The Cider House Rules (47 page)

As for the
best
congenital heart defect for Homer Wells, Dr. Larch was leaning toward pulmonary valve stenosis. “From infancy, and throughout his early childhood, Homer Wells had a loud heart murmur,” Dr. Larch wrote—for the record, just to hear how it sounded. “At twenty-one,” he noted elsewhere, “Homer’s old heart murmur is difficult to detect; however, I find that the stenosis of the pulmonary valve is still apparent in an X ray.” It might be
barely
detectable, he knew; Homer’s heart defect was not for everyone to see—that was the point. What was necessary was that it just be there.

“Don’t take Latin or Greek if you don’t want to,” Dr. Larch wrote to Homer Wells. “It’s a free country, isn’t it?”

Homer Wells was beginning to wonder. In the same envelope with Dr. Larch’s letter was a letter Dr. Larch had forwarded to him from good old Snowy Meadows. In Wilbur Larch’s opinion, Snowy was a fool, “but a persistent one.”

“Hi, Homer, it’s me—Snowy,” Snowy Meadows began. He explained that his name was now Robert Marsh—“of the Bangor Marshes, we’re the big furniture family,” Snowy wrote.

The furniture family? thought Homer Wells.

Snowy went on and on about how he’d met and married the girl of his dreams, and how he’d chosen the furniture business over going to college, and how happy he was that he’d gotten out of St. Cloud’s; Snowy added that he hoped Homer had “gotten out,” too.

“And what do you hear from Fuzzy Stone?” Snowy Meadows wanted to know. “Old Larch says Fuzzy is doing well. I’d like to write Fuzzy, if you know his address.”

Fuzzy Stone’s
address
! thought Homer Wells. And what did “old Larch” mean (that “Fuzzy is doing well”)? Doing well at
what
? wondered Homer Wells, but he wrote to Snowy Meadows that Fuzzy was, indeed, doing well; that he had misplaced Fuzzy’s address for the moment; and that he found apple farming to be healthy and satisfying work. Homer added that he had no immediate plans to visit Bangor; he would surely look up “the furniture Marshes” if he was ever in town. And, no, he concluded, he didn’t agree with Snowy that “a kind of reunion in St. Cloud’s” was such a hot idea; he said he was sure that Dr. Larch would never approve of such a plan; he confessed that he did miss Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna, and of course Dr. Larch himself, but wasn’t the place better left behind? “Isn’t that what it’s for?” Homer Wells asked Snowy Meadows. “Isn’t an orphanage supposed to be left behind?”

Then Homer wrote to Dr. Larch.

“What’s this about Fuzzy Stone ‘doing well’—doing well at WHAT? I know that Snowy Meadows is an idiot, but if you’re going to tell him some stuff about Fuzzy Stone, don’t you think you better tell me, too?”

In time, in time, thought Wilbur Larch wearily; he was feeling harassed. Dr. Gingrich and Mrs. Goodhall had prevailed upon the board of trustees; the board had requested that Larch comply with Dr. Gingrich’s recommendation of a “follow-up report” on the status of each orphan’s success (or failure) in each foster home. If this added paperwork was too tedious for Dr. Larch, the board recommended that Larch take Mrs. Goodhall’s suggestion and accept an administrative assistant. Don’t I have enough history to attend to, as is? Larch wondered. He rested in the dispensary; he sniffed a little ether and composed himself. Gingrich and Goodhall, he said to himself. Ginghall and Goodrich, he muttered. Richhall and Ginggood! Goodging and Hallrich! He woke himself, giggling.

“What are you so merry about?” Nurse Angela said sharply to him from the hall outside the dispensary.

“Goodballs and Ding Dong!” Wilbur Larch said to her.

He went to Nurse Angela’s office, with a vengeance. He had plans for Fuzzy Stone. He called Bowdoin College (where Fuzzy Stone would successfully complete his undergraduate studies) and Harvard Medical School (where Larch intended Fuzzy to do very, very well). He told the registrar’s office at Bowdoin that a sum of money had been donated to the orphanage at St. Cloud’s for the express purpose of paying the medical school expenses of an exceptional young man or woman who would be willing—more than willing, even dedicated—to serve St. Cloud’s. Could Dr. Larch have access to the transcripts of Bowdoin’s recent graduates who had gone on to medical school? He told a slightly different story to Harvard Medical School; he wanted access to transcripts, of course, but in this case the sum of money had been donated to establish a training fellowship in obstetrics.

It was the first traveling Wilbur Larch had done since he’d chased after Clara, the first time he’d slept in a place other than the dispensary since World War I; but he needed to familiarize himself with the transcript forms at Bowdoin and at Harvard Medical School. Only in this way could he create a transcript for F. Stone; he begged the use of a typewriter and some paper—“one of your blank transcript forms will make it easier for me”—and pretended to type out the names and credentials of a few interesting candidates. “I see so many who’d be perfect,” he told them at Bowdoin and Harvard, “but it’s impossible to know if any of them could tolerate Saint Cloud’s. We’re very isolated,” he confessed, thanking them for their help, handing them back their transcripts (Fuzzy’s in the proper place, among the S’s).

When he had returned to St. Cloud’s, Dr. Larch wrote to Bowdoin and Harvard, requesting copies of the transcripts of a few outstanding graduates; he had narrowed the choices down to these few, he told them. A copy of Fuzzy’s transcript came in the mail with the others.

When Larch had visited Harvard Medical School, he’d taken a Cambridge post office box in Fuzzy’s name. Now he wrote to the postmaster there, requesting the mail for F. Stone be forwarded to St. Cloud’s. The P.O. box address would be useful, too, if young Dr. Stone were to pursue his zealous instincts to a mission abroad. Then he sent an empty envelope to the Cambridge address and waited for its return.

When the letter came back to him—when he was sure the system worked—he composed the rest of the history regarding F. Stone and his adoptive family (named Eames) and sent it along to the board of trustees, together with Fuzzy’s address. He did not have to invent anything regarding Curly Day; he cringed to write the name Roy Rinfret; and he told the truth regarding Snowy Meadows and most of the others, although he had difficulty typing “the furniture Marshes” without laughing out loud, and when he came to the case of Homer Wells, he thought very carefully about how to word the matter of Homer’s heart.

Among the members of the board, there wasn’t a heart specialist or a radiologist, or even a surgeon; there was a very old GP who, Dr. Larch felt sure, never read anything at all. Larch didn’t count Dr. Gingrich as a doctor; he counted psychiatrists as nothing at all, and he felt confident that he could bully Mrs. Goodhall with the slightest terminology.

He confessed to the board (isn’t everyone flattered by a confidence?) that he had refrained from mentioning the matter of Homer’s heart to Homer; he admitted to stalling but argued that worrying the boy might contribute to his problem, and he wanted the boy to gain confidence in the outside world before burdening him with this dangerous knowledge—yet he intended to burden Homer with it, shortly. Larch said he
had
informed the Worthingtons of the heart defect; they might therefore be more than usually protective of Homer; he had not bothered to explain the presence of the actual murmur to them, or to detail the exact characteristics of pulmonary valve stenosis. He would be happy to provide the board with such details, should they request them. He had fun imagining Mrs. Goodhall scrutinizing an X ray.

He concluded that he thought the board’s request for the follow-up reports had been a good idea and that he had enjoyed himself immensely in preparing them; contrary to needing an administrative assistant to perform such a service, Dr. Larch said he had felt “positively energized” by the “welcome task”—since, he added, following up on his orphans’ adoptive lives was always on his mind. And sometimes right off the top of my head, he thought.

He was exhausted, and forgot to circumcise a newborn baby boy whom Nurse Angela had prepared for the operation. He mistook a woman awaiting an abortion for a woman he’d delivered the previous day, and therefore told her that her baby was very healthy and doing fine. He spilled a small amount of ether on his face and needed to irrigate his eye.

He became cross because he had overdosed prophylactics—he had far too many rubbers around. Since Melony had left, no one was stealing the rubbers anymore. When he thought of Melony, he became worried, which also made him cross.

He returned to Nurse Angela’s office and wrote a report, which was real, concerning David Copperfield’s lisp; he neglected to mention that David Copperfield had been delivered and named by Homer Wells. He wrote a slightly fictitious report on the orphan called Steerforth, remarking that his delivery was so straightforward that Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela had been able to handle it entirely without a doctor’s assistance. He wrote the truth about Smoky Fields: the boy hoarded food, a trait that was more common in the girls’ division than in the boys’, and Smoky was beginning to exhibit a pattern of insomnia that Larch had not witnessed at St. Cloud’s “since the days of Homer Wells.”

The memory of those days brought instant tears to his eyes, but he recovered himself sufficiently to write that both he and Mrs. Grogan were worried about Mary Agnes Cork: she had exhibited frequent depressions since Melony’s departure. He also told the truth about Melony, although he chose not to include any acts of vandalism. Larch wrote of Mary Agnes: “Perhaps she sees herself as inheriting Melony’s former position, but she hasn’t the dominating character that usually attends any powerful or leadership role.” That idiot Dr. Gingrich is going to like that, Larch imagined. “Role,” Larch said aloud, scornfully. As if orphans have the luxury of imagining that they have
roles.

Impulsively, he went to the dispensary and inflated two prophylactics. Got to use these things up in some way, he thought. He used a laundry-marking pen to write the name GINGRICH on one prophylactic and the name GOODHALL on the other. Then he took these jolly balloons and went in search of Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna.

They were in the girls’ division, having tea with Mrs. Grogan, when Dr. Larch found them.

“A-ha!” Larch said, surprising the ladies, who were unused to see him making an appearance in the girls’ division except for the evening dose of
Jane Eyre—
and even more unused to see him waving marked prophylactics in their faces.

“Doctor Gingrich and Missus Goodhall, I presume!” Larch said, bowing to everyone. Whereupon he took a scalpel and popped the prophylactics. On the floor above them, Mary Agnes Cork heard the noise and sat up in her bed where she had been lying in a sullen depression. Mrs. Grogan was too stunned to speak.

When Dr. Larch left the ladies with their tea and returned to the hospital, Nurse Edna was the first to say something. “Wilbur works so hard,” she said cautiously. “Isn’t it a wonder that he can find the time to be playful?”

Mrs. Grogan was still struck speechless, but Nurse Angela said, “I think the old man is losing his marbles.”

Nurse Edna appeared to be personally wounded by this remark; she returned her teacup to her saucer very steadily before she spoke. “I think it’s the ether,” she said quietly.

“Yes and no,” said Nurse Angela.

“Do you think it’s Homer Wells, too?” Mrs. Grogan asked.

“Yes,” Nurse Angela said. “It’s ether
and
it’s Homer Wells, and it’s old age,
and
it’s those new members on the board. It’s just everything. It’s Saint Cloud’s.”

“It’s what happened to Melony, too,” Mrs. Grogan said, but she burst into tears when she said Melony’s name. Upstairs, Mary Agnes Cork heard Melony’s name and cried.

“Homer Wells will be back, I just know it,” Nurse Angela said, but this so dissolved her in tears that Nurse Edna was obliged to comfort both her and Mrs. Grogan. “There, there,” Nurse Edna said to them, but she wondered: where is the young man or the young woman who’s going to take care of us all?

“Oh Lord,” began Mrs. Grogan. Upstairs, Mary Agnes Cork bowed her head and clasped her hands; by pressing the heels of her hands together at a certain angle, she could revive a little of the pain from her old collarbone injury. “Oh Lord,” Mrs. Grogan prayed, “support us all day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.”

That night, in the darkness, in keeping with the moan of an owl, Nurse Edna whispered “Amen” to herself while she listened to Dr. Larch making his rounds, kissing each of the boys—even Smoky Fields, who hoarded his food and hid it in his bed, which smelled, and who only pretended to be asleep.

On the Ferris wheel, high above the carnival grounds and the beach at Cape Kenneth, Homer Wells was trying to spot the roof of the cider house, but it was dark and there were no lights on in the cider house—and even if the cider house had been lit, or there had been the clearest daylight imaginable, the house was too far away. Only the brightest carnival lights, especially the distinctive lights of the Ferris wheel, were visible from the cider house roof; the visibility didn’t exist the other way around.

“I want to be a pilot,” Wally said. “I want to fly, I really do. If I had my pilot’s license, and my own plane, I could do all the spraying at the orchards—I’d get a crop duster, but I’d paint it like a fighter. It’s so clumsy, driving those dumb sprayers around behind those dumb tractors, up and down those dumb hills.”

It was what Candy’s father, Ray, was doing at the moment; Meany Hyde was sick, and Everett Taft, the foreman, had asked Ray if he’d mind driving a night spray—Ray knew the equipment so well. It was the last spray before harvest, and somewhere in the blackened inland greenery that lay below the Ferris wheel, Raymond Kendall and Vernon Lynch were spraying their way through Ocean View.

Sometimes Wally sprayed; Homer was learning how. And sometimes Herb Fowler sprayed, but Herb protested against night spraying. (“I have better things to do at night,” he’d say.) It was better to spray at night because the wind dropped in the evenings, especially along the coast.