The Surrogate, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book one (5 page)

1:9

Hannah noticed the woman first and judged her to be in her mid-40s. Her skirt and blouse were ablaze with bright colors - reds, oranges, deep blues - and a purple loose-weave shawl, threaded with yellow, hugged her shoulders. Gold earrings that looked like nothing so much as miniature wind chimes dangled from her ears. Her hair was jet black. Her lipstick was brick-red and thick, and she had not stinted on the eyeliner, either. In principle, the effect should have been loud and garish, but the woman pulled it off with flair. Hannah found her dramatic.

The man, on the other hand, was older by ten years and dressed more conservatively in a dark pin-striped suit and a burgundy tie that suggested he was a corporate player or a banker. His features were pleasant, but unremarkable, except for the luxuriance of his salt-and-pepper hair, which gave him a distinguished air. Hannah wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he made shampoo commercials in his spare time.

They were unlike anybody she knew in Fall River, that was for sure: well-to-do, stylish, the kind of couple that her aunt, with the disdain the lower-middle-class reserved for those higher up the socio-economic ladder, called the “lah-de-dahs.”

Mrs. Greene jumped to her feet and welcomed them with outstretched hands. “Isn’t this exciting?” she said, then without waiting for an answer, stepped back, gestured proudly toward Hannah and announced, “Jolene and Marshall Whitfield, I’d like you to introduce you to Hannah Manning.”

Hannah stood up and extended a hand. Jolene took it gently in both of her hands, as if it were something easily crushed, an eggshell or the baby chick that had come out of it. “I’m delighted,” she said. “This is almost like a blind date, isn’t it? Marshall, come meet Hannah Manning.”

His handshake was more deferential, bordering on limp, but he gave her a warm smile that revealed rows of handsome teeth. At six foot three, he was a good foot taller than his wife, who seemed to make up in assertiveness what she lacked in stature. Like a border collie herding sheep, Mrs. Greene guided them all to the sofas and encouraged them to take their places - the Whitfields on one side of the coffee table, she and Hannah on the other.

“So you’re from Fall River,” said Jolene Whitfield, plunging right in.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ma’am? Oh, that won’t do at all. Jolene, please. And Marshall. I hear that area is very nice. We recently moved to East Acton. Do you know East Acton?”

“No, I don’t…Jolene.”

“It’s lovely. Lots of trees. A little boring, though, if you want the truth. Everyone turns their lights out by ten. But it’s an easy commute for Marshall. Marshall works here in Boston. And we’ve got a beautiful garden.”

Mrs. Greene said, “Did I tell you Mrs. Whitfield is an artist. I’ve seen her works. They’re wonderful. She sells them on Newberry Street.”

“Oh, once in a blue moon, is all. Mostly, I just dabble in the studio at home. It keeps me occupied.”

“She’s being modest. She has such a distinctive…vision. You can’t imagine how unusual it is!”

Oddly enough, Hannah thought she probably could.

Mr. Whitfield - Marshall - came from Maryland, it transpired, and was in insurance, both dead-ends as conversational topics. So they talked about the weather and the driving conditions and Mrs. Whitfield complemented Hannah on her tan cardigan and said it was a good color for her hair.

“Well, now,” said Mrs. Greene, feeling it was time to direct the conversation to the business at hand, “I’ve explained to Hannah the service we provide here at Partners in Parenthood. And I told you both on the phone how impressed I was with Hannah.” (What, Hannah wondered, had she done to impress Mrs. Greene?) “But perhaps it might be helpful if she heard your story in your own words. Jolene?”

“It’s very simple. We waited too long. We had other priorities. Before we knew it, it was too late.” A veil of distress swept over the woman’s face.

“We don’t know that’s true, Jolene,” her husband said. “It might not have been any different, if we’d started at twenty.”

“But the point is, we didn’t start at 20. There is a good chance I might have been able to have a child back then. The doctor told me so. Two doctors. But we put it off and we put it off. And by then, well, the damage was done. You know that’s true. You know we waited too long.”

Marshall Whitfield patted his wife’s shoulder. “That’s neither here nor there now, dear. We’ve been over this a thousand times.”

Jolene ignored her husband’s gesture. “We did. We waited longer than we should have. Marshall was working his way up in the company, doing better and better each year. And we both loved to travel. So the plan was to see the world, while we were still young and relatively free, before we started a family. We knew once we had children, they would tie us down and travel would become more difficult.”

“They’ve been everywhere, Hannah,” interjected Mrs. Greene. “China, India, Turkey, Spain, North Africa. I’m so envious.”

“I don’t regret the traveling one minute,” said Jolene. “We saw some extraordinary places. But there was always one more country we had to see. Wasn’t there, Marshall? For ten years, we postponed having a family. When the time came, we thought it would be so easy. Like planning our trips. Just pick the date, buy the ticket and go. ‘This year we’ll go to Ceylon. Next year, we’ll have a baby.’ That’s how we talked about it. Pretty foolishly, I guess. The year of the baby, I went off the birth control pills and … nothing! The doctor told us to be patient, give it time. Still nothing. A year later, I found out why I was not able to carry a child— fibroids in the uterus prevented the egg from attaching itself to the uterine wall. I had an operation. Then another. Once I thought I was pregnant, but I miscarried in the third month. That was seven years ago.”

Marshall chimed in. “We’ve discussed adoption. There are so many babies that need a home. We still haven’t ruled it out.”

“But it’s not the same,” said Jolene, over-riding him. “I feel like we’re being deprived of a very important element of our lives. Something’s missing.”

“I’m sure she understands that, Jolene. Everyone does. You don’t have to explain your need to have a child of your own. It’s the natural desire of all men and women.”

Jolene took her appeal directly to Hannah. “I do produce eggs. I’m fertile like any other woman. And Marshall’s sperm count is normal. I just can’t carry a baby to term. There’s nothing wrong otherwise. I’m capable of all the rest. Believe me, I am.”

Mrs. Greene reached across the table for Jolene’s hand, much as she had done with Hannah on their first meeting. “Of course, you are. You can still love your children, and take them in your arms, and comfort them and watch them take their first steps and help them grow into adulthood. You can do all that.” The words and the physical contact seemed to have the same effect on Jolene Whitfield, comforting her and calming her down.

Jolene took out a handkerchief and blew her nose.

“Well,” Marshall said, breaking an awkward silence. “You know all about us now. Tell us about you.”

There was so little to recount, Hannah thought. She’d just barely graduated from high school, worked in a diner and lived with relatives who had considered raising her a chore. Her world was such a small one. It hadn’t always been that way, though. There was a time, back when her parents were still alive, that she’d had great enthusiasm for life and books and travel, too.

When she was still an infant, her mother took her to the library, where she worked, and Hannah spent her days in a crib that had been set up in the back room. As she got older, the children’s section became her home. She passed hours, reading every book she could lay her tiny hands on, books about dolphins and Indians and a magic tree house that transported you back in history to exotic locales. Whenever she looked up from the pages, she’d see her mother behind the counter, checking people’s library cards and answering their questions. On the walk home, Hannah would tell her mother everything she’d learned that day.

But after the accident, her interest in books had dried up. Books were associated with her mother and reading brought back too many painful memories. Her schoolwork suffered as a result, although her teachers said it was just a phase she was going through and a perfectly understandable one, given the trauma she had experienced. She would pull out of it. But she never did.

By the time she had graduated from high school near the bottom of her class, few of her teachers remembered, if they had ever known, that she had once been a bright girl, full of curiosity. For them, she was just another quiet, unmotivated student, who stared out the window a lot, dreaming, no doubt, of the day she wouldn’t have to attend classes and could get herself a job.

She looked across the coffee table at the Whitfields, world travelers, well-off and educated. They were waiting for her answer.

“My life hasn’t been as exciting as yours, I’m afraid,” she said apologetically. “I haven’t been out of Fall River much. I work at a diner, the Blue Dawn Diner.”

“What a poetic name!” said Jolene Whitfield. “Do you enjoy your work?”

At first, Hannah thought the woman was just being polite. Who cared about a stupid old diner in a town that had seen better days? But she couldn’t help noticing how Jolene was leaning in, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her eyes dark with concentration. Marshall Whitfield projected a similar air of expectation. Then Hannah realized something: these people needed her. They needed her almost more than she needed them. She never would have believed that she had the power to make people like the Whitfields happier, more fulfilled. But their body language argued the case persuasively.

A feeling of well-being came over her, as if she’d had something potent to drink, except that she never drank anything stronger than soda pop. Like the wise men following their star, she seemed to know where to go and what to do next. Beginning with the ad in the newspaper, she had been guided to this couple.

Everybody’s eyes were upon her. Even a beaming Mrs. Greene was content to sit back and relinquish her role as catalyst. Their faces were all so open that Hannah thought she’d burst with pride.

“I really want to help you,” she said. “I hope you will let me be the one to carry your child.”

1:10

After the emotional meeting with the Whitfields, the appointment with Dr. Eric Johanson was decidedly anticlimactic. He had a small clinic near Beacon Hill, which meant that once again she would have to slip out of the house and drive to Boston. It was becoming a routine.

From his name, Hannah pictured Dr. Johanson to be a tall, strapping Swede, with a mop of curly blonde hair and sea-blue eyes, so she was a bit surprised to discover a courtly gentleman in his 50s, who looked more like a writer or a college dean with his three-piece tweed suit and horn-rimmed glasses that perched on the top of his head, when he wasn’t using them. She couldn’t imagine a drop of blood or even a baby’s drool had ever sullied his crisp, white, cuff-linked shirt. Even for a doctor, his appearance was imposingly immaculate.

He had a soft voice with the trace of an accent that Hannah couldn’t identify. It sounded like some Middle European country. Definitely not Sweden. His manner was slightly old-fashioned, and when he greeted her, he gave a short bow from the waist, which amused her.

“I can tell in advance, just looking at you, so pretty and healthy, there’s nothing to worry about,” he chuckled. “How do you young people put it? ‘Piece of cake?’”

Dr. Johanson posed all the usual questions - Did she have diabetes? Hypertension? Was she a smoker? - checking off the appropriate boxes on a medical form almost as if he could predict her responses before she gave them.

Hannah hesitated only when Dr. Johanson asked if anyone in her family had a history of difficult pregnancies. Her mother or a grandmother, for example. “We’re concerned for your health,” the doctor explained. “But we have to be concerned for the baby, too. After all, you’ll be the incubator.”

That was the second time someone had used that word. Hannah thought it made her sound like a machine, just a bunch of tubes and wires and an on/off switch. Surrogate mother was so much nicer. But the benign look on Dr. Johanson’s face indicated that he meant no offense. Maybe, it was the technical term.

“My aunt might know. She’s my only living relative. And my uncle. I could ask them, if you want.”

“Well, maybe that won’t be necessary.” Dr. Johanson indicated a paneled door to the right of his desk that opened onto a small, antiseptic examining room. “Why don’t we get right to the physical exam, shall we? If you don’t mind removing the clothes. You’ll find a robe on the back of the door. I’ll be with you in a second.” He refocused on his paper work and jotted a few more notations on the forms in front of him.

The black leather examining table was covered with paper that crinkled when Hannah sat on it sideways, her bare feet dangling over the side. The room was chilly and smelled of disinfectant, laced with rubbing alcohol. The thin cloth robe afforded her little warmth. On the wall, a travel poster touted the sunny charms of the Costa del Sol, with people cavorting happily in the waves. Hannah concentrated on it and tried to think about faraway places, not needles and rubber gloves and unpleasant steel instruments for probing. She’d come this far. It would be—

She had no time to complete the thought, before the door opened. Dr. Johanson had taken off his suit jacket and put on a white lab coat that flapped about his knees and gave him a comical penguinish appearance. He went to the sink, scrubbed his hands, patted them dry on a towel.

“Shall we roll up the sleeves and get down to work, yes?” He turned to face Hannah. “We will want to take some blood samples today, check your heart and your blood pressure. Weigh you, of course. Then a pelvic exam to see that everything’s in good working order. And I’ll need to take cultures of the vagina and the cervix. Not that I believe there’s the slightest cause for concern. We just want to make certain there are no infections.”

He took her right wrist in his hand and felt for her pulse.

“Heavens, your heart is racing! Thump, thump, thump. Like the little bunny rabbit. You are not frightened, are you?”

“Just a little nervous, I guess.”

“No need to be, young lady.” He laid his hand reassuringly on her arm. “No need at all. What was that delicious expression? Ah, yes. ‘Piece of cake!’ This will be just like the piece of cake.” He chuckled again.

And it was, too.

Two days later, Dr. Johanson reached her at the diner and informed her that the lab tests had turned up nothing out of the ordinary. Her health was perfect.

“Congratulations,” he said. “So now we must choose the big day, no?”

“Whatever you think best, doctor. It’s just that I’ll have to make a few plans beforehand and if you’re in a big rush, well…”

“Not to be so flustered! The Whitfields are eager to get on with this. But we can’t hurry up nature, can we? Haste makes the waste, as the saying goes. Let me see. I have your chart and my calendar right here in front of me. The ideal time would be the first week after your period, so by my calculations…early March looks good. And I see the clinic is free March 3. That would be a Tuesday. At 10 in the morning? How does that suit you?”

Hannah’s heart pounded. March 3 was less than three weeks away. “Will I be able to work afterwards?”

“Of course, you will, my dear, as long as you don’t lift anything heavy. The procedure takes no time at all. No anesthesia required. You won’t feel a thing. As I keep telling you, ‘a piece of cake.'”

“Then, March 3 it is, I guess. Oh, and doctor, I have a new address, where you can send all my mail from now on.”

It was only a post office box that she had rented at Mailboxes Inc. in the mall, but she figured it would prevent Ruth and Herb from coming upon any correspondence from Partners in Parenthood. They were inquisitive enough, as it was.

“P.O. Box 127?” the doctor repeated, making sure he had gotten it right. “That sounds lovely. Very nice address, my dear. Much nicer, I hear, than 126.”

He chuckled and Hannah found herself joining in.

Her first piece of mail arrived two days later. An elegant greeting card, it showed a rainbow arching over a bucolic English landscape. The lavender ink told Hannah who had written it before she saw the signatures.

At the end of the rainbow lies a lifetime of dreams.
Jolene and Marshall

The future, which for so long had struck her as terrifyingly empty, ceased to scare her. There was a place for her and there were people concerned for her welfare. What had been a hazy dream off in the distance was no dream at all. It was about to become a reality.

She moved through the Blue Dawn Diner with a lightness of step that matched her mood, no longer resenting the long hours or the endless bickering of Teri and Bobby, or even the paltry tips, which actually began to improve noticeably. One trucker, who’d only had a cup of coffee, left a $10 bill under the saucer. When she asked him if he hadn’t made a mistake, he said, “Nope, honey, you just make this damn diner one helluva pleasant place.”

Teri noticed the change in her, as well, and credited it to the rejuvenating, relaxing and all-round restorative properties of sex.

Even Ruth picked up on something. “What you got to be so happy about all the time?” she harrumphed one morning at breakfast.

“Nothing. Just happy,” Hannah replied.

The woman limited her skepticism to a brief “Haw!” It was her long-held belief that people had no cause to feel good about themselves, and if they did, it was probably because they’d broken a law.

The eve of the big day, Hannah did something she hadn’t done in ages. She sat on the edge of the bed, closed her eyes and prayed to her mother for strength. Then she slid under the covers and fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke, she felt more refreshed than she had in years. The bed hardly looked slept in and the pillow bore practically no crease marks. It was as if she’d lain all night long in a state of suspended animation. The calmness she had experienced on her first meeting with the Whitfields had grown into a deep serenity, a cushion of well-being that enveloped her whole body and insulated her from doubt.

An hour later, when she got into the Nova, her hand went automatically to the car radio, but she stopped herself, preferring to prolong the serene mood. Halfway to Boston, Fall River seemed light years away.

She found a parking place a half block from the clinic (decidedly it was one of those magical days) and when she entered the waiting room of Dr. Johanson, she had a similar impression of heightened silence, silence distilled of all its impurities.

The receptionist acknowledged her arrival with a nod. At first Hannah didn’t notice the Whitfields, who were seated in the corner, side by side, their backs erect, their hands folded on their laps.

Jolene had traded her usual flamboyant garb for a simple, tailored gray suit and she gave a tiny wave of the hand, as if a more demonstrative greeting might somehow jeopardize what was a very special morning. In a voice barely above a whisper, Marshall said, “We’re with you all the way.” They looked like nervous parents at a PTA meeting.

The door to Dr. Johanson’s office swung open and Letitia Greene slipped out. As soon as she saw Hannah, her face lit up and she balled her hand and shook it, a gesture that Hannah interpreted as one of victory or solidarity. Hannah sensed that they all regarded her differently this time - not as a teenager, who had almost flunked out of high school, but as a full-grown woman, an equal, a partner.

Dr. Johanson stood in the doorway, gathering his thoughts and waiting for their full attention. He had on the white lab coat that made him look comical a few weeks ago, but this time there was a gravity to his manner that took Hannah aback.

“How are you this morning, dear? Are you ready?” he said, assisting her with her coat. Hannah was reassured to see that he hadn’t foresworn all his courtly charm.

“Yes, very ready.” Hannah thought she caught Mrs. Whitfield fighting back tears. Everyone seemed so solemn. Wasn’t this supposed to be a joyous event?

Dr. Johanson took her gently by the elbow and steered her into his office, closing the door behind them. “This is an important day for all of us,” he said, as if he had read her thoughts.

He gestured for her to sit down. “We are creating a new life and that is always a serious responsibility, never to be taken lightly, even though what we are going to do today is actually very simple. We were able to retrieve six of Mrs. Whitfield’s eggs and fertilize them with her husband’s sperm in a petri dish. In a moment, I shall be placing them in your uterus and we’ll see if they take. The instruments I use are microscopic - basically, a catheter on a syringe - and you should feel very little. But implantation is never a sure thing, so it is important that you stay relaxed, calm. That is how you can help, Hannah - by trusting me and thinking only of all the good that will come of this. Do you have any questions?”

“How long will the operation take?” she asked, determined to overlook the parched sensation in her mouth.

“Please, not an operation, a
procedure.
No more than ten, fifteen minutes. Afterwards, we shall ask you to eat a small snack and rest for a couple of hours, just to make sure your body has a chance to settle down. But we shall have accomplished our little mission. And then, well…then it will be in the hands of God.”