The Cider House Rules

"An abortion, definitely," Melony had said once, when Homer Wells had asked her. "How about you?"

"I'd have the orphan," Homer had said.

"You're just a dreamer, Sunshine," Melony had told him.

Now he supposed it was true; he was just a dreamer. He confused the high school k

ids with each other, and gave some of them credit for picking bushels that other kids had picked. He stopped two of the boys from throwing apples at each other, and felt that he had to make an example of them--in order to protect the fruit and establish his authority. But while he was driving the boys back to the apple mart, where he forced them to wait without getting in any trouble--and to miss a morning's picking--a full-scale apple fight broke out among the other high school kids, and when Homer returned to the field, he interrupted a war. The crates that were already loaded on the flatbed were splattered with apple seeds, and the hot parts of the tractor gave off a burned-apple stench (someone must have tried to use the tractor for "cover"). Perhaps Vernon Lynch would have made a better foreman for the high school kids, Homer thought. All Homer wanted to do was to make things right with Candy.

When they sat on Ray Kendall's dock now, they sat close together, and they didn't sit for long--it was getting cold. They sat huddled against one of the posts at the dock's end, where Ray had seen Candy sit with Wally--so many times--and in somewhat the same position (although, Ray noted, Wally had always sat up straighter, as if he were already fastened to the pilot's seat).

Ray Kendall understood why it was necessary for them to brood about the process of falling in love, but he felt sorry for them; he knew that falling in love was never meant to be such a morose moment. Yet Ray had every respect for Olive, and it was for Olive, he knew, that Homer and Candy were forced to be mourners at their own love story. "You should just go away," Ray said out the window to Homer and Candy; he spoke very softly and the window was closed.

Homer was afraid that if he insisted to Candy that she marry him--insisted that she have their baby--that he would force her to reject him completely. He also knew that Candy was afraid of Olive; it was not that Candy was so eager to have a second abortion--Homer knew that Candy would marry him, and have their baby on the same day, if she thought she could avoid telling Olive the truth. Candy was not ashamed of Homer; she was not ashamed of being pregnant, either. Candy was ashamed that Olive would judge her harshly for her insufficient feelings for Wally--Candy's faith (in Wally being alive) had not been as strong as Olive's. It is not unusual for the mother of an only son and the young woman who is the son's lover to envision themselves as competitors.

More shocking (to Homer's mind) was what he could gather of his own feelings. He already knew that he loved Candy, and wanted her; now he discovered that--more than wanting her--he wanted her child.

They were just another trapped couple, more comfortable with their illusions than they were with the reality of their situation.

"After the harvest," Homer said to Candy, "we'll go to Saint Cloud's. I'll say that they need me there. It's probably true, anyway. And because of the war, no one else is paying attention to them. You could tell your dad it's just another kind of war effort. We could both tell Olive that we feel an obligation--to be where we're really needed; to be of more use."

"You want me to have the baby?" Candy asked him.

"I want you to have our baby," said Homer Wells. "And after the baby's born, and you're both recovered, we'll come back here. We'll tell your dad, and Olive--or we'll write them--that we've fallen in love, and that we've gotten married."

"And that we conceived a child before we did any of that?" Candy asked.

Homer Wells, who saw the real stars above the blackened coast of Maine--bright and cold--envisioned the whole story very clearly. "We'll say the baby is adopted," he said. "We'll say we felt a further obligation--to the orphanage. I do feel that, in a way, anyway," he added.

"Our baby is adopted?" Candy asked. "So we have a baby who thinks it's an orphan?"

"No," Homer said. "We have our own baby, and it knows it's all ours. We just say it's adopted--just for Olive's sake, and just for a while."

"That's lying," Candy said.

"Right," said Homer Wells. "That's lying for a while."

"Maybe--when we came back, with the baby--maybe we wouldn't have to say it was adopted. Maybe we could tell the truth then," Candy said.

"Maybe," Homer said. Maybe everything is waiting and seeing, he thought. He put his mouth on the back of her neck; he nuzzled into her hair.

"If we thought that Olive could accept it, if we thought that she could accept--about Wally," Candy added, "then we wouldn't have to lie about the baby being adopted, would we?"

"Right," said Homer Wells. What is all this worrying about lying? he wondered, holding Candy tightly as she softly cried. Was it true that Wilbur Larch had no memory of Homer's mother? Was it true that Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna had no memory of his mother, either? Maybe it was true, but Homer Wells would never have blamed them if they had lied; they would have lied only to protect him. And if they'd remembered his mother, and his mother was a monster, wasn't it better that they'd lied? To orphans, not every truth is wanted.

And if Homer had discovered that Wally had died in terrible pain or with prolonged suffering--if Wally had been tortured, or had burned to death, or had been eaten by an animal--Homer certainly would have lied about that. If Homer Wells had been an amateur historian, he would have been as much of a revisionist as Wilbur Larch--he would have tried to make everything come out all right in the end. Homer Wells, who always said to Wilbur Larch that he (Larch) was the doctor, was more of a doctor than he knew.

The first night of cider making he shared the work of the press and grinder with Meany Hyde and Everett Taft; Big Dot and her kid sister, Debra Pettigrew, were the bottlers. Debra was sullen at the prospect of messy work; she complained about the slopping and the spilling, and her irritation was further enhanced by the presence of Homer Wells, to whom she had not been speaking--Debra's understanding that Candy and Homer had become partners in a certain grief was markedly colored by her suspicion that Candy and Homer had become partners in a certain pleasure, too. At least Debra had not reacted generously to Homer's suggestion that they just be friends. Homer was puzzled by Debra's hostility, and assumed that his years in the orphanage had deprived him of some perfectly sensible explanation for her behavior. It seemed to Homer that Debra had always denied him access to anything more than her friendship. Why was she now incensed that he asked no more of her than that?

Meany Hyde announced to Homer and Everett Taft that this would be his first and last night press of the harvest because he wanted to stay home with Florence--"Now that her time is approachin'," Meany said.

When Mr. Rose pressed cider, there was a very different feeling in the fermented air. For one thing, everything went more quickly; the pressing was a kind of contest. For another, there was a tension that Mr. Rose's authority created--and the knowledge of those tired men asleep, or trying to sleep, in the next room, lent to the working of the grinder and the press a sense of hurry (and of perfection) that one feels only on the edge of exhaustion.

Debra Pettigrew's future heaviness grew more and more apparent the wetter she got; there was a matching slope in the sisters' shoulders, and even a slackness in the backs of Debra's arms that would one day yield the massive jiggles that shivered through Big Dot. In sisterly imitation, they wiped the sweat from their eyes with their biceps--not wanting to touch their faces with their cider-sweet and sticky hands.

After midnight, Olive brought them cold beer and hot coffee. When she had gone, Meany Hyde said, "That Missus Worthington is a thoughtful woman--here she is not only bringin' us somethin' but givin' us a choice."

"And her with Wally gone," said Everett Taft. "It's a wonder she even thought of us."