"You can't be too choosy, Wilbur," Nurse Edna said. "If the boy gets sick, there'll be lots of pills and cough medicines around."

"He'll still be Curly to me," Nurse Angela said defiantly.

Worse, Larch imagined: he'll always be Curly to Curly. But Larch let him go; it was high time for him to be gone--that was the main reason.

The couple's name was Rinfret; they called Curly "Roy." And so Roy "Curly" Rinfret took up residence in Boothbay. Rinfret's Pharmacy was a harborfront store; the family lived several miles inland, where the sea was out of sight. "But not out of scent," Mrs. Rinfret had maintained; she declared that, when the wind was right, the ocean could be smelled from the house.

Not with Curly's nose, Dr. Larch imagined: Curly's nose was such a constant streamer, Dr. Larch suspected that Curly had no sense of smell at all.

"Let us be happy for Curly Day," Dr. Larch announced to the boys' division one evening in August in 194_--over David Copperfield's steady sobs. "Curly Day has found a family," Dr. Larch said. "Good night, Curly!"

"G'night, Burly!" young Copperfield cried.

When Homer Wells received the letter telling him the news of Curly's adoption, he read it again and again--in the moonlight streaming through Wally's window, while Wally slept.

A druggist! thought Homer Wells. He'd been upset enough by the news to talk about it with Wally and Candy. They'd sat in the moonlight, earlier that evening, throwing snails off Ray Kendall's dock. Ploink! Ploink! went the periwinkles; Homer Wells talked and talked. He told them about the litany--"Let us be happy for Curly Day," and so forth; he tried to explain how it had felt to be addressed as a Prince of Maine, as a King of New England.

"I guess I imagined someone who looked like you," Homer said to Wally.

Candy remembered that Dr. Larch had said this to her, too: that he'd told her that her babies would be these princes, these kings. "But I didn't know what he meant," she said. "I mean, he was nice--but it was unimaginable."

"It still is unimaginable to me," Wally said. "I mean, what you saw," he said to Homer. "What all of you imagined--it must have been different, for each of you." Wally was unwilling to accept the notion that someone who looked like himself would ever be adequate to the expression.

"It sounds a little mocking," Candy said. "I just can't see what he meant."

"Yeah," Wally agreed. "It sounds a little cynical."

"Maybe it was," said Homer Wells. "Maybe he said it for himself and not for us."

He told them about Melony, but not everything about her. He took a deep breath and told them about Fuzzy Stone; he imitated the breathing contraption admirably--he had them both so roaring with laughter at the racket he was making that they drowned out the insignificant ploink of the snails dropping into the sea. Wally and Candy didn't know they were at the end of the story until Homer simply arrived at it. "Fuzzy Stone has found a new family," he repeated to them. "Good night, Fuzzy," he concluded hollowly.

There wasn't a sound, then, not even a snail; the sea lapped at the dock posts; the boats moored around them rocked on the water. When a line was pulled taut and yanked out of the water, you could hear the water drip off the line; when the thicker ropes were stretched, they made a noise like grinding teeth.

"Curly Day was the first boy I circumcised," Homer Wells announced--just to change the subject from Fuzzy Stone. "Doctor Larch was there when I did it," Homer said, "and a circumcision is no big deal--it's really easy." Wally felt his own penis inch toward itself like a snail. Candy felt a cramp knot in her calf and she stopped swinging her legs off the edge of the dock; she drew her heels up to her buttocks and hugged her knees. "Curly was the first one," Homer said. "I made it a little lopsided," he confessed.

"We could drive up to Boothbay and see how he's doing," Wally suggested.

What would we see? Candy wondered. She imagined Curly peeing all over the Cadillac again, and telling them again that he was the best one.

"I don't think that would be a good idea," Homer said.

He went with Wally back to Ocean View and wrote Dr. Larch a long letter--his longest so far. He tried to tell Larch about the drive-in movie, but the letter degenerated into a critique of the movie itself, and so he tried to change the subject.

Should he tell him about Herb Fowler carrying all the prophylactics? (Although Dr. Larch approved of everyone using prophylactics, he would hardly have approved of Herb Fowler.) Should he tell Larch that he had learned the real purpose of the drive-in? Wasn't it to tease oneself and one's date into a state of sexual frenzy--which neither of you were allowed to act upon? (Dr. Larch would certainly not think highly of that.) Should he tell Dr. Larch what Grace Lynch had said and done, or how he dreamed about her--or how he imagined he was falling in love, or already had fallen in love, with Candy (which he knew was forbidden)? And how do I say, "I miss you"? he wondered--when I don't mean, "I want to come back!"?

And so he ended the letter in his fashion; he ended it inexactly. "I remember when you kissed me," he wrote to Dr. Larch. "I wasn't really asleep."

Yes, thought Dr. Larch, I remember that, too. He rested in the dispensary. Why didn't I kiss him more--why not all the time? In other parts of the world, he dreamed, they have drive-in movies!

He always used more ether than he should have before the annual meeting of St. Cloud's board of trustees. He'd never quite understood what a board of trustees was for, and his impatience with the routine inquiries was growing. In the old days, there'd been the Maine State board of medical examiners; they'd never asked him any questions--they never wanted to hear from him. Now it appeared to Wilbur Larch that there was a board of trustees for everything. This year there were two new board members who'd never before seen the orphanage, and so the meeting had been scheduled to take place in St. Cloud's--the board usually met in Portland. The new members wanted to see the place; the old members agreed they should refresh themselves with the atmosphere.

It was a perfect August morning, with more indications of September in the air's crispness than there were indications of the stifling carry-over of July's humidity and hazy heat; but Larch was irritable.

"I don't know, 'exactly,' what a drive-in movie is," he said crossly to Nurse Angela. "Homer doesn't say, 'exactly.' "

Nurse Angela looked frustrated. "No, he doesn't," she agreed, going over the letter again and again.

"What do you do with your cars when you're watching the movie?" Nurse Edna asked.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net