John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'How could she?' Candy asked him. 'Did you tell her?'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Homer said. 'She just knows-she always knows.'

'Don't you be ridiculous,' Candy said crossly.

'Wally's a great swimmer,' Angel explained to Melony.

'In the ocean, he just needs to get carried out past the breakers. I can carry him.'

'You're a good-lookin' guy,' Melony said to Angel. 'You're better lookin' than your dad ever was.'

Angel was embarrassed; he took the temperature of the pool. 'It's warm,' he said. 'Too bad you don't swim. You could stay in the shallow end, or I could teach you how to float. Candy taught my dad how to swim.'

'Incredible,' Melony said. She walked out on the diving board and jounced a little; she needed to jounce very little to make the board dip close to the water. 'If I fell in, I'll bet you could save me,' she said to Angel, who {609} couldn't tell if the big woman was being flirtatious or threatening-of if she was idly fooling around. That was what was exciting about her, Angel thought: she gave him the impression that-from one minute to the next- she might do anything.

'I could probably save you, if you were drowning,' Angel offered cautiously. But Melony retreated from the end of the diving board, which lent to her step the sense of springing power that one detects in the larger members of the cat family.

'Incredible,' she repeated, her eyes trying to take in everything.

'Want to see the house now?' Angel asked her. She was making him nervous.

'Gee, it's some place you got,' Melony told Candy, who showed her the downstairs; Homer showed her the upstairs. In the hallway between Homer's and Angel's rooms, Melony whispered to him, 'Boy, you really done all right for yourself. How'd you manage it, Sunshine?' How she feasted on him with her tawny eyes! 'You even got a great view!' she pointed out, sitting on the master bed and looking out the window.

When she asked if she could use the bathroom, Homer went downstairs to have a word with Candy, but Angel was still hanging around-still very much enjoying himself, and still curious. The impact that the thuglike nature of his father's first girlfriend had made on the boy was considerable; if Angel had been troubled in trying to imagine why his father chose such a solitary life, the violent apparition that had presented herself today had done much to reassure him. If this menacing woman had been his father's first experience, it was more understandable (to Angel) why Homer had been reluctant to repeat the relationship.

Melony seemed to spend a long time in the bathroom, and Homer Wells was grateful for the time; he needed it-to convince Candy and Angel to go back to work, to leave him alone with Melony. 'She wants a job,' he told {610} them forcefully. 'I need to have a little time with her, alone.'

'A job,' Candy said-a new horror coming into her face; the thought of it made her squint her pretty eyes.

Mirrors had never been Melony's friends, but the mirror in Homer's bathroom was especially harsh to her. She went through the medicine cabinet quickly; for no reason, she dumped some of the pills down the toilet. She began ejecting razor blades from a crude, metal dispenser; she emptied the dispenser before she could make herself stop. She cut her finger trying to pick up one of the blades from the floor. She had her finger stuck in her mouth when she first looked at herself in the mirror. She held the razor blade in her other hand while she reviewed the forty-something years she saw in her face. Oh, she had never been attractive, she had never been nice, but once she had been an efficient weapon, she thought; now she wasn't so sure. She held the razor blade against the pouch under one eye; she shut that eye, as if the eye itself couldn't watch what she was going to do. Then she did nothing. After a while, she put the blade down on the edge of the sink and cried.

Later, she found a cigarette lighter; Candy must have left it in the bathroom; Homer didn't smoke; Wally couldn't climb stairs. She used the lighter to melt the handle of Homer's toothbrush; she sunk the razor blade in the softest part and waited for the handle to harden. When she clutched the brush end in her hand, she had quite a nice little weapon, she thought.

Then she saw the fifteen-year-old questionnaire from the St. Cloud's board of trustees; the paper was so old, she had to be careful not to tear it. How those questions spun her mind around! She threw the toothbrush with the razor blade in the sink, then she picked it up again, then she put it in the medicine cabinet, then she took it out. She was sick once and flushed the toilet twice.

Melony stayed upstairs in the bathroom a long time. When she came downstairs, she found Homer waiting {611} for her in the kitchen; she'd had enough time alone for her disposition to change and rechange-for her to grasp hold of her real feelings about finding Homer in these surroundings, and in what she presumed was a sleazy situation. She might have enjoyed a few minutes of the discomfort she had caused him, but by the time she came downstairs she was no longer enjoying herself and her disappointment in Homer Wells was even deeper than her steadfast anger-it was nearly level with grief.

'I somehow thought you'd end up doin' somethin' better than ballin' a poor cripple's wife and pretendin' your own child ain't your own,' Melony said to Homer Wells. 'You of all people-you, an orphan,' she reminded him.

'It's not quite like that,' he started to tell her, but she shook her huge head and looked away from him.

'I got eyes,' Melony said. 'I can see what it's; like-it's like shit. It's ordinary, middle-class shit-bein' unfaithful and lyin' to the kids. You of all people!' Melony said. She had her hands thrust in her pockets; she took them out and clasped them behind her back; then she jammed them back in her pockets again. Every time she moved her hands, Homer flinched.

Homer Wells had expected to be attacked by her; Melony was an attacker; but this was not the attack he had expected. He had imagined that he would, one day -when he saw her again-be a match for her, but now he knew that he would never be a match for Melony.

'Do you think I get my rocks off embarrassin' you?' Melony asked him. 'Do you think I was always lookin' for you-only to give you a bad time?'

'I didn't know you were looking for me,' said Homer Wells.

'I had you figured all wrong,' said Melony. Looking at her, Homer Wells realized that he'd had Melony figured all wrong, too. 'I always thought you'd end up like the old man.'

'Like Larch?' Homer said.

'Of course, like Larch!' Melony snapped at him. 'I {612} figured you for that-you know, the missionary. The dogooder with his nose in the air.'

'I don't see Larch quite that way,' Homer said.

'Don't be snotty to me!' Melony cried, her raw face streaked with tears. 'You've got your nose in the air-I got that part right. But you ain't exactly no missionary. You're a creep! You knocked up somebody you shouldn't 'a' been fuckin' in the first place, and you couldn't even come clean about it to your own kid. Some missionary! Ain't that brave? In my book, Sunshine, that's a creep,' Melony told him.

Then she left; she never asked him about the job; he never got to ask her how her life had been.

He went upstairs to the bathroom and threw up; he filled the sink with cold water and soaked his head, but the throbbing had no end. One hundred seventy-five pounds of truth had struck him in the face and neck and chest-had constricted his breathing and made him ache. A vomit taste was in his mouth; he tried to brush his teeth but he cut himself in the hand before he saw the blade. He felt nearly as paralyzed above the waist as he knew Wally must feel below. When he reached for the towel by the shower door, he saw what else was wrong, he saw what was missing from the bathroom: the blank questionnaire, the one he'd never returned to the board of trustees of St. Cloud's was gone. It didn't take Homer Wells long to imagine how Melony might answer some of the questions.