John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'She has a toy name,' Larch said aloud. 'Candy!' he remembered. Then he laughed. Nurse Edna, passing the dispensary, held her breath and listened to the laughter. But even when she didn't breathe, the fumes made her old eyes water. That and the sawdust. That and the orphans-some of them made her eyes water, too.

She opened the door at the hospital entrance to let some fresh air into the hall. On the hill she watched a cardboard carton make an unsteady descent; she knew that sterile vulval pads had been in the carton, but she wasn't sure what was in the carton now. Something heavy, because the carton's descent was clumsy and irregular. At times it picked up speed, sliding almost smoothly, but always some rock or bare patch in the slushy snow would jar it off-course and slow it down. The first small body to roll out of the carton and make its {425} way downhill was Steerforth's; she recognized his overlarge mittens and the ski hat that always covered his eyes. For a while he tumbled almost as fast as the carton, but a large patch of bare, frozen ground finally stopped him. Nurse Edna watched him climb back uphill for one of his mittens.

The second, larger body to be propelled from the carton was obviously David Copperfield's; he rolled free with a large, soggy piece of the carton in both his; hands. The carton appeared to disintegrate in flight.

'Thit!' Copperfield cried. At least, Nurse Edna thought, young Copperfield's profanities were improved by his lisp.

'Close that door,' said Dr. Larch, in the hall behind Nurse Edna.

'I was just trying to get some fresh air,' Nurse Edna said pointedly.

'You could have fooled me,' said Wilbur Larch. 'I thought you were trying to freeze the unborn.'

Maybe that will be the way of the future, Nurse Edna thought-wondering what future ways there would be.

In the December swimming pool the raft that Senior Worthington used to ride still floated, windblown from one end of the pool to the other, breaking up the lacy fringes of ice that formed and reformed around the edges. Olive and Homer had drained out a third of the pool's water, to leave room for rainfall ancl snow melt.

Senior's cold raft, only partially deflated by the falling temperature, still charged around the swimming pool like a riderless horse; it galloped wherever the wind urged it. Every day Olive watched the raft out the kitchen window, and Homer wondered when she would suggest getting rid of it.

One weekend Candy came home from Camden, and Homer's confusion regarding what he should do about her mounted. Friday was a bad, indecisive day. He went {426} early to Senior Biology, hoping to persuade Mr. Hood either to let him have his own rabbit for dissection or to assign him a lab partner other than that boy Bucky. Bucky managed to mangle the rabbit's innards whenever he handled them, and Homer found the oaf's constant fixation with everything's reproductive system both silly and maddening. Bucky had lately seized on the fact that marsupials have paired vaginas.

'Twin twats! Can you believe it?' Bucky asked Homer.

'Right,' said Homer Wells.

'Is that all you can say?' Bucky asked. 'Don't you get it? If you was a hamster, you could fuck another hamster with your buddy!'

'Why would I want to do that?' Homer asked.

'Two cunts!' Bucky said enthusiastically. 'You got no imagination.'

'I doubt that even the hamsters are interested in what you suggest,' said Homer Wells.

'That's what I mean, stupid,' Bucky said. 'What a waste-to give two twats to a hamster! You ever seen 'em run on them little wheels? They're crazy! Wouldn't you be crazy if you knew the girl of your dreams had two twats and she still wasn't interested?'

'The girl of my dreams,' said Homer Wells.

It was crazy enough, in Homer's opinion, that the girl of his dreams had two people who loved her.

And so he went early to Senior Biology to request either a fresh rabbit or a replacement for the obsessed boy named Bucky.

There was a geography class in progress when he got there; and when the class was released, Homer saw that the large maps of the world were still pulled down, covering the blackboard. 'May I just look at the maps for a moment, before my next class?' Homer asked the geography teacher. 'I'll roll them back up for you.'

And so he was left alone with his first accurate view of the world-the whole world, albeit unrealistically flat against a blackboard. After a while he found Maine; he {427} regarded how small it was. After a while he found South Carolina; he stared into South Carolina for a long time, as if the exact whereabouts of Mr. Rose and the other migrants would materialize. He had heard all the talk about Germany, which was easier to find than Maine. He was surprised at the size of England; Charles Dickens had given him the impression of something much bigger.

And the ocean that seemed so vast when you looked at it off Ray Kendall's dock-why, the oceans of the world were even more vast than he'd imagined. Yet St. Cloud's which loomed so large in Homer's life, could not be located on the map of Maine. He was using the geography teacher's magnifying glass when he suddenly realized that the entire class of Senior Biology had filled the seats behind him. Mr. Hood was regarding him strangely.

'Looking for your rabbit, Homer?' Mr. Hood asked. The class enjoyed this joke enormously, and Homer realized he had-at least for that day-lost the opportunity to rid himself of Bucky.

'Look at it this way,' Bucky whispered to him, near the end of class. 'If Debra Pettigrew had two twats, she might let you in one of them. You see the advantages?'

Unfortunately, the idea of paired vaginas troubled Homer throughout his Friday evening date with Debra Pettigrew. There was a Fred Astaire movie in Bath, but that was almost an hour-long drive, each way, and what did Homer Wells know or care about dancing? He had declined several invitations to attend Debra's dancing class with her; if she wanted to see the Fred Astaire movie, Homer thought she could go with someone who was in her dancing class. And it was getting too cold simply to drive to the beach and park there. Olive was generous about letting Homer use the van. Soon there would be gas rationing, and a welcome end, in Homer's opinion, to all this restless driving.

He drove Debra Pettigrew out to the carnival site at Cape Kenneth. In the moonlight, the abandoned, {428} unlighted Ferris wheel stood out like scaffolding for the world's first rocket launch, or like the bones of some species from dinosaur times. Homer tried to tell Debra about the knife work of Mr. Rose, but she had her heart set on Fred Astaire; he knew better than to waste a good story on her when she was sulking. They drove to the Cape Kenneth drive-in, which was 'closed for the season'; they appeared to be reviewing the scenes of a romance that had happened to other people-and not just last summer, but to another generation.

'I don't know what you've got against dancing,' Debra said.

'I don't know, either,' said Homer Wells.

It was still early when he drove Debra to her winter home in Kenneth Corners; the same ferocious dogs of the summer were there, with their coats grown thicker, with their hot breath icing on their muzzles. There had been talk between Debra and Homer, earlier, about using the summer house on Drinkwater Lake for some kind of party; the house would be unheated, and they would have to keep the lights off, or someone might report a breaking and entering; but despite these discomforts, surely there was a thrill in being unchaperoned. Why? wondered Homer Wells. He knew he still wouldn't get to Debra Pettigrew-even if she had two vaginas. With the dull Friday evening they had spent together, and with the dogs' breath crystallizing on the driver'sside window of the van, there was no talk about such a tempting party this night.