by John Irving
“I think you’d be more comfortable inside,” he murmured to her.
“Yes, thank you,” Candy said, not able to look in his eyes now.
Larch, seeing the girl walk toward the hospital entrance—recognizing that deliberate way of walking that predictably happens to someone who’s watching her own feet—thought suddenly, Oh, it’s just another abortion, that’s all this is about. He turned to follow the girl and Homer, just as Smoky Fields finished the jar of jelly and began to eat a jar of honey. Smoky ate with no apparent satisfaction; but he ate so methodically that even when he was jostled by a nearby orphan, he never took his eyes from his little paw as it scooped its way into the jar. When he was severely jostled, a kind of growl—or gurgle—caught in his throat, and he hunched his shoulders forward as if to protect the jar from other predators.
Homer led the way to Nurse Angela’s office; at the threshold he saw the dead baby’s hands reaching above the edge of the white enamel examining tray, which still rested on Nurse Angela’s typewriter. The baby’s hands were still waiting for the ball, but Homer’s reflexes were quick enough; he turned full circle in the doorway, pushing Candy back into the hall. “This is Doctor Larch,” Homer said to Candy, introducing them while he herded them down the hall to the dispensary. Wilbur Larch did not remember that there was a dead baby on top of the typewriter in Nurse Angela’s office.
He said crossly to Homer, “Shouldn’t we let Miss Kendall sit down?” He didn’t remember that the dead stationmaster was in the dispensary, either, and when he saw the moron’s muddy shoes, he pulled Homer aside and whispered harshly to him. “Have you no feeling for this poor girl?” Homer whispered back that he thought the partial view of a dead man was preferable to the whole view of a dead baby.
“Oh,” Wilbur Larch said.
“I’ll deliver the woman from Damariscotta,” Homer added to Dr. Larch, still whispering.
“Well, don’t be in too big a hurry,” Larch whispered.
“I mean I won’t have anything to do with this one,” Homer whispered back, looking at Candy. “I won’t even look at her, do you understand?”
Dr. Larch regarded the young woman. He thought he understood, a little. She was a very pretty young woman, even Dr. Larch could see that, and he’d not seen Homer so agitated in anyone’s presence before. Homer fancies he’s in love! thought Dr. Larch. Or he fancies that he’d like to be. Have I been utterly insensitive? Larch wondered. Is the boy still enough of a boy to need to romanticize women? Or is he enough of a man to desire to romance women, too?
Wally was introducing himself to Homer Wells. Wilbur Larch thought, Here’s the one with apples for brains; why is he whispering? It didn’t occur to Dr. Larch that Wally thought, by his partial view of the stationmaster, that the stationmaster was asleep.
“If I could have just a moment’s peace with Miss Kendall,” said Wilbur Larch, “we can all meet each other another time. Edna will assist me with Miss Kendall, please, and Angela—would you help Homer with the Damariscotta woman? Homer,” Dr. Larch explained to Wally and to Candy, “is a very accomplished midwife.”
“You are?” Wally said to Homer enthusiastically. “Wow.”
Homer Wells maintained silence. Nurse Angela, bristling at the word “midwife”—at the condescension she quite correctly heard in Dr. Larch’s tone—touched Homer’s arm very gently and said to him, “I’ll give you a count of the contractions.” Nurse Edna, whose uncritical love for Dr. Larch beamed forth ever brightly, cheerfully pointed out that various people had to be moved both from and to various beds if a room was to be made ready for Candy.
“Please do it, then,” Dr. Larch said. “If I could just have a moment alone with Miss Kendall,” he repeated, but he saw that Homer seemed riveted; Homer was unaware that he was staring at Candy. The boy has gone gaga on me, thought Wilbur Larch, and he saw no indication that Apple Brains intended to leave the dispensary. “If I could just explain a little of the process to Miss Kendall,” Wilbur Larch said to Wally (it appeared hopeless to address Homer). “I’d like her to know about the bleeding, later—for example,” Larch added, intending that the word “bleeding” would have some effect on Wally’s apple-bright complexion. It did—perhaps in combination with the overpowering atmosphere of ether in the dispensary.
“Is someone going to cut her?” he asked Homer pathetically; Homer caught Wally’s arm and pulled him abruptly away. He pulled him so quickly along the hall and got him outdoors so fast that Wally almost escaped being sick at all. As it was, completely owing to Homer’s good reflexes, Wally didn’t throw up until the two of them were behind the boys’ division—on the particular hillside Wally had suggested planting with apple trees, the very hillside where Homer Wells’s shadow had only recently outdistanced Dr. Larch’s.
The two young men walked up and down and across the hill, in straight lines—respecting the rows of trees Wally was planting in his imagination.
Homer, politely, explained the procedure that Candy would undergo, but Wally wanted to talk about apple trees.
“This hill is perfect for your standard forty-by-forty plot,” Wally said, walking forty feet in one direction, then making a perfect right-angle turn.
“If she’s in the first three months,” Homer noted, “there really shouldn’t be any work with the forceps, just the standard dilatation—that means dilating the opening to the uterus—and then curetting—that’s scraping.”
“I’d recommend four rows of McIntosh, then one row of Red Delicious,” Wally said. “Half of the trees should be Macs. I’d mix up the rest—maybe ten percent Red Delicious, another ten or fifteen percent Cortlands and Baldwins. You’ll want a few Northern Spies, and I’ll throw in some Gravensteins—they’re a great apple for pies, and you get to pick them early.”
“There’s no actual cutting,” Homer told Wally, “although there will be some bleeding—we call it spotting, actually, because it’s usually not very heavy bleeding. Doctor Larch has a great touch with ether, so don’t worry—she won’t feel a thing. Of course, she’ll feel something afterward,” admitted Homer. “It’s a special sort of cramp. Doctor Larch says that the other discomfort is psychological.”
“You could come back to the coast with us,” Wally told Homer. “We could load a truck full of baby trees, and in a day or two we could come back here and plant the orchard together. It wouldn’t take too long.”
“It’s a deal,” said Homer Wells. The coast, he thought. I get to see the coast. And the girl. I get to ride in that car with that girl.
“A midwife, gosh,” Wally said. “I guess you’re probably going to be a doctor?”
“I don’t think so,” said Homer Wells. “I don’t know yet.”
“Well, apples are in my family,” Wally said. “I’m going to college, but I really don’t know why I bother.”
College, thought Homer Wells.
“Candy’s father is a lobsterman,” Wally explained, “but she’s going to go to college, too.”
Lobster! thought Homer Wells. The bottom of the sea!
From the bottom of the hill, Nurse Angela was waving to them.
“Damariscotta is ready!” she called to Homer Wells.
“I have to go deliver someone’s baby,” Homer told Wally.
“Gosh,” Wally said. He seemed reluctant to leave the hill. “I think I’ll stay up here. I don’t think I want to hear anything,” he added; he gave Homer a likable and confessional smile.
“Oh, there’s not much noise,” Homer said; he wasn’t thinking of the Damariscotta woman; he was thinking of Candy. He thought of the gritty sound the curette made, but he’d spare his new friend that detail.
He left Wally on the hill and jogged toward Nurse Angela; he looked back at Wally once and waved. A boy his own age! A boy his own size! They were the same height, although Wally was more muscular—from sports, Dr. Larch had guessed. He has the body of a hero, Dr. Larch thought, remembering the heroes he had tried to help in France, in World War I. Lea
n but well muscled: that was a hero’s body—and shot full of holes, thought Wilbur Larch. He didn’t know why Wally’s body reminded him of this.
And Wally’s face? Wilbur Larch was thinking. It was handsome in a finer way than Homer’s face, which was also handsome. Although Wally’s body was stronger, his bones were somewhat sharper—and more delicate. There wasn’t a trace of anger in Wally’s eyes; they were the eyes of good intentions. The body of a hero, and the face . . . the face of a benefactor! concluded Wilbur Larch, brushing aside a blond curl of pubic hair that had not gone directly into the refuse bag but had clung to Candy’s inner thigh, near her raised, bent knee. He exchanged the medium-sized curette for the smaller one, noting that the girl’s eyelids were fluttering, noting Nurse Edna’s gentle thumbs—massaging the girl’s temples—and the girl’s slightly parted lips; she had been remarkably relaxed for such a young girl, and under ether she was even more composed. The beauty in her face, Larch thought, was that she was still free of guilt. It surprised Larch: how Candy looked as if she would always be free of it.
He was aware of Nurse Edna observing the scrutiny he was giving to the girl, and so he bent once more to the view the speculum afforded him and finished his task with the small curette.
A benefactor, thought Wilbur Larch. Homer has met his benefactor!
Homer Wells was thinking on parallel lines. I have met a Prince of Maine, he was thinking; I have seen a King of New England—and I am invited to his castle. In all his journeys through David Copperfield, at last he understood young David’s first vision of Steerforth. “He was a person of great power in my eyes,” young Copperfield observed. “No veiled future glanced upon him in the moonbeams. There was no shadowy picture of his footsteps, in the garden that I dreamed of walking in all night.”
“No veiled future,” thought Homer Wells. I am going to the coast!
“Push,” he said to the woman from Damariscotta. “Is Damariscotta on the coast?” he asked the woman, whose neck was taut with straining—who held Nurse Angela’s hand in a white-knuckled grip.
“Near it!” the woman cried, and shoved her child forth into St. Cloud’s—its slick head captured perfectly in the palm of Homer’s confident right hand. He slipped the heel of his hand under the baby’s fragile neck; his left hand lifted the baby’s bottom as he guided the baby “outdoors”—as Dr. Larch would say.
It was a boy. Steerforth, Homer Wells would name this one—his second solo delivery. Homer cut the cord and smiled to hear young Steerforth’s healthy bawling.
Candy, coming out of ether, heard the baby’s cries and shuddered; if Dr. Larch had seen her face at that moment, he might have detected some guilt upon it. “Boy or girl?” she asked, her speech slurred. Only Nurse Edna heard her. “Why is it crying?” Candy asked.
“It was nothing, dear,” Nurse Edna said. “It’s all over.”
“I would like to have a baby, one day,” Candy said. “I really would.”
“Why, of course, dear,” Nurse Edna told her. “You can have as many as you want. I’m sure you’d have very beautiful children.”
“You’d have Princes of Maine!” Dr. Larch told Candy suddenly. “You’d have Kings of New England!”
Why, the old goat, Nurse Edna thought—he’s flirting! Her love for Larch felt momentarily ruffled.
What a strange idea, Candy thought—I can’t see what they would look like. Her mind drifted for a while. Why is the baby crying? she wondered. Wilbur Larch, cleaning up, noticed another curly clump of her pubic hair; it was the same tawny tone of Candy’s skin, which was doubtlessly why Nurse Edna had missed it. He listened to the cries of the Damariscotta woman’s baby and thought that he mustn’t be selfish; he must encourage Homer to make friends with this young couple. He stole a look at the dozing girl; opportunity shone from her like light.
And people will always eat apples, he thought—it must be a nice life.
The apple enameled on the Cadillac’s door—and monogrammed in gold—was of special interest to Melony, who managed to prod herself into action; she tried to steal the apple on the door before she realized it wouldn’t come off. Mary Agnes’s arrival at the girls’ division—with her scrawny arms hoarding jars of jelly and honey—had prompted Melony to go see for herself what was going on. She thought, sourly, how it was typical how nothing had been left for her—not even a glimpse of the beautiful people; she wouldn’t have minded another look at them. There was nothing worth stealing, she could see at a glance—just an old book; it was fate, she would think later, that the title of the book and the name of its author were visible to her. The book appeared discarded on the car’s floor. Little Dorrit meant nothing to Melony, but Charles Dickens was a name she recognized—he was a kind of hero to Homer Wells. Without thinking that this was her life’s first unselfish act, she stole the book—for Homer. At the time, she wasn’t even thinking how it might press him, how it might gain for her some favorable light in his eyes. She thought only generously: Oh look, a present for Sunshine!
It meant more to her than she could ever admit to herself: that Homer had promised never to leave St. Cloud’s without her.
Then she saw Wally; he was walking toward the Cadillac, in the direction of the hospital entrance, but he kept turning around to look at the hill. In his mind, he saw the orchard at harvest time—the long ladders were in the trees, the pickers were the orphans themselves. The bushel crates were stacked in the rows between the trees; in one row a tractor towed a flatbed trailer already heavy with apples. It looked like a good crop.
Where will they get a tractor? Wally wondered. He tripped, caught his balance, looked where he was walking—toward the abandoned Cadillac. Melony was gone. She’d lost her nerve. The thought of confronting that handsome young man, alone—she wasn’t sure if she could have tolerated his indifference. If he’d been clearly appalled by her appearance, that wouldn’t have bothered Melony; she rather enjoyed her ability to shock people. But she could not bear the thought that he might not even notice her. And if he’d handed her a jar of honey, she’d have cracked his skull with it. Nobody honeys me, she thought—Little Dorrit slipped inside her shirt, against her thudding heart.
She crossed the road between the boys’ and girls’ divisions just as the stationmaster’s assistant was climbing the same road, toward the hospital. At first she didn’t recognize him—he was so dressed up. To Melony he was just a simpleton in overalls, a busybody who tried to fashion for himself an air of self-importance out of what Melony imagined was the world’s stupidest job: watching for trains to arrive, and then watching them leave. The loneliness of the railroad station depressed Melony; she avoided the place. You went there for one thing: to leave. But to stand there all day, imagining leaving—could there be anything sadder, or more stupid, than that? And now here was this oaf, still wearing his year-long effort to grow a moustache, but dressed to kill—well, no, Melony realized: he’s dressed for a funeral.
That was it: the plain but ambitious boy had been impressed by the white Cadillac; he’d conceived that the stationmaster’s job was his for the taking if he exhibited a proper and adult solemnity regarding the stationmaster’s passing. He was terrified of Dr. Larch, and the idea of pregnant women made him feel furtive; but he had imagined that paying his respects at the orphanage, where the stationmaster’s body reposed, was a grueling but necessary rite of passage. The spit-up smell he associated with babies made him nauseous, too; an unusual bravery had guided him to the orphanage, giving his silly, young face an almost adult countenance—except for the silky smudge that marred his upper lip and made all his efforts at manhood ridiculous. He had also burdened himself for the uphill climb by carrying all the catalogues; the stationmaster wouldn’t be needing them now, and his assistant imagined that he could ingratiate himself to Dr. Larch by bringing the catalogues as a present—a kind of peace offering. He had not bothered to consider what use Wilbur Larch would have for seeds and lingerie, or how the old doctor would respond to declarations reg
arding the peril of souls—his own and many restless others.
The two orphans the stationmaster’s assistant most despised were Homer and Melony. Homer, because his serenity gave him a confident, adult appearance that the assistant felt powerless to achieve; and Melony, because she mocked him. Now, to make a bad day worse, here was Melony—blocking his way.
“What’s that on your lip? A fungus?” Melony asked him. “Maybe you should wash it.” She was bigger than the stationmaster’s assistant, especially now that she stood uphill from him. He tried to ignore her.
“I’ve come to view the body,” he said with dignity—had he any sense, he should have known these words were ill chosen for presentation to Melony.
“Wanna view my body?” she asked him. “I’m not kidding,” she added, when she saw how lost he was, and frightened. Melony had an instinct for pressing any advantage, but she relented when her adversary was too easy. She saw that the stationmaster’s assistant would go on standing in the road until he dropped from fatigue, and so she stepped aside for him, and said, “I was kidding.”
He stumbled ahead, blushing, and had almost turned the corner by the boys’ division when she called after him, “You’d have to shave before I’d let you!” He staggered slightly, causing Melony to marvel at her power; then he turned the corner and felt himself uplifted by the gleaming Cadillac—by what he mistook for the white hearse. If, at that moment, a choir had erupted into heavenly voice, the assistant would have fallen to his knees, the catalogues spilling around him. The same light that blessed the Cadillac seemed to shine forth from the blond hair of the powerful-looking young man: the driver of the hearse. Now there was a responsibility that awed the stationmaster’s assistant!