by John Irving
"Oops," Candy said, bending to pick up the jelly for her while Mary Agnes stole the barrette--little John Walsh observing her deft moves, admiringly. A trace of blood, or maybe rust, on Mary Agnes's bare shin caught Candy's eye and made her feel queasy; she needed to restrain herself from wetting her finger and trying to rub the streak away. When she stood up and handed the girl her jar of jelly, Candy felt a little dizzy. Some grown-ups were coming out of the hospital entrance, and their presence helped Candy compose herself: I've not come here to play with the children, she thought.
"I'm Doctor Larch," the old man was saying to Wally, who seemed transfixed by the determination with which Smoky Fields was devouring the jarful of apple-cider jelly.
"Wally Worthington," Wally said, pumping Dr. Larch's hand, handing him a jar of Ira Titcomb's honey. "Fresh from Ocean View Orchards. That's in Heart's Rock, but we're very near the coast--we're in Heart's Haven, almost."
"Heart's Haven?" said Wilbur Larch, examining the honey. A sea breeze seemed to spring off the boy--as distinctive, Larch thought, as fresh, crisp hundred-dollar bills. Whose face was on a hundred-dollar bill? Larch tried to imagine.
"Tell her," Curly Day said to Homer Wells, pointing to Candy, but there was no need to point. Homer Wells had seen her, and only her, from the moment he emerged from the hospital entrance. Young Copperfield clung to her leg, but this didn't seem to impede her gracefulness--and nothing could interfere with her radiance. "Tell her I'm the best one," Curly said to Homer.
"Hello," Candy said to Homer because he was the tallest person present; he was as tall as Wally. "I'm Candy Kendall," she said to him. "I hope we're not interrupting anything." You are interrupting two abortions, one birth, one death, two autopsies, and an argument, thought Homer Wells, but all he said was, "He's the best one." Too mechanically! thought Curly Day. He lacks conviction!
"Me," Curly said, stepping between them. "He means me. I'm the best."
Candy bent over Curly and ruffled his sticky hair. "Of course you are!" she said brightly. And straightening up, she said to Homer, "And do you work here? Or are you one of . . ." Was it polite to say them? she wondered.
"Not exactly," Homer mumbled, thinking: I work here, inexactly, and I am inexactly one of them.
"His name's Homer Wells," Curly told Candy, since Homer had failed to introduce himself. "He's too old to adopt."
"I can see that!" Candy said, feeling shy. I should be talking to the doctor, she thought awkwardly; she was irritated with Wally for creating such a crowd.
"I'm in the apple business," Wally was saying to Dr. Larch. "It's my father's business. Actually," he added, "my mother's business."
What does this fool want? thought Wilbur Larch.
"Oh, I love apples!" Nurse Edna said.
"I would have brought lots of apples," Wally said, "but it's the wrong time of year. You should have your own apples." He indicated the barren hillside stretching behind them. "Look at that hill," he said. "It's washing away. You ought to plant it. I could even get you the trees. In six or seven years, you'd have your own apples; you'd have apples for more than a hundred years."
What do I want with a hundred years of apples? thought Wilbur Larch.
"Wouldn't that be pretty, Wilbur?" Nurse Edna asked.
"And you could get your own cider press," Wally suggested. "Give the kids fresh apples and fresh cider--they'd have lots to do."
They don't need things to do, thought Dr. Larch. They need places to go!
They're from some charity, thought Nurse Angela cautiously. She put her lips close to Dr. Larch's ear and whispered, "A sizable donation," just so Dr. Larch wouldn't be rude to them.
They're too young to give their money away, thought Wilbur Larch.
"Bees!" Wally was saying. "You should keep bees, too. Fascinating for the kids, and a lot safer than most people think. Have your own honey, and give the kids an education--bees are a model society, a lesson in teamwork!"
Oh shut up, Wally, Candy was thinking, although she understood why he couldn't stop babbling. He was unused to an environment he couldn't instantly brighten; he was unused to a place so despairing that it insisted on silence. He was unused to absorbing a shock, to simply taking it in. Wally's talk-a-mile-a-minute style was a good-hearted effort; he believed in improving the world--he had to fix everything, to make everything better.
Dr. Larch looked around at the children stuffing themselves with honey and jelly. Have they come here to play with the orphans for a day and to make everyone sick? he wondered. He should have looked at Candy; then he would have known why they were there. He was not good at looking in women's eyes, Wilbur Larch; he had seen too much of them under the harsh lights. Nurse Angela at times wondered if Dr. Larch even knew how he tended to overlook women; she wondered if this was an occupational hazard among obstetricians, or if men with a tendency to overlook women were drawn to the obstetrical field.
Homer Wells did not overlook women; he looked right into their eyes, which might have been why, Nurse Angela thought, he seemed to find their position in the stirrups so troubling. Funny, she thought, how he has seen everything that Dr. Larch does, yet he will not watch me or Nurse Edna shave anyone. He was so adamant in arguing with Dr. Larch about shaving the women for abortions. It wasn't necessary, Homer always said, and the women surely didn't like to be shaved.
"Like it?" Dr. Larch would say. "Am I in the entertainment business?"
Candy felt helpless; no one seemed to understand why she was standing there. Children were colliding with her at hip level, and this awkward, darkly handsome young man, who was surely her own age but seemed somehow older . . . was she supposed to tell him why she'd come to St. Cloud's? Couldn't anyone tell just by looking at her? Then Homer Wells looked at her in that way; their eyes met. Candy thought that he had seen her many times before, that he'd watched her grow up, had seen her naked, had even observed the act responsible for the particular trouble she was now presenting for cure. It was shattering to Homer to recognize in the expression of the beautiful stranger he had fallen in love with something as familiar and pitiable as another unwanted pregnancy.
"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. Lean 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 slip
ped 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!
