Golden Fingers

    Nellie was waiting for me at the nursing home entrance. Her first words revealed that she was in much turmoil of spirit: "The little boy fell on his head," she said, without preamble, "and broke into lots of pieces!" I knew exactly which "little boy" she meant; she has two porcelain dolls, about six or eight inches tall, dressed in Russian-style clothes, who live on her shelves and sometimes tumble off for no good reason at all. I had glued his feet (or maybe it was his brother's) a time or two before.
    "Don't worry," I tried to comfort her. "Maybe I can fix him. Let's go see."
    "But there are so many pieces!" She would not be comforted, so we wheeled down the hall and started tea while I inspected the fragments she had gathered. Sure enough, there were quite a few pieces...and try as I could, they didn't quite make a whole head. One was unmistakably missing. I crawled around the floor, peering under the bed and into corners hoping that the last bit would magically appear...but it was nowhere to be found.
     I showed Nellie the triangular hole right in the center of his forehead and told her that I while could glue the rest, there would still be that gap. She brightened up immediately and dismissed the gaping wound as a non-issue: "You have golden fingers," she assured me. "You can do something. Maybe his hair will cover it!"
    "Alright," I agreed, somewhat doubtfully, to make the attempt. "So what is his name? If we're going to fix him, he needs a name."
    "Ummm..." Nellie looked blank.
    "Do you want him to have a Russian name, or an American name?"
    "Well...I'm not sure. Maybe an American name. What's your husband's name, again?" I reminded her, and she seized upon it happily. "His name is Jerry!" she declared.
    There was no way his hair, even bowl-cut as it was, could cover that hole in any manner that looked natural--but with such trust, I had to try. Carefully wrapped in a paper towel, the little boy traveled with me to work, where we have many tubes of superglue; Jerry's story so affected my coworkers that he quickly became a community project. I carefully glued all the pieces until all that remained was that triangle between his eyes.... "Maybe," my boss suggested, "you could use a bit of paper."
    So I took him back home and fashioned a tiny papier-mache patch which, when dabbed with foundation, actually blended pretty well. When Tuesday came again, I showed the finished product to the ladies at work and continued on with a tiny bit of trepidation to Nellie. I wasn't so concerned that she wouldn't be pleased, but that she might refuse to believe that I had used paper to patch him!
    I shouldn't have worried. Nellie was so delighted at Jerry's return that she only shook her head in wonder at how little the hole showed. Smiling happily, she kissed the doll on the head and directed me to put him back on his shelf next to the other little boy. As I gently set him in his place, I asked her if she had a name for the second figure. She shrugged her shoulders. "You name him," she commanded.
    "How about 'Tom'?" I suggested.
    "Thom ee Djeri," she tried out the sounds of the words, nodding with approval. "Very good."
    And so Tom and Jerry live high on Nellie's shelf, where (hopefully) they will stay safely without any more falls.