The Fourth Hand

“He’s a very easy baby,” Mrs. Clausen said.

Wallingford didn’t know what to say.

“Why don’t you try reading him some of that mouse book you brought?” she asked. “He doesn’t have to understand you—it’s the sound of your voice that matters. I’d like to hear it, too.”

Patrick climbed out of bed and came back with the book.

“Nice boxers,” Doris told him.

There were parts of Stuart Little that Wallingford had marked, thinking that they might have special significance for Mrs. Clausen. How Stuart’s first date with Harriet Ames goes awry because Stuart is too upset about his canoe being vandalized to accept Harriet’s invitation to the dance. Alas, Harriet says good-bye,

“leaving Stuart alone with his broken dreams and his damaged canoe.”

Patrick had once thought Doris would like that part—now he wasn’t so sure. He decided he would skip ahead to the last chapter, “Heading North,” and read only the bit about Stuart’s philosophical conversation with the telephone repairman. First they talk about the bird Stuart is looking for. The telephone repairman asks Stuart to describe the bird, then the repairman writes down the description. While Wallingford read this part, Mrs. Clausen lay on her side and watched him with their son. Otto, with only an occasional glance at his mother, appeared to be listening intently to his father. With both his mother and father near enough to touch, the child was getting sufficient attention.

Then Patrick reached the moment when the telephone repairman asks Stuart where he’s headed. Wallingford read this excerpt with particular poignancy.

“North,” said Stuart.

“North is nice,” said the repairman. “I’ve always enjoyed going north. Of course, south-west is a fine direction, too.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” said Stuart, thoughtfully.

“And there’s east,” continued the repairman. “I once had an interesting experience on an easterly course. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

“No, thanks,” said Stuart.

The repairman seemed disappointed, but he kept right on talking.

“There’s something about north,” he said, “something that sets it apart from all other directions. A person who is heading north is not making any mistake, in my opinion.”

“That’s the way I look at it,” said Stuart. “I rather expect that from now on I shall be traveling north until the end of my days.”

“Worse things than that could happen to a person,” said the repairman.

“Yes, I know,” answered Stuart.

Worse things than that had happened to Patrick Wallingford. He’d not been heading north when he met Mary Shanahan, or Angie, or Monika with a k —or his ex-wife, for that matter. He had met Marilyn in New Orleans, where he was doing a three-minute story on excessive partying at Mardi Gras; he’d been having a fling with a Fiona somebody, another makeup girl, but he dumped Fiona for Marilyn. (A long-acknowledged mistake.)

A trivial statistic, but Wallingford couldn’t think of a woman he’d had sex with while traveling north. As for being up north, he’d only been there with Doris Clausen, with whom he wanted to remain—not necessarily up north but anywhere

—until the end of his days.

Pausing for dramatic effect, Patrick repeated just that phrase—“until the end of my days.” Then he looked at little Otto, afraid that the child might be bored, but the boy was as alert as a squirrel; his eyes flashed from his father’s face to the colored picture on the book’s cover. (Stuart in his birchbark canoe with summer memories stamped on the bow.)

Wallingford was thrilled to have seized and kept his young son’s attention, but when he glanced at Mrs. Clausen, upon whom he’d hoped to make a redeeming impression, he realized that she’d fallen asleep—in all likelihood, before she fully comprehended the relevancy of the “Heading North” chapter. Doris lay on her side, still turned toward Patrick and their baby boy, and although her hair partly covered her face, Wallingford could see that she was smiling. Well… if not exactly smiling, at least she wasn’t frowning. Both in her expression and in the tranquillity of her repose, Mrs. Clausen seemed more at peace than Wallingford had ever known her to be. Or more deeply asleep—Patrick couldn’t really tell.

Taking his new responsibility seriously, Wallingford picked up Otto junior and inched out of the bed—carefully, so as not to wake the boy’s mother. He carried the child into the other bedroom, where he did his best to imitate Doris’s orderly routine. He boldly attempted to change the baby on the bed that was appointed as a changing table, but (to Patrick’s dismay) the diaper was dry, little Otto was clean, and while Wallingford contemplated the astonishing smallness of his son’s penis, Otto peed straight up in the air in his father’s face. Now Patrick had grounds for changing the diaper—not easy to do one-handed.

That done, Wallingford wondered what he should do next. As Otto junior sat upright on the bed, virtually imprisoned by the pillows Patrick had securely piled around him, the inexperienced father searched through the bags of baby paraphernalia. He assembled the following items: a packet of formula, a clean baby bottle, two changes of diapers, a shirt, in case it was cool outside—if they went outside—and a pair of socks and shoes, in case Otto was happiest bouncing in the jumper-seat.

That contraption was in the main cabin, where Wallingford carried Otto next. The socks and shoes, Patrick thought—thereby revealing the precautionary instincts of a good father—would protect the baby’s tiny toes and prevent him from getting splinters in his soft little feet. As an afterthought, just before he’d left the boathouse apartment with Otto and the bag of paraphernalia, Wallingford had added the baby’s hat to the bag, along with Mrs. Clausen’s copy of The English Patient. His one hand had lightly touched Doris’s underwear as he’d reached for the book.

It was cooler in the main cabin, so Patrick put the shirt on Otto, and just for the challenge, also dressed the boy in his socks and shoes. He tried putting Otto in the jumper-seat, but the child cried. Patrick then put the little boy in the highchair, which Otto seemed to like better. (Only momentarily—there was nothing to eat.) Finding a baby spoon in the dish drainer, Wallingford mashed a banana for Otto, who enjoyed spitting out some of the banana and rubbing his face with it before wiping his hands on his shirt.

Wallingford wondered what else he could feed the child. The kettle on the stove was still warm. He dissolved the powdered formula in about eight ounces of the heated water and mixed some of the formula with a little baby cereal, but Otto liked the banana better. Patrick tried mixing the baby cereal with a teaspoon of strained peaches from one of the jars of baby food. Otto cautiously liked this, but by then several globs of banana, and some of the peach-cereal mixture, had found their way into his hair.

It was evident to Wallingford that he’d managed to get more food on Otto than in him. He dampened a paper towel with warm water and wiped the baby clean, or almost clean; then he took Otto out of the highchair and put him in the jumper-seat again. The boy bounced all around for a couple of minutes before throwing up half his breakfast.

Wallingford took his son out of the jumper-seat and sat down in a rocking chair, holding the child in his lap. He tried giving him a bottle, but the besmeared little boy drank only an ounce or two before he spit up in Wallingford’s lap. (Wallingford was wearing just his boxer shorts, so what did it matter?) Patrick tried pacing back and forth with Otto in the crook of his left arm and Mrs. Clausen’s copy of The English Patient held open, like a hymnal, in his right hand. But given Wallingford’s handless left arm, Otto was too heavy to carry in this fashion for long. Patrick returned to the rocking chair. He sat Otto on his thigh and let the boy lean against him; the back of the child’s head rested on Wallingford’s chest and left shoulder, with Wallingford’s left arm around him. They rocked back and forth for ten minutes or more, until Otto fell asleep. Patrick slowed the rocker down; he held the sleeping boy on his lap while he attempted to read The English Patient. Holding the book open in his one hand was less difficult than turning the pages, which required an act of considerable manual dexterity—as challenging to Wallingford as some of his efforts with prosthetic devices—but the effort seemed suited to the early descriptions of the burned patient, who doesn’t appear to remember who he is.

Patrick read only a few pages, stopping at a sentence Mrs. Clausen had underlined in red—the description of