The Cider House Rules (43 page)

“Sometimes I think of myself as doddering,” Larch said defensively. “I suppose you might think so, too.”

“The
pressure
you must be under,” Dr. Gingrich said. “Someone with all your responsibilities should have all the help he can get.”

“Someone with my responsibility should stay responsible,” Larch said.

“With the
pressure
you must be under,” said Dr. Gingrich, “it’s no wonder you find it hard to delegate even a little of that responsibility.”

“I have more use for a typewriter than for a delegate,” Wilbur Larch said, but when he blinked his eyes he saw those bright stars that populated both a clear Maine night and the firmament of ether, and he wasn’t sure which stars they were. He rubbed his face with his hand, and caught Mrs. Goodhall scribbling something on the impressively thick pad before her.

“Let’s see,” she said—sharply, by comparison to Dr. Gingrich’s wispy voice. “You’re in your seventies, now—is that correct? Aren’t you seventy-something?” she asked Dr. Larch.

“Right,” said Wilbur Larch. “Seventy-something.”

“And how old is Missus Grogan?” Mrs. Goodhall asked suddenly, as if Mrs. Grogan weren’t present—or as if she were so old that she was incapable of answering for herself.

“I’m sixty-two,” Mrs. Grogan said pertly, “and I’m as lively as a spring chicken!”

“Oh, no one doubts you’re not
lively
!” said Dr. Gingrich.

“And Nurse Angela?” Mrs. Goodhall asked, not looking up at anyone; the scrutiny of her own writing on the pad before her required every ounce of her exhaustive attention.

“I’m fifty-eight,” Nurse Angela said.

“Angela is as strong as an ox!” Mrs. Grogan said.

“We don’t doubt it!” said Dr. Gingrich cheerfully.

“I’m fifty-five or fifty-six,” Nurse Edna offered, before the question was raised.

“You don’t
know
how old you are?” Dr. Gingrich asked meaningfully.

“Actually,” said Wilbur Larch, “we’re all so senile, we can’t remember—we’re just guessing. But look at you!” he said suddenly to Mrs. Goodhall, which did get Mrs. Goodhall to raise her eyes from her pad. “I guess you have such trouble remembering things,” Larch said, “that you have to write everything down.”

“I’m just trying to get the picture of what’s going on here,” Mrs. Goodhall said evenly.

“Well,” Larch said. “I suggest you listen to me. I’ve been here long enough to have the picture pretty clearly in mind.”

“It’s very clear what a wonderful job you’re doing!” Dr. Gingrich told Dr. Larch. “It’s also clear how
hard
a job it is.” Such a warm washcloth kind of sympathy was leaking from Dr. Gingrich that Larch felt wet—and grateful that he wasn’t sitting near enough to Dr. Gingrich for Dr. Gingrich to touch him; Gingrich was clearly a toucher.

“If it’s not asking too much, in the way of your support,” Dr. Larch said, “I’d not only like a new typewriter; I’d like permission to keep the old one.”

“I think we can arrange that,” Mrs. Goodhall said.

Nurse Edna, who was not accustomed to sudden insights—or, despite her years, hot flashes—and was completely inexperienced with the world of omens and signs or even forewarnings, felt a totally foreign and breathtaking violence rise from her stomach. She found herself staring at Mrs. Goodhall with a hatred Nurse Edna couldn’t conceive of feeling for another human being. Oh dear, the
enemy
! she thought; she had to excuse herself—she was sure she was going to be ill. (She was, but discreetly, out of sight, in the boys’ shower room.) Only David Copperfield, still mourning the departure of Curly Day, and still struggling with the language, spotted her.

“Medna?” young Copperfield asked.

“I’m fine, David,” she told him, but she was not fine. I have seen the
end,
she thought with an unfamiliar bitterness.

Larch had seen it, too. Someone will replace me, he realized. And it won’t be long. He looked at his calendar; he had two abortions to perform the next day, and three “probables” near the end of the week. There were always those who just showed up, too.

And what if they get someone who won’t perform one? he thought.

When the new typewriter arrived, it fit—just in time—into his plans for Fuzzy Stone.

“Thank you for the new typewriter,” Larch wrote to the board of trustees. It had arrived “just in time,” he added, because the old typewriter (which, if they remembered, he wanted to keep) had completely broken down. This was not true. He had the keys replaced on the old typewriter, and it now typed a story with a different face.

What it typed were letters from young Fuzzy Stone. Fuzzy began by wanting Dr. Larch to know how much he was looking forward to being a doctor when he grew up, and how much Dr. Larch had inspired him to make this decision.

“I doubt that I will
ever
come to feel as you do, regarding abortion,” young Fuzzy wrote to Dr. Larch. “Certainly, it is obstetrics that interests me, and certainly your example is responsible for my interest, but I expect we shall never agree about abortion. Although I know you perform abortions out of the most genuine beliefs and out of the best intentions, you must permit me to honor my beliefs accordingly.”

And on and on. Larch covered the years; he wrote into the future, leaving a few convenient blanks. Larch completed Dr. F. Stone’s training (he put him through medical school, he gave him fine obstetrical procedure—even a few variances from Dr. Larch’s procedure, which Dr. Larch had Dr. Stone describe). And always Fuzzy Stone remained faithful to his beliefs.

“I’m sorry, but I believe there is a soul, and that it exists from the moment of conception,” Fuzzy Stone wrote. He was slightly pompous-sounding, as he grew up, close to unctuous in his graciousness toward Larch, even capable of condescension at times—the kind of patronizing a young man will indulge in when he thinks he has “developed” beyond his teacher. Larch gave Fuzzy Stone an unmistakable self-righteousness, which he imagined all supporters of the existing law against abortion would feel at home with.

He even had young Dr. Stone propose that
he
replace Dr. Larch—“but not until you’re ready to retire, of course!”—and that by this replacement it might be demonstrated to Dr. Larch that the law should be observed, that abortions should
not
be performed, and that a safe and informative view of family planning (birth control, and so forth) could in time achieve the desired effect (“. . . without breaking the laws of God or man,” wrote a convincingly creepy Fuzzy Stone).

“The desired effect”—both Dr. Larch and Dr. Stone agreed—would be a minimum of unwanted children brought forth into the world. “I, for one, am happy to be here!” crowed young Dr. Stone. He sounds like a missionary! thought Wilbur Larch. The idea of making a missionary out of Fuzzy appealed to Dr. Larch for several reasons—among them: Fuzzy wouldn’t need a license to practice medicine if he took his magic to some remote and primitive place.

It exhausted Larch, but he got it all down—one typewriter for Fuzzy that was used for nothing else, and the new one for himself. (He made carbons of his own letters and referred to his “dialogue” with young Dr. Stone in various fragments, which he contributed to
A Brief History of St. Cloud’s.
)

He imagined that their correspondence ended, quite abruptly, when Larch refused to accept the idea that anyone should replace him who was unwilling to perform abortions. “I will go until I drop,” he wrote to Fuzzy. “Here in St. Cloud’s, I will never allow myself to be replaced by some reactionary religious moron who cares more for the misgivings suffered in his own frail soul than for the actual suffering of countless unwanted and mistreated children. I am
sorry
you’re a doctor!” Larch ranted to poor Fuzzy. “I am sorry such training was wasted on someone who refuses to help the living because of a presumptuous point of view taken toward the unborn. You are
not
the proper doctor for this orphanage, and over my dead body will you ever get my job!”

What he heard from Dr. Stone, after that, was a rather curt note in which Fuzzy said he needed to search his soul regarding his personal debt to Dr. Larch and his “perhaps larger debt to society, and to all the murdered unborn of the future”; it was hard, Fuzzy implied, to listen to his conscience and not “turn in” Dr. Larch “. . . to the authorities,” he added ominously.

What a good story! thought Wilbur Larch. It had taken him the rest of August of 194_. He wanted to leave the matter all set up—all arranged—when Homer Wells returned to St. Cloud’s from his summer job.

Wilbur Larch had created a replacement for himself, one who would be acceptable to the authorities—whoever they were. He had created someone with qualified obstetrical procedure, and—what better?—an orphan familiar with the place from birth. He had also created a perfect lie, because the Dr. F. Stone whom Wilbur Larch had in mind
would
perform abortions, of course, while at the same time—what better?—he would be on record for claiming he was
against
performing them. When Larch retired (or, he knew, if he was ever caught), he would already have available his most perfect replacement. Of course, Larch was not through with Fuzzy; such an important replacement might require some revision.

Wilbur Larch lay in the dispensary with both the stars of Maine and the stars of ether circling around him. He had given Fuzzy Stone a role in life that was much more strenuous than Fuzzy ever could have been capable of. How could poor Fuzzy even have imagined it, as he succumbed to the failure of his breathing contraption?

Only one problem, thought Wilbur Larch, dreaming with the stars. How do I get Homer to play the part?

Homer Wells, gazing at the actual stars of Maine and at the orchards visible in the waning moonlight out Wally’s window, saw something glint—something beyond the orchard from which he knew the ocean could be viewed. Homer moved his head up and down in Wally’s window, and the glint flashed to him; the feeble signal reminded him of the night when the deep Maine woods had not returned his voice to him—when he had yelled his echoless good night to Fuzzy Stone.

Then he realized where the glint was coming from. There must be one, small, polished spot on the tin roof of the cider house; he was seeing the waning moon bounce off the roof of the cider house—off a spot no bigger than a knife blade. This little glint in the night was one of those things that—even after you identify it—you can’t leave alone.

It was no help to him, to listen to Wally’s peaceful breathing. The problem is, Homer Wells knew, I am in love with Candy. It was Candy who suggested he not go back to St. Cloud’s.

“My father likes you so much,” she’d told Homer. “I know he’ll give you a job on the boat, or in the pound.”

“My mother likes you so much,” Wally had added. “I know she’ll keep you on in the orchards, especially through harvest. And she gets lonely whenever I go back to college. I’ll bet she’d be delighted to have you stay right where you are—in my room!”

Out in the orchards, the roof of the cider house flashed to him; the flash was as small and as quick as the one glimpse of an eyetooth Grace Lynch had revealed—her mouth had parted only that much when she’d last looked at him.

How could I
not
be in love with Candy? he wondered. And if I stay here, he asked himself, what can I do?

The roof of the cider house flashed; then it stood dark and still. He had seen the wink of the curette before it went to work; he had seen it at rest in the examining tray, dull with blood, in need of cleaning.

And if I go back to St. Cloud’s, he asked himself, what can I do?

In Nurse Angela’s office, on the new typewriter, Dr. Larch began a letter to Homer Wells. “I remember nothing so vividly as kissing you,” Dr. Larch began, but he stopped; he knew he couldn’t say that. He pulled the page from the typewriter, then he hid it deep within
A Brief History of St. Cloud’s,
as if it were another particle of history without an audience.

David Copperfield had a fever when he’d gone to bed, and Larch went to check on the boy. Dr. Larch was relieved to feel that young Copperfield’s fever had broken; the boy’s forehead was cool, and a slight sweat chilled the boy’s neck, which Larch carefully rubbed dry with a towel. There was not much moonlight; therefore, Larch felt unobserved. He bent over Copperfield and kissed him, much in the manner that he remembered kissing Homer Wells. Larch moved to the next bed and kissed Smoky Fields, who tasted vaguely like hot dogs; yet the experience was soothing to Larch. How he wished he had kissed Homer more, when he’d had the chance! He went from bed to bed, kissing the boys; it occurred to him, he didn’t know all their names, but he kissed them anyway. He kissed all of them.

When he left the room, Smoky Fields asked the darkness, “What was
that
all about?” But no one else was awake, or else no one wanted to answer him.

I wish he would kiss
me,
thought Nurse Edna, who had a very alert ear for unusual goings-on.

“I think it’s nice,” Mrs. Grogan said to Nurse Angela, when Nurse Angela told her about it.

“I think it’s senile,” Nurse Angela said.

But Homer Wells, at Wally’s window, did not know that Dr. Larch’s kisses were out in the world, in search of him.

He didn’t know, either—he could never have imagined it!—that Candy was also awake, and also worried. If he
does
stay, if he
doesn’t
go back to St. Cloud’s, she was thinking, what will I do? The sea tugged all around her. Both the darkness and the moon were failing.

There came that time when Homer Wells could make out the boundaries of the cider house, but the roof did not wink to him, no matter how he moved his head. With no signal flashing to him, Homer may have thought he was speaking to the dead when he whispered, “Good night, Fuzzy.”

He did not know that Fuzzy Stone, like Melony, was looking for him.

7
Before the War

One day that August a hazy sun hung over the coastal road between York Harbor and Ogunquit; it was not the staring sun of Marseilles, and not the cool, crisp sun that blinks on much of the coast of Maine at that time of year. It was a St. Cloud’s sunlight, steamy and flat, and Melony was irritated by it and sweating when she accepted a ride in a milk truck that was heading inland.