John Irving - The Cider House Rules

This night the air between the girls' and boys' divisions seemed odorless and void of history. It was simply dark outside.

When he went back to the boys' division, Nurse Angela told him that John Wilbur was gone- adopted!

'A nice family,' Nurse Angela told Homer happily. 'The father of the family used to be a bed-wetter. They're going to be very sympathetic.'

As was Dr. Larch's habit, when someone was adopted, his routine benediction to the boys in the darkness was altered slightly. Before he addressed them as 'Princes of Maine,' as 'Kings of New England,' he made an oddly formal announcement.

'Let us be happy for John Wilbur,' Wilbur Larch said. 'He has found a family. Good night, John,' Dr. Larch said, and the boys murmured after him:

'Good night, John!'

'Good night, John Wilbur.' {144}

And Dr. Larch would pause respectfully before saying the usual: 'Good night, you Princes of Maine-you Kings of New England!'

Homer Wells looked at a little of Gray's Anatomy in the candlelight allowed him before he tried to go to sleep. It was not just John Wilbur's peeing that was missing from the night; something else was gone. It took Homer a while to detect what was absent; it was the silence that finally informed him. Fuzzy Stone and his noisy apparatus had been taken to the hospital. Apparently, the breathing contraption-and Fuzzy-required more careful monitoring, and Dr. Larch had moved the whole business into the private room, next to surgery, where Nurse Edna or Nurse Angela could keep a close eye on Fuzzy.

It was not until Homer Wells had some experience with dilatation and curettage that he would know what Fuzzy Stone resembled: he looked like an embryo- Fuzzy Stone looked like a walking, talking fetus. That was what was peculiar about the way you could almost see through Fuzzy's skin, and his slightly caved-in shape; that was what made him appear so especially vulnerable. He looked as if he were not yet alive but still in some stage of development that should properly be carried on inside the womb. Dr. Larch told Homer that Fuzzy had been born prematurely-that Fuzzy's lungs had never adequately developed. Homer would not have a picture of what this meant until he confronted the few recognizable parts in his first look at the standard procedure for removing the products of conception.

'Are you listening, Homer?' Wilbur Larch asked, when the procedure was over.

'Yes,'Homer Wells said.

'I'm not saying it's right, you understand? I'm saying it's her choice-it's a woman's choice. She's got a right to have a choice, you understand?' Larch asked.

'Right,' said Homer Wells.

When he couldn't sleep, he thought about Fuzzy Stone. {145}When Homer went down to the private room, next to surgery, he couldn't hear the breathing apparatus. He stood very still and listened; he could always track Fuzzy down by his sound-lungs, waterwheel and fan-but the silence Homer Wells listened to made a more startling noise to him than the sound of that snake hitting the roof while his finger was in Melony's mouth.

Poor Melony, he thought. She now listened to Jane Eyre as if it were her life story being told to her, and the only thing she ever said to Homer Wells was to remind hi m of his promise. ('You won't leave here before I do, remember? You promised.')

'Where is he?'Homer asked Dr. Larch. 'Where's Fuzzy?'

Dr. Larch was at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's off ice, where he was-very late-almost every night.

'I was thinking of a way to tell you,' Larch said.

'You said I was your apprentice, right?' Homer asked him. 'If that's what I am, I should be told. If you're teaching me, you can't leave anything out. Right?'

That's right, Homer,' Dr. Larch agreed. How the boy had changed! How does one mark the passage of time in an orphanage? Why hadn't Larch noticed that Homer Wells needed a shave? Why hadn't Larch taught him to do that? I am responsible for everything-if I am going to be responsible at all, Larch reminded himself.

'Fuzzy's lungs weren't strong enough, Homer,' Dr. Larch said. 'They never developed properly. He was susceptible to every respiratory infection that I ever saw.'

Homer Wells let it pass. He regretted that Fuzzy h ad seen the photograph. Homer was growing up; he was starting the process of holding himself responsible for things. That photograph had upset Fuzzy Stone; there was nothing Homer, or even Dr. Larch, could have done for Fuzzy's lungs, but the photograph hadn't been necessary.

'What are you going to tell the little ones?' Homer asked Dr. Larch.

Wilbur Larch looked at Homer; God, how he loved {146}what he saw! Proud as a father, he had trouble speaking. His affection for Homer Wells had virtually etherized him. 'What do you think I should say, Homer?' Dr. Larch asked.

It was Homer's first decision as an adult. He thought about it very carefully. In 193-, he was almost sixteen. He was beginning the process of learning how to be a doctor at a time when most boys his age were learning how to drive a car. Homer had not yet learned how to drive a car; Wilbur Larch had never learned how to drive a car.

'I think,' said Homer Wells, 'that you should tell the little ones what you usually tell them. You should tell them that Fuzzy has been adopted.'

Wilbur Larch watched Homer carefully. In A Brief History of St. Cloud's, he would write, 'How I resent fatherhoodf The feelings it gives one: they completely ruin one's objectivity, they wreck one's sense of fair play. I worry that I have caused Homer Wells to skip his childhood -I worry that he has absolutely skipped being a child! But many orphans find it easier to skip childhood altogether than to indulge themselves as children when they are orphans. If I helped Homer Wells to skip his childhood, did I help him skip a bad thing? Damn the confusion of feeling like a father! Loving someone as a parent can produce a cloud that conceals from one's vision what correct behavior is.' When he wrote that line, Wilbur Larch saw the cloud created in the photographer's studio, the cloud that so falsely edged the photograph of Mrs. Eames's daughter with the pony; he launched off into a paragraph on 'clouds.' (The terrible weather in inland Maine; 'the clouds of St. Cloud's,' and so forth).

When Homer Wells suggested to Dr. Larch that he tell the little ones that Fuzzy Stone had been adopted, Larch knew that Homer was right; there were no clouds around that decision. The next night, Wilbur Larch followed the advice of his young apprentice. Perhaps because he was 147 lying, he forgot the proper routine. Instead of beginning with the announcement about Fuzzy Stone, he gave the usual benediction; he got the whole business out of order.

'Good night, you Princes of Maine-you Kings of New England!' Dr. Larch addressed them in the darkness. Then he remembered what he was supposed to say. 'Oh!' he said aloud, in a startled voice that caused one of the little orphans to leap in his bed in fright.

'What's wrong?' cried Snowy Meadows, who was always throwing up; he did not throw up only when confronted with the image of a woman with what he thought was a pony's intestines in her mouth.

'Nothing's wrong!' Dr. Larch said heartily, but the whole room of boys was charged with anxiety. Into this jumpy atmosphere, Larch tried to say the usual about the unusual. 'Let us be happy for Fuzzy Stone,' Dr. Larch said. Homer Wells knew what was meant when it was said that you could hear a pin drop. 'Fuzzy Stone has found a family,' Dr. Larch said. 'Good night, Fuzzy.'

'Good night, Fuzzy!' someone said. But Homer Wells heard a pause in the air; it had all been done out of order, and not everyone was completely convinced.

'Good night, Fuzzy!' Homer Wells said with authority, and a few of the little voices followed him.