by John Irving
When Candy turned to him and saw his face, she couldn’t help it—both her hands opened and grasped his hands, the blond wisp of pubic hair flying free; a current of rough air carried it out over the river and into the darkness.
“Is it your heart?” Candy asked him. “Oh God, you don’t have to say anything—please don’t even think about it!”
“My heart,” he said. “You know about my heart?”
“You know?” she asked. “Don’t worry!” she added fiercely.
“I love you,” Homer Wells croaked, as if he were saying his last words.
“Yes, I know—don’t think about it,” Candy said. “Don’t worry about anything. I love you, too.”
“You do?” he asked.
“Yes, yes, and Wally too,” she said. “I love you and I love Wally—but don’t worry about it, don’t even think about it.”
“How do you know about my heart?” asked Homer Wells.
“We all know about it,” Candy said. “Olive knows, and Wally knows.”
Hearing this was more convincing to Homer Wells than even the offhand remarks in Dr. Larch’s letter; he felt his heart race out of control again.
“Don’t think about your heart, Homer!” Candy said, hugging him tightly. “Don’t worry about me, or Wally—or any of it.”
“What am I supposed to think about?” asked Homer Wells.
“Only good things,” Candy told him. When she looked into his eyes, she said suddenly, “I can’t believe that you kept my hair!” But when she saw the intensity of his frown, she said, “I mean, it’s okay—I understand, I guess. Don’t worry about it, either. It may be peculiar, but it’s certainly romantic.”
“Romantic,” said Homer Wells, holding the girl of his dreams—but only holding her. To touch her more would surely be forbidden—by all the rules—and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of a normal life. This is a normal life, he tried to think, holding Candy as both the night fog off the river and the darkness reached over them.
It was not a night that put them in the mood for a musical.
“We can see Fred Astaire dance another time,” Candy said philosophically.
The safety of the familiar drew them toward Raymond Kendall’s dock—when they got cold, sitting out there, they could always have some tea with Ray. They drove the van back to Heart’s Haven; nobody who knew them saw them come or go.
In the Fred Astaire movie, Mary Agnes Cork ate too much popcorn; her foster family thought that the poor girl was simply overstimulated by her first movie; she could not sit still. She watched the audience more than she watched the dancing; she searched every face in the flickering darkness. It was that pretty girl and that pretty boy she was looking for—and maybe Homer Wells. And so she was unprepared to spot the face in the crowd of the one person she missed most in her narrow world; the sight of that dark, heavy countenance shot such a stab of pain through her old collarbone injury that the popcorn container flew from her hands.
Melony loomed over the sassy blond girl named Lorna—hulking in her seat with the authority of a chronic and cynical moviegoer, looking like a sour critic born to be displeased, although this was her first movie. Even in the projector’s gray light, Mary Agnes Cork could not fail to recognize her old brutalizer, the ex-queen and former hit-woman of the girls’ division.
“I think you’ve had enough of that popcorn, sweetheart,” Patty Callahan told Mary Agnes, who appeared to have a kernel of the stuff caught in her throat. And for the rest of the evening’s frivolous entertainment, Mary Agnes could not keep her eyes off that most dominant member of the audience; in Mary Agnes Cork’s opinion, Melony could have wiped up a dance floor with Fred Astaire, she could have broken every bone in Fred’s slender body—she could have paralyzed him after just one waltz.
“Do you see someone you know, dear?” Ted Callahan asked Mary Agnes. He thought the poor girl was so stuffed with popcorn that she couldn’t talk.
In the lobby, in the sickly neon light, Mary Agnes walked up to Melony as if a dream led her feet—as if she were captured in the old, violent trance of Melony’s authority.
“Hi,” she said.
“You talking to me, kid?” Lorna asked, but Mary Agnes was smiling just at Melony.
“Hi, it’s me!” Mary Agnes said.
“So you got out?” Melony said.
“I’ve been adopted!” said Mary Agnes Cork. Ted and Patty stood a little nervously near her, not wanting to intrude but not wanting to let her very far from their sight, either. “This is Ted and Patty,” Mary Agnes said. “This is my friend, Melony.”
Melony appeared not to know what to make of the hands extended to her. The tough little broad named Lorna batted her eyes—some of her mascara sticking one of her eyelids in a frozen-open position.
“This is my friend, Lorna,” Melony said awkwardly.
Everyone said Hi! and then stood around. What does the little creep want? Melony was thinking.
And that was when Mary Agnes said, “Where’s Homer?”
“What?” Melony said.
“Homer Wells,” said Mary Agnes. “Isn’t he with you?”
“Why?” Melony asked.
“Those pretty people with the car . . .” Mary Agnes began.
“What car?” Melony asked.
“Well, it wasn’t the same car, it wasn’t the pretty car, but there was the apple on the door—I’ll never forget that apple,” Mary Agnes said.
Melony put her big hands heavily on Mary Agnes’s shoulders; Mary Agnes felt the weight pressing her into the floor. “What are you talking about?” Melony asked.
“I saw an old car, but it had that apple on it,” Mary Agnes said. “I thought they was at the movie, those pretty people—and Homer, too. And when I saw you, I thought he would be here for sure.”
“Where was the car?” Melony asked, her strong thumbs bearing down on both of Mary Agnes’s collarbones. “Show me the car!”
“Is something wrong?” Ted Callahan asked.
“Mind your own business,” Melony said.
But the van was gone. In the damp cold, on the slushy sidewalk, staring at the empty curbstone, Melony said, “Are you sure it was that apple? It had a double W, and it said Ocean View.”
“That’s it,” Mary Agnes said. “It just wasn’t the same car, it was an old van, but I’d know that apple anywhere. You don’t forget a thing like that.”
“Oh, shut up,” Melony said tiredly. She stood on the curb, her hands on her hips, her nostrils flared; she was trying to pick up a scent, the way a dog guesses in the air for the history of intrusions upon its territory.
“What is it?” Lorna asked Melony. “Was your fella here with his rich cunt?”
Ted and Patty Callahan were anxious to take Mary Agnes home, but Melony stopped them as they were leaving. She reached into her tight pocket and produced the horn-rimmed barrette that Mary Agnes had stolen from Candy, which Melony had taken for herself. Melony gave the barrette to Mary Agnes.
“Keep it,” Melony said. “You took it, it’s yours.”
Mary Agnes clutched the barrette as if it were a medal for bravery, for valorous conduct in the only arena that Melony respected.
“I hope I see ya!” Mary Agnes called after Melony, who was stalking away—the escaping Homer Wells might be around the next corner.
“What color was the van?” Melony called.
“Green!” said Mary Agnes. “I hope I see ya!” she repeated.
“You ever hear of an Ocean View?” Melony yelled back at the Callahans; they hadn’t. What are apples to antiques dealers?
“Can I see ya sometime?” Mary Agnes asked Melony.
“I’m at the shipyards,” Melony told the girl. “If you ever hear of an Ocean View, you can see me.”
“You don’t know it was him,” Lorna said to Melony later. They were drinking beer. Melony wasn’t talking. “And you don’t know if the rich cunt is still with him.”
They stood on the bank of the foggy Kennebec, near the boardinghouse where Lorna lived; when they’d finish a beer, they’d throw the bottle into the river. Melony was good at throwing things into rivers. She kept her face turned up; she was still smelling the wind—as if even that wisp of Candy’s pubic hair could not escape her powers of detection.
Homer Wells was also making a deposit in the water. Ploink! said the snails he threw off Ray Kendall’s dock; the sea made just the smallest sound in swallowing snails. Ploink! Ploink!
Candy and Homer sat with their backs against opposite corner posts at the end of the dock. If they’d both stretched out their legs to each other, the soles of their feet could have touched, but Candy sat with her knees slightly bent—in a position familiar to Homer Wells from his many views of women in stirrups.
“Is it okay?” Candy asked quietly.
“Is what okay?” he asked.
“Your heart,” she whispered.
How could he tell? “I guess so,” he said.
“It’ll be okay,” she said.
“What will be okay?” asked Homer Wells.
“Everything,” Candy said hurriedly.
“Everything,” repeated Homer Wells. “Me loving you—that’s okay. And you loving me, and Wally—that’s okay, too? Right,” he said.
“You have to wait and see,” Candy said. “For everything—you have to wait and see.”
“Right.”
“I don’t know what to do, either,” said Candy helplessly.
“We have to do the right thing,” Homer Wells said. Wally would want to do the right thing, and Dr. Larch was doing what he thought was the right thing, too. If you could be patient enough to wait and see, the right thing must present itself—mustn’t it? What else does an orphan do, anyway, but wait and see?
“I can be patient,” said Homer Wells.
Melony could be patient, too. And Ray Kendall, at his window above his dock—he could be patient, too. A mechanic is also patient; a mechanic has to wait for something to break before he can fix it. Ray stared at the distance between his daughter’s feet and the feet of Homer Wells; it was not much of a distance, and he had observed his daughter on his dock many times in Wally’s arms, and, before that, when Candy and Wally had also sat on that dock with their feet not touching.
They were three good kids, Ray was thinking. But he was a mechanic; he knew better than to interfere. When it breaks, then he would fix it; he felt sorry for them all.
“I can drive you back to school tomorrow,” Homer said.
“My dad can drive me back,” Candy said. “I think he likes to.”
Olive Worthington looked at the clock on her night table and turned out her reading lamp; Homer never stayed out this late with Debra Pettigrew, she was thinking. Olive had no trouble imagining Candy’s attraction to Homer Wells; Olive had the greatest respect for Homer’s diligence. She had seen him be a better student—and of the rabbit, of all things!—than Wally had ever been, and she knew he was a reliable and friendly companion, too. Olive fumed to herself. She felt that typical contradiction a parent so often feels: completely on her son’s side—she even wanted to warn him, to help his cause—but at the same time Wally could stand to be taught a lesson. Just maybe not this lesson, Olive thought.
“Well, thank goodness, they are three nice people!” she said aloud, her own voice in the empty house surprising her and thoroughly waking her up. Some hot chocolate would be soothing, she thought; and when Homer comes home, he can have some with me.
But in the kitchen Olive was struck by how the fog, shot through with a cloudy moonlight, made the raft in the swimming pool look quite ghostly. The raft was poised at the side of the pool, half in the water and half out, like a very gray and shadowy photograph of itself. The image disturbed her, and Olive decided she’d had enough of that raft. She put on a pair of boots and a long winter coat over her nightgown. It bothered her that the outdoor patio light was not working; only the underwater lights would turn on, and she was surprised to see that the water in the pool had finally frozen. That was the reason for the raft’s arrested position. It was trapped as rigidly as a statue, like a ship seized in an ice floe. Being careful to hold tight to the pool curb, she kicked tentatively at the ice with the heel of her boot, but when she tugged the raft, it would not come free. If I walk out there, I’ll fall right through, she thought.
That was when Homer came home. She heard the van in the driveway and she called to him.
“What do you want done with it?” Homer asked Olive about the raft.
“Just get it out,” Olive said to him.
“And then what?” he asked.
“Throw it away,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’ll make you some hot chocolate.”
Homer struggled with the raft. The ice, which would not support all his weight, was hard enough to have a firm grip on the raft. Very cleverly, he eased himself onto the raft, hoping it still had enough air in it so that it wouldn’t sink once he broke the bond with the ice. He rocked back and forth on his knees on the raft until he could feel the ice breaking. Then he rocked his way through more of the ice and climbed up on the pool curb and pulled the raft out of the pool after him. Ice still clung to it; it was so heavy, he had to drag it. When he got to the trash barrels, he needed to deflate the raft in order to stuff it in a barrel. The nozzle was rusted shut, and even by jumping with both feet, he couldn’t break the tough canvas hide.
He went into the garden shed and found a pair of hedge shears; with the thinner blade, he stabbed a gash in the raft and snipped upward—the stale, rubbery air blasting into his face. It was moist and fetid, and when he tore the hole wider, the smell washed over him—strangely warm in the cold night air, and strangely foul. It was not only the smell of someone’s old sneakers left out in the rain; there was also something putrid about it and he couldn’t help viewing the slashed object as he might have viewed a ripped intestine. He stuffed the raft into a trash barrel, but when he went into the house for his hot-chocolate reward, the smell remained on his hands even after he had washed them. He stuck his nose into the hollow in the palm of his hand; the smell was still there. Then he recognized the smell: it was what was left on his hands after he removed the rubber gloves.
“How’s Candy?” Olive asked.
“Fine,” said Homer Wells.
They sipped their hot chocolate—like mother and son, both of them were thinking; and, at the same time, not like mother and son, they both thought.
“And how are you?” Olive asked him, after a while.
“Just fine,” said Homer Wells, but what he thought was: I’m going to wait and see.
Wilbur Larch, inhaling and seeing the stars race across the ceiling of the dispensary, knew what a luxury it was: to be able to wait and see. Even if I last, he thought, I might get caught; an abortionist believes in odds. He had been in the business too long. What are the odds that someone will blow the whistle before I’m through? the old man wondered.
Only yesterday he had made a new enemy—a woman in her eighth month who said it was only her fourth. He had to refuse her. When the women were hysterical, he usually could wait them out; if they required firmness, he gave them Nurse Angela; Nurse Edna was better at handholding. In time, they calmed down. If, in his opinion, a woman was simply too late—if he felt he had to refuse to perform the abortion—he usually could convince the woman she would be safe at St. Cloud’s; that he would deliver the baby and find it a home, and that this was preferable to the risk involved in a late abortion.
But not this woman. There had been no hysterics. The peacefulness of a long-standing hatred made the woman almost serene.
“So that’s it—you won’t do it,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Larch said.
“How much do you want?” the woman asked him. “I can get it.”
“Whatever you can afford to donate to the orphanage would be appreciated,” Larch said. “If you can’t afford anything, then everythin
g is free. An abortion is free, delivery is free. A donation is appreciated. If you have nowhere to go, you’re welcome to stay here. You don’t have long to wait.”
“Just tell me what I have to do,” the woman said. “Do I fuck you? Okay, I’ll fuck you.”
“I want you to have this baby and let me find it a home,” Wilbur Larch said. “That’s all I want you to do.”
But the woman had stared right through him. She struggled out of the overstuffed chair in Nurse Angela’s office. She regarded the paperweight on Larch’s desk; it was a weighted vaginal speculum, but it held down a lot of paper and most of the would-be foster families didn’t know what it was. The woman who wanted the late abortion clearly knew what it was; she stared at it as if the sight of it gave her cramps. Then she looked out the window, where (Dr. Larch imagined) she intended to hurl the paperweight.
She picked up the weighted speculum and pointed the jaw of the thing at Larch, as if it were a gun.
“You’ll be sorry,” the woman said.
In his ether haze, Wilbur Larch saw the woman point the speculum at him again. How will I be sorry? he wondered.
“I’m sorry,” he said aloud. Nurse Edna, passing in the hall—ever passing—thought, You’re forgiven; I forgive you.
It was Sunday, and overcast—as usual. The same Fred Astaire movie that was entertaining the residents of Bath was playing in Orono, and the students at the University of Maine in 194_ were not yet so cynical that they failed to enjoy it. Wally went to the movie with some of his friends. During the afternoon matinee, they didn’t interrupt the show with the news that interrupted the rest of the world. They allowed Fred Astaire to dance on, and on, and the moviegoers heard the news after the show, when they stepped out of the comforting dark of the theater into the late-afternoon daylight of downtown Orono.
Candy was returning to Camden with her father. Raymond Kendall was especially proud of the radio reception he had engineered for his Chevrolet; it was much clearer reception than was possible, at the time, in a standard car radio, and Ray had made the whiplash antenna himself. Candy and her father heard the news as soon as anyone in Maine heard it, and they heard it loud and clear.