The Cider House Rules

"I love you," Homer repeated, kissing her good night. There were both fervor and anger in Candy's good-night kiss, both ferocity and resignation in the way she clutched his hands. Homer stood for a while in the parking lot behind the lobster pound; the only sound was the aeration device that circulated fresh oxygen through the water tank that kept the lobsters alive. The quality of the air in the parking lot was divided between brine and motor oil. The night's heat was gone. A cool, damp fog rolled in from the sea; there was no more heat lightning to illuminate, however slightly, the view across the Atlantic.

It seemed to Homer Wells that there had been so much waiting and seeing to his life, and now there was something else to wait and see about.

Wilbur Larch, who was seventy-something and the grand master of Maine in the field of waiting and seeing, gazed once again upon the starry ceiling of the dispensary. One of ether's pleasures was its occasional transportation of the inhaler to a position that afforded him a bird's-eye view of himself; Wilbur Larch was thus permitted to smile from afar upon a vision of himself. It was the night that he blessed the adoption of young Copperfield, the lisper.

"Let us be happy for young Copperfield," Dr. Larch had said. "Young Copperfield has found a family. Good night, Copperfield!"

Only this time, in ether's memory, it was a joyous occasion. There was even unison in the responses, as if Larch conducted a choir of angels--all singing Copperfield merrily on his way. It hadn't been like that. Copperfield had been especially popular with the littlest orphans; he was what Nurse Angela called a "binder"--in his good-natured, lisping presence, the spirits of the other orphans rose and held together. That night no one had joined Larch in wishing Copperfield good night and good-bye. But Copperfield's departure had been especially hard for Dr. Larch, because with Copperfield's passing there went from St. Cloud's not only the last orphan to be named by Homer Wells but also the last orphan to have known Homer. With Copperfield's leaving, a little more of Homer Wells left, too. Little Steerforth--second-born and second-named--had been adopted first.

But good for ether! How it allowed Dr. Larch to revise his history. Perhaps it had been the ether, all along, that had provided Dr. Larch with the impulse to be a revisionist with Fuzzy Stone. And in Larch's ether dreams he had many times rescued Wally Worthington--the exploding plane had reassembled itself and returned to the sky; the parachute had opened, and the gentle currents of the Burmese air had borne Wally all the way to China. Safely above the Japanese, above the tigers and the snakes, and above the dread diseases of Asia--how peacefully Wilbur Larch had seen Wally fly. And how the Chinese had been impressed with Wally's noble good looks--with those patrician bones in that handsome face. In time, the Chinese would help Wally to find his base, and he would come home to his girlfriend--this was what Wilbur Larch wanted most: he wanted Wally back with Candy, for only then would there be any hope of Homer Wells returning to St. Cloud's.

Nearly three months after Wally's plane was shot down, the harvest at Ocean View began and Candy Kendall knew she was pregnant. After all, she was familiar with the symptoms; so was Homer Wells.

A ragtag crew of pickers mauled the orchards that year; there were housewives and war brides falling out of trees, and students dismissed from the local schools so that they might contribute to the harvest. Even the apple harvest in 194_ was considered a part of the war effort. Olive made Homer a crew boss of the high school kids, whose methods of bruising the fruit were so various that Homer was kept very busy.

Candy worked in the mart; she told Olive that her frequent bouts of nausea were probably caused by the smell of diesel fuel and exhaust that was constant around the farm vehicles. Olive remarked that she thought the daughter of a mechanic and lobsterman would be less sensitive to strong odors, and when she suggested that Candy might be more comfortable working in the fields, Candy admitted that climbing trees also made her feel queasy.

"I never knew you were so delicate," Olive said. Olive had never been more active in a harvest, or more grateful for there being one. But the harvest that year reminded Homer Wells of learning to tread water; both Candy and Olive had taught him how. ("Swimming in place," Olive had called it.)

"I'm just swimming in place," Homer told Candy. "We can't leave Olive during the harvest."

"If I work as hard as I can," Candy told him, "it's possible that I'll miscarry."

It was not very possible, Homer Wells knew.

"What if I don't want you to miscarry?" Homer asked her.

"What if?" Candy asked.

"What if I want you to marry me, and to have the baby?" Homer asked.

They stood at one end of the conveyor belt in the packinghouse; Candy was at the head of the line of women who sized and sorted the apples--who either packaged them or banished them to cider. Candy was retching, even though she had chosen the head of the line because that put her nearest the open door.

"We have to wait and see," Candy said between retches.

"We don't have long to wait," said Homer Wells. "We don't have long to see."

"I shouldn't marry you for a year, or more," Candy said. "I really want to marry you, but what about Olive? We have to wait."

"The baby won't wait," Homer said.

"We both know where to go--to not have the baby," Candy said.

"Or to have it," said Homer Wells. "It's my baby, too."

"How do I have a baby without anyone knowing I've had it?" Candy asked; she retched again, and Big Dot Taft came up the packing line to see what was the matter.

"Homer, ain't you got no better manners than to watch a young lady puke?" Big Dot asked him. She put her huge arm around Candy's shoulder. "You get away from the door, darlin'," Big Dot Taft said to Candy. "You come on and work down the line--there's only apples to smell down there. The tractor exhaust comes in the door."

"I'll see you soon," Homer mumbled, to both Candy and Big Dot.

"No one likes to be sick around the opposite sex, Homer," Big Dot informed him.

"Right," said Homer Wells, orphan and would-be father.

In Maine, it is considered wiser just to know something than to talk about it; that no one said Candy Kendall was pregnant didn't necessarily mean that they didn't know she was. In Maine, it is a given that any boy can get any girl in trouble. What they do about it is their business; if they want advice, they should ask.

"If you were an orphan, what would you have?" Wilbur Larch once wrote in A Brief History of St. Cloud's. "An orphan, or an abortion?"