The Fourth Hand

by John Irving

  There was a gangplank and a slender dock that separated the two boats tied up in the boathouse, the family speedboat and a smaller outboard. At the open end of the boathouse, a ladder went into the water from the dividing dock. Who would want to enter or climb out of the lake from inside the boathouse? But Patrick didn't mention the ladder because Mrs. Clausen was already making arrangements for the baby on the big outdoors dock.

  She'd brought some toys and a quilt the size of a picnic blanket. The child wasn't crawling as actively as Wallingford had expected. Otto junior could sit up by himself, until he seemed to forget where he was; then he'd roll over on his side. At eight months, the child could pull himself up to his feet--if there was a low table or some other sturdy thing for him to hang on to. But he often forgot he was standing; he would suddenly sit down or topple sideways.

  And most of little Otto's crawling was backward--he could back up more easily than he could move forward. If he was surrounded by some interesting objects to handle and look at, he would sit in one spot quite contentedly--but not for long, Doris pointed out. "In a few weeks, we won't be able to sit on a dock with him. He'll be moving, on all fours, nonstop."

  For now, because of the sun, the child wore a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, and a hat--also sunglasses, which he didn't pull off his face as frequently as Patrick would have predicted. "You swim. I'll watch him. Then you can watch him while I swim," Mrs. Clausen told Wallingford.

  Patrick was impressed by the sheer amount of baby paraphernalia Mrs. Clausen had brought for the weekend; he was equally impressed by how calmly and effortlessly Doris seemed to have adjusted to being a mother. Or maybe motherhood did that to women who'd wanted to have a baby as badly and for as long as Mrs. Clausen had wanted one. Wallingford didn't really know.

  The lake water felt cold, but only when you first went in. Off the deep end of the dock, the water was blue-gray; nearer shore, it took on a greener color from the reflected fir trees and white pines. The bottom was sandier, less muddy, than Patrick had anticipated, and there was a small beach of coarse sand, strewn with rocks, where Wallingford bathed little Otto in the lake. Initially the boy was shocked by the coldness of the water, but he never cried; he let Wallingford wade with him in his arms while Mrs. Clausen took their picture. (She seemed quite the expert with a camera.)

  The grown-ups, as Patrick began to think of Doris and himself, took turns swimming off the dock. Mrs. Clausen was a good swimmer. Wallingford explained that, with one hand, he felt more comfortable just floating or treading water. Together they dried little Otto, and Doris let Patrick try to dress the child--his first attempt. She had to show him how to do the diaper.

  Mrs. Clausen was deft at taking her bathing suit off under the terry-cloth robe. Wallingford, because of the one-hand problem, was less skillful at taking his suit off while wrapped in a towel. Finally Doris laughed and said she would look the other way while he managed it, out in the open. (She didn't tell him about the Peeping Tom with the telescope on the opposite shore of the lake--not yet.)

  Together they carried the baby and his paraphernalia to the main cabin. There was a child's highchair already in place, and Wallingford drank a beer--he was still wearing just a towel--while Mrs. Clausen fed Otto junior. She told Patrick that they should feed the baby and make their own dinner, and be finished with everything they had to do in the main cabin--all before dark. After dark, the mosquitoes came. They should be settled into the boathouse apartment by then.

  There was no bathroom in the boathouse. Doris reminded Wallingford that he should use the toilet in the main cabin, and brush his teeth in the bathroom sink there. If he had to get up and pee in the middle of the night, he could go outside with a flashlight and be quick about it. "Just get back to the boathouse before the mosquitoes find you," Mrs. Clausen warned.

  Using her camera, Patrick took a picture of Doris and little Otto on the sundeck of the main cabin.

  The grown-ups barbecued a steak for their dinner, which they ate with some green peas and rice. Mrs. Clausen had brought two bottles of red wine--they drank only one. While Doris did the dishes, Patrick took her camera down to the dock and took two pictures of their bathing suits side-by-side on the clothesline.

  It seemed to him the height of privacy and domestic tranquillity that they had eaten their dinner together with Doris dressed in her old bathrobe and Wallingford wearing only a towel around his waist. He'd never lived like this, not with anyone.

  Wallingford took another beer with him when they went back to the boathouse. As they navigated the pine-needle path, they were aware that the west wind had dropped and the lake was dead-calm; the setting sun still struck the treetops on the eastern shore. In the windless evening, the mosquitoes had already risen--they hadn't waited till dark. Patrick and Doris were waving the mosquitoes away as they carried little Otto and the baby's paraphernalia into the boathouse apartment.

  Wallingford watched the encroaching darkness from his bedroom window while he listened to Mrs. Clausen putting Otto junior to bed in the next room. She was singing him a nursery rhyme. Patrick's windows were open; he could hear the mosquitoes humming against the screens. The loons were the only other sound, save an outboard puttering on the lake, over which he could hear voices. Perhaps they were fishermen returning home, or teenagers. Then the outboard docked, far-off, and Mrs. Clausen was no longer singing to little Otto; it was quiet in the other bedroom. Now the loons and an occasional duck were the only sound, except for the mosquitoes.

  Wallingford sensed a remoteness he'd never experienced, and it was not yet fully dark. Still wrapped in the towel, he lay on the bed and let the room grow darker. He tried to imagine the photographs that Doris had once tacked to the wall on her side of the bed.

  He'd fallen sound asleep when Mrs. Clausen came and woke him with the flashlight. In her old white bathrobe, she stood at the foot of the bed like a ghost, the light pointed at herself. She kept blinking the flashlight on and off, as if she were trying to impress him with how dark it was, although there was nearly a full moon.

  "Come on," she whispered. "Let's go swimming. We don't need suits for a night swim. Just bring your towel."

  She went out into the hall and led him down the stairs, holding his one hand and pointing the flashlight at their bare feet. With his stump, Wallingford made a clumsy effort to keep the towel tight around his waist. The boathouse was very dark. Doris took him down the gangplank and out on the slender dividing dock between the moored boats. She shined the flashlight ahead of them, illuminating the ladder at the end of the dock.

  So the ladder was for night swims. Patrick was being invited to take part in a ritual that Mrs. Clausen had enacted with her late husband. Their careful, single-file navigation of the thin, dark dock seemed a holy passage.

  The flashlight caught a large spider moving quickly along a mooring line. The spider startled Wallingford, but not Mrs. Clausen. "It's just a spider," she said. "I like spiders. They're so industrious."

  So she likes industriousness and spiders, Patrick thought. He hated himself for bringing Stuart Little instead of Charlotte's Web. Perhaps he wouldn't even mention to Doris that he had brought the stupid book with him, let alone that he'd imagined reading it first to her and then to little Otto.

  At the ladder, Mrs. Clausen took off her robe. She'd clearly had some practice at arranging the flashlight on the robe so that it pointed out over the lake. The light would be a beacon for them to return to.

  Wallingford took off his towel and stood naked beside her. She gave him no time to think about touching her; she went quickly down the ladder and slipped into the lake, making almost no sound. He followed her into the water, but not as gracefully or noiselessly as she had managed it. (You try going down a ladder with one hand.) The best Patrick could do was clutch the side rail in the crook of his left arm; his right hand and arm did most of the work.

  They swam close together. Mrs. Clausen was careful not to swim too far ahead of him, or she treaded water or
just floated until he caught up with her. They went out past the deep end of the big outdoors dock, where they could see the dark outline of the unlit main cabin and the smaller outbuildings; the rudimentary buildings resembled a wilderness colony, abandoned. Across the moonlit lake, the other summer cottages were unlit, too. The cottagers went to bed early and got up with the sun.

  In addition to the flashlight aimed at the lake from the dock in the boathouse, there was another light visible--in Otto junior's bedroom. Doris had left the gas lamp on, in case the child woke up; she didn't want him to be frightened by the dark. With the windows open, she was sure she would hear the baby if he awakened and cried. Sound travels very clearly over water, especially at night, Mrs. Clausen explained.

  She could easily talk while swimming--she didn't once sound out of breath. She talked and talked, explaining everything. How she and Otto senior could never swim at night by diving off the big outdoors dock, where the other Clausens (in the other cabins) would hear them. But by entering the lake from inside the boathouse, they'd discovered that they could reach the water undetected.

  Wallingford could hear the ghosts of boisterous, fun-loving Clausens going back and forth to the beer fridge--a screen door whapping and someone calling, "Don't let the mosquitoes in!" Or a woman's voice: "That dog is all wet!" And the voice of a child: "Uncle Donny did it."

  One of the dogs would come down to the lake and bark witlessly at Mrs. Clausen and Otto senior, swimming naked and undetected--except by the dog. "Someone shoot that damn dog!" an angry voice would call. Then someone else would say, "Maybe it's an otter or a mink." A third person, either opening or closing the door of the beer fridge, would comment: "No, it's just that brainless dog. That dog barks at anything, or at nothing at all."

  Wallingford wasn't sure if he was really swimming naked with Doris Clausen, or if she was sleeplessly reliving her night swims with Otto senior. Patrick loved swimming beside her, despite the obvious melancholy attached to it.

  When the mosquitoes found them, they swam underwater for a short distance, but Mrs. Clausen wanted to go back to the boathouse. If they swam underwater, even briefly, they wouldn't hear the baby if he cried or notice if the gaslight flickered.

  There were the stars and the moon in the northern night sky; there was a loon calling, and another loon diving nearby. Just briefly, the swimmers thought they heard snatches of a song. Maybe someone in one of the dark cottages across the lake was playing a radio, but the swimmers didn't think it was a radio.

  The song, which was a song they were both familiar with, was on their minds at that moment simultaneously. It was a popular song about missing someone, and clearly Mrs. Clausen was missing her late husband. Patrick missed Mrs. Clausen, although in truth they'd only ever been together in his imagination.

  She went up the ladder first. Treading water, he saw her silhouette--the beam of the flashlight was behind her. She quickly put on her robe as he struggled one-handed up the ladder. She shined the flashlight down at the dock, where he could see his towel; while he picked it up and wrapped it around his waist, she waited with the light pointed at her feet. Then she reached back and took his one hand, and he followed her again.

  They went to look at little Otto, sleeping. Wallingford was unprepared; he didn't know that watching a sleeping child was as good as a movie to some mothers. When Mrs. Clausen sat on one of the twin beds and commenced to stare at her sleeping son, Patrick sat down beside her. He had to--she'd not let go of his hand. It was as if the child were a drama, unfolding.

  "Story time," Doris whispered, in a voice Wallingford had not heard before--she sounded ashamed. She gave a slight squeeze to Wallingford's one hand, just in case he was confused and had misunderstood her. The story was for him, not for little Otto.

  "I tried to see someone, I mean someone else," she said. "I tried going out with him."

  Did "going out" with someone mean what Wallingford thought it meant, even in Wisconsin?

  "I slept with someone, someone I shouldn't have slept with," Mrs. Clausen explained.

  "Oh ..." Patrick couldn't help saying; it was an involuntary response. He listened for the breathing of the sleeping child, not hearing it above the sound the gaslight made, which was like a kind of breathing.

  "He's someone I've known for a long time, but in another life," Doris went on. "He's a little younger than I am," she added. She still held Wallingford's one hand, although she'd stopped squeezing it. He wanted to squeeze her hand--to show her his sympathy, to support her--but his hand felt anesthetized. (He recognized the feeling.) "He used to be married to a friend of mine," Mrs. Clausen continued. "We all went out together when Otto was alive. We were always doing things, the four of us, the way couples do."

  Patrick managed to squeeze her hand a little.

  "But he broke up with his wife--this was after I lost Otto," Mrs. Clausen explained. "And when he called me and asked me out, I didn't say I would--not at first. I called my friend, just to be sure they were getting divorced and that our going out was all right with her. She said it was okay, but she didn't mean it. It wasn't okay with her, after the fact. And I shouldn't have. I didn't like him, anyway. Not in that way."

  It was all Wallingford could do not to shout, "Good!"

  "So I told him I wouldn't go out with him anymore. He took it okay, he's still friendly, but she won't talk to me. And she was the maid of honor at my wedding, if you can imagine that." Wallingford could, if only on the basis of a single photograph. "Well, that's all. I just wanted to tell you," Mrs. Clausen said.

  "I'm glad you told me," Patrick managed to say, although "glad" didn't come close to what he felt--a devastating jealousy in tandem with an overwhelming relief. She'd slept with an old friend--that was all! That it hadn't worked out made Wallingford feel more than glad; he felt elated. He also felt naive. Without being beautiful, Mrs. Clausen was one of the most sexually attractive women he'd ever met. Of course men would call her and ask her "out." Why hadn't he foreseen this?

  He didn't know where to start. Possibly Patrick took too much encouragement from the fact that Mrs. Clausen now gripped his hand more tightly than before; she must have been relieved that he'd been a sympathetic listener.

  "I love you," he began. He was pleased that Doris didn't take her hand away, although he felt her grip lessen. "I want to live with you and little Otto. I want to marry you." She was neutral now, just listening. He couldn't tell what she thought.

  They didn't look at each other, not once. They continued to stare at Otto junior sleeping. The child's open mouth beckoned a story; therefore, Wallingford began one. It was the wrong story to begin, but he was a journalist--a fact guy, not a storyteller.

  What he neglected was the very thing he deplored about his profession--he left out the context! He should have begun with Boston, with his trip to see Dr. Zajac because of the sensations of pain and crawling insects where Otto senior's hand had been. He should have told Mrs. Clausen about meeting the woman in the Charles Hotel--how they'd read E. B. White to each other, naked, but they'd not had sex; how he'd been thinking of Mrs. Clausen the whole time. Really, he had!

  All that was part of the context of how he'd acquiesced to Mary Shanahan's desire to have his baby. And while it might have gone better with Doris Clausen if Patrick had begun with Boston, it would have been better yet if he'd begun with Japan--how he'd first asked Mary, then a young married woman who was pregnant, to come to Tokyo with him; how he'd felt guilty about that, and for so long had resisted her; how he'd tried so hard to be "just a friend."

  Because wasn't it part of the context, too, that he'd finally slept with Mary Shanahan with no strings attached? Meaning wasn't he being "just a friend" to give her what she said she wanted? Just a baby, nothing more. That Mary wanted his apartment, too, or maybe she wanted to move in with him; that she also wanted his job, and she knew all along that she was about to become his boss ... well, shit, that was a surprise! But how could Patrick have predicted it?

 
Surely if any woman could sympathize with another woman wanting to have Patrick Wallingford's baby, wasn't it reasonable for Patrick to think that Doris Clausen would be the one? No, it wasn't reasonable! And how could she sympathize, given the half-assed manner in which Wallingford told the story?

  He'd just plunged in. He was artless, in the worst sense of the word--meaning oafish and crude. He began with what amounted to a confession: "I don't really think of this as an illustration of why I might have trouble maintaining a monogamous relationship, but it is a little disturbing."

  What a way to begin a proposal! Was it any wonder that Doris withdrew her hand from his and turned to look at him? Wallingford, who sensed from his misguided prologue that he was already in trouble, couldn't look at her while he talked. He stared instead at their sleeping child, as if the innocence of Otto junior might serve to shield Mrs. Clausen from all that was sexually incorrigible and morally reprehensible in his relationship with Mary Shanahan.

  Mrs. Clausen was appalled. She wasn't, for once, even looking at her son; she couldn't take her eyes off Wallingford's handsome profile as he clumsily recounted the details of his shameful behavior. He was babbling now, out of nervousness, in part, but also because he feared that the impression he was making on Doris was the opposite of what he'd intended.

  What had he been thinking? What an absolute mess it would be if Mary Shanahan was pregnant with his child!

  Still in a confessional mode, he lifted the towel to show Mrs. Clausen the bruise on his shin from the glass-topped table in Mary's apartment; he also showed her the burn from the hot-water faucet in Mary's shower. She'd already noticed how his back was scratched. And the love-bite on his left shoulder--she'd noticed that, too.

  "Oh, that wasn't Mary," Wallingford confessed.

  This was not the best thing he could have said.

  "Who else have you been seeing?" Doris asked.

  This wasn't going as he'd hoped. But how much more trouble could Patrick get into by telling Mrs. Clausen about Angie? Surely Angie's was a simpler story.