The Cider House Rules (88 page)

Then she hung up on him—she really slammed the phone down. His ear rang; he heard the sound of the logs bashing together in the water that swept the Winkles away. His eyes had not stung so sharply since that night in the Drapers’ furnace room, in Waterville, when he had dressed himself for his getaway. His throat had not ached so deeply—the pain pushing down, into his lungs—since that night he had yelled across the river, trying to make the Maine woods repeat the name of Fuzzy Stone.

Snowy Meadows had found happiness with the furniture Marshes; good for Snowy, thought Homer Wells. He imagined that the other orphans would have difficulty finding happiness in the furniture business. At times, he admitted, he had been very happy in the apple business. He knew what Larch would have told him: that his happiness was not the point, or that it wasn’t as important as his usefulness.

Homer shut his eyes and watched the women getting off the train. They always looked a little lost. He remembered them in the gaslit sleigh—their faces were especially vivid to him when the sled runners would cut through the snow and strike sparks against the ground; how the women had winced at that grating sound. And, briefly, when the town had cared enough to provide a bus service, how isolated the women had seemed in the sealed buses, their faces cloudy behind the fogged glass; through the windows they had appeared to Homer Wells the way the world appeared to them, just before the ether transported them.

And now they walked from the station. Homer saw them marching uphill; there were more of them than he’d remembered. They were an army, advancing on the orphanage hospital, bearing with them a single wound.

Nurse Caroline was tough; but where would Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela go, and what would happen to Mrs. Grogan? worried Homer Wells. He remembered the hatred and contempt in Melony’s eyes. If Melony were pregnant, I would help her, he thought. And with that thought he realized that he was willing to play God, a little.

Wilbur Larch would have told him there was no such thing as playing a
little
God; when you were willing to play God—at all—you played a lot.

Homer Wells was thinking hard when he reached into his pocket and found the burned-down nub of the candle Mr. Rose had returned to him—“That ’gainst the rules, ain’t it?” Mr. Rose had asked him.

On his bedside table, between the reading lamp and the telephone, was his battered copy of
David Copperfield.
Homer didn’t have to open the book to know how the story began. “ ‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show,’ ” he recited from memory.

His memory was exceedingly keen. He could recall the different sizes of the ether cones that Larch insisted upon making himself. The apparatus was rudimentary: Larch shaped a cone out of an ordinary huckaback towel; between the layers of the towel were layers of stiff paper to keep the cone from collapsing. At the open tip of the cone was a wad of cotton—to absorb the ether. Crude, but Larch could make one in three minutes; they were different sizes for different faces.

Homer had preferred the ready-made Yankauer mask—a wire-mesh mask, shaped like a soup ladle, wrapped with ten or twelve layers of gauze. It was into the old Yankauer mask on his bedside table that Homer deposited the remains of the cider house candle. He kept change in the mask, and sometimes his watch. Now he peered into it; the mask contained a piece of chewing gum in a faded green wrapper and the tortoiseshell button from his tweed jacket. The gauze in the mask was yellow and dusty, but all the mask needed was fresh gauze. Homer Wells made up his mind; he would be a hero.

He went downstairs to the kitchen where Angel was pushing Wally around in the wheelchair—it was a game they played when they were both restless. Angel stood on the back of the wheelchair and pushed it, the way you push a scooter; he got the chair going faster and faster—much faster than Wally could make it move by himself. Wally just steered—he kept turning and turning. Wally kept trying to miss the furniture, but despite his skill as a pilot and the good size of the kitchen floor, eventually Angel would get the chair going too fast to control and they’d crash into something. Candy got angry at them for it, but they did it, anyway (especially when she was out of the house). Wally called it “flying”; most of all, it was something they did when they were bored. Candy had gone to the cider house to get Rose Rose and her baby. Angel and Wally were freewheeling.

When they saw how Homer looked, they stopped.

“What’s the matter, old boy?” Wally asked his friend.

Homer knelt by Wally’s wheelchair and put his head in Wally’s lap.

“Doctor Larch is dead,” he told Wally, who held Homer while he cried. He cried a very short time; in Homer’s memory, Curly Day had been the only orphan who ever cried for a long time. When Homer stopped crying, he said to Angel, “I’ve got a little story for you—and I’m going to need your help.”

They went outside to the shed where the garden things were kept, and Homer opened one of the quarter-pound ether cans with a safety pin. The fumes made his eyes tear a little; he’d never understood how Larch could like the stuff.

“He got addicted to it,” Homer told his son. “But he used to have the lightest touch. I’ve seen patients talking back to him while they were under, and still they didn’t feel a thing.”

They took the ether upstairs and Homer told Angel to make up the extra bed in his room—first with the rubber sheet they’d used when Angel had still been in diapers; then the usual sheets (but clean ones) over that.

“For Baby Rose?” Angel asked his father.

“No, not for Baby Rose,” Homer said. When he unpacked the instruments, Angel sat down on the other bed and watched him.

“The water’s boiling!” Wally called upstairs.

“You remember how I used to tell you that I was Doctor Larch’s
helper
?” Homer asked Angel.

“Right,” said Angel Wells.

“Well, I got very good—at helping him,” Homer said. “Very good. I’m not an amateur,” he told his son. “That’s really it—that’s the little story,” Homer said, when he’d arranged everything he needed where he could see it; everything looked timeless, everything looked perfect.

“Go on,” Angel Wells told his father. “Go on with the story.”

Downstairs, in the quiet house, they heard Wally in his wheelchair, rolling from room to room; he was still flying.

Upstairs, Homer Wells was talking to his son while he changed the gauze on the Yankauer mask. He began with that old business about the Lord’s work and the Devil’s—how, to Wilbur Larch, it was all the work of the Lord.

It startled Candy: how the headlights from her Jeep caught all the men in the starkest silhouettes against the sky; how they were perched in a row, like huge birds, along the cider house roof. She thought that everyone must be up there—but not everyone was. Mr. Rose and his daughter were inside the cider house, and the men were waiting where they’d been told to wait.

When Candy got out of the Jeep, no one spoke to her. There were no lights on in the cider house; if her headlights hadn’t exposed the men on the roof, Candy would have thought that everyone had gone to bed.

“Hello!” Candy called up to the roof. “One day, that whole roof is going to cave in.” It suddenly frightened her: how they wouldn’t speak to her. But the men were more frightened than Candy was; the men didn’t know what to say—they knew only that what Mr. Rose was doing to his daughter was wrong, and that they were too afraid to do anything about it.

“Muddy?” Candy asked in the darkness.

“Yes, Missus Worthington!” Muddy called down to her. She went over to the corner of the cider house where the roof dipped closest to the ground; it was where everyone climbed up; an old picking ladder was leaned up against the roof there, but no one on the roof moved to hold the ladder steady for her.

“Peaches?” Candy said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Peaches said.

“Please, someone hold the ladder,” she said. Muddy and Peaches held the ladder, and Black Pan held her hand when she climbed up on the roof. The men made room for her, and she sat down with them.

She could not see very clearly, but she would have known if Rose Rose was there; and if Mr. Rose had been there, Candy knew he would have spoken to her.

The first time she heard the sound from the cider house—it came from directly under her—Candy thought it was the baby, just babbling or maybe beginning to cry.

“When your Wally was a boy, it was different—out there,” Black Pan said to her. “It look like another country then.” His gaze was fixed upon the twinkling coast.

The noise under the cider house roof grew more distinct, and Peaches said, “Ain’t it a pretty night, ma’am?” It was decidedly not a pretty night; it was a darker night than usual, and the sound from the cider house was now comprehensible to her. For a second, she thought she was going to be sick.

“Careful when you stand up, Missus Worthington,” Muddy said to her, but Candy stamped her feet on the roof; then she knelt down and began to beat on the tin with both her hands.

“It’s so old a roof, Missus Worthington,” Black Pan said to her. “You best be careful you don’t fall through it.”

“Get me down, get me off,” Candy said to them. Muddy and Peaches took her arms and Black Pan preceded them to the ladder. Even walking down the roof, Candy tried to keep stamping her feet.

Going down the ladder, she called, “Rose!” She could not say the ridiculous name of “Rose Rose,” and she couldn’t make herself say “Mister Rose,” either. “Rose!” she called ambiguously. She wasn’t even sure which one she was summoning, but it was Mr. Rose who met her at the cider house door. He was still getting dressed—he was tucking his shirt in and buttoning his trousers. He looked thinner and older to her than he’d looked before, and although he smiled at her, he didn’t look into her eyes with his usual confidence—with his usual, polite indifference.

“Don’t you speak to me,” Candy told him, but what would he have said? “Your daughter and her baby are coming with me.” Candy walked by him into the cider house; she felt the tattered rules with her fingers as she found the light.

Rose Rose was sitting up on the bed. She had pulled her blue jeans on, but she hadn’t closed them, and she had pulled the T-shirt on, but she held Candy’s bathing suit in her lap—she was unfamiliar with wearing it, and she’d not been able to put it on in a hurry. She had found only one of her work shoes, which she held in one hand. The other one was under the bed. Candy found it and put it on the correct foot—Rose Rose wore no socks. Then Candy tied the laces for her, too. Rose Rose just sat on the bed while Candy put on and tied her other shoe.

“You’re coming with me. Your baby, too,” Candy told the girl.

“Yes, ma’am,” Rose Rose said.

Candy took the bathing suit from her and used the suit to wipe the tears from Rose Rose’s face.

“You’re fine, you’re just fine,” Candy said to the girl. “And you’re going to feel better. No one’s going to hurt you.”

Baby Rose was sound asleep, and Candy was careful not to wake her when she picked her up and handed her to her mother. Rose Rose moved uncertainly and Candy put her arm around her when they walked out of the cider house together. “You’re going to be just fine,” Candy said to Rose Rose; she kissed the young woman on her neck, and Rose Rose, who was sweating, leaned against her.

Mr. Rose was standing in the darkness between the Jeep and the cider house, but the rest of the men still sat on the roof.

“You comin’ back,” Mr. Rose said—nothing was raised at the end of his voice; it was not a question.

“I told you not to speak to me,” Candy told him. She helped Rose Rose and her baby into the Jeep.

“I was speakin’ to my daughter,” Mr. Rose said with dignity.

But Rose Rose would not answer her father. She sat like a statue of a woman with a baby in her arms while Candy turned the Jeep around and drove away. Before they went into the fancy house together, Rose Rose slumped against Candy and said to her, “I never could do nothin’ about it.”

“Of course you couldn’t,” Candy told her.

“He hated the father of the other one,” Rose Rose said. “He been after me ever since.”

“You’re going to be all right now,” Candy told the girl before they went inside; through the windows, they could watch Wally flying back and forth in the house.

“I know my father, Missus Worthington,” Rose Rose whispered. “He gonna want me back.”

“He can’t have you,” Candy told her. “He can’t make you go back to him.”

“He make his own rules,” said Rose Rose.

“And the father of your beautiful daughter?” Candy asked, holding the door open for Rose Rose and her baby girl. “Where is he?”

“My father cut him up. He long gone,” Rose Rose said. “He don’t wanna be involved with me no more.”

“And your mother?” Candy asked, as they went in the house.

“She dead,” Rose Rose said.

That was when Wally told Candy that Dr. Larch was dead, too. She would not have known it to look at Homer, who was all business; an orphan learns how to hold back, how to keep things in.

“Are you all right?” Candy asked Homer, while Wally wheeled Baby Rose around the downstairs of the house and Angel took Rose Rose to his room, which was prepared for her.

“I’m a little nervous,” Homer admitted to Candy. “It’s certainly not a matter of technique, and I’ve got everything I need—I know I can do it. It’s just that, to me, it is a living human being. I can’t describe to you what it feels like—just to hold the curette, for example. When living tissue is touched, it responds—somehow,” Homer said, but Candy cut him off.

“It may help you to know who the father is,” she said. “It’s Mister Rose. Her father is the father—if that makes it any easier.”

The crisply made-up bed in Angel’s childhood room and the gleaming instruments—which were displayed so neatly on the adjacent bed—made Rose Rose both talkative and rigid.

“This don’t look like no fun,” the girl said, holding her fists in her lap. “They took the other one out through the top—not the way she was supposed to come out,” Rose Rose explained. She’d had a Caesarean, Homer Wells could see, perhaps because of her age and her size at the time. But Homer could not quite convince her that this time everything would be much easier. He wouldn’t need to take anything “out through the top.”