John Irving - The Cider House Rules

Everyone felt sorry for how out of it poor Senior seemed, how his drinking (they thought) had aged him overnight. 'It won't be long, Alice, before the guy's pissing his pants in public,' the charmless Bucky Bean said to Olive.

And Candy thought that Olive Worthington would be a perfect mother-in-law. When Candy dreamed of her own mother-grown older than she'd been allowed to grow in this life; grown naturally older in a better world -she always thought her mother would have aged to resemble Olive Worthington. Candy hoped, at least, {186}that her mother would have managed Olive's refinement, if not perhaps her college-learned New British. Candy would be going to college in a year, she assumed, and she had no intentions of learning an accent there. But except for the accent, Candy thought Olive Worthington was wonderful; it was sad about Senior, but the man was certainly sweet.

So everyone was happy with this love affair that was as certain to become a marriage made in heaven as any love affair Heart's Haven and Heart's Rock had seen. It was understood that Wally would finish college first, and that Candy would be allowed to finish college-if she wanted to-before they got married. But with Olive Worthington's instincts for worry, one might have assumed that Olive would have foreseen the possible causes for a change of plans. After all, it was 194-; there was a war in Europe; there were many people who thought that more than Europe would be involved before long. But Olive had a mother's wish to keep war out of her mind.

Wilbur Larch had the war in Europe very much in his mind; he had been in the last war, and he foresaw that if there was another war, it might coincide with Homer Wellg's being the right age to go. Since that would be the wrong age to be, the good doctor had already taken somepains to see that Homer Wells wouldn't have to go to a war, if there was one.

Larch was, after all, the historian of St. Cloud's; he wrote the only records that were kept there; he usually wrote the not-so-simple history of the place but he had tried his hand at fiction, too. In the case of Fuzzy Stone, for example-and in the other, very few cases of orphans who had died in his care-Wilbur Larch hadn't liked the actual endings, hadn't wanted to record the actual outcomes to those small, foreshortened lives. Wasn't it fair if Larch took liberties-if he occasionally indulged himself with happy endings? In the case of the few who had died, Wilbur Larch {187} made up a longer life for them. For example, the history of F. Stone read like a case study of what Wilbur Larch wished for Homer Wells. Following Fuzzy's most successful adoption (every member of the adoptive family was scrupulously described) and the most successful treatment and cure imaginable of Fuzzy's respiratory difficulties, the young man would pursue an education at none other than Bowdoin College (Wilbur Larch's own alma mater) and study medicine at Harvard Medical School-he would even follow Larch's footsteps to internships at Mass General and at the Boston Lying-in. Larch intended to make a devoted and skilled obstetrician out of Fuzzy Stone; the orphan's fictional history was as carefully done as everything Wilbur Larch did-allowing a possible exception for his use of ether, and Larch was especially pleased to note that some of his fictional history was more convincing than what had actually happened to some of the others.

Snowy Meadows, for example, would be adopted by a family in Bangor by the name of Marsh. Who would believe that a Meadows became a Marsh? Wilbur Larch was pleased with himself for making up better stories than that. The Marshes were in the furniture business, and Snowy (who had been unimaginatively named Robert) would attend the University of Maine only briefly before marrying some local flower and going into the Marsh family furniture business as a salesman.

'It's for keeps,' Snowy would write Dr. Larch, about the girl who caused him to drop out of school. 'And I really love the furniture business!'

Whenever he wrote to Dr. Larch, Snowy Meadows, alias Robert Marsh, would always ask, 'Say, what's happened to Homer Wells?' The next thing you know, Larch thought, Snowy Meadows will suggest a reunion! Larch grumbled to himself for days, trying to think of what to say to Snowy Meadows about Homer; he would have liked to brag about Homer's perfect procedure with the eclampsia patient, but Larch was aware that his training {188} of Homer Wells-and the business of the Lord's work arid the Devil's work in St. Cloud's-would not meet with everyone's approval.

'Homer is still with us,' Larch would write to Snowy, ambiguously. Snowy is a sneaky one, Larch concluded -Snowy Meadows also never failed to ask, in each of his letters, about Fuzzy Stone.

'What's happening with Fuzzy, these days?' Snowy always asked, and Wilbur Larch would carefully check the history he had written for Fuzzy-just to keep Snowy up to date.

Larch ignored Snowy's requests for Fuzzy Stone's address. Dr. Larch was convinced that the young furniture salesman, Robert Marsh, was a dogged sort of fool, who-if he had any of the other orphans' addresses- would bother everyone about starting an Orphan Club or an Orphan Society. Larch even complained to Nurse Edna and to Nurse Angela about Snowy Meadows, saying, 'I wish someone out of Maine had adopted that one, someone far away. That Snowy Meadows is so stupid, he writes to me as if I ran a boarding school! The next thing you know, he'll expect me to publish an alumni magazine!'

This was a somewhat unfeeling remark to make to Nurse Edna and to Nurse Angela, Larch realized later. These two dear but sentimental ladies would have jumped at the idea of an alumni magazine; they missed every orphan they ever gave away. If things were up to them, there would be reunions planned every year. Every month! Larch thought, and groaned.

He lay down in the dispensary. He thought about a slight modification he had been shrewd enough to make in the history of Homer Wells; he would tell Homer about it one day, if the situation demanded it. He was very pleased with himself for this slight fiction that he had so skillfully blended with the actual history of Homer Wells. Of course, he'd included nothing of the medical training; he had incriminated himself by what {189} he'd written about the abortions, many times, but Larch knew well enough that Homer Wells should be left out of that written history. What Wilbur Larch had written about Homer Wells was that the boy had a heart defect, a heart that was damaged and weakened from birth. Larch had even taken the trouble to make this the first entry about Homer, which necessitated his locating some older-looking paper and painstakingly revising, and retyping, all the earlier-and actual-history. But he managed to work in the heart defect in the correctly casual places. The reference was always vague and uncharacteristically lacking in medical precision; the words 'defect' and 'damaged' and 'weakened' would not have convinced a good detective, or even a good doctor, whom Wilbur Larch imagined he might one da}' need to convince. In fact, he worried a little if he could convince Homer of it-given what the boy had learned. But Larch would face that if and when the situation arose.

The situation Larch was thinking of was war, the socalled war in Europe; Larch, and many others, feared that the war wouldn't stay there. (I'm sorry, Homer,' Larch imagined having to tell the boy. 'I don't want you to worry, but you have a bad heart; it just wouldn't stand up to a war.') What Larch meant was that his own heart would never stand up to Homer Wells's going to war.

The love of Wilbur Larch for Homer Wells extended even to his tampering with history, a field wherein he was an admitted amateur, but it was nonetheless a field that he respected and also loved. (In an earlier entry in the file on Homer Wells-an entry that Dr. Larch removed, for it lent an incorrect tone of voice, or at least a tone of voice unusual for history-Dr. Larch had written: 'I love nothing or no one as much as I love Homer Wells. Period.')