Cider House Rules

by John Irving

  “Sunshine,” Melony said, finding a small pane of glass that hadn’t been smashed—and smashing it. “Sunshine, we’ve got nobody. If you tell me we’ve got each other, I’ll kill you.”

  It had not occurred to Homer to offer this or any other suggestion to Melony; he kept silent.

  “If you tell me we’ve got your favorite Doctor Larch, or this whole place,” she said—stamping her foot through a floorboard, trying to pry the floorboard loose with both hands—“if you tell me that, I’ll torture you before I kill you.”

  “Right,” said Homer Wells.

  With the floorboard in both hands, Melony attacked the banister of the main staircase; the banister was knocked apart easily, but the banister post, which anchored the whole railing in the downstairs hall, remained upright. Melony dropped the floorboard and seized the banister post in a bear hug.

  “Goddamn you!” she screamed—at Dr. Larch, at her mother, at St. Cloud’s, at the world. She wrestled the post to the floor; it was still attached to a main support beam, under the floorboards, but Melony swung a piece of the banister railing like a club until she was able to knock the post free. When she tried to lift the post, and couldn’t, she turned to Homer Wells.

  “Can’t you see I need help?” she said to him.

  Together, they lifted the post; using it as a battering ram, they knocked down the kitchen wall.

  “Why aren’t you angry?” she asked Homer. “What’s wrong with you? You’re never going to find out who did this to you! Don’t you care?”

  “I don’t know,” said Homer Wells. Together, they ran the post head-on into what appeared to be a fairly major beam; maybe it supports the second floor, thought Homer Wells. They hit the beam three blows, bouncing off in a different direction each time; with the fourth try, they cracked it. Something in the building above them appeared to shift. Melony dropped her share of the banister post and bear-hugged the cracked beam; she tried to run with the beam, her momentum carrying her over the doorsill, out onto the porch. One of the upstairs’ bunkrooms fell downstairs, into the kitchen; when that happened, the porch roof partially collapsed, and what remained of the porch railing was launched into the river. Even Melony seemed impressed with this much destruction; she took Homer Wells by the hand and almost gently led him upstairs—more than half the upstairs was still upstairs, including the bunkroom where the pony and the woman had entertained a former woodsman of St. Cloud’s.

  “Help me,” Melony said softly to Homer Wells. They went to the window and together managed to wrest the shutter free of the one hinge that held it; they watched it fall straight through the porch roof and pass even more easily through the porch floorboards before it splashed in the river. “Neat, huh?” Melony asked dully.

  She sat on the mattress where they’d been kneeling when the snake hit the roof. “Help me,” Melony said again; she indicated to Homer that he should sit beside her.

  “Help me, or I’m going to run away,” she told him, “help me, or I’m going to kill someone.” These notions seemed vaguely parallel if not equal to her. Homer realized that it was not easy for him, in the case of Melony, “to be of use,” but he tried.

  “Don’t kill anyone,” he said. “Don’t run away.”

  “Why stay?” she countered. “You’re not staying—I don’t mean you’ll run away, I mean someone will adopt you.”

  “No, they won’t,” Homer said. “Besides, I wouldn’t go.”

  “You’ll go,” Melony said.

  “I won’t,” Homer said. “Please, don’t run away—please don’t kill anyone.”

  “If I stay, you’ll stay—is that what you’re saying?” Melony asked him. Is that what I mean? thought Homer Wells. But Melony, as usual, gave him no time to think. “Promise me you’ll stay as long as I stay, Sunshine,” Melony said. She moved closer to him; she took his hand and opened his fingers and put his index finger in her mouth. “Lucky pony,” Melony whispered, but Homer Wells wasn’t sure if the pony had been so lucky. The old building gave a groan. Melony slid his index finger in and out of her mouth. “Promise me you’ll stay as long as I stay, Sunshine,” she said.

  “Right,” said Homer Wells. She bit him. “I promise,” Homer said. More of the upstairs fell into the kitchen; there was a sympathetic shriek from the twisted beams that still supported what was left of the porch roof.

  What was it that distracted him—when Melony, finally, found his tiny penis and put it into her mouth? He was not afraid that the old building would collapse and kill them both; this would have been a reasonable fear. He was not thinking about the history of the mattress they were lying on; its history was violent—even by Melony’s standards. He was not thinking of his own lost history, and he wasn’t thinking that his being with Melony was or wasn’t a betrayal of Dr. Larch. In part, the noise distracted Homer; there was the noise that Melony made with her mouth—and her breathing—and then there was his own breathing. The racket of this passion reminded him of little Fuzzy Stone and the energy of those mechanisms that struggled to keep Fuzzy alive. That such wet, breathy effort was made in Fuzzy’s behalf seemed to emphasize how fragile his life was.

  Homer grew only a little bigger in Melony’s mouth; when he started to grow smaller, Melony increased her efforts. Homer’s major distraction was the photograph itself, which he saw very clearly. He could even see the dust-free rectangle on the wall where the photograph had been. If the photograph had, at first, inspired him to imagine this act with Melony, now the photograph directly blocked his ability to perform at all. If the woman in the photograph had, at first, encouraged him to think of Melony, now the woman, and Melony, seemed only abused. The pony’s brute insensitivity remained the same: the dumb beast’s inappropriate passivity. Homer felt himself grow tinier than he felt he’d ever been.

  Melony was humiliated; she shoved him away. “Goddamn you!” she screamed at him. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? And don’t you tell me there’s anything wrong with me!”

  “Right,” Homer said, “there isn’t.”

  “You bet there isn’t!” Melony cried, but her lips looked sore—even bruised—and he saw tears in the anger in her eyes. She yanked the mattress out from under him; then she folded it in half and threw it out the window. The mattress fell on the roof and stuck half through the hole the shutter had made. This seemed to enrage Melony: that the mattress hadn’t passed cleanly through to the river. She began to dismantle the bunk bed nearest her, crying while she worked. Homer Wells, as he had retreated from her outrage at the “gleams of sunshine,” retreated from her now. He sneaked down the weakened stairs; when he stepped on the porch, it gave a sharp creak and slumped in the direction of the river, momentarily throwing him off-balance. He heard what sounded like several bunk beds, or a part of a wall, landing on the roof above him; he fled for open ground. Melony must have seen him through the upstairs window.

  “You promised me, Sunshine!” she screamed at him. “You promised you wouldn’t leave me! As long as I stay, you stay!”

  “I promise!” he called to her, but he turned away and started down the river, along the bank, heading back to the occupied buildings of St. Cloud’s and to the orphanage on the hill above the river. He was still on the riverbank, near the water’s edge, when Melony managed to dislodge the overhanging porch (the porch roof went with it); he stood and watched what looked like half the building float downstream. Homer imagined that Melony—given time enough—could possibly rid the landscape of the entire town. But he didn’t stay to watch her ongoing efforts at destruction. He went directly to his bed in the sleeping room of the boys’ division. He lifted his mattress; he intended to throw the photograph away, but it was gone.

  “It wasn’t me,” said Fuzzy Stone. Although it was midday, Fuzzy was still in the sleeping room, imprisoned in his humidified tent. That meant, Homer knew, that Fuzzy was having a kind of relapse. The tent, at night, was Fuzzy’s home, but when Fuzzy spent the day in the tent, the tent was referred to as his “treatme
nt.” He had to have what Dr. Larch called “tests” all the time, too, and every day, everyone knew, he had to have a shot. Homer stood next to the flapping, breathing, gasping contraption and asked Fuzzy Stone where the photograph was. Homer was informed that John Wilbur had wet his bed so thoroughly that Nurse Angela had told him to lie down on Homer’s bed while she replaced the ruined mattress. John Wilbur had found the photograph; he showed it to Fuzzy and to a few of the other boys who were around—among them, Wilbur Walsh and Snowy Meadows; Snowy had thrown up.

  “Then what happened?” Homer asked Fuzzy, who was already out of breath. Fuzzy was nine; next to Homer Wells, he was the oldest orphan in the boys’ division. Fuzzy said that Nurse Angela had come back with a fresh mattress for John Wilbur and she had seen the photograph; naturally, she’d taken it away. Of course, John Wilbur had told her where he’d found it. By now, Homer knew, Nurse Edna would have seen it, and Dr. Larch would have seen it, too. It crossed Homer’s mind to go find John Wilbur and hit him, but the boy was too small—he would only pee; there would be this new evidence against Homer.

  “But what was it?” Fuzzy Stone gasped to Homer.

  “I thought you saw it,” Homer said.

  “I saw it, but what was it?” Fuzzy repeated. He looked genuinely frightened.

  Snowy Meadows had thought that the woman was eating the pony’s intestines, Fuzzy explained; Wilbur Walsh had run away. John Wilbur had probably peed some more, thought Homer Wells. “What were they doing?” Fuzzy Stone pleaded. “The woman,” Fuzzy said with a gasp, “how could she? How could she breathe?” Fuzzy asked breathlessly. He was wheezing badly when Homer left him. In the daylight Fuzzy seemed almost transparent, as if—if you held him up to a bright enough source of light—you could see right through him, see all his frail organs working to save him.

  Dr. Larch was not in Nurse Angela’s office, where Homer had expected to find him; Homer was thankful that Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela were not around; he felt especially ashamed to face them. Outside the hospital entrance he could see Nurse Angela talking to the man who hauled away the nonburnable trash. The issue of their conversation was John Wilbur’s old mattress. Homer went to the dispensary to see if Dr. Larch was there.

  It had been quite a day for Wilbur Larch, who had reclined on his hospital bed in the dispensary with a gauze cone that was more heavily saturated with ether than was his usual habit. The reported vandalism to the so-called sawyer’s lodge had upset Larch less than it had disturbed certain townspeople who had witnessed the damage done by Homer and Melony—mostly by Melony, Dr. Larch was sure. What are abandoned buildings for? Dr. Larch wondered—if not for kids to vandalize, a little? The report that half the building had floated downriver was surely exaggerated.

  He inhaled and thought about what had really upset him: that photograph. That woman with the pony.

  Larch was not bothered that Homer Wells had the picture; teenagers were interested in that kind of thing. Larch knew that Homer never would have shown it to the younger boys; that Homer had kept such a photograph meant to Wilbur Larch that it was time Homer was given more serious, adult responsibilities. It was time to step up the apprenticeship.

  And the photograph itself—to Larch—was not that upsetting. After all, he had worked in the South End. Such photographs were everywhere; in Wilbur Larch’s days at the Boston Lying-In, such pictures cost a dime.

  What troubled Larch was the particular woman in the photograph; he had no trouble recognizing Mrs. Eames’s brave daughter. Larch had seen her cheeks puffed out before—she was a veteran cigar smoker, no stranger to putting terrible things in her mouth. And when she’d been brought to his door with acute peritonitis, the result of whatever unspeakable injuries she had suffered “Off Harrison,” her eyes had bulged then. To look at the photograph reminded Larch of the life she must have had; it reminded him, too, that he could have eased the pain of her life—just a little—by giving her an abortion. The photograph reminded Larch of a life he could have—even if only momentarily—saved. Mrs. Eames’s tragic daughter should have been his first abortion patient.

  Wilbur Larch looked at the photograph and wondered if Mrs. Eames’s daughter had been paid enough for posing with the pony to be able to afford the abortion fee “Off Harrison.” Probably not, he concluded—it wasn’t even a very good photograph. Whoever had posed the participants had been careless with the young woman’s stunning, dark pigtail; it could have been draped over her shoulder, or even been made to lie near her breast, where its darkness would have accented the whiteness of her skin. It could have been flung straight back, behind her head, which at least would have emphasized the pigtail’s unusual thickness and length. Obviously, no one had been thinking about the pigtail. It lay off to the side of Mrs. Eames’s daughter’s face, curled in a shadow that was cast by one of the pony’s stout, short, shaggy legs. In the photograph, the pigtail was lost; you had to know Mrs. Eames’s daughter to know what that dark shape off to the side of the woman’s straining face was.

  “I’m sorry,” Larch said, inhaling. Mrs. Eames’s daughter did not respond, so he said again, “I’m sorry.” He exhaled. He thought he heard her calling him.

  “Doctor Larch!”

  “Rhymes with screams,” Wilbur Larch murmured. He took the deepest possible breath. His hand lost touch with the cone, which rolled off his face and under the bed.

  “Doctor Larch?” Homer Wells said again. The smell of ether in the dispensary seemed unusually strong to Homer, who passed through the labyrinth of medicine chests to see if Dr. Larch was on his bed.

  “Shit or get off the pot!” he heard Dr. Larch say. (Inhale, exhale.) “I’m sorry,” Dr. Larch said when he saw Homer beside his bed. He sat up too fast; he felt very light-headed; the room was swimming. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

  “That’s okay,” said Homer Wells. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

  “Rhymes with screams,” said Wilbur Larch.

  “Pardon me?” said Homer Wells.

  In the closed dispensary, a fragrant mothball sent its vapory messages everywhere.

  “Sit down, Homer,” said Dr. Larch, who realized that Homer was already sitting beside him on the bed. Larch wished his head was clearer; he knew this was an important confrontation for the boy. Homer expected to be reprimanded, and not in uncertain terms, but Larch feared he might not be in the best shape for sounding certain.

  “Vandalism!” Larch launched in. “Pornography!” Now there’s a start, he thought, but the boy sitting beside him just waited patiently. Larch took a gulp of what he hoped was clearer air; the fragrance of ether was still heavily present in the dispensary; the air in the immediate vicinity was alternately drowsy and sparkling with little stars.

  “Vandalism is one thing, Homer,” Larch said. “And pornography—quite another.”

  “Right,” said Homer Wells—growing older, learning something new every day.

  “More central to our relationship, Homer, is the issue of you deceiving me. Right?”

  “Right,” Homer said.

  “Fine,” Larch said.

  The stars sparkled so brightly on the ceiling of the dispensary that for a moment Dr. Larch thought that their dialogue was taking place under the nighttime firmament. He tipped his head back, to escape the fumes, but he lost his balance and fell back on the bed.

  “Are you okay?” Homer asked him.

  “Fine!” Larch boomed heartily. Then he started to laugh.

  It was the first time Homer Wells had heard Dr. Larch laugh.

  “Listen, Homer,” Dr. Larch said, but he giggled. “If you’re old enough to vandalize whole buildings and masturbate to pictures of women giving blow jobs to ponies, then you’re old enough to be my assistant!” This struck Larch as so funny that he doubled up on the bed. Homer thought it was a funny thing to say, too, and he began to smile. “You don’t get it, do you?” Larch asked, still giggling. “You don’t get what I mean.” He lay on his back and waved his feet in the air while the fir
mament of stars circled above them. “I’m going to teach you surgery!” Larch shouted at Homer, which dissolved both of them into tears of laughter. “Obstetrical procedure, Homer,” Larch said; Homer, now, fell back on the bed, too. “The Lord’s work and the Devil’s, Homer!” Larch said, hooting. “The works!” he screamed. Homer started to cough, he was laughing so hard. He was surprised when Larch—like a magician—produced the photograph of the woman and the pony and waved it in front of him. “If you’re old enough even to contemplate this,” Larch said, “you’re old enough to have a grown-up’s job!” This cracked up Larch so completely that he had to hand the photograph to Homer Wells—or else he would have dropped it.

  “Listen, Homer,” Larch said. “You’re going to finish medical school before you start high school!” This was especially funny to Homer, but Dr. Larch suddenly grew serious. He snatched the photograph back from Homer. “Look at this,” he commanded. They sat on the edge of the bed and Larch held the photograph steady on his knee. “I’ll show you what you don’t know. Look at that!” he said, pointing to the pigtail, obscured in the shadow of the pony’s leg. “What is it?” he asked Homer Wells. “Teen-agers: you think you know everything,” Larch said threateningly. Homer caught the new tone of voice; he paid close attention to this part of the picture he’d never looked at before—a stain on the rug, maybe, or was it a pool of blood from the woman’s ear?

  “Well?” Larch asked. “It’s not in David Copperfield. It’s not in Jane Eyre, either—what you need to know,” he added almost nastily.

  The medical slant of the conversation convinced Homer Wells that it was a pool of blood in the photograph—that only a doctor could recognize it so positively. “Blood,” Homer said. “The woman’s bleeding.” Larch ran with the photograph to the lamp at the dispensary counter.