window.

  He opened the venetian blinds completely and looked down. For a moment, he was unable to move. It seemed as if all the blood in his body had sunk to his feet, turning them into cast iron. He thought that when he looked down at himself, he would see himself standing in a red pool.

  Jonathan dangled from the same tree. The early morning wind made the strands of his hair dance over his forehead. Incredibly, his head was up, and he was looking straight at their bedroom window. His eyes were open; he wore a look of accusation.

  Joe shook his head. He put his hands over his eyes and pressed his fingers against them. Surely this was just a memory. He was reliving Solomon’s death. When he opened his eyes again, the mirage would be gone.

  But it wasn’t. Jonathan had killed himself.

  Or, Solomon had killed him.

  “NO,” Joe screamed. He turned from the window. Martha groaned, and when he realized what she would do once she saw this, he panicked.

  He ran out of the bedroom and down the stairs as quickly as he could. It took him moments to go out and around the house. When he reached the boy, he stopped and looked up furiously. The boy’s face was white. His hands were frozen in rigor mortis. He hadn’t just done this. Sometime during the night, he had sneaked out of the house.

  Joe recognized the rope. A chill rippled up his spine. Somehow the boy had found where Joe had hidden it, or . . . Solomon found it for him.

  “WHY?” he screamed at the corpse. “I WAS GETTING YOU OUT OF HERE, GETTING YOU HELP. WHY?”

  And suddenly he realized that was why. Solomon knew Jonathan was about to escape. Joe had cut out the files. But then, how had Solomon reached him again?

  Joe spun around as though Solomon were there.

  “WHERE ARE YOU?” he screamed. “WHERE ARE YOU?”

  There was only the sound of the morning wind weaving its way through the surrounding trees and bushes. Jonathan’s body turned a little to the right and then swung back a little to the left. It was as though Solomon were doing it.

  Joe backed away, shaking his head. Then he turned and ran back into the house, fleeing from both the sight of Jonathan’s corpse and the fear of Solomon’s spirit. He rushed up the stairs like a lunatic. He needed Martha; he needed someone.

  But he stopped at the opened door to Jonathan’s room. The computer was on. The lit monitor glared out at him defiantly. Why was it on? What could Jonathan have done with it after he had deleted those files? Had he heard the keys going last night after all? It hadn’t been a dream?

  He stepped into the room and slowly approached the computer. The monitor was displaying the menu. His eyes followed the lines down the list of files and stopped when he saw them.

  “NO!” he screamed, and stepped back. “IT CAN’T BE.”

  The files were back.

  Either Jonathan had entered them again from memory or . . . Solomon had returned to the computer.

  In any case, the words and thoughts were there again, and Jonathan had followed them to the end, just as Solomon had done.

  Joe raised his fists and brought them down as hard as he could on the top of the monitor. The force shook the instrument. He struck it again and again and again until the light went out. Then he lifted it from the table and threw it to the floor. The glass smashed as the monitor bounced into the wall.

  Exhausted, tears streaming down his face, Joe fled the room. When he returned to his bedroom, he found that Martha had dragged herself out of bed. She had made her way to the window and looked out. Then she had collapsed on the floor in front of it. He went to her and took her into his arms, holding her body and rocking back and forth. He brushed back her hair from her face and kissed her cheeks.

  It’s over; it’s all over, he thought. It was his only thought until Mrs. Posner arrived and found them both still on the floor of the bedroom.

  SEVENTEEN

  Spring came early. Joe was happy to see the snow and ice go. The winter had been unusually depressing. He had gotten so angry about the weather that he took to keeping track of the sunny days. At the end of January and at the end of February, he reviewed his records as if to prove a point to someone.

  Maybe he did it because whenever he visited Martha, their discussions began with the weather. He would go on and on about it in great detail, and then they would sit quietly, listening to the silence for a while.

  Everyone said she was doing so well. Just after spring had officially begun, she did seem to blossom. Her face took on more color; her eyes were brighter. He knew how fond she was of spring, how she liked to get out and start planting her flowers. It was important to her that she start things growing again.

  Their conversations began to liven up. He became very optimistic. The doctor told him she was talking more and more about home and about the things she wanted to do. Then one day when he arrived, she appeared to have regressed. She wouldn’t come out of her room. She sat by the window staring out at the grounds around the hospital, and she wouldn’t answer his questions.

  He found out that a teenage boy had come to visit a patient and mistakenly come to her room. When Joe spoke to the doctor, the doctor told him to be patient.

  “Let her deal with it. She has to come to terms with the past in her own way now. We’ve done all we can.”

  “She won’t,” Joe said.

  “Maybe not, but we’ve got to give her some more time.”

  Joe couldn’t help being impatient. The house was filled with too many echoes. He tried to get rid of them in his own way. One afternoon, he went into the backyard and cut down the tree. He spent days hacking away at the stump until he was able to cover the spot with fresh dirt. He knew it was foolish to take out his frustration on the tree. The tree’s only fault was being there. What if Solomon would have hanged himself from the garage roof, he thought, would he have ripped down the garage?

  He realized it was a matter of trying to escape from the past. He got everything associated with Jonathan out of the house. He gave the bike to the police department and told them to offer it to a deserving poor family.

  But none of this ended the loneliness or drove away the images. All it did was provide less opportunity for the stimulation of a particular memory. As usual, he buried himself in his work; but that didn’t solve the problem.

  The problem was he missed Martha. He missed the sound of her laughter, the scent of her hair, the look in her eyes, and the warmth of her body beside his.

  One day after she had gone into this regression, he came to her and told her just that.

  “I know,” he began, “that’s it’s been a long time since I told you how much I love you, but I need you to know that.”

  She continued to look out, her back to him.

  “I can’t take it anymore, Martha. It’s hard for me, too. I know you’re going through terrible pain, and I know how guilty you feel, but you’ve got to come back. I need you. I always needed you . . . even more than they did.”

  He brought his hands to his face and pressed his palms hard into his cheeks.

  “There aren’t any more words, Martha. The doctors have said all the words. Words don’t matter anymore. Feelings matter. Actions matte
r. I want to walk with you in the woods now that the leaves are back and you can smell the earth coming alive. I want to hold your hand and listen to you laugh. I want us to start over somewhere, somehow. I want it to be different. I want us to care more about each other than we care about anything else. I promise to hold you and to love you more than you could ever know.”

  She lowered her head, but she didn’t turn to him.

  “Martha, the truth is I’m scared . . . not of ghosts . . . not even of memories . . . I’m just scared of being alone forever.” He waited and then stood up.

  “Joe,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “He’s dead, Martha. He’s not coming back anymore, not as another boy, not as a ghost, nothing.”

  “I don’t hear his voice anymore.”

  “That’s good, Martha.”

  She turned to him.

  “But now I’m scared, too, scared of the silence.”

  “It won’t be silent when you come home.”

  “I want to come home, Joe.”

  “Thank God,” he sighed, and he went to her. He embraced her, and he kissed her.

  She did come home, and she looked out at where the tree had been. She didn’t say anything about its disappearance, but he could see she was grateful for it.

  It was hard at first. Some nights they fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms. Sounds stirred them. Shadows had to be wiped away with brighter lights. The bright sun of summer was a welcomed sight.

  They spent almost every available moment together. They took their walks; they took rides and visited relatives. They went on a vacation to Cape Cod and fell in love over again. They spent more money on themselves, buying themselves new clothing and a new car.

  And then one August day, they went to the cemetery. They held tightly to each other and prayed at Solomon’s grave. Martha prayed for forgiveness; Joe prayed for understanding.

  It was odd, but she never talked about Jonathan. It was as if he had never come to their house. His time with them had lost its separate identity for Martha. Joe thought that in a strange and wonderful way, Solomon had absorbed him. He thought that was as it should be.

  And then at the age of thirty-nine, Martha became pregnant again. After the doctor had confirmed it, neither she nor Joe knew what to say. The doctor had no ready explanation as to why she had failed to become pregnant during the earlier years and suddenly did now. They went home to ponder it.

  The first thought was she should have an abortion. Perhaps it was too late to have children.

  Both of them knew what the real fears were, but neither said anything about them.

  The days passed, and Martha announced her intention to have the child. Joe didn’t oppose it, even though he was quietly terrified. He had nightmares about Solomon’s second return. Martha had become pregnant in a supernatural way. In his dreams, the baby was Solomon’s exact weight at birth: seven pounds, fourteen ounces, and his hair was the same light brown.

  The night she gave birth he was convinced they had made a terrible mistake. He was even considering their giving the child up for adoption. Other people in the waiting room assumed he was the usual nervous father, but his anxiety was the result of so much more.

  When the nurse came out to tell him all was well, he did not smile.

  “Mr. Stern,” she announced, a half smile on her face. “Your wife and your daughter are fine.”

  “Daughter?”

  “Yes, sir. A plump one, too. She’s eight pounds, twelve ounces.”

  “A daughter?”

  Everyone was looking at him now, but he couldn’t help it. He started to laugh and laugh and laugh. The nurse had to help him to a seat.

  When he calmed down, he went in to see Martha. She was tired, but she was beaming. The baby was in her arms, looking so new and so different from Solomon. Joe was ecstatic. His nightmares burst like soap bubbles.

  “I want to name her after my grandmother,” Martha said.

  “Name her anything you want.”

  “There are so many changes to be made . . . colors, furniture . . .”

  “Yes,” he said. “So many changes.”

  When he left the hospital, he was still laughing. He didn’t care about the people who looked at him as though he had gone mad. Never did the sky look as blue. “So many changes,” he repeated, and got into his car to go home so he could begin.

  EPILOGUE

  Gussie put her shoulder to the attic door and pressed as hard as she could. She had been up here only a few times before, and each time the door resisted being opened as though it were trying to prevent her from seeing what was stored within. She had first come up here when she was eleven, simply out of curiosity. Her curiosity grew out of her father’s command not to go up to the attic.

  “I’m not sure about the floorboards,” he told her. “You could step on a rotten one and fall through the roof.”

  For a long time, that was enough to keep her away. Then one day she heard him wandering about up there and realized if he could walk on those boards, she certainly could. He was so much bigger and heavier.

  When she asked about it casually at dinner one night, her mother told her it was dirty and dusty up there.

  “Who knows, you might catch some disease,” she said, but then again she wondered why her father didn’t have such fears. Why did he move about up there if such danger existed?

  She realized eventually what the real reason was: They didn’t want her seeing any of Solomon’s things. According to her parents, they no longer had anything relating to Jonathan.

  “He had so little that was his, anyway,” her mother told her. “He used Solomon’s things, and whatever we did buy him, we got rid of.”

  “Why?” she wanted to know, but her mother wasn’t willing to talk about it, and when she asked her father, he asked her . . . no, he pleaded with her, not to talk about Jonathan.

  “Some memories are painful,” he said, “and you don’t want to cause your mother any pain, do you?”

  Of course she didn’t. But still, why couldn’t she know more about Jonathan and Solomon? It wasn’t fair. Her girlfriends knew all about their brothers and sisters. She felt funny when they asked her questions about her dead brother and she didn’t know the answers. Even dumb Wilma Pedersen knew about her own dead brother. How he was killed in that car accident. Who his girlfriends had been. And he had died before Wilma was born, just as Solomon had died before she was born.

  For a long time she was able to keep her curiosity bridled. Lately, however, that was getting to be a harder and harder thing to do. She had just reached her fifteenth birthday, and there often were nights now when she would lie awake in her bed and look up at the ceiling thinking, the mystery of my dead brother is buried up there, hidden in old chests and closed away in cartons.

  Sometimes, as eerie as it sounded, she felt as if he were calling to her, calling to the sister he had never known. She sensed another presence, even heard a voice . . . a whisper. Oh, it could easily be only the wind winding its way through the crevices and openings of the house, or it could be purely a product of her own overworked imagination. She knew that, but she couldn’t help thinking about it.

  The other times, she had sneaked into the attic, she had been afraid to touch anything. All she had really done was stand there, just inside the doorway, and look around. She was afraid to walk across the room, afraid her father might be right about the floorboards. He could do it just because he knew the safe from the unsafe ones.

  She held her breath, too, thinking there was a great deal of dust and dirt here. Just as her mother suggested, the attic could be a haven for all sorts of germs. It was hot and musty most of the time, a perfect environment for evil bacteria.

  But these fears dissipated as she grew older. Now they seemed like silly, obviously fabricated reasons to keep a young child from endangering herself. But she was no longer a young child. She was becoming a young woman, and she had a ri
ght to be trusted. She had a right to know about her own dead brother, to know her past.

  Just as before, the door squeaked, its hinges straining under her efforts. There was a single, uncovered light bulb at the center of the ceiling. She flicked the switch and sent the pale yellow light down and around the attic. Shadows seemed to retreat reluctantly and hover in the corners, angry with the intrusion of light. She waved the air in front of her. Something did smell awful up here. Maybe, as her mother once suggested, bats lived here.

  She went farther into the attic and studied its contents more closely. She saw the familiar shapes of old pieces of furniture and boxes draped in gray sheets. This time, though, she went to her right and began to examine what was under those sheets. She discovered old clothing; she found old books. Taking some of the clothing out of the cartons and holding shirts and pants out before her, she was able to envision her brother’s height and form. The clothing had belonged to him when he was at least fourteen or fifteen, she thought, judging the length of the pants and the sizes of the shirts.

  She looked with interest at the books, impressed with the depth and scope of his interests. She found a box of model airplanes and cars and studied the intricate work that had been required to make a successful replica of a famous automobile or plane. What patience he must have had, she thought, and envisioned him alone in his room for hours, working meticulously on these tiny plastic parts.

  She moved on to discover lamps and toys and then finally stood before a large carton draped in a heavier, dark gray sheet. The bottom of the sheet had been tucked in under the carton to wrap it even tighter. This was something special, she thought, and quickly pulled the sheet out from under the carton and off it. She undid the flaps and peered in to discover a monitor, cables, and computer. At first, in the dim light, she thought it was a broken discard, the glass of the monitor shattered, the plastic case cracked. But when she knelt down to look more closely, she saw that she was mistaken.