Work Text:
Hands
I think I first started noticing handsâ€"I mean really noticing them, with Joey. His hands were beautiful; long and graceful, expressive creative, articulate. I loved watching them; they fascinated me and made me jealous because they were everything that mine aren't.
Oh, my hands do their job and are strong and all; they do what I ask them to, but they're not like Joey's were. His hands were exquisite.
Lori Elton was the first to remark on my own hands. She liked to rub her fingers along the calluses I have, the ones on every finger and which cover my palms, the pads just below my fingers and lower where they make contact with the bars I've been flying around and hanging onto almost all my life. When I was small, still in the circus, I was proud of them, because they looked to me like badges of honor. They proved I wasn't like the town kids; I was a circus rat, I worked. I had skills and talent and I did things that were way more interesting than just going to school everyday. They were like a membership card into a secret club, like a special tattoo or handshake no one else could understand.
My hands are like my father's and I take covert pride in that.
I loved Dad's hands; they were so sure of themselves, no doubts, no uncertainty. They'd hold onto the bar or me or Mom without hesitation, just strong and sureâ€"confidant, and were our safety net, but then we'd be back in the trailer after a show and everything would change. He'd hold Mom's smaller hand and it was like night and day. They were still strong and sure but they'd become gentle and loving at the same time.
My parents were always holding hands, whenever they were walking somewhere, even just down the aisle of some grocery store and he was always so tender with her. I was jealous of his hands then, wishing I could share what was just between them and knowing it was private with no way completely in, even for me. That doesn't sound right. I sound like I resent what they had together and that's not it at all. I just knew, even when I was six or seven, that they had a connection and I'd always be half a step outsideâ€"much as I knew they loved me.
I wanted what they had and what Dad's hands told Mom every time he touched her.
I still want what they had. I thought I had it with Barbara.
Barbara's hands are different, too. I know that sounds obvious because she's a woman, but her hands aren't like Mom's. Mom's hands were strong, even though they were thin, and she had a few calluses. She hated them and would look at them sometimes with annoyance, but Dad would kiss them for her and though it didn't make it all better, it helped till next time.
But Barbara; her hands are sure and quick and competent. They'd accurate, deft and precise. She could be a surgeon with those hands if she wanted and when I'd feel her hands on meâ€"God they felt good. I imagine them sometimes at night before I fall asleep or when I'm daydreaming. Her nails were longish and always well cared for, polished and shaped, the cuticles never torn or ragged, the nails themselves always with some kind of clear polish on them to protect them against the constant typing and strikes against the keys and the wear and tear of wheeling her chair. I loved watching her at the keyboard. I know, I'm a cheap date but I really did. Every time I watched her I'd imagine it was a piano or a harpsicord or something and could hear the music she was making in my head--which she'd suggest I get examined if she knew. And her hands are just so feminine. I know that sounds sexist or something and she'd be angry if she knew I think that, but it's true.
I noticed last week that Alfred has some liver spots on his hands now and I'm pretty sure they weren't there a few months ago. His hands are strong and thin like the rest of himâ€"almost bony, really and always accurate, precise in whatever he's doing with them. His hands are so sure of whatever they're doing and I can't count the times he used them to sooth or comfort me as well as my mother used to be able to do. I doubt I can remember ever seeing them completely at restâ€"even when he's seated watching a movie or something, his hands are busy with mending or polishing, never really still, never wasting time, never wasting motion or effort. Never not working and usually for someone else and always smelling of furniture polish or baking.
Leslieâ€"Doctor Leslie's hands; gentle, reassuring, healing and comforting whatever was wrong with meâ€"cuts, scrapes, broken bones or a broken heartâ€"it was all the same. I'd go to her, frightened or in pain and she'd make it better with her small hands and fingers that are always so clean. I know that sounds obvious for a doctor who washes her hands twenty times a day, but it always impressed me and it's something I always notice when I see her. Maybe it's because I always have oil under my nails or chalk ingrained in the calluses of my own hands that will always be there, but hers are so wonderfully clean and soft without the slightest trace of weakness about them. Strong in their own way and so steady she can cut into a human being and cause healing instead of pain.
The first time I saw Bruce's hands was the night he held me after my parent's died and the only reason I let him was because his hands reminded me of my father's. I sometimes think that if they hadn't, thingsâ€"well, everything in my life would have turned out differently. Stupid the things that matter to kids, isn't it? The specific thing I noticed was that his thumbnail wasâ€"I mean, isâ€"flattened. It's not like it's in any way deformed or anything, but it's pretty unique and my dad had the same thing. It made Bruce not a stranger that night, somehow familiar. Maybe if he'd been dressed as the Bat with the gauntlets on I would have run screaming the other way, but I could see his hands and they somehow reassured me that he was okay.
Weird the things that make a first impression, isn't it?
The other thing I noticed that night was that Bruce has hair on his knuckles like Dad had, the same black hairs, just a few of them on his fingers with a few more where they've sort of crept up from his wrist. That always seemed to me as just so damn masculine, and when I was a kid I wished my hands would grow some hair on the backs like Dadâ€"and later Bruce had. I forgot about that as I got older, but one day when I was about twenty-one I was in Hogan's wiping down the counter and for some reason I noticed the backs of my hands. You know how you look at something a million times and don't really see it? That day for some reason I looked and I had hair on my knuckles and creeping up just a little from my wrists like Dad and Bruce.
It sounds stupid, but I was incredibly proud of that and, if someone tied me down and put a gun to my head, I guess I'd have to admit that I still get a kind of charge out of it. It's like, 'hell, look at meâ€"I'm a grown-up', or something like that.
But all that aside, the fact is that I've never really liked my hands.
You know how people like and dislike different features about themselves? Like they think their eyes are too close together or their nose is too big or they're too fat but maybe they think they have nice legs or hair? Well, I never liked the way my hands looked until the day I realized that they'd grown and looked like my father's. Both of my father's. I still have the calluses like my Dad and now I have the hair on my knuckles, too. My hands are tough and able. They can do almost anything I want them to but they're no longer the hands I used to have. They're bigger and stronger and scarred. They have lines on them and my left pinky doesn't quite straighten out completely after I broke it that time when I was seventeen.
I think they tell a lot about me if anyone takes the time or the trouble to look, but most people don't, of course. Most people don't pay all that much attention to hands or fingers and I think that's a shame.
Eyes are the mirrors of the soul, right? Okay, I'll buy that, at least sometimes, anyway.
But handsâ€"hands are the story of the life that's being lived.
6/26/05
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