John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'Okay,' Homer said.

'Whatever happens, we share Angel.'

'Of course,' Homer said.

'I mean, you get to be his father-you get all the father time you want to have-and I get to have all the mother time I need,' Candy said.

'Always,' said Homer Wells, but something was wrong.

'I mean, regardless of what happens-whether I'm with you, or with Wally,' Candy said.

Homer was quiet for a while. 'So you're leaning toward Wally?' he asked.

Tm not leaning anywhere,' Candy said. Tm standing right here, and we're agreeing to certain rules.'

'I didn't know they were rules,' said Homer Wells.

'We share Angel,' Candy said. 'We both get to live with him. We get to be his family. Nobody ever moves out.'

'Even if you're with Wally?' Homer said, after a while.

'Remember what you told me when you wanted me to have Angel?' Candy asked him.{562}

Homer Wells was cautious, now. 'Remind me,' he said.

'You said that he was your baby, too-that he was ours. That I couldn't decide, all by myself, not to have him-that was the point,' Candy said.

'Yes,' Homer said. 'I remember.'

'Well, if he was ours then, he's ours now-whatever happens,' Candy repeated.

'In the same house?' asked Homer Wells. 'Even if you go with Wally?'

'Like a family,' Candy said.

'Like a family,' said Homer Wells. It was a word that took a strong grip of him. An orphan is a child, forever; an orphan detests change; an orphan hates to move; an orphan loves routine.

For fifteen years, Homer Wells knew that there were possibly as many cider house rules as there were people who had passed through the cider house. Even so, every year, he posted a fresh list.

For fifteen years, the board of trustees had tried and failed to replace Dr. Larch; they couldn't find anyone who wanted the job. There were people dying to throw themselves into unrewarded service of their fellow man, but there were more exotic places than St. Cloud's where their services were needed-and where they could also suffer. The board of trustees couldn't manage to entice a new nurse into service there, either; they couldn't hire even an administrative assistant.

When Dr. Gingrich retired-not from the board; he would never retire from the board-he mused about accepting the position in St. Cloud's, but Mrs. Goodhall pointed out to him that he wasn't an obstetrician. His psychiatric practice had never flourished in Maine, yet Dr. Gingrich was surprised and a little hurt to learn that Mrs. Goodhall enjoyed pointing this out to him. Mrs. Goodhall had reached retirement age herself, but nothing could have been farther from that woman's {563} zealous mind. Wilbur Larch was ninety-something, and Mrs. Goodhall was obsessed with retiring him before he died; she realized that to have Larch die, while still in service, would register as a kind of defeat for her.

Not long ago-perhaps in an effort to invigorate the board-Dr. Gingrich had proposed they hold a meeting in an off-season hotel in Ogunquit, simply to break the routine of meeting in their usual offices in Portland. 'Make it a kind of outing,' he proposed, 'The ocean air and all.'

But it rained. In the colder weather, the wood shrank; the sand got in the windows and doors and crunched underfoot; the drapes and the towels and the bedsheets were gritty. The wind was off the ocean; no one could sit on the veranda because the wind blew the rain under the roof. The hotel provided them with a long, dark, empty dining room; they held their meeting under a chandelier that no one could turn on-no one could find the right switch.

It was appropriate to their discussion of St. Cloud's that they attempted to conduct their business in a former ballroom that had seen better days, in a hotel so deeply in the off-season that anyone seeing them there would have suspected they'd been quarantined. In fact, when he got a glimpse of them, that is what Homer Wells thought; he and Candy were the hotel's only other off-season guests. They had taken a room for half the day; they were a long way from Ocean View, but they'd come this far to be sure that no one would recognize them.

It was time for them to leave. They stood outside on the veranda, Candy with her back against Homer's chest, his arms wrapped around her; they both faced out to sea. He appeared to like the way the wind whipped her hair in his face, and neither of them seemed to mind the rain.

Inside the hotel, Mrs. Goodhall looked through the streaked window, frowning at the weather and at the young couple braving the elements. In her opinion, noth- {564} ing could ever be normal enough. That was what was wrong with Larch; not everyone who is ninetysomething is senile, she would grant you, but Larch wasn't normal. And even if they were a young married couple, public displays of affection were not acceptable to Mrs. Goodhall-and they were calling all the more attention to themselves by their defiance of the rain.

'What's more,' she remarked to Dr. Gingrich, who was given no warning and had no map with which he could have followed her thoughts, Til bet they're not married.'

The young couple, he thought, looked a little sad. Perhaps they needed a psychiatrist; perhaps it was the weather-they'd been planning to sail.

'I've figured out what he is,' Mrs. Goodhall told Dr. Gingrich, who thought she was referring to the young man, Homer Wells. 'He's a nonpractising homosexual,' Mrs. Goodhall announced. She meant Dr. Larch, who was on her mind night and day.

Dr. Gingrich was rather amazed at what struck him as Mrs. Goodhall's wild guess, but he looked at the young man with renewed interest. True, he was not actually fondling the young woman; he seemed a trifle distant.

'If we could catch him at it, we'd have him out in a minute,' Mrs. Goodhall observed. 'Of course we'd still have to find someone willing to replace him.'

Dr Gingrich was lost. He realized that Mrs. Goodhall couldn't be interested in replacing the young man on the veranda, and that therefore she was still thinking about Dr. Larch. But if Dr. Larch were a 'nonpractising homosexual,' what could they ever catch him at?

'We would catch him at being a homosexual, just not practising as such?' Dr. Gingrich asked cautiously; it was not hard to rile Mrs. Goodhall.

'He's obviously queer,' she snapped.

Dr. Gingrich, in all his years of psychiatric service to Maine, had never been moved to apply the label of 'nonpractising homosexual' to anyone, although he had {565} often heard of such a thing; usually, someone was complaining about someone else's peculiarity. In Mrs. Goodhall's case, she despised men who lived alone. It wasn't normal. And she despised young couples who displayed their affection, or weren't married, or both; too much of what was normal also enraged her. Although he shared with Mrs. Goodhall the desire to replace Dr. Larch and his staff at St. Cloud's, it occurred to Dr. Gingrich that he should have had Mrs. Goodhall as a patient-she might have kept him out of retirement for a few more years.

When the young couple came inside the hotel, Mrs. Goodhall gave them such a look that the young woman turned away.

'Did you see her turn away in shame?' Mrs. Goodhall would ask Dr. Gingrich, later.

But the young man stared her down. He looked right through her! Dr. Gingrich marveled. It was one of the best looks, in the tradition of 'withering,' that Dr. Gingrich had ever seen and he found himself smiling at the young couple.

'Did you see that couple?' Candy asked him later, in the long drive back to Ocean View.

'I don't think they were married,' said Homer Wells. 'Or if they're married, they hate each other.'

'Maybe that's why I thought they were married,' Candy said.

'He looked a little stupid, and she looked completely crazy,' Homer said.

'I know they were married,' Candy said.