John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'Wally!'Candy said.

Tm so sick of it!' Wally shouted. 'It's time you learned a new word, Homer,' Wally said.

'Jesus, Wally,' Candy said.{583}

'I'm okay,' Homer said, but he remained sitting on the office floor.

'I'm sorry,' Wally said. 'It just gets on rny nerves-you saying “Right” all the time.' And although he had not made this particular mistake for years, he lifted himself off the desk with his arms-it must have seemed to him that the appropriate thing to do would be to swing his legs to the floor and help Homer up to his feet; he'd forgotten that he couldn't walk. If Candy had riot caught him under the arms, and hugged him-chest to chest -Wally would have fallen. Homer got to his feet and helped Candy put Wally back on the desk.

'I'm sorry, buddy,' Wally said. He put his head on Homer's shoulder.

Homer did not say 'Right.' Candy went to get a piece of ice in a towel for Homer's face, and Homer said, 'It's okay, Wally, Everything's okay.' Wally slumped a little forward, and Homer leaned over him; their foreheads touched. They maintained that position until Candy returned with the ice.

Most days, for fifteen years, Candy and Homer thought that Wally knew everything, that he accepted everything, but that he resented not being told. At the same time, Homer and Candy imagined that it was a relief to Wally-that he didn't have to admit that he knew everything. What new, uncomfortable position would they put him in by telling him now? Wasn't the main thing that Angel not know?-not until Candy and Homer told him; the main thing was that Angel shouldn't hear it from anyone else. Whatever Wally knew, he would never tell Angel.

If Homer was surprised, he was surprised that Wally had never hit him before.

'What was that all about?' Candy asked Homer when they were alone that night by the swimming pool, Some kind of large, whirring insect was caught in the leaf skimmer; they heard its wings beating against the soggy leaves. WThatever it was, it grew weaker and weaker. {584}

'I guess it is irritating how I say “Right” all the time,' Homer said.

'Wally knows,' Candy said.

That's what you've thought for fifteen years,' said Homer Wells.

'You think he doesn't know?' Candy asked.

'I think he loves you, and you love him,' Homer said. 'I think he knows we love Angel. I think Wally loves Angel, too.'

'But do you think he knows Angel is ours? Candy asked.

'I don't know,' Homer said. 'I know that one day Angel has to know he's ours. I think that Wally knows I love you,' he said.

'And that I love you?' Candy asked. 'Does he know that?'

'You love me sometimes,' Homer said. 'Not very often.'

'I wasn't talking about sex,' Candy whispered.

'I was,' said Homer Wells.

They had been careful, and-in their opinion-almost good. Since Wally had come home from the war, Homer and Candy had made love only two hundred seventy times-an average of only eighteen times a year, only one and a half times a month; they were simply as extremely careful as they knew how. It was another thing that Candy had insisted Homer agree to: that for Wally's sake and for Angel's-for the sake of what Candy called their family-they would never be caught; they would never cause anyone even the slightest embarrassment. If anyone ever saw them, they would stop, forever.

That was why they hadn't told Wally. Why wouldn't Wally accept that they'd thought he was dead-not just missing-and that they had needed each other, and that they'd wanted Angel, too? They knew Wally would have accepted that. Who couldn't accept what had happened? What was happening now was what they knew Wally wanted to know, and they couldn't tell him.{585}

They had another thing to be careful about. Because Wally was sterile, Candy's becoming pregnant would seem too miraculous to be believed. Because Wally's sterility was not the result of encephalitis, it would take him several years to discover that he was sterile. He would remember the unclean instrumentation of his urethra, but he would remember it gradually-the way he remembered the rest of Burma. Once he learned that his epididymis was sealed, for life, the specificity of the various bamboo shoots came back to him; sometimes it seemed to him that he could recall, exactly, every catheter that had ever relieved him.

There is no difference in the feeling of orgasm; Wally was fond of emphasizing this particular point to Homer Wells. Wally called it 'shooting'; Homer was the only person with whom Wally could joke about his condition. 'I can still aim the gun, and the gun still goes off,' Wally said, 'and it still goes off with a bang-for me,' he said. 'It's just that no one ever finds the bullet.'

Wally remembered, from time to time, that when one of the Burmese on the sampan would instrument him- for which he was always so grateful-there was never very much bleeding, even when the bamboo shoot was not exactly straight; his blood seemed pale and minimal by comparison to the bloodier stains of the betel juice that everyone spat on the deck.

If Homer Wells got Candy pregnant again, Candy made him promise that-this time- he would give her an abortion. She could not fool Wally about another trip to St. Cloud's; she would not fool him, she said. And so this added consideration-that Candy never get pregnant-contributed to the moderation of their coupling, which was almost always managed under conditions harsh enough to win the approval of New England's founding fathers. It still would not have won Wilbur Larch's approval.

They established no pattern of behavior that could make anyone suspicious. (As if everyone wasn't already {586} suspicious, regardless of how they behaved!) There was no one place that they met, no one day, no one time of day. In the winter months, when Angel-after school -would take Wally for a swim in the indoor pool of a private boys' academy, Homer and Candy could manage an occasional late afternoon together. But Homer's bed, which had been Olive's bed, which also suffered from all the master-bedroom connotations, was full of conflicting emotions for them both-and the bed Candy shared with Wally had its own set of taboos. Rarely, they took trips. The cider house was fit to be used only in the late summer after it had been made ready for the picking crew; but ever since Angel had learned to drive, he'd been given the run of the orchards-he was allowed to drive any of the farm vehicles, just so he kept off the public roads, and his pudgy pal, Pete Hyde, often drove around with him. Homer suspected that Pete and Angel used the cider house to drink beer in secret, whenever they could convince Herb Fowler to buy beer for them; or that they went there for the fifteen-year-old thrill of smoking cigarettes. And at night, trapped by their own insomnia, where could Candy and Homer have disappeared to-now that Angel was an insomniac, too?

Homer Wells knew that there was no reason ever to have an accident-no reason for Candy ever to get pregnant (certainly not, knowing what Homer knew)-and no reason for them ever to get caught, either. But by being so reasonable and so discreet, Homer regretted the loss of the passion with which he and Candy had at first collided. Although she insisted (and he agreed), he thought it was quite unnecessary for him to write to Dr. Larch to request (which he did) the proper equipment with which to treat the emergency that Candy feared.

For fifteen years Homer had told her: 'You won't get pregnant. You can't.'

'Do you have everything you need, if you need it?' she always asked him.

'Yes,' he said.{587}

He'd gotten better about not saying 'Right,' since Wally had hit him. And when the word would slip out, it was often attended by an equally involuntary wince – as if in anticipation of another punch, as if anyone he might say the word to would feel as strongly about it as Wally and might be as fast as Mr. Rose.