The Cider House Rules

"You're goin' the wrong way," one of them said.

"I could turn around!" he called to them. When they walked on without answering him, he drove ahead to the hospital entrance of the boys' division and turned out the headlights. The snow falling in front of the light in the dispensary was the same kind of snow that had been falling the night that he arrived in St. Cloud's after his escape from the Drapers in Waterville.

There had been something of a brouhaha between Larch and his nurses about where Homer and Candy would sleep. Larch assumed that Candy would sleep in the girls' division and that Homer would sleep where he used to sleep, with the other boys, but the women reacted strongly to this suggestion.

"They're lovers!" Nurse Edna pointed out. "Surely they sleep together!"

"Well, surely they have," Larch said. "That doesn't mean that they have to sleep together here."

"Homer said he was going to marry her," Nurse Edna pointed out.

"Going to," grumbled Wilbur Larch.

"I think it would be nice to have someone sleeping with someone else here," Nurse Angela said.

"It seems to me," said Wilbur Larch, "that we're in business because there's entirely too much sleeping together."

"They're lovers!" Nurse Edna repeated indignantly.

And so the women decided it. Candy and Homer would share a room with two beds on the ground floor of the girls' division; how they arranged the beds was their own business. Mrs. Grogan said that she liked the idea of having a man in the girls' division; occasionally, the girls complained of a prowler or a peeping tom; having a man around at night was a good idea.

"Besides," Mrs. Grogan said, "I'm all alone over there--you three have each other."

"We all sleep alone over here," Dr. Larch said.

"Well, Wilbur," Nurse Edna said, "don't be so proud of it."

Olive Worthington, alone in Wally's room, regarded the two beds, Homer's and Wally's--both beds were freshly made up, both pillows were without a crease. On the night table between their beds was a photograph of Candy teaching Homer how to swim. Because there was no ashtray in the boys' room, Olive held her free hand in a cupped position under the long, dangling ash of her cigarette.

Raymond Kendall, alone above the lobster pound, viewed the triptych of photographs that stood like an altarpiece on his night table, next to his socket wrench set. The middle photograph was of himself as a young man; he was seated in an uncomfortable-looking chair, his wife was in his lap; she was pregnant with Candy; the chair was in apparent danger. The left-hand photograph was Candy's graduation picture, the right-hand photograph was of Candy with Wally--their tennis racquets pointed at each other, like guns. Ray had no picture of Homer Wells; he needed only to look out the window at his dock in order to imagine Homer clearly; Ray could not look at his dock and think of Homer Wells without hearing the snails rain upon the water.

Nurse Edna had tried to keep a

little supper warm for Homer and Candy; she had put the disappointing pot roast in the instrument sterilizer, which she checked from time to time. Mrs. Grogan, who was praying in the girls' division, did not see the Cadillac come up the hill. Nurse Angela was in the delivery room, shaving a woman who had already broken her bag of waters.

Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela's empty office. Homer knew better than to peek into the delivery room when the light was on. From the dormitory, they could hear Dr. Larch's reading voice. Although Candy held tightly to his hand, Homer Wells was inclined to hurry--in order not to miss the bedtime story.

Meany Hyde's wife, Florence, was delivered of a healthy baby boy--nine pounds, two ounces--shortly after Thanksgiving, which Olive Worthington and Raymond Kendall celebrated in a fairly formal and quiet fashion at Ocean View. Olive invited all her apple workers for an open house; she asked Ray to help her host the occasion. Meany Hyde insisted to Olive that his new baby was a definite sign that Wally was alive.

"Yes, I know he's alive," Olive told Meany calmly.

It was not too trying a day for her, but she did find Debra Pettigrew sitting on Homer's bed in Wally's room, staring at the photograph of Candy teaching Homer how to swim. And not long after ushering Debra from the room, Olive discovered Grace Lynch sitting in the same dent Debra had made on Homer's bed. Grace, however, was staring at the questionnaire from the board of trustees at St. Cloud's, the one that Homer had never filled out and had left tacked to the wall of Wally's room as if they were unwritten rules.

And Big Dot Taft broke down in the kitchen while telling Olive about one of her dreams. Everett had found her, in her sleep, dragging herself across the bedroom floor toward the bathroom. "I didn't have no legs," Big Dot told Olive. "It was the night Florence's boy was born, and I woke up without no legs--only I didn't really wake up, I was just dreamin' that there was nothin' left of me, below the waist."

"Except that you had to go to the bathroom," Everett Taft pointed out. "Otherwise, why was you crawlin' on the floor?"

"The important thing was that I was injured," Big Dot told her husband crossly.

"Oh," said Everett Taft.

"The point is," Meany Hyde said to Olive, "my baby was born just fine but Big Dot had a dream that she couldn't walk. Don'tcha see, Olive?" Meany asked. "I think God is tellin' us that Wally is okay--that he's alive--but that he's been hurt."

"He's injured, or somethin'," Big Dot said, bursting into tears.

"Of course," Olive said abruptly. "It's what I've always thought." Her words startled them all--even Ray Kendall. "If he weren't injured, we would have heard from him by now. And if he weren't alive, I'd know it," Olive said. She handed her handkerchief to Big Dot Taft and lit a fresh cigarette from the butt end of the cigarette she had almost finished.

Thanksgiving at St. Cloud's was not nearly so mystical, and the food wasn't as good, but everyone had a good time. In lieu of balloons, Dr. Larch distributed prophylactics to Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna, who--despite their distate for the job--inflated the rubbers and dipped them in bowls of green and red food coloring. When the coloring dried, Mrs. Grogan painted the orphans' names on the rubbers, and Homer and Candy hid the brightly colored prophylactics all over the orphanage.