by John Irving
"Oh," Wallingford said. He tried to take his hand out of her motherly grasp, but Ms. Arbuthnot wouldn't let him; after all, she had two hands and she firmly held his one hand between them.
"Listen to me, Patrick," Evelyn said. "It's great that Dr. Sayzac wants to give you a new left hand--"
"Dr. Zajac," Wallingford corrected her petulantly.
"Dr. Zajac, then," Ms. Arbuthnot continued. "I don't mean to take anything away from the courage involved in subjecting yourself to such a risky experiment--"
"It would be only the second such surgery ever," Patrick, again petulantly, informed her. "The first one didn't work."
"Yes, yes--you've told me," Ms. Arbuthnot reminded him. "But do you have the courage to change your life?" Then she fell asleep, her grip on his hand relaxing as she did so. Wallingford probably could have pulled his hand away without waking her, but he didn't want to risk it.
Evelyn would be flying to San Francisco; Wallingford was on his way back to New York. There was another women-related conference in San Francisco, she'd told him.
He hadn't asked her what her "message" was, nor would he ever finish one of her books. The only one he tried to read would be disappointing to him. Evelyn Arbuthnot was more interesting as a person than she was as a writer. Like many smart, motivated people who've had busy and informed lives, she didn't write especially well.
In bed, where personal history is most unselfconsciously forthcoming, Ms. Arbuthnot had told Patrick that she'd been married twice--the first time when she was very young. She'd divorced her first husband; her second, the one she'd truly loved, had died. She was a widow with grown children and several young grandchildren. Her children and grandchildren, she'd told Wallingford, were her life; her writing and traveling were only her message. But in what little Wallingford managed to read of Evelyn Arbuthnot's writing, her "message" eluded him. Yet whenever he thought of her, he had to admit that she'd taught him quite a lot about himself.
On the bullet train, just before their arrival in Tokyo, some Japanese schoolgirls and their accompanying teacher recognized him. They seemed to be gathering their courage to send one of the girls the length of the passenger car to ask the lion guy for his autograph. Patrick hoped not--giving the girls his signature would require extricating his right hand from Evelyn's sleeping fingers.
Finally none of the schoolgirls could summon the courage to approach him; their teacher came down the aisle of the bullet train instead. She was wearing a uniform that closely resembled those of her young charges, and although she was young herself, she conveyed both the severity and formality of a much older woman when she spoke to him. She was also exceedingly polite; she made such an effort to keep her voice low and soft, so as not to wake Evelyn, that Wallingford had to lean a little into the aisle in order to hear her above the clatter of the speeding train.
"The girls wanted me to tell you that they think you're very handsome, and that you must be very brave," she told Patrick. "I have something to say to you, too," she whispered. "When I first saw you, with the lion, I regret that I didn't think you would be such a nice man. But seeing you as you are--you know, just traveling and talking with your mother--I now realize that you are a very nice man."
"Thank you," Wallingford whispered back, although her misunderstanding pained him, and when the young teacher had returned to her seat, Evelyn gave his hand a squeeze--just to let him know she'd been awake. When Wallingford looked at her, her eyes were open wide and she was smiling at him.
Less than a year later, when he heard of her death--"The breast cancer returned," one of her daughters told Wallingford when he called to give Evelyn's children and grandchildren his condolences--Patrick would remember her smile on the bullet train. The lump, which Evelyn had told him was nothing, had been something after all. Given how long a scar it had been, maybe she'd already known that.
There was something entirely too fragile about Patrick Wallingford. Women--his ex-wife, Marilyn, excepted--were always trying to spare him things, although that hardly had been Evelyn Arbuthnot's style.
Wallingford would remember, too, that he could have asked the Japanese schoolteacher what the official name for National Prayer Weekend for Girls was, but he hadn't. Incredibly, especially for a journalist, he'd spent six days in Japan and learned absolutely nothing about the country.
Like the young schoolteacher, the Japanese he'd met had been extremely civilized and courteous, including the Japanese newspapermen who'd been Wallingford's hosts--they'd been a lot more respectful and well mannered than most of the journalists Patrick worked with in New York. But he'd asked them nothing; he'd been too consumed studying himself. All he'd half-learned was how to mock their accents, which he imitated incorrectly.
Fault Marilyn, Wallingford's ex-wife, all you want. She was right about at least one thing--Patrick was permanently a boy. Yet he was capable of growing up, or so he hoped.
There is often a defining experience that marks any significant change in the course of a person's life. Patrick Wallingford's defining experience was not losing his left hand, nor was it adjusting to life without that hand. The experience that truly changed him was a largely squandered trip to Japan.
"Tell us about Japan, Pat. How was it?" those fast-talking women in the New York newsroom would ask him in their ever-flirtatious, always-baiting voices. (They'd already learned from Dick how Wallingford had heard "cunt" when Dick had said "runt.")
But when Wallingford was asked about Japan, he would duck the question. "Japan is a novel," Patrick would say, and leave it at that.
He already believed that the trip to Japan had made him sincerely want to change his life. He would risk everything to change it. He knew it wouldn't be easy, but he believed he had the willpower to try. To his credit, the first moment he was alone with Mary whatever-her-name-was in the newsroom, Wallingford said, "I'm very sorry, Mary. I am truly, deeply sorry for what I said, for upsetting you so--"
She interrupted him. "It wasn't what you said that upset me--it's my marriage. It's not working out very well, and I'm pregnant."
"I'm sorry," Patrick said again.
Calling Dr. Zajac and confirming that he wanted to undergo the transplant surgery had been relatively easy.
The next time Patrick had a minute alone with Mary, he made a blunder of the well-intentioned kind. "When are you expecting, Mary?" (She wasn't showing yet.)
"I lost the baby!" Mary blurted out; she burst into tears.
"I'm sorry," Patrick repeated.
"It's my second miscarriage," the miserable young woman told him. She sobbed against his chest, wetting his shirt. When some of those savvy New York newsroom women saw them, they shot one another their most knowing glances. But they were wrong--that is, they were wrong this time. Wallingford was trying to change.
"I should have gone to Japan with you," Mary whatever-her-name-was whispered in Patrick's ear.
"No, Mary--no, no," Wallingford said. "You should not have gone to Japan with me, and I was wrong to propose it." But the young woman cried all the harder.
In the company of crying women, Patrick Wallingford did what many men do--he thought of other things. For example, how exactly do you wait for a hand when you've been without one for five years?
His recent experience with sake notwithstanding, he was not a drinker; but he grew strangely fond of sitting alone in an unfamiliar bar--always a different bar--in the late afternoon. A kind of lassitude compelled him to play this game. As the cocktail hour came, and the place filled with people intent on becoming more and more companionable, Patrick Wallingford sat sipping a beer; his objective was to project an aura of such unapproachable sadness that no one would intrude on his solitude.
They would all recognize him, of course; possibly he would overhear a whispered "lion guy" or "disaster man," but no one would speak to him. That was the game--it was an actor's exercise in finding the right look. (Pity me, the look said. Pity me, but leave me alone.) It was a game at which he became pretty
good.
Then, one late afternoon--shortly before the cocktail hour--Wallingford went to a bar in his old New York neighborhood. It was too early for the night doorman in Patrick's former apartment building to start his shift, but Wallingford was surprised to see the doorman in the bar--all the more so because he wasn't wearing his doorman's uniform.
"Hi, Mr. O'Neill," Vlad or Vlade or Lewis greeted him. "I saw you was in Japan. They play pretty good baseball over there, don't they? I suppose it's an alternative for you, if things don't work out here."
"How are you, Lewis?" Wallingford asked.
"It's Vlade," Vlad said gloomily. "This here's my brother. We're just killin' some time before I go to work. I don't enjoy the night shift no more."
Patrick nodded to the nice-looking young man standing at the bar with the depressed-looking doorman. His name was Loren or Goran, or possibly Zorbid; the brother was shy and he'd mumbled his name.
But when Vlad or Vlade or Lewis went off to the men's room--he'd been drinking glass after glass of cranberry juice and soda--the shy brother confided to Patrick, "He doesn't mean any harm, Mr. Wallingford. He's just a little confused about things. He doesn't know you're not Paul O'Neill, even though he does know it. I honestly believed that, after the lion thing, he would finally get it. But he doesn't. Most of the time, you're just Paul O'Neill to him. I'm sorry. It must be a nuisance."
"Please don't apologize," Patrick said. "I like your brother. If I'm Paul O'Neill to him, that's fine. At least I've left Cincinnati."
They both looked a little guilty, just sitting there at the bar, when Vlad or Vlade or Lewis returned from the men's room. Patrick regretted that he hadn't asked the normal brother what the confused doorman's real name was, but the moment had passed. Now the three-named doorman was back; he looked more like his old self because he'd changed into his uniform in the men's room.
The doorman handed his regular clothes to his brother, who put them in a backpack resting against the footrail at the bar. Patrick hadn't seen the backpack until now, but he realized that this was part of a routine with the brothers. Probably the normal brother came back in the morning to take Vlad or Vlade or Lewis home; he looked like that kind of good brother.
Suddenly the doorman put his head down on the bar as if he wanted to go to sleep on the spot. "Hey, come on--don't do that," his brother said affectionately to him. "You don't want to do that, especially not in front of Mr. O'Neill."
The doorman lifted his head. "I just get tired of workin' so late, sometimes," he said. "No more night shifts, please. No more night shifts."
"Look--you have a job, don't you?" the brother said, trying to cheer him up.
Miraculously--that quickly!--Vlad or Vlade or Lewis broke into a grin. "Gosh, look at me," he said. "I'm feelin' sorry for myself while I'm sittin' with the best right fielder I can think of, and he's got no left hand! And he bats left and throws left, too. I'm very sorry, Mr. O'Neill. I got no business feelin' sorry for myself in front of you."
Naturally Wallingford felt sorry for himself, too, but he wanted to be Paul O'Neill for a little while longer. It was the beginning of getting away from being the old Patrick Wallingford.
Here he was, disaster man, cultivating a look for the cocktail hour. The look was just an act, the lion guy knew, but the pity-me part was true.
CHAPTER FIVE
An Accident on
Super Bowl Sunday
ALTHOUGH MRS. CLAUSEN had written to Schatzman, Gingeleskie, Mengerink & Associates that she was from Appleton, Wisconsin, she meant only that she'd been born there. By the time of her marriage to Otto Clausen, she was living in Green Bay, the home of the celebrated professional football team. Otto Clausen was a Packer fan; he drove a beer truck for a living, and the only bumper sticker he permitted was in Green Bay green on a field of gold.
PROUD TO BE A CHEESEHEAD!
Otto and his wife had made plans to go to their favorite sports bar in Green Bay on Sunday night, January 25, 1998. It was the night of Super Bowl XXXII, and the Packers were playing the Denver Broncos in San Diego. But Mrs. Clausen had felt sick to her stomach all day; she would say to her husband, as she often did, that she hoped she was pregnant. She wasn't--she had the flu. She quickly developed a fever and threw up twice before kickoff. Both the Clausens were disappointed that it wasn't morning sickness. (Even if she were pregnant, she'd had her period only two weeks ago; it would have been too soon for her to have had morning sickness.)
Mrs. Clausen's moods were very readable--at least Otto believed that he usually knew what his wife was thinking. She wanted to have a baby more than anything in the world. Her husband wanted her to have one, too--she couldn't fault him for that. She just felt awful about having no children, and she knew that Otto felt awful about it, too.
Regarding this particular case of the flu, Otto had never seen his wife so sick; he volunteered to stay home and take care of her. They could watch the game on the TV in the bedroom. But Mrs. Clausen was so ill that she couldn't imagine watching the game, and she was a virtual cheesehead, too; that she'd been a Packer fan all her life was a principal bond between her and Otto. She even worked for the Green Bay Packers. She and Otto could have had tickets to the game in San Diego, but Otto hated to fly.
Now it touched her deeply: Otto loved her so much that he would give up seeing the Super Bowl at the sports bar. Mrs. Clausen wouldn't hear of his staying home. Although she felt too nauseated to talk, she summoned her strength and declared, in a complete sentence, one of those oft-repeated truths of the sports world that render football fans mute with agreement (at the same time striking everyone indifferent to football as a colossal stupidity). "There's no guarantee of returning to the Super Bowl," Mrs. Clausen stated.
Otto was childishly moved. Even on her sickbed, his wife wanted him to have fun. But one of their two cars was in the body shop, the result of a fender-bender in a supermarket parking lot. Otto didn't want to leave his wife home sick without a car.
"I'll take the beer truck," he told her. The truck was empty, and Otto was friends with everyone at the sports bar; they would let him park the truck at the delivery entrance. There weren't going to be any deliveries on a Super Bowl Sunday.
"Go, Packers!" his wife said weakly--she was already falling asleep. In a gesture of unspoken physical tenderness that she would long remember, Otto put the TV remote on the bed beside her and made sure that the television was on the correct channel.
Then he was off to the game. The beer truck was lighter than he was used to; he kept checking his speed while he maneuvered the big vehicle through the near-empty Sunday streets. Not since he was six or seven had Otto Clausen missed the kickoff of a Packer game, and he wouldn't miss this one. He may have been only thirty-nine, but he'd seen all thirty-one previous Super Bowls. He would see Super Bowl XXXII from the opening kickoff to the bitter end.
Most sportswriters would concede that the thirty-second Super Bowl was among the best ever played--a close, exciting game that the underdog won. It is common knowledge that most Americans love underdogs, but not in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in the case of Super Bowl XXXII, where the upstart Denver Broncos beat the Packers, rendering all cheeseheads despondent.
Green Bay fans were borderline suicidal by the end of the fourth quarter--not necessarily Otto, who was despondent but also very drunk. He'd fallen sound asleep at the bar during a beer commercial in the final two minutes of the game, and while he woke up the moment play resumed, he had suffered another unabridged edition of his worst recurring dream, which seemed to be hours longer than the commercial.
He was in a delivery room, and a man who was just a pair of eyes above a surgical mask was standing in a corner. A female obstetrician was delivering his wife's baby, and a nurse whom he was certain he'd never seen before was helping. The obstetrician was Mrs. Clausen's regular OB-GYN; the Clausens had been to see her together, many times.
Although Otto hadn't recognized the man in the corner the first time he'd had the dream, he n
ow knew in advance who the man was, thus giving him a sense of foreboding.
When the baby was born, the joy on his wife's face was so overwhelming that Otto always cried in his sleep. That was when the other man removed his mask. It was that playboy TV reporter--the lion guy, disaster man. What the fuck was his name? Anyway, the joy in Mrs. Clausen's expression was directed at him, not at Otto; it was as if Otto weren't really in the delivery room, or as if only Otto knew he was there.
What was wrong with the dream was that the lion guy had two hands and was holding the newborn baby in both of them. Suddenly Otto's wife reached up and stroked the back of his left hand.
Then Otto saw himself. He was staring at his own body, looking for his hands. The left one was gone--his own left hand was gone!
That was when he woke up, sobbing. This time, at the sports bar in Green Bay, with under two minutes remaining in the Super Bowl, a fellow Packer fan misunderstood his anguish and patted Otto on the shoulder. "Lousy game," he said with gruff sympathy.
Drunk as he was, Otto had to make a concerted effort not to doze off again. It wasn't that he didn't want to miss the end of the game; he didn't want to have that dream again, not if he could help it.
Naturally he knew where the dream came from, and he was so ashamed of its source that he'd never told his wife about the dream.
As a beer-truck driver, Otto believed himself to be a role model for Green Bay's youth--not once had he been a drunk driver. Otto hardly drank at all; and when he drank, he drank nothing stronger than beer. He was instantly as ashamed of his own inebriation as he was of his dream and the outcome of the game.
"I'm too drunk to drive," Otto confessed to the bartender, who was a decent man and a trusted friend. The bartender wished that there were more drunks like Otto Clausen, meaning responsible ones.
They quickly agreed on the best way for Otto to get himself home, which was not by accepting a ride with any of several drunken and despondent friends. Otto could easily move the beer truck the mere fifty yards from the delivery entrance to the bar's main parking lot so that it would not be in the way of any Monday-morning deliveries. Since the parking lot and the delivery entrance were adjacent to each other, he wouldn't even have to cross a public sidewalk or a street. The bartender would then call Otto a taxi to take him home.
