The Cider House Rules (72 page)

If Wilbur Larch could have heard her, he would have said: 'Just give me the time, lady, and you'll buy more than that.'

But in 195-, Wilbur Larch was ninety-something. Sometimes his face would hold so still under the ether cone that the mask would stay in place after his hand had dropped to his side; only the force of his exhalations would make the cone fall. He had lost a lot of weight. In a mirror, or traveling with his beloved ether, he had the impression that he was becoming a bird. Only Nurse Caroline had the courage to criticize his drug habit. 'You should know, of all people,' Nurse Caroline told him roughly.

'Me of all people?' Larch asked innocently. Sometimes, he found it was fun to provoke her.

'You have a low opinion of religion,' Nurse Caroline remarked to him.

'I suppose so,' he said cautiously. She was a little too young and quick for him, he knew.

'Well, what do you suppose a drug dependency is—if not a kind of religion?' Nurse Caroline asked. {581}

'I have no quarrel with anyone at prayer,' Wilbur Larch said. 'Prayer is personal—prayer is anyone's choice. Pray to whom or what you want! It's when you start making rules,' said Wilbur Larch, but he felt lost. He knew she could talk circles around him. He admired socialism, but talking to a damn socialist was like talking to any true believer. He had heard her say, so many times, that a society that approved of making abortion illegal was a society that approved of violence against women; that making abortion illegal was simply a sanctimonious, self-righteous form of violence against women—it was just a way of legalizing violence against women, Nurse Caroline would say. He had heard her say, so many times, that abortions were not only a personal freedom of choice but also a responsibility of the state—to provide them.

'Once the state starts providing, it feels free to hand out the rules, too!' Larch blurted hastily. It was a Yankee thing to say—very Maine. But Nurse Caroline smiled. That led him into another of her arguments; she could always trap him. He was not a systems man, he was just a good one.

'In a better world…' she began patiently. Her patience with him could make Larch furious.

'No,
not
in a better world!' he cried. 'In this one—in
this
world. 1 take this world as a given. Talk to me about this world!' But it all made him so tired. It made him want a little ether. The more he tried to keep up with Nurse Caroline, the more he needed ether; and the stronger he felt his need for it, the more that made her right.

'Oh, I can't always be right,' Larch said tiredly.

'Yes, I know,' Nurse Caroline said sympathetically. 'It's because even a good man can't always be right that we need a society, that we need certain rules—call them priorities, if you prefer,' she said.

'You can call them whatever you want,' said Wilbur Larch testily. T don't have time for philosophy., or for {582} government, or for religion. I don't have enough time,' said Wilbur Larch.

Always, in the background of his mind, there was a newborn baby crying; even when the orphanage was as silent as the few, remaining, abandoned buildings of St. Cloud's—even when it was ghostly quiet—Wilbur Larch heard babies crying. And they were not crying to be born, he knew; they were crying because they were born.

That summer, Mr. Rose wrote that he 'and the daughter' might be arriving a day or so ahead of the picking crew; he hoped the cider house would be ready.

'It's been a while since we've seen the daughter,' Wally remarked, in the apple-mart office. Everett Taft was outside, oiling Wally's wheelchair for him, so Wally sat on the desk—his withered legs swinging limply, his unused feet in a perfectly polished pair of loafers; the loafers were more than fifteen years old.

Candy was playing with the adding machine. 'I think the daughter is about Angel's age,' she said.

'Right,' said Homer Wells, and Wally hit Homer with a very well-thrown jab—the only sort of punch he could really throw, sitting down. Because Homer had been leaning on the desk and Wally had been sitting up straight, the punch caught Homer completely by surprise, and very solidly, in the cheek. The punch surprised Candy so much that she pushed the adding machine off the far corner of the desk. The machine crashed to the office floor; when Homer hit the floor, he did not land quite as loudly or as deadweight as the adding machine, but he landed hard. He put his hand to his cheek, where he would soon have some swelling and the start of a slight shiner.

'Wally!'Candy said.

I'm so
sick
of it!' Wally shouted. 'It's time you learned a new word, Homer,' Wally said.

'Jesus, Wally,' Candy said.{583}

'I'm okay,' Homer said, but he remained sitting on the office floor.

'I'm sorry,' Wally said. 'It just gets on rny nerves—you saying “Right” all the time.' And although he had not made this particular mistake for years, he lifted himself off the desk with his arms—it must have seemed to him that the appropriate thing to do would be to swing his legs to the floor and help Homer up to his feet; he'd forgotten that he couldn't walk. If Candy had riot caught him under the arms, and hugged him—chest to chest —Wally would have fallen. Homer got to his feet and helped Candy put Wally back on the desk.

'I'm sorry, buddy,' Wally said. He put his head on Homer's shoulder.

Homer did not say 'Right.' Candy went to get a piece of ice in a towel for Homer's face, and Homer said, 'It's okay, Wally, Everything's okay.' Wally slumped a little forward, and Homer leaned over him; their foreheads touched. They maintained that position until Candy returned with the ice.

Most days, for fifteen years, Candy and Homer thought that Wally knew everything, that he accepted everything, but that he resented not being told. At the same time, Homer and Candy imagined that it was a relief to Wally—that he didn't have to admit that he knew everything. What new, uncomfortable position would they put him in by telling him now? Wasn't the main thing that Angel not know?—not until Candy and Homer told him; the main thing was that Angel shouldn't hear it from anyone else. Whatever Wally knew, he would never tell Angel.

If Homer was surprised, he was surprised that Wally had never hit him before.

'What was that all about?' Candy asked Homer when they were alone that night by the swimming pool, Some kind of large, whirring insect was caught in the leaf skimmer; they heard its wings beating against the soggy leaves. WThatever it was, it grew weaker and weaker. {584}

'I guess it is irritating how I say “Right” all the time,' Homer said.

'Wally knows,' Candy said.

That's what you've thought for fifteen years,' said Homer Wells.

'You think he doesn't know?' Candy asked.

'I think he loves you, and you love him,' Homer said. 'I think he knows we love Angel. I think Wally loves Angel, too.'

'But do you think he knows Angel is
ours?
Candy asked.

'I don't know,' Homer said. 'I know that one day Angel has to know he's ours. I think that Wally knows I love you,' he said.

'And that I love you?' Candy asked. 'Does he know that?'

'You love me sometimes,' Homer said. 'Not very often.'

'I wasn't talking about sex,' Candy whispered.

'I was,' said Homer Wells.

They had been careful, and—in their opinion—almost good. Since Wally had come home from the war, Homer and Candy had made love only two hundred seventy times—an average of only eighteen times a year, only one and a half times a month; they were simply as extremely careful as they knew how. It was another thing that Candy had insisted Homer agree to: that for Wally's sake and for Angel's—for the sake of what Candy called their family—they would never be caught; they would never cause anyone even the slightest embarrassment. If anyone ever saw them, they would stop, forever.

That was why they hadn't told Wally. Why wouldn't Wally accept that they'd thought he was dead—not just missing—and that they had needed each other, and that they'd wanted Angel, too? They knew Wally would have accepted that. Who couldn't accept what
had
happened? What was happening
now
was what they knew Wally wanted to know, and they couldn't tell him.{585}

They had another thing to be careful about. Because Wally was sterile, Candy's becoming pregnant would seem too miraculous to be believed. Because Wally's sterility was not the result of encephalitis, it would take him several years to discover that he was sterile. He would remember the unclean instrumentation of his urethra, but he would remember it gradually—the way he remembered the rest of Burma. Once he learned that his epididymis was sealed, for life, the specificity of the various bamboo shoots came back to him; sometimes it seemed to him that he could recall, exactly, every catheter that had ever relieved him.

There is no difference in the feeling of orgasm; Wally was fond of emphasizing this particular point to Homer Wells. Wally called it 'shooting'; Homer was the only person with whom Wally could joke about his condition. 'I can still aim the gun, and the gun still goes off,' Wally said, 'and it still goes off with a bang—for me,' he said. 'It's just that no one ever finds the bullet.'

Wally remembered, from time to time, that when one of the Burmese on the sampan would instrument him— for which he was always so grateful—there was never very much bleeding, even when the bamboo shoot was not exactly straight; his blood seemed pale and minimal by comparison to the bloodier stains of the betel juice that everyone spat on the deck.

If Homer Wells got Candy pregnant again, Candy made him promise that—this time—
he
would give her an abortion. She could not fool Wally about another trip to St. Cloud's; she
would
not fool him, she said. And so this added consideration—that Candy never get pregnant—contributed to the moderation of their coupling, which was almost always managed under conditions harsh enough to win the approval of New England's founding fathers. It still would not have won Wilbur Larch's approval.

They established no pattern of behavior that could make anyone suspicious. (As if everyone wasn't already {586} suspicious, regardless of how they behaved!) There was no one place that they met, no one day, no one time of day. In the winter months, when Angel—after school —would take Wally for a swim in the indoor pool of a private boys' academy, Homer and Candy could manage an occasional late afternoon together. But Homer's bed, which had been Olive's bed, which also suffered from all the master-bedroom connotations, was full of conflicting emotions for them both—and the bed Candy shared with Wally had its own set of taboos. Rarely, they took trips. The cider house was fit to be used only in the late summer after it had been made ready for the picking crew; but ever since Angel had learned to drive, he'd been given the run of the orchards—he was allowed to drive any of the farm vehicles, just so he kept off the public roads, and his pudgy pal, Pete Hyde, often drove around with him. Homer suspected that Pete and Angel used the cider house to drink beer in secret, whenever they could convince Herb Fowler to buy beer for them; or that they went there for the fifteen-year-old thrill of smoking cigarettes. And at night, trapped by their own insomnia, where could Candy and Homer have disappeared to—now that Angel was an insomniac, too?

Homer Wells knew that there was no reason ever to have an accident—no reason for Candy ever to get pregnant (certainly not, knowing what Homer knew)—and no reason for them ever to get caught, either. But by being so reasonable and so discreet, Homer regretted the loss of the passion with which he and Candy had at first collided. Although she insisted (and he agreed), he thought it was quite unnecessary for him to write to Dr. Larch to request (which he did) the proper equipment with which to treat the emergency that Candy feared.

For fifteen years Homer had told her: 'You won't get pregnant. You can't.'

'Do you have everything you need, if you need it?' she always asked him.

'Yes,' he said.{587}

He'd gotten better about not saying 'Right,' since Wally had hit him. And when the word would slip out, it was often attended by an equally involuntary wince — as if in anticipation of another punch, as if anyone he might say the word to would feel as strongly about it as Wally and might be as fast as Mr. Rose.

Wilbur Larch had misunderstood about the instruments Homer had requested. For fifteen years, he'd misunderstood. Larch had sent everything promptly. There were both a medium and a large vaginal speculum, and an Auvard's weighted speculum; there was a set of dilators with Douglass points—and one uterine sound, one uterine biopsy curette, two vulsellum forceps, a set of Sim's uterine curettes, and a Rheinstater's uterine flushing curette. Larch sent enough Dakin's solution and red Merthiolate (and enough sterile vulval pads) for Homer Wells to perform abortions into the next century.

'I'm NOT going into the business!' Homer wrote to Dr. Larch, but Larch remained encouraged by the simple fact of Homer's possessing the necessary equipment.

Homer wrapped the instruments in a whole bale of cotton and gauze; he then put the bundle in a waterproof bag that had once contained Angel's diapers. He stored the instruments, along with the Merthiolate, the Dakin's solution and all the vulval pads, in the very back of the upstairs linen closet. Homer kept the ether in the shed with the lawn and garden tools. Ether was flammable; he didn't want it in the house.

However, in the one and a half times a month that he could be with Candy, it jolted him to realize that in their union there was (even after fifteen years) a frenzy with which they clung to each other that would not have appeared pale in comparison to their first such meeting in the cider house. But since Melony had first introduced Homer Wells to sex—and it had been only during that brief period of what seemed to him to be his 'married life' with Candy in St. Cloud's that he had experienced any- {588} thing of what sex ideally is—it was Homer's opinion that sex had little to do with love; that love was much more focused and felt in moments of tenderness and of concern. It had been years (for example) since he had seen Candy asleep, or had been the one to wake her; years since he had watched her fall asleep, and had stayed awake to watch her.