John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'Blow,' Candy said. Only once had anyone done this for Curly Day-Nurse Edna, he thought. He:;hut his eyes and blew his nose-at first, cautiously.

'Come on,' Candy said. 'Really blow it!' He really blew it-he blew his nose so emphatically that his head was instantly clear. The delicious scent of her perfume made him giddy; he shut his eyes and wet his pants. Then he lost control and flung himself back in the huge scarlet seat. He saw that he'd blown his nose all over her hand -and she didn't even look angry; she looked concerned, and that made him pee even harder. He couldn't stop himself. She looked completely surprised.

'Left or right?' Wally asked heartily, pausing at the driveway to the boys' division delivery entrance.

'Left!' Curly shouted; then he opened the rear door on Candy's side, and said to her, 'I'm sorry! I don't even wet my bed. I never have! I ain't a bed-wetter. I just got a cold! And I got excited! I'm just having a bad day. I'm really goodl' he cried. 'I'm the best one!'

'It's all right, it's all right, get back in,' she said to him, but Curly was already sprinting through the weeds and around the far corner of the building.

'The poor kid just wet his pants,' Candy said to Wally, who saw the way Candy held David Copperfield in her lap and felt himself breaking.

'Please,' he whispered to her, 'you don't have to do this. You can have the baby. I want the baby-I want {234} your baby. It would be fine. We can just turn around,' he pleaded with her.

But she said, 'No, Wally. I'm all right. It's not the time for us to have a baby.' She put her face down on David Copperfield's damp neck; the boy smelled both sweet and mildewed.

The car stood still. 'Are you sure?' Wally whispered to her. 'You don't have to.' She loved him for saying just the right thing at the right time, but Candy Kendall was more practical than Wally Worthington, and she had her father's stubbornness when her mind was made up; she was no waffler.

'The boy said you go left,' Candy said to Wally. 'Go left.'

Mrs. Grogan, across the road in the girls' division entrance, observed the Cadillac's hesitation. She had not seen Curly Day flee from the car and she did not recognize the small child in the pretty girl's lap. Mrs. Grogan assumed that the child belonged to the pretty girl-she wondered if she'd ever seen a girl that pretty. And her young man was certainly handsome-almost too handsome for a husband, as they say in Maine.

In Mrs. Grogan's opinion, they looked too young to be adopting anyone-too bad, she mused, because they certainly seemed well off. A Cadillac meant nothing to Mrs. Grogan; it was the people themselves who appeared expensive to her. She was puzzled by how charmed she felt to be looking at these lovely people. Her few glimpses of the very rich had not charmed Mrs. Grogan in the past; those glimpses had only made her feel bitter-on behalf of the unadopted girls. She was all for her girls, Mrs. Grogan was; there was nothing personal in her bitterness-and very little that was personal in her whole life, really.

The car stood still, giving Mrs. Grogan a long view. Oh, the poor dears, she thought. They are not married, they have had this child together, either he or she is being disinherited-they have both, clearly, been disgraced {235} -and now they have come to give up their child. But they are hesitating! She wanted to rush out and tell them: keep the child! Drive away! She felt paralyzed by the drama she was imagining. Don't do it! she whispered, mustering the strength for an enormous telepathic signal.

It was the signal Wally felt when he told Candy that she didn't have to. But then the car started up again-it was not turning around, it was heading straight for the hospital entrance of the boys' division-and Mrs. Grogan's heart sank. Boy or girl? she wondered, numbly.

What the fuck is going on? wondered Melony, at her bitter window.

Because of the harsh overhead light in the dormitory, Melony could see her own face reflected in the window; she watched the white Cadillac halt on her upper lip. Curly Day escaped across her cheek, arid the pretty blond girl's arms enclosed David Copperfield at M elony's throat.

It was as close as Melony came to looking in a mirror. It was not that she was troubled by the heaviness of her face, or how close together her eyes were, or how her hair rebelled; it was her own expression that upset her-the vacantness, the absence of energy (formerly, she imagined, she had at least had energy). She couldn't remember when she'd last looked at herself in a mirror.

What troubled her, now, was that she'd just seen this familiar vacantness on the face of Homer Wells when he'd lifted the stationmaster's body-it wasn't the absence of strain, it was that look of zero surprise. Melony was afraid of Homer. How things had changed! she thought. She'd wanted to remind him of his promise. You won't leave, will you? she'd almost asked. You'll take me, if you run away, she'd wanted to say, but her familiarity with his new expression (because it was her nearly constant expression, she was sure) had paralyzed her.

Now who are these pretty people? she wondered. Some car, she thought. She'd not seen their faces, but even the {236} backs of their heads had discomforted her. The man's blond hair had contrasted so perfectly with the smooth, tanned back of his neck that it had given her a shiver. And how could the back of the girl's head be so perfect-the bounce and swing of her hair so accurate? Was there some trick to aligning the length of the hair so exactly with the girl's straight but small shoulders? And it was positively graceful how she'd picked up young Copperfield and held him in her lap-that little runt, thought Melony. She must have said the word 'runt' half aloud, because her breath fogged the window at that instant; she lost sight of her own mouth and nose. When the window cleared, she saw the car move on, toward the hospital entrance. People like that are too perfect to need an abortion, Melony imagined. They're too perfect to fuck, she thought bitterly. They're too clean to do it. The pretty girl wonders why she can't get pregnant. She doesn't know you have to fuck first. They're considering adopting someone, but they won't find anyone here. There's no one who's good enough for them, thought Melony-hating them. She spat straight into her own dull reflection and watched her spit run down the pane. She hadn't the energy to move. There was a time, she thought, when I would have at least gone outdoors and poked around the Cadillac. Maybe they would leave something in the car-something good enough to steal. But now, not even the thought of something to steal could move Melony from her window.

Dr. Larch had performed the first abortion with Nurse Edna's assistance; Larch had asked Homer to check on the contractions of the expectant mother from Damariscotta. Nurse Angela was assisting Larch with the second abortion, but Dr. Larch had insisted on Homer's presence, too. He had supervised Homer's ether application; Dr. Larch had such a light touch with ether that the first abortion patient had been speaking to Nurse Edna throughout the operation and yet the woman hadn't {237} felt a thing. She talked and talked: a kind of airy list of non sequiturs to which Nurse Edna responded with enthusiasm.

Homer had put the second woman out, and he was clearly cross with himself for sedating the woman more heavily than he'd meant to. 'Better safe than sorry,' Nurse Angela said encouragingly-her hands on the woman's pale temples, which she instinctively smoothed with her soft hands. Larch had asked Homer to insert the vaginal speculum, and Homer now stared darkly at the woman's shiny cervix, at the puckered opening of the uterus. Bathed in a clear mucus, it had an aura ol: morning mist, of dew, of the pink clouds of a sunrise gathered around it. If Wally Worthington had peered through the speculum, he would have imagined that he wa.s viewing an apple in some pale, ethereal phase of its development. But what is that little opening? he might have wondered.