by John Irving
"Are you sure you're pregnant?" Larch began again. Yes, she nodded. "You have no idea how long you've been pregnant?" Larch asked her, while Nurse Caroline helped the woman undress; she was so undernourished, both Larch and Nurse Caroline saw instantly that she was more pregnant than they first supposed. After Larch examined the woman, who was extremely jumpy to his touch, and feverish, he said, "You might be seven months. You might be too late," Larch pointed out to her. The woman shook her head.
Larch wanted to look more closely, but Nurse Caroline was having difficulty getting the woman to assume the proper position. And while Nurse Caroline took the woman's temperature, all Larch could do was press his hand against the woman's abdomen, which was extremely tense--whenever Larch barely touched her, she would hold her breath.
"Have you tried to do something to yourself?" he asked the woman gently. "Have you hurt yourself?" The woman froze. "Why won't you talk?" Larch asked; the woman shook her head. "Are you mute?" She shook her head. "Have you been injured?" Larch asked. The woman shrugged.
Finally, Nurse Caroline made the woman comfortable in the stirrups. "I'm going to look inside you, now," Larch explained. "This is a speculum," he said, holding up the instrument. "It may feel cold, but it doesn't hurt." The woman shook her head. "No, really, I'm not going to hurt you--I'm just going to look."
"Her temperature is a hundred and four," Nurse Caroline whispered to Dr. Larch.
"This will be more comfortable for you if you can relax," Larch said; he could feel the woman's resistance to the speculum. As he bent to look, the young woman spoke to him.
"It wasn't me," she said. "I would never have put all that inside of me."
"All that?" Larch said. "All what?" Suddenly, he didn't want to look before he knew.
"It wasn't me," she repeated. "I would never do such a thing."
Dr. Larch bent so close to the speculum, he had to hold his breath. The smell of sepsis and putrefaction was strong enough to gag him if he breathed or swallowed, and the familiar, fiery colors of her infection (even clouded by her discharge) were dazzling enough to blind the intrepid or the untrained. But Wilbur Larch started to breathe again, slowly and regularly; it was the only way to keep a steady hand. He just kept looking and marveling at the young woman's inflamed tissue; it looked hot enough to burn the world. Now do you see, Homer? Larch asked himself. Through the speculum, he felt her heat against his eye.
11
Breaking the Rules
Melony, who had hitchhiked from Bath to Ocean View, hitchhiked back on the same day; she'd lost her zeal for apple picking. She retreated, to plan another vacation--or to plead to return to work. Melony went to the pizza bar where everyone went, and she was looking so woebegone that Lorna left the lout she was with at the bar and sat down in the booth opposite her.
"I guess you found him," Lorna said.
"He's changed," Melony said; she told Lorna the story. "It wasn't for me that I felt so bad," Melony said. "I mean, I didn't really expect him to run away with me, or anythin' like that. It was just him--he was really better than that, I thought. He was someone I thought was gonna be a hero. I guess that's dumb, but that's what he looked like--like he had hero stuff in him. He seemed so much better than everybody else, but he was just a fake."
"You don't know everythin' that's happened to him," Lorna said philosophically; she didn't know Homer Wells, but she had sympathy for sexual entanglements.
Her present sexual entanglement grew impatient at the bar, where he'd been waiting for her; he was a bum named Bob, and he came over to Melony's booth where the two women were holding hands.
"I guess what's the matter with Homer is that he's a man," Melony observed. "I only ever met one who didn't let his dong run his life"--she meant Dr. Larch--"and he was an ether addict."
"Are you with me, or have you gone back to her?" Bob asked Lorna, but he stared at Melony.
"We was just talkin', she was just bein' an old friend," Melony said.
"I thought you was on vacation," Bob said to Melony. "Why don'tcha go somewhere where there's cannibals?"
"Go beat off in a bucket," Melony told him. "Go try to fill a pail, go drip in a teaspoon," she told him, and Bob twisted her arm too sharply--he broke it. Then Bob broke her nose against the Formica tabletop before some of the shipyard workers pulled him off her.
Lorna took her friend to the hospital, and when they'd put the cast on her arm and had set her nose--they set it almost straight--Lorna took Melony back to the women-only boardinghouse, where they both agreed they belonged: together. Lorna moved her things back in while Melony was convalescing. The swelling in her face went down after a few days, and her eyes turned from black to a purplish-green to yellow in about a week.
"The thing is," Melony said, with her sore face against Lorna's tummy, with Lorna's hand stroking her hair, "when he was a boy, he had that kind of bravery that's really special--no one could make him just go along with what was goin' on. And now look at him: bangin' a cripple's wife, lyin' to his own son."
"It's disgusting," Lorna agreed. "Why not forget it?" When Melony didn't answer her, Lorna asked, "How come you're not gonna press charges against Bob?"
"Suppose it works?" Melony asked.
"Pardon me?" Lorna said.
"Suppose they really put Bob in jail, or send him off somewheres?" Melony asked. "Then when I'm all better, I won't be able to find him."
"Oh," Lorna said.
Homer Wells did not recognize the voice that spoke to him from the headlights' glare.
"What you got in the bag, Homer?" asked Mr. Rose. It had been a long drive from the Carolinas, and Mr. Rose's old car creaked and popped with heat and with apparent pain. "It's nice of you workin' all night to make my house nice for me, Homer," he said. When he stepped in front of his headlights, his black face was still hard to see, but Homer recognized the way he moved--so slowly, but with a felt potential for moving so fast.
"Mister Rose!" Homer said.
"Mistuh Wells," said Mr. Rose, smiling. They shook hands, while Homer's heart calmed down. Candy was still hiding in the cider house, and Mr. Rose sensed that Homer wasn't alone. He was peering through the lit kitchen, looking into the shadowy bunkroom, when Candy walked, guiltily, into the light.
"Missus Worthington!" said Mr. Rose.
"Mister Rose," Candy said, smiling, shaking his hand. "We're just in time," she said to Homer, poking him. "We just this minute got all the bed linen ready," she told Mr. Rose, but Mr. Rose observed that there was no car or truck--that they had walked to the cider house. Had they carried all the blankets and sheets?
"Just this minute, we got it all folded up, I mean," Candy said.
Homer Wells thought that Mr. Rose might have seen the light in the apple-mart office when he drove by. "We were working late in the office," Homer said, "and we remembered the linen was down here--all in a heap."
Mr. Rose nodded and smiled. Then the baby cried. Candy jumped.
"I wrote to Wally 'bout bringin' the daughter," Mr. Rose explained, as a young woman, about Angel's age, walked into the light with a baby in her arms.
"I haven't seen you since you were a little girl," Homer Wells told the young woman, who looked at him blankly; it must have been an exhausting trip with a small child.
"My daughter," Mr. Rose said in introduction. "And her daughter," he added. "Missus Worthington," said Mr. Rose, introducing her, "and Homer Wells."
"Candy," Candy said, shaking the young woman's hand.
"Homer," Homer said. He couldn't remember the daughter's name, and so he asked her. She looked a little startled, and looked at her father--as if for clarification, or advice.
"Rose," Mr. Rose said.
Everyone laughed--the daughter, too. The baby stopped crying and looked with wonder at the laughter. "No, I mean your first name!" said Homer Wells.
"Rose is her first name," said Mr. Rose. "You already heard it."
"Rose Rose?" Candy asked. The daughter smiled; she didn't look
very sure.
"Rose Rose," said Mr. Rose proudly.
Everyone laughed again; the baby was cheering up, and Candy played with the little girl's fingers. "And what's her name?" Candy asked Rose Rose. This time, the young woman answered for herself.
"She don't have a name, yet," Rose Rose replied.
"We're still thinking it out," said Mr. Rose.
"What a good idea," said Homer Wells, who knew that too many names were given frivolously, or just temporarily--or, in the cases of John Wilbur and Wilbur Walsh, that they were repeated without imagination.
"The cider house isn't really set up for a baby," Candy said to Rose Rose. "If you'd like to come up to the house, I may have some baby things you could use--there's even a playpen in the attic, isn't there, Homer?"
"We don't need nothin'," Mr. Rose said pleasantly. "Maybe she'll look another day."
"I could sleep a whole day, I think," said Rose Rose prettily.
"If you'd like," Candy told her, "I could look after the baby for you--so you could sleep."
"We don't need nothin'," Mr. Rose repeated. "Not today, anyway," he said, smiling.
"Want a hand unpacking?" Homer asked him.
"Not today, anyway," Mr. Rose said. "What's in the bag, Homer?" he asked when they'd all said good night and Homer and Candy were leaving.
"Apples," Homer admitted.
"That would be strange," said Mr. Rose. Homer unzipped the bag and showed him the apples.
"You the apple doctor?" Mr. Rose asked him.
Homer almost said "Right."
"He knows," Homer said to Candy, as they were walking back to the office.
"Of course he knows," Candy said. "But what's it matter if we're stopping?"
"I guess it doesn't matter," Homer said.
"Since you were prepared to tell Wally and Angel," she said, "I guess it won't be that hard to really do it."
"After the harvest," he said; he took her hand, but when they came near the apple mart and the office light, they dropped hands and walked their separate ways.
"What's the bag for?" Candy asked him, before she kissed him good night.
"It's for me," said Homer Wells. "I think it's for me."
He fell asleep, marveling at what seemed to him to be the extreme control Mr. Rose had of his world--he even controlled the speed at which his daughter's daughter would be named (not to mention, probably, the name itself)! Homer woke up near dawn and took a fountain pen from his night table and used it to write, with a heavy finality, over the penciled number on the back of the photograph of the crew of Opportunity Knocks.
With the dark ink he followed the outline of the pencil; this permanency was reassuring--as if ink, as on a contract, was more binding than pencil. He couldn't have known that Candy was also awake; her stomach was upset, and she was looking for some medicine in her and Wally's bathroom. She also found it necessary to address the subject of the two hundred seventy times she and Homer had made love together since Wally had come home from the war, but Candy honored the finality of this number with less significance than Homer honored it. Instead of writing over the number in ink, Candy used her eraser to remove the evidence from the back of the photograph of her teaching Homer how to swim. Then her stomach calmed and she was able to sleep. It astonished her: how completely relaxed she was at the prospect that after the harvest, her life (as she'd grown used to it) would be over.
Homer Wells didn't try to go back to sleep; he knew his history on the subject of sleep; he knew there was no fighting history. He read an article in The New England Journal of Medicine about antibiotic therapy; he'd followed, for many years, the uses of penicillin and streptomycin. He was less familiar with Aureomycin and Terramycin, but he thought that antibiotics were easy to figure out. He read about the limited usage of neomycin; he made note of the fact that Achromycin and tetracycline were the same. He wrote erythromycin in the margin of the article, several times, until he was sure he knew how to spell it; Dr. Larch had taught him that method of familiarizing himself with something new.
"E-R-Y-T-H-R-O-M-Y-C-I-N," wrote Homer Wells--the apple doctor, as Mr. Rose had called him. He wrote that in the margin, too. "The apple doctor." And just before he got out of bed, he wrote, "A Bedouin Again."
In the morning, Candy sent Angel to the cider house to inquire if Rose Rose needed anything for the baby, and that was when Angel fell in love. He was shy with girls his own age; boys his own age, and a little older, always teased him about his name. He thought he was the only Angel in Maine. He was even shy in advance of meeting girls, anticipating when he would have to tell them his name. In Heart's Rock and Heart's Haven, the prettier, more confident girls in his class ignored him; they were interested in the older boys. The girls who appeared to like him were plain, sullen gossips who most enjoyed talking to other girls like themselves, about themselves--or about which boys had said what to whom. Every time Angel spoke to a girl, he knew his remarks were relayed that evening over the telephone to every other neglected girl in his class. The following morning, they would all smirk at him--as if he'd said the same, foolish thing to each of them. And so he learned to keep quiet. He watched the older girls in school; he approved of the ones who did the least amount of talking to their girlfriends. They struck him as more mature, by which he meant that they were actually doing things they would not want their girlfriends to know.
In 195_, girls Angel's age looked forward to dating; boys Angel's age--as in other times--looked forward to doing things.
Mr. Rose's daughter was not only the most exotic young woman Angel had ever seen; if she had a daughter, she must also have done things.
It was cold and damp in the cider house in the mornings; when Angel arrived there, Rose Rose was outside, in the sun, washing Baby Rose in a bucket. The baby was splashing, and Rose Rose was talking to her daughter; she didn't hear Angel walking up to her. Perhaps--since Angel had been brought up more by his father than by his mother--Angel was predisposed to be attracted to a Madonna scene. Rose Rose was only a few years older than Angel--she was so young that her maternity was startling. When she was with her baby, her gestures and her expressions were womanly, and she had a full, womanly figure. She was a little taller than Angel. She had a round, boyish face.
"Good morning," Angel said, startling Baby Rose in the bucket. Rose Rose wrapped her daughter in a towel and stood up.
"You must be Angel," she said shyly. She had a fine scar that sliced across the flange of one nostril and her upper lip; it made a nick in her gum, which Angel could see when she parted her lips. Later, he would see that the knife had stopped at the eyetooth and removed it, which accounted for her only partial smile. She would explain to him that the wound had killed the root of the tooth and that the tooth had fallen out later. He was so smitten when he first met her that even the scar was beautiful to him; it was her only apparent flaw.
"I wondered if I could help you get anything for the baby," Angel said.
"She seem to be teethin'," Rose Rose reported on her daughter. "She kind of cranky today."
Mr. Rose came out of the cider house; when he saw Angel, he waved and smiled, and then he walked over and put his arm around the boy. "How you doin'?" he asked. "You still growin', I think. I used to carry him on top of my head," he told Rose Rose. "He used to grab them apples I couldn't reach," Mr. Rose explained, punching Angel affectionately on the arm.
"I'm counting on growing a little more," Angel said--for Rose Rose's benefit. He wouldn't want her to think he had stopped growing; he wanted her to know that he would be taller than she, one day.
He wished he'd worn a shirt; it was not that he wasn't muscular, it was somehow more grown-up to wear a shirt. Then he imagined that she might approve of his summer tan, and so he relaxed about not having a shirt; he put his hands in the hip pockets of his jeans, and he wished he'd worn his baseball cap. It was a Boston Red Sox cap, and he had to get hold of it first thing in the morning if he was going to wear it--otherwise, Candy would wea
r it. They had been meaning to buy another baseball cap for two summers now; Candy owed him one because she'd admitted to tearing one of the sweat holes in the cap by poking a pencil through it.
Candy worked as a checker during the harvest, and she needed her pencil. This would be the second harvest that Angel would be a checker, and the second summer that he got to drive one of the tractors that hauled the apples out of the orchards.
When Angel told his father that Rose Rose's baby was teething, Homer knew what to do. He sent Angel (with Wally) to town to buy some pacifiers, and then he sent Angel back to the cider house with a package of pacifiers and a fifth of bourbon; Wally drank a very little bourbon from time to time, and the bottle was three-quarters full. Homer showed Angel how to dab whiskey on Baby Rose's gums.
"It numbs the gums," Angel explained to Rose Rose. He dipped his pinky finger in the whiskey, then he stuck his finger in Baby Rose's tiny mouth. At first, he was afraid he'd gag the baby girl, whose eyes instantly grew large and watery at the bourbon fumes; but then Baby Rose went to work on Angel's finger so ferociously that when he removed his finger to apply more bourbon, the baby cried to have the finger back.
"You gonna make her drunk," Rose Rose warned.
"No, I won't," Angel assured her. "I'm just putting her gums to sleep."
Rose Rose examined the pacifiers. They were rubber nipples, like the nipple on a baby's bottle, but without the hole and attached to a baby-blue plastic ring that was too big to swallow. The problem with using a regular bottle nipple, Angel Wells explained, was that the baby would keep sucking in air through the hole, and the air would give the baby burping fits or a gassy stomach.
"How come you know so much?" Rose Rose asked Angel, smiling. "How old are you?"
"I'm almost sixteen," Angel said. "How old are you?"
" 'Bout your age," she told him.
In the afternoon, when Angel came back to the cider house to see how the teething was going, Baby Rose was not the only Rose with a pacifier stuck in her mouth. Mr. Rose was sitting on the cider house roof, and Angel could see--from a considerable distance, because of the unreal, baby-blue hue of the plastic ring--that he had a pacifier in his mouth.