nly in the lake.
Even now, when she stood in Dr. Zajac's office with her arms crossed on her chest--as if she were cold, or concealing from Patrick Wallingford any impression he might have been able to have of her breasts--Mrs. Clausen could almost smell the pine needles, and she sensed Otto's presence as strongly as if he were right there with her in Zajac's office.
Given the hand surgeon's photo gallery of famous patients, it's a wonder that neither Patrick Wallingford nor Mrs. Clausen paid much attention to the surrounding walls. The two of them were too engaged in noticing each other, although, in the beginning, there was no eye contact between them.
Mrs. Clausen's running shoes had got wet in the snow back in Wisconsin, and they still looked wet to Wallingford, who found himself staring at her feet.
Mrs. Clausen took her parka off and sat in the chair beside Patrick. It was Wallingford's impression that, when she spoke, she addressed his surviving hand.
"Otto felt awful about your hand--the other one, I mean," she began, never taking her eyes from the hand that remained. Patrick Wallingford listened to her with the concealed disbelief of a veteran journalist who usually knows when an interviewee is lying, which Mrs. Clausen was.
"But," the widow went on, "I tried not to think about it, to tell you the truth. And when they showed the lions eating you up, I had trouble watching it. It still makes me sick to think about it."
"Me, too," Wallingford said; he didn't believe she was lying now.
It's hard to tell much about a woman in a sweatshirt, but she seemed fairly compact. Her dark-brown hair needed washing, but Patrick sensed that she was generally a clean person who maintained a neat appearance.
The overhead fluorescent light was harsh to her face. She wore no makeup, not even lipstick, and her lower lip was dry and split--probably from biting it. The circles under her brown eyes exaggerated their darkness, and the crow's-feet at the corners indicated that she was roughly Patrick's age. (Wallingford was only a few years younger than Otto Clausen, who'd been only a little older than his wife.)
"I suppose you think I'm crazy," Mrs. Clausen said.
"No! Not at all! I can't imagine how you must feel--I mean beyond how sad you must be." In truth, she looked like so many emotionally drained women he'd interviewed--most recently, the sword-swallower's wife in Mexico City--that Patrick felt he'd met her before.
Mrs. Clausen surprised him by nodding and then pointing in the general direction of his lap. "May I see it?" she asked. In the awkward pause that followed, Wallingford stopped breathing. "Your hand ... please. The one you still have."
He held out his right hand to her, as if it had been newly transplanted. She reached out to take it but stopped herself, leaving his hand extended in a lifeless-looking way.
"It's just a little small," she said. "Otto's is bigger."
He took back his hand, feeling unworthy.
"Otto cried when he saw how you lost your other hand. He actually cried!" We know, of course, that Otto had felt like throwing up; it had been Mrs. Clausen who'd cried, yet she managed to make Wallingford think that her husband's compassionate tears were a source of wonder to her still. (So much for a veteran journalist knowing when someone was lying. Wallingford was completely taken in by Mrs. Clausen's account of Otto's crying.)
"You loved him very much. I can see that," Patrick said.
The widow bit her lower lip and nodded fiercely, tears welling in her eyes. "We were trying to have a baby. We just kept trying and trying. I don't know why it wasn't working." She dropped her chin to her chest. She held her parka to her face and sobbed quietly into it. Although it was not as faded, the parka was the same Green Bay green as her sweatshirt, with the Packers' logo (the gold helmet with the white G) emblazoned on the back.
"It will always be Otto's hand to me," Mrs. Clausen said with unexpected volume, pushing the parka away. For the first time, she leveled her gaze at Patrick's face; she looked as if she'd changed her mind about something. "How old are you, anyway?" she asked. Perhaps from seeing Patrick Wallingford only on television, she'd expected someone older or younger.
"I'm thirty-four," Wallingford answered, defensively.
"You're my age exactly," she told him. He detected the faintest trace of a smile, as if--either in spite of her grief or because of it--she were genuinely mad.
"I won't be a nuisance--I mean after the operation," she continued. "But to see his hand ... later, to feel it ... well, that shouldn't be very much of a burden to you, should it? If you respect me, I'll respect you."
"Certainly!" Patrick said, but he failed to see what was coming.
"I still want to have Otto's baby."
Wallingford still didn't get it. "Do you mean you might be pregnant?" he cried excitedly. "Why didn't you say so? That's wonderful! When will you know?"
That same trace of an insane smile crossed her face again. Patrick hadn't noticed that she'd kicked off her running shoes. Now she unzipped her jeans; she pulled them down, together with her panties, but she hesitated before taking off her sweatshirt.
It was additionally disarming to Patrick that he'd never seen a woman undress this way--that is, bottom first, leaving the top until last. To Wallingford, Mrs. Clausen seemed sexually inexperienced to an embarrassing degree. Then he heard her voice; something had changed in it, and not just the volume. To his surprise, he had an erection, not because Mrs. Clausen was half naked but because of her new tone of voice.
"There's no other time," she told him. "If I'm going to have Otto's baby, I should already be pregnant. After the surgery, you'll be in no shape to do this. You'll be in the hospital, you'll be taking a zillion drugs, you'll be in pain--"
"Mrs. Clausen!" Patrick Wallingford said. He quickly stood up--and as quickly he sat back down. Until he'd tried to stand, he hadn't realized how much of a hard-on he had; it was as obvious as what Wallingford said next.