John Irving - The Fourth Hand

“But,” the widow went on, “I tried not to think about it, to tell you the truth. And when they showed the lions eating you up, I had trouble watching it. It still makes me sick to think about it.”

“Me, too,” Wallingford said; he didn’t believe she was lying now. It’s hard to tell much about a woman in a sweatshirt, but she seemed fairly compact. Her dark-brown hair needed washing, but Patrick sensed that she was generally a clean person who maintained a neat appearance. The overhead fluorescent light was harsh to her face. She wore no makeup, not even lipstick, and her lower lip was dry and split—probably from biting it. The circles under her brown eyes exaggerated their darkness, and the crow’s-feet at the corners indicated that she was roughly Patrick’s age. (Wallingford was only a few years younger than Otto Clausen, who’d been only a little older than his wife.)

“I suppose you think I’m crazy,” Mrs. Clausen said.

“No! Not at all! I can’t imagine how you must feel—I mean beyond how sad you must be.” In truth, she looked like so many emotionally drained women he’d interviewed—most recently, the sword-swallower’s wife in Mexico City—that Patrick felt he’d met her before.

Mrs. Clausen surprised him by nodding and then pointing in the general direction of his lap. “May I see it?” she asked. In the awkward pause that followed, Wallingford stopped breathing. “Your hand … please. The one you still have.”

He held out his right hand to her, as if it had been newly transplanted. She reached out to take it but stopped herself, leaving his hand extended in a lifeless-looking way.

“It’s just a little small,” she said. “Otto’s is bigger.”

He took back his hand, feeling unworthy.

“Otto cried when he saw how you lost your other hand. He actually cried!” We know, of course, that Otto had felt like throwing up; it had been Mrs. Clausen who’d cried, yet she managed to make Wallingford think that her husband’s compassionate tears were a source of wonder to her still. (So much for a veteran journalist knowing when someone was lying. Wallingford was completely taken in by Mrs. Clausen’s account of Otto’s crying.)

“You loved him very much. I can see that,” Patrick said.

The widow bit her lower lip and nodded fiercely, tears welling in her eyes. “We were trying to have a baby. We just kept trying and trying. I don’t know why it wasn’t working.” She dropped her chin to her chest. She held her parka to her face and sobbed quietly into it. Although it was not as faded, the parka was the same Green Bay green as her sweatshirt, with the Packers’ logo (the gold helmet with the white G ) emblazoned on the back.

“It will always be Otto’s hand to me,” Mrs. Clausen said with unexpected volume, pushing the parka away. For the first time, she leveled her gaze at Patrick’s face; she looked as if she’d changed her mind about something. “How old are you, anyway?” she asked. Perhaps from seeing Patrick Wallingford only on television, she’d expected someone older or younger.

“I’m thirty-four,” Wallingford answered, defensively.

“You’re my age exactly,” she told him. He detected the faintest trace of a smile, as if—either in spite of her grief or because of it—she were genuinely mad.

“I won’t be a nuisance—I mean after the operation,” she continued. “But to see his hand… later, to feel it… well, that shouldn’t be very much of a burden to you, should it? If you respect me, I’ll respect you.”

“Certainly!” Patrick said, but he failed to see what was coming.

“I still want to have Otto’s baby.”

Wallingford still didn’t get it. “Do you mean you might be pregnant?” he cried excitedly. “Why didn’t you say so? That’s wonderful! When will you know?”

That same trace of an insane smile crossed her face again. Patrick hadn’t noticed that she’d kicked off her running shoes. Now she unzipped her jeans; she pulled them down, together with her panties, but she hesitated before taking off her sweatshirt.

It was additionally disarming to Patrick that he’d never seen a woman undress this way—that is, bottom first, leaving the top until last. To Wallingford, Mrs. Clausen seemed sexually inexperienced to an embarrassing degree. Then he heard her voice; something had changed in it, and not just the volume. To his surprise, he had an erection, not because Mrs. Clausen was half naked but because of her new tone of voice.

“There’s no other time,” she told him. “If I’m going to have Otto’s baby, I should already be pregnant. After the surgery, you’ll be in no shape to do this. You’ll be in the hospital, you’ll be taking a zillion drugs, you’ll be in pain—”

“Mrs. Clausen!” Patrick Wallingford said. He quickly stood up—and as quickly he sat back down. Until he’d tried to stand, he hadn’t realized how much of a hard-on he had; it was as obvious as what Wallingford said next.

“This would be my baby, not your husband’s, wouldn’t it?”

But she’d already taken off the sweatshirt. Although she’d left her bra on, he could nonetheless see that her breasts were more special than he’d imagined. There was the glint of something in her navel; the body-piercing was also unexpected. Patrick didn’t look at the ornament closely—he was afraid it might have something to do with the Green Bay Packers.

“His hand is the closest to him I can get,” Mrs. Clausen said with unflagging determination. The ferocity of her will could easily have been mistaken for desire. But what worked, meaning what was irresistible, was her voice. She held Wallingford down in the straight-backed chair. She knelt to undo his belt buckle, then she yanked down his pants. By the time Patrick leaned forward, to stop her from removing his undershorts, she’d already removed them. Before he could stand up again, or even sit up straight, she had straddled his lap; her breasts brushed his face. She moved so quickly, he’d somehow missed the moment when she’d taken off her bra.

“I don’t have his hand yet!” Wallingford protested, but when had he ever said no?

“Please respect me,” she begged him in a whisper. What a whisper it was!

Her small, firm buttocks were warm and smooth against his thighs, and his fleeting glimpse of the doohickey in her navel—even more than the appeal of her breasts—had instantly given Wallingford what felt like an erection on top of his erection. He was aware of her tears against his neck as her hand guided him inside her.

It was not his right hand that she clutched in hers and pulled to her breast—it was his stump. She murmured something that sounded like, “What were you going to do right now, anyway—nothing this important, right?” Then she asked him,

“Don’t you want to make a baby?”

“I respect you, Mrs. Clausen,” he stammered, but he abandoned all hope of resisting her. It was clear to them both that he’d already given in.

“Please call me Doris,” Mrs. Clausen said through her tears.

“Doris?”

“Respect me, respect me. That’s all I ask.” She was sobbing.

“I do, I do respect you… Doris,” Patrick said. His one hand had instinctively found the small of her back, as if he’d slept beside her every night for years and even in the dark he could reach out and touch exactly that part of her he wanted to hold. At that moment, he could have sworn that her hair was wet—wet and cold, as if she’d just been swimming. Of course, he would think later, she must have known she was ovulating; a woman who’s been trying and trying to get pregnant surely knows. Doris Clausen must also have known that her difficulty in getting pregnant had been entirely Otto’s problem.