The Cider House Rules (9 page)

'What do you want?' the man asked Larch. {76}

I'm a doctor, I want to see the doctor here,' Larch said.

'No doctor here,' the man said. 'Just you.'

'Then I want to give advice,' Larch said. 'Medical advice. Free medical advice.'

The man studied Larch's face; he appeared to think that a response to Larch's offer could be found there. 'You're not the first one here,' the man said, after a while. 'You wait your turn.'

That seemed to satisfy both men for the moment, and Larch looked for a seat—taking a chair precisely between the twosomes of women already in the room. He was too shocked by everything to be surprised when he recognized one of the couples: the Lithuanian woman whose child he'd delivered (his first delivery) sat mutely with her mole-faced mother. They wouldn't look up at him; Larch smiled at them and nodded. The woman was very pregnant—too pregnant for an easy abortion, under the safest of circumstances. Larch realized, with panic, that he couldn't convey this to her; she spoke only Lithuanian. She would associate him with delivering only live babies! Also, he knew nothing of what might have become of her first baby—nothing of what her life with that baby had been, or was now. He tapped his foot nervously and looked at the other couple—also, clearly, a mother and her daughter, but both of them were younger than the Lithuanians and it was hard to tell which of them was pregnant. This abortion, at least, looked easier to perform. The daughter looked too young to be pregnant, but then why, Larch wondered, had the mother brought the girl here? Did she need the company so badly, or was this meant as a lesson? Watch out—this could happen to you! In the front room, the singers grew hysterical on the subject of God's love and something that sounded like 'blinding destiny'—
verblendenen Geschike.

Wilbur Larch stared at the shut door, behind which he had heard unmistakable vomiting. A bee, crazily out of {77}place, buzzed in the open window and seemed to find the flowers fakes; it buzzed straight out again. When Larch looked at the Lithuanian couple, he saw that the grandmother had recognized him—and she had discovered a new way to exhibit her mole, which had grown additional and longer hairs and had slightly changed color. Pinching her fingers to either side of the mole, the grandmother inflamed the surrounding skin and made the mole appear to explode from her face—like a boil come to a head, about to burst. The pregnant woman seemed not to notice her mother's charmless demonstration, and when she stared at Larch she appeared not to recognize him; for Larch there was only Lithuanian written on her face. Perhaps, Larch thought, her husband threw her baby out the window and drove her mad. For a moment Larch thought that the choir might be Lithuanian, but he recognized something about a battle between
Gott und Schicksal
—clearly German, clearly God and Fate.

The scream that cut through the shut door had no difficulty rising above the voices declaring that God had won. The young girl jumped from her seat, sat down, hugged herself, cried out; she put her face in her mother's lap to muffle her cries. Larch realized she'd been the one to cry before. He also realized that she must be the one needing the abortion—not her mother. The girl didn't look older than ten or twelve.

'Excuse me,' Larch said to the mother. I'm a doctor.'

He felt like an actor with good potential who'd been crippled with a single stupid line—it was all
lie
had to say. 'I'm a doctor.' What followed from that?

'So you're a doctor,' the mother said, bitterly, but Larch was happy to hear she didn't speak Lithuanian. 'So what help are you?' the mother asked him.

'How many months is she?' Larch asked the mother.

'Maybe three,' the mother said suspiciously. 'But I already paid them here.'

'How old is she?' Larch asked.

The girl looked up from her mother's lap; a strand of {78} her dirty-blond hair caught in her mouth. 'I'm fourteen,' she said defensively.

'She'll
be
fourteen, next year,' the mother said.

Larch stood up and said to the man with the cashbox key, 'Pay them back. I'll help the girl.'

'I thought you came for advice,' the man said.

'To give it,' Dr. Larch said.

'Why not take some while you're here?' the man said. 'When you pay, there's a deposit. You don't get a deposit back.'

'How much is the deposit?' Larch asked. The man shrugged; he drummed his fingers on the cashbox.

'Maybe half,'hesaid.

'EureganzeMacht!'
the choir sang. 'Your whole power,' translated Wilbur Larch. Many medical students were good in German.

When the evil door opened, an old couple, like someone's bewildered grandparents, peered anxiously into the waiting room—both confusion and curiosity on their faces, which, like the faces of many old couples, had grown to resemble each other. They were small and stooped, and behind them, on a cot—as still as a painting—a woman lay resting under a sheet, her eyes open but unfocused. The vomit basin had been placed on a towel on the floor, within her reach.

'He says he's a doctor,' the cashbox man said, without looking at the old couple. 'He says he came to give you free medical advice. He says to pay these ladies back. He says he'll take care of the you ng lady himself.'

By the way that the old white-haired woman had become a presence—or, stronger, a
force
—in the doorway between the waiting room and the operating theater, Larch realized
thatshe was
in charge; the old white-haired man was her assistant. The old woman would have looked at home in a pleasant kitchen, baking cookies, inviting the neighborhood children to come and go as they pleased.

'Doctor Larch,' Dr. Larch said, bowing a little too formally. {79}

'Oh, yes, Doctor Larch,'the old woman said, neutrally. 'Come to shit or to get off the pot?'

The abortionist was known in the neighborhood 'Off Harrison' as Mrs. Santa Glaus. She was not the original author of that remark—or of that note. Mrs. Eames's daughter had written that herself, before she went to see Mrs. Santa Glaus; she knew enough about the dangers'Off Harrison' to know that she might be in no shape to write anything at all after Mrs. Santa Glaus finished with her.

Larch was unprepared for Mrs. Santa Glaus—specifically, for her attitude. He had imagined that in any meeting with an abortionist
he
(Dr. Larch) would take charge. He still tried to. He walked into the operating theater and picked up something, just to demonstrate his authority. What he picked up was the suction cup with a short hose running to the foot pump. The cup fitted neatly into the palm of his hand; he had no trouble imagining what else it fitted. To his surprise, when he had attached the cup to his palm, Mrs. Santa Glaus began stepping on the foot pump. When he felt the blood rushing to his pores, he popped the cup out of his palm before the thing could raise more than a blood blister on the heel of his hand.

'Well?' Mrs. Glaus asked, aggressively. 'What's your advice, Doctor?' As if in reply, the patient under the sheet drew Larch to her; the woman's forehead was clammy with sweat.

'You don't know what you're doing,' Dr. Larch said to Mrs. Santa Glaus.

'At least I'm doing something,' the old woman said with hostile calm. 'If you know how to do it, why don't you do it?' Mrs. Santa Glaus asked. 'If you know how, why don't you teach me?'

The woman under the sheet looked groggy, but she was trying to pull herself together. She sat up and tried to examine herself; she discovered that, under the sheet, she still wore her own dress. This knowledge appeared to relax her.

'Please listen to me, 'Dr. Larch said to her. 'If you have a {80}fever—if you have more than just a little bleeding—you must come to the hospital. Don't wait.'

'I thought the advice was for
me,'
Mrs. Santa Glaus said. 'Where's
my
advice?'

Larch tried to ignore her. He went out to the waiting room and told the mother with her young daughter that they should leave, but the mother
was
concerned about the money.

'Pay them back!' Mrs. Santa Glaus told the cashbox man.

They don't get the deposit back,' the man said again.

'Pay them back the deposit, too!' the old woman said angrily. She came into the waiting room to oversee the disgruntled transaction. She put her hand on Dr. Larch's arm. 'Ask her who the father is,' Mrs. Santa Glaus said.

That's none of my business,' Larch said.

'You're right,' the old woman said. That much you got right. But ask her, anyway—it's an interesting story.'

Larch tried to ignore her; Mrs. Santa Glaus grabbed hold of both the mother and her daughter. She spoke to the mother. Tell him who the father is,' she said. The daughter began to snivel and whine; Mrs. Santa Glaus ignored her; she looked only at the mother. Tell him,' she repeated.

'My husband,' the woman murmured, and then she added—as if it weren't clear—'her father.'

'Her father is the father,' Mrs. Santa Glaus said to Dr. Larch. 'Got it?'

'Yes, I've got it, thank you,' Dr. Larch said. He needed to put his arm around the thirteen-year-old, who was sagging; she had her eyes shut.

'Maybe a third of the young ones are like her,' Mrs. Santa Glaus told Larch nastily; she treated him as if
he
were the father. 'About a third of them get it from their fathers, or their brothers. Rape,' Mrs. Santa Glaus said. 'Incest. You understand?'

'Yes, thank you,' Larch said, pulling the girl with {81}him—tugging the sleeve of the mother's coat to make her follow.

'Shit or get off the pot!' Mrs. Santa Glaus yelled after them.

'All you starving doctors!' the cashbox man hollered. 'You're all over.'

The choir was singing. Larch thought he heard them say
'vom keinen Sturm erschrecket'
—frightened by no storm.

In the empty room that separated the songs  from the abortions, Larch and the mother with her daughter collided with the woman who'd been under the sheet. She was still groggy, her eyes were darting, and her dress was plastered with sweat to her back.

'Please remember!' Larch said to her. 'If there's a fever, if there's more than a little blood'…Then he saw the woman's underwear pinned to the shoulder of her dress. That reminding epaulette was the badge of 'Off Harrison,' a kind of ribbon for bravery. Obviously, the woman didn't know that her panties were there. Larch imagined that the South End was sprinkled liberally with these staggering women, their panties pinned to their shoulders, marking them as indelibly as that longago Puritan New England 'A' upon their bosoms.

'Wait!' Larch cried, and grabbed for the underwear. The woman didn't want to wait; as she pulled herself free of his grasp, the pin opened and stuck Larch in the hand. After she'd gone, he put her panties in his suit-jacket pocket.

He led the mother and her daughter through the room that was always so heady with song, but the choir was taking a beer break. The lean, bald conductor had just dipped into his frothy stein when he looked up and saw Dr. Larch leaving with the women; a moustache of foam whitened his lip and a dab of the white froth shone on the end of his nose. The conductor raised his stein toward Dr. Larch, offering a toast. 'Praise the Lord!' the conductor called. 'You keep on saving those poor souls, Doc!' {82}

'Danke schön!'
the choir called after him. Of course they could not have been singing Mahler's
Songs on the Death of Children,
but those were the songs Wilbur Larch had heard.

'In other parts of the world,' wrote Dr. Wilbur Larch upon his arrival in St. Cloud's, 'an ability to act before you think—but to act nonetheless correctly—is essential. Perhaps there will be more time to think, here in St. Cloud's.'

In Boston, he meant, he was a hero; and he wouldn't have lasted long—being a hero. He took the young girl and her mother to the South Branch. He instructed the house officer to write up the following:

'This is a thirteen-year-old girl. Her pelvis is only three and a half inches in diameter. Two previous, violent deliveries have lacerated her soft parts and left her with a mass of unyielding scar tissue. This is her third pregnancy as a result of incest—as a result of rape. If allowed to come to term, she can be delivered only by Caesarean section, which—given the child's delicate state of health (she is a child), not to mention her state of mind—would be dangerous. Therefore, I've decided to give her an abortion.'

'You have?' the house officer asked.

'That's right,' Wilbur Larch said—and to the nurseanesthetist, he said, 'We'll do it immediately.' The abortion took only twenty minutes; Larch's light touch with ether was the envy of his colleagues. He used the set of dilators with the Douglass points and both a medium-sized and a small curette. There was, of course, no mass of unyielding scar tissue; there were no lacerated soft parts. This was a iFirst, not a third pregnancy, and although she was a small girl, her pelvis was certainly greater than three and a half inches in diameter. These fictional details, which Wilbur Larch provided for the house officer, were intended to make the house officer's report more convincing. No one at the Boston Lying-in {83} ever questioned Larch's decision to perform this abortion —no one ever mentioned it, but Dr. Larch could tell that something had changed.

He detected the dying of conversations upon his entering a room. He detected a general aloofness; although he was not exactly shunned, he was; never invited. He dined alone at a nearby German restaurant; he ate pig knuckles and sauerkraut, and one night he drank a beer. It reminded him of his father; it was Wilbur Larch's first and last beer.

At this time in his life Wilbur Larch seemed destined to a first-and-last existence; one sexual experience, one beer, one abortion. But he'd had more than one experience with ether, and the news, in the South End—that there was an alternative to Mrs. Santa Glaus and the methods practised 'Off Harrison'—traveled fast. He was first approached while standing at a fruüt-vendor's cart, drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice; a tall, gaunt woman with a shopping bag and a laundry basket materialized beside him.