The Cider House Rules (79 page)

Candy was grateful for the special bathroom equipment—especially the sink at wheelchair level, like a sink for children in a kindergarten, like the sinks at St. Cloud’s (she remembered). She knelt on the bathroom floor and hung her head in the sink; she turned her face under a faucet; the cold water was continuous against her lip.

“How are the dishes coming?” Wally asked Homer, who was still laboring over the broiler rack.

“Kind of messy tonight,” Homer said.

“I’m sorry,” Wally said genuinely. “Where’s Candy?” he asked.

“I think she’s in the bathroom.”

“Oh,” said Wally. He wheeled himself over to the corner of the kitchen where the serving tongs and a few broken bits of asparagus were on the floor. He leaned down and picked up the tongs, which he delivered to Homer at the sink. “Want to see the last couple of innings of the ball game?” he asked Homer. “Let Candy do the fucking dishes.” Wally wheeled himself out of the kitchen; he waited in the driveway for Homer Wells to bring the car around.

They took Candy’s Jeep, keeping the top down. It wasn’t necessary to take the wheelchair; it was just a Little League game, and Homer could drive the Jeep right up to the foul line and they could watch the game from the car seats. The town was thrilled to have a lighted field, although it was stupid to play Little League games after dark; it kept the little kids up later than was necessary, and the field wasn’t that well lit—home runs and long foul balls were always lost. The tiny infielders seemed to lose the high pop-ups. But Wally loved watching the kids play; when Angel had played, Wally had never missed a game. Angel was too old for Little League now, and he found watching the games the depths of boredom.

The game was nearly over when they arrived, which relieved Homer Wells (who hated baseball). A worried fat boy was pitching; he took the longest time between pitches, as if he were waiting for it to grow so dark (or for the lights to fail so completely) that the batter could no longer see the ball at all.

“You know what I miss?” Wally asked Homer Wells.

“What’s that?” said Homer, who dreaded the answer. Maybe walking, Homer thought—or maybe he’s going to say, “Loving my wife; that’s what I miss.”

But Wally said, “Flying. I really miss flying. I miss being up there.” Wally was not watching the ball game but looking above the tall field lights at some point high in the darkness. “Above everything,” he said. “That’s how it was.”

“I never did it,” said Homer Wells.

“My God, that’s true!” Wally said, genuinely shocked. “That’s right, you’ve never flown! My God, you’d love it. We’ve got to arrange that, somehow. And Angel would really find it exciting,” Wally added. “It’s the thing I miss most.”

When the game was over and they were driving home, Wally reached across to the gearshift and popped the Jeep into neutral. “Cut the engine just a second,” he said to Homer. “Let’s just coast.” Homer turned off the key and the Jeep ambled silently along. “Cut the headlights, too,” Wally said. “Just for a second.” And Homer Wells cut the lights. They could see the lights from the Ocean View house ahead of them, and both of them knew the road so well that they felt fairly secure just freewheeling in the darkness, but then the trees rose up and cut their view of the lighted house, and there was an unfamiliar dip in the road. For just a moment they seemed to be completely lost, possibly plunging off the road into the dark trees, and Homer Wells turned the headlights back on.

“That was flying,” Wally said, when they pulled into the driveway—ahead of them, gleaming in the headlights, the wheelchair was parked in waiting. When Homer carried Wally from the Jeep to the wheelchair, Wally let both his arms lock around Homer’s neck. “Don’t ever think I’m not grateful to you, for all you’ve done, old boy,” Wally told Homer, who put him very gently in the chair.

“Come on,” Homer said.

“No, I mean it. I know how much you’ve done for me, and I don’t usually get the opportunity to say how grateful I really am,” Wally said. He kissed Homer smack between the eyes, then, and Homer straightened up, clearly embarrassed.

“You’ve certainly done everything for me, Wally,” Homer said, but Wally dismissed this with a wave; he was already wheeling himself toward the house.

“It’s not the same, old boy,” Wally said, and Homer went to park the Jeep.

That night when Homer put Angel to bed, Angel said, “You know, you really don’t have to put me to bed anymore.”

“I don’t do it because I have to,” Homer said. “I like to.”

“You know what I think?” Angel said.

“What’s that?” asked Homer, who dreaded the answer.

“I think you ought to try having a girlfriend,” Angel said cautiously. Homer laughed.

“Maybe when you try having one, I’ll try one, too,” Homer said.

“Sure, we can double-date!” Angel said.

“I get the back seat,” Homer said.

“Sure, I’d rather get to drive, anyway,” Angel said.

“Not for long, you won’t rather drive,” his father told him.

“Sure!” Angel said, laughing. Then he asked his father: “Was Debra Pettigrew big like Melony?”

“No!” Homer said. “Well, she was on her way to being big, but she wasn’t that big—not when I knew her.”

“There’s no way Big Dot Taft’s sister could have been small,” Angel said.

“Well, I never said she was small,” Homer said, and they both laughed. It was a lighthearted enough moment for Homer to lean over Angel and kiss the boy—smack between the eyes, where Wally had just kissed Homer. It was a good place to kiss Angel, in Homer’s opinion, because he liked to smell his son’s hair.

“Good night, I love you,” Homer said.

“I love you. Good night, Pop,” Angel said, but when Homer was almost out the door, Angel asked him, “What’s the thing you love best?”

“You,” Homer told his son. “I love you best.”

“Next to me,” said Angel Wells.

“Candy and Wally,” Homer said, making them as close to one word as his tongue could manage.

“Next to them,” Angel said.

“Well, Doctor Larch—and all of them, in Saint Cloud’s, I guess,” said Homer Wells.

“And what’s the best thing you ever did?” Angel asked his father.

“I got you,” Homer said softly.

“Next best,” Angel said.

“Well, I guess it was meeting Candy and Wally,” Homer said.

“You mean,
when
you met them?” Angel asked.

“I guess so,” said Homer Wells.

“
Next
best,” Angel insisted.

“I saved a woman’s life, once,” Homer said. “Doctor Larch was away. The woman had convulsions.”

“You told me,” Angel said. Angel had never been especially interested that his father had become a highly qualified assistant to Dr. Larch; Homer had never told him about the abortions. “What else?” Angel asked his father.

Tell him now, thought Homer Wells, tell him all of it. But what he said to his son was, “Nothing else, really. I’m no hero. I haven’t done any best things, or even any one best thing.”

“That’s okay, Pop,” Angel said cheerfully. “Good night.”

“Good night,” said Homer Wells.

Downstairs, he couldn’t tell if Wally and Candy had gone to bed, or if Wally was in bed alone; the bedroom door was closed, and there was no light coming from the crack under the door. But someone had left a light on in the kitchen, and the outdoor light on the post at the head of the driveway was still on. He went to the apple-mart office to read the mail; with the light on in the office, Candy would know where he was. And if she’d already gone to the cider house, he could walk there from the office; it would be smart, in that case, to leave the office light on and not turn it out until he came back from the cider house. That way, if Wally woke up and saw the light, he’d figure that Homer or Candy was still working in the office.

The package from St. Cloud’s, arriving so exactly on the day of Melony’s visit, startled Homer. He almost didn’t want to open it. The old man has probably sent me enema bags! Homer Wells thought. He was shocked to see the black leather doctor’s bag; the leather was scuffed and soft, and the brass clasp was so tarnished that its luster was as dull as the cinch buckle of an old saddle, but everything that was worn and used about the bag’s appearance only made the gold initials that much brighter.

F.S
.

Homer Wells opened the bag and sniffed deeply inside it; he was anticipating the hearty and manly smell of old leather, but mixed with the leather smell were the feminine traces of ether’s tangy perfume. That was when—in one whiff—Homer Wells detected something of the identity that Dr. Larch had fashioned for Fuzzy Stone.

“Doctor Stone,” Homer said aloud, remembering when Larch had addressed him as if he were Fuzzy.

He didn’t want to walk back to the house to put the doctor’s bag away, but he didn’t want to leave the bag in the office, either; when he came back to the office to turn out the light, he thought he might forget the bag. And the thing about a good doctor’s bag is that it’s comfortable to carry. That was why he took it with him to the cider house. The bag was empty, of course—which didn’t feel quite right to Homer—so he picked some Gravensteins and a couple of early Macs on his way to the cider house and put the apples in the bag. Naturally, the apples rolled back and forth; that didn’t feel quite authentic. “Doctor Stone,” he mumbled once, his head nodding as he took high steps through the tall grass.

Candy had been waiting for him for a while, long enough so her nerves were shot. He thought that if it had happened the other way around—if she’d been the one to break things off—he would have been as upset as she was.

It was heartbreaking for him to see that she had made up one of the beds. The clean linen and the blankets had already been put in the cider house in anticipation of the picking crew’s arrival, the mattresses rolled and waiting at the opposite ends of the beds. Candy had made up the bed the farthest from the kitchen doorway. She’d brought a candle from the house, and had lit it—it gave the harsh barracks a softer light, although candles were against the rules. Recently, Homer had found it necessary to emphasize candles on the list; one of the pickers had started a small fire with one some years ago.

PLEASE DON’T SMOKE IN BED—AND NO CANDLES, PLEASE
!

was the way he’d written that rule.

The candlelight was faint; it couldn’t be seen from the fancy house.

Candy had not undressed herself, but she was sitting on the bed—and she had brushed her hair out. Her hairbrush was on the apple crate that served as a night table, and this commonplace article of such familiarity and domesticity gave Homer Wells (with the black doctor’s bag in his hand) a shiver of such magnitude that he envisioned himself as a helpless physician paying a house call to someone with not long to live.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly to her. “We’ve tried it—we’ve certainly tried—but it just doesn’t work. Only the truth will work.” His voice was croaking at his own pomposity.

Candy sat with her knees together and her hands in her lap; she was shivering. “Do you really think Angel’s old enough to know all this?” she whispered, as if the flickering room were full of sleeping apple pickers.

“He’s old enough to beat off, he’s old enough to know what drive-ins are for—I think he’s old enough,” said Homer Wells.

“Don’t be coarse,” Candy said.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“There’s always so much to do during harvest,” Candy said; she picked at her white, summery dress as if there were lint on it (but it was spotlessly clean), and Homer Wells remembered that Senior Worthington had this habit—that in Senior’s case it was a symptom of his Alzheimer’s disease and that Dr. Larch had even known the name for the symptom. What did the neurologists call it? Homer tried to remember.

“We’ll wait and tell them after the harvest, then,” Homer said. “We’ve waited fifteen years. I guess we can wait another six weeks.”

She stretched out on her back on the thin bed, as if she were a little girl waiting to be tucked in and kissed good night in a foreign country. He went to the bed and sat uncomfortably on the edge of it, at her waist, and she put her hand on his knee. He covered her hand with his hand.

“Oh, Homer,” she said, but he wouldn’t turn to look at her. She took his hand and pulled it under her dress and made him touch her; she wasn’t wearing anything under the dress. He didn’t pull his hand away, but he wouldn’t allow his hand to be more than a deadweight presence against her. “What do you imagine will happen?” she asked him coolly—after she realized that his hand was dead.

“I can’t imagine anything,” he said.

“Wally will throw me out,” Candy said, blandly and without self-pity.

“He won’t,” Homer said. “And if he did,
I
wouldn’t—then you’d be with me. That’s why he won’t.”

“What will Angel do?” Candy asked.

“What he wants,” Homer said. “I imagine he’ll be with you when he wants, and with me when he wants.” This part was hard to say—and harder to imagine.

“He’ll hate me,” Candy said.

“He won’t,” said Homer Wells.

She pushed his hand away from her and he returned the dead thing to his own lap; in another moment, her hand found his knee again, and he held her hand lightly there—at the wrist, almost as if he were taking her pulse. At his feet, the shabby doctor’s bag, heavy with apples, crouched like a cat drawn in upon itself and waiting; in the flickering room, the doctor’s bag looked like the only natural object—that bag would look at home wherever anyone took it; it was a bag that belonged wherever it was.

“Where will you go?” Candy asked him after a while.

“Will I have to go anywhere?” he asked her.

“I imagine so,” Candy said.

Homer Wells was trying to imagine it all when he heard the car. Candy must have heard it in the same instant because she sat up and blew out the candle. They sat holding each other on the bed, listening to the car approach them.

It was an old car, or else it was not very well cared for; the valves were tapping and something like the tailpipe was loose and rattled. The car was heavy and low; they heard it scrape on the high crown of the dirt road through the orchard, and the driver had to be familiar with the way through the orchard because the headlights were off—that’s how the car had gotten so close without their knowing it was coming.