The Fourth Hand by John Irving Read Free Book Online Page B

pointed out, “and Medea is a girl. But I suppose it would be al right. You could rename her Charlotte, if you like—Charlotte is a girl’s name, you know.”
    “But Charlotte dies,” Rudy argued. (The eponymous Charlotte is a spider.) “I’m already afraid that Medea wil die.”
    “Medea won’t die for a long time, Rudy,” Zajac assured his son.
    “Mommy says you might kil her, because of the way you lose your temper.”
    “I promise I won’t kil Medea, Rudy,” Zajac said. “I won’t lose my temper with her.” (This was typical of how little Hildred had ever understood him; that he lost his temper at dogshit didn’t mean he was angry at dogs!)
    “Tel me again why they named her Medea,” the boy said.
    It was hard to relate the Greek legend to a six-year-old—
    just try describing what a sorceress is. But the part about Medea assisting her husband, Jason, in obtaining the Golden Fleece was easier to explain than the part about what Medea does to her own children. Why would anyone name a dog Medea? Dr. Zajac wondered. In the six months since he’d been divorced, Zajac had read more than a dozen books by child psychiatrists about the troubles children have after a divorce. A great emphasis was put on the parents’ having a sense of humor, which was not the hand surgeon’s strongest point.
    Zajac’s indulgence in mischief overcame him only in those moments when he was cradling a dog turd in a lacrosse stick. However, in addition to his having been a midfielder at Deerfield, Dr. Zajac had sung in some kind of glee club there. Although his only singing now was in the shower, he felt a spontaneous outpouring of humor whenever he was taking a shower with Rudy. Taking a shower with his father was another item on the smal but growing list of things Rudy liked to do with his dad.
    Suddenly, to the tune of “I Am the River,” which Rudy had learned to sing in kindergarten—the boy, as many only children do, liked to sing—Dr. Nicholas M. Zajac burst into song.
    I am Medea
    and I eat my poo.

    In an-tiq-ui-ty
    I killed my kids, too!
    “What?” Rudy said. “Sing that again!” (They’d already discussed antiquity.) When his father sang the song again, Rudy dissolved into laughter. Scatological humor is the best stuff for six-year-olds.
    “Don’t sing this around your mother,” Rudy’s father warned him. Thus they had a secret, another step in creating a bond between them.
    Over time, two copies of Stuart Little made their way home with Rudy, but Hildred would not read it to the boy; worse, she threw away both copies of the book. It wasn’t until Rudy caught her throwing away Charlotte’s Web that he told his father, which became another bond between them.
    Every weekend they were together, Zajac read al of either Stuart Little or Charlotte’s Web to Rudy. The little boy never tired of them. He cried every time Charlotte died; he laughed every time Stuart crashed the dentist’s invisible car. And, like Stuart, when Rudy was thirsty, he told his father that he had “a ruinous thirst.” (The first time, natural y, Rudy had to ask his father what “ruinous”
    meant.)
    Meanwhile, although Dr. Zajac had made much headway in Meanwhile, although Dr. Zajac had made much headway in contradicting Hildred’s message to Rudy—the boy was increasingly convinced that his father did love him—the hand surgeon’s smal -minded col eagues were nonetheless convincing themselves that they were superior to Zajac because of the al eged unhappiness and undernourishment of Zajac’s six-year-old son. At first Dr. Zajac’s col eagues felt superior to him because of Irma, too. They regarded her as a clear loser’s choice among housekeepers; but when Irma began to transform herself, they soon noticed her, long before Zajac himself showed any signs of sharing their interest.
    His failure to be aware of Irma’s transformation was further proof of Dr. Zajac’s being a madman of the unseeing variety. The girl had