The Cider House Rules (86 page)

“Plaisir d’amour!”
she said.

“Non, non!”
he told her; he had to wave his arms to keep her away. One hand, swinging back and forth beside the bed, knocked over the ether can with the loose pin. Slowly, the puddle developed on the linoleum floor; it spread under the bed, and all around him. The strength of the fumes overpowered him—the woman in Paris had smelled very strongly, too. Her perfume was strong, and stronger still was the effluvia of her trade. By the time Larch moved his face away from the windowsill and the cone fell, he was already gagging.

“Princes of Maine!” He tried to call for them, but he didn’t make a sound. “Kings of New England!” He thought he was summoning them, but no one could hear him, and the French woman lay down beside him and snuggled her heavy belly against him. She hugged him so tightly that he couldn’t breathe, and her flavorful, tangy aroma made the tears run down his cheeks. He thought he was vomiting; he was.

“Plaisir d’amour,”
she whispered.

“Oui, merci,”
he said, giving in to her.
“Oui, merci.”

The cause of death would be respiratory failure, due to aspiration of vomit, which would lead to cardiac arrest. The board of trustees—in light of the evidence submitted against him—would privately call it a suicide; the man was about to be disgraced, they told themselves. But those who knew him and understood his ether habit would say that it was the kind of accident a tired man would have. Certainly, Mrs. Grogan knew—and Nurse Angela, and Nurse Edna, and Nurse Caroline knew, too—that he was
not
a man “about to be disgraced”; rather, he was a man about to be no longer of use. And a man
of use,
Wilbur Larch had thought, was all that he was born to be.

Nurse Edna, who for some time would remain almost speechless, found his body. The dispensary door was not a perfect seal, and she thought that the odor was especially strong and that Dr. Larch had been in there longer than usual.

Mrs. Grogan, who hoped he’d gone to a better world, read, in the voice of a troubled thrush, a quavering passage of
Jane Eyre
to the girls’ division.

An orphan loves and needs routine, the women reminded each other.

Nurse Caroline, who was tough as nails and found Dickens a sentimental bore, had a firm grasp of the language; she read aloud an almost hearty passage of
David Copperfield
to the boys’ division. But she found herself broken by the prospect of the expected benediction.

It was Nurse Angela who said it all, according to the rules.

“Let us be happy for Doctor Larch,” she said to the attentive children. “Doctor Larch has found a family. Good night, Doctor Larch,” Nurse Angela said.

“Good night, Doctor Larch!” the children called.

“Good night, Wilbur!” Nurse Edna managed to say, while Nurse Angela summoned her strength for the usual refrain, and Nurse Caroline, who hoped the evening wind would dry her tears, marched down the hill to the railroad station—once again to inform the frightened stationmaster that there was a body in St. Cloud’s.

That Sunday at Ocean View was an Indian summer day, and Homer Wells was fishing. Not real fishing: Homer was trying to find out more about the relationship between Mr. Rose and his daughter. The two men sat on the cider house roof—for the most part, they weren’t talking. Not talking too much, Homer assumed, was the only way to go fishing with Mr. Rose.

Below them, Angel was trying to teach Rose Rose how to ride a bicycle. Homer had offered to drive Rose Rose and Angel to the beach (and to drive back and pick them up at some designated hour), but it mattered to Angel that he and Rose Rose were independent—to be driven to the beach only emphasized that he was still waiting to be old enough to get his driver’s license. The beach was too far to walk to, and Homer wouldn’t allow Angel to hitchhike; but it was only a four- or five-mile ride on a bike, and the road was mostly flat.

Mr. Rose observed the lesson placidly, but Homer grew anxious for Rose Rose to succeed on the bicycle; he knew how much preparation had gone into the proposed trip—how Angel had fussed over both his own and Candy’s bicycles, and how Angel had discussed (with Candy) which of Candy’s bathing suits would be the most suitable for Rose Rose. Together, they had chosen an emerald-green one—it had one pink, spiraled, barber-pole stripe, and Candy was sure the suit would fit Rose Rose better than it fit her; it had always been too loose in the bust and in the hips for Candy.

“It’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to learn when you’re a little kid, I guess,” Homer Wells observed of the bicycle lesson. Angel would run alongside the wobbly bicycle, which Rose Rose struggled to ride. After the bike was moving at a comfortable speed, Angel would release his hold on it. Rose Rose would either not pedal—hugging the bike until it simply ran out of speed and toppled—or else she would pedal furiously, but without guidance. She seemed unable to balance the bicycle and pedal it at the same time. And her hands appeared frozen on the handlebars; for her to balance, and pedal,
and
steer simultaneously looked, increasingly, like a distant miracle.

“Can you ride one?” Mr. Rose asked Homer.

“I never tried,” said Homer Wells. “I’d probably have a little trouble,” he admitted; it looked easy enough to him. There were no bicycles at the orphanage; the children might have used them to ride away. The only bicycle in St. Cloud’s was the stationmaster’s, and he rarely rode it.

“I never tried, either,” said Mr. Rose. He watched his daughter careen over a slight hill; she shrieked, the bike jackknifed, she fell—and Angel Wells ran to her, to help her up.

A line of men sat with their backs against the cider house wall; some were drinking coffee, some were drinking beer, but all of them watched the bicycle lesson. Some were encouraging—and as vocal as local fans, rooting at a sporting event—and others watched the procedure as placidly as Mr. Rose.

It had been going on for a while, and the applause—what there’d been of it—grew spottier and more random.

“Don’t give up,” Angel said to Rose Rose.

“I
not
givin’ up,” Rose Rose said. “Did I say I was givin’ up?”

“You remember what you said to me, once, about the rules?” Homer asked Mr. Rose.

“What rules?” Mr. Rose asked.

“You know, those rules I put up every year in the cider house,” Homer said. “And you mentioned that you had other rules—your own rules for living here.”

“Yeah, those rules,” said Mr. Rose.

“I thought you meant that your rules were about not hurting each other—I thought they were about being careful,” Homer said. “Sort of like my rules, too, I guess.”

“Say what you mean, Homer,” said Mr. Rose.

“Is someone getting hurt?” Homer asked. “I mean, this year—is there some kind of trouble?”

Rose Rose was up on the bicycle; her look was grim; both she and Angel were sweating. It appeared to Homer that Rose Rose was jouncing on the seat too hard, almost intentionally hurting herself; or else she was treating herself so roughly in order to give herself the intensity she needed to master the machine. She wobbled off a knoll, out of sight behind some apple trees, and Angel sprinted after her.

“Why don’t they just walk?” the picker named Peaches asked. “They coulda been there by now.”

“Why don’t someone take ’em in some car?” another man asked.

“They wanna do it they own way,” Muddy said. There was a little laughter about that.

“Show some respect,” said Mr. Rose. Homer thought Mr. Rose was speaking to him, but he was speaking to the men, who stopped laughing. “Pretty soon, that bicycle gonna break,” Mr. Rose said to Homer.

Rose Rose was wearing a pair of blue jeans, some heavy work shoes and a white T-shirt; because she was sweating, the outline and the colors of the emerald-green and pink bathing suit were visible through her shirt.

“Imagine her learnin’ to swim,” said Mr. Rose.

Homer Wells felt bad for Angel, but another subject weighed more heavily on his mind.

“About someone being hurt,” Homer said. “About the rules.”

Mr. Rose reached into his pocket, slowly, and Homer half expected to see the knife, but it was not the knife that Mr. Rose removed from his pocket and very gently placed in Homer’s hand—it was the burned-down nub of a candle. It was what was left of the candle Candy had lit for their lovemaking in the cider house. In her panic—when she thought it was Wally who had caught them there—she had forgotten it.

Homer closed his fingers around the candle, and Mr. Rose patted his hand.

“That ’gainst the rules, ain’t it?” Mr. Rose asked Homer.

Black Pan was baking corn bread and the smell rose from the cider house and hung deliciously over the roof, which was warming in the late-morning sun; pretty soon, it would be uncomfortably hot on the roof.

“Ain’t that bread ready to eat yet?” Peaches hollered into the kitchen.

“No it ain’t,” Black Pan said from inside the cider house. “And pipe down, or you wake the baby.”

“Shit,” Peaches said. Black Pan came outside and kicked Peaches—not terribly hard—where he was leaning against the cider house wall.

“When that bread ready, you won’t call it ‘shit,’ will you?” Black Pan asked him.

“I wasn’t callin’ nothin’ ‘shit,’ man—I was just sayin’ it,” Peaches said.

“Just pipe down,” Black Pan said. He observed the bicycle lesson. “How it comin’ with that?” he asked.

“They tryin’ hard,” Muddy said.

“They inventin’ a new sport,” Peaches said, and everyone laughed.

“Show some respect,” said Mr. Rose, and everyone piped down. Black Pan went back inside the cider house.

“What you bet he burns the bread?” Peaches asked quietly.

“If he burns it, it ’cause he took the time to kick your ass,” Muddy told him.

The bicycle was broken; either the rear wheel wouldn’t turn, or else the chain was jammed in the wheel.

“There’s another bicycle,” Angel told Rose Rose. “You try that one, while I fix this one.” But while he fixed Candy’s bicycle, Rose Rose had to suffer with a boy’s bicycle, so that in addition to her troubles, she slipped and hurt her crotch against the crossbar. Homer was actually worried about how hard a fall she had, and he asked her if she was all right.

“It just like a cramp,” she called to him, but she remained bent over until Angel managed to get Candy’s bicycle running again.

“It looks hopeless,” Homer confided to Mr. Rose.

“What about them rules?” Mr. Rose asked him. Homer put the candle in his pocket. He and Mr. Rose regarded each other—it was almost a contest, the way they looked at each other.

“I’m worried about your daughter,” said Homer Wells, after a while. Together they watched Rose Rose fall off the bicycle again.

“Don’t worry about her,” said Mr. Rose.

“She looks unhappy, sometimes,” Homer said.

“She ain’t unhappy,” Mr. Rose said.

“Are you worried about her?” Homer asked him.

“Once you start worryin’, you can worry ’bout anybody, can’t you?” said Mr. Rose.

It appeared to Homer Wells that her fall against the crossbar was still giving Rose Rose some pain because she stood for a while with her hands on her knees and her head down (as if her stomach hurt her) each time she fell off the bicycle.

Homer and Mr. Rose missed the moment when she gave up. They just noticed that she was running off, in the direction of the orchard called Frying Pan, and that Angel was running after her; both bicycles were left behind.

“That’s too bad,” Homer said. “They would have had a good time at the beach. Maybe I can convince them to let me drive them there.”

“Leave ’em alone,” said Mr. Rose; the way Homer heard it, it was more of a command than a suggestion. “They don’t have to go to no beach,” Mr. Rose said, more mildly. “They just young, they not sure how to have a good time,” he said. “Just think what might happen at the beach. They might get drowned. Or some people might not like seein’ a white boy with a colored girl—and they both in bathin’ suits. It better they don’t go nowhere,” Mr. Rose concluded. That was the end of that subject, because then Mr. Rose asked, “Are you happy, Homer?”

“Am I happy?” said Homer Wells.

“Why you repeat every single thing?” Mr. Rose asked him.

“I don’t know,” Homer said. “I’m happy, sometimes,” he said cautiously.

“That good,” said Mr. Rose. “And Mistuh and Missus Worthington—are they happy?”

“I think they’re pretty happy, most of the time,” Homer told him.

“That good,” said Mr. Rose.

Peaches, who’d had a few beers, approached Angel’s bicycle warily, as if the machine were dangerous even when it was lying on the ground.

“Careful it don’t bite you,” Muddy warned him. Peaches mounted the bike and grinned at the men.

“How do it start?” he asked them, and they all laughed.

Muddy got up from against the wall and went over to Candy’s bicycle.

“I have you a race,” he said to Peaches.

“Yeah,” said Black Pan, in the cider house door. “We see which one of you falls down first.”

“Mine ain’t got no middle,” Muddy observed of Candy’s bike.

“That make it go faster,” Peaches said. He tried to move Angel’s bike forward, as if his feet were paddles.

“You ain’t ridin’ that thing, you fuckin’ it,” one of the men said, and everyone laughed. Black Pan ran up behind Peaches and started pushing him faster.

“Cut that shit out!” Peaches cried, but Black Pan got the bike rolling so fast that he couldn’t keep up with it.

“I can’t be in no race if someone don’t push me, too,” Muddy said, and two of the men got him rolling faster than Peaches, who had disappeared over a hill into the next field (from which the men could hear him screaming).

“Holy shit!” said Muddy, when he was under way. He pedaled so hard that the front wheel rose off the ground, and then the bicycle rode right out from under him. The men were howling now, and Black Pan picked up Muddy’s fallen bicycle; he was the next to try it.

“You gonna try it, too?” Mr. Rose asked Homer.

As long as Angel and Candy weren’t around to watch him, Homer thought he would. “Sure,” Homer said. “I’m next!” he yelled at Black Pan, who was balancing the bicycle in place, his feet slipping off the pedals; he fell over on his side before he could get moving.