The Surrogate (20 page)

Rocking the carrier was no longer working for Billy, and she carried him out to the car. He nursed vigorously for a time then obligingly fell back asleep.

Jamie tucked him back into the carrier and headed back to the pay phone. A woman’s voice answered.

“Mrs. Brammer?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Jamie Long. I hope I have the right number. Do you have a son named Joe?”

“Yes, I do, Jamie. You used to live across the back fence from my parents in Mesquite. I remember you well and was so sorry to hear about your grandmother. We all thought a lot of Gladys. You know, dear, Joe tried to track you down last summer. I remember him saying that you seemed to have dropped off the planet.”

Jamie’s heart soared.
Joe had been looking for her.

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with Joe, too. His Austin number is no longer in service.”

“Joe took his last semester of law school abroad—at Oxford,” Mrs. Brammer said. “Then he and some of the young men he’d met at Oxford decided to bike around the Continent. When winter came, Art and I thought for sure he’d head on home, but he and his companions headed south—for Greece.”

Mrs. Brammer paused a second or two before continuing. Jamie had a sense that she was not going to like what followed. “Joe signed on as a crew member on a tramp steamer, Jamie. His last phone call was from some island off the coast of Turkey.”

Jamie found herself having terribly conflicting reactions. God only knew when she would be able to talk to Joe. But trekking around Europe didn’t sound like something a married man would be doing.

“So, Joe is not married?” she dared ask, trying to keep her voice a careful neutral.

“No, dear, he’s not married. I always thought he was waiting around for you to grow up, but he got sidetracked with Marcia, who is a lovely girl, and they really seemed to care about each other, but I think she got tired of waiting around for him to get on with things.”

Joe was not married.
Not married.

Jamie realized that she had been holding her breath. She let it out before asking, “So, when do you think he’s coming home?”

“Believe me, we ask him every time he calls. And his father lectures him about how it’s time for him to settle down and how risky it is nowadays for Americans traveling abroad. Joe’s all but promised that he’ll be home in time for his father’s birthday in June, but I’m hoping it will be sooner. We do miss him so.”

“Is there any way I could get in touch with him?” Jamie asked.

“Not that I know of. He was e-mailing his grandparents every few weeks from places called cyber cafés, but they haven’t heard from him since he’s been on the ship. Is there anything Art and I can help you with, dear? You sound so forlorn.”

“No, really I’m fine. The next time Joe calls, tell him that you talked to me,” Jamie said, disappointment displacing joy.

“Where are you, Jamie? And where in the world have you been? Before he left for Europe he checked with UT, but you weren’t enrolled for the spring semester. And while he was in England, he searched for you on the computer—which I don’t understand at all. Finally he decided that you must have signed up for the Peace Corps or something exotic like that.”

Jamie took a deep breath. Joe had been looking for her.
Really
looking for her. “It’s too complicated to explain on the phone,” she said.

“But you have to be living someplace. Where are you calling from?”

A man and woman were coming through the front door. They looked down at the baby in the carrier parked at Jamie’s feet and smiled. “A pay phone in another state,” Jamie said, lowering her voice. “I’ll try to call you back in a day or two and tell you where I can be reached.”

“You can’t even tell me the name of the state! Are you in hiding or something? You sound so tired, dear. Are you all right?”

The sympathy and concern in the voice of Joe’s mother was too much for Jamie to bear. She choked up, unable to speak for several seconds, unable to hold back sobs.

“Oh, my goodness. You poor child. How can I help you? Please tell me where you are. Art and I will come to get you. Or wire you money. Send you a plane ticket. Just tell me what you need.”

“I’ll be fine. Really I will. I’ll talk to you soon. Okay?”

“No. I want you to promise me that you will call back
tomorrow
with a phone number where we can reach you.”

“I’ll try,” Jamie said and hung up the phone. She wondered if the Brammers had caller ID. She should have warned Mrs. Brammer not to tell anyone except Joe that she had called. And her husband. That would be okay. But no one else. She rubbed her forehead and tried to tell herself once again that her fears could very well be baseless. But how could she know for sure?

J
AMIE SAGGED AGAINST
the foyer wall by the pay phone. She wanted to carry her baby back into the nice warm library and sit in an easy chair for a time to ponder her conversation with Joe’s mother—to replay Mrs. Brammer’s words, turning them over and over in her mind and examining them from every angle as one would a handful of pleasing pebbles gathered from a creek bed. Jamie had no idea when she might see Joe again or hear his voice. But
he was not married.

Even so, she must put thoughts of him aside and decide what she was going to do next. She would get back to them, though.

With no way of knowing when Joe would return home, maybe she should find another lawyer.

She imagined sitting across the desk from an attorney. Imagined the incredulous look on his or her face as she tried to explain the predicament she was in. And what if in the process of checking out her story, the attorney alerted the very people who were looking for her?

Joe wouldn’t think she was crazy. He would realize the threat against her was real.

She had always been in love with Joe. She could admit that now. It had not been just an adolescent crush.

She had tried to cure herself of Joe, telling herself that he was nice to her because he felt sorry for her. Sorry that her parents were dead. Sorry she didn’t have cute clothes and wasn’t popular and lost her one shot at being special when she hurt her knee and couldn’t run track anymore. But now Joe’s own mother had indicated that his feelings for her were not based on pity.

Jamie knelt and touched her baby’s unbelievably soft cheek with a fingertip. “Let’s go, my little Billy boy,” she whispered.

She stopped at a Conoco station on the way out of Guymon. She paid for gas, a cup of coffee, and a cheese sandwich, then—with an ever watchful eye on the car and its precious cargo—studied the map of Oklahoma taped to the wall. The Oklahoma-Kansas line was only thirty-five miles away.

She got back in the car and started the motor. Then, absently stroking her dog, she sat there for a time, trying to decide what to do. She was exhausted and desperately in need of sleep. The stitches in her bottom hurt like hell. The baby was whimpering, and soon she would need to nurse him again, longer this time. Maybe she should get a motel room here in Guymon.

But she had used her ATM card here. Twice. She could be traced to this town. Gus Hartmann’s henchmen might already be on their way. Jamie recalled a movie in which an on-the-run Julia Roberts discovered that her bank account had mysteriously vanished, leaving her without funds. Even though Jamie realized that she would be leaving an electronic trail by using her ATM card, she hoped to remove all of the money from her account before anyone had a chance to make it disappear. By then she would be far away from the town in which she made her withdrawals.

She needed to keep going. Needed to put miles between herself and Guymon. Needed to find other banks and withdraw the rest of her money before it vanished like Julia Roberts’s had done. Of course, she was probably being paranoid. Probably Gus Hartmann could not simply pick up a phone and make her money vanish. But just in case he could, she needed that money and whatever she got for selling her car to live on until she had a Social Security number and was able to find a job.

She closed her eyes, trying to will away the headache that was planting itself inside her weary brain.

The next thing she knew her head was jerking back. And she realized that she had dozed off while sitting in the car beside a gas pump.

She could see a road sign indicating that Liberal, Kansas, was straight ahead. She would go there, withdraw more money, and then decide where to go next. She drove behind the service station. She let Ralph run around a bit then fell asleep again while she was nursing Billy.

During the drive to Liberal, when she felt herself starting to nod off, she would pull over onto the shoulder of the two-lane highway, get out of the car, inhale the cold air, swing her arms around for a minute or two, then get back in and drive a few more miles.

Finally she crossed the state line. Liberal was just ahead.

A large stone monument announced that she had arrived in the town. She continued driving until she reached the downtown, where she pulled into the ATM lane of the Bank of America and withdrew $500.

Then, at the Community Bank, the words “Invalid PIN” appeared on the screen.

Very carefully she entered the number again. Then she punched “enter.” And the same words appeared on the screen.

“Oh my God!” Jamie whispered as goose flesh rose on her arms. Her worst fear had been validated. Any notion she had harbored that she had misjudged the entire situation vanished. Some ominous and seemingly omnipotent power had closed her bank account, and the electronic word of that closure had reached all the way to Liberal, Kansas.

She looked around, half expecting men with carefully trimmed hair and wearing overcoats and mirrored sunglasses to appear suddenly and pull her from the car. They hadn’t arrived yet, but they would.

She rested her forehead on the steering wheel.
What should she do?

She couldn’t just sit here like a sitting duck. She needed to hide. And get rid of her car.
ASAP!

The driver of the car in line behind her gently tapped on his horn, reminding her it was time to move on. For an instant, Jamie couldn’t remember how to drive.

Push in the clutch,
she told herself.
Put the car in gear.

She followed the curving drive to the street. Left or right? She turned right and drove hesitantly for a block then pulled into a parking space.

Ralph pushed his head under her idle hand, and she absently began to stroke him. She couldn’t take a bus or a train with a dog. And she couldn’t hitchhike in frigid weather with a two-day-old baby.

What would she do with her possessions if she abandoned her car? She hated to give them up. They were all she had left of her past.

But they were only
things,
she told herself. They weren’t worth losing her baby. Or her life.

She toyed with the idea of renting a car. But she would have to show her driver’s license. How long would it take for the transaction to be traced, for the men in mirrored sunglasses to be looking for a specific rental car with a specific tag number?

Then a hopeful thought crossed her mind. Maybe the computer at the last bank had malfunctioned. Maybe she should try another bank.

She pulled out of the parking space and made a U-turn on the wide street.

She pulled into the ATM lane of a third bank. Her hand was shaking as she inserted her card and punched in her PIN.

Once again she was informed that she had used an invalid number.

She had to get out of Liberal, Kansas.
Now.

She left the bank and headed back toward the highway. When she reached the intersection, she hesitated. Anyone pursuing her probably would expect her to continue heading north, putting as much distance and as many states as possible between herself and the Hartmann Ranch.

She turned south. Once she had crossed back over the state line, she stopped at the first service station and bought an Oklahoma map. She wanted the anonymity provided by a large city, and Oklahoma City was the largest city in the state. She would use only the least traveled roads to get there.

But first, she had to find a place to sleep for a few hours. Her vision was starting to blur. She was weak with exhaustion, probably from all the blood she was losing. She needed to change the pad again. Needed something to eat.

She went through a tiny community whose only businesses seemed to be a convenience store and a tavern. Then she spotted a sign that said
COTTAGES FOR RENT
.

She pulled into what was left of an old-fashioned tourist court—four cottages and a row of empty foundations. A crooked sign with the word
OFFICE
was nailed on the side of a frame house. Jamie climbed up the steps and knocked on the door. An elderly man in filthy overalls opened the door. “Twenty dollars’ cash in advance,” he said. Jamie returned to the car for a twenty-dollar bill, which she exchanged for a key to cottage 2.

She parked the car behind the cottage so it would be out of sight from the road and carried the baby and a few things inside. She watched from the door of the cottage while Ralph raced around the bare foundations then called him inside. She fed him and filled a bowl with water. After changing her baby, she nursed him once again, not because he was crying but because she needed him to let her sleep.

She had promised herself a nice long shower but didn’t have energy left even for that. She drank the bottle of orange juice and ate the banana-nut bread that Mae the midwife had given her, then crawled into bed with her baby and her dog, which probably wasn’t recommended in Mae’s booklets. But first she needed to survive and then she would worry about the rules for child rearing.

She kissed the baby’s forehead and his ears and hands. “I love you, baby Billy.” She felt as though her heart had grown to enormous proportions in order to accommodate all the love she felt for this tiny infant.

With her cheek against the top of his downy head, she used the few minutes she had before sleep claimed her to think about the phone call with Joe’s mother. She replayed the conversation in her head, considering its implications.

It could be weeks—or longer—before the Brammers heard from Joe.

He wasn’t married.

He had searched for her.

His mother thought he had been waiting around for her to grow up.

What did mothers know about such things, though?

Jamie knew, however, that she was going to cling to Mrs. Brammer’s words like a lifeline. Maybe she was setting herself up for disappointment, but she was going to allow herself to hope. What she had to do now was survive until Joe returned from his travels.

The baby woke in the night. Jamie changed him then wrapped them both in a blanket and leaned against the headboard to nurse him. He was getting lustier about the nursing, and her breasts suddenly were much fuller. Painfully so. She worried that she had an infection or that the milk ducts were becoming clogged. She definitely needed to read those booklets, but they would have to wait. Right now the best she could do was fly by the seat of her pants.

She slept a few more hours. When she woke it was dawn. She put on her coat and took Ralph outside for a few minutes, then fed him and set out a bowl of water. Then she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, took a deep breath, and cut her hair, leaving about four inches all over her head.

She had also planned to dye it, but the directions revealed a far more lengthy and complicated process than she had anticipated.

The water in the shower was freezing cold, but she was desperate for a shower. She hurriedly soaped herself and rinsed. When she turned off the water, she could hear Billy crying. She dried quickly and pulled on some clothes. “There, there, there,” she cooed as she picked him up.

Her breasts were as hard as rocks, but their swollen state did not seem to impede the flow. Billy was obviously getting something out of them.

When he finished nursing, she changed him and sponged the cord stump with rubbing alcohol as per Mae’s instructions.

She loaded up her possessions, baby, and dog in the car then pulled up in front of the convenience store and, keeping the car in her line of vision, bought coffee and a packaged pastry.

Billy slept for three hours, which took her as far as the town of Shattuck. She pulled into an empty church parking lot to nurse him and let Ralph out. Then she bought gas along with snacks and water bottles for the road and once again took up her meandering route eastward.

It was evening before she reached the outskirts of Oklahoma City. She pulled over to consult the city map that was printed on the back of the state map. She wanted to be close to the downtown and the inter-city bus station it would offer. Eventually she found herself in a neighborhood near a large hospital complex where formerly large gracious homes had been divided into apartments. Within walking distance were a park and a small commercial area that offered a grocery, bakery, drugstore, and service station. It was almost dark by the time she parked in front of a brick dwelling with an
APARTMENT FOR RENT
sign in a window.

She pulled the knit cap over her much shorter but still blond hair, lifted her baby out of the infant seat, and went inside. The word “Office” was written in magic marker on the first door. Jamie knocked and a seriously overweight woman with graying hair opened the door and stepped out into the hall. She introduced herself as Ruby Duffy.

“You got a husband?” she asked Jamie.

“No, ma’am. It would be just me and the baby.”

Jamie followed behind the woman as she laboriously climbed to the third floor and unlocked the door to an apartment on the backside of the building.

The apartment was bleak. Jamie took in the dingy windows, worn linoleum, stained sink, and mouse droppings in the corners. The double bed took up so much room in the tiny bedroom that the two bottom bureau drawers wouldn’t open all the way. The minuscule kitchen was an alcove off the living room. The living room’s only furnishings were a sofa and chair, both upholstered in cracked brown vinyl, and a battered coffee table. The bathroom was no bigger than a closet, and the only closet was so shallow it offered only a row of hooks on the back wall from which to hang clothes. But the apartment was cheap and the water that came out of the hot-water faucet was actually hot.

Mrs. Duffy announced that she required a month’s rent in advance.

“I have a dog,” Jamie said.

“No dogs,” the landlady said and started for the door.

“He’s a very good dog. Could I just bring him in and let you meet him? You’ll see what a nice dog he is.”

Mrs. Duffy frowned. “You want me to
meet
a dog?”

“Just to see how well behaved he is,” Jamie said. “Please. I’ve come a long way, and I just don’t have the energy to look further.”