She wandered aimlessly around the house. Jolene’s mini-van was gone from the garage. There was nobody around. She went upstairs, took a sweater from her bureau and draped it over her shoulders. Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting in the back pew of Our Lady of Perpetual Light.
A few people, mostly older women, were already there, seated near the confessional, into which they disappeared, one by one, only to emerge minutes later and kneel at the altar rail, where they quietly recited the Hail Marys the priest had given them as penance. They didn’t kneel for long, so their sins couldn’t have been that serious, Hannah concluded. Not as serious as the one she couldn’t put out of her mind.
And thinking about a sin was almost as bad as committing it. The nuns had taught her that much in Sunday school.
She watched the last woman leave the confessional and kneel before the altar. Father Jimmy would come out of the booth next. But it wasn’t Father Jimmy, who appeared. It was an older priest, 60 or so, sturdily built, with a ruddy complexion and a shock of silver hair. He stopped briefly to talk to one of the parishioners.
Swallowing her disappointment, Hannah made her way to his side and waited quietly until he finished his conversation and directed his attention to her. Up close, his face looked authoritarian, the rough-hewn features conveying an impression of rigor and strength. His bushy eyebrows were silver, too, which made his dark eyes stand out.
“Excuse me. Is Father Jimmy here today?”
“You mean for confession?”
“No, I just wanted to talk to him.”
“I believe he’s in the rectory. Can I be of help?” His rich, sonorous voice seemed to rumble up from his feet.
“No, no. I don’t want to bother him. I’ll come back another time.”
“You won’t be bothering him. That’s his job. Why don’t you come with me, Mrs….?”
Hannah had a moment of confusion, until she realized he had seen the wedding ring.
“Manning. Hannah Manning.”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Manning. You’re new here, aren’t you? I’m Monsignor Gallagher.”
The rectory, a two-story clapboard house with white shutters and a wide front porch, was in keeping with the rest of the neighborhood, if less grandiose. Monsignor Gallagher showed Hannah into the parlor. The furniture was on the dowdy side, but the room was immaculate, the wood polished to a high shine. The absence of knickknacks and other signs of daily habitation indicated that it was reserved for official occasions. A graying housekeeper materialized to ask Hannah if she would like a cup of tea, and, receiving a negative answer, returned to the kitchen.
Monsignor Gallagher said, “If you’ll take a seat, Mrs. Manning, I’ll get Father James. Or Father Jimmy, as you call him. You and everybody else, it seems.” Midway up the staircase, he stopped and added. “I hope to see you often in the future. Naturally, the invitation extends to your husband, if he so wishes.”
“Thank you, I’ll tell him,” said Hannah, blushing faintly.
Father Jimmy looked surprised, but pleased to see Hannah, when, minutes later, he bounded into the reception room.
“How are you? Everything all right?”
“Fine, fine. I just asked the Monsignor if you were around, and before I knew it, he was leading me over here.”
“He likes to take charge. It’s a good quality if you’re going to run a parish.”
“I don’t want to make a big deal out of this. I just wanted to talk. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
“No, I was playing around on the computer. Web surfing. We can talk outside, if you’d like. It’s a beautiful day.”
A cool front from the north had staved off the stifling heat that usually gripped Massachusetts in late August and lawns that would have long since been scorched by the sun remained green and fresh. Midway between the rectory and the church, the shade from a pair of maple trees fell over a stone bench. Hannah sat down at one end, the priest at the other, as if both were adhering to some unspoken rule about the acceptable proximity of priest and parishioner, when the latter was young and attractive.
“I’ve been having some disturbing thoughts is all,” said Hannah. “I thought it might help if I discussed them with somebody.”
The priest waited for her to continue.
“Thoughts I shouldn’t be thinking. Wrong thoughts.”
“Then you’re right to want to talk about them.”
“The problem is, I promised I wouldn’t. I don’t want to break that promise. It’s so complicated. You’ll think I’m a horrible person.”
“No, I won’t.” He was struck by the confusion that had come over her all of a sudden. “You’re concerned about betraying a confidence, is that it?”
“Sort of.”
“Something about this confidence is causing you distress?”
“Yes,” she said, the misgivings about divulging the details evident in her wrinkled forehead. He was aware of how little experience he had dealing with people his own age. Older women and young children came to him for absolution, but the difference in years made him less self-conscious about his role, and their sins were invariably trivial. Hannah Manning belonged to his generation. He felt his inadequacy acutely.
“If you want to talk to me in the form of a confession, it will go no further than here.” he suggested. “I am bound by the holy orders not to reveal anything you say. So you wouldn’t be betraying anyone. Perhaps that way, I could help you find the… the peace you deserve.”
The words sounded lofty even to his own ear, almost pompous. He meant them, but realized he had to talk simply - from the heart, not the head. How did one do that?
Hannah read the signs of perplexity in his broadly handsome face. “Do we have to go inside the church?”
“No, we can do it here.”
“But I thought…”
“The confessional affords people anonymity, that’s all. It’s up to you.”
“I think I’d rather stay here.”
“I’ll be right back then.”
He went in the side door of the church and returned with a purple stole which he placed around his neck, as he sat down on the bench. Averting Hannah’s eyes, he made the sign of the cross and blessed her. “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
The response, filed away in Hannah’s mind since childhood, came to her automatically. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been seven years since my last confession. These are my sins.” Here she hesitated. “I…I want something that is not mine.”
“And what is that?”
“This baby. I want to keep this baby.”
It was a struggle for Father Jimmy to contain his surprise. Why wouldn’t she keep it? Was she ill? Was the baby somehow jeopardy? No one had ever come to him before to talk about an abortion.
“Is someone telling you that you can’t?” he asked.
“It doesn’t belong to me. It’s not mine.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“The woman I introduced you to, Mrs. Whitfield, it’s her baby. I’m a surrogate mother. I’m having the baby for her and her husband.”
“And what about your own husband?”
Hannah lowered her head. “I’m not married. They gave me this ring to wear.”
“I see.” But he didn’t. What was he supposed to say now? What did the church say about surrogate mothers? He didn’t have a clue. Silently, he prayed for inspiration, for a response that wouldn’t make him appear as unprepared as he felt.
“When did…these feelings begin?”
“A couple of weeks ago. I don’t know how to explain them. I sense this person growing inside of me. I feel its heartbeat. I hear its thoughts. I want it to be mine, but I have no right. The Whitfields have tried for so long to have a child, they would be devastated if I kept it. That’s what Mrs. Greene said. They’ve had the nursery ready for months.”
“Who is Mrs. Greene?”
“The woman who arra
nged all this. She runs an agency, the agency I went to.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Not yet. At one the first interviews, she told me I had to be sure of what I was doing, because she didn’t want her clients put through any more pain. They’ve been through enough already, she said.”
He tried to picture the situation, the participants, the odd ties that bound them together. He remembered the Bible story about King Solomon, who had to decide which of two women was the rightful mother of a child they both claimed was theirs. It didn’t seem to apply here.
In the silence, he could hear a couple of kids on skateboards, scraping the sidewalk, as they sailed by on their way to town.
“Are you getting paid for this?” he asked.
“Yes,” Hannah mumbled. “I suppose you think that’s wrong, too.”
“No, I don’t. I think, well, I think the feelings you are having must be very natural. Wouldn’t it be extraordinary if you weren’t having them?”
“I love this baby. I really do.”
“As well you must, Hannah.” Simple, he cautioned himself. Direct. Tell her what you really believe. “Every moment you carry this child, you should love it, let it know that the world it is entering is a place of joy. That is part of your job. Part of my job, too. Part of everyone’s job. Nobody owns God’s children. Parents have to let their children grow up and leave home and become adults. But they never stop loving them. Just because you have to let this baby go, doesn’t mean you will stop loving it, either.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You can, Hannah. You will. What you’re going through must be common to surrogate mothers. I think you should ask Mrs. Greene for counsel. She must have dealt with this situation before. Are you comfortable around her?”
Hannah nodded. “She’s very nice. She has a child through a surrogate mother herself.”
“She can sympathize with all sides then. Surely she doesn’t want you to be miserable. Go to her. Talk to her. Listen to what she has to say. But promise me, you’ll come back and see me.”
“I will. Thank you, father.”
Father Jimmy felt a surge of relief. Hannah seemed less distraught to him now. Some of the gentleness had come back into her face. If he had accomplished that, perhaps he had not failed entirely.
He accompanied her out to the sidewalk and was rewarded with a shy smile. But all afternoon, he couldn’t stop asking himself if he’d given her the proper advice or, indeed, if his advice was worth anything at all.
1:20
It was a week before Hannah had screwed up her courage to do what Father Jimmy had suggested. She waited until Jolene had disappeared into her studio and gotten sufficiently involved in “healing” a canvas so that she wouldn’t want to stop. Then she poked her head in the door and said she was going to drive over to the Framingham Mall.
“I’d come with you, but I’m up to my elbows in plaster of Paris.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll come next time.”
Hannah had no trouble finding Revere Street or the parking garage. The area was teeming with activity - deliverymen with trolleys, office workers on their lunch break, even students from one of the nearby colleges. As she climbed the steps to the agency, she hoped she wasn’t catching Mrs. Greene at an inopportune time. She hadn’t called in advance, for fear that Mrs. Greene would tell Jolene, and Jolene would go into a tailspin. It seemed wiser to leave the Whitfields out of it for the time being. A good heart-to-heart with Mrs. Greene would probably bring everything back into perspective, as Father Jimmy had said.
When she reached the landing, she didn’t see the PIP sign and wondered if, in her preoccupied state, she’d entered the wrong building. She looked around. No, there was the door with the chicken-wire glass in it, and the stenciled letters that identified it as the office of Gene M. Rosenblatt, attorney at law. So she was in the right place.
But the PIP sign was gone. Where it had been, she noticed several screw holes in the plaster. Assuming that it must have fallen down, she gave the doorknob a turn. The door was locked tight. She knocked, then knocked harder a second time, waiting for a response. None came.
Puzzled, she was about to start down the stairs, when she saw a light inside the attorney’s office. She crossed the landing and tried his door, which triggered a welcome chime, as it swung open. A spherical man with glasses so thick they that looked as if they’d been made from vintage Coca Cola bottles, was bent over the drawer of a filing cabinet.
He straightened up and blinked several times. “Yes, young lady. What can I do for you?”
“I was just looking for the woman across the hall at Partners in Parenthood.”
“Partners in Parenthood? So that’s what PIP stood for. My, my, my! I kept meaning to stop in, say hello, introduce myself, as it were.” He gave a push to the metal drawer, which closed with a clang.
“You didn’t happen to see her go out to lunch by any chance?”
“Lunch?” His eyes, magnified by the glasses, resembled pinwheels. “Maybe once or twice last spring, I did.”
“No, today. You didn’t see her leave today, did you?”
“Well, that would be pretty difficult since that office has been closed for a while.”
“Closed?”
“Yes, I kept meaning to go by and introduce myself, seeing as we were neighbors, chat a bit. Before I knew it, they were gone. Moved out lock, stock and barrel.”
“When was that?”
“Well, now, let me see.” He sank into deep concentration. “I was out sick for a week there. Flu. Seems to me that sign was down when I came back. No, wait. It was after my sister came to visit. That’s it. She was here around the middle of spring. So I guess that place has been closed - would you believe it? - more than four months now.”
1:21
At the parking garage, Hannah put a quarter in the pay telephone and dialed the number for Partners in Parenthood. It rang four times, then there was a click and a recorded voice said that the number was no longer in service.
She tried to remember when she’d last had contact with Mrs. Greene. Only a week ago, the woman had called the house in East Acton. Hannah hadn’t spoken directly to her, but after hanging up the phone, Jolene had said, “Letitia sends her best.” And the first of every month, Hannah received her check from Partners in Parenthood, to which Mrs. Greene always appended a personal note.
But when had she seen her, face to face?
It had been a while.
She wondered if the Whitfields knew that the PIP office was closed. If they did, they had never mentioned it.
She walked over to the Public Gardens and looked at the swan boats. A large number of college students were stretched out on the grass, determined to soak up the late-summer rays. Hannah found a free bench and tried to clear her head.
But the worrisome thoughts kept returning. First Dr. Johanson had withheld the results of the sonogram from her and now Mrs. Greene had disappeared without telling her. It was as if Hannah had been demoted to the role of supporting player - important enough to carry the baby, perhaps, but not important enough to be kept abreast of significant developments. They were excluding her. At least, it felt that way.
A young mother, pushing a stroller, passed by. The child had on a yellow jump suit and a yellow sunbonnet tied under the chin, and was fast asleep. The woman’s blonde hair was braided and the braids were piled on the top of her head, rather like a crown. She gave Hannah a knowing smile. There seemed to be an unofficial sorority of new mothers and mothers-to-be, forged out of all the shared fears and joys. No spoken communication was necessary between members. A look was enough to say, “Isn’t it wonderful?” or “Some days all you can do is hang in there.”
Hannah stayed in the Gardens longer than she intended. By the time she got on the road, the traffic out of Boston was bumper to bumper. The cars didn’t start to thin out until she reached the East Acton turn-off on Route 128.
Although
it was late, Hannah pulled into the parking lot at Our Lady of Perpetual Light and went directly to the rectory. The housekeeper informed her that Father Jimmy had gone away for a couple of days. “His family has a cottage in New Hampshire,” she said.
“So he’ll be back on Monday?”
“No, dear. He’ll be back in time for 7 p.m. mass tomorrow. Priests don’t get weekends off. Shall I tell him you stopped by?”
“No, don’t bother,” Hannah replied, thinking that this was the fitting end to a disappointing day.
The lights were on in the Whitfields’ house and Marshall was already home from work.
“Well, if it isn’t the merry wanderer,” Jolene cried out from the kitchen. “We were just about to sit down to dinner. I hope this roast of lamb isn’t dry as shoe leather. Wash up quickly, can you?” She poked the lamb with a fork. “Marshall, does this look like shoe leather to you?”
They gathered around the table, and Jolene piled everyone’s plate with lamb, mashed potatoes and fresh broccoli. “So,” she said, passing Hannah her serving, “Did you have a good day?”
“Yes. I’m a little tired, though.”
“You’re going to have to start conserving your energy. It’s one thing to be young, but it’s another to be young and pregnant. How was your day, Marshall?”
“Same old, same old. Nothing special.”
Hannah finished chewing a bite of lamb. “I almost paid you a surprise visit today.”
“In Boston?” Marshall’s fork stopped in mid-air.
“I thought you were going to the Framingham Mall,” Jolene said.
“I did. But I couldn’t find what I wanted. Since it was nice out, I decided to go into Boston.”
“In that car? I worry about you in that old car. Marshall, tell her not to drive that rattletrap long distances. You know it’s going to conk out on you one of these days, and then where will you be? Stuck on the side of the road somewhere.”
“The Nova is okay. It looks crummy, but it’s never given me any trouble.”
“Still, I’m more than happy to drive you anywhere you want. I’ve told you that a hundred times. I’d rather drive you than worry about where you are every moment of the day.”
The Surrogate, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book one Page 10
