John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'Why you wear that old baseball cap?' she asked him. 'You got nice eyes, but nobody see 'em. You got nice hair, but nobody see it. And you got one pale forehead 'cause the sun can't find your face. If you didn't wear th at dumb cap, your face would be as brown as your body.'

This implied to Angel, of course, that Rose Rose liked his body being brown, didn't care for his forehead being pale, and had managed-despite the hat-to notice his eyes and hair (and to like them, too).

After filling the trailer with his first load of apples, Angel took a long drink from a water jug in the orchard, twisting the baseball cap backward on his head as he drank. Then he wore it that way, the way a catcher wears a baseball cap-or the way Candy wore it, with the visor tipped over her hair and the back of her neck. Somehow it looked better that way on Candy. When Rose Rose saw Angel wearing the cap that way, she said, 'Now you look real stupid, like you got a ball for a head.'

The next day, Angel let Candy wear the cap.

Baby Rose was sucking the pacifier, like a three-horsepower pump, and Rose Rose smiled at Angel. 'Where's that nice hat?' she asked him.

'I lost it,' he lied.

'Too bad,' she said. 'It was nice.' 'I thought you didn't like that hat,' he said.

'I didn't like that hat on you,' said Rose Rose.

The next day he brought the hat and put it on her head as soon as she was settled into the tractor seat. Rose Rose looked awfully pleased; she wore the hat the same way Angel had worn it-low, over her eyes. Baby Rose looked cross-eyed at the visor.

'You lost it and then you found it, huh?' Rose Rose asked Angel.

'Right,' Angel said.{657}

'You better be careful,' she told him. 'You don't wanna get involved with me.'

But Angel was flattered and encouraged that she'd even noticed his interest-especially since he was unsure how to express his interest.

'How old are you?' he asked her casually, later that day.

''Bout your age, Angel,' was all she said. Baby Rose slumped against her breast; a floppy-brimmed white sailor's hat protected the baby from the sun, but under the brim of the hat, the little girl looked glassy-eyed and exhausted from chomping on the pacifier all day. 'I don't believe you can still be teethin',' Rose Rose said to her daughter. She took hold of the baby-blue plastic ring and pulled the pacifier out of the little girl's mouth; it made a pop like a wine cork, which startled Baby Rose. 'You becomin' an addict,' Rose Rose said, but when Baby Rose started to cry, her mother put the nipple back.

'How do you like the name Gabriella?' Angel asked Rose Rose.

'I never heard it before,' she said.

'How about Ginger?' Angel asked.

'That somethin' you eat,' Rose Rose said.

'Gloria?' Angel asked.

'That nice,' said Rose Rose. 'Who it for?'

'Your baby!' Angel said. 'I've been thinking of names for your baby.' Rose Rose raised the visor of the Boston Red Sox cap and looked into Angel's eyes.

'Why you thinkin' of that?' she asked him.

'Just to be of help,' he said awkwardly. 'Just to help you decide.'

'Decide?' Rose Rose asked.

'To help you make up your mind,' said Angel Wells.

The picker named Peaches was almost as fast as Mr. Rose. He was emptying his canvas bag into a bushel crate, and he interrupted Rose Rose and Angel.

'You countin' me, Angel?' Peaches asked.

'I got you,' Angel said. Sometimes Angel examined the {658} fruit if he didn't know the picker very well-to make sure they weren't bruising it; if they were bruising it, or if there were other signs that they were picking too fast, Angel wouldn't give them the top price for a bushel. But Angel knew Peaches was a good picker, so he just put a number on the list without getting off the tractor to look at the apples. '

'Ain't you a checker?' Peaches asked Angel, then.

'Sure, I got you!' Angel said to him.

'Don't you wanna check me, then? Better make sure I ain't pickin' pears, or somethin',' Peaches said, grinning. Angel went to look over the apples, and that was when Peaches said to him: 'You don't wanna go into the knife business with Mistuh Rose.' Then he walked away, with his bag and his ladder, before Angel could say anything about his apples-which were, of course, perfect.

Back on the tractor, Angel got up his nerve. 'Are you still married to the baby's father?' he asked Rose Rose.

'Wasn't ever married,' she said.

'Are you still together, you and the father?' Angel asked.

'Baby got no father,' Rose Rose said. 'I wasn't ever together.'

'I like Hazel and Heather,' Angel said, after a while. 'They're both names of plants, so they sort of go with Rose.'

'I don't have no plant, I got a little girl,' Rose Rose said, smiling.

'I also like the name Hope,' Angel said.

'Hope ain't no name,' Rose Rose said.

'Iris is nice,' Angel said. 'But it's sort of cute, because it's another flower. Then there's Isadora.'

'Whew!' said Rose Rose. 'No name is better than some.'

'Well, how about plain old Jane?' asked Angel Wells, who was getting frustrated. 'Jennifer? Jessica? Jewel? Jill? Joyce? Julia? Justine?'

She touched him. She just put her hand on his hip, which nearly caused him to jackknife the trailer and spill {659} the load. 'Don't never stop,' she told him. 'I never knew there was so many names. Go on,' she said, her hand urging him-it was just a little shove, before she returned her hand to her lap, where Baby Rose sat mesmerized by the tractor's motion and the tractor's sound.

'Katherine? Kathleen? Kirsten? Kitty?' Angel Wells began.

'Go on,' Rose Rose said, her hand grazing his hip again.

'Laura? Laurie? Laverne? Lavinia? Leah? That means “weary,” ' he told her. 'Leslie? Libby? Loretta? Lucy? Mabel? That means “lovable,” ' he told her. 'Malvina? That means “smooth snow,” ' he explained.

'I never livin' where they got snow,' Rose Rose said.

'Maria?' Angel said. 'Marigold? That's another flower. Mavis? That means a “thrush,” it's a kind of bird,' he said.

'Don't tell me what they mean,' Rose Rose instructed him.

'Melissa? Mercedes?' Angel said.

'Ain't that a car?' Rose Rose asked him.

'It's a good car,' Angel said. 'A German car. Very expensive.'

'I seen one, I think,' Rose Rose said. They got a funny bull's eye on the hood.'

'Their insignia,' said Angel Wells.

'Their what?' she asked.

'It's a kind of bull's eye, you're right,' Angel said.

'Say it again,' Rose Rose said.

'Mercedes,' he said.

'It for rich people, ain't it?' Rose Rose asked.

'The car?' he asked.

'The name or the car,' she said.

'Well,' Angel said, 'it's an expensive car, but the name means “Our Lady of Mercies.” '

'Well, fuck it, then,' Rose Rose said. 'Didn't I tell you not to tell me what the names mean?'

'Sorry,' he said.{660}

'How come you never wear a shirt?' she asked him.

'Ain't you never cold?'

Angel shrugged.

'You can go on with them names, any time,' she told him.

After the first four or five days of the harvest, the wind shifted; there was a strong sea breeze off the Atlantic, and the early mornings were especially cold. Angel wore a T-shirt and a sweat shirt over that. One morning, when it was so cold that Rose Rose had left Baby Rose with Candy, Angel saw that she was shivering and he gave her his sweat shirt. She wore it all day. She was still wearing it when Angel went to help with the cider press that night, and for a while they sat on the cider house roof together. Black Pan sat up there with them, and he told them about the time when there'd been an Army installation on the coast, which they could see at night.

'It was a secret weapon,' he told them. 'And your father,' Black Pan told Angel, 'he made up a name for it-he had us all shittin' our pants, we was so scared. It was a kind of wheel, he told us-it sent people to the moon, or somethin'.'