The Surrogate (23 page)

O
NCE AGAIN
J
AMIE
found herself at the downtown bus station. She had planned to buy a ticket to Seminole, which was southeast of Shawnee, the town where she had made her last phone call to Mrs. Brammer, but discovered there would not be a return bus to Oklahoma City until morning.

How necessary was it for her to go someplace else to make these calls? She was trying not to pinpoint herself in Oklahoma City proper, but maybe that was already evident by the calls she had made from different points on the far edges of the metro. And maybe there was no one sitting at a huge console like some technology wizard in a James Bond movie tracking on an electronic map every call made to the Arthur Brammer residence in Houston, Texas. Her connection to the Brammer family was just too tenuous for anyone to have made the connection.

Or was it?

Any number of people in Mesquite knew about the long-standing friendship Gladys Simpson and her granddaughter had had with their back-fence neighbors, Evelyn and Paul Washburn, who were the parents of Millie Brammer and the grandparents of Joe Brammer. And it was no secret that Joe often visited his grandparents and had befriended both Jamie and Gladys. How careful Jamie needed to be about the phone calls depended on how thorough a search Gus Hartmann was conducting.

She had three choices. The wisest one would be to forget about Joe Brammer for the time being. Or she could call his mother from someplace closer to home and save herself a great deal of trouble. Or she could buy a ticket to someplace other than Seminole.

She bought a ticket. She would go a second time to the town of Shawnee. Maybe the wizard at the console would decide that she was living in Shawnee or one of the many even smaller towns scattered along the interstate highway that connected Oklahoma City to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and points beyond.

It was time to feed Billy. She sought out the back of the bus and draped a blanket over her shoulder. A weathered man in a denim shirt sitting across the aisle and one row up kept glancing in her direction, which made her very nervous. She couldn’t decide if he was just being lecherous or if his interest in her was something else altogether.

Once she had arrived in Seminole, she went to a pay phone. The phone rang eight times before the answering machine came on. A male voice announced that she had reached the Brammer residence. She hung up, waited fifteen minutes, and tried again. Then she walked around the block and tried a third time. When the bus for Oklahoma City was announced, she tried one last time but to no avail. Of course Jamie had told Mrs. Brammer that she would try again the following week if they weren’t yet home from their trip. Or perhaps she and her husband had something more entertaining to do tonight than sit around waiting for a phone call from a girl they barely knew who might be in trouble or might be off her rocker.

Perhaps, as Mrs. Brammer had strongly suggested, it was time for her to find another attorney to help her. Maybe she should go to the Oklahoma City legal aid office, where attorneys helped people of limited means.

During her ride back to Oklahoma City, Jamie tried to imagine explaining her situation to a total stranger.

My baby is the grandson of Amanda Tutt Hartmann. Yes, the famous televangelist who just had a baby. Except the baby she is holding in those pictures probably is not really hers. It’s just one that she and her brother are using while they are trying to track me down and take my baby away from me. I signed a contract agreeing to be artificially inseminated with semen supplied by Amanda Hartmann’s husband, though actually the semen came from her son, who was supposed to be dead but really was being kept alive until Amanda was sure that I was carrying a healthy baby. For the eight months and one week of my pregnancy, I was held prisoner on the Hartmann Ranch in the Texas Panhandle, where I met Amanda Hartmann’s mother, Mary Millicent Tutt Hartmann, who was also being held prisoner except she had a passkey and sometimes roamed around the ranch house at night. Mary Millicent was the one who told me that her almost dead grandson was really the father of the baby I was carrying and that Amanda planned to claim that she was the child’s biological mother, which would make him the heir to her ministry when he grew up. And Mary Millicent warned me that Amanda’s brother was going to have me killed after my baby was born so that I couldn’t tell anyone that Amanda was not the baby’s mother and that God had not performed a miracle so that her barren body could produce one more kid.

All of which was definitely too far-fetched to be believed, Jamie realized, even for a long-haired, antiestablishment legal aid attorney. Maybe if she ever had the chance to tell the story to Joe, he, too, would think she was crazy. Maybe she should start operating on the assumption that she would never be believed so there was no point in ever telling anyone the truth about her baby’s birth.

She wondered how many years it would take for Amanda and her brother to give up looking for Sonny’s child. How many years she would have to hide.

But if hiding was going to be a way of life for her, she needed to make some preparations. She would have to buy a car. Without a driver’s license she would have to drive very, very carefully—never speeding, always coming to a complete stop at stop signs, never having a burned-out taillight, never doing anything to get pulled over. But she could do that. And she would always keep the tank full of gas and have basic supplies in the trunk—diapers, blankets, clothes, dog food, some nonperishable food for herself, water bottles—in case she had to make a hasty departure. And she would never leave the apartment without money.

It was depressing to think she would probably be on the run for years and years. But depressing or not, she would sleep better at night with a car parked behind the apartment house.

It was dark when she arrived back at the apartment. She was climbing up the first flight of stairs when Ruby stepped out into the hall. “Janet,” she called up to her. “I was hoping that was you. I have something to tell you.”

Jamie wearily retraced her steps. “I have a new tenant,” Ruby said. “A young woman with a baby not much older than Billy. She’s applied for a job over at the medical center and asked if I knew of anyone who could look after her baby while she was at work. It occurred to me that might be a perfect way for you to earn some money and still stay home with little Billy.”

Jamie could hardly believe her ears.
Good
news for a change.

“You look tired, honey,” Ruby said. “Why don’t you see to your dog then let me fix you a plate of spaghetti.”

Jamie was too tired to argue with her.

“If you like, you can just leave the baby here with me while you take the dog out,” Ruby offered.

Jamie backed up the first step as a knot of panic rose in her throat. “I, ah…I really need to change him,” she stammered. “Just give us a few minutes.”

“Honey, I’m not going to steal your baby if that’s what you’re worried about,” Ruby said. Then she cocked her head to one side and frowned as she regarded Jamie’s face. “And that
is
what you are worried about, isn’t it? That someone’s going to take that baby?”

Jamie did not know how to respond so she didn’t. She simply rushed up the stairs as fast as she could with a baby strapped to her chest.

She greeted her exuberant dog with less enthusiasm than usual. She simply did not have the energy or goodwill it took to frolic with him and make him feel loved. She changed Billy, used the bathroom, splashed water on her face, and brushed her ugly hair. Then, in accordance with her new resolve never to leave her apartment without money, she reached under the mattress and pulled out the manila envelope that contained her cash along with her personal papers and her grandmother’s ring. She removed three hundred dollars, slid the envelope back under the mattress, and stuffed the money in her pocket.

With Billy in the infant seat, she took Ralph to the vacant lot for a few minutes then headed back to the house.

Ruby had left her door ajar, and Jamie called out to her, “Is it okay for Ralph to come, too?”

Ruby stuck her head around the corner. “All three of you come right on in here.”

Jamie closed the door behind her and wound her way through the crowded living room to the brightly lit kitchen, which was filled with the aromas of garlic and warm bread.

The refrigerator had a new picture—one from the newspaper of Amanda Hartmann holding the mystery baby. Once again Jamie sat with her back to the refrigerator.

Ruby dished up a generous helping of spaghetti, covered it with a thick sauce, and set it in front of Jamie. Then she filled Jamie’s glass with iced tea and put a generous slice of crusty bread on her plate.

The spaghetti was wonderful, and Jamie had to admit that it was nice having someone fuss over her, even if she didn’t approve of that person’s taste in refrigerator art.

Over coffee Ruby told Jamie that she had once been a beautician and reached across the table to lift a strand of Jamie’s hair. “Why don’t you let me give you a decent haircut tomorrow and adjust the color a bit? If you don’t want to be a blond anymore, I think you at least need some highlights for a more natural look.”

Jamie was speechless. And had to blink back tears. First there had been Mae the midwife, and now there was Ruby the landlady. She had almost forgotten what kindness felt like.

“I know you got private troubles that run real deep,” Ruby said, “but having bad hair and not having a friend you can count on shouldn’t be among them. And besides, it does a lonely old lady’s heart good to feel useful to another human being once in a while.”

After leaving Ruby’s apartment, Jamie sat on the front step while Ralph raced around the yard for a few minutes. Then she called to him and smiled as he came racing up the steps, his tail wagging and tongue hanging. Such a dear little dog he was.

In spite of her weariness, she climbed the stairs with a lighter step. It was amazing what a good meal and human kindness could do to raise one’s spirit.

Jamie, Billy, and Ralph spent the next morning downstairs with Ruby. First she shaped Jamie’s hair then touched up the roots and carried out a complicated procedure involving aluminum foil and a paintbrush. The morning was almost gone before it was time for Jamie to shampoo her hair at the kitchen sink and watch in the bathroom mirror while Ruby showed her how to use a handheld drier to fluff her hair into a soft, becoming style. The highlights softened the dark color and actually made it look more natural.

“I look like a different person,” Jamie said with relief, thinking that if she ever did get to see Joe again, she wouldn’t be embarrassed about the way she looked.

Saturday morning, Ruby introduced her to the new tenant. Lynette was a petite, gregarious brunette whose boyfriend was working on an offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Lynette’s baby was two weeks older than Billy.

Jamie felt almost like a normal young mother sitting there among the boxes and clutter of Lynette’s apartment as they discussed sleep patterns and feeding schedules and took turns holding each other’s babies.

Lynette explained that she had completed her LPN training the month before Sally Ann was born. She hoped to get a regular shift at one of the medical center hospitals, but for now she was going to fill in as needed. “I’d like to be assigned the night shift so I can spend more waking hours with Sally Ann if that’s all right with you,” Lynette said.

Jamie assured her that the night shift would be fine. In fact, she would prefer it. A little voice in the back of her head wondered if she should warn Lynette that she might not be permanent in Oklahoma City. But she didn’t know that for sure. She didn’t know anything for sure. And it would be nice to have an income, no matter how modest.

That afternoon, she left Ralph in the apartment and, with Billy back in the infant carrier, walked south toward downtown Oklahoma City and the used-car lots strung along North Broadway. The infant carrier was cumbersome and bumped uncomfortably against her leg, but she would need it if she took a car for a test drive.

As she wandered up and down the rows of cars, she wondered how negotiable the prices painted on the windshields were. The only cars with a price she could even begin to afford looked as though they belonged in a salvage yard.

At each lot, a salesman would follow her around while she checked the tread on tires and looked under hoods for clues as to how well the motors had been maintained—the condition of belts, how clean the oil was, if the filter needed replacing, if the spark plugs were clean or dirty.

At the third lot, she selected what she considered the best of the bunch and, with the salesman in the front seat and Billy in the infant carrier fastened in the back, took a test drive. The motor ran a bit rough, and she decided to look further tomorrow, but she took the salesman’s card and said she would keep the car in mind. Then she started the long walk home with the afternoon sun beating down unmercifully.

Back in her apartment, she opened both windows. She could see that she was definitely going to need to buy a couple of fans or they were going to swelter this summer. She grilled a cheese sandwich and made a salad for dinner and entertained herself for a couple of hours working crossword puzzles with the radio as background noise. Then, with Billy in her arms, she took Ralph out front. It was a beautiful night, and she sat on the front step while Ralph carefully sniffed every bush and tree trunk as he decided the very best locations for him to deposit his pee, a few drops here and a few there. Billy’s gaze seemed to be focused on the very bright moon that was directly overhead, and she took his hands in hers and, waving them back and forth, softly sang,

The night sky brought to mind an evening when she and Joe had stretched out on the grass in the backyard and looked up at the moon through a pair of binoculars. Jamie had been aware that Joe was watching her as she studied the pockmarked lunar surface, amazed at the details she could make out with just binoculars. He told her that her hair looked silver in the moonlight. And he had touched a strand.