The Cider House Rules

Candy telephoned her father.

"It's gonna be weeks, or maybe months before they can move him," Ray told her. "He's gotta gain some weight before he can travel so far, and there's probably tests they've gotta do--and there's still a war on, don't forget."

At her end of the phone, Candy just cried and cried.

"Tell me how you are, darlin'," Ray Kendall said. That was when she could have told him that she'd just had Homer's baby, but what she said was, "Homer's adopted one of the orphans."

After a pause, Raymond Kendall said, "Just one of them?"

"He's adopted a baby boy," Candy said. "Of course, I'll help, too. We've kind of adopted a baby together."

"You have?" Ray said.

"His name is Angel," Candy said.

"Bless his heart," Ray said. "Bless you both, too."

Candy cried some more.

"Adopted, huh?" Ray asked his daughter.

"Yes," said Candy Kendall. "One of the orphans."

She quit the breast-feeding, and Nurse Edna introduced her to the device for pumping her breasts. Angel disliked his conversion to formula milk, and for a few days he displayed a cranky temperament. Candy displayed a cranky temperament, too. When Homer observed that her pubic hair would be very nearly grown back by the time she returned to Heart's Haven, she snapped at him.

"For God's sake, who's going to see whether I have pubic hair or not--except you?" Candy asked.

Homer showed signs of strain, too.

He was impatient with Dr. Larch's suggestion that Homer's future lay in the medical profession. Larch insisted on giving Homer a brand-new copy of Gray's Anatomy; he also gave him the standard Greenhill's Office Gynecology and the British masterpiece Diseases of Women.

"Jesus Christ," said Homer Wells. "I'm a father, and I'm going to be an apple farmer."

"You have near-perfect obstetrical procedure," Larch told him. "You just need a little more of the gynecological--and the pediatric, of course."

"Maybe I'll end up a lobsterman," Homer said.

"And I'll send you a subscription to The New England Journal of Medicine," Dr. Larch said. "And JAMA, and S, G and O . . ."

"You're the doctor," said Homer Wells tiredly.

"How do you feel?" Candy asked Homer.

"Like an orphan," Homer said. They held each other tightly, but they did not make love. "How do you feel?" Homer asked.

"I won't know until I see him," Candy said honestly.

"What will you know then?" Homer asked.

"If I love him, or you, or both of you," she said. "Or else I won't know any more than I know now."

"It's always wait and see, isn't it?" Homer asked.

"You don't expect me to tell him anything when he's still over there, do you?" Candy asked.

"No, of course I don't expect that," he said softly. She held him tighter; she began to cry again.

"Oh, Homer," she said. "How can he weigh only a hundred and five pounds?"