The Rearranged Woman

The face at the corner table in the café ... something about her caught my eye.
While I was trying to figure out what, she noticed me staring. She glanced away, then back.
And her look of recognition at me coincided with mine back at her.

She left the table she was sharing with a companion and came over to mine. “Tom!”
she called. “It’s been a while.”

“Tara!” I called in reply. I got up and held out my hand to shake hers. And now I was
staring even more.

“It’s all right if you don’t want to shake ... hands,” she replied, noticing my
hesitation. Her smile lost some of its warmth. “Some people get freaked out by it.”

I felt my face getting hot. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—” And I took her “hand”
in both of mine, and shook it enthusiastically. Perhaps a little too enthusiastically.
For it was a foot, but it was attached to the end of her arm, where a hand should have been.

She held forward both her arms. “They’re both like that, I’m afraid. I’ve got feet
in place of my hands.”

“But how...?” My voice trailed off.

Tara gave a quick smile back at her friend at the other table, before sitting
down with me. “I’ve only got a few minutes before I have to get back, but the short
version is that there was this bad accident. Nearly killed me. I lost both my hands.
And both my legs were crushed as well. But would you believe it, the feet were still intact.
They gave me artificial legs, of course. They worked well enough. But the doctors decided
that, for hands, real flesh and blood was still better than anything made of metal
and plastic. Especially if it was my own flesh and blood, not a transplant from a
donor.” She held out her armfeet and flexed her fingertoes. “Of course they were
right. It was some major breakthrough surgery, involving making tricky adaptations between
wrist and ankle joints, and toe and finger muscles, and who knows what else. I think
I was only the second or third person to have the operation. But it worked quite nicely,
don’t you think?”

I watched in fascination as she popped open her purse with those graceful feet,
took out her phone, and tapped a few times with those nimble toes on the screen.

“Come over to my place after work,” she continued, “and you can hear the rest
of the story, and I can catch up on what you’ve been up to. Here’s my address.” She held
out the phone.

I took out mine in response, and tapped it against hers.

“Got it? OK. Got to go. See you later.” And she went back to her table. Artificial legs, did
she say? You couldn’t tell, under that pantsuit and those high-heeled boots, or even from the
graceful way she walked. She looked perfectly normal, apart from her hands—or her unusual
substitute for them. A minute later she and her friend had left.

❦ ❦ ❦

A comfortable-looking house, in a comfortable-looking suburb. I stopped my car at the
end of the driveway, got out and rang the bell. The door opened, and there was Tara.
She wore an open smock stained with a remarkable number of different colours of paint, and
underneath it she had on shorts, leaving her legs bare down to the feet—

“Come in,” she said. “Can I offer you a drink?” She followed my look down to her
legs. “Oh. I told you they gave me artificial legs, didn’t I? Yup, I had those for
so many years. Until another wonderful operation just a year ago. The kinds of parts
they can grow from your own body cells just gets more and more amazing. I have my own
legs again.”

I followed her into the living room, where she poured out a couple of glasses.
As she handed me one, I couldn’t help noticing how she grasped it by the rim between
her fingertoes. Then she beckoned me to follow her into another room, fitted out as
an artist’s studio.

And all the while, she was standing and walking on those ...

She seated herself down in front of the easel. “I took up painting as therapy
after the accident. It helped me build up the dexterity in my new hands. I liked it so
much I kept on with it. And now I’m trying it in a different way, since I have my legs
back. It’s nice to have real flesh-and-blood legs again, that you don’t have to take off
before having a shower, or going swimming, or going to bed.”

She smiled at the question she could see written all over my face. “But what about
the feet, you must be wondering? Wouldn’t they have taken them off my arms, and put them
back on my legs? We talked about that, the doctors and I—whether to grow new legs without
feet, switch the feet, and then make me a new pair of hands.” She picked up a brush
and began making deft strokes in an empty area of the canvas. “But it takes a long
time to make hands—they’re rather complicated. And separate growth stages take more
resources and add more complications, bla-de-bla-de-bla. Something like that. And
I wanted to be whole again, as quickly as possible. So they decided to make the
hands with the legs at one go.”

She steadied herself with both armfeet on the arms of her chair,
while with her right leg she continued painting on the canvas. With the brush held in
the long, slender fingers, complete with opposable thumb, of the absolutely-normal-looking
hand on the end of her leg, normal except it was where a foot should be. While the
matching hand on the end of her other leg held the palette steady on the floor, as she
picked up more paint on the brush.

“At some point, when I’m good and ready, they can switch them round, and apparently
that kind of operation is almost routine nowadays, and I can be fully functional again
after just a few months. With hands on my arms, and feet on my legs, just like a normal
person. But in the meantime they said I should exercise my new hands by actually using
them as hands, not just to walk on. Build up their grasping ability and dexterity, that
kind of thing. So I’ve been practising a new adaptation of my painting technique. What
do you think?”

It took me several moments before I could think of something to say. “You are a wonder,”
I finally managed.

She ducked her head almost shyly, and got up. “Let me refill your glass.” I noticed
how she bunched her leghands up loosely into fists, and walked on the curled knuckles.
She noticed me watching her, and smiled. “I’ve got all these different styles of walking.
There’s this, or this”—she switched to walking on the flats of her palms—“or this”—she
raised herself on the tips of her splayed-out fingers, thumbs to the rear—“but that’s
hard to keep up for long. The others are OK indoors, on carpet. But they’re all murder
outside, on hard concrete, for more than a short distance. So I wear shoes, like most
people do. They’re normal shoes, and my hands can fit inside, but with special
inserts, to pad them out and cushion the load. Still, it’s a lot less troublesome to wear
those than electric legs that need to be plugged in and recharged every day.”

She returned my replenished glass, and raised hers. “It’s coming up to fifteen years
since the accident. You know, I’ve had these as my only hands for so long”—she indicated her
armfeet—“I’m not really sure I can get used to switching them back to normal hands. I know
it’s not like having proper opposable thumbs, and regular-length fingers, but after so many
years I’ve learned to manage.” And she spread her fingertoes wide, and wiggled them independently,
just like regular fingers. “And frankly, I don’t think I want to go through another spell of
months as a cripple, unable to care for myself, again.”

She half-raised a leg, wiggled the fingers on that hand, and lowered it again. “Don’t
get me wrong, it’s great having regular hands as well. But as an extra, not as a
substitute. What I mean is, I now have four hands, not two. Am I getting tipsy?” She smiled
languidly, and giggled. “And how long has it been since we last met?”

“Nearly fifteen years,” I replied.

Tara frowned. “The day of the accident ... when they found me ... I remember
the paramedic saying it was lucky I didn’t lose all my limbs completely, even if I wasn’t
killed. I thought at the time, that’s one hell of a way of defining “lucky”.” She
held an armfoot to her head. “Something else I remember ...” She frowned some more,
then her face cleared. “Never mind. It’ll come to me. Would you like to see around the
house?”

She gave me the tour, culminating in the expansive garden. “You know,” she said,
“something I used to enjoy as a young girl was walking barefoot through the grass,
and feeling the leaves and soil between my toes. It was something I missed when I lost
my legs. But after so long I’ve been enjoying it again, only it’s with my hands and fingers
now.” She spread the fingers of her leghands and brought them back together, rubbed them
sideways against each other, and curled and uncurled them sensuously. “And you know what?
It’s even more different kinds of fun than how I did it with feet and toes. How odd is
that?” She giggled again.

We turned back to the house. She picked up a rag by the garden door with her leghands
without stooping, and rubbed them both with it, one over the other in turn, to clean off the
sandy soil. “Fifteen years since my accident. Fifteen years since we saw each other last—”
She stopped abruptly.

And I watched quietly as the beginnings of a memory, long-buried, made their way
to the surface.

She pointed a foot accusingly at me. “It was you...” she said slowly, in dawning
realization.

I held up my hands placatingly. “Now, it was a long time ago...”

“We were on a date that day, you and I, and then all I could recall was a blank...” She
shook her head, and fire came into her eyes. “No, I remember now. After all these years, I
finally remember now. You put something in my drink, didn’t you? To knock me out. Then you
placed me carefully me out there, to be run over. Why did you want to kill me?” She stared
at me in incomprehension.

I sighed. “Kill you? Never! I admired you, you were such an independent,
capable woman, good at so many things, you could never love a loser like me. But I thought, if
I could make you dependent on me, then you could never leave.”

Her look deepened to one of horror. “Dependent? You mean ... cut off my arms and legs?”
Her voice shook.

I nodded, and smiled. “Just like my own little Boxing Helena. Then I would have to
do everything for you, look after you, help you through the day. Which I would have done,
believe me. We would have been together, always.” I shrugged. “But it didn’t quite work out
that way.”

“So it’s to you that I owe this ... thing that has happened to me. Turning my
life completely upside-down.” She just stared at me for several moments. Then her demeanour
went from agitated to icily quiet. “Get out,” she said softly, pointing to the door.
“I never want to see you again, you ... I don’t have the words to describe what you are.”
Somehow her quietness just emphasized the fury in her voice.

“Couldn’t we still—” I began to say, but something in her eyes made me shut up and quickly
let myself out. I could feel her look burning into my back all the way to the front door.

I walked to my car. I hesitated before getting in, thinking about what I should do,
and turned to look back at the house. Of course the door was shut, and there was no sign of her.

I wondered if she was going to tell anyone...