The Surrogate, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book one (12 page)

1:24

Father Jimmy raised the chalice high over his head, his eyes lifted heavenward, then dropped to one knee before the altar.

The Saturday evening mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Light had become a popular alternative to the Sunday morning service, which automatically ruled out sleeping in late. In addition, there was a gathering in the basement social hall afterwards, to which the women of the parish brought cookies and cakes, and people seemed to enjoy congregating around the punch bowl.

Hannah took what was becoming her habitual place in the last pew. The rows down front were mostly filled, but there were empty spaces around her. On Sunday, the inhabitants of the million-dollar houses would show up, but on Saturday evening, the church belonged to those who serviced the well-heeled community during the week - the shop owners, delivery men, gardeners and members of their families.

When it came time for communion, most of them got up out of the pews and formed a line in the center aisle, inching their way forward. A vague feeling of self-consciousness kept Hannah rooted to her seat.

She contented herself by watching Father Jimmy. He had struck her as so much younger when they had talked in the garden. Here, in his green robes, he had an assurance she hadn’t perceived in him before. He seemed to be dispensing grace for the very first time - the ritual, as he performed it, not yet dulled by a hundred thousand repetitions, still fresh and spontaneous with its miraculous promise of salvation. The message of unconditional acceptance shone in his eyes.

She stood up and joined the line.

“Body of Christ,” Father Jimmy intoned, as he placed the holy wafer on her tongue.

She let it dissolve slowly inside her mouth, knowing the rapture, the lightness, it brought to the devout and wanting to experience it herself.

“Amen,” she said, lowering her eyes.

And indeed, felt that mysterious lightness, despite the extra weight she was carrying, when she returned to the back pew.

After the service, she waited until the church had cleared out, before going down to the basement and joining the crowd, which had already begun to make a substantial dent in the refreshments.

A strapping woman in a denim skirt and blouse, tapped her on the shoulder.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before, Mrs … Mrs?”

“Manning. Hannah Manning.”

“Welcome, Mrs. Manning. I’m Janet Webster. Webster’s Hardware. This is my husband, Clyde.”

Clyde Webster grunted amiably.

“Do you mind my asking?” the woman went on, eyebrows raised expectantly. “When is it? The little one?”

“Oh, December.”

“How marvelous! Just in time for Christmas.”

“Just in time for a tax deduction, you mean,” countered her husband, a pragmatist or an aspiring humorist.

“Yes, that, too, Clyde,” said Janet Webster impatiently. “Did you get yourself some punch? If I may make a little suggestion, be sure you try a piece of Mrs. Lutz’s apple cinnamon spice cake.”

Hannah allowed that she would and headed toward the punch bowl, squeezing between people, who, as soon as they noticed her condition, immediately stepped aside and opened up a path for her. Jolene was right about one thing: There was no hiding in this town.

Several minutes later, Father Jimmy appeared in the doorway. Spotting Hannah on the far side of the room, he came over to her as quickly as possible, which was not quickly at all, since everyone had something to say to him as he passed and he invariably said something in return.

“Phew!” He exhaled audibly once he had managed to free himself. “I was glad to see you tonight, Hannah. I was hoping you’d come back.”

Hannah knew he was talking as her confessor, but blushed anyway.

“I was very moved by mass,” she said. “You were so involved in it, it made me want to be involved, too.”

“Mass has always been a very personal experience for me, but now that I celebrate it, I’ve had to learn to make it a public one, too,” he said, but she could see he was pleased by her remark.

“Did you always want to be a priest?”

“As long as I can remember.” He looked at her closer, not sure whether she was making polite conversation or really wanted to know. He decided she really wanted to know. “I was an altar boy since I was this high. Weddings, funerals, christenings - any excuse I could find to be in a church, I seized it. I guess it was just instinctual then, but as I grew up I realized there was nothing else for me and never would be.”

“I envy you that. Knowing how you want to spend the rest of your life. I wish I knew. Thank you for listening to me the other day, by the way.”

“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought since then. Are you any clearer about things now?”

“I’m afraid I’m more confused than ever.”

At that moment, Mrs. Webster detached herself from the throng. In her right hand was a paper plate, which she bore triumphantly aloft in a fashion that suggested she had just stolen ambrosia from the gods. “There you are Father Jimmy,” she said. “I’m not going to let you get away without having a piece of Mrs. Lutz’s spice cake. It’s absolutely heavenly.”

He accepted the plate graciously, then turned to Hannah, “Perhaps we should talk some place more private.”

The church was dark, except for two work lights that cast a white film over the pews and made them look as if they were covered with frost. A few votive candles were still burning. The social gathering in the basement registered as a distant echo.

“Did you see the woman from the agency?” asked Father Jimmy.

“Mrs. Greene? Yes, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what was bothering me.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know how to put it. She’s a very nice woman, very friendly and everything, but…well, I just didn’t feel I could trust her.”

Father Jimmy waited for an elaboration.

“She closed her office in Boston and never told me. Even lied about it. Not that it’s all that important. She’s got a lot on her mind. She doesn’t have to keep me posted on her movements…Do you ever feel left out, Father Jimmy?”

“Sometimes. We all do.”

“I think Mrs. Greene and the Whitfields are making this big fuss, because I’m useful to them. As soon as the baby is born, they won’t bother any more. They’ll send me on my way. I know, that’s part of the arrangement, but it’s so strange, having people hovering over you all the time, coddling you, protecting you, when it’s really the baby they’re protecting. It’s like I don’t really count. I know if I tell that to Mrs. Greene, she’ll tell the Whitfields, and then they’ll just hover all the more. As it is, Jolene has grown terribly nervous lately.”

“Maybe they sense your feelings. Do you ever think about the contract you made with them?”

“I haven’t looked into my legal rights. I was going to.”

“No, I mean your moral contract. You gave your word to help them. Can you in good conscience go back on your word? In God’s eyes, wouldn’t you have to have a very important reason to do that?”

“I suppose I would, yes.”

“You told me this couple can’t produce a child on their own. And now God has provided them with the means. You are the means, Hannah. You and your feelings are part of a much larger plan. As we all are. Can you think of it that way? You’re not being left out. You’re being included in something far bigger than you can imagine.”

Hannah let his words sink in. “How can you be so sure of yourself, Father? I’ve never been sure about anything.”

“In this building, I feel very sure about God’s plan. Outside in the world, it’s as hard for me as it is for you. I’ve just come back from a few days with my family in New Hampshire. My parents have a cottage and we’ve gone there every year around Labor Day since my brothers and I were kids. It’s a tradition. But no sooner do we get there than my parents start treating us all like children again. Here at Our Lady’s I minister to grown-ups all the time! But up there, my father is yelling at me, because I ate the last of the peanut butter and didn’t replace it and why don’t I think about somebody besides myself for a change. And the worst part of it is I’m yelling back! I revert to being a child.”

He laughed boyishly and Hannah joined in.

“I guess what I’m saying is no one is sure all the time. Having this child has given you a purpose, and when that purpose ends, you’re afraid you’ll find yourself adrift. But you’re young and healthy, Hannah, with a lot of life ahead of you. One day you will have a baby of your own.”

A deep voice resonated in the empty church and a burly figure appeared out of the shadows. “Aha! Found you! Mrs. Forte said that you had gone off with a pretty, young woman, and I thought, ‘Oh, dear God, not another one lost.’”

As he came into the light, Monsignor Gallagher had a forced smile on his face. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“No”, replied Hannah. “I was about to go.”

“Well, there are a few people downstairs, who require your attention, Father James. You know how Mrs. Quinn gets if you don’t sample her peach cobbler. And I fear Mrs. Lutz has stolen her thunder tonight with that spice cake of hers..”

“I hope I’ve helped,” Father Jimmy said to Hannah. Then, excusing himself (and looking slightly guilty, she thought), he hurried back to the gathering in the basement.

Monsignor Gallagher watched, until he’d disappeared. “Sometimes, I think we’re no longer priests. We’ve become tasters! Spiritual nourishment has been replaced in this parish by home-baked pastries! Last Saturday, one of the ladies brought a dessert called Triple Fudge Divinity! What, pray tell, are the implications of that?”

His second attempt at levity was accompanied by a slightly bolder smile. “Will you join us, Mrs. Manning?”

“I really should be getting home.”

“I understand. Your husband mustn’t like it when you’re gone too long.”

What was this man thinking about her?

“Yes, well, good night, Monsignor.”

Several dozen cars were still in the parking lot. Hannah sat in the Nova for a moment, mulling over what Father Jimmy had said. He was correct, of course. She had made a promise and now she had to honor it. Which made her an incubator, after all. No, that’s not how he had put it. A means to an end. Part of a bigger plan.

She inserted her key into the ignition and gave it a turn. There was a faint click, then nothing. She tried again. Still nothing. She checked the gearshift to make certain it was in park (it was) and looked at the dashboard to see if any red lights had come on (none had), then turned the key once more. This time there wasn’t even a click. That was odd. The car hadn’t given her any trouble when she’d driven here.

But it certainly was dead now.

1:25

Hannah and Jolene stood by the edge of the church parking lot on Monday morning, as Jack Wilson backed his tow truck up to the Nova. Watching him fasten two large hooks under the front bumper and adjust the thick chains that clanked as they did in that story about Scrooge and the ghosts, Hannah found her sadness mounting. The Nova was just a big hunk of metal, but it was her hunk of metal and they’d been through a lot together. Whenever her aunt and uncle had got on her nerves, it was the Nova that took her away from them, even if it was just to escape to the mall or a movie. It had been responsible for whatever freedom she had. And now…

Jolene’s voice intruded on her thoughts. “…

“I don’t want to say I told you so. You’re better off without it. At the risk of repeating myself, I am more than willing to drive you wherever, whenever, for whatever purpose. All you have to do is ask.”

A Cassandra whose worst wailings had been vindicated, she seemed almost gleeful today.

Dr. Johanson was anything but gleeful. At what had become Hannah’s weekly check-up, he wore a preoccupied air all through the examination. Even the courtly flourishes had disappeared.

“Your blood pressure is abnormally high,” he said at one point. “This concerns me.” But he offered no explanation for the dour look on his face, which only got darker as the exam progressed.

At one point, Hannah asked outright if anything was wrong, and he mentioned something about the swelling in her hands and legs.

“Is it serious?”

“It is not unserious” was all he would answer.

He made some entries in Hannah’s file. “You have not changed your diet, have you?”

“No.”

“You are eating and drinking same things, same amounts as before. At least eight glasses of water a day?”

“Yes.”

“Headaches?”

“None to complain of.”

“Constipation?”

“No.”

“Hmmmm.” Dr. Johanson frowned, as he made another note to himself. “I will need a urine specimen from you today. Then, if you would be so kind as to get dressed and join me in my office.”

With a brusque nod, Dr. Johanson turned and left the examining room. The impersonality of his departure had her worried. Where were the encouraging smiles and the warm reassurances he usually lavished on her? She tried to keep her imagination from galloping away with her.

She knocked softly at his office door and was instructed to come in. He was seated behind his desk, his head and shoulders outlined by the light coming in the window. Jolene occupied one of the two chairs opposite him. She had a frazzled look about her.

“Nothing’s wrong, I hope. I’m okay, aren’t I? The baby’s okay?”

Dr. Johanson gave Hannah time to sit down. “There’s no cause for undue alarm. Everything will be fine, Hannah. We just need to take a few precautions from now on. That is why I wanted Mrs. Whitfield in the room with us. We are all in this together, no?”

He rubbed his chin and glanced down at his notes. “You seem to have developed early signs of preeclampsia. Is a very fancy word, this preeclampsia, and I do not mean to intimidate you with it. It merely means hypertension in pregnancy. But I must tell you the swelling in your feet and ankles is not good. So much water retention is not good. The blood pressure is especially not good.”

“But I feel okay, I really do.”

“And you wish to stay that way, no?”

“Of course.”

“Which is why we must control this rising blood pressure.

“What do I have to do?” Hannah asked, suddenly nervous.

“Aha! That is the point precisely. Very little. You should do as little as possible. The urinalysis will help us determine the gravity of the problem. Until then, bed rest, bed rest, and more bed rest. I want Mrs. Whitfield to see to it that you don’t exert yourself.”

Jolene kneaded her hands compulsively. “I hope my exhibition wasn’t too much of a strain. All those people and all that noise. If so, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“No harm is yet done, Mrs. Whitfield. We have caught it in time. So now we take the precautions. That is all.”

“I don’t understand,” said Hannah, who was finding Jolene’s anxiety contagious. “My friend Teri worked right up until she delivered. Both times.”

“Everybody is different,” Dr. Johanson replied, his voice sterner than before. “Every pregnancy is different. I don’t want to scare you, but listen to me. This is no laughing joke. High blood pressure means too little blood supply to the uterus. That can affect the growth of the baby and can jeopardize your own health. Pre-term delivery is even sometimes necessary. Does it seem too much to ask you to take things easy for a while?”

“I’ve hardly been doing anything.”

“That’s more than enough to convince me, doctor,” said Jolene. “I’ll make sure Hannah doesn’t lift a finger.”

Dr. Johanson nodded his approval wearily. “That would be most advisable, Mrs. Whitfield, for everyone concerned. You hear me, Hannah?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, feeling ten years old.

“So nothing is wrong with your ears today, thank heavens.” Hannah couldn’t tell if he was making “a laughing joke” or not.

That was all the prompting Jolene required. A role that always come to her naturally now had Dr. Johanson’s official imprimatur. She performed her duties as cook, caretaker and maid with heightened enthusiasm, racing up and down the stairs so often that Hannah actually began to fear for her hypertension. She brought Hannah breakfast in bed, made the bed after she’d gotten up, picked up her clothes, washed them, drove her to town, and then insisted on running all her errands for her, while Hannah remained behind in the mini-van.

All the frantic energy she normally threw into healing her paintings, she now channeled into Hannah’s care.

Whenever Hannah complained that she was bored doing nothing, Jolene would reply, “You’re taking care of your health, is what you’re doing! Is that nothing?” After a week had gone by, Hannah didn’t feel any better, but then she hadn’t felt bad to begin with. At her next check-up, Dr. Johanson announced he was “lightly optimistic about her condition,” but “that doesn’t mean you can go out dancing.”

The trouble, she found, with lying around all day taking naps, keeping her feet up an hour at a time, or rocking endlessly in a rocking chair to promote circulation in her legs, was that she slept poorly at night. Whereas once she awoke two and three times a night, she now seemed to be waking up every hour.

It left her grumpy most mornings.

So here she was, without a set of wheels but with a permanent nursemaid, who wanted to confine her to the third floor. If this kept up, the Whitfields would have her on a leash before long! Hannah’s mood didn’t improve all day, but she got the impression Jolene was at least making an effort to stay out of her way.

In the afternoon, she installed herself in the sunroom and tried to read a new novel that the librarian had recommended. It was all about an abused wife, who decides to run away with her ten-year-old son and start a new life under a new name in Florida. But the sunroom was hot and after 40 pages, she grew drowsy and dozed off. She made herself get up and walk out into the garden.

“Remember, don’t go too far, now,” Jolene called after her.

“I thought I’d see if I could make it to the birdbath and back,” Hannah replied. Jolene didn’t pick up on the sarcasm or chose to ignore it.

Just as Hannah had feared, she slept miserably that night. In bed by ten, she woke up at midnight, then one, then two, regular as clockwork. The more she fretted, the harder it was to fall back asleep. At three she gave up entirely, turned on her bedside light and tried to lose herself in the novel. Her back ached, but when she lay on her side, she couldn’t see the pages very well, so she shifted her position and the book slid off the bed and fell onto the floor.

Exasperated by now and thoroughly awake, she got up and went for a glass of water (although she knew the consequences of that only too well), when she heard activity on the floor below and what sounded like voices - a voice, anyway - and footsteps descending the stairs. The noise was followed by the clack of the back door and she realized somebody had gone outside.

She quickly extinguished the bedside lamp and crept to the window to see what was happening.

The sky was cloudless and a full moon lit up the yard in a silvery glow. Both of the Whitfields had ventured out of the house. Marshall had on striped pajamas and a blue flannel bathrobe, which hung open. Jolene hadn’t even bothered with a bathrobe and her white silk nightgown looked almost luminescent in the moonlight. It was as if they had been abruptly awakened by a strange noise in the garden and were now trying to locate its source.

Jolene walked ahead of her husband, until she reached the middle of the lawn, whereupon she stopped and stared off into the distance. Marshall followed several steps behind her, but when she stopped, he did, too. They both stood still for a long time, as if they expected someone or something to emerge from the stand of pines at the garden’s edge. But no one did. The night was silent, the trees so many frozen icicles in the bright moonlight. The water in the birdbath seemed to have the thickness and the sheen of mercury.

Had the Whitfields had been facing her way, Hannah was certain she could have read the subtlest expression on their faces, seen their eyelids blink or their lips move. But they kept their backs to her, seemingly transfixed by the silvery tangle of pine boughs. Several more minutes passed, during which nothing stirred.

Then Hannah noticed Jolene’s shoulders sag and her back slump, as if a plug at the base of her spine had been removed and all the tension in her body were draining out. She turned around and approached Marshall. The intruder, if that’s what it was, appeared to have departed. As quietly as possible, Hannah lifted up the sash of her bedroom window. A rush of cool air entered the room, along with the sound of voices. The Whitfields were talking in a hush, but if she concentrated, Hannah could make out some of the words.

“What did she say?” Marshall was asking his wife.

“There will be danger,” Jolene answered. Now Hannah could see her face clearly. The moonlight lent it a mask-like pallor.

“Did she say when?”

“It’s already here. Evil, trying to bore its way in. Trying to lure and cajole. It will be a fight. A fight we could lose, if we are not careful.”

“What are we supposed to do?”

“Be vigilant. She said to be vigilant. But she will be with us, when the time comes. She will stay close and she will keep us strong.”

Marshall took off his bathrobe and put it around his wife’s shoulders. “How will we recognize this evil?”

“It comes in the guise of help. ‘It will come in my name,’ she said. From there. It will come from there!” And with that, Jolene raised her arm and pointed down Alcott Street in the direction of the town.