The Cider House Rules

Homer was also impressed with the first live birth he was asked to observe--not so much with any special skill that seemed to be required of Dr. Larch, and not with the formal, efficient procedures carried out by Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna. What impressed Homer was the process that was already so much under way before Dr. Larch's procedure began; what impressed Homer was how much had happened to the woman and her child that was, internally, just their natural progress--the actual rhythm of the labor (you could set a watch to it), the power of the woman's pushing muscles, the urgency of the child to be born. The most unnatural thing about it, to Homer Wells, was how clearly hostile the child found the environment in which it first exercised its lungs--how clearly unfriendly, though not unexciting, the child's new world was to the child, whose first choice (had it been given a choice) might have been to remain where it was. Not a bad reaction, Melony might have observed, had she been there. However much Homer enjoyed having sex with Melony, he was troubled that the act was more arbitrary than birth.

When Homer went to read Jane Eyre to the girls' division, Melony seemed subdued to him, not defeated or even resigned; something in her had been tired out, something about her look was worn down. She had been wrong, after all, about the existence of her history in Dr. Larch's hands--and being wrong about important things is exhausting. She had been humiliated, too--first by the incredible shrinking penis of little Homer Wells, and second by how quickly Homer appeared to take sex with her for

granted. And, Homer thought, she must be physically tired--after all, she had single-handedly obliterated a sizable chunk of the man-made history of St. Cloud's. She had pushed half a building into the flow of time. She has a right to look worn out, thought Homer Wells.

Something in the way he read Jane Eyre struck Homer as different too--as if this or any story were newly informed by the recent experiences in his life: a woman with a pony's penis in her mouth, his first sexual failure, his first routine sex, Gray's Anatomy, and a live birth. He read with more appreciation of Jane's anxiety, which had struck him earlier as tedious. Jane has a right to be anxious, he thought.

It was unfortunate timing--after what he and Melony had been through together--that he encountered that passage in the middle of Chapter Ten, where Jane imagines how it might be to leave her orphanage, where she realizes that the real world is "wide," and that her own existence is "not enough." Did Homer only imagine there was a new reverence in the girls' division when he read this section--that Melony, especially, seemed poised above the sentences, as if she were hearing them for the first time? And then he hit this line:

I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon.

His mouth went dry when he read it; he needed to swallow, which gave the line more emphasis than he wanted to give it. When he tried to begin again, Melony stopped him.

"What was that? Read that again, Sunshine."

" 'I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon,' " Homer Wells read aloud.

"I know just how she feels," Melony said bitterly, but quietly.

"It hurts me to hear you say that, Melony," Mrs. Grogan began softly.

"I know just how she feels!" Melony repeated. "And so do you, Sunshine!" she added. "Little Jane should try fifteen or sixteen or seventeen years," Melony announced loudly. "She should try it and see if she doesn't 'tire' of that routine!"

"You'll only hurt yourself, dear, if you keep on like that," Mrs. Grogan said. And indeed, this seemed true; Melony was crying. She was such a big girl--to put her head in Mrs. Grogan's lap and allow her to stroke her hair--but she just went on crying, quietly. Mrs. Grogan could not remember when she'd last held Melony's head in her lap. Homer caught the look from Mrs. Grogan: that he should leave. It was not the end of the chapter, not even the end of the scene, or even of a paragraph. There was more to read; the next line began:

I desired liberty . . .

But it would have been cruel to continue. Jane Eyre had already made her point. Homer and Melony had already had several such afternoons--those days that tire you out about your whole life!

This night the air between the girls' and boys' division seemed odorless and void of history. It was simply dark outside.

When he went back to the boys' division, Nurse Angela told him that John Wilbur was gone--adopted!

"A nice family," Nurse Angela told Homer happily. "The father of the family used to be a bed-wetter. They're going to be very sympathetic."

As was Dr. Larch's habit, when someone was adopted, his routine benediction to the boys in the darkness was altered slightly. Before he addressed them as "Princes of Maine," as "Kings of New England," he made an oddly formal announcement.

"Let us be happy for John Wilbur," Wilbur Larch said. "He has found a family. Good night, John," Dr. Larch said, and the boys murmured after him:

"Good night, John!"

"Good night, John Wilbur."

And Dr. Larch would pause respectfully before saying the usual: "Good night, you Princes of Maine--you Kings of New England!"

Homer Wells looked at a little of Gray's Anatomy in the candlelight allowed him before he tried to go to sleep. It was not just John Wilbur's peeing that was missing from the night; something else was gone. It took Homer a while to detect what was absent; it was the silence that finally informed him. Fuzzy Stone and his noisy apparatus had been taken to the hospital. Apparently, the breathing contraption--and Fuzzy--required more careful monitoring, and Dr. Larch had moved the whole business into the private room, next to surgery, where Nurse Edna or Nurse Angela could keep a closer eye on Fuzzy.

It was not until Homer Wells had some experience with dilatation and curettage that he would know what Fuzzy Stone resembled: he looked like an embryo--Fuzzy Stone looked like a walking, talking fetus. That was what was peculiar about the way you could almost see through Fuzzy's skin, and his slightly caved-in shape; that was what made him appear so especially vulnerable. He looked as if he were not yet alive but still in some stage of development that should properly be carried on inside the womb. Dr. Larch told Homer that Fuzzy had been born prematurely--that Fuzzy's lungs had never adequately developed. Homer would not have a picture of what this meant until he confronted the few recognizable parts in his first look at the standard procedure for removing the products of conception.

"Are you listening, Homer?" Wilbur Larch asked, when the procedure was over.

"Yes," Homer Wells said.

"I'm not saying it's right, you understand? I'm saying it's her choice--it's a woman's choice. She's got a right to have a choice, you understand?" Larch asked.

"Right," said Homer Wells.

When he couldn't sleep, he thought about Fuzzy Stone. When Homer went down to the private room, next to surgery, he couldn't hear the breathing apparatus. He stood very still and listened; he could always track Fuzzy down by his sound--lungs, waterwheel and fan--but the silence Homer Wells listened to made a more startling noise to him than the sound of that snake hitting the roof while his finger was in Melony's mouth.