The Cider House Rules (81 page)

He had been so convincing about Fuzzy Stone—he had presented them with such marvelous details—that Nurse Caroline was the only one to spot the problem.

“What if Homer Wells won’t come here and pretend to be Fuzzy Stone?” she asked Dr. Larch.

“Homer belongs here,” Nurse Angela said, by rote; that Homer Wells belonged to St. Cloud’s was (to Nurse Angela) as obvious a fact as the weather—even if this fact (to Homer) had been his life’s crucible.

“But he doesn’t believe in performing abortions,” Nurse Caroline reminded all the old people. “When did you last talk to him about it?” she asked Larch. “
I’ve
talked to him pretty recently, and he believes in
your
right to perform them—he even sent me here, to help you. And he believes it should be legal—to have one. But he also says that he could never, personally, do it—to him, it’s killing someone. That’s how he sees it. That’s what he says.”

“He has near-perfect procedure,” Wilbur Larch said tiredly. When Nurse Caroline looked at all of them, she saw them as if they were dinosaurs—not just prehistoric but also almost willfully too large for the world. How could the planet ever provide enough for them? It was not a very socialist thought, but this was the conviction with which her heart sank as she looked at them.

“Homer Wells thinks it’s killing someone,” Nurse Caroline repeated.

As she spoke, she felt she was personally responsible for starving the dinosaurs; the old people looked gaunt and feeble to her—despite their size.

“Is the alternative just waiting and seeing?” Nurse Angela asked.

No one answered her.

“ ‘O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes,’ ” Mrs. Grogan began softly, but Dr. Larch wouldn’t hear her out.

“Whatever the alternative is—if there is one—it isn’t
prayer,
” he said.

“It’s always been an alternative for me,” Mrs. Grogan said defiantly.

“Then say it to yourself,” he said.

Dr. Larch moved slowly in the small room. He handed Nurse Angela the letter to the board he had written for her. He handed Nurse Caroline her letter, too.

“Just sign them,” he said. “Read them over, if you want.”

“You don’t
know
that Melony will expose you,” Mrs. Grogan said to him.

“Does it really matter?” Larch asked. “Just look at me. Do I have a lot of time?” They looked away. “I don’t want to leave it up to Melony. Or to old age,” he added. “Or to ether,” he admitted, which caused Nurse Edna to cover her face with her hands. “I prefer to take my chances with Homer Wells.”

Nurse Angela and Nurse Caroline signed the letters. Several examples of the correspondence between Wilbur Larch and Fuzzy Stone were also submitted to the board of trustees; Nurse Angela would include these in the envelope with her letter. The board would understand that all the nurses, and Mrs. Grogan, had discussed the matter together. Wilbur Larch would not need ether to help him sleep—not that night.

Mrs. Grogan, who usually slept like a stone, would be awake all night; she was praying. Nurse Edna took a long walk through the apple orchard on the hill. Even when they all pitched in for the harvest, it was hard to keep up with the apples Homer had provided. Nurse Caroline, who (everyone agreed) was the most alert, was assigned the task of familiarizing herself with the details of the life and training of the zealous missionary Dr. Stone; if the board asked questions—and surely they would—someone had to be ready with the right answers. Despite her youth and her energy, Nurse Caroline was forced to take Fuzzy’s history with her to her bed, where sleep overcame her before she got to the part about the children’s diarrhea.

Nurse Angela was on duty. She gave the woman who was expecting an abortion another sedative; she gave a woman who was expecting a baby a glass of water; she tucked one of the smaller boys back into his bed—he must have had a dream; he was completely on top of his covers and his feet were on his pillow. Dr. Larch had been so tired that he had gone to bed without kissing any of the boys, so Nurse Angela decided to do this for him—and, perhaps, for herself. When she’d kissed the last boy, her back was hurting her and she sat down on one of the unoccupied beds. She listened to the boys’ breathing; she tried to remember Homer Wells as a boy, to recall the particular sound of his breathing; she tried to get a picture of the postures of his style of sleep. It calmed her to think of him. Given old age, given ether, given Melony, she, too, would prefer to take her chances with Homer Wells.

“Please come home, Homer,” Nurse Angela whispered. “Please come home.”

It was one of the few times that Nurse Angela fell asleep when she was on duty, and the first time, ever, that she fell asleep in the boys’ sleeping room. The boys were astonished to discover her with them in the morning; she woke up with the boys climbing on her, and she needed to busy herself to assure the younger ones that no great change in the order of their lives was being heralded by her being found asleep among them. She hoped she was telling the truth. A particularly small and superstitious boy did not believe her; he believed in things he referred to as “woods creatures,” which he refused to describe, and he remained convinced that one of these demons had turned Nurse Angela into an orphan overnight.

“When you fall asleep, the bark grows over your eyes,” he explained to her.

“Heavens, no!” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “And then only the trees will adopt you.”

“Nonsense,” Nurse Angela told him. “The trees are just trees. And bark can’t hurt you.”

“Some of the trees used to be people,” the little boy told her. “They used to be orphans.”

“No, no, dear. No, they didn’t,” Nurse Angela said. She made him sit on her lap.

Although it was early in the morning, she could hear the typewriter; Dr. Larch had more to say. The little boy in her lap was trembling; he was listening to the typewriter, too.

“Do you hear that?” he whispered to Nurse Angela.

“The typewriter?” she asked him.

“The what?” he said.

“That’s a typewriter,” she said, but he shook his head.

“No, it’s the bark,” he said. “It gets in at night, and in the morning.”

Although her back still hurt her, Nurse Angela carried the boy all the way to her office; she showed him the noise he’d heard—Dr. Larch at the typewriter—but she wondered if Larch, in the state he was in when he was writing, was not even more terrifying to the little boy than his imagined tree people.

“You see?” Nurse Angela asked the boy. “It’s a typewriter, and that’s Doctor Larch.” Larch scowled at them; irritated by the interruption, he grumbled something they couldn’t hear. “You know Doctor Larch, don’t you?” Nurse Angela asked the little boy.

But the child had no doubt. He threw his arms around Nurse Angela’s neck; then, tentatively, he let go with one hand, with which he pointed at the typewriter and at Dr. Larch. “Woods creature,” he whispered.

This time the letter was written in Larch’s most didactic voice; he wrote to Homer Wells; he told Homer everything. He didn’t beg. He did not characterize Fuzzy Stone as having an altogether more important job than Homer had; he did not point out that both Homer Wells and Fuzzy Stone were impostors. Larch said that he was sure Angel would accept his father’s sacrifice—“He’ll value your need to be of use,” was how Wilbur Larch put it.

“Young people find risk-taking admirable. They find it heroic,” Larch argued. “If abortions were legal, you could refuse—in fact, given your beliefs, you
should
refuse. But as long as they’re against the law, how can you refuse? How can you allow yourself a choice in the matter when there are so many women who haven’t the freedom to make the choice themselves? The women have no choice. I know you know that’s not right, but how can you—you of all people, knowing what you know—HOW CAN YOU FEEL FREE TO CHOOSE NOT TO HELP PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT FREE TO GET OTHER HELP? You have to help them because you know how. Think about who’s going to help them if you refuse.” Wilbur Larch was so tired that if he had allowed himself to go to sleep, the bark would have grown over his eyes.

“Here is the trap you are in,” Dr. Larch wrote to Homer. “And it’s not my trap—I haven’t trapped you. Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you—because you know how to perform them—have no choice, either. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman’s freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice—and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you’re trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you.

“You are my work of art,” Wilbur Larch told Homer Wells. “Everything else has just been a job. I don’t know if you’ve got a work of art in you,” Larch concluded in his letter to Homer, “but I know what your job is, and you know what it is, too. You’re the doctor.”

It went out in the same mail with the letters and the “evidence” to the board of trustees; Nurse Caroline not only carried the letters to the railroad station, she also watched the mail being put on the train. When the train left, she observed a particularly lost-looking young woman who’d gotten off the train on the wrong side of the tracks; the station-master, who was watching television, was not available to give directions. Nurse Caroline asked the woozy young woman if she was looking for the orphanage, which she was. Unable to speak, or else choosing not to, she simply nodded and accompanied Nurse Caroline up the hill.

Dr. Larch was just finishing with the abortion patient who’d arrived the day before and had spent the night. “I’m sorry you had to wait. I hope you were comfortable,” he told her.

“Yes, everyone’s been very nice,” she said. “Even the children seem nice—what I saw of them.” Dr. Larch was puzzled by the “even”; why
wouldn’t
the children seem nice? Then he wondered if he had any idea how everything at St. Cloud’s might appear to others.

He was on his way to the dispensary to rest for a while when Nurse Caroline introduced him to the next patient. The young woman still wouldn’t speak, which made it hard for Larch to trust her.

“You’re sure you’re pregnant?” he asked her. She nodded. “Second month?” Larch guessed. The woman shook her head; she held up three fingers. “Third month,” Larch said, but the woman shrugged; she held up four fingers. “Maybe four?” Larch asked. She held up five fingers. “You’re five months pregnant?” Larch asked. Now she held up six fingers. “Maybe six?” Larch asked. The woman shrugged.

“Are you sure you’re pregnant?” Larch began again. Yes, she nodded. “You have no idea how long you’ve been pregnant?” Larch asked her, while Nurse Caroline helped the woman undress; she was so undernourished, both Larch and Nurse Caroline saw instantly that she was more pregnant than they first supposed. After Larch examined the woman, who was extremely jumpy to his touch, and feverish, he said, “You might be seven months. You might be too late,” Larch pointed out to her. The woman shook her head.

Larch wanted to look more closely, but Nurse Caroline was having difficulty getting the woman to assume the proper position. And while Nurse Caroline took the woman’s temperature, all Larch could do was press his hand against the woman’s abdomen, which was extremely tense—whenever Larch barely touched her, she would hold her breath.

“Have you tried to do something to yourself?” he asked the woman gently. “Have you hurt yourself?” The woman froze. “Why won’t you talk?” Larch asked; the woman shook her head. “Are you mute?” She shook her head. “Have you been injured?” Larch asked. The woman shrugged.

Finally, Nurse Caroline made the woman comfortable in the stirrups. “I’m going to look inside you, now,” Larch explained. “This is a speculum,” he said, holding up the instrument. “It may feel cold, but it doesn’t hurt.” The woman shook her head. “No, really, I’m not going to hurt you—I’m just going to look.”

“Her temperature is a hundred and four,” Nurse Caroline whispered to Dr. Larch.

“This will be more comfortable for you if you can relax,” Larch said; he could feel the woman’s resistance to the speculum. As he bent to look, the young woman spoke to him.

“It wasn’t me,” she said. “I would never have put all that inside of me.”

“All that?” Larch said. “All what?” Suddenly, he didn’t want to look before he knew.

“It wasn’t me,” she repeated. “I would never do such a thing.”

Dr. Larch bent so close to the speculum, he had to hold his breath. The smell of sepsis and putrefaction was strong enough to gag him if he breathed or swallowed, and the familiar, fiery colors of her infection (even clouded by her discharge) were dazzling enough to blind the intrepid or the untrained. But Wilbur Larch started to breathe again, slowly and regularly; it was the only way to keep a steady hand. He just kept looking and marveling at the young woman’s inflamed tissue; it looked hot enough to burn the world. Now do you see, Homer? Larch asked himself. Through the speculum, he felt her heat against his eye.

11
Breaking the Rules

Melony, who had hitchhiked from Bath to Ocean View, hitchhiked back on the same day; she’d lost her zeal for apple picking. She retreated, to plan another vacation—or to plead to return to work. Melony went to the pizza bar where everyone went, and she was looking so woebegone that Lorna left the lout she was with at the bar and sat down in the booth opposite her.

“I guess you found him,” Lorna said.

“He’s changed,” Melony said; she told Lorna the story. “It wasn’t for
me
that I felt so bad,” Melony said. “I mean, I didn’t really expect him to run away with me, or anythin’ like that. It was just him—he was really better than that, I thought. He was someone I thought was gonna be a hero. I guess that’s dumb, but that’s what he looked like—like he had hero stuff in him. He seemed so much better than everybody else, but he was just a fake.”

“You don’t know everythin’ that’s happened to him,” Lorna said philosophically; she didn’t know Homer Wells, but she had sympathy for sexual entanglements.