by John Irving
“A wanted baby!” Nurse Angela said. “We’re going to have a wanted baby!”
“If not a planned one,” said Wilbur Larch, who stared out the window of Nurse Angela’s office as if the hill that rose outside the window had personally risen against him. “And I suppose he’s going to plant the damn trees,” said Dr. Larch. “What does he want a baby for? How can he have a baby and go to college—or to medical school?”
“When was he ever going to go to medical school, Wilbur?” Nurse Edna asked.
“I knew he’d be back!” Nurse Angela shouted. “He belongs with us!”
“Yes, he does,” said Wilbur Larch. Involuntarily, and somewhat stiffly, his back straightened, his knees braced, his arms reached out and the fingers of his hands partially opened—as if he were preparing to receive a heavy package. Nurse Edna shuddered to see him in such a pose, which reminded her of the fetus from Three Mile Falls, that dead baby whose posture of such extreme supplication had been arranged by Homer Wells.
Homer said to Olive Worthington: “I hate to leave, especially with Christmas coming, and all those memories—but there is something, and someone, I’ve been neglecting. It’s really all of them at Saint Cloud’s—nothing changes there. They always need the same things, and now that there’s a war, and everyone is making an effort for the war, I think Saint Cloud’s is more forgotten than ever. And Doctor Larch isn’t getting any younger. I should be of more use than I am here. With the harvest over, I don’t feel I have enough to do. At Saint Cloud’s, there’s always too much to do.”
“You’re a fine young man,” said Olive Worthington, but Homer hung his head. He remembered what Mr. Rochester said to Jane Eyre:
“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre: remorse is the poison of life.”
It was an early November morning in the kitchen at Ocean View; Olive had not done her hair or put her makeup on. The gray in the light, and in her face and in her hair, made Mrs. Worthington look older to Homer. She was using the string of her tea bag to wring the last of the tea from the bag, and Homer could not raise his eyes from the ropy, knotted veins in the backs of her hands. She had always smoked too much, and in the morning she always coughed.
“Candy is coming with me,” said Homer Wells.
“Candy is a fine young woman,” Olive said. “It is most unselfish of you both—when you could be enjoying yourselves—to give comfort and companionship to unwanted children.” The string across the belly of the tea bag was so taut that Homer thought it would slice through the bag. Olive’s voice was so formal that she might have been speaking at an awards ceremony describing the heroism that was worthy of prizes. She was trying her hardest not to cough. When the string tore the tea bag, some of the wet leaves stuck to the yolk of her uneaten soft-boiled egg, which was perched in a china egg cup that Homer Wells had once mistaken for a candlestick holder.
“I could never thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me,” Homer said. Olive Worthington just shook her head; her shoulders were squared, her chin was up, the straightness of her back was formidable. “I’m so sorry about Wally,” said Homer Wells. There was the slightest movement in Olive’s throat, but the muscles of her neck were rigid.
“He’s just missing,” Olive said.
“Right,” said Homer Wells. He put his hand on Olive’s shoulder. She gave no indication that the presence of his hand was either a burden or a comfort, but after they remained like that for a while, she turned her face enough to rest her cheek on top of his hand; there they remained for a while longer, as if posing for a painter of the old school—or for a photographer who was waiting for the unlikely: for the November sun to come out.
Olive insisted that he take the white Cadillac.
“Well,” Ray said to Candy and to Homer, “I think it’s good for you both that you stick together.” Ray was disappointed that neither Homer nor Candy acknowledged his observation with any enthusiasm; as the Cadillac was leaving the lobster pound parking lot, Ray called out to them: “And try havin’ some fun together!” Somehow, he doubted that they had heard him.
Who goes to St. Cloud’s to have fun?
I have not really been adopted, thought Homer Wells. I am not really betraying Mrs. Worthington; she never said she was my mother. Even so, Homer and Candy did not talk a lot on the drive.
On their journey inland, the farther north they drove, the more the leaves had abandoned the trees; there was a little snow in Skowhegan, where the ground resembled an old man’s face in need of a shave. There was more snow in Blanchard and in East Moxie and in Moxie Gore, and they had to wait an hour in Ten Thousand Acre Tract where a tree was down—across the road. The snow had drifted over the tree, the smashed shape of which resembled a toppled dinosaur. In Moose River and in Misery Gore, and in Tomhegan, too, the snow had come to stay. The drifts along the roadside were shorn so sharply by the plow—and they stood so high—that Candy and Homer could detect the presence of a house only by chimney smoke, or by the narrow paths chopped through the drifts that were here and there stained by the territorial pissing of dogs.
Olive and Ray and Meany Hyde had given them extra gas coupons. They had decided to take the car because they thought that it would be nice to have a means to get away from St. Cloud’s—if only for short drives—but by the time they reached Black Rapids and Homer had put the chains on the rear tires, they realized that the winter roads (and this was only the beginning of the winter) would make most driving impossible.
If they had asked him, Dr. Larch would have saved them the trouble of bringing the car. He would have said that no one comes to St. Cloud’s for the purpose of taking little trips away from it; he would have suggested, for fun, that they could always take the train to Three Mile Falls.
With the bad roads and the failing light and the snow that began to fall after Ellenville, it was already dark when they reached St. Cloud’s. The headlights of the white Cadillac, climbing the hill past the girls’ division, illuminated two women walking down the hill toward the railroad station—their faces turning away from the light. Their footing looked unsure; one of them didn’t have a scarf; the other one didn’t have a hat; the snow winked in the headlights as if the women were throwing diamonds in the air.
Homer Wells stopped the car and rolled down the window. “May I give you a ride?” he asked the women.
“You’re goin’ the wrong way,” one of them said.
“I could turn around!” he called to them. When they walked on without answering him, he drove ahead to the hospital entrance of the boys’ division and turned out the headlights. The snow falling in front of the light in the dispensary was the same kind of snow that had been falling the night that he arrived in St. Cloud’s after his escape from the Drapers in Waterville.
There had been something of a brouhaha between Larch and his nurses about where Homer and Candy would sleep. Larch assumed that Candy would sleep in the girls’ division and that Homer would sleep where he used to sleep, with the other boys, but the women reacted strongly to this suggestion.
“They’re lovers!” Nurse Edna pointed out. “Surely they sleep together!”
“Well, surely they have,” Larch said. “That doesn’t mean that they have to sleep together here.”
“Homer said he was going to marry her,” Nurse Edna pointed out.
“Going to,” grumbled Wilbur Larch.
“I think it would be nice to have someone sleeping with someone else here,” Nurse Angela said.
“It seems to me,” said Wilbur Larch, “that we’re in business because there’s entirely too much sleeping together.”
“They’re lovers!” Nurse Edna repeated indignantly.
And so the women decided it. Candy and Homer would share a room with two beds on the ground floor of the girls’ division; how they arranged the beds was their own business. Mrs. Grogan said that she liked the idea of having a man in the girls’ division; occasionally, the girls complained of a prowler or a peeping tom
; having a man around at night was a good idea.
“Besides,” Mrs. Grogan said, “I’m all alone over there—you three have each other.”
“We all sleep alone over here,” Dr. Larch said.
“Well, Wilbur,” Nurse Edna said, “don’t be so proud of it.”
Olive Worthington, alone in Wally’s room, regarded the two beds, Homer’s and Wally’s—both beds were freshly made up, both pillows were without a crease. On the night table between their beds was a photograph of Candy teaching Homer how to swim. Because there was no ashtray in the boys’ room, Olive held her free hand in a cupped position under the long, dangling ash of her cigarette.
Raymond Kendall, alone above the lobster pound, viewed the triptych of photographs that stood like an altarpiece on his night table, next to his socket wrench set. The middle photograph was of himself as a young man; he was seated in an uncomfortable-looking chair, his wife was in his lap; she was pregnant with Candy; the chair was in apparent danger. The left-hand photograph was Candy’s graduation picture, the right-hand photograph was of Candy with Wally—their tennis racquets pointed at each other, like guns. Ray had no picture of Homer Wells; he needed only to look out the window at his dock in order to imagine Homer clearly; Ray could not look at his dock and think of Homer Wells without hearing the snails rain upon the water.
Nurse Edna had tried to keep a little supper warm for Homer and Candy; she had put the disappointing pot roast in the instrument sterilizer, which she checked from time to time. Mrs. Grogan, who was praying in the girls’ division, did not see the Cadillac come up the hill. Nurse Angela was in the delivery room, shaving a woman who had already broken her bag of waters.
Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela’s empty office. Homer knew better than to peek into the delivery room when the light was on. From the dormitory, they could hear Dr. Larch’s reading voice. Although Candy held tightly to his hand, Homer Wells was inclined to hurry—in order not to miss the bedtime story.
Meany Hyde’s wife, Florence, was delivered of a healthy baby boy—nine pounds, two ounces—shortly after Thanksgiving, which Olive Worthington and Raymond Kendall celebrated in a fairly formal and quiet fashion at Ocean View. Olive invited all her apple workers for an open house; she asked Ray to help her host the occasion. Meany Hyde insisted to Olive that his new baby was a definite sign that Wally was alive.
“Yes, I know he’s alive,” Olive told Meany calmly.
It was not too trying a day for her, but she did find Debra Pettigrew sitting on Homer’s bed in Wally’s room, staring at the photograph of Candy teaching Homer how to swim. And not long after ushering Debra from the room, Olive discovered Grace Lynch sitting in the same dent Debra had made on Homer’s bed. Grace, however, was staring at the questionnaire from the board of trustees at St. Cloud’s, the one that Homer had never filled out and had left tacked to the wall of Wally’s room as if they were unwritten rules.
And Big Dot Taft broke down in the kitchen while telling Olive about one of her dreams. Everett had found her, in her sleep, dragging herself across the bedroom floor toward the bathroom. “I didn’t have no legs,” Big Dot told Olive. “It was the night Florence’s boy was born, and I woke up without no legs—only I didn’t really wake up, I was just dreamin’ that there was nothin’ left of me, below the waist.”
“Except that you had to go to the bathroom,” Everett Taft pointed out. “Otherwise, why was you crawlin’ on the floor?”
“The important thing was that I was injured,” Big Dot told her husband crossly.
“Oh,” said Everett Taft.
“The point is,” Meany Hyde said to Olive, “my baby was born just fine but Big Dot had a dream that she couldn’t walk. Don’tcha see, Olive?” Meany asked. “I think God is tellin’ us that Wally is okay—that he’s alive—but that he’s been hurt.”
“He’s injured, or somethin’,” Big Dot said, bursting into tears.
“Of course,” Olive said abruptly. “It’s what I’ve always thought.” Her words startled them all—even Ray Kendall. “If he weren’t injured, we would have heard from him by now. And if he weren’t alive, I’d know it,” Olive said. She handed her handkerchief to Big Dot Taft and lit a fresh cigarette from the butt end of the cigarette she had almost finished.
Thanksgiving at St. Cloud’s was not nearly so mystical, and the food wasn’t as good, but everyone had a good time. In lieu of balloons, Dr. Larch distributed prophylactics to Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna, who—despite their distate for the job—inflated the rubbers and dipped them in bowls of green and red food coloring. When the coloring dried, Mrs. Grogan painted the orphans’ names on the rubbers, and Homer and Candy hid the brightly colored prophylactics all over the orphanage.
“It’s a rubber hunt,” said Wilbur Larch. “We should have saved the idea for Easter. Eggs are expensive.”
“We’ll not give up eggs for Easter, Wilbur,” Nurse Edna said indignantly.
“I suppose not,” Dr. Larch said tiredly.
Olive Worthington had sent a case of champagne. Wilbur Larch had never drunk a drop of champagne before—he was not a drinker—but the way the bubbles tightened the roof of his mouth, opened his nasal passages and made his eyes feel dry but clear reminded him of that lightest of vapors, of that famous inhalation he was addicted to. He drank and drank. He even sang for the children—something he’d heard the French soldiers sing in World War I. That song was no more suitable for children than those prophylactics were, but—because of an ignorance of French and an innocence of sex—the French song (which was filthier than any limerick Wally Worthington would ever know) was mistaken for a pleasing ditty and the green and red rubbers were mistaken for balloons.
Even Nurse Edna got a little drunk; champagne was new to her, too, although she sometimes put sherry in hot soup. Nurse Angela didn’t drink, but she became emotional—to the degree that she threw her arms around Homer’s neck and kissed him mightily, all the while proclaiming that the spirit of St. Cloud’s had been in a noticeable slump during Homer’s absence and that Homer had been sent by a clearly sympathetic God to revive them.
“But Homer’s not staying,” Wilbur Larch said, hiccuping.
They had all been impressed with Candy, whom even Dr. Larch referred to as “our angelic volunteer,” and over whom Mrs. Grogan daily fussed as if Candy were her daughter. Nurse Edna busied herself around the young lovers the way a moth flaps around a light.
On Thanksgiving Day, Dr. Larch even flirted with Candy—a little. “I never saw such a pretty girl who was willing to give enemas,” Larch said, patting Candy’s knee.
“I’m not squeamish,” Candy told him.
“There’s no room for squeamishness here,” Larch said, burping.
“There’s still a little room for sensitivity, I hope,” Nurse Angela complained. Larch had never praised her or Nurse Edna for their willingness to give enemas.
“Of course, I wanted him to go to medical school, to be a doctor, to come back and relieve me here,” Wilbur Larch told Candy in a loud voice—as if Homer weren’t sitting right across the table. Larch patted Candy’s knee again. “But that’s all right!” he said. “Who wouldn’t rather get a girl like you pregnant—and grow apples!” He said something in French and drank another glass of champagne. “Of course,” he whispered to Candy, “he doesn’t need to go to medical school to be a doctor here. There’s just a few more procedures he ought to be familiar with. Hell!” Larch said, indicating the orphans eating their turkey—each with a colored rubber, like a name tag, stationed in front of his or her plate, “this isn’t a bad place to raise a family. And if Homer ever gets around to planting the damn hillside, then you’ll get to grow apples here, too.”
When Dr. Larch fell asleep at the table, Homer Wells carried him back to the dispensary. In his time away from St. Cloud’s, Homer wondered, had Dr. Larch gone completely crazy? There was no one to ask. Mrs. Grogan, Nurse Edna, and especially
Nurse Angela might agree that Larch had traveled around the bend—that he had one oar out of the water, as Ray Kendall would say; that he had one wheel in the sand, as Wally used to say—but Mrs. Grogan and the nurses would most emphatically defend Dr. Larch. Their view, Homer could tell, was that Homer had left them for too long, that his judgment was rusty. Fortunately, Homer’s obstetrical procedure had not suffered from his absence.
Pregnant women have no respect for holidays. The trains run at different times, but they run. It was after six in the evening when the woman arrived in St. Cloud’s; although it was not his usual practice, the stationmaster escorted her to the hospital entrance because the woman was already engaged in the second stage of labor—her membranes were ruptured, and her bearing-down pains were at regular intervals. Homer Wells was palpating the baby’s head through the perineum when Nurse Angela informed him that Dr. Larch was too drunk to be aroused, and Nurse Edna had also fallen asleep. Homer was concerned that the perineum showed signs of bulging, and the woman’s response to a rather heavy ether sedation was quite slow.
Homer was obliged to hold back the infant’s head in order to protect the perineum from tearing; the mediolateral incision, which Homer elected to perform, was made at a point corresponding to seven on the face of a clock. It was a safer episotomy, in Homer’s view, because the cut could, if necessary, be carried back considerably farther than the midline type of operation.
Immediately after the birth of the head, Homer slipped his finger around the neck of the child to see if the umbilical cord was coiled there, but it was an easy birth, both shoulders emerging spontaneously. He applied two ligatures to the umbilical and cut the cord between the two. He still had his surgical gown on when he went to the dispensary to see how Dr. Larch was recovering from his Thanksgiving Day champagne. If Larch was familiar with the transitions he encountered in moving from a world of ether to a world without anesthesia, he was unfamiliar with the transition between drunkenness and hangover. Seeing Homer Wells in the bloody smock of his business, Wilbur Larch imagined he was saved.