Surrogate Child

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Unfortunately,” Solomon had once said, “there is nothing more than what really is. Most of us don’t want to face it, so we fantasize. Illusions make truth palatable,” he concluded. He had used that theme for an essay in English and gotten an A plus. Mr. Littlefield, the teacher, enjoyed the allusions to soap operas so much he had read the essay aloud in all his classes and insisted that the school newspaper print the essay in its next edition.

  In any case Audra discounted her initial reactions to Jonathan, considering it to be a product of her own need to replace Solomon. Since his death, she had become something of a loner. She had not gone on a single date, and she had become a thorough workaholic. If anything, she found herself estranged more than ever from her peers. She kept up casual relationships and remained friendly with what had once been known as “Solomon’s crowd,” but she didn’t socialize with them very much. No matter where they were or what they did, to her it seemed as though the heart had been cut out of them. Like the disciples without Jesus, she thought.

  She had intended to introduce herself to the new boy and make him feel comfortable, mostly because she wanted to do something for the Sterns. She liked Martha and Joe Stern even though Solomon often treated his parents as though they were a necessary evil. Actually, he was more like that in relation to his father. His mother he seemed to have treated with more sympathy and understanding. She got the feeling he thought of his mother as the child and himself as the parent sometimes.

  And then sometimes she caught him looking and talking to his mother as though she were someone he idolized from a distance. During those times he reminded her more of a teenager doting on a television or movie starlet. Solomon wasn’t fond of discussing his mother, though. It was one of the few subjects he treated with an almost religious taboo.

  Everyone knew the new boy was a foster child and therefore something of a wandering orphan. Audra, who came from a very close and relatively large family for this day and age, couldn’t imagine what it would be like to “borrow a home” and then have to do it more than once. She was intrigued with the new boy because of that as well. She wanted to see what he was like and how being a foster child had affected him.

  She had no problem meeting him. In fact, he approached her. It was just after their first class together. She had seen him in homeroom for a few moments because Miss Bogart, the homeroom teacher, immediately sent him to the office for some forms. The forty-five-year-old spinster was always unnerved by anything that caused her to break away from her pattern of procedures. She practically panicked during the fire drills, screaming orders with a voice shrill enough to be used as the alarm. Jonathan’s sudden presence sent her stuttering and fumbling for things on her desk. Most of the students smiled and laughed, but Jonathan stood there, calmly waiting, looking cool and collected. Just as Solomon Stern would have, Audra thought. She was fascinated, and when he turned around and looked at her, she was positive that he knew her. But how? How could he know about her relationship with Solomon?

  Did the Sterns tell him about her? she wondered. Such an idea seemed improbable for a number of reasons, not the least of which was her perception of how difficult it must be for them to talk about Solomon, even after this length of time since his death. And she was never sure that Martha Stern liked her that much. Sometimes she got the feeling that Solomon’s mother thought he was spending too much time with her, even though Solomon assured her that wasn’t so.

  She went to her first-period class, but Jonathan, because of the business at the office, came late. He was put in a seat two rows away from her and to the rear. Every once in a while during the period, she turned slightly and looked back. Each time she did so, she caught him staring at her. Once, he smiled at her. Right after the bell to end the period rang, she got up and saw that he was waiting for her.

  Her heart began beating rapidly. She couldn’t recall being as nervous and excited about meeting anyone, not even when her parents took her and her sister and brothers to see the Monkees in a revival show at the Monticello racetrack and her father managed to get them to meet Davy Jones afterward.

  Jonathan lingered at the doorway to the classroom. He didn’t take his eyes off her as she walked up the aisle. Some of the other students noted that he was waiting for her, and they were obviously curious.

  “Hi,” he said as she approached the door. “I’m Jonathan,” he added, as though that were enough. It brought a smile to her lips. She brushed back her hair with her free left hand. “I’m the new kid,” he said with Solomon’s tone of dry sarcasm, and she laughed.

  From there it just flowed smoothly and naturally. They waited for each other at the end of each period. In science, he managed to get seated beside her. They sat together at lunch, and she introduced him to many of Solomon’s friends. She sat back and watched how he handled them, how he knew just what to say to make them feel comfortable. In a matter of minutes, he grasped each separate identity and seemed to know just what each one wanted to hear and know. Before the lunch bell rang, they were talking to him as if he had been there for years, not hours.

  He even seemed to know about Donald Pedersen, the one boy Solomon had absolutely hated.

  By day’s end, Audra had begun to feel that Jonathan’s arrival was something just short of miraculous. A brightness had returned to her life. The dark shadow that had descended since Solomon’s suicide lifted. She was excited by the sound of her own laughter. The loneliness that had been wound around her like a sari began to unwind and fall away with every passing moment she and Jonathan spent together. She welcomed the sense of freedom that followed.

  Despite the terrible feeling of sadness and horror she often experienced when she went by or even near the Stern residence now, she didn’t hesitate to accept Jonathan’s invitation to come to the house in order to go over some of the work he would have to review. She couldn’t believe how quickly she had agreed to the visit herself. And when she went home and told her mother what she was going to do, her mother stopped what she was doing in the kitchen and looked at her as if Audra had announced she were enlisting in the army.

  “You want to go to the Sterns’ house?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Audra became introspective a moment. Her mother’s surprise made her self-conscious. She had been behaving like someone under hypnosis.

  “You seemed surprised yourself,” her mother said, and smiled widely. “You want to help this new boy? A stranger?”

  “Well, he’s not exactly a stranger.”

  “What do you mean? You knew him before? Where? When?”

  “I don’t know,” Audra said.

  “What?”

  “I mean, he reminds me of Solomon.”

  “My God,” her mother said. “What a thing to say and with the boy living in the Sterns’ home, too.” Her mother looked pensive for a moment. She returned to the batter she was preparing for chicken cutlets and then stopped as if just realizing something very important. “Is that why you’re going over there?” she asked.

  Audra looked up sharply.

  “I don’t know. Yes,” she said quickly. “But I don’t want to talk about it,” she added, and fled from her mother’s look of amazement, not knowing why she felt she had to.

  The Lowes lived in a rich-looking, brick-faced ranch-style home in what was essentially the first housing development constructed in the Upstate New York, Catskill Mountains village of Sandburg. Audra’s father had been one of the early investors in the project; consequently, they had the choice corner lot, which was only a half a block from Main Street, Sandburg. Her father was an accountant who had good judgment whenever it came to investments. Presently, he was one of the investors in a rather large town house project being built to attract the so-called second-home market.

  Stephani Lowe found that her anxiety about what her daughter had told her did not lessen as the early evening went on. During dinner, she tried to bring up the subject of the new boy and Audra’s intentions to go to the Sterns’ to help him with sch
oolwork, but Audra wouldn’t talk about it, and Harry Lowe was too excited about the four new sales at the town-house project to pick up on his wife’s tensions. The other Lowe children had heard about the new boy, but none of them had Audra’s interest in him. As usual, the conversation at dinner was a cacophony of different discussions with rarely a time when everyone listened to only one speaker.

  As soon as dinner was completed, Audra went to her room to get her books. When she stopped by the living room entrance to tell her father she was leaving, he looked up in surprise. He had been sitting there reading the proof of a pamphlet created to advertise the new town houses.

  “Leaving? Going where?”

  “She’s going to the Sterns’,” Stephani Lowe said. She was waiting in the hallway by the kitchen, expecting Harry to snap out of his fantasies about making fortunes just before Audra left and realize what she had been trying to tell him at dinner. It was typical of him, Stephani thought; he hadn’t heard a word she had said at the table.

  “The Sterns’? What for?”

  “I’m helping the new boy get started with our subjects,” Audra said.

  “New boy? Oh, that foster child they took in. It’s a boy, huh?” he said, as though Martha Stern had given birth again. “How old?”

  “How old? Harry, don’t you listen to anything I say?” Stephani said, stepping forward. “He’s the same age as Solomon would have been. He’s in Audra’s classes.”

  “No foolin’. What’dya know about that? And you’re going to help him, huh? That’s nice.”

  “Harry.”

  “What?” He looked up at his wife, puzzled.

  “Oh, what’s the use,” Stephani said. She really didn’t know what to say herself. He had never had the same anxieties about Audra’s relationship with Solomon Stern. Even after Solomon’s suicide, he was unable to understand why Stephani was so uptight about Audra’s having spent so much time with Solomon. But Harry was always like that when it came to people, Stephani thought. He was always blind to the nuances in character or the quirks in personality that she thought were obvious. Harry had a tendency to stereotype and classify people. Teenagers were all the same, just as were doctors and lawyers and small businessmen. They were categories on a tax form.

  Another thought came to her mind as she searched for a way to make him see some danger. “I don’t think you should be riding your bike at night, Audra.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too far to go on a road without streetlights,” she said.

  “But you never complained before. Why is it suddenly too far?” Audra didn’t whine; she never had to whine. Even as a little girl, she was somehow perceptive enough to cut right to the heart of something. It was difficult to deal with a child who could be so logical and right. Most of the time, Stephani would simply say, “Because it is,” and leave it at that. It was easier to deal with Debbie because Stephani was more like Debbie.

  Audra took after Harry’s side of the family in looks. Debbie had Stephani’s small, slightly upturned nose and emerald green eyes. Audra’s eyes were deep blue, thoughtful, and penetrating. When she spoke to someone, she held her gaze firmly. She didn’t have Stephani’s and Debbie’s shy and somewhat coquettish manner of looking quickly and then down or away.

  Audra was already an inch taller than Stephani and two inches taller than Debbie. Sometimes Stephani thought that the physical differences and the differences in mannerism between her and Audra were what made it so difficult for them to understand each other.

  “Well, I should have complained about it before,” Stephani said.

  “What’s the problem?” Harry said. “I’ll drive her.”

  Stephani looked at him with both shock and annoyance. Couldn’t he see that he was contradicting her?

  “Thanks, Dad,” Audra said.

  “You’ll have to pick her up,” Stephani said, hoping that would discourage him. Why she was so intense about this, she couldn’t say, but she was, and it was something she couldn’t help.

  “Maybe. Maybe Joe Stern will drive her home. You’re not staying there very late anyway, right, princess?”

  “No, Dad.”

  “Problems solved,” Harry Lowe said. “Tonight, I’ll do anyone a favor.” He got up and joined Audra at the door.

  “Audra,” Stephani said.

  “Mom?”

  “Be careful.”

  “Of what?” Harry said. “The slide rule or prepositional phrases?” He laughed loudly at his own joke, but Stephani Lowe didn’t even crack a smile.

  She couldn’t help it. It had always bothered her that Audra had been so close to a boy who committed suicide. There had to have been some great danger there. If someone could do harm to himself, why couldn’t he just as easily do harm to others? she thought. Who knew how close Audra had come to something terrible and now she was returning to that house and going to help a boy she said resembled Solomon Stern.

  Why would a mother want to bring another child into her house who resembled her dead child, especially if her child had committed suicide? she wondered. Stephani had never really liked Solomon Stern. She always thought there was something weird about him. She felt Audra’s relationship with him was illogical. Her daughter had such a good mind and a sensible way about her. Why would she choose to keep company with someone so sour all the time?

  She recalled how the boy gave her the chills whenever he came into the house. He was polite enough, but there was something about the way he looked at her. It was almost a lewd expression. Whatever it was, she was made uncomfortable by it, and when Solomon committed suicide, she was, God forgive her, almost happy about it. At least he couldn’t influence Audra anymore.

  But now Audra was returning to that house, and for Stephani Lowe, it was as if all of it were starting over again. What a ridiculous idea, she thought, now that she did give it thought. Just because Audra said the boy reminded her of Solomon and just because the boy was about the age Solomon would have been had he not killed himself doesn’t mean the boy would have Solomon’s personality.

  Still, he was a foster child, Stephani thought, and one didn’t know what kind of background he had. This was a whole other problem. Oh, why couldn’t Audra be more like Debbie, she concluded, and chase only the handsome, athletic types. At least you were guaranteed they were normal.

  She went back into the kitchen to finish up. Usually the girls helped her, but occasionally she wanted to be alone after dinner. She needed the peace and quiet, especially if the conversation around the table was as boisterous as it was this evening.

  Debbie and the boys were all in their rooms. She knew Debbie was on her telephone; it was practically attached to her ear. As a joke, Harry once pinned a cartoon on her door. In the cartoon a doctor is delivering a child, and the child is born holding a telephone receiver to its ear. The mother is looking up, anxious to know whether she had given birth to a boy or a girl, but instead of saying “boy” or “girl,” the doctor in the cartoon says, “It’s a teenager.”

  Audra rarely spoke for long periods of time on the telephone. She said she wasn’t fond of talking to people unless it was face-to-face. Stephani remembered that Audra had quoted Solomon about that. “People can rarely hide their true feelings from being exposed in their eyes.”

  “Except Solomon,” Audra had said. “He’s very good at that. If he wanted to, he could even get Donald Pedersen to believe he likes him.”

  “Why don’t they like each other?” Stephani asked her. “The Pedersen boy seems nice enough, and his mother is very nice.” She made it sound innocent, but she meant to drive a wedge between Audra and Solomon.

  “It’s a matter of chemistry,” Audra said. And then, realizing the weakness of her answer, she added. “Donald’s jealous of him. He’s always mocking Solomon, and trying to embarrass him in front of his friends.”

  After his suicide, Solomon became something of a forbidden topic. Stephani wasn’t unhappy about that; she was just unhappy about the reason f
or it. She could tell that her daughter somehow felt responsible for Solomon’s death. Audra once said, “Of all people, I should have sensed it.”

  “Shouldn’t his parents have been the ones to sense it?”

  “No. I should have been the one,” Audra insisted.

  Stephani shook her head and retreated from the subject. She didn’t want to know why Audra felt that way; she didn’t want to learn about the intimacy between her and Solomon. She had hoped that Audra would get over it and go on to have more sensible relationships.

  But she didn’t, and it was hard not to compare her with Debbie. Debbie flitted from boy to boy with the grace and smoothness of a butterfly, but Audra didn’t see anyone socially, even though she was far from the ugly duckling. It was as if she had no interest in ever finding anyone else. Stephani first thought Audra might be afraid to have another boyfriend. She wanted Audra to understand that all boys weren’t like Solomon Stern, but Stephani was afraid to get into such a conversation with her.

  Whenever Debbie, she, and Audra would sit around and talk, Debbie’s conversation was filled with descriptions and anecdotes about this boy and that. Audra would listen with interest, but she had nothing similar to say. The way Audra listened and gave advice to Debbie made Stephani feel as though Audra were closer to her age than to Debbie’s. In any case, Stephani noted that she hadn’t gotten as excited over anyone since Solomon’s death as much as she was excited about this new boy.

  It disturbed her because it was as if she had been waiting for him to arrive, as if she knew eventually he would come.

  Joe Stern stared incredulously at Audra Lowe for an embarrassingly long moment after he had answered the doorbell and opened the door to face her, even though he expected her arrival. During that long moment, it was as if all the terrible events of the past year or so had been part of a bad dream. He had fallen asleep in the living room watching television, and he had dreamed Solomon’s suicide and Martha’s depression. All the misery was imagined, for here was Audra as usual, coming to spend time with Solomon.