by John Irving
When he had returned to St. Cloud’s, Dr. Larch wrote to Bowdoin and Harvard, requesting copies of the transcripts of a few outstanding graduates; he had narrowed the choices down to these few, he told them. A copy of Fuzzy’s transcript came in the mail with the others.
When Larch had visited Harvard Medical School, he’d taken a Cambridge post office box in Fuzzy’s name. Now he wrote to the postmaster there, requesting the mail for F. Stone be forwarded to St. Cloud’s. The P.O. box address would be useful, too, if young Dr. Stone were to pursue his zealous instincts to a mission abroad. Then he sent an empty envelope to the Cambridge address and waited for its return.
When the letter came back to him—when he was sure the system worked—he composed the rest of the history regarding F. Stone and his adoptive family (named Eames) and sent it along to the board of trustees, together with Fuzzy’s address. He did not have to invent anything regarding Curly Day; he cringed to write the name Roy Rinfret; and he told the truth regarding Snowy Meadows and most of the others, although he had difficulty typing “the furniture Marshes” without laughing out loud, and when he came to the case of Homer Wells, he thought very carefully about how to word the matter of Homer’s heart.
Among the members of the board, there wasn’t a heart specialist or a radiologist, or even a surgeon; there was a very old GP who, Dr. Larch felt sure, never read anything at all. Larch didn’t count Dr. Gingrich as a doctor; he counted psychiatrists as nothing at all, and he felt confident that he could bully Mrs. Goodhall with the slightest terminology.
He confessed to the board (isn’t everyone flattered by a confidence?) that he had refrained from mentioning the matter of Homer’s heart to Homer; he admitted to stalling but argued that worrying the boy might contribute to his problem, and he wanted the boy to gain confidence in the outside world before burdening him with this dangerous knowledge—yet he intended to burden Homer with it, shortly. Larch said he had informed the Worthingtons of the heart defect; they might therefore be more than usually protective of Homer; he had not bothered to explain the presence of the actual murmur to them, or to detail the exact characteristics of pulmonary valve stenosis. He would be happy to provide the board with such details, should they request them. He had fun imagining Mrs. Goodhall scrutinizing an X ray.
He concluded that he thought the board’s request for the follow-up reports had been a good idea and that he had enjoyed himself immensely in preparing them; contrary to needing an administrative assistant to perform such a service, Dr. Larch said he had felt “positively energized” by the “welcome task”—since, he added, following up on his orphans’ adoptive lives was always on his mind. And sometimes right off the top of my head, he thought.
He was exhausted, and forgot to circumcise a newborn baby boy whom Nurse Angela had prepared for the operation. He mistook a woman awaiting an abortion for a woman he’d delivered the previous day, and therefore told her that her baby was very healthy and doing fine. He spilled a small amount of ether on his face and needed to irrigate his eye.
He became cross because he had overdosed prophylactics—he had far too many rubbers around. Since Melony had left, no one was stealing the rubbers anymore. When he thought of Melony, he became worried, which also made him cross.
He returned to Nurse Angela’s office and wrote a report, which was real, concerning David Copperfield’s lisp; he neglected to mention that David Copperfield had been delivered and named by Homer Wells. He wrote a slightly fictitious report on the orphan called Steerforth, remarking that his delivery was so straightforward that Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela had been able to handle it entirely without a doctor’s assistance. He wrote the truth about Smoky Fields: the boy hoarded food, a trait that was more common in the girls’ division than in the boys’, and Smoky was beginning to exhibit a pattern of insomnia that Larch had not witnessed at St. Cloud’s “since the days of Homer Wells.”
The memory of those days brought instant tears to his eyes, but he recovered himself sufficiently to write that both he and Mrs. Grogan were worried about Mary Agnes Cork: she had exhibited frequent depressions since Melony’s departure. He also told the truth about Melony, although he chose not to include any acts of vandalism. Larch wrote of Mary Agnes: “Perhaps she sees herself as inheriting Melony’s former position, but she hasn’t the dominating character that usually attends any powerful or leadership role.” That idiot Dr. Gingrich is going to like that, Larch imagined. “Role,” Larch said aloud, scornfully. As if orphans have the luxury of imagining that they have roles.
Impulsively, he went to the dispensary and inflated two prophylactics. Got to use these things up in some way, he thought. He used a laundry-marking pen to write the name GINGRICH on one prophylactic and the name GOODHALL on the other. Then he took these jolly balloons and went in search of Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna.
They were in the girls’ division, having tea with Mrs. Grogan, when Dr. Larch found them.
“A-ha!” Larch said, surprising the ladies, who were unused to see him making an appearance in the girls’ division except for the evening dose of Jane Eyre—and even more unused to see him waving marked prophylactics in their faces.
“Doctor Gingrich and Missus Goodhall, I presume!” Larch said, bowing to everyone. Whereupon he took a scalpel and popped the prophylactics. On the floor above them, Mary Agnes Cork heard the noise and sat up in her bed where she had been lying in a sullen depression. Mrs. Grogan was too stunned to speak.
When Dr. Larch left the ladies with their tea and returned to the hospital, Nurse Edna was the first to say something. “Wilbur works so hard,” she said cautiously. “Isn’t it a wonder that he can find the time to be playful?”
Mrs. Grogan was still struck speechless, but Nurse Angela said, “I think the old man is losing his marbles.”
Nurse Edna appeared to be personally wounded by this remark; she returned her teacup to her saucer very steadily before she spoke. “I think it’s the ether,” she said quietly.
“Yes and no,” said Nurse Angela.
“Do you think it’s Homer Wells, too?” Mrs. Grogan asked.
“Yes,” Nurse Angela said. “It’s ether and it’s Homer Wells, and it’s old age, and it’s those new members on the board. It’s just everything. It’s Saint Cloud’s.”
“It’s what happened to Melony, too,” Mrs. Grogan said, but she burst into tears when she said Melony’s name. Upstairs, Mary Agnes Cork heard Melony’s name and cried.
“Homer Wells will be back, I just know it,” Nurse Angela said, but this so dissolved her in tears that Nurse Edna was obliged to comfort both her and Mrs. Grogan. “There, there,” Nurse Edna said to them, but she wondered: where is the young man or the young woman who’s going to take care of us all?
“Oh Lord,” began Mrs. Grogan. Upstairs, Mary Agnes Cork bowed her head and clasped her hands; by pressing the heels of her hands together at a certain angle, she could revive a little of the pain from her old collarbone injury. “Oh Lord,” Mrs. Grogan prayed, “support us all day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.”
That night, in the darkness, in keeping with the moan of an owl, Nurse Edna whispered “Amen” to herself while she listened to Dr. Larch making his rounds, kissing each of the boys—even Smoky Fields, who hoarded his food and hid it in his bed, which smelled, and who only pretended to be asleep.
On the Ferris wheel, high above the carnival grounds and the beach at Cape Kenneth, Homer Wells was trying to spot the roof of the cider house, but it was dark and there were no lights on in the cider house—and even if the cider house had been lit, or there had been the clearest daylight imaginable, the house was too far away. Only the brightest carnival lights, especially the distinctive lights of the Ferris wheel, were visible from the cider house roof; the visibility didn’t exist the other way around.
“I want to be a pilot,” Wally said. “I want to fly, I really do. If I
had my pilot’s license, and my own plane, I could do all the spraying at the orchards—I’d get a crop duster, but I’d paint it like a fighter. It’s so clumsy, driving those dumb sprayers around behind those dumb tractors, up and down those dumb hills.”
It was what Candy’s father, Ray, was doing at the moment; Meany Hyde was sick, and Everett Taft, the foreman, had asked Ray if he’d mind driving a night spray—Ray knew the equipment so well. It was the last spray before harvest, and somewhere in the blackened inland greenery that lay below the Ferris wheel, Raymond Kendall and Vernon Lynch were spraying their way through Ocean View.
Sometimes Wally sprayed; Homer was learning how. And sometimes Herb Fowler sprayed, but Herb protested against night spraying. (“I have better things to do at night,” he’d say.) It was better to spray at night because the wind dropped in the evenings, especially along the coast.
Wally wasn’t spraying tonight because it was his last night home; he was going back to college in the morning.
“You’ll look after Candy for me, won’t you, Homer?” Wally asked, as they loomed above the rocky coast and Cape Kenneth’s crowded beach; the scarce bonfires from the summer’s-end beach parties winked; the wheel descended.
Candy would finish her senior year at the girls’ academy in Camden; she’d get home most weekends, but Wally would stay in Orono except for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the longer vacations.
“Right,” said Homer Wells.
“If I were flying—in the war,” Wally said. “If I joined, and if I flew, I mean, if I were in a bomber, I’d rather be in the B-24 than the B-25. I’d rather be strategic than tactical, bomb things not people. And I wouldn’t want to fly a fighter in the war. That’s shooting people, too.”
Homer Wells didn’t know what Wally was talking about; Homer didn’t follow the war—he didn’t know the news. A B-24 was a four-engine, heavy bomber that was used for strategic bombing—bridges, oil refineries, fuel depots, railroad tracks. It hit industry, it didn’t drop its bombs on armies. That was the work of the B-25—a medium, tactical bomber. Wally had studied the war—with more interest than he pursued his botany (or his other courses) at the University of Maine. But the war, which was called—in Maine, in those days—“the war in Europe,” was very far from Homer’s mind. People with families are the people who worry about wars.
Do Bedouins have wars? wondered Homer Wells. And if they do, do they much care?
He was eager for the harvest to start; he was curious about meeting the migrants, about seeing the Negroes. He didn’t know why. Were they like orphans? Did they not quite belong? Were they not quite of sufficient use?
Because he loved Wally, he resolved to keep his mind off Candy. It was the kind of bold resolve that his sense of elevation, on the Ferris wheel, enhanced. And this evening there was a plan; Homer Wells—an orphan attached to routine—liked for every evening to have a plan, even if he was not that excited about this one.
He drove Wally, in Senior’s Cadillac, to Kendall’s Lobster Pound, where Candy was waiting. He left Candy and Wally there. Ray would be out spraying for several hours, and Candy and Wally wanted a private good-bye together before Ray came home. Homer would go pick up Debra Pettigrew and take her to the drive-in in Cape Kenneth; it would be their first drive-in without Candy and Wally, and Homer wondered if the touch-this-but-not-that rules would vary when he and Debra were alone. As he navigated an exact path through the Pettigrews’ violent dogs, he was disappointed in himself that he wasn’t dying to find out whether Debra would or wouldn’t. A particularly athletic dog snapped very loudly, near his face, but the chain around the dog’s neck appeared to strangle the beast in midair; it landed solidly on its rib cage, with a sharp groan, and was slow getting to its feet. Why do people want to keep dogs? Homer wondered.
It was a Western movie, from which Homer could only conclude that crossing the country in a wagon train was an exercise in lunacy and sorrow; at the very least, he thought, one should make some arrangements with the Indians before starting out. The film was void of arrangements, and Homer was unable to arrange for the use of Herb Fowler’s rubbers, which he kept in his pocket—“in case.” Debra Pettigrew was substantially freer than she had ever been before, but her ultimate restraint was no less firm.
“No!” she yelled once.
“There’s no need to shout,” said Homer Wells, removing his hand from the forbidden place.
“Well, that’s the second time you did that particular thing,” Debra pointed out—a mathematical certainty (and other certainties) apparent in her voice. In Maine, in 194_, Homer Wells was forced to accept that what they called “necking” was permitted; what they called “making out” was within the rules; but that what he had done with Melony—what Grace Lynch appeared to be offering him, and what Candy and Wally did (or had done, at least once)—to all of that, the answer was “No!”
But how did Candy ever get pregnant? Homer Wells wondered, with Debra Pettigrew’s damp little face pressed to his chest. Her hair tickled his nose, but he could just manage to see over her—he could witness the Indian massacre. With Herb Fowler dispensing prophylactics even faster than Dr. Larch passed them out to the women at St. Cloud’s, how could Wally have let her get pregnant? Wally was so provided for; Homer Wells couldn’t understand why Wally was even interested in war. But would an orphan ever worry that he was spoiled, or untested? Is an orphan ever bored, or restless—or are those luxurious states of mind? He remembered that Curly Day had been bored.
“Are you asleep, Homer?” Debra Pettigrew asked him.
“No,” he said, “I was just thinking.”
“Thinking what?” Debra asked.
“How come Wally and Candy do it, and we don’t?” Homer asked her.
Debra Pettigrew appeared to be wary of the question, or at least she was surprised by its bluntness; she was cautious in composing an answer.
“Well,” she began philosophically. “They’re in love—Wally and Candy. Aren’t they?”
“Right,” said Homer Wells.
“Well, you never said you were in love—with me,” Debra added. “And I never said I was—with you.”
“That’s right,” Homer said. “So it’s against the rules to do it if you aren’t in love?”
“Look at it this way,” said Debra Pettigrew; she bit her lower lip. It was absolutely as hard as she had ever thought. “If you’re in love and there’s an accident—if somebody gets pregnant, is what I mean; then if you’re in love, you get married. Wally and Candy are in love, and if they have an accident, they’ll get married.”
Maybe, thought Homer Wells, maybe the next time. But what he said was, “I see.” What he thought was, So those are the rules! It’s about accidents, it’s about getting pregnant and not wanting to have a baby. My God, is everything about that?
He considered taking the rubber out of his pocket and presenting it to Debra Pettigrew. If the argument was that an accidental pregnancy was really the only reason for not doing it, what did she think of the alternative that Herb Fowler so repeatedly presented? But by arguing in this fashion, wouldn’t he be suggesting that all intimacy could be crudely accounted for—or was crude itself? Or was intimacy crude only for him?
In the movie, several human scalps were dangling from a spear; for reasons unfathomable to Homer Wells, the Indians carried on and on about the spear as if such a spear were a treasure. Suddenly a cavalry officer had his hand pinned to a tree by an arrow; the man went to great lengths (using his teeth and his other hand) to free the arrow from the tree, but the arrow still stuck very prominently through his hand. An Indian with a tomahawk approached the cavalry officer; it looked like the end of him, especially since he insisted on trying to cock his pistol with the thumb of the hand that had the arrow stuck through it.
Why doesn’t he use his good hand? Homer Wells wondered. But the thumb worked; the pistol—finally—was cocked. Homer Wells concluded from this demonstration that the arrow had managed to pass through t
he hand without damaging the branch of the median nerve that goes to the muscles of the thumb. Lucky man, thought Homer Wells, as the cavalry officer shot the approaching Indian in the heart—it must be the heart, thought Homer Wells, because the Indian died instantly. It was funny how he could see the pictures of the hand in Gray’s Anatomy more clearly than he could see the movie.
He took Debra home, begging her forgiveness for not offering to walk her to her door; one of the dogs was loose, it had broken its chain, and it pawed furiously at the driver’s-side window (which Homer had rolled up, just in time). It breathed and slobbered and clicked its teeth against the glass, which became so fogged and smeared that Homer had difficulty seeing when he turned the Cadillac around.
“Cut it out, Eddy!” Debra Pettigrew was screaming at the dog as Homer drove away. “Would you just cut it out, Eddy, please!” But the dog chased the Cadillac for nearly a mile.
Eddy? thought Homer Wells. Didn’t Nurse Angela name someone Eddy, once? He thought so; but it must have been someone who was adopted quickly—the way it was supposed to be done.
By the time he got to Kendall’s Lobster Pound, Ray was home. He was making tea and warming his deeply lined, cracked hands on the pot—under his ragged nails was the mechanic’s permanent, oil-black grime.
“Well, look who survived the drive-in!” Ray said. “You better sit a while and have some tea with me.” Homer could see that Candy and Wally were out on the dock, huddled together. “Lovebirds don’t feel the cold, I guess,” Ray said to Homer. “It don’t look like they’re finished saying good-bye.”
Homer was happy to have the tea and to sit with Ray; he liked Ray and he knew Ray liked him.
“What’d you learn today?” Ray asked him. Homer was going to say something about the drive-in rules but he guessed that wasn’t what Ray meant.
“Nothing,” said Homer Wells.