Surrogate Child

by Andrew Neiderman

  He couldn’t really blame her for treating Jonathan the same way she had treated Solomon. What other way did she know? She had been a mother only once. For some reason, after Solomon’s birth, all their other attempts at having more children failed. Martha used to say, “Solomon doesn’t want a sister or brother.” She said it with such conviction that he began to believe she believed it. He even went so far as to ask the doctor if it was possible for a woman to will herself not to become pregnant. The doctor started to laugh, but when he saw Joe was seriously asking, he stopped and went into a detailed explanation of the biology. He did end by shrugging and saying, “But who knows the power of the human mind.”

  Perhaps it would have all been different if they’d had another child or two and Solomon hadn’t gotten all Martha’s and his attention. Maybe Solomon needed a brother or sister to confide in. What would it have been like if Jonathan had been living here then? he wondered.

  What’s the difference? he thought. It’s too late now. Still, Martha might be right. The new boy might end up giving them more than they could give to him. He had to wait and see, but more importantly, he had to give it a chance and be cooperative. For the time being, he decided, he would do nothing to interfere with Martha’s strategy. He shouldn’t have even questioned her decision to postpone her career plans. If she was willing to be unselfish, why, he had to be as well.

  Feeling guilty now, he got up and went upstairs to see if he could make her feel better. He paused in front of the door to Solomon’s room and thought, I’ve got to stop thinking of this as Solomon’s room. It’s got to be Jonathan’s room.

  That’s it, he realized. One of the first things he could do to help things along was change this room to satisfy the new boy. That way he would feel more at home. The idea excited him. He knocked on the door and waited. Nothing happened. Solomon had the same habit, he thought. He would ignore the first knock; and unless Joe had something he considered very important on his mind, he would give up and go to his own room. It used to amaze him. Why wasn’t the kid at least curious about what his father wanted? Because he didn’t care, that’s why, he told himself. He just didn’t care.

  He knocked again, this time a bit harder. After a moment, Jonathan came to the door. He was wearing Solomon’s light brown, cotton pajamas, the ones that had the initial S embroidered on the top pocket. They did fit him perfectly. How could he take to someone else’s clothes so quickly? Joe thought. Despite what he had concluded earlier, he couldn’t imagine himself being so easily adaptable, no matter how many homes he had been farmed out to so far.

  He was afraid that this boy was so different, almost another species of human, that they would never find things in common and never reach real understandings. It might even be worse than it had been with Solomon, for at least Solomon was his own flesh and blood. There were some genetic links. What linked him to this child?

  “Hi. Didn’t want to disturb you, but I was thinking about this room,” he said. Jonathan turned to look at it as though for the first time.

  The room was a twelve-by-twelve with a heavy pinewood bunk bed on the left, and a dresser just to the right of that. There was a wall of attached shelves on the far right wall, the first three shelves of which were stocked with paperbacks and hardcover books. On the top two shelves were some of the model planes and cars Solomon had made from kits when he was only ten and eleven. To the right of the shelves was a large walk-in closet. Against the center wall and between the two windows that faced northeast was the matching pinewood desk and chair.

  The year before Solomon died, Joe had gotten him an IBM PCXT with a ten megabyte hard-disc drive. Its capacity was far beyond anything Solomon needed at the time, but being an IBM employee, Joe was able to get a bargain, and he had the notion that he might get closer to his son if he could get him interested in the work he did.

  He expected his son would have a million questions for him once he got started with the computer. He gave him an initial lesson and then Solomon started to read the basic manual. If he had any problems, Joe never knew about it, for Solomon asked him nothing. From time to time, he stopped by to watch him work on the computer and offered unsolicited suggestions. He brought him new and different software packages, but after a while, he sensed that Solomon wanted privacy whenever he worked on his computer. Ironically, the thing that Joe thought would have brought them closer together had wedged them further apart.

  He always shrugged. Ah, well, with his son’s high IQ, he was probably creating new programs. Solomon might be reinventing the field of computers.

  The room was papered with blue and white glossy sheets that had pictures of a variety of sports cars scattered throughout. A light blue shag rug carpeted the floor, and Joe noticed it was beginning to show wear.

  “What about the room?”

  “Well,” Joe said, stepping forward. “There’s nothing chipped in concrete here. We can replace the wallpaper.”

  “It’s all right,” Jonathan said.

  “You like cars?” Joe asked, and then shook his head. “Stupid question. All kids your age like cars. Well, this rug is looking anemic.” He looked to Jonathan, but the boy only shrugged. “I see you are already learning about computers,” Joe said, gesturing toward the IBM. Jonathan had it started and had drawn up a file.

  “A little,” he said, but Joe thought he looked guilty about it. “We had IBMs at my school, though I never learned much about them.”

  “After you get settled in awhile, I’ll show you more. Could really help you in school.” Jonathan didn’t reply. The momentary silence made Joe uncomfortable. He kept looking around the room. “Main thing is for you to be comfortable,” he said.

  “I’m comfortable. You don’t have to change a thing.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, we’ll see as we go along. There’s time,” Joe said. His gaze went to a carton pulled out of the walk-in closet. In it were notes and papers and pictures, all Solomon’s stuff, things he wished Martha would have at least put in the basement. It was obvious Jonathan had been spending time looking through it.

  Oh, well, he thought. He couldn’t blame him for being curious about the boy who had lived here before. Still, he felt uneasy about it. He hadn’t looked in that carton himself because he was unable to involve himself with Solomon’s personal things, just the way he was when Solomon was alive. He wouldn’t think of looking in his son’s drawers or through his papers.

  “Okay,” he said. “If there’s anything you need—”

  “Thanks,” Jonathan said quickly. It was obvious he wanted Joe to leave.

  “’Night, then,” he said. The moment he stepped out, Jonathan closed the door.

  Why was it, he wondered, that the boy already made him feel like an intruder in his own home?

  Martha was still awake. She was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling, a Mona Lisa smile on her face. He hadn’t seen that smile for quite a while. The Mona Lisa smile was attractive, but mysterious. Was it really a smile, or was it a grimace? In the early days, she teased him about it.

  “I can’t tell if you’re happy or sad,” he would say.

  And she would say, “You’ll just have to wait to see.”

  Usually it was a true smile, but because of the time when it was not, the look remained mysterious.

  She was locked into some memory right now; it was obvious. He started to undress, deliberately making more noise than was necessary.

  They had what would normally be a comfortable-size bedroom, sixteen-by-twenty, but since they had bought the king-size oakwood bed, the space was significantly diminished. Getting the big bed was more his idea. They were going to replace their queen-size bed with two singles because he was a restless sleeper, but to his mind separate beds added to the chasm that had been growing between them at the time. They bought the new bed a year before Solomon’s death. He characterized most everything they did in those terms now.

  Their life together was divided into two parts: before Solomon’s death and af
ter it. He had a strong feeling it was about to be divided into a third phase: after Jonathan’s arrival.

  “I was just talking to the boy about Solomon’s room,” he said, putting on his pajama top. He thought that would bring her out of her reverie. It did. She blinked rapidly and pushed herself up a little in the bed.

  He saw that she was sleeping nude again. It was something she had stopped doing after Solomon’s death. Why one should relate to the other, he did not know; but it was one of the many things in their daily lives that changed and made them strangers to each other. If he brought up one of these changes and asked her why she had done it, she couldn’t remember how it was before or she denied that it was that way before. It had been a while since he challenged anything anymore.

  “What do you mean? What about the room?”

  “I thought the boy would like things more to his own liking. It would give him a better feeling and a stronger sense of belonging.”

  “But he likes everything in the room just the way it is,” she said, obviously troubled by the suggestion.

  “So I discovered. Weird,” he added, and pulled on the pajama pants.

  “I don’t think that’s so weird, Joe. Solomon had everything well organized in there.”

  “It’s not a question of that, Martha. Everyone wants to put his own stamp on things; otherwise, it’s not his own.”

  “Obviously this boy doesn’t have those ego problems.” She pulled the blanket up against her throat as though she were suddenly very modest about herself. He didn’t say anything else. He went into the bathroom and prepared for bed. When he came back out, she was on her side, her back to him. The blanket was draped just below her elbow now and the sight of her naked back stimulated him.

  Ever since her high school years, Martha always had an attractive figure, giving credence to the belief that some people hold onto their shape for genetic reasons. No matter how little or how much she ate, her metabolism adjusted to maintain the symmetry in her body.

  What was particularly beautiful about her was the way the lines of her features melded. Her neck turned gently into her soft shoulders, shoulders that were developed to the perfect point between femininity and masculinity. Some women, especially those who were involved with heavy exercise, had shoulders more like the shoulders of men, and some had shoulders so frail and bony they were downright unattractive. Martha’s shoulders felt good in his palms. Whenever they embraced in bed, he lingered over them and then ran his hand down over her arms until he reached the point where he would move laterally and lift her full and perky breasts toward him. Whenever he strummed her nipples with his thumbs, her kiss would become more demanding. The slight touch of the tips of their tongues lit each other.

  Joe wasn’t a man with a record of sexual conquests. Twice before, during his college days, he thought he was in love. Now, whenever he looked back, those relationships seemed so insignificant, he had difficulty recalling what, if anything, had given them any intensity. When the lovemaking between him and Martha was good, pre-Solomon’s death and lately, since Solomon’s death, it was so all-consuming he felt as though they created a new form of life during the act. They were totally involved and gave of each other so completely, their identities merged. For those moments they became a part of each other. After it was over, he always felt it took time to return to himself.

  Right now, he wanted that feeling very much.

  He slipped into bed beside her and pressed his body up against hers, running his right palm down her shoulder and arm, over her hips and onto her thigh. She didn’t respond. He pressed himself against her more emphatically. She could not misunderstand.

  “Martha,” he whispered. “You look so good tonight.”

  “Don’t, Joe.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s his first night here.”

  “So?” He pulled back. “What could that possibly have to do with it?” He waited, but she didn’t respond, nor did she turn toward him. “Martha?”

  “He might . . . hear us.”

  “Are you kidding? What do you think he’s doing, holding his ear to the wall? Come on.”

  “No, I just feel nervous about it tonight.”

  “What if he did hear us? He’s old enough to know what men and women do, for godsakes. Who knows what he’s done during his wild life?”

  She turned toward him.

  “That’s precisely why we’ve got to set a good example for him, Joe.”

  “So? We will. What’s that got to do with making love?”

  “Don’t you remember that time Solomon heard us and came into the bedroom just as we . . . just as I opened my eyes and saw him standing there. He looked so angry.”

  “Not half as angry as I was. He was old enough to respect his parents’ privacy.”

  “Don’t talk critically about him. Not now, now that he’s gone.”

  “Well . . . dammit. Do you expect this boy to come spying on us?” She didn’t reply, and he thought for a moment. “Was that why that woman, Mrs. Porter, wanted her bedroom door locked?”

  “What?”

  “Was that the reason? Maybe the kid has a history of perversion.”

  “Joe!”

  “We’ve got to think about it. They don’t tell us everything. If they told the foster parents everything, there probably wouldn’t be any.”

  “That’s not fair, Joe. It wasn’t his fault. That woman was a . . . was a nut.”

  “Maybe.”

  He turned on his back.

  “I know what you’re doing,” Martha said. “You’re blackmailing me.”

  “What?” He wasn’t, but now that she had brought it up . . . “Well, if having a kid living here is going to interfere with my love life . . .”

  “You’re a bastard, Joe.” He smiled, but she couldn’t see. There was a long moment of silence, and then she said, “All right, but let’s be quiet about it. At least tonight.”

  “It’ll be a silent movie,” he said, and subdued a giggle. He turned back to her and began to kiss her.

  Just before his climax, he heard Jonathan come out of his room and go into the bathroom. He closed the door rather hard and rather loudly. It was close to a slam. He didn’t come out and go back to his bedroom until after they were finished and Martha had turned over on her side again. They heard him close his bedroom door.

  “Just like Solomon,” she whispered. “He senses when we do it.”

  “For Christ sakes, Martha,” Joe said.

  But he lay awake for the longest time recalling his son’s belligerent attitude the mornings after he and Martha had made love. He had to admit to himself, he had had a thought similar to hers. He just never verbalized it as she just had.

  Because it was a ridiculous idea, he thought. No mother and son could be that simpatico.

  And anyway, how could this new boy be so tuned in to them so quickly? In the back of his mind, he was afraid of the answer, for he suspected that the answer to this question would be the same as the answer to why he had taken so quickly to Solomon’s bike and Solomon’s clothes and Solomon’s foods and Solomon’s room.

  THREE

  In the morning Joe couldn’t make up his mind whether Jonathan was sleepy, pensive, or sullen. The new boy’s conversation at breakfast, even with Martha, was restricted to short sentences and monosyllabic answers. Martha felt something wasn’t right also, and he knew what she believed to be the cause. Before Joe left the table to get ready to go to work, she gave him an “I told you so” look.

  “How about us going to one of the fast-food places for dinner tonight?” he offered, in hopes of rescuing the first full day with Jonathan. “Which one’s your favorite, Jonathan? They just opened a new Roy Rogers in Middletown.”

  Jonathan didn’t respond immediately. Joe recalled that Solomon had the same technique. Joe got to think of it as a technique because it seemed so calculated. After a while Joe had gotten to feel it was another subtle way his son belittled him—he would keep him waiting,
especially when he offered to do something for him. He would do Joe a favor by responding. Usually Joe kept his anger contained, but occasionally, he expressed it by saying something like, “I just asked you a question, Solomon. The courteous thing is to acknowledge.”

  “I’m going to respond. I’m just thinking about it,” Solomon would say. Of course, Martha defended him.

  “He’s not impulsive, Joe. We should be grateful. So many young people rush in where angels fear to tread.”

  “He’s arrogant,” Joe told her. But he didn’t pursue it; he just stopped offering to do things.

  “It’s all right with me,” Jonathan said finally, without looking at him. But he looked at Martha after he spoke, and she appeared to read something in his face.

  “For the first week, I think I should make dinner for all of us,” she said. “We want to get Jonathan into the habit of good, home-cooked meals,” she added.

  “Fine,” Joe said.

  “Maybe on the weekend we’ll let you take us somewhere, Joe,” she said. Joe felt as if she had thrown a bone to him. He shrugged.

  “I gotta get moving,” he said. “Have a good first day at school, Jonathan.” He wanted to pat him on the shoulder, but he hesitated. Why was it that Martha had no inhibitions about touching him? What made him so timid?

  Now that he thought about it, though, hadn’t he been the same way with Solomon? Had it been Solomon’s fault or his?

  “Thank you,” Jonathan said. Joe left the two of them sitting there, looking after him as he left. He had the same cold and empty feeling he had often had during the last year or so of Solomon’s life. Was it something he imagined? Or had his wife and son come to resent him to the point where they welcomed his leaving? Once, when he and his close friend and attorney, Kevin Baker, talked about their relationships with their families, he described this feeling to him.