John Irving - The Cider House Rules

Candy Kendall clung to Homer Wells-oh, how she clung!-as the breath left them both and stirred the otherwise unmoving air. And the trembling mice beneath the floor of the cider house stopped in their tracks between the cider house walls to listen to the lovers. The mice knew there was the owl to worry about, and the fox. But what animal was this whose sound was petrifying them? The owl does not hoot when it hunts, and the fox does not bark when it pounces. But what is this new animal? wondered the cider house mice-what new beast has charged and disturbed the air?

And is it safe?

In Wilbur Larch's opinion, love was certainly not safe-not ever. For his own advancing frailty since Homer Wells had departed St. Cloud's, he would have said love was to blame; how tentative he had become concerning some things and how suddenly irritable concerning others. Nurse Angela might have suggested to him that his more recent bouts of gloom and anger were as much the result of his fifty-year-old addiction to ether and of his advanced age as they were the result of his anxious love for Homer Wells. Mrs. Grogan, had she {495} been asked, would have told him that he suffered more from what she called St. Cloud's syndrome than from love; Nurse Edna would never have held love to blame for anything.

But Wilbur Larch viewed love as a disease even more insidious than the polio that President Roosevelt had stood up to so courageously. And could anyone blame Larch if he occasionally referred to the so-called products of conception as the 'results of love'?-although his dear nurses were upset with him when he spoke like this. Did he not have a right to judge love harshly? After all, there was much evidence-in both the products of conception, and their attendant pain, and in the injured lives of many of Dr. Larch's orphans-to justify his view that there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.

Had he felt the force of the collision between Candy Kendall and Homer Wells-had he tasted their sweat and touched the tension in the muscles of their shining backs; had he heard the agony and the release from agony that could be detected in their voices-Wilbur Larch would not have changed his mind. A passing glimpse of such passion would have confirmed his opinion of the danger of love; he would have been as petrified as the mice.

In Dr. Larch's opinion, even when he could prevail on his patients to practise some method of birth control, love was never safe.

'Consider the so-called rhythm method,' wrote Wilbur Larch. 'Here in St. Cloud's we see many results of the rhythm method.'

He had a pamphlet printed, in the plainest block letters:

COMMON MISUSES OF THE PROPHYLACTIC

He wrote as if he were writing for children; in some cases, he was. {496}

1. SOME MEN PUT THE PROPHYLACTIC ON JUST THE TIP OF THE PENIS: THIS IS A MISTAKE, BECAUSE THE PROPHYLACTIC WILL COME OFF. IT MUST BE PUT OVER THE WHOLE PENIS, AND IT MUST BE PUT ON WHEN THE PENIS IS ERECT.

2. SOME MEN TRY TO USE THE PROPHYLACTIC A SECOND TIME: THIS IS ALSO A MISTAKE. ONCE YOU REMOVE A PROPHYLACTIC, THROW IT AWAY! AND WASH YOUR GENITAL AREA THOROUGHLY BEFORE ALLOWING YOURSELF FURTHER CONTACT WITH YOUR PARTNER-SPERM ARE LIVING THINGS (AT LEAST, FOR A SHORT TIME), AND THEY CAN SWIM!

3. SOME MEN TAKE THE PROPHYLACTIC OUT OF ITS WRAPPER: THEY EXPOSE THE RUBBER TO LIGHT AND AIR FOR TOO LONG A TIME BEFORE USING IT: CONSEQUENTLY, THE RUBBER DRIES OUT AND IT DEVELOPS CRACKS AND HOLES. THIS IS A MISTAKE! SPERM ARE VERY TINY-THEY CAN SWIM THROUGH CRACKS AND HOLES!

4. SOME MEN STAY INSIDE THEIR PARTNERS FOR A LONG TIME AFTER THEY HAVE EJACULATED; WHAT A MISTAKE THIS IS! THE PENIS SHRINKS! WHEN THE PENIS IS NO LONGER ERECT, AND WHEN THE MAN FINALLY PULLS HIS PENIS OUT OF HIS PARTNER, THE PROPHYLACTIC CAN SLIDE COMPLETELY OFF. MOST MEN CAN'I EVEN FEEL THIS HAPPENING, BUT WHAT A MESS! INSIDE THE WOMAN YOU HAVE JUST DEPOSITED A WHOLE PROPHYLACTIC, AND ALL THOSE SPERM!

And some men, Homer Wells could have added- {497} thinking of Herb Fowler-distribute prophylactics with holes in them to their fellow man.

In the cider house at Ocean View, huddled with the huddled mice, Homer Wells and Candy Kendall could not move from their embrace. For one thing, the mattress was so narrow-it was only possible to share that mattress if they remained joined together-and for another, they had waited so long; they had anticipated so much. And, to both of them, so much was meant by having allowed themselves to come together. They shared both a love and a grief, for neither of them would have permitted each other this moment if there were not at least parts of each of them that had accepted Wally's death. And, after lovemaking, those parts of them that felt Wally's loss were forced to acknowledge the moment with reverence and with solemnity; therefore, their expressions were not so full of rapture and not so void of worry as the expressions of most lovers after lovemaking.

Homer Wells, with his face pressed into Candy's hair, lay dreaming that he was only now arriving at the white Cadillac's original destination; he felt as if Wally were still driving him and Candy away from St. Cloud's-as if Wally were still in charge; surely Wally was a true benefactor to have driven him safely to this resting place. The pulse in Candy's temple, which lightly touched his own pulse, was as soothing to Homer as the tire hum when the great white Cadillac had rescued him from the prison into which he was born. There was a tear on Homer's face; he would have thanked Wally, if he could.

And if, in the darkness, he could have seen Candy's face, he would have known that a part of her was still over Burma.

They lay still for so long-the first mouse bold enough to run across their bare legs surprised them. Homer Wells jerked up to a kneeling position; a moment passed before he realized that he had left a whole prophylactic, and all those sperm inside Candy. It was number 4 on Wilbur {498} Larch's list of the COMMON MISUSES OF THE PROPHYLACTIC.

'Oh-oh,' said Homer Wells, whose fingers were quick, and sensitive, and trained; he needed only the index and middle fingers of his right hand to retrieve the lost rubber; although he was very fast, he doubted he'd been fast enough.

Despite the careful detail of Homer's instructions to Candy, she cut him off. 'I think I know how to douche myself, Homer,' she said.

And so their first night of passion, which had been so slowly building between them, ended in the haste typical of the measures taken to avoid an unwanted pregnancy -the possible cause of which was fairly typical, too.

'I love you,' Homer repeated, kissing her good night. There were both fervor and anger in Candy's good-night kiss, both ferocity and resignation in the way she clutched his hands. Homer stood for a while in the parking lot behind the lobster pound; the only sound was the aeration device that circulated fresh oxygen through the water tank that kept the lobsters alive. The quality of the air in the parking lot was divided between brine and motor oil. The night's heat was gone. A cool, damp fog rolled in from the sea; there was no more heat lightning to illuminate, however slightly, the view across the Atlantic.

It seemed to Homer Wells that there had been so much waiting and seeing to his life, and now there was something else to wait and see about.

Wilbur Larch, who was seventy-something and the grand master of Maine in the field of waiting and seeing, gazed once again upon the starry ceiling of the dispensary. One of ether's pleasures was its occasional transportation of the inhaler to a position that afforded him a bird's eye view of himself; Wilbur Larch was thus permitted to smile from afar upon a vision of himself. It was the night that he blessed the adoption of young Copperfield, the lisper. {499}