Surrogate Child

by Andrew Neiderman

  “We can talk. I’m listening. You said Ralph Levine is getting divorced, and Kevin is going to handle it for him.”

  “I said a lot of other things,” he muttered.

  “So? I’m listening. Talk.”

  He looked at her. She wore such an understanding expression. He felt foolish, and anyway, the excitement had been dissipated. Maybe the boy wasn’t here at the table, but he was here. He chalked it up to the novelty. It was only natural. As soon as the boy had been here awhile, Martha’s intensity about him would diminish. He had to be fair about it.

  “The rest is nonsense. What’s worrying you about Jonathan now?”

  “Nothing’s worrying me, Joe. I spoke to Mrs. Posner today, and we agreed that Jonathan should get a dental checkup this month. I made an appointment at Dr. Baxter’s. Remember how much Solomon liked him. He never complained about going to the dentist.

  “Oh, and Jonathan wanted to get his hair styled and asked if I would take him to Barbara Jean.”

  “Barbara Jean? How did he know about her? You told him?” Barbara Jean was a hairstylist who worked for one of the biggest style shops located in the Concorde Hotel, a major Catskill resort, but for years she had been taking in work on the side at her own home in Sandburg. Solomon had liked the personal attention.

  “He just knew about her. I suppose the other kids told him.”

  “Um.”

  “And he needs new sneakers. He went out for the basketball team and made the first cut.”

  “Did he?”

  “I’ve got to get him more sweat socks and a new gym uniform. They’re not using the old one anymore. Oh, and I was wondering whether we should sign him up for ski lessons this winter. All of Solomon’s friends are into skiing. He’ll be left out.”

  She went on and on and assumed the style of monologue he had abandoned. He turned his attention to his meal, nodding when she asked a question occasionally, but her chatter drove him into a quick retreat to the living room. She brought him his coffee and some new cupcakes she had purchased because Jonathan told her he liked them.

  “Aren’t they good?” she asked. They were, but he didn’t say so. He watched the news and felt like someone drifting through his life.

  A little more than an hour later, Jonathan came home. Joe noticed that he was quite a bit more animated than usual. He had obviously enjoyed his dinner out with his friends. Joe was pleasantly amused by his enthusiasm. He was more sociable than Solomon had been, and Joe thought that was healthy.

  He saw the way Martha listened to him when he spoke. She bathed in the light of his excitement, glancing at Joe once in a while to demonstrate her happiness and pride. There was something contagious about the boy’s energy. Joe concluded he was bringing a new warmth into the house, maybe even more so than they’d had with their own flesh and blood son.

  “Oh,” Joe said, “by the way, thanks for fixing the garage door. You did a great job.”

  “That was nothing,” he said.

  “Where did you learn how to do that?”

  “There was a garage door like this one at my last foster home. I watched my foster father fixing it.”

  “He’s got an aptitude for fixing things, Joe.”

  “Maybe he does. I’ll have to have him look at hard disc one of these days,” he kidded. Jonathan nodded thoughtfully.

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing some of that stuff,” he said. “Martha says you have to make a call this Saturday.”

  “Yeah. I thought I’d get started on that paint job, doing the trim, but it’ll have to wait until Sunday. If it doesn’t rain. They’re calling for showers.”

  “I’d like to go along with you, if you don’t mind,” Jonathan said.

  “Huh?”

  “He means along with you on your service call on Saturday, Joe,” Martha said slowly, as if she had to translate from another language.

  “You would?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Hell no. Great. We’ll leave right after breakfast.”

  “Fine,” he said. He looked at Martha. “Thanks for the money for dinner.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing,” she said.

  “It’s still nice of you,” he said.

  There was a moment’s pause and silence during which Joe felt as if ice that had lingered in the air and over the walls of their home since Solomon’s tragic death was instantly melted away.

  Jonathan took a few steps toward Martha, who was sitting at the corner of the couch. If she had anticipated his intent, she didn’t know it. Jonathan bent down, leaned toward her, and kissed her on the cheek.

  It was a kiss that took her across worlds, through the darkness of sorrow, back through time. It was the fantasy kiss that could bring a dead princess back to life, and indeed, Jonathan’s eyes, when he turned them to Joe, lit up with a sense of power.

  No one said a word. Jonathan turned and walked out to go up to his room. It was so still, they could hear his footsteps on the carpeted stairway. Martha sat back and looked down at her hand in her lap.

  After a moment they heard the beginning notes of Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” waltz. The music escaped under the door of Solomon’s old room and nudged the ghosts of old memories asleep in every dark corner of the house. Joe could almost feel them float by, drawn by the melodious tones up the stairs and into the room from which they had fled that fateful day.

  Who was this boy whom they had taken into their home? Joe wondered. Had they found him, or had he found them?

  SIX

  Jonathan’s desire to accompany him on his Saturday service call filled Joe with a renewed enthusiasm and excitement for his work. Ever since he was a young boy, Joe had a fascination for mechanical things. All children enjoy taking things apart, but even as a child Joe enjoyed putting them back together as well. Mechanical things, no matter what they were, had an aura of mystery about them. He saw a kind of magic in the way things fit or the way something could cause another thing to behave in a particular pattern.

  Joe could never understand why most people had a fear of handling mechanical things. He had always been more comfortable with things electrical and mechanical because they followed permanent and orderly laws, laws that were not affected by emotions and feelings. Unlike human responses and decisions, there were no whims, no moments of depression with which to contend. If something went wrong with a machine, it went wrong for explainable reasons. Usually, there was no debate and no conflict of theory, and even if there were conflicts like that, there was the assurance that eventually the truth would be discovered: only one theory could be right.

  The same could never be said about people and why they behaved as they did. Just the small amount of reading on the subject of teenage suicide that he had done showed him how inexact and theoretical social science was. It seemed that for every statement made by one so-called expert, a contradictory one was made by another.

  No, as far as he was concerned, machines were much easier to deal with than people. He still delighted in successfully repairing something and especially took pleasure in the repair of computers and their associated hardware. Because most of the people who used computers, even those who were expert in their use, had no interest in or knowledge of how the computers actually worked, he was seen to be some kind of specialist. He liked to compare himself to a medical specialist, a neurosurgeon called in when all else failed.

  In any case, he was more than a mere repairman, and he was confident no one would simply call him a mechanic. He was a technician, highly respected and in great demand. Joe knew he was unnecessarily defensive about this, especially in the company of Kevin Baker and some of his lawyer friends. True, he didn’t make as much money as they did, but the value of what he did was not diminished by that in his eyes.

  At times, Joe thought that Solomon had belittled what he did for a living. He had little interest in getting to know exactly what his father’s work was like. Joe thought he deliberately minimized the significance of computers a
nd the value of his own computer, even though he was always using it, just to illustrate his disrespect for Joe’s vocation. Even professional men whose fathers had been menial laborers had respect for the work their fathers had done, for it was this work that kept the families intact and provided the opportunity for them to go to college and become professional men. Joe sensed that Solomon didn’t respect his work, but they never argued about it; they never discussed it. It remained one of the many unspoken thoughts that kept them separated and made them strangers.

  Despite the pride Joe took in his work, the manner in which his son viewed what he did had a depressing effect on Joe’s enthusiasm. Except for Martha’s polite attention whenever he came home with what he thought to be a particularly interesting or exciting problem he had solved, there was no one with whom he could share his accomplishments. Of course, he could discuss things at the office, just as everyone could or did, but it wasn’t the same as finding appreciation in the lay world, especially in the family.

  When he expressed this unhappiness to Martha and mentioned Solomon, she reacted in character.

  “Your work is so technical, Joe. How do you expect a teenage boy to understand or care about it?”

  “It’s his father’s work,” he said, but he knew his point was lost.

  He couldn’t help being jealous of Kevin Baker when they went out together and Martha took great interest in a particular case he had. He realized there was often human drama involved, but what of it—the human drama was all built around some interpretation of law, some view of words, things technical, too, weren’t they?

  After Solomon’s suicide, he tried on a few occasions to interest Martha in something he was doing. He wanted to cheer her up, but he also wanted her to be a part of what and who he was. After all, he thought, they really had no one but themselves now. It was important that they draw even closer to each other. As always, she showed interest, but her interest was polite and aloof. There was even less sharing than there had been before Solomon’s death. He could just as well have been a counter clerk at the supermarket for all it mattered during the long period of bereavement.

  Jonathan’s sudden interest, however, changed things. The boy was more than just a good listener; he asked excellent questions, questions that enabled Joe to go on and on about systems, software, and a comparative analysis of different computers. During their ride to Pine Bush, Joe realized he was conducting an introductory seminar on computers and their uses. However, whenever he thought he was talking too much and paused, Jonathan asked him another question that forced him to explain things further. The boy showed no boredom and seemed to grasp concepts well.

  Joe had to go to a travel agency that was having systems failures with their computer, and since so much of what they did was now tied to computer communications with the airlines and resorts, the agency was at a standstill. The owner, Faye Brenner, a rather elegant-looking woman in her mid-fifties, greeted him with such overt and dramatic appreciation, he was a little embarrassed.

  There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do to make him comfortable. She wanted to send out for coffee and for things to eat. When he asked for nothing, she offered to get things for Jonathan, even though he was obviously just along for the ride.

  As it turned out, the problem was much simpler than he had imagined. He replaced a chip in the computer’s mother board and did it so quickly, Faye couldn’t believe things would be all right. He had to run an entire systems check in front of her to prove that the computer was repaired. When she saw it was true, her flattery rained down in a string of superlatives that left Joe laughing and shaking his head. He smiled at Jonathan. The boy seemed impressed.

  Filled with pride and elation, Joe started for home. He began the return journey by explaining what he had done to locate the problem and why the faulty chip caused the failure. Feeling more confident about Jonathan’s interest, he went on to talk about other repair jobs, ones that had been a great deal more difficult. In fact, he was about to go on about that IBM AT up at the community college that had stumped not only him, but his supervisor, when Jonathan interrupted with a question that seemingly came out of nowhere.

  “Did Solomon take a lot of interest in his computer because of you?”

  “In the beginning. Then he was mostly on his own. It became his most personal possession,” Joe said, not quite hiding his bitterness. “Once he learned just the very basic things about it, he stopped asking questions. I tried getting him to do more.”

  “He learned how to use the word processor software,” Jonathan said, but he said it as if there were something inherently evil about that fact.

  “But he could have done so much more with that computer. He was satisfied merely using it as an advanced typewriter. I was still trying to work with him just before he died.”

  “Martha says that, too,” Jonathan said. There was a half smile on his face, the smile of an adult amused at the actions of a child.

  “Says that? Says what?”

  “Just before he died. Makes it sound like he had a disease or a heart attack.”

  “Well, you can understand how painful it is to describe exactly what happened. She’s made remarkable progress recently.”

  “But you do the same thing. You avoid it, too.”

  “That’s natural,” Joe said. “I was his father. It was painful for me. It still is painful.”

  “Not as painful as it was for him,” Jonathan said. Joe looked at him. The boy didn’t look like he was being amusing. He looked angry. Joe had to look away. There was a long moment of silence between them. Then Jonathan added, “It’s too bad people can’t be fixed as easily as computers.”

  “I agree,” Joe said. “Unfortunately, in Solomon’s case, I never had the opportunity to try. What happened was a total surprise.”

  “Was it?” Jonathan countered. The skepticism was so thick, Joe had to look at him to be sure he was talking to someone who had been in their house barely a week.

  “Yes, it was. There were no warnings, no notes, no threats, no statements indicating this was going to happen, or even that it could happen.”

  “You weren’t very close, then?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said. He realized he was ashamed of the truth. “No, I guess we weren’t what you would call close. He didn’t come to me with his problems, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It was a Thursday, huh? After school?”

  Joe said nothing. Jonathan’s questions had already triggered a vivid recollection, so vivid it brought tears to his eyes. It was a Thursday, and it was after school. Martha had discovered Solomon’s hanging body hours before Joe arrived home from work, but she had done nothing until then.

  Apparently, from what Joe gathered then and later, Solomon had come back from school and gone right up to his room as usual. She never heard him walk back down the stairs and out of the house. He went out the front door and walked around to the back. The rope must have been in his room awhile, maybe for days. The suicide was in no way spontaneous. Solomon had planned it with the same attention to detail that characterized most everything he did.

  A while later Martha gazed out of the window over the kitchen sink. How many times during those months right afterward did she tell and retell about it?

  “At first, I thought it was some kind of joke. You know how Solomon can do something funny . . . or at least, something he thinks is funny. He didn’t seem like he was . . .

  “I stepped back from the window and shook my head, just like someone might do in a movie, hoping the sight would disappear. I shook it hard, like you would shake a bottle of soda that had been in the refrigerator awhile to see if it still had any carbonation. The shaking brings the fizz back,” she explained and laughed at the silly analogy. “Only, the fizz didn’t come back, did it? I looked out again and he was dangling there, his arms straight down, his body turning ever so slowly.

  “My heart stopped. I know I got terribly white. You even said I was ghastly white when you first
arrived. ‘Why are you so pale?’ you asked. Remember? And I laughed. ‘You won’t believe what Solomon has done,’ I said. And you smirked and said, ‘What’s he done now?’ ‘He’s killed himself,’ I said. Didn’t I?”

  Martha’s hysterical words lingered in his mind, indelibly printed on the very essence of his being, to be erased only by death itself.

  Thursday afternoon?

  “Yes, a Thursday afternoon.”

  “I’m not surprised that he didn’t say anything ahead of time,” Jonathan said. “People who really mean to kill themselves don’t let anyone know ahead of time. I knew this kid at the temporary house who was always threatening to jump out windows or cut his wrists. He never went through with any of his threats. He just wanted attention.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Solomon wanted more than attention,” Jonathan said. Joe was impressed with his tone of certainty.

  “How can you be sure of that? How can anyone be sure?”

  “Did you like him?” Jonathan asked.

  “What?” Joe’s half smile was like a confession. “He was my son.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything,” Jonathan said. “I’m my father’s son; I’m my mother’s son.”

  “Well, it meant something in my house,” Joe replied, hearing the anger and the defensiveness in his voice. “This isn’t a very pleasant subject,” he added. Jonathan ignored him.

  “People usually kill themselves because they don’t like themselves,” he said.

  “How do you know so much about suicide? It’s not a subject for someone of your age.”

  “But it’s happening to people my age. Why do you suppose Solomon didn’t like himself?” he asked.

  “I don’t know as that’s the reason for his actions. Look, Jonathan, I can understand your curiosity, but you have to realize this is still a very sensitive topic in my house. I would appreciate your not discussing it, especially with Martha.”

  Jonathan didn’t respond. They drove in silence for a while.