The Cider House Rules (66 page)

“He’s injured, or somethin’,” Big Dot said, bursting into tears.

“Of course,” Olive said abruptly. “It’s what I’ve always thought.” Her words startled them all—even Ray Kendall. “If he weren’t injured, we would have heard from him by now. And if he weren’t alive, I’d know it,” Olive said. She handed her handkerchief to Big Dot Taft and lit a fresh cigarette from the butt end of the cigarette she had almost finished.

Thanksgiving at St. Cloud’s was not nearly so mystical, and the food wasn’t as good, but everyone had a good time. In lieu of balloons, Dr. Larch distributed prophylactics to Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna, who—despite their distate for the job—inflated the rubbers and dipped them in bowls of green and red food coloring. When the coloring dried, Mrs. Grogan painted the orphans’ names on the rubbers, and Homer and Candy hid the brightly colored prophylactics all over the orphanage.

“It’s a rubber hunt,” said Wilbur Larch. “We should have saved the idea for Easter. Eggs are expensive.”

“We’ll not give up eggs for Easter, Wilbur,” Nurse Edna said indignantly.

“I suppose not,” Dr. Larch said tiredly.

Olive Worthington had sent a case of champagne. Wilbur Larch had never drunk a drop of champagne before—he was not a drinker—but the way the bubbles tightened the roof of his mouth, opened his nasal passages and made his eyes feel dry but clear reminded him of that lightest of vapors, of that famous inhalation he was addicted to. He drank and drank. He even sang for the children—something he’d heard the French soldiers sing in World War I. That song was no more suitable for children than those prophylactics were, but—because of an ignorance of French and an innocence of sex—the French song (which was filthier than any limerick Wally Worthington would ever know) was mistaken for a pleasing ditty and the green and red rubbers were mistaken for balloons.

Even Nurse Edna got a little drunk; champagne was new to her, too, although she sometimes put sherry in hot soup. Nurse Angela didn’t drink, but she became emotional—to the degree that she threw her arms around Homer’s neck and kissed him mightily, all the while proclaiming that the spirit of St. Cloud’s had been in a noticeable slump during Homer’s absence and that Homer had been sent by a clearly sympathetic God to revive them.

“But Homer’s not staying,” Wilbur Larch said, hiccuping.

They had all been impressed with Candy, whom even Dr. Larch referred to as “our angelic volunteer,” and over whom Mrs. Grogan daily fussed as if Candy were her daughter. Nurse Edna busied herself around the young lovers the way a moth flaps around a light.

On Thanksgiving Day, Dr. Larch even flirted with Candy—a little. “I never saw such a pretty girl who was willing to give enemas,” Larch said, patting Candy’s knee.

“I’m not squeamish,” Candy told him.

“There’s no room for squeamishness here,” Larch said, burping.

“There’s still a little room for sensitivity, I hope,” Nurse Angela complained. Larch had never praised her
or
Nurse Edna for their willingness to give enemas.

“Of course, I wanted him to go to medical school, to be a doctor, to come back and relieve me here,” Wilbur Larch told Candy in a loud voice—as if Homer weren’t sitting right across the table. Larch patted Candy’s knee again. “But that’s all right!” he said. “Who wouldn’t rather get a girl like you pregnant—and grow apples!” He said something in French and drank another glass of champagne. “Of course,” he whispered to Candy, “he doesn’t need to go to medical school to be a doctor
here.
There’s just a few more procedures he ought to be familiar with. Hell!” Larch said, indicating the orphans eating their turkey—each with a colored rubber, like a name tag, stationed in front of his or her plate, “this isn’t a bad place to raise a family. And if Homer ever gets around to planting the damn hillside, then you’ll get to grow apples here, too.”

When Dr. Larch fell asleep at the table, Homer Wells carried him back to the dispensary. In his time away from St. Cloud’s, Homer wondered, had Dr. Larch gone completely crazy? There was no one to ask. Mrs. Grogan, Nurse Edna, and especially Nurse Angela might agree that Larch had traveled around the bend—that he had one oar out of the water, as Ray Kendall would say; that he had one wheel in the sand, as Wally used to say—but Mrs. Grogan and the nurses would most emphatically defend Dr. Larch. Their view, Homer could tell, was that Homer had left them for too long, that his judgment was rusty. Fortunately, Homer’s obstetrical procedure had not suffered from his absence.

Pregnant women have no respect for holidays. The trains run at different times, but they run. It was after six in the evening when the woman arrived in St. Cloud’s; although it was not his usual practice, the stationmaster escorted her to the hospital entrance because the woman was already engaged in the second stage of labor—her membranes were ruptured, and her bearing-down pains were at regular intervals. Homer Wells was palpating the baby’s head through the perineum when Nurse Angela informed him that Dr. Larch was too drunk to be aroused, and Nurse Edna had also fallen asleep. Homer was concerned that the perineum showed signs of bulging, and the woman’s response to a rather heavy ether sedation was quite slow.

Homer was obliged to hold back the infant’s head in order to protect the perineum from tearing; the mediolateral incision, which Homer elected to perform, was made at a point corresponding to seven on the face of a clock. It was a safer episotomy, in Homer’s view, because the cut could, if necessary, be carried back considerably farther than the midline type of operation.

Immediately after the birth of the head, Homer slipped his finger around the neck of the child to see if the umbilical cord was coiled there, but it was an easy birth, both shoulders emerging spontaneously. He applied two ligatures to the umbilical and cut the cord between the two. He still had his surgical gown on when he went to the dispensary to see how Dr. Larch was recovering from his Thanksgiving Day champagne. If Larch was familiar with the transitions he encountered in moving from a world of ether to a world without anesthesia, he was unfamiliar with the transition between drunkenness and hangover. Seeing Homer Wells in the bloody smock of his business, Wilbur Larch imagined he was saved.

“Ah, Doctor Stone,” he said, extending his hand to Homer with a self-congratulatory formality famous among colleagues in the medical profession.

“Doctor Who?” said Homer Wells.

“Doctor Stone,” said Wilbur Larch, withdrawing his hand, his hangover settling on him—a dust so thick on the roof of his mouth that he could only repeat himself. “Fuzzy Stone, Fuzzy Stone, Fuzzy Stone.”

“Homer?” Candy asked, when they lay together in one of the twin beds given them in their room in the girls’ division. “Why would Doctor Larch say that you don’t need to go to medical school to be a doctor here?”

“Maybe he means that half the work here is illegal, anyway,” said Homer Wells. “So what’s the point of being a legitimate doctor?”

“But no one would hire you if you weren’t a legitimate doctor, would they?” Candy asked.

“Maybe Doctor Larch would,” said Homer Wells. “I know some things.”

“You don’t
want
to be a doctor here, anyway—do you?” Candy asked.

“That’s right, I don’t want to,” he said. What is all this about Fuzzy Stone? he was wondering as he fell asleep.

Homer was still asleep when Dr. Larch bent over the Thanksgiving woman and examined the episiotomy. Nurse Angela was telling him about it, stitch by stitch, but although Larch appreciated the description, it wasn’t really necessary; the look and feel of the woman’s healthy tissue told him everything he wanted to know. Homer Wells had not lost his confidence; he still had the correct touch.

He also possessed the self-righteousness of the young and wounded; Homer Wells had no doubts to soften his contempt for people who’d bungled their lives so badly that they didn’t want the children they’d conceived. Wilbur Larch would have told him that he was simply an arrogant, young doctor who’d never been sick—that he was guilty of a young doctor’s disease, manifesting a sick superiority toward
all
patients. But Homer was wielding an ideal of marriage and family like a club; he was more sure of the rightness of his goal than a couple celebrating their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary.

He must have imagined that the sacredness with which he viewed his union with Candy would hover like a halo above the young couple and shed a conspicuously forgiving light upon them and their child when they returned to Heart’s Haven and Heart’s Rock. He must have thought that the goodness of his and Candy’s intentions would glow with such a powerful radiance that Olive and Ray and the rest of that all-knowing, say-nothing community would be blinded. Homer and Candy must have envisioned that their child—conceived in a moment of love that overshadowed Wally’s being lost or dead or “just missing”—would be greeted as a descending angel.

And so they enjoyed the life of a young married couple that winter in St. Cloud’s. Never had being of use been such good fun. There was no chore the lovely and growingly pregnant young woman thought herself to be above; her beauty and her physical energy were inspiring to the girls in the girls’ division. Dr. Larch devoted himself to teaching Homer more about pediatrics—since he could find no fault with Homer’s obstetrical procedure and since Homer was emphatic about his refusal to participate in the abortions. The rigidity of this latter position perplexed even Candy, who was fond of saying to Homer, “Just explain it to me again—how you’re not disapproving of the procedure, but that you will not yourself be party to what you feel is wrong.”

“Right,” said Homer Wells; he had no doubts. “You’ve got it. There’s nothing else to explain. I think an abortion should be available to anyone who wants one, but
I
never want to perform one. What’s hard to understand about that?”

“Nothing,” Candy said, but she would keep asking him about it. “You think it’s wrong, yet you think it should be legal—right?”

“Right,” said Homer Wells. “I think it’s wrong, but I also think it should be everyone’s personal choice. What could be more personal than deciding whether you want a child or not?”

“I don’t know,” Candy said, although it occurred to her that she and Homer Wells had “decided” that Wally was dead—which seemed especially personal to her.

In her fifth month, they began sleeping in separate beds, but they drew the beds together and attempted to make them up as if they were one big bed—a problem, since there were no double-bed sheets at St. Cloud’s.

Mrs. Grogan wanted to make a present of double-bed sheets to Homer and Candy, but she had no money of her own to buy them and she wondered if purchasing them for the orphanage would seem strange. “Very strange,” Larch said, vetoing the idea.

“In other parts of the world, they have double-bed sheets,” wrote Wilbur Larch in
A Brief History of St. Cloud’s.
“Here in St. Cloud’s we do without—we just do without.”

Yet it was the best Christmas ever in St. Cloud’s. Olive sent so many presents, and Candy’s example—as the first happily pregnant woman in any of their memories—was a present to them all. They had a turkey and a ham, and Dr. Larch and Homer Wells had a carving contest, which everyone said Homer won. He finished carving the turkey before Larch finished carving the ham.

“Well, turkeys are easier to cut than pigs,” Larch said. Secretly, he was very pleased with Homer’s knife work. That Homer had learned his touch for cutting under circumstances different from Mr. Rose’s was often on Homer’s mind. Given certain advantages of education, Homer thought, Mr. Rose might have made an excellent surgeon.

“Might have made,” Homer mumbled to himself. He had never been happier.

He was of use, he was in love—and was loved—and he was expecting a child. What more is there? he thought, making the daily rounds. Other people may look for a break from routine, but an orphan craves daily life.

In midwinter, in a blizzard, when the women were having tea in the girls’ division with Mrs. Grogan and Dr. Larch was at the railroad station, personally accusing the stationmaster of losing an expected delivery of sulfa, a woman arrived at the hospital entrance, bent double with cramps and bleeding. She’d had the D without the C, as Nurse Caroline would have observed; whoever had managed the dilatation appeared to have managed it safely. What was required now was a completion curettage, which Homer performed alone. One very small piece of the products of conception was recognizable in the scraping, which caused Homer Wells a single, small thought. About four months, was what he estimated—looking quickly at the piece, and quickly throwing it away.

At night, when he touched Candy without waking her up, he marveled at how peacefully she slept; and he observed how life in St. Cloud’s seemed timeless, placeless and constant, how it seemed grim but caring, how it seemed somehow safer than life in Heart’s Rock or in Heart’s Haven—certainly safer than life over Burma. That was the night he got up and went to the boys’ division; perhaps he was looking for his history in the big room where all the boys slept, but what he found instead was Dr. Larch kissing every boy a late good night. Homer imagined then that Dr. Larch had kissed him like that, when he’d been small; Homer could not have imagined how those kisses, even now, were still kisses meant for him. They were kisses seeking Homer Wells.

That was the same night that he saw the lynx on the barren, unplanted hillside—glazed with snow that had thawed and then refrozen into a thick crust. Homer had stepped outside for just a minute; after witnessing the kisses, he desired the bracing air. It was a Canada lynx—a dark, gunmetal gray against the lighter gray of the moonlit snow, its wildcat stench so strong Homer gagged to smell the thing. Its wildcat sense was keen enough to keep it treading within a single leap’s distance of the safety of the woods. The lynx was crossing the brow of the hill when it began to slide; its claws couldn’t grip the crust of the snow, and the hill had suddenly grown steeper. The cat moved from the dull moonlight into the sharper light from Nurse Angela’s office window; it could not help its sideways descent. It traveled closer to the orphanage than it would ever have chosen to come, its ferocious death smell clashing with the freezing cold. The lynx’s helplessness on the ice had rendered its expression both terrified and resigned; both madness and fatalism were caught in the cat’s fierce, yellow eyes and in its involuntary, spitting cough as it slid on, actually bumping against the hospital before its claws could find a purchase on the crusted snow. It spit its rage at Homer Wells, as if Homer had caused its unwilling descent.