The Cider House Rules

When the letter came back to him--when he was sure the system worked--he composed the rest of the history regarding F. Stone and his adoptive family (named Eames) and sent it along to the board of trustees, together with Fuzzy's address. He did not have to invent anything regarding Curly Day; he cringed to write the name Roy Rinfret; and he told the truth regarding Snowy Meadows and most of the others, although he had difficulty typing "the furniture Marshes" without laughing out loud, and when he came to the case of Homer Wells, he thought very carefully about how to word the matter of Homer's heart.

Among the members of the board, there wasn't a heart specialist or a radiologist, or even a surgeon; there was a very old GP who, Dr. Larch felt sure, never read anything at all. Larch didn't count Dr. Gingrich as a doctor; he counted psychiatrists as nothing at all, and he felt confident that he could bully Mrs. Goodhall with the slightest terminology.

He confessed to the board (isn't everyone flattered by a confidence?) that he had refrained from mentioning the matter of Homer's heart to Homer; he admitted to stalling but argued that worrying the boy might contribute to his problem, and he wanted the boy to gain confidence in the outside world before burdening him with this dangerous knowledge--yet he intended to burden Homer with it, shortly. Larch said he had informed the Worthingtons of the heart defect; they might therefore be more than usually protective of Homer; he had not bothered to explain the presence of the actual murmur to them, or to detail the exact characteristics of pulmonary valve stenosis. He would be happy to provide the board with such details, should they request them. He had fun imagining Mrs. Goodhall scrutinizing an X ray.

He concluded that he thought the board's request for the follow-up reports had been a good idea and that he had enjoyed himself immensely in preparing them; contrary to needing an administrative assistant to perform such a service, Dr. Larch said he had felt "positively energized" by the "welcome task"--since, he added, following up on his orphans' adoptive lives was always on his mind. And sometimes right off the top of my head, he thought.

He was exhausted, and forgot to circumcise a newborn baby boy whom Nurse Angela had prepared for the operation. He mistook a woman awaiting an abortion for a woman he'd delivered the previous day, and therefore told her that her baby was very healthy and doing fine. He spilled a small amount of ether on his face and needed to irrigate his eye.

He became cross because he had overdosed prophylactics--he had far too many rubbers around. Since Melony had left, no one was stealing the rubbers anymore. When he thought of Melony, he became worried, which also made him cross.

He returned to Nurse Angela's office and wrote a report, which was real, concerning David Copperfield's lisp; he neglected to mention that David Copperfield had been delivered and named by Homer Wells. He wrote a slightly fictitious report on the orphan called Steerforth, remarking that his delivery was so straightforward that Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela had been able to handle it entirely without a doctor's assistance. He wrote the truth about Smoky Fields: the boy hoarded food, a trait that was more common in the girls' division than in the boys', and Smoky was beginning to exhibit a pattern of insomnia that Larch had not witnessed at St. Cloud's "since the days of Homer Wells."

The memory of those days brought instant tears to his eyes, but he recovered himself sufficiently to write that both he and Mrs. Grogan were worried about Mary Agnes Cork: she had exhibited frequent depressions since Melony's departure. He also told the truth about Melony, although he chose not to include any acts of vandalism. Larch wrote of Mary Agnes: "Perhaps she sees herself as inheriting Melony's former position, but she hasn't the dominating character that usually attends any powerful or leadership role." That idiot Dr. Gingrich is going to like that, Larch imagined. "Role," Larch said aloud, scornfully. As if orphans have the luxury of imagining that they have roles.

Impulsively, he went to the dispensary and inflated two prophylactics. Got to use these things up in some way, he thought. He used a laundry-marking pen to write the name GINGRICH on one prophylactic and the name GOODHALL on the other. Then he took these jolly balloons and went in search of Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna.

They were in the girls' division, having tea with Mrs. Grogan, when Dr. Larch found them.

"A-ha!" Larch said, surprising the ladies, who were unused to see him making an appearance in the girls' division except for the evening dose of Jane Eyre--and even more unused to see him waving marked prophylactics in their faces.

"Doctor Gingrich and Missus Goodhall, I presume!" Larch said, bowing to everyone. Whereupon he took a scalpel and popped the prophylactics. On the floor above them, Mary Agnes Cork heard the noise and sat up in her bed where she had been lying in a sullen depression. Mrs. Grogan was too stunned to speak.

When Dr. Larch left the ladies with their tea and returned to the hospital, Nurse Edna was the first to say something. "Wilbur works so hard," she said cautiously. "Isn't it a wonder that he can find the time to be playful?"

Mrs. Grogan was still struck speechless, but Nurse Angela said, "I think the old man is losing his marbles."

Nurse Edna appeared to be personally wounded by this remark; she returned her teacup to her saucer very steadily before she spoke. "I think it's the ether," she said quietly.

"Yes and no," said Nurse Angela.

"Do you think it's Homer Wells, too?" Mrs. Grogan asked.

"Yes," Nurse Angela said. "It's ether and it's Homer Wells, and it's old age, and it's those new members on the board. It's just everything. It's Saint Cloud's."

"It's what happened to Melony, too," Mrs. Grogan said, but she burst into tears when she said Melony's name. Upstairs, Mary Agnes Cork heard Melony's name and cried.

"Homer Wells will be back, I just know it," Nurse Angela said, but this so dissolved her in tears that Nurse Edna was obliged to comfort both her and Mrs. Grogan. "There, there," Nurse Edna said to them, but she wondered: where is the young man or the young woman who's going to take care of us all?

"Oh Lord," began Mrs. Grogan. Upstairs, Mary Agnes Cork bowed her head and clasped her hands; by pressing the heels of her hands together at a certain angle, she could revive a little of the pain from her old collarbone injury. "Oh Lord," Mrs. Grogan prayed, "support us all day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done."

That night, in the darkness, in keeping with the moan of an owl, Nurse Edna whispered "Amen" to herself while she listened to Dr. Larch making his rounds, kissing each of the boys--even Smoky Fields, who hoarded his food and hid it in his bed, which smelled, and who only pretended to be asleep.

On the Ferris wheel, high above the carnival grounds and the beach at Cape Kenneth, Homer Wells was trying to spot the roof of the cider house, but it was dark and there were no lights on in the cider house--and even if the cider house had been lit, or there had been the clearest daylight imaginable, the house was too far away. Only the brightest carnival lights, especially the distinctive lights of the Ferris wheel, were visible from the cider house roof; the visibility didn't exist the other way around.

"I want to be a pilot," Wally said. "I want to fly, I really do. If I had my pilot's license, and my own plane, I could do all the spraying at the orchards--I'd get a crop duster, but I'd paint it like a fighter. It's so clumsy, driving those dumb sprayers around behind those dumb tractors, up and down those dumb hills."

It was what Candy's father, Ray, was doing at the moment; Meany Hyde was sick, and Everett Taft, the foreman, had asked Ray if he'd mind driving a night spray--Ray knew the equipment so well. It was the last spray before harvest, and somewhere in the blackened inland greenery that lay below the Ferris wheel, Raymond Kendall and Vernon Lynch were spraying their way through Ocean View.

Sometimes Wally sprayed; Homer was learning how. And sometimes Herb Fowler sprayed, but Herb protested against night spraying. ("I have better things to do at night," he'd say.) It was better to spray at night because the wind dropped in the evenings, especially along the coast.

Wally wasn't spraying tonight because it was his last night home; he was going back to college in the morning.

"You'll look after Candy for me, won't you, Homer?" Wally asked, as they loomed above the rocky coast and Cape Kenneth's crowded beach; the scarce bonfires from the summer's-end beach parties winked; the wheel descended.

Candy would finish her senior year at the girls' academy in Camden; she'd get home most weekends, but Wally would stay in Orono except for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the longer vacations.

"Right," said Homer Wells.