by John Irving
A normal life? thought Homer Wells. I am a Bedouin with a heart condition and Dr. Larch is telling me I can lead a normal life? I am in love with my best--and only--friend's girlfriend, but is that what Larch would call "extreme stress"? And what was Melony to me if not "extreme exertion"?
Whenever Homer Wells thought of Melony (which was not often), he missed her; then he was angry at himself. Why should I miss her? he wondered. He tried not to think about St. Cloud's; the longer he stayed away, the more extreme life there appeared to him--yet when he thought of it, he missed it, too. And Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna and Mrs. Grogan and Dr. Larch, he missed them all. He was angry at himself for that, too; there were absolutely no signals from his heart to tell him that the life at St. Cloud's was the life he wanted.
He liked the life at Ocean View. He wanted Candy, and some life with her. When she went back to Camden, he tried not to think about her; and since he could not think of Wally without thinking of Candy, he was relieved when Wally went back to Orono--although he had missed Wally all that fall.
"When an orphan is depressed," wrote Wilbur Larch, "he is attracted to telling lies. A lie is at least a vigorous enterprise, it keeps you on your toes by making you suddenly responsible for what happens because of it. You must be alert to lie, and stay alert to keep your lie a secret. Orphans are not the masters of their fates; they are the last to believe you if you tell them that other people are also not in charge of theirs.
"When you lie, it makes you feel in charge of your life. Telling lies is very seductive to orphans. I know," Dr. Larch wrote. "I know because I tell them, too. I love to lie. When you lie, you feel as if you have cheated fate--your own, and everybody else's."
And so Homer Wells answered the questionnaire; he sang a hymn of praise to St. Cloud's. He mentioned the "restoration" of the abandoned buildings of St. Cloud's as one of the many attempts made "to integrate the daily life of the orphanage with the life of the surrounding community." He also lied to Nurse Angela, but it was just a little lie--one of those that are intended to make other people feel better. He wrote to her that he had lost the original questionnaire--which was the only reason he had been so tardy in returning it. Perhaps the board would be kind enough to send him another? (When he received the second questionnaire from the board, he would know it was time to send the one he had so arduously filled out--that way he would appear to have filled it out spontaneously, off the top of his head.)
He wrote with feigned calmness to Dr. Larch. He would appreciate further details regarding his pulmonary valve stenosis. Did Dr. Larch think it necessary, for example, for Homer to have monthly checkups? (Dr. Larch would think it unnecessary, of course.) And were there signs of trouble that Homer himself might detect; were there ways that he could listen for his perhaps-returning murmur? (Calm yourself, Dr. Larch would advise; that was the best thing--staying calm.)
In an effort to calm himself, Homer tacked the extra questionnaire--which he did not fill out--to the wall of Wally's room, right by the light switch, so that the questions regarding life at St. Cloud's occupied a position of ignored authority quite similar to the page of rules that were yearly tacked up in the cider house. As Homer came and went, he regarded those questions he had answered with such able lies--for example, it was quite a kick for him to contemplate "any possible improvements in the methods and management of St. Cloud's" each time he entered and left Wally's room.
At night, now, Homer's insomnia kept time to a new music; the winter branches of the picked apple trees rattling against each other in the early December wind made a brittle click-clack sound. Lying in his bed--a moonlight the color of bone starkly outlining his hands folded on his chest--Homer Wells thought the trees might be trying to shake the snow off their branches, in advance of the snow itself.
Perhaps the trees knew that a war was coming, too, but Olive Worthington didn't think about it. She had heard the orchard's winter rattle for many years; she had seen the winter branches bare, then lacy with snow, and then bare again. The coastal winds gave the brittle orchard such a shaking that the clashing trees resembled frozen soldiers in all the postures of saber-rattling, but Olive had heard so many years of this season that she never knew a war was coming. If the trees seemed especially naked to her that December, she thought it was because she faced her first winter without Senior.
"Grown-ups don't look for signs in the familiar," noted Dr. Wilbur Larch in A Brief History of St. Cloud's, "but an orphan is always looking for signs."
Homer Wells, at Wally's window, searched the skeletal orchard for the future--his own, mainly, but Candy's too, and Wally's. Dr. Larch's future was certainly out there, in those winter branches--even Melony's future. And what future would there be for the Lord's work? wondered Homer Wells.
The war that was about to be did not announce itself in signs at St. Cloud's; both the familiar and the unfamiliar were muted there by ritual and by custom. A pregnancy terminated in a birth or in an abortion; an orphan was adopted or was waiting to be adopted. When there was a dry and snowless cold, the loose sawdust irritated the eyes and the noses and the throats of St. Cloud's; only briefly, when the snow lay newly fallen, was the sawdust gone from the air. When there was a thaw, the snow melted down and the matted sawdust smelled like wet fur; when there was a freeze, the sawdust reappeared--dry again, somehow on top of the old snow--and again the eyes itched, the noses ran, and the throats could never quite clear themselves of it.
"Let us be happy for Smoky Fields," Dr. Larch announced in the boys' division. "Smoky Fields has found a family. Good night, Smoky."
"Good night, Thmoky!" said David Copperfield.
"G'night!" young Steerforth cried.
Good night, you little food hoarder, Nurse Angela thought. Whoever took him, she knew, would soon learn to lock the refrigerator.
In the December morning, at the window where Melony once allowed the world to pass both with and without comment, Mary Agnes Cork watched the women walking uphill from the train station. They don't look pregnant, Mary Agnes thought.
On the bleak hill where Wally Worthington once imagined apple trees, young Copperfield attempted to steer a cardboard carton through the first, wet snow. The carton had once contained four hundred sterile vulval pads; Copperfield knew this because he had unpacked the carton--and he had placed young Steerforth in the carton, at the bottom of the hill. Near the top, he was beginning to realize his mistake. Not only had dragging Steerforth uphill been difficult, but also the boy's weight--in addition to the wetness of the snow--had turned the bottom of the carton soggy. Copperfield wondered if his make-do sled would even slide--if he ever managed to get the mess to the top.
"Good night, Smoky!" Steerforth was singing.
"Thut up, thupid," David Copperfield said.
Dr. Larch was very tired. He was resting in the dispensary. The gray, winter light turned the white walls gray and for a moment Larch wondered what time of day it was--and what time of year. From now on, he was thinking, let everything I do be for a reason. Let me make no wasted moves.
In his mind's eye he saw the correct angle at which the vaginal speculum allowed him a perfect view of the cervix. Whose cervix? he wondered. Even in his ether sleep the thumb and index finger of his right hand tightened the screw that held the jaws of the speculum in place, and he saw the astonishing blondness of the little clump of pubic hair caught in the hairs of his own wrist. It was so blond he had nearly missed seeing it against his own pale skin. When he shook his wrist, the little clump was so light that it floated in the air. In his ether swoon his left hand reached for it, just missing it. Oh yes--her cervix, thought Wilbur Larch. What was her name?
"She has a toy name," Larch said aloud. "Candy!" he remembered. Then he laughed. Nurse Edna, passing the dispensary, held her breath and listened to the laughter. But even when she didn't breathe, the fumes made her old eyes water. That and the sawdust. That and the orphans--some of them made her eyes water, too.
She opened the door at th
e hospital entrance to let some fresh air into the hall. On the hill she watched a cardboard carton make an unsteady descent; she knew that sterile vulval pads had been in the carton, but she wasn't sure what was in the carton now. Something heavy, because the carton's descent was clumsy and irregular. At times it picked up speed, sliding almost smoothly, but always some rock or bare patch in the slushy snow would jar it off-course and slow it down. The first small body to roll out of the carton and make its way downhill was Steerforth's; she recognized his overlarge mittens and the ski hat that always covered his eyes. For a while he tumbled almost as fast as the carton, but a large patch of bare, frozen ground finally stopped him. Nurse Edna watched him climb back uphill for one of his mittens.
The second, larger body to be propelled from the carton was obviously David Copperfield's; he rolled free with a large, soggy piece of the carton in both his hands. The carton appeared to disintegrate in flight.
"Thit!" Copperfield cried. At least, Nurse Edna thought, young Copperfield's profanities were improved by his lisp.
"Close that door," said Dr. Larch, in the hall behind Nurse Edna.
"I was just trying to get some fresh air," Nurse Edna said pointedly.
"You could have fooled me," said Wilbur Larch. "I thought you were trying to freeze the unborn."
Maybe that will be the way of the future, Nurse Edna thought--wondering what future ways there would be.
In the December swimming pool the raft that Senior Worthington used to ride still floated, windblown from one end of the pool to the other, breaking up the lacy fringes of ice that formed and reformed around the edges. Olive and Homer had drained out a third of the pool's water, to leave room for rainfall and snow melt.
Senior's cold raft, only partially deflated by the falling temperature, still charged around the swimming pool like a riderless horse; it galloped wherever the wind urged it. Every day Olive watched the raft out the kitchen window, and Homer wondered when she would suggest getting rid of it.
One weekend Candy came home from Camden, and Homer's confusion regarding what he should do about her mounted. Friday was a bad, indecisive day. He went early to Senior Biology, hoping to persuade Mr. Hood either to let him have his own rabbit for dissection or to assign him a lab partner other than that boy Bucky. Bucky managed to mangle the rabbit's innards whenever he handled them, and Homer found the oaf's constant fixation with everything's reproductive system both silly and maddening. Bucky had lately seized on the fact that marsupials have paired vaginas.
"Twin twats! Can you believe it?" Bucky asked Homer.
"Right," said Homer Wells.
"Is that all you can say?" Bucky asked. "Don't you get it? If you was a hamster, you could fuck another hamster with your buddy!"
"Why would I want to do that?" Homer asked.
"Two cunts!" Bucky said enthusiastically. "You got no imagination."
"I doubt that even the hamsters are interested in what you suggest," said Homer Wells.
"That's what I mean, stupid," Bucky said. "What a waste--to give two twats to a hamster! You ever seen 'em run on them little wheels? They're crazy! Wouldn't you be crazy if you knew the girl of your dreams had two twats and she still wasn't interested?"
"The girl of my dreams," said Homer Wells.
It was crazy enough, in Homer's opinion, that the girl of his dreams had two people who loved her.
And so he went early to Senior Biology to request either a fresh rabbit or a replacement for the obsessed boy named Bucky.
There was a geography class in progress when he got there; and when the class was released, Homer saw that the large maps of the world were still pulled down, covering the blackboard. "May I just look at the maps for a moment, before my next class?" Homer asked the geography teacher. "I'll roll them back up for you."
And so he was left alone with his first accurate view of the world--the whole world, albeit unrealistically flat against a blackboard. After a while he found Maine; he regarded how small it was. After a while he found South Carolina; he stared into South Carolina for a long time, as if the exact whereabouts of Mr. Rose and the other migrants would materialize. He had heard all the talk about Germany, which was easier to find than Maine. He was surprised at the size of England; Charles Dickens had given him the impression of something much bigger.
And the ocean that seemed so vast when you looked at it off Ray Kendall's dock--why the oceans of the world were even more vast than he'd imagined. Yet St. Cloud's, which loomed so large in Homer's life, could not be located on the map of Maine. He was using the geography teacher's magnifying glass when he suddenly realized that the entire class of Senior Biology had filled the seats behind him. Mr. Hood was regarding him strangely.
"Looking for your rabbit, Homer?" Mr. Hood asked. The class enjoyed this joke enormously, and Homer realized he had--at least for that day--lost the opportunity to rid himself of Bucky.
"Look at it this way," Bucky whispered to him, near the end of class. "If Debra Pettigrew had two twats, she might let you in one of them. You see the advantages?"
Unfortunately, the idea of paired vaginas troubled Homer throughout his Friday evening date with Debra Pettigrew. There was a Fred Astaire movie in Bath, but that was almost an hour-long drive, each way, and what did Homer Wells know or care about dancing? He had declined several invitations to attend Debra's dancing class with her; if she wanted to see the Fred Astaire movie, Homer thought she could go with someone who was in her dancing class. And it was getting too cold simply to drive down to the beach and park there. Olive was generous about letting Homer use the van. Soon there would be gas rationing, and a welcome end, in Homer's opinion, to all this restless driving.
He drove Debra Pettigrew out to the carnival site at Cape Kenneth. In the moonlight, the abandoned, unlighted Ferris wheel stood out like scaffolding for the world's first rocket launch, or like the bones of some species from dinosaur times. Homer tried to tell Debra about the knife work of Mr. Rose, but she had her heart set on Fred Astaire; he knew better than to waste a good story on her when she was sulking. They drove to the Cape Kenneth drive-in, which was "closed for the season"; they appeared to be reviewing the scenes of a romance that had happened to other people--and not just last summer, but to another generation.
"I don't know what you've got against dancing," Debra said.
"I don't know, either," said Homer Wells.
It was still early when he drove Debra to her winter home in Kenneth Corners; the same ferocious dogs of the summer were there, with their coats grown thicker, with their hot breath icing on their muzzles. There had been talk between Debra and Homer, earlier, about using the summer house on Drinkwater Lake for some kind of party; the house would be unheated, and they would have to keep the lights off, or someone might report a breaking and entering; but despite these discomforts, surely there was a thrill in being unchaperoned. Why? wondered Homer Wells. He knew he still wouldn't get to Debra Pettigrew--even if she had two vaginas. With the dull Friday evening they had spent together, and with the dogs' breath crystallizing on the driver's-side window of the van, there was no talk about such a tempting party this night.
"So what are we doing tomorrow night?" Debra asked, sighing.
Homer watched a dog gnaw at his side-view mirror.
"Well, I was going to see Candy--she's home from Camden," Homer said. "I haven't seen her on a weekend all fall, and Wally did ask me to look after her."
"You're going to see her without Wally?" Debra asked.
"Right," Homer said. The van was so snub-nosed that the dogs could hurl themselves directly against the windshield without having to clamber over the hood. A big dog's paws raked one of the windshield wipers away from the windshield, releasing it with a crack; it looked bent; it wouldn't quite touch the surface of the glass anymore.
"You're going to see her alone," Debra said.
"Or with her dad," Homer said.
"Sure," said Debra Pettigrew, getting out of the van. She left the doo
r open a little too long. A dog with the spade-shaped head of a Doberman charged the open door; it was half in the van, its heavy chest heaving against the passenger-side seat, its frosty muzzle drooling on the gearshift box, when Debra grabbed it by the ear and yanked it back, yelping, out of the van.
"So long," said Homer Wells softly--after the door had slammed, after he had wiped the dog's frothy slobber off the gearshift knob.
He drove by Kendall's Lobster Pound twice, but there was nothing to tell him whether Candy was home. On the weekends when she came home, she took the train; then Ray drove her back, on Sunday. I'll call her tomorrow--Saturday--Homer thought.
When Candy said that she wanted to see the Fred Astaire movie, Homer had no objections. "I always wanted to see him," he said. Bath, after all, was less than an hour away.
On the bridge across the Kennebec River, they could see several big ships in the water and several more in dry dock; the Bath shipyards were sprawled along the shore--a rhythmic hammering and other metal sounds audible even on a Saturday. They were much too early for the movie. They were looking for an Italian restaurant that Ray had told them about--if it was still there; Raymond Kendall hadn't been in Bath in years.
In 194_, especially to an outsider, the city seemed dominated by the shipyards, and by the ships that stood taller than the shipyard buildings, and by the bridge that spanned the Kennebec River. Bath was a workingman's town, as Melony soon discovered.
She found a job in the shipyards and began her winter employment on an assembly line, working with other women--and with an occasional, handicapped man--on the second floor of a factory specializing in movable parts. The movable part to which Melony would devote her energies for the first month of her employment was a hexagonal-shaped sprocket that looked like half a ham, split open lengthwise; Melony did not know the whereabouts of the assembly line that dealt with the other half of the ham. The sprocket arrived on the conveyor belt in front of her, pausing there for exactly forty-five seconds before it was moved on and replaced by a new sprocket. The joint of the sprocket was packed with grease; you could stick your finger in the grease, past the second knuckle. The job was to insert six ball bearings into the grease-packed joint; you pushed each ball bearing into the grease until you felt it hit the bottom; all six fit perfectly. The trick was to get only one hand greasy; a clean hand had an easier time handling the clean ball bearings, which were the size of marbles. The other part of the job was making sure that the six ball bearings were perfect--perfectly round, perfectly smooth; no dents, no jagged metal scraps stuck to them. The odds were that one out of every two hundred ball bearings had something wrong with it; at the end of the day, you turned in the bad ball bearings. If you had a day with no bad ball bearings, the foreman told you that you weren't looking each ball bearing over carefully enough.
