The Cider House Rules

"What am I supposed to think about?" asked Homer Wells.

"Only good things," Candy told him. When she looked into his eyes, she said suddenly, "I can't believe that you kept my hair!" But when she saw the intensity of his frown, she said, "I mean, it's okay--I understand, I guess. Don't worry about it, either. It may be peculiar, but it's certainly romantic."

"Romantic," said Homer Wells, holding the girl of his dreams--but only holding her. To touch her more would surely be forbidden--by all the rules--and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of a normal life. This is a normal life, he tried to think, holding Candy as both the night fog off the river and the darkness reached over them.

It was not a night that put them in the mood for a musical.

"We can see Fred Astaire dance another time," Candy said philosophically.

The safety of the familiar drew them toward Raymond Kendall's dock--when they got cold, sitting out there, they could always have some tea with Ray. They drove the van back to Heart's Haven; nobody who knew them saw them come or go.

In the Fred Astaire movie, Mary Agnes Cork ate too much popcorn; her foster family thought that the poor girl was simply overstimulated by her first movie; she could not sit still. She watched the audience more than she watched the dancing; she searched every face in the flickering darkness. It was that pretty girl and that pretty boy she was looking for--and maybe Homer Wells. And so she was unprepared to spot the face in the crowd of the one person she missed most in her narrow world; the sight of that dark, heavy countenance shot such a stab of pain through her old collarbone injury that the popcorn container flew from her hands.

Melony loomed over the sassy blond girl named Lorna--hulking in her seat with the authority of a chronic and cynical moviegoer, looking like a sour critic born to be displeased, although this was her first movie. Even in the projector's gray light, Mary Agnes Cork could not fail to recognize her old brutalizer, the ex-queen and former hit-woman of the girls' division.

"I think you've had enough of that popcorn, sweetheart," Patty Callahan told Mary Agnes, who appeared to have a kernel of the stuff caught in her throat. And for the rest of the evening's frivolous entertainment, Mary Agnes could not keep her eyes off that most dominant member of the audience; in Mary Agnes Cork's opinion, Melony could have wiped up a dance floor with Fred Astaire, she could have broken every bone in Fred's slender body--she could have paralyzed him after just one waltz.

"Do you see someone you know, dear?" Ted Callahan asked Mary Agnes. He thought the poor girl was so stuffed with popcorn that she couldn't talk.

In the lobby, in the sickly neon light, Mary Agnes walked up to Melony as if a dream led her feet--as if she were captured in the old, violent trance of Melony's authority.

"Hi," she said.

"You talking to me, kid?" Lorna asked, but Mary Agnes was smiling just at Melony.

"Hi, it's me!" Mary Agnes said.

"So you got out?" Melony said.

"I've been adopted!" said Mary Agnes Cork. Ted and Patty stood a little nervously near her, not wanting to intrude but not wanting to let her very far from their sight, either. "This is Ted and Patty," Mary Agnes said. "This is my friend, Melony."

Melony appeared not to know what to make of the hands extended to her. The tough little broad named Lorna batted her eyes--some of her mascara sticking one of her eyelids in a frozen-open position.

"This is my friend, Lorna," Melony said awkwardly.

Everyone said Hi! and then stood around. What does the little creep want? Melony was thinking.

And that was when Mary Agnes said, "Where's Homer?"

"What?" Melony said.

"Homer Wells," said Mary Agnes. "Isn't he with you?"

"Why?" Melony asked.

"Those pretty people with the car . . ." Mary Agnes began.

"What car?" Melony asked.

"Well, it wasn't the same car, it wasn't the pretty car, but there was the apple on the door--I'll never forget that apple," M

ary Agnes said.

Melony put her big hands heavily on Mary Agnes's shoulders; Mary Agnes felt the weight pressing her into the floor. "What are you talking about?" Melony asked.

"I saw an old car, but it had that apple on it," Mary Agnes said. "I thought they was at the movie, those pretty people--and Homer, too. And when I saw you, I thought he would be here for sure."

"Where was the car?" Melony asked, her strong thumbs bearing down on both of Mary Agnes's collarbones. "Show me the car!"