John Irving - The Cider House Rules

Candy had been like a mother to him, and Wally was a second father-or the favorite, eccentric uncle. The only life Angel had known was a life with all of them. At fifteen, he'd never suffered so much as a change of rooms; everything had been the same since he could remember it.

He had what had been Wally's room, the one Wally had shared with Homer. Angel had been born into a real boy's room: he'd grown up surrounded by Wally's tennis and swimming trophies, and the pictures of Candy with Wally (when Wally's legs worked), and even the picture of Candy teaching Homer how to swim. Wally's Purple Heart (which Wally had given to Angel) was hung on the wall over the boy's bed; it concealed an oddly smeared fingerprint-Olive's fingerprint, from the night when she'd crushed a mosquito against that wall, which was the same night Angel Wells had been conceived in the cider house. After fifteen years, the wall needed a fresh coat of paint.

Homer's room down the hall had been the master bedroom; it had been Olive's room and the room where Senior had died. Olive herself had died in Cape Kenneth Hospital before the war was over, even before they'd sent Wally home. It was an inoperable cancer, which spread very quickly after they'd done the exploratory.

Homer and Candy and Ray had taken turns visiting her; one of them was always with Angel but Olive was never alone. Homer and Candy had said-privately, only to each other-that things might have worked out differently if Wally had made it back to the States before Olive died. Because of Wally's precariousness and the added difficulty of moving him in wartime, it was thought best not to tell Wally of Olive's cancer; that was how Olive had wanted it, too.

In the end, Olive thought Wally had come home. She was pumped so full of pain-killers that she mistook {571} Homer for Wally in their last few meetings. Homer had been in the habit of reading to her-from Jane Eyre, from David Copperfield, and from Great Expectations -but he gave that up when Olive's attention began to wander. The first few times Olive confused Homer with Wally, Homer couldn't be sure whom she thought she was addressing.

'You must forgive him,' Olive said. Her speech was slurred. She took Homer's hand, which she did not really hold so much as contain in her lap.

'Forgive him?' said Homer Wells.

'Yes,' Olive said. 'He can't help how much he loves her, or how much he needs her.'

To Candy, Olive was clearer. 'He's going to be crippled. And he's going to lose me. If he loses you, too, who's going to look after him?'

'I'll always look after him,' Candy said. 'Homer and I will look after him.'

But Olive was not so drugged that she failed to detect and dislike the ambiguity of Candy's answer. 'It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived, Candy,' she said. With the drugs she was taking. Olive felt a perfect freedom. It was not for her to tell them that she knew what she knew; it was for them to tell her what they were keeping from her. Until they told her, she could keep them guessing about what she knew.

To Homer, Olive said: 'He's an orphan.'

'Who is?' Homer asked.

'He is,' she said. 'Don't you forget how needy an orphan is. He'll take everything. He's come from having nothing-when he sees what he can have, he'll take everything he sees. My son,' Olive said, 'don't blame anyone. Blame will kill you.'

'Yes,' said Homer Wells, who held Olive's hand. When he bent over her, to hear how she was breathing, she kissed him as if he were Wally.

'Blame will kill you,' he repeated to Candy, after Olive {572} had died. ' “Dread remorse,” ' said Homer Wells, forever recalling Mr. Rochester's advice.

'Don't quote to me,' Candy told him. 'The thing is, he's coming home. And he doesn't even know his mother's dead. Not to mention,' Candy said; then she stopped talking.

'Not to mention,' said Homer Wells.

Candy and Wally were married less than a month after Wally returned to Ocean View; Wally weighed one hundred forty-seven pounds, and Homer Wells pushed the wheelchair down the church aisle. Candy and Wally occupied the converted bedroom on the ground floor of the big house.

Homer Wells had written to Wilbur Larch, shortly after Wally had come home. Olive's death (Homer wrote to Larch) had 'fixed' things for Candy and Wally more securely than Wally's paralysis, or than whatever sense of betrayal and guilt might have plagued Candy.

'Candy's right: don't worry about Angel,' Wilbur Larch had written to Homer Wells. 'Angel will get enough love. Why would he feel like an orphan if he never is one? If you're a good father to him, and Candy's a good mother to him-and if he's got Wally loving him, too-do you think he's going to start missing some idea of who his so-called real father is? The problem is not going to be Angel's problem. It's going to be yours. You're going to want him to know you're his real father, because of you -not because he's going to need to know. The problem is, you're going to need to tell. You and Candy. You're going to be proud. It will be for you, and not for Angel, that you're going to want to tell him he's no orphan.'

And to himself, or as an entry in A Brief History of St. Cloud's, Wilbur Larch wrote: 'Here in St. Cloud's we have just one problem. His name is Homer Wells. He's a problem, wherever he goes.'

Aside from the darkness in his eyes and an ability to {573} sustain a pensive, faraway look that was both alert and dreaming, Angel Wells resembled his father very little. He never thought of himself as an orphan, he knew he had been adopted, and he knew he came from where his father came from. And he knew he was loved; he had always felt it. What did it matter that he called Candy 'Candy' and Homer 'Dad'- and Wally 'Wally'?

This was the second summer that Angel Wells had been strong enough to carry Wally-up some steps, or into the surf, or out of the shallow end of the pool and back into the wheelchair. Homer had taught Angel how to carry Wally into the surf, when they went to the beach. Wally was a better swimmer than any of them, but he needed to get into deep enough water so that he could either float over a wave or duck under one.

'You just can't let him get dragged around in the shallow water,' Homer had explained to his son.

There were some rules regarding Wally (there were always rules;, Angel had observed). As good a swimmer as he was, Wally was never allowed to swim alone, and for many summers now, Angel Wells had been Wally's lifeguard whenever Wally swam his laps or just floated in the pool. Almost half the physical contact between Wally and Angel occurred in the water, where they resembled otters or seals. They wrestled and dunked each other so ferociously that Candy couldn't help being anxious at times for both of them.

And Wally was not allowed to drive alone; even though the Cadillac had hand-operated controls, someone else had to collapse the wheelchair and put it in or take it out of the back of the car. The first collapsible wheelchairs were quite heavy. Although Wally would occasionally drag himself through the ground floor of the house using one of those metal walkers, his legs were mere props; in unfamiliar terrain, he needed his wheelchair-and in rough terrain, he needed a pusher.

So many times the pusher had been Angel; and so many times Angel had been the passenger in the {574} Cadillac. Although Homer and Candy might have complained if they had known, Wally had long ago taught Angel to drive the Cadillac.

'The hand controls make it easy, kiddo,' Wally would say. 'Your legs don't have to be long enough to reach the pedals.' That was not what Candy had told Angel about teaching him to drive in the Jeep. 'Just as soon as your legs are long enough to reach the pedals,' she had told him, kissing him (which she did whenever she had the excuse), Til teach you how to drive.'