John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'Well?' Larch asked. 'It's not in David Copperfield. It's not in Jane Eyre, either-what you need to know,' he added almost nastily.

The medical slant of the conversation convinced Homer Wells that it was a pool of blood in the photograph -that only a doctor could recognize it so positively. 'Blood,' Homer said. 'The woman's bleeding.' Larch ran with the photograph to the lamp at the dispensary counter.

'Blood?' Larch said. 'Blood!' He looked the photograph all over. That's not blood, you idiot! That's a pigtail!' He showed the photograph once more to Homer Wells; it would be Homer's last look at the photograph, though Dr. Larch would look at it often. He would keep it attached to the pages of A Brief History of St. Cloud's; he did not keep it for pornographic interest but because it reminded him of a woman he had abused twice. He had slept with her mother in front of her, and he had not provided her with a service that she had every right to request. He had not been a proper doctor to her, and he wanted to remember her. That he was forced to remember her with a pony's penis in her mouth made Dr. Larch's mistakes all the more forcefully mistakes to him; Larch liked it that way.

He was a hard man-on himself, too. {140}

He took a harder line toward Homer Wells than the hilarity of his promises to the boy at first suggested-to teach him 'the works,' as Larch called it, was not so funny. Surgery, obstetrical procedure-even a normal birth, even the standard D and C-required considerable background and preparation,

'You think it's tough to look at a woman with a pony's penis in her mouth, Homer?' Larch asked him the next day-when he was not under the influence of ether. 'You ought to look at something that's harder to understand than that. Here,' Larch said, handing Homer the well-worn copy of Gray's Anatomy, 'look at this. Look at it three or four times a day, and every night. Forget pony penises, and learn this.'

'Here in St. Cloud's,' wrote Dr. Wilbur Larch, 'I have had little use for my Gray's Anatomy; but in France, in World War I, I used it every day. It was the only road map I had over there.'

Larch also gave Homer his personal handbook of obstetrical procedure, his notebooks from medical school and from his internships; he began with the chemistry lectures and the standard textbook. He set aside a corner of the dispensary for a few easy experiments in bacteriology, although the sight of Petri dishes caused Larch flashes of no uncertain pain; he was not fond of the world there was to be seen under the microscope. Larch was also not fond of Melony-specifically, he was not fond of her apparent hold on Homer Wells. Larch assumed that they slept together; he assumed that Melony had initiated him, which was true, and now forced him to continue, which was not the case. In time, they would sleep together, albeit routinely, and that hold that Dr. Larch imagined Melony had on Homer was balanced by a hold Homer had on Melony (Homer's promise to her, which Larch couldn't see). He saw Melony as Mrs. Grogan's responsibility, and he was unaware how his responsibility for Homer Wells might cloud his other responsibilities. {141}

He sent Homer to the river to catch a frog; then he made Homer dissect it, although not everything in the frog could be properly accounted for in Gray's Anatomy. It was Homer's first visit to the river since he had fled from Melony's destruction of the so-called sawyers' lodge, and Homer was impressed to see that truly half the building was gone.

Homer was also impressed with the first live birth he was asked to observe-not so much with any special skill that seemed to be required of Dr. Larch, and not with the formal, efficient procedures carried out by Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna. What impressed Homer was the process that was already so much under way before Dr. Larch's procedure began; what impressed Homer was how much had happened to the woman and her child that was, internally, just their natural progress-the actual rhythm of the labor (you could set a watch to it), the power of the woman's pushing muscles, the urgency of the child to be born. The most unnatural thing about it, to Homer Wells, was how clearly hostile the child found the environment in which it first exercised its lungs-how clearly unfriendly, though not unexciting, the child's new world was to the child, whose firsl: choice (had it been given a choice) might have been to remain where it was. Not a bad reaction, Meloriy might have observed, had she been there. However much Homer enjoyed having sex with Melony, he was troubled that the act was more arbitrary than birth.

When Homer went to read Jane Eyre to the girls' division, Melony seemed subdued to him, not defeated or even resigned; something in her had been tired out, something about her look was worn down. She had been wrong, after all, about the existence of her history in Dr. Larch's hands-and being wrong about important things is exhausting. She had been humiliated, too- first by the incredible shrinking penis oif little Homer Wells, and second by how quickly Homer appeared to take sex with her for granted. And, Homer thought, {142} she must be physically tired-after all, she had singlehandedly obliterated a sizable chunk of the man-made history of St. Cloud's. She had pushed half a building into the flow of time. She has a right to look worn out, thought Homer Wells.

Something in the way he read Jane Eyre struck Homer as different too-as if this or any story were newly informed by the recent experiences in his life: a woman with a pony's penis in her mouth, his first sexual failure, his first routine sex, Gray's Anatomy , and a live birth. He read with more appreciation of Jane's anxiety, which had struck him earlier as tedious. Jane has a right to be anxious, he thought.

It was unfortunate timing-after what he and Melony had been through together-that he encountered that passage in the middle of Chapter Ten, where Jane imagines how it might be to leave her orphanage, where she realizes that the real world is 'wide,' and that her own existence is 'not enough.' Did Homer only imagine there was a new reverence in the girls' division when he read this section-hat Melony, especially, seemed poised above the sentences as if she were hearing them for the first time? And then he hit this line:

I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon.

His mouth went dry when he read it; he needed to swallow, which gave the line more emphasis than he wanted to give it. When he tried to begin again, Melony stopped him.

'What was that? Read that again, Sunshine.'

' “I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon,” ' Homer Wells read aloud.

'I know just how she feels,' Melony said bitterly, but quietly.

'It hurts me to hear you say that, Melony,' Mrs. Grogan began softly.

'I know just how she feels!' Melony repeated. 'And so {143}do you, Sunshine!' she added. 'Little Jane should try fifteen or sixteen or seventeen years,' Melony announced loudly. 'She should try it and see if she doesn't “tire” of that routine!'

'You'll only hurt yourself, dear, if you keep on like that,' Mrs. Grogan said. And indeed, this seemed true; Melony was crying. She was such a big girl-to put her head in Mrs. Grogan's lap and allow her to stroke her hair-but she just went on crying, quietly. Mrs. Grogan could not remember when she'd last held Melony's head in her lap. Homer caught the look from Mrs. Grogan: that he should leave. It was not the end of the chapter, not even the end of the scene, or even of a paragraph. There was more to read; the next line began:

I desired liberty…

But it would have been cruel to continue. Jane Eyre had already made her point. Homer and Melony had already had several such afternoons-those days that tire you out about your whole life!