John Irving - The Cider House Rules

Ray had been tinkering with his homemade torpedo; for all of his legendary mechanical genius, he must have found out something about a torpedo that he didn't know. The misfortune of someone you love can bring out the guilt in you; Candy regretted that she'd not told her father about Homer and Angel Wells. It was no consolation to her that she imagined Ray already knew everything; she had been able to understand, by his silences, that he wanted to hear it from her. Yet not even the death of her father could prompt Candy Kendall to tell her story to anyone.

As far south along the coastal highway as Powell's Ice Cream Palace, there had been dead lobsters and lobster parts in the parking lot and in the road. This had prompted Herb Fowler (who was never caught without something funny to say) to ask old Mr. Powell if he was inventing a new ice cream flavor.

Herb had waited for the summer that Angel Wells was fifteen before he flicked Angel his first rubber. Angel's feelings were slightly hurt that Herb had not initiated him sooner. Angel's pal and co-worker, pudgy Pete Hyde, was only a few months older than Angel (and not {579} nearly so grown up, in countless ways), and Angel knew that Herb Fowler had bounced a rubber off Pete Hyde's head when Pete was only thirteen. What Angel hadn't yet fathomed was that Pete Hyde was a part of Ocean View's working-class family, and Angel-although he worked with the workers-was from the boss's family.

The workers knew that Homer Wells ran Ocean View. He was the one most in charge. This would not have surprised Olive, and it was clear that Candy and Wally were grateful for Homer's authority. Perhaps because the workers knew that Homer had come from St. Cloud's, they felt that he was closer to them; he lived in what Big Dot Taft called 'the fancy house,' but he was like one of them. None of the workers resented that Homer was the boss, with the possible exception of Vernon Lynch, who resented any and every authority-all the more so since Grace Lynch had died.

Candy, who looked into the matters concerning the workers' wives, discovered that Grace had been pregnant; she'd died of acute peritonitis, following a misguided attempt to abort herself. Homer, who would often wonder why she had not chosen to make a second trip to St. Cloud's, liked to think that she had not died in vain. It had been her death (and Dr. Harlow's particularly unsympathetic response to it) that had prompted Nurse Caroline to resign from the Cape Kenneth Hospital staff, as Homer Wells had been encouraging her to do. Nurse Caroline finally took Homer's suggestion and offered her services to St. Cloud's.

'Homer Wells sent me,' Nurse Caroline said, when she introduced herself to Wilbur Larch. The old man had not grown too careless.

'Sent you for what?' Larch asked.

Tm a trained nurse,' she said. 'I'm here to help you.'

'Help me do what?' asked Larch, who was not very convincing at portraying innocence.

'I believe in the Lord's work,' Nurse Caroline said, exasperated.{580}

'Well, why didn't you say so?' Wilbur Larch asked.

So he's given me something besides apple trees, the old man mused. So there's still hope for him.

Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna were so relieved to get Nurse Caroline that they weren't even jealous. Here was the new blood that might hold the board of trustees at bay a while longer.

'The new nurse is a definite improvement to the situation,' Dr. Gingrich confided to the board. 'I would say that she takes a lot of pressure off making any immediate decision.' (As if they weren't trying to replace the old man every minute!)

'I'd prefer a young doctor to a young nurse,' Mrs Goodhall declared. 'A young doctor and a young administrator. You know how I feel about the records; the records of that place are pure whimsy. But it's at least a temporary improvement; I'll buy that,' she said.

If Wilbur Larch could have heard her, he would have said: 'Just give me the time, lady, and you'll buy more than that.'

But in 195-, Wilbur Larch was ninety-something. Sometimes his face would hold so still under the ether cone that the mask would stay in place after his hand had dropped to his side; only the force of his exhalations would make the cone fall. He had lost a lot of weight. In a mirror, or traveling with his beloved ether, he had the impression that he was becoming a bird. Only Nurse Caroline had the courage to criticize his drug habit. 'You should know, of all people,' Nurse Caroline told him roughly.

'Me of all people?' Larch asked innocently. Sometimes, he found it was fun to provoke her.

'You have a low opinion of religion,' Nurse Caroline remarked to him.

'I suppose so,' he said cautiously. She was a little too young and quick for him, he knew.

'Well, what do you suppose a drug dependency is-if not a kind of religion?' Nurse Caroline asked. {581}

'I have no quarrel with anyone at prayer,' Wilbur Larch said. 'Prayer is personal-prayer is anyone's choice. Pray to whom or what you want! It's when you start making rules,' said Wilbur Larch, but he felt lost. He knew she could talk circles around him. He admired socialism, but talking to a damn socialist was like talking to any true believer. He had heard her say, so many times, that a society that approved of making abortion illegal was a society that approved of violence against women; that making abortion illegal was simply a sanctimonious, self-righteous form of violence against women-it was just a way of legalizing violence against women, Nurse Caroline would say. He had heard her say, so many times, that abortions were not only a personal freedom of choice but also a responsibility of the state-to provide them.

'Once the state starts providing, it feels free to hand out the rules, too!' Larch blurted hastily. It was a Yankee thing to say-very Maine. But Nurse Caroline smiled. That led him into another of her arguments; she could always trap him. He was not a systems man, he was just a good one.

'In a better world…' she began patiently. Her patience with him could make Larch furious.

'No, not in a better world!' he cried. 'In this one-in this world. 1 take this world as a given. Talk to me about this world!' But it all made him so tired. It made him want a little ether. The more he tried to keep up with Nurse Caroline, the more he needed ether; and the stronger he felt his need for it, the more that made her right.

'Oh, I can't always be right,' Larch said tiredly.

'Yes, I know,' Nurse Caroline said sympathetically. 'It's because even a good man can't always be right that we need a society, that we need certain rules-call them priorities, if you prefer,' she said.

'You can call them whatever you want,' said Wilbur Larch testily. T don't have time for philosophy., or for {582} government, or for religion. I don't have enough time,' said Wilbur Larch.

Always, in the background of his mind, there was a newborn baby crying; even when the orphanage was as silent as the few, remaining, abandoned buildings of St. Cloud's-even when it was ghostly quiet-Wilbur Larch heard babies crying. And they were not crying to be born, he knew; they were crying because they were born.

That summer, Mr. Rose wrote that he 'and the daughter' might be arriving a day or so ahead of the picking crew; he hoped the cider house would be ready.

'It's been a while since we've seen the daughter,' Wally remarked, in the apple-mart office. Everett Taft was outside, oiling Wally's wheelchair for him, so Wally sat on the desk-his withered legs swinging limply, his unused feet in a perfectly polished pair of loafers; the loafers were more than fifteen years old.

Candy was playing with the adding machine. 'I think the daughter is about Angel's age,' she said.

'Right,' said Homer Wells, and Wally hit Homer with a very well-thrown jab-the only sort of punch he could really throw, sitting down. Because Homer had been leaning on the desk and Wally had been sitting up straight, the punch caught Homer completely by surprise, and very solidly, in the cheek. The punch surprised Candy so much that she pushed the adding machine off the far corner of the desk. The machine crashed to the office floor; when Homer hit the floor, he did not land quite as loudly or as deadweight as the adding machine, but he landed hard. He put his hand to his cheek, where he would soon have some swelling and the start of a slight shiner.