OVER THE NEXT few weeks, Jamie was able to control her nausea by never allowing her stomach to be completely empty. If she awoke during the night, she ate crackers. And she ate crackers while still lying in bed in the morning. Which helped but didn’t cure her.
She no longer had the energy for swimming laps, but she still went on walks with Ralph, always with a packet of saltines in her pocket. Lester usually accompanied her, but he no longer did so on foot. With country music blaring out the open windows, Lester would follow along behind her in a white pickup with the words “Hartmann Ranch” painted on the side. Jamie could have done without the music, but she liked the privacy that the arrangement provided. And sometimes he would drop far enough behind her that the radio wasn’t an issue. Then the only sounds were the wind rustling through the prairie grasses and the calls and chirps of the many grassland birds. When she saw a bird she didn’t recognize, she would pull Granny’s field guide from her pocket.
After her morning walk, Jamie would eat a light lunch and read or watch television. But more often than not, she would succumb to the drowsiness that was also a symptom of early pregnancy. She wished her correspondence course would arrive so she could make better use of all this free time, but probably she wouldn’t be any more wakeful if she was trying to study.
Actually Jamie felt rather proud of how well she was managing the nausea. It just took a little planning and sticking to a routine. She was losing weight, but Freda said that wasn’t unusual during the first trimester and was not a worry.
Gradually, however, the nausea began to increase, each day worse than the one before. Jamie’s two main concerns were looking after her dog and not throwing up, and it was becoming difficult to do either. Being on her feet not only made her more nauseated, it made her dizzy. When she fell and hit her head on the corner of the coffee table, Freda stitched up her scalp and ordered her to bed. When Ralph was sent to stay in the security office, Jamie didn’t even protest.
In spite of the bed rest, the nausea increased. Just the act of lifting her head from the pillow made Jamie feel sick. She wished she had never heard of surrogate motherhood. She’d rather be homeless on the streets of Austin than enduring a continuous state of nausea. Her tortured stomach rejected even the tiniest sip of water and had her reaching for the basin on her bedside table.
Freda came twice a day to give her IV fluids. “This will pass, sugar,” the nurse assured Jamie. “I promise that it will. And don’t worry about your baby. Nature looks after babies first and mothers second.”
Jamie wanted to correct Freda. The baby in her womb was not her baby. It belonged to Amanda Hartmann. But talking took too much effort. And to think that she had willingly subjected herself to this torture! If she ever decided to have a child of her own, she would adopt one.
Once a day, Miss Montgomery and Freda would help Jamie to the shower, where she would sit on a metal stool and allow the hot water to stream over her body. Which was heaven. For a time she could almost forget about the nausea. Then her two keepers would decide she had been in heaven long enough and dry her off, then help her into a nightshirt and back into bed. She hated being so helpless, but she was grateful to them. “You’re very kind,” she would say. Of course, a little voice inside her head would remind her that it was not just kindness that motivated the two women. Caring for her was one more way they could serve Amanda Hartmann. When Miss Montgomery was alone with Jamie, she was less gentle as she helped her back and forth to the bathroom or lifted her head so she could take a sip of water. “One of the reasons Amanda selected you was because you seemed so strong and healthy,” the housekeeper mumbled on one occasion. “And just look at you. You have no idea what you are putting that dear woman through.”
Jamie now slept most of the time. Wakefulness meant the return of nausea. When she felt herself waking, she would concentrate on going back in the other direction. Often she would find herself stalled just on the edge. Not asleep. Not awake. Balancing there like a trapeze artist on a high wire.
She was seldom alone. If the nurse or Miss Montgomery wasn’t with her, one of the housemaids would watch over her. And even at night, she was aware of Miss Montgomery coming into her bedroom to check on her. Sometimes she would sit in the corner chair for a time. Or kneel beside the bed and pray that God would watch over the blessed baby in this young woman’s womb.
But sometimes it was Jamie’s grandmother sitting in the corner chair. At times, she could even feel her grandmother’s gentle hands placing a damp washcloth on her forehead.
When Jamie woke during the night, she would look to see if anyone was sitting in the chair, hoping that her grandmother would be there. Of course, she knew perfectly well that Granny was dead and that she was hallucinating because she was so weak. But she didn’t care about the reason why. She liked having her grandmother look after her.
One night Jamie felt well enough to speak to her. “Is it hard for you to come here, Granny? Do you have to ask permission?”
Granny cackled like an old hen laying an egg. Which seemed strange. Jamie couldn’t ever remember her grandmother laughing like that.
Jamie struggled to rise onto an elbow and gave the shadowy figure in the corner a better look. The woman had long white hair rather than her grandmother’s frizzy halo.
“You’re not my grandmother,” Jamie said accusingly.
“Never said I was,” the shadowy figure said.
“Who are you, then?” Jamie asked, allowing her head to sink back on the pillow. She felt light-headed. Maybe she was still asleep and having a strange dream. Then she realized the most incredible thing.
She wasn’t nauseated.
The figure in the corner rose from the chair and came closer to the bed. It was an old, disheveled woman who smelled bad. “I am Mary Millicent,” the woman said. “I can save your soul if you want me to.”
“Mary Millicent Tutt?” Jamie asked.
The old woman sat on the side of the bed. “Tutt? Yes, that’s my name. And there was another name, too.” She frowned and looked around the room as though searching for her other name. “Oh, dear, what was it?”
“Hartmann?” Jamie suggested.
“Yes. The man I married was named Hartmann. Jason Hartmann. He had a penis as long as a hammer handle.”
I must be dreaming, Jamie decided. She closed her eyes and eased her body back into a sleeping position. But the woman smelled, she reminded herself. She couldn’t remember ever smelling someone in a dream.
Maybe she should take a second look.
But when she opened her eyes, the malodorous old woman was gone.
First light was coming through the window when next she woke. Jamie lay very still and put her hands on her stomach, which was tender from all that retching. With great effort, she stretched her legs and lifted her arms over her head. Her muscles felt as though they were made of Jell-O. But the nausea had retreated.
She glanced at the corner of the room recalling her strange dream, which was already growing fuzzy. A dream about Amanda Hartmann’s mother? That was just too weird. If she was going to keep on having dreams about old dead women, she would much prefer limiting them to just her grandmother.
Jamie rolled onto her side and tentatively put one foot and then the other on the floor and pushed herself to a sitting position. She felt hollow and weak but not queasy. “Hot damn!” she said.
Very carefully, she made her way into the bathroom, where she used the toilet and brushed her teeth. Then, feeling stronger with each step, she went into the sitting room, where she got a bottle of water from the refrigerator. She opened the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony. She inhaled several breaths of the clean morning air then sipped the deliciously cold water and watched as daylight crept across the sky, erasing the stars as it went.
“A new day,” she whispered, then turned to go inside and get on with her day-a day that would not be spent in bed.
As she closed the doors, she realized the holly bushes were dead. The inside plants were still alive but no one had thought to water the ones on the balcony. She wouldn’t bother to replace them, she decided.
She walked over to her desk and looked at the calendar. She wasn’t sure what day it was, but it must already be well into September. She had been sick for almost a month.
The first thing she was going to do was take a nice hot bath, she decided-all by herself!
That was where Miss Montgomery found her-in the bathtub. “What do you think you’re doing!” the housekeeper shrieked.
“I’m feeling better,” Jamie said, covering her breasts with her arms. “Thank you so much for all you have done to help me get through this, but I need to have my privacy back.”
The woman stood there for a time, glowering. “You don’t even have a bath mat on the floor. You could slip and fall.”
Jamie took the bath mat hanging on the side of the tub and dropped it to the floor. “Thank you,” she repeated. “I know this has been difficult for you, but I’m fine now. Really I am. I would appreciate it if you closed the bathroom door when you leave. It’s rather drafty with it open.”
With a huff, the housekeeper turned heel and left. She did not close the bathroom door.
Jamie leaned back in the tub, planning to luxuriate a while longer in the hot water, but the draft from the open door chilled her shoulders. With a sigh, she carefully got herself out of the tub. She was going to start locking the door to her apartment, she decided. Of course, Miss Montgomery had a key, but locking the door would send a message.
After she had dried off, she looked at herself in the mirror on the back of the door and hardly recognized herself. “You look like hell,” she told her emaciated self.
She put on a robe and made two phone calls. The first was to the security office. “This is Jamie Long,” she said. “I need for you to bring my dog back. As soon as possible, please.”
Then she called the kitchen. “I’d like some hot tea and toast,” she said when Anita answered.
Ralph arrived just as she was finishing her second cup of tea. His joy was boundless. Jamie wept as she buried her face against his neck.
She took him out into the backyard. While he raced around, she sat on the steps of the gazebo and lifted her face to the sun. Fall was in the air, she realized, with leaves just beginning to turn on the trees. It would be spring before she could leave here. Before she could have her life back.
Ralph came to sit beside her, and she put her arm around his shoulders. “I wish I could get us back to the starting line and withdraw from the race, but that’s not going to happen.”
Ralph thumped his tail on the step and licked her chin. Jamie hugged her dog and sighed. There was no going back.
“We’ll get through this,” she promised, planting a kiss on the top of Ralph’s scruffy head. “Less than seven months from now, we’ll be on our way back to Austin. I’ll find us a little house with a backyard near the campus where we’ll be safe and happy and never have to think of Hartmann Ranch ever again.”
But no matter how much she wanted to forget this time in her life, she knew she never would. And sometimes she would pause to think of this other time and place and the child she had borne here.
Not wanting to push her luck, Jamie had only a bowl of soup for lunch, after which Lester came to drive her to Freda’s clinic.
“Montgomery says that you’ve made a miraculous recovery,” Freda said. “Climb up on the table, and let me give you and the baby a once-over. I told you the nausea would pass, didn’t I? I told Montgomery that a big, strong, healthy girl like you would bounce back just fine. Matter of fact, I was more worried about Montgomery worrying herself into a nervous breakdown or a stroke than I was about you.”
When she was finished with her examination, Freda pronounced Jamie “fit as a fiddle.”
“I’ll call Montgomery and let her know,” she said. “And Amanda. She’s been worried sick about you.”
“Where is Amanda?” Jamie asked.
“In Virginia right now. She travels a lot, you know, speaking at revivals and political rallies. She’s a very important woman,” Freda said with pride in her voice. “Some folks say the only reason our dear president got himself elected was because Amanda Hartmann raised all that money and let righteous people know that it was their Christian duty to vote for him. You should hear the woman speak. You can just feel her love for the Lord. It fills up the room and fills up people’s hearts. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it,” Freda said, rubbing her arms. “Course she’ll start tapering off now that…” Freda’s voice trailed off and she turned her attention to making an entry on Jamie’s chart. “Leave a specimen on the way out,” she said, nodding in the direction of the bathroom.
When Jamie came out of the clinic, Lester was dozing behind the wheel. He awoke and stretched when she got in the truck.
Back at the ranch house, instead of climbing the stairs to her apartment, Jamie walked to the end of the first-floor hallway and stopped in front of the door to Ann Montgomery’s apartment. She paused a minute, getting up her courage, then tapped on the door.
“Can I help you?” the housekeeper’s voice asked from behind her.
Startled, Jamie turned around. Miss Montgomery was wearing her usual navy blue-today’s attire was a double-breasted dress with white buttons. “I want to ask you a question,” Jamie explained.
“Well, what is it?”
“If Amanda Hartmann is expecting a baby, do she and her husband still plan to raise the one I am carrying?”
“Who told you that she was expecting a baby?” Miss Montgomery asked, a frown deepening the creases in her forehead.
“Freda sort of indicated that she was.”
Miss Montgomery digested this information, then forced a smile and patted Jamie’s arm. “You need not concern yourself with what is going on in Amanda’s life,” she said, her tone firm but pleasant. “All you need to know is that the child you are carrying is destined to be her child. And Mister Toby’s, too, of course. They want this child very much, more than you could ever know.”
Ann Montgomery watched as Jamie headed down the hall and started up the stairs. Under other circumstances she might actually have allowed herself to like the girl. As it was, all she felt was wariness.
Ann unlocked the door and went inside her spacious apartment with its handsome rugs, custom-made drapes, and elegant furnishings. It was a beautiful room that usually gave her great pleasure every time she opened the door and stepped inside. Her pleasure was muted, however, by what Jamie Long had just told her.
Amanda claiming to be pregnant?
She went into her bedroom, which was austere compared with the living room. Her father had made the sturdy bedroom furniture for his only daughter.
She sat on the bed that she had first slept in as a girl, the same bed that she had shared with Buck Hartmann for more than twenty years. She and Buck had made love under this same quilt.
She looked at her ugly old face in the speckled old mirror that hung above the dresser. She had been beautiful back then. Buck would call her his “raven-haired beauty.” But the years had not been kind to her. Her once willowy body was now thick and buxom, her once smooth skin crisscrossed with a maze of wrinkles.
After Buck’s son, Jason, married, Mary Millicent came into Ann’s life and immediately began transforming the ranch house and making it her own. That was when the guests started coming. So many guests-mostly wealthy men and powerful politicians who came to hunt and play poker into the night.
Mary Millicent was often dismissive of Ann and never sought her advice, allowing both her personal maid and her secretary to usurp Ann’s authority at the ranch. But Ann was a faithful listener of Mary Millicent’s Sunday morning radio show. On her knees, she would pray along with Mary Millicent and ask the Lord to forgive her for welcoming a married man into her bed. She wondered if serving a woman of God would help balance out the transgressions in her life. And as the years went by, Mary Millicent came to rely on Ann more and more to look after things at the ranch and care for her children.
After Jason died, Mary Millicent once again took up her ministry, and Amanda and Gus were sent away to school but spent their summers and school vacations at the ranch.
Jason’s death had been more than Buck could bear. Not only had he lost his only child, he lost the dream that his son would one day be president of the United States. A month or so after Jason’s death, Buck went out to the paddock and managed to get his weak, old body on top of an unbroken colt. They found him the next morning miles from the ranch house, his neck broken, the colt grazing nearby.
Buck had promised to leave her enough money that she would never want for anything, but his last will and testament made no provision for the housekeeper whose legs he had crawled between night after night for decades. She chose not to hate him. He had just forgotten.
It was Buck’s grandchildren, her beloved Amanda and Gus, who made things right for her. Ann Montgomery wasn’t wealthy but she had all the money she would ever need and a home for life.
Ann allowed her vision to become soft-focus as she stared into the mirror. Instead of the formidable old woman she had become, she saw instead the raven-haired beauty who had loved Buck Hartmann. And continued to love his grandchildren.
Then she took a deep breath and reached for the telephone on her bedside table. First she called Freda. Then she called Gus. He answered on the second ring.
“My darling boy, there’s something I think you need to know,” Ann said.
Jamie was watching CNN-which she had come to think of as her best friend, after Ralph, of course-when she heard a knock at the door. When she opened the door, one of the housemaids handed her a cardboard box.
Jamie thanked the girl and shut the door. Inside the box was her correspondence course. Finally, she thought. She didn’t even mind that Miss Montgomery had opened the box and probably riffled through the lessons and textbooks. After all, she had to make sure that the University of Texas wasn’t sending her a stash of drugs or cartons of cigarettes.
Jamie wondered if the university had inadvertently omitted a cover letter from the professor or if Miss Montgomery had confiscated it.
That evening Jamie began reading the assignment for the first lesson. When she started nodding off, she picked up the remote control and scrolled through the channels until suddenly she was startled to see Amanda Hartmann’s face on the screen. “Oh, my God!” she said, causing Ralph to jump to his feet.
Jamie sank onto the sofa and stared at the screen. Amanda’s eyes were closed. She was telling God that more than seven thousand souls had gathered here this night to ask his forgiveness for their sins and offer him their souls. The prayer was accompanied by a harpist playing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
The camera was tight on Amanda’s face, which was even lovelier than Jamie remembered. She seemed to glow with an inner radiance. Or maybe it was just clever lighting. Whatever, the woman looked like an angel. Her voice was as beautiful as her face and filled with such hope and exultation as she promised the Lord’s forgiveness. All they had to do was ask, and their souls would be washed clean. They would live the rest of their days on this earth with joyful hearts, and when they died they would rise through the clouds and be welcomed by all of those who had gone before them and would see the face of the one true God.
Then the scene was shown through another camera’s eye, with Amanda a small kneeling figure in the middle of a huge stage at the front of a vast auditorium. Huge television screens, one on each side of the stage, showed close-ups of Amanda’s face.
A trailer running across the bottom of the screen announced that this was the Amanda Tutt Hartmann Crusade being broadcast live from Cincinnati.
Ralph slipped into Jamie’s arms, and she hugged him close, her eyes glued to the screen. The baby inside of her belonged to this woman. A holy woman. A woman pure of heart and soul.
I should be happy, Jamie told herself.