The Fourth Hand (7 page)

Dr. Zajac sprinkled the birdseed in the outdoor birdfeeder with red pepper flakes; he’d told Irma that this made the birdseed inedible to squirrels. Afterward, Irma tried sprinkling Medea’s dog turds with red pepper flakes, too.

While this was visual y interesting, especial y against the new-fal en snow, the dog found the pepper off-putting only initial y.

And drawing even greater attention to the dogshit in his yard did
not
please Zajac. He had a far simpler, albeit more athletic method of preventing Medea from eating her own shit. He got to her turds first, with his lacrosse stick. He usual y deposited the turds in the ubiquitous brown paper bag, although on occasion Irma had seen him take a shot at a squirrel in a tree clear across Brattle Street. Dr. Zajac missed the squirrel every time, but the gesture went straight to Irma’s heart. While it was too soon to say if the girl Hildred had named “Nick’s stripper” would ever find her way into Zajac’s heart, there was another area of concern at Schatzman, Gingeleskie, Mengerink & Associates: it was only a matter of time before Dr. Zajac, although he was stil in his forties, would have to be included in the
title
of Boston’s foremost surgical associates in hand treatment.

Soon it would have to be Schatzman, Gingeleskie, Mengerink,
Zajac
& Associates. Don’t think this didn’t gal the eponymous Schatzman, even though he was retired.

Don’t think it didn’t rile the surviving Gingeleskie brother, too. In the old days, when the other Gingeleskie was alive, they were Schatzman, Gingeleskie & Gingeleskie—this being before Mengerink’s time. (Dr. Zajac said privately that he doubted Dr. Mengerink could cure a hangnail.) As for Mengerink, he’d had an affair with Hildred when she was stil married to Zajac; yet he despised Zajac for getting a divorce, even though the divorce had been Hildred’s idea. Unbeknownst to Dr. Zajac, his ex-wife was on a mission to drive Dr. Mengerink crazy, too. It seemed the cruelest of fates, to Mengerink, that Zajac’s name was soon destined to fol ow his on the venerable surgical associates’

letterhead and nameplate. But if Dr. Zajac pul ed off the country’s first hand transplant, they would al be lucky if they weren’t

renamed
Z a j a c ,
Schatzman,

Gingeleskie,

Mengerink & Associates. (Worse things could happen. No doubt Harvard would soon make Zajac an associate professor.)

professor.)

And

now

Dr.

Zajac’s

housekeeper/assistant

had

transformed herself into an instant erection machine, although Zajac himself was too screwed up to realize it.

Even old Schatzman, retired, had observed the changes in Irma. And Mengerink, who’d had to change his home phone number twice to discourage Zajac’s ex-wife from cal ing him—Mengerink had noticed Irma, too. As for Gingeleskie, he said: “Even the
other
Gingeleskie could pick Irma out of a crowd,” referring, of course, to his dead brother.

From the grave, a
corpse
couldn’t miss seeing what had happened to the housekeeper/assistant-turned-sexpot. She looked like a stripper with a day job as a personal trainer.

How had Zajac missed the transformation? No wonder such a man had managed to pass through prep school and col ege unremembered. Yet when Dr. Zajac went shopping on the Internet for potential hand donors and recipients, no one at Schatzman, Gingeleskie, Mengerink & Associates cal ed

him

crass

or

said

that

they

thought

www.needahand.com was a tad crude. Despite his shit-eating dog, his obsession with fame, his wasting-away thinness, and his problem-ridden son—and, on top of everything, his inconceivable obliviousness to his cheeks-of-steel “assistant”—in the pioneer territory of handtransplant surgery, Dr. Nicholas M. Zajac remained the man in charge.

That Boston’s most bril iant hand surgeon was reputed to be a sexless jerk was a matter of no account to his only son. What does a six-year-old boy care about his father’s professional or sexual acumen, especial y when he is beginning to see for himself that his father loves him?

As for what launched the newfound affection between Rudy and his complicated father, credit must be spread around.

Some acknowledgment is due a dumb dog who ate her own poo, as wel as that long-ago single-sex glee club at Deerfield, where Zajac first got the mistaken idea he could sing. (After the spontaneous opening verse of “I Am Medea,” both father and son would compose many more verses, al of them too childishly scatological to record here.) And there were also, of course, the stove-timer game and E. B. White.

In addition, we should put in a word for the value of mischief in father-son relations. The former midfielder had first developed an instinct for mischief by cradling and then whizzing dog turds into the Charles River with a lacrosse stick. If Zajac had initial y failed to interest Rudy in lacrosse, the good doctor would eventual y turn his son’s attention to the finer points of the sport while walking Medea along the banks of the historic Charles.

Picture this: there is the turd-hunting dog, dragging Dr.

Zajac after her while she strains against her leash. (In Cambridge, of course, there is a leash law; al dogs must be leashed.) And there, running abreast of the eager part-Lab—yes, actual y
running,
actually
getting some exercise

!—is six-year-old Rudy Zajac, his child-size lacrosse stick held low to the ground in front of him. Picking up a dog turd in a lacrosse stick, especial y on the run, is a lot harder than picking up a lacrosse bal . (Dog turds come in varying sizes and are, on occasion, entangled with grass, or they have been stepped on.) Nevertheless, Rudy had been wel coached. And Medea’s determination, her powerful lunges against the leash, gave the boy precisely what was needed in the process of mastering any sport—especial y “dog-turd lacrosse,” as both father and son cal ed it. Medea provided Rudy with competition.

Any amateur can cradle a dog turd in a lacrosse stick, but try doing it under the pressure of a shit-eating dog; in any sport, pressure is as fundamental a teacher as a good coach. Besides, Medea outweighed Rudy by a good ten pounds and could easily knock the boy down.

“Keep your back to her—attaboy!” Zajac would yel .

“Cradle, cradle—keep cradling! Always know where the river is!”

The river was their goal—the historic Charles. Rudy had two good shots, which his father had taught him. There was the standard over-the-shoulder shot (either a long lob or a fairly flat trajectory) and there was the sidearm shot, which was low to the water and best for
skipping
the dog turds, which Rudy preferred. The risk with the sidearm shot was that the lacrosse stick passed low to the ground; Medea could block a sidearm shot and eat it in a hurry.

“Midriver, midriver!” the former midfielder would be coaching. Or else he would shout: “Aim for under the bridge!”

“But there’s a boat, Dad.”

“Aim for the boat, then,” Zajac would say, more quietly, aware that his relations with the oarsmen were already strained.

The resulting shouts and cries of the outraged oarsmen gave a certain edge to the rigors of competition. Dr. Zajac was especial y engaged by the high-pitched yelps the coxswains made into their megaphones, although nowadays one had to be careful—some of the coxswains were girls.

Zajac disapproved of girls in scul s or in the larger racing shel s, no matter whether the girls were rowers or coxswains. (This was surely another hal mark prejudice of his single-sex education.)

As for Dr. Zajac’s modest contribution to the ongoing pol ution of the Charles River . . . wel , let’s be fair. Zajac had never been an advocate of environmental correctness.

In his hopelessly old-fashioned opinion, a lot worse than dogshit was dumped into the Charles on a daily basis.

Furthermore, the dogshit that little Rudy Zajac and his father were responsible for throwing into the Charles River was for a good cause, that of solidifying the love between a divorced father and his son. Irma deserves some credit, too, despite being a prosaic girl who would one day watch the lions-eating-the-hand episode on video with Dr. Zajac and say, “I never knew lions could eat somethin’ so
quick.
”

Dr. Nicholas M. Zajac, who knew next to everything there was to know about hands, couldn’t watch the footage without exclaiming: “Oh, God, my God—there it goes!

Sweet Jesus, it’s
gone
! It’s al gone!”

Of course it didn’t hurt the chances of Patrick Wal ingford, Dr. Zajac’s first choice among the would-be hand recipients, that Wal ingford was
famous;
a television audience estimated in the mil ions had witnessed the frightening accident. Thousands of children and uncounted adults were
still
suffering nightmares, although Wal ingford had lost his hand more than five years ago and the televised footage of the accident itself was less than thirty seconds long.

“Thirty seconds is a long time to be engaged in losing your hand, if it’s your hand,” Patrick had said.

People meeting Wal ingford, especial y for the first time, would never fail to comment on his boyish charm. Women would remark on his eyes. Whereas Wal ingford had formerly been envied by men, the way in which he was maimed had put an end to that; not even men, the gender more prone to envy, could be jealous of him anymore. Now me n
and
women found him irresistible. Dr. Zajac hadn’t needed the Internet to find Patrick Wal ingford, who had been the first choice of the Boston surgical team from the start. More interesting was that www.needahand.com had turned up a surprising candidate in the field of potential donors. (What Zajac meant by a donor was a fresh cadaver.) This donor was not only alive—he wasn’t even dying!

His wife wrote Schatzman, Gingeleskie, Mengerink & Associates from Wisconsin.

“My husband has got the idea that he wants to leave his left hand to Patrick Wal ingford—you know, the lion guy,” Mrs.

Otto Clausen wrote. Her letter caught Dr. Zajac in the middle of a bad day with the dog. Medea had ingested a sizable section of lawn hose and had required stomach surgery. The miserable dog should have spent the weekend recovering at the vet’s, but it was one of those weekends when young Rudy visited his father; the six-year-old divorce survivor might have reverted to his former inconsolable self without Medea’s company. Even a drugged dog was better than no dog. There would be no dog-turd lacrosse for the weekend, but it would be a chal enge to prevent Medea from eating her stitches, and there was always the reliable stove-timer game and the more reliable genius of E. B. White. It would certainly be a good time to devote some constructive reinforcement to Rudy’s ever-experimental diet. In short, the hand surgeon was a trifle distracted. If there was something disingenuous about the charm of Mrs. Otto Clausen’s letter, Zajac didn’t catch it. His eagerness for the media possibilities overrode al else, and the Wisconsin couple’s unabashed choice of Patrick Wal ingford as a worthy recipient of Otto Clausen’s hand would make a good story.

Zajac didn’t find it at al odd that Mrs. Clausen, instead of Otto himself, had written to offer her husband’s hand. Al Otto had done was sign a brief statement; his wife had composed the accompanying letter.

Mrs. Clausen hailed from Appleton, and she proudly mentioned that Otto was already registered with the Wisconsin Organ Donor Affiliates. “But this hand business is a little different—I mean different from organs,” she observed. Hands were indeed different from organs, Dr.

Zajac knew. But Otto Clausen was only thirty-nine and in no apparent proximity to death’s door. Zajac believed that a fresh cadaver with a suitable donor hand would show up long before Otto’s. As for Patrick Wal ingford, his desire and need for a new left hand might possibly have put him at the top of Dr. Zajac’s list of wannabe recipients even if he hadn’t been famous. Zajac was not a thoroughly unsympathetic man. But he was also among the mil ions who’d taped the three-minute lion story. To Dr. Zajac, the footage was a combination of a hand surgeon’s favorite horror film and the precursor of his future fame.

It suffices to say that Patrick Wal ingford and Dr. Nicholas M. Zajac were on a col ision course, which didn’t bode wel from the start.

Before Meeting Mrs. Clausen

T
RY BEING AN ANCHORwho hides the evidence of his missing hand under the news desk—see what that gets you. The earliest letters of protest were from amputees.

What was Patrick Wal ingford ashamed of?

Even two-handed people complained. “Be a man, Patrick,”

one woman wrote.

“Show us.”

When he had problems with his first prosthesis, wearers of artificial limbs criticized him for using it incorrectly. He was equal y clumsy with an array of other prosthetic devices, but his wife was divorcing him—he had no time to practice.

Marilyn simply couldn’t get over how he’d “behaved.” In this case, she didn’t mean the other women—she was referring to how Patrick had behaved with the lion. “You looked so . .

. unmanly,” Marilyn told him, adding that her husband’s physical attractiveness had always been “of an inoffensive kind, tantamount to blandness.” What she real y meant was that nothing about his body had revolted her, until now. (In sickness and in health, but not in missing pieces, Wal ingford concluded.)