John Irving - The Cider House Rules

Of course, Wilbur Larch saw that the South End was mercilessly full of evidence of uncharitableness towards the erring and that he had become, in the view of the erring, the sanctuary to which to flee.

Instead, he fled. He went home to Maine. He applied to the Maine State board of medical examiners for a useful position in obstetrics. While they sought a position for him in some developing community, they liked his Harvard degree and made him a member of their board. Wilbur Larch awaited his new appointment in his old hometown of Portland, that safe harbor-the old mayor's mansion where he had spent the half life of his childhood, the salty boardinghouse where he had caught his dose of life from Mrs. Eames.

He wondered if he would miss the South End: the palmist who had assured him he would live a long time and have many children ('Too many to count!'), which Larch understood as confirmation that, in seeking to become an obstetrician, he had made the right choice; the fortune teller who had told young Larch that he would never follow in his father's footsteps, which was all right with Wilbur Larch, who had no knowledge of lathes, no fondness for drink, and was sure that his liver wouldn't be the culprit of his final undoing; and the Chinese herb doctor who had told Larch that he could cure the clap by applying crushed green leaves and bread mold to his penis. The quack was almost right. The chlorophyll in the plants would destroy the bacteria that contributed to gangrene but.it wouldn't kill the dance couples in the pus cells, those lively gonococci; the penicillin, extracted from some bread molds, would. Years later, Larch would dream that if only Dr. Harold Ernst, Harvard Medical School's bacteriologist and curve-ball {85} pitcher, and the Chinese herb doctor from the South End had put their heads together…well, what wouldn't they have cured?

'They would not have cured orphans,' wrote Dr. Larch when he woke from that dream.

And the orphans of the South End: Wilbur Larch remembered them from the branch hospitals of the Boston Lying-in. In 189-, less than half the mothers were married. In the institution's charter it was written that no patient would be admitted 'unless a married woman or one recently widowed, and known to be of good moral character.' The benevolent citizen groups who had first contributed thousands of dollars to provide for a lying-in hospital for the poor… they had insisted; but in truth almost everyone was admitted, There was an astonishing number of women claiming to be widows, or claiming marriage to sailors off to sea-gone with the Great Eastern, Wilbur Larch used to imagine.

In Portland, he wondered, why were there no orphans, no children or women in need? Wilbur Larch did not feel of much use in the tidy town of Portland; it is ironic to think that while he waited to be sent somewhere where he was needed, a prostitute's letter-about abandoned women and orphans-was making its way to him from St. Cloud's.

But before the letter arrived, Wilbur Larch had another invitation. The pleasure of his company -was requested by a Mrs. Channing-Peabody of the Boston Channing-Peabodys, who spent every summer on their coastal property just east of Portland. The invitation suggested that perhaps young Larch missed the Boston society to which he'd doubtlessly become accustomed and would enjoy some tennis or croquet, or even some sailing, before a dinner with the Channing-Peabodys and friends. Larch had been accustomed to no Boston socifity. He associated the Channing-Peabodys with Cambridge, or with Beacon Hill-where he was never invited-and although he knew that Channing and Peabody were old {86} Boston family names, he was unfamiliar with this strange coupling of the two. For all Wilbur Larch knew about this level of society, the Channings and the Peabodys might be throwing a party together and for the purpose of the invitation had agreed to hyphenate their names.

As for sailing, Wilbur Larch had never been on the water-or in it. A child of Maine, he knew better than to learn to swim in that water; the Maine water, in Wilbur Larch's opinion, was for summer people and lobsters. And as for tennis or croquet, he didn't own the proper clothing. From a watercolor of some strange lawn games, he had once imagined that striking a wooden ball with a wooden mallet as hard as he could would be rewarding, but he wanted time to practice this art alone and unobserved. He regretted the expense of hiring a driver to take him to the Channing-Peabody summer house., and he felt uncomfortably dressed for the season-his only suit was a dark, heavy one, and he hadn't worn it since the day of his visit 'Off Harrison.' As he lifted the big brass door knocker of the Channing-Peabody house (choosing to introduce himself formally, rather than wandering among the people in their whites at play at various sports around the grounds), he felt the suit was not only too hot but also needed a pressing, and he discovered in the jacket pocket the panties of the woman who'd aborted the birth of her child 'Off Harrison.' Wilbur Larch was holding the panties in his hand and staring at them-remembering their valiant, epaulette position, their jaunty bravery on the woman's shoulder-when Mrs. Channing-Peabody opened the door to receive him.

He could not return the panties to his jacket pocket quickly enough so he stuffed them into the pocket in the attitude of a handkerchief he'd just been caught blowing his nose in. By the quick way Mrs. Channing-Peabody looked away from them, Larch knew she'd seen the panties for what they were: women's underdrawers, plain as day. {87}

'Doctor Larch?' Mrs. Channing-Peabody said cautiously, as if the panties had provided her with a clue to Larch's identity.

I should simply leave now, Wilbur Larch thought, but he said, 'Yes, Doctor Larch,' and bowed to the woman -a great gunship of a woman, with a tanned face and a head helmeted in silver-gray hair, as sleek and as dangerous-looking as a bullet.

'You must come meet my daughter,' the woman said. 'And all the rest of us!' she added with a booming laugh that chilled the sweat on Wilbur Larch's back.

All the rest of them seemed to be named Charming or Peabody or Channing-Peabody, and some of them had first names that resembled last names. There was a Cabot and a Chadwick and a Loring and an Emerald (who had the dullest brown eyes), but the daughter whom Mrs. Channing-Peabody had designated to meet Dr. Larch was the plainest and youngest and least healthy-looking of the bunch. Her name was Missy.

'Missy?' Wilbur Larch repeated. The girl nodded and shrugged.

They were seated at a long table, next to each other. Across from them, and about their age, was one of the young men in tennis whites, either the Chadwick or the Cabot. He looked cross, or else he'd just had a fight with Miss Channing-Peabody, or else he would rather have been seated next to her himself. Or maybe he's just her brother and wishes he were seated farther away from her, thought Wilbur Larch.

The girl looked unwell. In a family of tans, she was pale; she picked at her food. It was one of those dinners where the arrival of each course caused a complete change of dishes, and as the conversation lapsed and failed, or at least grew fainter, the sound of china and silverware grew louder, and a tension mounted at the dinner table. It was not a tension caused by any subject of conversation-it was a tension caused by no subject of conversation. {88}

The rather senile retired surgeon who was seated on Wilbur's other side-he was either a Channing or a Peabody-seemed disappointed to learn that Larch was an obstetrician. Still, the old codger insisted on knowing Dr. Larch's preferred method of expelling the placenta into the lower genital tract. Wilbur Larch tried, quietly, to describe the expression of placenta to Dr. Peabody or Dr. Channing, or whoever he was, but the old man was hard of hearing and insisted that young Larch speak up\ Their conversation, which was the dinner table's only conversation, thus progressed to injuries to the perineum-including; the method of holding back the baby's head to prevent a perineal tear-and the proper mediolateral incision for the performance of an episiotomy when a tear of the perineum seems imminent.