“I never liked Gus Hartmann,” Bentley admitted, “or people like him-people who think this country should be run to benefit the few on the backs of the many. But, then, in many ways I am as guilty as Gus. I never broke the law for him, but I certainly bent it. But in the last few seconds of Gus’s life, he did the right thing. The shot that was meant for Jamie’s heart blew his brains out. I suppose that if there is such a thing as redemption, Gus Hartmann earned it.”
“Yes, and it leaves me in a terrible quandary,” Jamie admitted. “I can’t begin to add up all the grief and pain and fear that he caused Joe and me, but in the end, he apparently had a change of heart. It’s hard for me to know if I should curse his evil life or be grateful for his few seconds of atonement.”
Silence fell over the table. The only sounds were the chirping of birds and the distant sound of traffic. Then Jamie stood.
Bentley and Joe followed her lead.
Bentley felt their watching eyes while he put his yellow legal pad back in his briefcase.
“I’m sorry for all the grief I’ve caused you,” he told them.
“But out of all that grief came Billy,” Jamie said. “There’s no point in looking back or even in casting blame, I suppose. The only place we can go is forward.”
She extended her hand across the table, and Bentley hastily grabbed it. “You are a remarkable young woman, Jamie Long. I knew that the first minute I laid eyes on you. A remarkable woman.”
“It’s Jamie Brammer now,” she corrected, withdrawing her hand and taking a step toward the patio door.
“Yes, of course,” Bentley said. “I believe that I knew that. I wish you both the very best. Will you make your home here in Houston?”
“Maybe someday,” Joe said.
“We’re proud to be Americans,” Jamie said, “but until I know that sort of abuse of power can no longer happen in this country again, I think we’ll feel safer raising our family someplace else.”
Joe put an arm around his wife’s waist. “We’re expecting Billy’s little sister in March, and we both like the idea of raising our children as citizens of the world. I have an inheritance that will allow us to float for a time. I may take another course or two in international law at Oxford. Or we’re thinking about studying Italian and attending the university in Bologna. Jamie wants to study medicine, and medical education was invented there.”
Such a remarkable couple, Bentley thought. He wanted to tell Jamie and Joe to appreciate their youth and beauty and lives full of promise, but after what they had gone through, he suspected that they already did.
“I wish you well,” he said and took his leave.
As he slid the door closed behind him, he caught a glimpse of Jamie putting her head on her husband’s shoulder and him kissing the top of her head. The expression on Joe Brammer’s face was so tender it brought tears to Bentley’s eyes.
A Conversation with Judith Henry Wall
Q. What sparked the idea for this intriguing, controversial novel?
A. My increasing discomfort in recent years with the blending of politics and religion that is taking place in the United States.
Q. Authors often remark that they put a little bit of themselves into their characters. Which characters in The Surrogate do you identify with, and why?
A. Creating characters is like method acting. An author must, in a sense, become each of his or her characters and see through their eyes, hear through their ears, think their thoughts, feel their pain, etc., which means that all characters-good or evil-come out of an author’s imagination and his or her particular set of experiences, observations, education, relationships, etc. And I believe most authors keep in mind as they create their characters that even very evil people love their children or have some other redeeming quality and that even the most saintly are not perfect.
This is the first book in which I have created true villains and was rather proud of them. Gus, Amanda, Miss Montgomery, and Mary Millicent were united in their genuine love for Sonny. I didn’t like them, but I understood them.
Jamie, as the story’s protagonist, is the character who most closely shares my own sensibilities. I liked her a lot and suffered along with her, but she is not me. I have never birthed a baby in a blizzard or been on the run.
Q. Did you have any particular religious leaders or televangelists in mind when you created Amanda Hartmann?
A. As a child, I sometimes watched a very famous televangelist “healing” people during his weekly telecast from Oklahoma City. As a college student, I lived one summer near a small church, where-with its windows and doors open to the night air-people “talked in tongues” in very loud voices until the wee hours of the morning. And over the years I have watched televangelists conduct their crusades and have always been amazed by the power these people have over their flock and how readily people give over their own free will to others.
Q. On a similar note, did you have particular businessmen or politicians in mind when you created Gus Hartmann?
A. Yes.
Q. Your story seems to carry some heavy political implications. Are there current conditions in this country that prompted you to craft this layer into the novel?
A. Yes.
Q. The kind of power that Gus Hartmann wields and manipulates to find Jamie Long and baby Billy seems frighteningly possible. What kind of research did you do to prepare that aspect of the story?
A. I interviewed a former CIA agent and closely follow current events.
Q. Are you a mother? What kind of relationship do you have with your family?
A. I am very close to my three children and five grandchildren and all the other members of my large, quite wonderful family. We like and love each other and have great family gatherings.
Q. Have you ever known a surrogate mother? Do you think your portrayal of the dilemma a potential surrogate faces is accurate, one that women who have served as surrogates would identify with?
A. I have never known a surrogate mother but can understand why a woman might want to enter into such an arrangement. In writing the book, I tried very hard to in no way criticize surrogate motherhood per se.
Q. Physical beauty plays a subtle but large role in this book. Amanda is described repeatedly as angelic and beautiful, as is Sonny, while Gus is short and somewhat deformed. It is critically important to Amanda that her surrogate be attractive and athletic. What was your intention with this line of detail?
A. It seemed only natural to me that Amanda, whose own beauty had been such an important part of her appeal and power, would do everything possible to create a perfectly formed, beautiful child to replace her handsome son and to follow in her footsteps.
Judith Henry Wall
