John Irving - The Cider House Rules

Wilbur Larch stared at Melony and thought., Why, she's just a big child! She's a baby thug!

'I don't want to work around the hospital,' Melony said flatly. 'I'll rake leaves, or something-stuff like that is okay, if you want me to work more, for my food or something.'

'I want you to be happier than you are, Melony,' Dr. Larch said cautiously. He felt miserable for how neglected the creature before him was.

'Happier!' said Melony; she gave a little jump in her {286} chair and the stolen barrette dug into her. 'You must be stupid, or crazy.' Dr. Larch wasn't shocked; he nodded, considering the possibilities.

He heard Mrs. Grogan calling him from the hall outside the dispensary.

'Doctor Larch! Doctor Larch!' she called. 'Wilbur?' she added, which gave Nurse Edna a tremor, because she felt a certain possessiveness regarding the use of that name. 'Mary Agnes has broken her arm!' Larch stared at Melony, who for the first time managed to smile.

'You said this happened “not too long ago”?' Larch asked her.

'I said “pretty recently,” ' Melony admitted.

Larch went into the dispensary, where he examined Mary Agnes's collarbone, which was broken; then he instructed Nurse Angela to prepare the child for X-ray.

'I slipped on the shower room floor,' Mary Agnes moaned. 'It was real wet.'

'Melony!' Dr. Larch called. Melony was hanging around in the hall. 'Melony, would you like to observe how we set a broken bone?' Melony walked into the dispensary, which was a small, crowded area-especially with Nurse Edna and Mrs. Grogan standing there, and with Nurse Angela leading Mary Agnes away for her Xray. Seeing everyone together, Larch realized how old and frail he and his colleagues looked alongside Melony. 'Would you like to participate in the setting of a broken bone, Melony?' Larch asked the sturdy and imposing young woman.

'Nope,' Melony said. 'I got things to do.'She waved the copy of Little Dorrit a trifle threateningly. 'And I gotta look at what I'm gonna read tonight,' she added.

She went back to the girls' division, to her window there, while Dr. Larch set Mary Agnes's collarbone. Melony tried again to comprehend the power of the sun in Marseilles.

The very dust was scorched brown,' she read to herself, 'and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the {287} air itself were panting.' Oh, Sunshine, she thought, why didn't you take me anywhere? It wouldn't have to have been to France, although that would have been nice.

She daydreamed as she read and therefore she missed the transition between the 'universal stare' of the sun in Marseilles and the atmosphere of the prison in the same town. Suddenly, she discovered she was in the prison. 'A prison taint was on everything…' she read. 'Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside…' She stopped reading. She left Little Dorrit on her pillow. She stripped a pillowcase off a bed neater than her own, and into the pillowcase she stuffed her canvas bag of toilet articles and some clothes. She also put Jane Eyre in the bag.

In Mrs. Grogan's rather Spartan room, Melony had no difficulty locating Mrs. Grogan's purse-she robbed Mrs. Grogan of her money (there wasn't much), and also took Mrs. Grogan's heavy winter coat (in the summer, the coat would be useful if she had to sleep on the ground). Mrs. Grogan was still at the hospital, worrying about Mary Agnes Cork's collarbone; Melony would have liked to say good-bye to Mrs. Grogan (even after robbing her), but she knew the train schedule by heart -actually, she knew it by ear; the sound of every arrival and departure reached her window.

At the train station she bought a ticket only as far as Livermore Falls. She knew that even the new and stupid young stationmaster would be able to remember that, and he would tell Dr. Larch and Mrs. Grogan that Melony had gone to Livermore Falls. She also knew that once she was on the train she could purchase a ticket to some place much farther away than Livermore Falls. Can I afford Portland? she wondered. It was the coast that she would need to explore, eventually-because, below the Cadillac's gold monogram on that Red Delicious apple, inscribed (also in gold) against the vivid green background of the apple leaf, she had been able to read OCEAN VIEW ORCHARDS. That had to be within {288} sight of the coast, and the Cadillac had a Maine license plate. It mattered not to Melony that there were thousands of miles of coastline in the state of Maine. As her train pulled away from St. Cloud's, Melony said to herself -so vehemently that her breath fogged the window and obscured the abandoned buildings in that forsaken town from her view-'I'm gonna find you, Sunshine.'

Dr. Larch tried to comfort Mrs. Grogan, who said she wished only that she'd had more money for Melony to steal. 'And my coat's not waterproof,' Mrs Grogan complained. 'She should have a real raincoat in this state.'

Dr. Larch tried to reassure Mrs Grogan; he asserted that Melony was not a little girl. 'She's twenty-four or twenty-five,' Larch reminded Mrs. Grogan.

'I think her heart is broken,' said Mrs. Grogan miserably.

Dr. Larch pointed out that Melony had taken Jane Eyre with her; he accepted this as a hopeful sign- wherever Melony went, she would not be without guidance, she would not be without love, without faith; she had a good book with her. If only she'll keep reading it, and reading it, Larch thought.

The book that Melony had left behind was a puzzle to both Mrs. Grogan and Dr. Larch. They read the dedication to Homer 'Sunshine' Wells, which touched Mrs. Grogan deeply.

Neither of them had any luck reading Little Dorrit, either. Mrs. Grogan never would get to the Villainous' prison; the staring sun in Marseilles outstared her, it was too powerfully blinding. Dr. Larch, who-in the absence of Homer Wells and Melony-resumed his responsibilities as the nightly reader to both the boys' and the girls' divisions, attempted to read Little Dorrii to the girls; wasn't the main character a girl? But the contrast between the scorched air in the Marseilles sun and the tainted air in the Marseilles prison created such a powerful sleeplessness among the girls that Larch was relieved {289} to give up on the book in Chapter Three, which had an unfortunate title, for orphans: 'Home.' He began the description of London on a Sunday evening-hounded by church bells.

'Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot,' read Dr. Larch, and then he stopped; we need no more melancholy here, he thought.

'Wouldn't we rather wait, and read Jane Eyre again?' Dr. Larch asked; the girls nodded eagerly.

Knowing that the beautiful boy with the face of a benefactor must have a mother with the heart for benefiting those who existed in (as she had written herself) 'less fortunate circumstances,' Dr. Larch wrote Olive Worthington.

My Dear Mrs. Worthington,

Here in St. Cloud's, we depend on our few luxuries and imagine (and pray) they will last forever. If you would be so kind, please tell Homer that his friend Melony has left us-her whereabouts are unknown- and that she took with her our only copy oljane Eyre. The orphans in the girls' division were accustomed to hearing this book read aloud-in fact, Homer used to read to them. If Homer could discover a replacement copy, the little girls and I would remain in his debt. In other parts of the world, there are bookshops…

Thus, Larch knew, he had accomplished two things. Olive Worthington herself would send him a replacement Jane Eyre (he doubted very much that it would be a secondhand copy), and Homer would receive the important message: Melony was out. She was loose in the world. Larch thought that Homer should know this, that he might want to keep an eye open for her,