John Irving - The Fourth Hand

“Tell her you’re my mother,” Wallingford whispered in Sarah’s ear. (He was briefly ashamed to remember that the last time he’d used this line, his mother was still alive.)

“I’m Patrick Wallingford’s mother, dear,” Sarah Williams said into the phone.

“Who are you ?” The familiar “dear” made Wallingford think of Evelyn Arbuthnot again.

Mary hung up.

Ms. Williams went on reading from the penultimate chapter of Charlotte’s Web, which concludes, “No one was with her when she died.”

Sobbing, Sarah handed the book to Patrick. He’d promised to read her the last chapter, about Wilbur the pig, “And so Wilbur came home to his beloved manure pile…” the story of which Wallingford reported without emotion, as if it were the news. (It was better than the news, but that was another story.) When Patrick finished, they dozed until it was dark outside; only half awake, Wallingford turned off the light on the night table so that it was dark inside the hotel room, too. He lay still. Sarah Williams was holding him, her breasts pressing into his shoulder blades. The firm but soft bulge of her stomach fitted the curve at the small of his back; one of her arms encircled his waist. With her hand, she gripped his penis a little more tightly than was comfortable. Even so, he fell asleep.

Probably they would have slept through the night. On the other hand, they might have woken up just before dawn and made intense love in the semidarkness, possibly because they both knew they would never see each other again. But it hardly matters what they would have done, because the phone rang again. This time Wallingford answered it. He knew who it was; even asleep, he’d been expecting the call. He’d told Mary the story of how and when his mother had died. Patrick was surprised how long it had taken Mary to remember it.

“She’s dead. Your mother’s dead ! You told me yourself! She died when you were in college!”

“That’s right, Mary.”

“You’re in love with someone!” Mary was wailing. Naturally Sarah could hear her.

“That’s right,” Wallingford answered. Patrick saw no reason to explain to Mary that it wasn’t Sarah Williams he was in love with. Mary had hit on him for too long.

“It’s that same young woman, isn’t it?” Sarah asked. The sound of Sarah’s voice, whether or not Mary actually heard what she said, was enough to set Mary off again.

“She sounds old enough to be your mother!” Mary shrieked.

“Mary, please—”

“That dick Fred is looking for you, Pat. Everyone’s looking for you! You’re not supposed to go off for a weekend without leaving a number! You’re not supposed to be unreachable ! Are you trying to get fired or what?”

That was the first time Wallingford thought about trying to get fired; in the dark hotel room, the idea glowed as brightly as the digital alarm clock on the night table.

“You do know what’s happened, don’t you?” Mary asked. “Or have you been fucking so much that you’ve somehow managed to miss the news?”

“I have not been fucking.” Patrick knew it was a provocative thing to say. After all, Mary was a journalist. That Wallingford had been fucking a woman in a hotel room all weekend was a fairly obvious conclusion to come to; like most journalists, Mary had learned to draw her own fairly obvious conclusions quickly.

“You don’t expect me to believe you, do you?” she asked.

“I’m beginning not to care if you believe me, Mary.”

“That dick Fred—”

“Please tell him I’ll be back tomorrow, Mary.”

“You are trying to get fired, aren’t you?” Mary said. Once again, she hung up first. For the second time, Wallingford considered the idea of trying to get fired—he didn’t know why it seemed to be such a glow-in-the-dark idea.

“You didn’t tell me you were married or something,” Sarah Williams said. He could tell she was not in the bed; he could hear her, but only dimly see her, getting dressed in the dark room.

“I’m not married or anything,” Patrick said.

“She’s just a particularly possessive girlfriend, I suppose.”

“She’s not a girlfriend. We’ve never had sex. We’re not involved in that way,”

Wallingford declared.

“Don’t expect me to believe that,” Sarah said. (Journalists aren’t the only people who draw their own fairly obvious conclusions quickly.)

“I’ve really enjoyed being with you,” Patrick told her, trying to change the subject; he was also being sincere. But he could hear her sigh; even in the dark, he could tell she was doubting him.

“If I decide to have the abortion, maybe you’ll be kind enough to go with me,”

Sarah Williams ventured. “It would mean coming back here a week from today.”

Perhaps she meant to give him more time to think about it, but Wallingford was thinking of the likelihood of his being recognized—LION GUY ESCORTS

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN TO ABORTION MILL, or a headline to that effect.

“I just hate the idea of doing it alone, but I guess it doesn’t sound like a fun date,”

Sarah continued.

“Of course I’ll go with you,” he told her, but she’d noticed his hesitation. “If you want me to.” He immediately hated how this sounded. Of course she wanted him to! She’d asked him, hadn’t she? “Yes, definitely, I’ll go with you,” Patrick said, but he was only making it worse.

“No, that’s all right. You don’t even know me,” Sarah said.

“I want to go with you,” Patrick lied, but she was over it now.

“You didn’t tell me you were in love with someone,” she accused him.

“It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t love me.” Wallingford knew that Sarah Williams wouldn’t believe that, either.

She had finished dressing. He thought she was groping for the door. He turned on the light on the night table; it momentarily blinded him, but he was nonetheless aware of Sarah turning her face away from the light. She left the room without looking at him. He turned off the light and lay naked in bed, with the idea of trying to get himself fired glowing in the dark.

Wallingford knew that Sarah Williams had been upset about more than Mary’s phone call. Sometimes it’s easiest to confide the most intimate things to a stranger—Patrick himself had done it. And hadn’t Sarah mothered him for a whole day? The least he could do was go with her to the abortion. So what if someone recognized him? Abortion was legal, and he believed it should be legal. He regretted his earlier hesitation.

Therefore, when Wallingford called the hotel operator to ask for a wake-up call, he also asked to be connected to Sarah’s room—he didn’t know the number. He wanted to propose a late bite to eat. Surely some place in Harvard Square would still be serving, especially on a Saturday night. Wallingford wanted to convince Sarah to let him go with her to the abortion; he felt it would be better to try to persuade her over dinner.

But the operator informed him that no one named Sarah Williams was registered in the hotel.

“She must have just checked out,” Patrick said.

There was the indistinct sound of fingers on a computer keyboard, searching. In the new century, Wallingford imagined, it was probably the last sound we would hear before our deaths.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the hotel operator told him. “There never was a Sarah Williams staying here.”

Wallingford wasn’t that surprised. Later he would call the English Department at Smith—he would be equally unsurprised to discover that no one named Sarah Williams taught there. She may have sounded like an associate professor of English when she was discussing Stuart Little, and she may have taught at Smith, but she was not a Sarah Williams.