by John Irving
“I guess I imagined someone who looked like you,” Homer said to Wally.
Candy remembered that Dr. Larch had said this to her, too: that he’d told her that her babies would be these princes, these kings. “But I didn’t know what he meant,” she said. “I mean, he was nice—but it was unimaginable.”
“It still is unimaginable to me,” Wally said. “I mean, what you saw,” he said to Homer. “What all of you imagined—it must have been different, for each of you.” Wally was unwilling to accept the notion that someone who looked like himself would ever be adequate to the expression.
“It sounds a little mocking,” Candy said. “I just can’t see what he meant.”
“Yeah,” Wally agreed. “It sounds a little cynical.”
“Maybe it was,” said Homer Wells. “Maybe he said it for himself and not for us.”
He told them about Melony, but not everything about her. He took a deep breath and told them about Fuzzy Stone; he imitated the breathing contraption admirably—he had them both so roaring with laughter at the racket he was making that they drowned out the insignificant ploink of the snails dropping into the sea. Wally and Candy didn’t know they were at the end of the story until Homer simply arrived at it. “Fuzzy Stone has found a new family,” he repeated to them. “Good night, Fuzzy,” he concluded hollowly.
There wasn’t a sound, then, not even a snail; the sea lapped at the dock posts; the boats moored around them rocked on the water. When a line was pulled taut and yanked out of the water, you could hear the water drip off the line; when the thicker ropes were stretched, they made a noise like grinding teeth.
“Curly Day was the first boy I circumcised,” Homer Wells announced—just to change the subject from Fuzzy Stone. “Doctor Larch was there when I did it,” Homer said, “and a circumcision is no big deal—it’s really easy.” Wally felt his own penis inch toward itself like a snail. Candy felt a cramp knot in her calf and she stopped swinging her legs off the edge of the dock; she drew her heels up to her buttocks and hugged her knees. “Curly was the first one,” Homer said. “I made it a little lopsided,” he confessed.
“We could drive up to Boothbay and see how he’s doing,” Wally suggested.
What would we see? Candy wondered. She imagined Curly peeing all over the Cadillac again, and telling them again that he was the best one.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Homer said.
He went with Wally back to Ocean View and wrote Dr. Larch a long letter—his longest so far. He tried to tell Larch about the drive-in movie, but the letter degenerated into a critique of the movie itself, and so he tried to change the subject.
Should he tell him about Herb Fowler carrying all the prophylactics? (Although Dr. Larch approved of everyone using prophylactics, he would hardly have approved of Herb Fowler.) Should he tell Larch that he had learned the real purpose of the drive-in? Wasn’t it to tease oneself and one’s date into a state of sexual frenzy—which neither of you were allowed to act upon? (Dr. Larch would certainly not think highly of that.) Should he tell Dr. Larch what Grace Lynch had said and done, or how he dreamed about her—or how he imagined he was falling in love, or already had fallen in love, with Candy (which he knew was forbidden)? And how do I say, “I miss you”? he wondered—when I don’t mean, “I want to come back!”?
And so he ended the letter in his fashion; he ended it inexactly. “I remember when you kissed me,” he wrote to Dr. Larch. “I wasn’t really asleep.”
Yes, thought Dr. Larch, I remember that, too. He rested in the dispensary. Why didn’t I kiss him more—why not all the time? In other parts of the world, he dreamed, they have drive-in movies!
He always used more ether than he should have before the annual meeting of St. Cloud’s board of trustees. He’d never quite understood what a board of trustees was for, and his impatience with the routine inquiries was growing. In the old days, there’d been the Maine State board of medical examiners; they’d never asked him any questions—they never wanted to hear from him. Now it appeared to Wilbur Larch that there was a board of trustees for everything. This year there were two new board members who’d never before seen the orphanage, and so the meeting had been scheduled to take place in St. Cloud’s—the board usually met in Portland. The new members wanted to see the place; the old members agreed they should refresh themselves with the atmosphere.
It was a perfect August morning, with more indications of September in the air’s crispness than there were indications of the stifling carry-over of July’s humidity and hazy heat; but Larch was irritable.
“I don’t know, ‘exactly,’ what a drive-in movie is,” he said crossly to Nurse Angela. “Homer doesn’t say, ‘exactly.’ ”
Nurse Angela looked frustrated. “No, he doesn’t,” she agreed, going over the letter again and again.
“What do you do with your cars when you’re watching the movie?” Nurse Edna asked.
“I don’t know,” Dr. Larch said. “I assume that if you drive into something to see the movie, you must stay in your cars.”
“But what do you drive into, Wilbur?” Nurse Edna asked.
“That’s what I don’t know!” Larch shouted.
“Well, aren’t we in a lovely mood?” Nurse Angela said.
“Why would you want to bring your car to a movie in the first place?” Nurse Edna asked.
“I don’t know the answer to that, either,” Dr. Larch said tiredly.
Unfortunately, he looked tired during the trustees meeting, too. Nurse Angela tried to present some of the orphanage’s priorities for him; she didn’t want him to get bad-tempered with anyone on the board. The two new members seemed in an awful hurry to demonstrate that they already understood everything—and Nurse Angela detected Dr. Larch looking at these younger members with something of the look he had formerly reserved for Clara, in the days when Larch would discover that Homer’s cadaver hadn’t been put away properly.
The new woman on the board had been appointed for her abilities at fund-raising; she was especially aggressive. She’d been married to a Congregationalist missionary who’d committed suicide in Japan, and she had returned to her home state of Maine with a zeal for putting her considerable energies to work for something “doable.” Japan had not been at all “doable,” she kept saying. Maine’s problems, by comparison, were entirely surmountable. She believed that all Maine needed—or lacked—was organization, and she believed every solution began with “new blood”—a phrase, Nurse Angela observed, that caused Dr. Larch to pale as if his own blood were trickling away from him.
“That’s an unfortunate expression for those of us familiar with hospital work,” Dr. Larch snapped once, but the woman—Mrs. Goodhall—did not look sufficiently bitten.
Mrs. Goodhall expressed, albeit coldly, her admiration for the severity and the duration of Dr. Larch’s “undertaking” and her respect for how much experience Larch and his assistants had with administering St. Cloud’s; perhaps they all could be invigorated by a younger assistant. “A young intern—a willing toiler, and with some new ideas in the obstetrical field,” Mrs. Goodhall suggested.
“I keep up with the field,” Dr. Larch said. “And I keep up with the number of babies born here.”
“Well, then, how about a new administrative assistant?” Mrs. Goodhall suggested. “Leave the medical practice to you—I’m talking about someone with a grasp of some of the newer adoption procedures, or just someone who could handle the correspondence and the interviewing for you.”
“I could use a new typewriter,” Dr. Larch said. “Just get me a new typewriter, and you can keep the assistant—or give the assistant to someone who’s really doddering around.”
The new man on the board was a psychiatrist; he was rather new at psychiatry, which was rather new in Maine in 194_. His name was Gingrich; even with people he had just met, he had a way of assuming he understood what pressure they were under—he was quite sure that everyone was under some pressure. Even if he
was correct (about the particular pressure you were under), and even if you agreed with him (that there indeed was a certain pressure, and indeed you were under it), he had a way of assuming he knew other pressures that preyed upon you (which were always unseen by you). For example, had he seen the movie that began with the Bedouin on the camel, Dr. Gingrich might have assumed that the captive woman was under great pressure to marry someone—although it was clearly her opinion that all she wanted was to get free. His eyes and introductory smile communicated a cloying sympathy that you perhaps did not deserve—as if he were imparting by the imposed gentleness of his voice and the slowness with which he spoke, the assurance that everything is much more subtle than we can suppose.
The older members of the board—all men, all as elderly as Larch—were intimidated by this new man who spoke in whispers and by this new woman who was so loud. In tandem, they seemed so sure of themselves; they viewed their new roles on the board not as learning experiences, or even as an introduction to orphanage life, but as opportunities for taking charge.
Oh dear, Nurse Edna thought.
There’s going to be trouble, as if we need any, Nurse Angela thought. It wouldn’t have hurt to have a young intern around, or an administrative assistant, either; but she knew that Wilbur Larch was protecting his ability to perform the abortions. How could he accept new appointees without knowing the person’s beliefs?
“Now, Doctor Larch,” Dr. Gingrich said softly, “surely you know we don’t think of you as doddering.”
“Sometimes I think of myself as doddering,” Larch said defensively. “I suppose you might think so, too.”
“The pressure you must be under,” Dr. Gingrich said. “Someone with all your responsibilities should have all the help he can get.”
“Someone with my responsibility should stay responsible,” Larch said.
“With the pressure you must be under,” said Dr. Gingrich, “it’s no wonder you find it hard to delegate even a little of that responsibility.”
“I have more use for a typewriter than for a delegate,” Wilbur Larch said, but when he blinked his eyes he saw those bright stars that populated both a clear Maine night and the firmament of ether, and he wasn’t sure which stars they were. He rubbed his face with his hand, and caught Mrs. Goodhall scribbling something on the impressively thick pad before her.
“Let’s see,” she said—sharply, by comparison to Dr. Gingrich’s wispy voice. “You’re in your seventies, now—is that correct? Aren’t you seventy-something?” she asked Dr. Larch.
“Right,” said Wilbur Larch. “Seventy-something.”
“And how old is Missus Grogan?” Mrs. Goodhall asked suddenly, as if Mrs. Grogan weren’t present—or as if she were so old that she was incapable of answering for herself.
“I’m sixty-two,” Mrs. Grogan said pertly, “and I’m as lively as a spring chicken!”
“Oh, no one doubts you’re not lively!” said Dr. Gingrich.
“And Nurse Angela?” Mrs. Goodhall asked, not looking up at anyone; the scrutiny of her own writing on the pad before her required every ounce of her exhaustive attention.
“I’m fifty-eight,” Nurse Angela said.
“Angela is as strong as an ox!” Mrs. Grogan said.
“We don’t doubt it!” said Dr. Gingrich cheerfully.
“I’m fifty-five or fifty-six,” Nurse Edna offered, before the question was raised.
“You don’t know how old you are?” Dr. Gingrich asked meaningfully.
“Actually,” said Wilbur Larch, “we’re all so senile, we can’t remember—we’re just guessing. But look at you!” he said suddenly to Mrs. Goodhall, which did get Mrs. Goodhall to raise her eyes from her pad. “I guess you have such trouble remembering things,” Larch said, “that you have to write everything down.”
“I’m just trying to get the picture of what’s going on here,” Mrs. Goodhall said evenly.
“Well,” Larch said. “I suggest you listen to me. I’ve been here long enough to have the picture pretty clearly in mind.”
“It’s very clear what a wonderful job you’re doing!” Dr. Gingrich told Dr. Larch. “It’s also clear how hard a job it is.” Such a warm washcloth kind of sympathy was leaking from Dr. Gingrich that Larch felt wet—and grateful that he wasn’t sitting near enough to Dr. Gingrich for Dr. Gingrich to touch him; Gingrich was clearly a toucher.
“If it’s not asking too much, in the way of your support,” Dr. Larch said, “I’d not only like a new typewriter; I’d like permission to keep the old one.”
“I think we can arrange that,” Mrs. Goodhall said.
Nurse Edna, who was not accustomed to sudden insights—or, despite her years, hot flashes—and was completely inexperienced with the world of omens and signs or even forewarnings, felt a totally foreign and breathtaking violence rise from her stomach. She found herself staring at Mrs. Goodhall with a hatred Nurse Edna couldn’t conceive of feeling for another human being. Oh dear, the enemy! she thought; she had to excuse herself—she was sure she was going to be ill. (She was, but discreetly, out of sight, in the boys’ shower room.) Only David Copperfield, still mourning the departure of Curly Day, and still struggling with the language, spotted her.
“Medna?” young Copperfield asked.
“I’m fine, David,” she told him, but she was not fine. I have seen the end, she thought with an unfamiliar bitterness.
Larch had seen it, too. Someone will replace me, he realized. And it won’t be long. He looked at his calendar; he had two abortions to perform the next day, and three “probables” near the end of the week. There were always those who just showed up, too.
And what if they get someone who won’t perform one? he thought.
When the new typewriter arrived, it fit—just in time—into his plans for Fuzzy Stone.
“Thank you for the new typewriter,” Larch wrote to the board of trustees. It had arrived “just in time,” he added, because the old typewriter (which, if they remembered, he wanted to keep) had completely broken down. This was not true. He had the keys replaced on the old typewriter, and it now typed a story with a different face.
What it typed were letters from young Fuzzy Stone. Fuzzy began by wanting Dr. Larch to know how much he was looking forward to being a doctor when he grew up, and how much Dr. Larch had inspired him to make this decision.
“I doubt that I will ever come to feel as you do, regarding abortion,” young Fuzzy wrote to Dr. Larch. “Certainly, it is obstetrics that interests me, and certainly your example is responsible for my interest, but I expect we shall never agree about abortion. Although I know you perform abortions out of the most genuine beliefs and out of the best intentions, you must permit me to honor my beliefs accordingly.”
And on and on. Larch covered the years; he wrote into the future, leaving a few convenient blanks. Larch completed Dr. F. Stone’s training (he put him through medical school, he gave him fine obstetrical procedure—even a few variances from Dr. Larch’s procedure, which Dr. Larch had Dr. Stone describe). And always Fuzzy Stone remained faithful to his beliefs.
“I’m sorry, but I believe there is a soul, and that it exists from the moment of conception,” Fuzzy Stone wrote. He was slightly pompous-sounding, as he grew up, close to unctuous in his graciousness toward Larch, even capable of condescension at times—the kind of patronizing a young man will indulge in when he thinks he has “developed” beyond his teacher. Larch gave Fuzzy Stone an unmistakable self-righteousness, which he imagined all supporters of the existing law against abortion would feel at home with.
He even had young Dr. Stone propose that he replace Dr. Larch—“but not until you’re ready to retire, of course!”—and that by this replacement it might be demonstrated to Dr. Larch that the law should be observed, that abortions should not be performed, and that a safe and informative view of family planning (birth control, and so forth) could in time achieve the desired effect (“. . . without breaking the laws of God or man,” wrote a convincingly
creepy Fuzzy Stone).
“The desired effect”—both Dr. Larch and Dr. Stone agreed—would be a minimum of unwanted children brought forth into the world. “I, for one, am happy to be here!” crowed young Dr. Stone. He sounds like a missionary! thought Wilbur Larch. The idea of making a missionary out of Fuzzy appealed to Dr. Larch for several reasons—among them: Fuzzy wouldn’t need a license to practice medicine if he took his magic to some remote and primitive place.
It exhausted Larch, but he got it all down—one typewriter for Fuzzy that was used for nothing else, and the new one for himself. (He made carbons of his own letters and referred to his “dialogue” with young Dr. Stone in various fragments, which he contributed to A Brief History of St. Cloud’s.)
He imagined that their correspondence ended, quite abruptly, when Larch refused to accept the idea that anyone should replace him who was unwilling to perform abortions. “I will go until I drop,” he wrote to Fuzzy. “Here in St. Cloud’s, I will never allow myself to be replaced by some reactionary religious moron who cares more for the misgivings suffered in his own frail soul than for the actual suffering of countless unwanted and mistreated children. I am sorry you’re a doctor!” Larch ranted to poor Fuzzy. “I am sorry such training was wasted on someone who refuses to help the living because of a presumptuous point of view taken toward the unborn. You are not the proper doctor for this orphanage, and over my dead body will you ever get my job!”
What he heard from Dr. Stone, after that, was a rather curt note in which Fuzzy said he needed to search his soul regarding his personal debt to Dr. Larch and his “perhaps larger debt to society, and to all the murdered unborn of the future”; it was hard, Fuzzy implied, to listen to his conscience and not “turn in” Dr. Larch “. . . to the authorities,” he added ominously.
What a good story! thought Wilbur Larch. It had taken him the rest of August of 194_. He wanted to leave the matter all set up—all arranged—when Homer Wells returned to St. Cloud’s from his summer job.