John Irving - The Cider House Rules

She picked up the weighted speculum and pointed the jaw of the thing at Larch, as if it were a gun. {446}

'You'll be sorry,' the woman said.

In his ether haze, Wilbur Larch saw the woman point the speculum at him again. How will I be sorry? he wondered.

'I'm sorry,' he said aloud. Nurse Edna, passing in the hall-ever passing-thought, You're forgiven; I forgive you.

It was Sunday, and overcast-as usual. The same Fred Astaire movie that was entertaining the residents of Bath was playing in Orono, and the students at the University of Maine in 194- were not yet so cynical that they failed to enjoy it. Wally went to the movie with some of his friends. During the afternoon matinee, they didn't interrupt the show with the news that interrupted the rest of the world. They allowed Fred Astaire to dance on, and on, and the moviegoers heard the news after the show, when they stepped out of the comforting dark of the theater into the late-afternoon daylight of downtown Orono.

Candy was returning to Camden with her father. Raymond Kendall was especially proud of the radio reception he had engineered for his Chevrolet; it was much clearer reception than was possible, at the time, in a standard car radio, and Ray had made the whiplash antenna himself. Candy and her father heard the news as soon as anyone in Maine heard it, and they heard it loud and clear.

Olive always had the radio on, and so she was one of those people who needed to hear things several times before she really heard them at all. She was baking an apple pie, and simmering applesauce, and only the unusual urgency in the announcer's voice caused her to pay attention to the radio at all.

Homer Wells was in Wally's room, reading David Copperfield and thinking about Heaven-'…that sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what {447} the strife had been within me when I loved her here.' think I would prefer to love Candy here, 'on earth,' Homer Wells was thinking-when Olive interrupted him.

'Homer!' Olive called upstairs. 'Where is Pearl Harbor?'

He was the wrong person to ask; Homer Wells had seen the whole world only once, and briefly-and flat against the blackboard. He'd had difficulty locating South Carolina; not only did he not know where Pearl Harbor was, he also didn't know what it was.

'I don't know!' he called downstairs.

'Well, the Japanese have just bombed it!' Olive called to him.

'You mean, with planes?' asked Homer Wells. 'From the sky?'

'Of course from the sky!' Olive shouted. 'You better come listen to this.'

'Where is Pearl Harbor?' Candy asked her father.

'Ssshh!' said Raymond Kendall. 'If we just listen, maybe they'll say.'

'How could they get away with an attack?' Candy asked.

'Because someone wasn't doing his job,' Ray said.

The first reports were garbled. There was mention of California falling under attack, or even being invaded. Many listeners were confused from the beginning; they thought Pearl Harbor was in California.

'Where is Hawaii?' Mrs. Grogan asked. They were having tea and cookies and listening to the radio, for music, when they'd heard the news.

'Hawaii is in the Pacific,' said Wilbur Larch.

'Oh, that's very far away,' Nurse Edna said.

'Not far enough away,' Dr. Larch said.

'There's going to be another war, isn't there?' Nurse Angela asked.

'I guess it's already started,' said Wilbur Larch, while Wally-to whom this war would mean the most- {448} watched Fred Astaire; Fred just kept dancing and dancing, and Wally thought he could go on watching such a display of grace for hours.

Melony and Lorna were listening to the radio in the parlor of the boardinghouse where Lorna lived. It was a women-only boardinghouse; the women were either quite old or, like Lorna, only recently separated from their husbands. On this Sunday afternoon, most of the women listening to the radio were old.

'We should just bomb Japan,' Melony said. 'No messing around-just blow up the whole country.'

'You know how come Japs got squinty eyes?' Lorna asked. Melony, and all the old women, listened intently. 'Because they masturbate all the time-both the men and the women. They just do it all the time.'

There was either a polite or a stunned silence, or both. In Melony's case, her silence was polite.

'Is this a joke?' she asked her friend respectfully.

'Of course it's a joke!' Lorna cried.

'I don't get it, I guess,' Melony admitted.

'How come Japs got squinty eyes?' Lorna asked. 'Because they masturbate all the time.' She paused.

'That's what I thought you said,' Melony said.

'Because they shut their eyes every time they come!' Lorna said. 'Their eyes get tired from all that opening and closing. That's why they can't open their eyes all the way! Get it?' Lorna asked triumphantly.

Still self-conscious about her teeth, Melony managed a tight-lipped smile. Anyone seeing the old women in the boardinghouse parlor would not have known exactly what filled them with fear and trembling: the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor, or Lorna and Melony.

And young Wally Worthington, who was so itchy to be a hero, danced out on the streets of Orono, where he heard the news. President Roosevelt would call it a 'day of infamy,' but that day meant more than infamy to Wally, whose noble and adventurous heart longed to fly a B-24 Liberator: a heavy bomber, four engines, used for {449} bombing bridges, oil refineries, fuel depots, railroad tracks, and so forth. Somewhere, on that 'day of infamy,' there was a B-24 Liberator bomber waiting for young Wally Worthington to learn how to fly it.

People in Heart's Haven and in Heart's Rock always said that Wally had everything: money, looks, goodness, charm, the girl of his dreams-but he had courage, too, and he had in abundance youth's most dangerous qualities: optimism and restlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.

Wally enlisted in the Army Air Corps before Christmas, but they allowed him to spend Christmas at home. It would take the Army Air Corps more than a year to teach Wally the grim arts of aerial warfare.

'By that time,' he told Olive and Candy in the kitchen at Ocean View, 'all the fighting will probably be over. That would be just my luck.'

'That would be lucky,' Olive said. Candy nodded her head.

'Right!' said Homer Wells, from the other room. He was still thinking about being excused from his physical; Dr. Larch's account of Homer's heart history had sufficed. Physical examinations were given only to people who were Class I. Homer Wells was Class IV. According to his family physician, Homer had congenital pulmonic stenosis; Homer's 'family physician' was Dr. Larch, whose letter to the local medical advisory board had been accepted as evidence enough for Homer's deferment- Larch was also a member of the local board.

'I asked her to marry me, but she wouldn't,' Wally told Homer in their shared bedroom. 'She said she'd wait for me, but she wouldn't marry rne. She said she'd be my wife, but not my widow.'

'Is that what you call waiting and seeing?' Homer asked Candy the next day.

'Yes,' Candy said. 'For years I've expected to be married {450} to Wally. You came along second. I have to wait and see about you. And now conies the war. I have to wait and see about the war, too.'

'But you made him a promise,' said Homer Wells.

'Yes,' Candy said. 'Isn't a promise like waiting and seeing? Did you ever make a promise, and mean it- and break it?' Homer Wells's reaction was an involuntary cringe, as sudden and uncontrollable as if Candy had called him 'Sunshine.'

During Christmas dinner, Raymond Kendall, trying to relieve the silence, said, 'I would have chosen submarines.'