John Irving - The Cider House Rules

That is what the note said, the one Homer passed to Melony when he went to the girls' division to read Jane Eyre. Each night they had repeated a wordless habit: Melony would stick her finger in her mouth-she appeared to stick it halfway down her throat, her eyes bulging in mockery of the woman with the pony-and Homer Wells would simply shake his head, indicating that he hadn't found what he was looking for. The note that said “Not to Be Found” provoked a look of profound suspicion on Melony's restless countenance.

'Homer,' Dr. Larch had said, 'I don't remember your mother. I don't even remember you when you were born; you didn't become you until later.'

'I thought there was a law,' Homer said. He meant Melony's law-a law of records, or written history- but Wilbur Larch was the only historian and the only law at St. Cloud's. It was an orphanage law: an orphan's life began when Wilbur Larch remembered it; and if an {127}orphan was adopted before it became memorable (which was the hope), then its life began with whoever had adopted it. That was Larch's law. After all, he had taken the necessary responsibility to follow the common law regarding when a fetus was quick or not yet quick; the rules governing whether he delivered a baby or whether he delivered a mother were his rules, too.

'I've been thinking about you, Homer,' Dr. Larch told the boy. 'I think about you more and more, but I don't waste my time-or yours-thinking about who you were before I knew you.'

Larch showed Homer a letter he was writing-it was still in the typewriter. It was a letter to someone at The New England Home for Little Wanderers, which had been an orphanage even longer than St. Cloud's.

The letter was friendly and familiar; Larch's correspondent appeared to be an old colleague if not an old friend. There was in the tone of Larch's argument, too, the sparkle of frequent debate-as if the correspondent were someone Larch had often used as a kind of philosophical opponent.

The reasons orphans should be adopted before adolescence is that they should be loved, and have someone to love, before they embark on that necessary phase of adolescence: namely deceitfulness,' Larch argued in the letter. 'A teen-ager discovers that deceit is almost as seductive as sex, and much more easily accomplished. It may be especially easy to deceive loved ones-the people who love you are the least willing to acknowledge your deceit. But if you love no one, and feel that no one loves you, there's no one with the power to sting you by pointing out to you that you're lying. If an orphan is not adopted by the time he reaches this alarming period of adolescence, he may continue to deceive himself, and others forever.

'For a terrible time of life a teen-ager deceives himself; he believes he can trick the world. He believes he is invulnerable. An adolescent who is an orphan at this phase is in danger of never growing up.' 128

Of course, Dr. Larch knew, Homer Wells was different; he was loved-by Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna, and by Dr. Larch, in spite of himself-and Homer Wells not only knew that he was loved, he also probably knew that he loved these people. His age of deceit might be blessedly brief.

Melony was the perfect example of the adolescent orphan Larch described in his letter to The New England Home for Little Wanderers. This also occurred to Homer Wells, who had asked Melony- before he gave her the note that her history was “Not to Be Found”-what she wanted to find her mother for.

To kill her,' Melony had said without hesitation. 'Maybe I'll poison her, but if she's not as big as I am, if I'm much stronger than she is, and I probably am, then I'd like to strangle her.'

'To strangle her,' repeated Homer Wells uncontrollably.

'Why?' Melony asked him. 'What would you do if you found your mother?'

'I don't know,' he said. 'Ask her some questions, maybe.'

'Ask her some questions!' Melony said. Homer had not heard such scorn in Melony's voice since her response to Jane Eyre's 'gleams of sunshine.'

Homer knew that his simple note-“Not to Be Found” -would never satisfy her, although Homer had found Dr. Larch, as usual, to be convincing. Homer was also holding back; he was still deceiving Dr. Larch, and himself, a little. The photograph of the woman with the pony was still pinned between his mattress and his bedsprings; it had grown almost soft with handling. Frankly, Homer was full of regret. He knew he could not produce Melony's history and that without it he would be denied the pony's seemingly singular experience.

'What does he mean, “Not to Be Found?” Melony screamed at Homer; they were on the sagging porch of the building where the woman and the pony had spent so many {129}years. 'What he means is, he's playing God-he gives you your history, or he takes it away! If that's not playing God, what is?'

Homer Wells let this pass. Dr. Larch, Homer knew, played God in other ways; it was still Homer's cautious opinion that Dr. Larch played God pretty well.

'Here in St. Cloud's,' Dr. Larch wrote, 'I have been given the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God-we should seize those moments. There won't be many.

'Here in St. Cloud's there may be more moments to seize than one could find in the rest of the world, but that is only because so much that comes this way has been left to chance already.'

'Goddamn him!' Melony screamed; but the river was ever-loud, the empty building had heard much worse than this in its day, and Homer Wells let this remark pass, too.

'Too bad for you, Sunshine,' Melony snapped at him. 'Isn't it?' she insisted. He kept his distance.

'So!' she yelled-of which the Maine woods, across the river, managed only a short echo of the 'o!' She lifted her heavy leg and kicked a whole section of the wrecked porch rail into the river. 'So, this is it! Melony cried, but the forest was too dense to manage even a clipped echo of the 'it!' The Maine woods, like Homer Wells, let Melony's remark pass. 'Jesus!' Melony cried, but the forest repeated nothing; the old building might have creaked-possibly, it sighed. It was difficult to destroy that building; time and other vandals had already destroyed it; Melony was looking for possible parts of the building she could still destroy. Homer followed her at a safe distance.

'Sunshine,' Melony said, finding a small pane of glass {130}that hadn't been smashed-and smashing it. 'Sunshine, we've got nobody. If you tell me we've got each other, I'll kill you.'

It had not occurred to Homer to offer this or any other suggestion to Melony; he kept silent.

'If you tell me we've got your favorite Doctor Larch, or this whole place,' she said-stamping her foot through a floorboard, trying to pry the floorboard loose with both hands-'if you tell me that, I'll torture you before I kill you.'

'Right,' said Homer Wells.

With the floorboard in both hands, Melony attacked the banister of the main staircase; the banister was knocked apart easily, but the banister post, which anchored the whole railing in the downstairs hall, remained upright. Melony dropped the floorboard and seized the banister post in a bear hug.

'Goddamn you!' she screamed-at Dr. Larch, at her mother, at St. Cloud's, at the world. She wrestled the post to the floor; it was still attached to a main support beam, under the floorboards, but Melony swung a piece of the banister railing like a club until she was able to knock the post free. When she tried to lift the post, and couldn't, she turned to Homer Wells.