John Irving - The Cider House Rules

But whatever legend of the work ethic Ray represented, and whatever griping was done on account of the evidence of his work with which Raymond Kendall preferred to surround himself, no fault could be found with his beautiful daughter-except the fault of her name, which was not her fault (who would ever have named herself a Candice, and therefore been a Candy to all?) and which everyone knew had been the name of her dead mother, and therefore was not the mother's fault, either. Candice 'Candy' Kendall was named after her mother, who had died in childbirth. Raymond had named his daughter in memory of his departed wife, whom everyone had liked and who, in her day, had kept the environs {182} of the lobster pound and the dock slightly better picked up. Who could find fault with any name that was given out of love?

You had only to know her to know that she was not a Candy; she was lovely, but never falsely sweet; she was a great and natural beauty, but no crowd-pleaser. She had daily reliability written all over her, she was at once friendly and practical-she was courteous, energetic, and substantial in an argument without ever being shrill. She complained only about her name, and she was always good-humored about it (she would never hurt her father's feelings-or anyone else's feelings, willingly). She appeared to combine her father's enraptured embrace of the work ethic with the education and the refinements he had allowed her-she took to both labor and sophistication with ease. If other girls at the Haven Club (or in the rest of Heart's Haven and Heart's Rock) were jealous of the attention young Wally Worthington gave to her, there was still no one who disliked her. If she'd been born an orphan, even at St. Cloud's, half the population there would have fallen in love with her.

Even Olive Worthington liked her, and Olive was suspicious of the girls who dated Wally; she questioned what they wanted from him. She could never forget how much she had wanted to get out of her life and into a Worthington's green and apple-bright existence at Ocean View, and this memory of her younger self gave Olive an eye for girls who might be more interested in the Ocean View life than they were interested in Wally. Olive knew this wasn't the case with Candy, who seemed to think that her own life above Ray Kendall's crawling, live-lobster pound was perfect; she was as fond of her father's orneriness as she was deservedly proud of his industry. She was well cared for by the latter. She wasn't looking for money, and she preferred taking Wally for an ocean swim-off her father's treacherous and crowded dock-to swimming in the Haven Club pool or in the Worthingtons' private swimming pool, where she knew {183} she was welcome. In truth, Olive Worthington thought that Candy Kendall might be too good for her son, whom she knew to be rather unsettled, or at least not industrious-she would grant you he was charming and genuinely good-natured.

And then there was the uncertain pain that Candy caused in Olive's memory of her mother, Maucl (frozen among her cosmetics and clams): Olive envied Candy her perfect love of her mother (whom she'd never seen); the girl's absolute goodness made Olive feel guilty for how much she despised her own origins (her mother's; silence, her father's failure, her brother's vulgarity).

Candy worshiped at the little shrines to her mother that Raymond Kendall constructed-there were actual altarpieces assembled-all over the upstairs rooms of the lobster pound, where they lived above the gurgle of the lobster tank. And everywhere were gathered the photographs of Candy's young mother, many taken with Candy's young father (who was so unrecognizably youthful, whose smile was so unrecognizably constant in the pictures that Candy looked at Ray, at times, as if he were as much a stranger to her as her mother). Candy's mother was said to have smoothed out Ray's rough edges. She'd had a sunny spirit, she'd kept on top of everything, she'd had the boundless energy that Raymond Kendall possessed for his work and Candy had in abundance for everything. On the coffee table, in the kitchen, alongside a disassembled magneto case and ignition system (for the Evinrude), was a triptych of pictures of Ray and Candice at their wedding, which had been the only time Ray Kendall had attended an event at the Haven Club when he was not dressed to repa ir something.

In Ray's bedroom, on the night table, next to the broken toggles witch to the Johnson (the inboard Johnson; there was an outboard, too), was a picture of Candice and Ray-both in their oilskin slickers, both pulling pots, on a rough sea (and it was clear to anyone, espe-{184}cially to Candy, that Candice was pregnant and hard at work).

In her own bedroom, Candy kept the picture of her mother when her mother had been Candy's age (which was Homer Wells's age, exactly): young Candice Talbot, of the Heart's Haven Talbots-the long-standing Haven Club Talbots. £he was in a long white dress (for tennis, of all things!), and she looked just like Candy. The picture was taken the summer she met Ray (an older boy, strong and dark and determined to fix everything, to make everything work); if he had seemed a hick, or a little too serious, he was at least not grim about his ambitions, and alongside him the boys at the Haven Club had appeared as court dandies, as spoiled, upper-class fops.

Candy had her mother's blondness; it was darker than Wally's blondness-and much darker than her mother's and than Olive Worthington's former blondness. She had her father's dark skin and dark brown eyes, and her father's height. Ray Kendall was a tall man (a disadvantage for a lobsterman, and for a mechanic, he used to say good-naturedly, because of the strain on the lower back when pulling lobster pots-there is nearly constant lifting in that work-and because of a mechanic's need to crawl under and bend over things). Candy was extremely tall for a woman, which intimidated Olive Worthington -just a bit-but was felt by Olive as only a mild flaw in Olive's near-perfect satisfaction with Candy Kendall as the correct match for Wally.

Olive Worthington was fairly tall herself (taller than Senior, especially when Senior was staggering), and she looked in a somewhat unfriendly fashion upon everyone who was taller than she. Her son, Wally, was taller than she, too, which Olive still found difficult at times- especially when she desired to reprimand him.

'Is Candy taller than you, Wally?' she asked him once, a sudden alarm in her voice.

'No, Mom, we're exactly the same height,' Wally told his mother. That was another thing that slightly bothered {185}her about the two of them being together: they sfiemed so alike physically. Was their attraction to each other a form of narcissism? Olive worried. And since each of them was an only child, were they seeing in each other the brother or sister they always wanted? Wilbur Larch would have got along with Olive Worthington; she was a born worrier. Together they could have outworried the rest of the world.

They shared the concept that there was a 'rest of the world,' by which they meant the whole rest of the world-world outside their making. They were both smart enough to know why they feared this other world so much: they fully understood that, despite their considerable efforts, they were only marginally in control of the worlds of their own delicate making.

When Candy Kendall and Wally Worthington fell in love with each other, in the summer of 194-, everyone in Heart's Haven and in Heart's Rock always knew they would-it was a wonder only that it had taken them this long to discover it themselves. For years, both towns had thought them perfect for each other. Even crusty Raymond Kendall approved. Ray thought Wally was unfocused, but that was not the same as lazy, and anyone could see the boy was good-hearted. Ray also approved of Wally's mother; he had a thorough liking for the way Olive Worthington respected -work.