by John Irving
"Homer!" Candy shouted. Homer was upstairs in his very spare bedroom. His life was so spare, he'd tacked only two things on his walls--and one of those was in his bathroom. By his bed he had a picture of Wally in his flier's scarf and sheepskin. Wally was posing with the crew of Opportunity Knocks; the shadow from the wing of the dark plane completely obscured the face of the radioman, and the glare of the Indian sun completely whited out the face of the crew chief (who had eventually died of his colon complication); only Wally and the co-pilot were correctly illuminated, although Homer had seen better pictures of them both. The co-pilot sent Wally a picture of himself and his growing family every Christmas; he had five or six children and a plump wife; but every year the co-pilot looked thinner (the amoeba he'd contacted in Burma had never entirely left him).
And in the bathroom Homer had tacked up the blank questionnaire, the extra copy--the one he'd never sent to the board of trustees of St. Cloud's. The exposure to the steam from the shower had given to the paper of the questionnaire the texture of a parchment lampshade, but each question had remained readable and idiotic.
The master bed was higher than most (because, in his day, Senior Worthington had enjoyed looking out the window while lying down); it was a feature Homer also appreciated about the bed. He could oversee the pool from up there, and he could see the cider house roof; he liked to lie on that bed for hours, just looking out the window. "Homer!" Candy called to him. "Please come see what your son is reading!"
That was the way they all talked. Candy said "your son" to Homer, and that's how Wally spoke, too, and Angel always said "Dad" or "Pop" when he addressed his father. It had been an uninterrupted, fifteen-year relationship--Homer and Angel upstairs, Wally and Candy in the former dining room downstairs. The four of them ate their meals together.
Some nights--especially in winter, when the bare trees permitted more of a view of the lit dining room and kitchen windows of strangers' houses--Homer Wells liked to take a short car ride before dinner. He wondered about the families who were eating dinner together--what were their real lives like? St. Cloud's had been more predictable. What did anyone really know about all those families sitting down to have a meal?
"We are a family. Isn't that the main thing?" Candy asked Homer Wells, whenever Homer appeared to her to be taking longer and longer drives before dinner.
"Angel has a family, a really wonderful family. Yes, that's the main thing," Homer agreed.
And when Wally would tell her how happy he was, how he felt he was the luckiest man alive--how anyone would give up his legs to be as happy as Wally was--those were the nights that Candy couldn't sleep; those were the nights when she'd be aware of Homer Wells, who was wide awake, too. Some nights they would meet in the kitchen--they'd have some milk and apple pie. Some nights, when it was warm, they'd sit by the swimming pool not touching each other; to any observer, the space between them would have indicated a quarrel (although they rarely quarreled), or else indifference (but they were never indifferent to each other). The way they sat by the pool reminded them both of how they used to sit on Ray Kendall's dock, before they'd sat closer together. If ever they were too conscious of this memory--and of missing that dock, or of missing Ray (who'd died before Angel was old enough to have any memory of him)--this would spoil their evening by the swimming pool and they would be forced back to their separate bedrooms, where they would lie awake a little longer.
As he grew older (and almost as insomniac as his father), Angel Wells would often watch Homer and Candy sitting by the pool, which he could also see out the window of his room. If Angel ever thought anything about the two of them sitting out there, it was why such old friends sat so far apart.
Raymond Kendall had died shortly after Wally and Candy were married. He was killed when the lobster pound blew up; his whole dock was blown apart, and his lobster boat sank, and two old heaps of automobiles he was working on were jolted across his parking lot a good twenty-five yards down the coastal highway by the explosion--as if they'd been driven under their own power. Even the picture window at the Haven Club was collapsed by the blast, but it happened so late at night that the bar was closed and none of the Haven Club's regular drinkers was on hand to see their favorite eyesore obliterated from their view of Heart's Haven Harbor.
Ray had been tinkering with his homemade torpedo; for all of his legendary mechanical genius, he must have found out something about a torpedo that he didn't know. The misfortune of someone you love can bring out the guilt in you; Candy regretted that she'd not told her father about Homer and Angel Wells. It was no consolation to her that she imagined Ray already knew everything; she had been able to understand, by his silences, that he wanted to hear it from her. Yet not even the death of her father could prompt Candy Kendall to tell her story to anyone.
As far south along the coastal highway as Powell's Ice Cream Palace, there had been dead lobsters and lobster parts in the parking lot and in the road. This had prompted Herb Fowler (who was never caught without something funny to say) to ask old Mr. Powell if he was inventing a new ice cream flavor.
Herb had waited for the summer that Angel Wells was fifteen before he flicked Angel his first rubber. Angel's feelings were slightly hurt that Herb had not initiated him sooner. Angel's pal and coworker, pudgy Pete Hyde, was only a few months older than Angel (and not nearly so grown up, in countless ways), and Angel knew that Herb Fowler had bounced a rubber off Pete Hyde's head when Pete was only thirteen. What Angel hadn't yet fathomed was that Pete Hyde was a part of Ocean View's working-class family, and Angel--although he worked with the workers--was from the boss's family.
The workers knew that Homer Wells ran Ocean View. He was the one most in charge. This would not have surprised Olive, and it was clear that Candy and Wally were grateful for Homer's authority. Perhaps because the workers knew that Homer had come from St. Cloud's, they felt that he was closer to them; he lived in what Big Dot Taft called "the fancy house," but he was like one of them. None of the workers resented that Homer was the boss, with the possible exception of Vernon Lynch, who resented any and every authority--all the more so since Grace Lynch had died.
Candy, who looked into the matters concerning the workers' wives, discovered that Grace had been pregnant; she'd died of acute peritonitis, following a misguided attempt to abort herself. Homer, who would often wonder why she had not chosen to make a second trip to St. Cloud's, liked to think that she had not died in vain. It had been her death (and Dr. Harlow's particularly unsympathetic response to it) that had prompted Nurse Caroline to resign from the Cape Kenneth Hospital staff, as Homer Wells had been encouraging her to do. Nurse Caroline finally took Homer's suggestion and offered her services to St. Cloud's.
"Homer Wells sent me," Nurse Caroline said, when she introduced herself to Wilbur Larch. The old man had not grown too careless.
"Sent you for what?" Larch asked.
"I'm a trained nurse," she said. "I'm here to help you."
"Help me do what?" asked Larch, who was not very convincing at portraying innocence.
"I believe in the Lord's work," Nurse Caroline said, exasperated.
"Well, why didn't you say so?" Wilbur Larch asked.
So he's given me something besides apple trees, the old man mused. So there's still hope for him.
Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna were so relieved to get Nurse Caroline that they weren't even jealous. Here was the new blood that might hold the board of trustees at bay a while longer.
"The new nurse is a definite improvement to the situation," Dr. Gingrich confided to the board. "I would say that she takes a lot of pressure off making any immediate decision." (As if they weren't trying to replace the old man every minute!)
"I'd prefer a young doctor to a young nurse," Mrs. Goodhall declared. "A young doctor and a young administrator. You know how I feel about the records; the records of that place are pure whimsy. But it's at least a temporary improvement; I'll buy that," she said.
If Wilbur Larch could
have heard her, he would have said: "Just give me the time, lady, and you'll buy more than that."
But in 195_, Wilbur Larch was ninety-something. Sometimes his face would hold so still under the ether cone that the mask would stay in place after his hand had dropped to his side; only the force of his exhalations would make the cone fall. He had lost a lot of weight. In a mirror, or traveling with his beloved ether, he had the impression that he was becoming a bird. Only Nurse Caroline had the courage to criticize his drug habit. "You should know, of all people," Nurse Caroline told him roughly.
"Me of all people?" Larch asked innocently. Sometimes, he found it was fun to provoke her.
"You have a low opinion of religion," Nurse Caroline remarked to him.
"I suppose so," he said cautiously. She was a little too young and quick for him, he knew.
"Well, what do you suppose a drug dependency is--if not a kind of religion?" Nurse Caroline asked.
"I have no quarrel with anyone at prayer," Wilbur Larch said. "Prayer is personal--prayer is anyone's choice. Pray to whom or what you want! It's when you start making rules," said Wilbur Larch, but he felt lost. He knew she could talk circles around him. He admired socialism, but talking to a damn socialist was like talking to any true believer. He had heard her say, so many times, that a society that approved of making abortion illegal was a society that approved of violence against women; that making abortion illegal was simply a sanctimonious, self-righteous form of violence against women--it was just a way of legalizing violence against women, Nurse Caroline would say. He had heard her say, so many times, that abortions were not only a personal freedom of choice but also a responsibility of the state--to provide them.
"Once the state starts providing, it feels free to hand out the rules, too!" Larch blurted hastily. It was a Yankee thing to say--very Maine. But Nurse Caroline smiled. That led him into another of her arguments; she could always trap him. He was not a systems man, he was just a good one.
"In a better world . . ." she began patiently. Her patience with him could make Larch furious.
"No, not in a better world!" he cried. "In this one--in this world. I take this world as a given. Talk to me about this world!" But it all made him so tired. It made him want a little ether. The more he tried to keep up with Nurse Caroline, the more he needed ether; and the stronger he felt his need for it, the more that made her right.
"Oh, I can't always be right," Larch said tiredly.
"Yes, I know," Nurse Caroline said sympathetically. "It's because even a good man can't always be right that we need a society, that we need certain rules--call them priorities, if you prefer," she said.
"You can call them whatever you want," said Wilbur Larch testily. "I don't have time for philosophy, or for government, or for religion. I don't have enough time," said Wilbur Larch.
Always, in the background of his mind, there was a newborn baby crying; even when the orphanage was as silent as the few, remaining, abandoned buildings of St. Cloud's--even when it was ghostly quiet--Wilbur Larch heard babies crying. And they were not crying to be born, he knew; they were crying because they were born.
That summer, Mr. Rose wrote that he "and the daughter" might be arriving a day or so ahead of the picking crew; he hoped the cider house would be ready.
"It's been a while since we've seen the daughter," Wally remarked, in the apple-mart office. Everett Taft was outside oiling Wally's wheelchair for him, so Wally sat on the desk--his withered legs swinging limply, his unused feet in a perfectly polished pair of loafers; the loafers were more than fifteen years old.
Candy was playing with the adding machine. "I think the daughter is about Angel's age," she said.
"Right," said Homer Wells, and Wally hit Homer with a very well-thrown jab--the only sort of punch he could really throw, sitting down. Because Homer had been leaning on the desk and Wally had been sitting up straight, the punch caught Homer completely by surprise, and very solidly, in the cheek. The punch surprised Candy so much that she pushed the adding machine off the far corner of the desk. The machine crashed to the office floor; when Homer hit the floor, he did not land quite as loudly or as deadweight as the adding machine, but he landed hard. He put his hand to his cheek, where he would soon have some swelling and the start of a slight shiner.
"Wally!" Candy said.
"I'm so sick of it!" Wally shouted. "It's time you learned a new word, Homer," Wally said.
"Jesus, Wally," Candy said.
"I'm okay," Homer said, but he remained sitting on the office floor.
"I'm sorry," Wally said. "It just gets on my nerves--you saying 'Right' all the time." And although he had not made this particular mistake for years, he lifted himself off the desk with his arms--it must have seemed to him that the appropriate thing to do would be to swing his legs to the floor and help Homer up to his feet; he'd forgotten that he couldn't walk. If Candy had not caught him under the arms, and hugged him--chest to chest--Wally would have fallen. Homer got to his feet and helped Candy put Wally back on the desk.
"I'm sorry, buddy," Wally said. He put his head on Homer's shoulder.
Homer did not say "Right." Candy went to get a piece of ice in a towel for Homer's face, and Homer said, "It's okay, Wally. Everything's okay." Wally slumped a little forward, and Homer leaned over him; their foreheads touched. They maintained that position until Candy returned with the ice.
Most days, for fifteen years, Candy and Homer thought that Wally knew everything, that he accepted everything, but that he resented not being told. At the same time, Homer and Candy imagined that it was a relief to Wally--that he didn't have to admit that he knew everything. What new, uncomfortable position would they put him in by telling him now? Wasn't the main thing that Angel not know?--not until Candy and Homer told him; the main thing was that Angel shouldn't hear it from anyone else. Whatever Wally knew, he would never tell Angel.
If Homer was surprised, he was surprised that Wally had never hit him before.
"What was that all about?" Candy asked Homer when they were alone that night by the swimming pool. Some kind of large, whirring insect was caught in the leaf skimmer; they heard its wings beating against the soggy leaves. Whatever it was, it grew weaker and weaker.
"I guess it is irritating how I say 'Right' all the time," Homer said.
"Wally knows," Candy said.
"That's what you've thought for fifteen years," said Homer Wells.
"You think he doesn't know?" Candy asked.
"I think he loves you, and you love him," Homer said. "I think he knows we love Angel. I think Wally loves Angel, too."
"But do you think he knows Angel is ours?" Candy asked.
"I don't know," Homer said. "I know that one day Angel has to know he's ours. I think that Wally knows I love you," he said.
"And that I love you?" Candy asked. "Does he know that?"
"You love me sometimes," Homer said. "Not very often."
"I wasn't talking about sex," Candy whispered.
"I was," said Homer Wells.
They had been careful, and--in their opinion--almost good. Since Wally had come home from the war, Homer and Candy had made love only two hundred seventy times--an average of only eighteen times a year, only one and a half times a month; they were simply as extremely careful as they knew how. It was another thing that Candy had insisted Homer agree to: that for Wally's sake and for Angel's--for the sake of what Candy called their family--they would never be caught; they would never cause anyone even the slightest embarrassment. If anyone ever saw them, they would stop, forever.
That was why they hadn't told Wally. Why wouldn't Wally accept that they'd thought he was dead--not just missing--and that they had needed each other, and that they'd wanted Angel, too? They knew Wally would have accepted that. Who couldn't accept what had happened? What was happening now was what they knew Wally wanted to know, and they couldn't tell him.
They had another thing to be careful about. Because Wally was sterile, Candy's becoming p
regnant would seem too miraculous to be believed. Because Wally's sterility was not the result of encephalitis, it would take him several years to discover that he was sterile. He would remember the unclean instrumentation of his urethra, but he would remember it gradually--the way he remembered the rest of Burma. Once he learned that his epididymis was sealed, for life, the specificity of the various bamboo shoots came back to him; sometimes it seemed to him that he could recall, exactly, every catheter that had ever relieved him.
There is no difference in the feeling of orgasm; Wally was fond of emphasizing this particular point to Homer Wells. Wally called it "shooting"; Homer was the only person with whom Wally could joke about his condition. "I can still aim the gun, and the gun still goes off," Wally said, "and it still goes off with a bang--for me," he said. "It's just that no one ever finds the bullet."
Wally remembered, from time to time, that when one of the Burmese on the sampan would instrument him--for which he was always so grateful--there was never very much bleeding, even when the bamboo shoot was not exactly straight; his blood seemed pale and minimal by comparison to the bloodier stains of the betel juice that everyone spat on the deck.
If Homer Wells got Candy pregnant again, Candy made him promise that--this time--he would give her an abortion. She could not fool Wally about another trip to St. Cloud's; she would not fool him, she said. And so this added consideration--that Candy never get pregnant--contributed to the moderation of their coupling, which was almost always managed under conditions harsh enough to win the approval of New England's founding fathers. It still would not have won Wilbur Larch's approval.
They established no pattern of behavior that could make anyone suspicious. (As if everyone wasn't already suspicious, regardless of how they behaved!) There was no one place that they met, no one day, no one time of day. In the winter months, when Angel--after school--would take Wally for a swim in the indoor pool of a private boys' academy, Homer and Candy could manage an occasional late afternoon together. But Homer's bed, which had been Olive's bed, which also suffered from all the master-bedroom connotations, was full of conflicting emotions for them both--and the bed Candy shared with Wally had its own set of taboos. Rarely, they took trips. The cider house was fit to be used only in the late summer, after it had been made ready for the picking crew; but ever since Angel had learned to drive, he'd been given the run of the orchards--he was allowed to drive any of the farm vehicles, just so he kept off the public roads, and his pudgy pal, Pete Hyde, often drove around with him. Homer suspected that Pete and Angel used the cider house to drink beer in secret, whenever they could convince Herb Fowler to buy beer for them; or that they went there for the fifteen-year-old thrill of smoking cigarettes. And at night, trapped by their own insomnia, where could Candy and Homer have disappeared to--now that Angel was an insomniac, too?