by John Irving
You could sit or stand, and Melony tried both positions, alternating them through the day. The belt was too high to make sitting comfortable and too low to make standing any better. Your back hurt in one place when you stood and in another place when you sat. Not only did Melony not know who did what, where, to the other half of the sprocket; she also didn't know what the sprocket was for. What's more, she didn't care.
After two weeks, she had the routine down pat: between twenty-six and twenty-eight seconds to insert the ball bearings and never more than ten seconds to pick six perfect ball bearings. She learned to keep a nest of ball bearings in her lap (when she sat) and in an ashtray (she didn't smoke) when she stood; that way she always had a ball bearing handy in case she dropped one. She had a twelve-to-fourteen-second rest between sprockets, during which time she could look at the person on her left and at the person on her right, and shut her eyes and count to three or sometimes five. She observed that there were two styles of labor on the line. Some of the workers picked their six perfect ball bearings immediately upon finishing a sprocket; the others waited for the new sprocket to arrive first. Melony found faults with both styles.
The woman next to Melony put it this way: "Some of us are pickers, some are stickers," she said.
"I'm not either, or I'm both," Melony said.
"Well, I think you'll have an easier time of it, dearie, if you make up your mind," the woman said. Her name was Doris. She had three children; one side of her face was still pretty, but the other was marred by a mole with whiskers in it. In the twelve or fourteen seconds that Doris had between sprockets, she smoked.
On the other side of Melony was an elderly man in a wheelchair. His problem was that he could not pick up the ball bearings that he dropped, and some of them got caught in his lap blanket or in the wheelchair apparatus, which caused him to rattle when he wheeled himself off for his coffee break or for lunch. His name was Walter.
Three or four times a day, Walter would shout, "Fucking ball bearings!"
Some days, when someone was sick, the assembly line was reassembled and Melony was not pinned between Walter and Doris. Sometimes she got to be next to Troy, who was blind. He felt the ball bearings for perfection and daintily poked them into the thick and unseen grease. He was a little older than Melony, but he had always worked in the shipyards; he'd been blinded in a welding accident, and the shipyards owed him a job for life.
"At least I've got security," he would say, three or four times a day.
Some days Melony was put next to a girl about her age, a feisty little chick called Lorna.
"There's worse jobs," Lorna said one day.
"Name one," said Melony.
"Blowing bulldogs," Lorna said.
"I don't know about that," Melony said. "I'll bet every bulldog is different."
"Then how come every man is the same?" Lorna asked. Melony decided that she liked Lorna.
Lorna had been married when she was seventeen--"to an older man," she'd said--but it hadn't worked out. He was a garage mechanic, "about twenty-one," Lorna said. "He just married me 'cause I was the first person he slept with," Lorna told Melony.
Melony told Lorna that she'd been separated from her boyfriend by "a rich girl who came between us"; Lorna agreed that this was "the worst."
"But I figure one of two things has happened," Melony said. "Either he still hasn't fucked her, because she hasn't let him, and so he's figured out what he's missing. Or else she's let him fuck her--in which case, he's figured out what he's missing."
"Ha! That's right," Lorna said. She appeared to like Melony.
"I got some friends," she told Melony. "We eat pizza, go to movies, you know." Melony nodded; she had done none of those things. Lorna was as thin as Melony was thick, she showed as much bone as Melony showed flesh; Lorna was pale and blond, whereas Melony was dark and darker; Lorna looked frail and she coughed a lot, whereas Melony looked almost as strong as she was and her lungs were a set of engines. Yet the women felt they belonged together.
When they requested that they be put next to each other on the assembly line, their request was denied. Friendships, especially talkative ones, were considered counterproductive on the line. Thus Melony was allowed to work alongside Lorna only when the line was reassembled on a sick day. Melony was made to endure the crackpot homilies of Doris and the lost ball bearings of Wheelchair Walter, as everyone called him. But the enforced separation from Lorna on the work line only made Melony feel stronger in her attachment; the attachment was mutual. That Saturday they put in for overtime together, and they worked side by side through the afternoon.
At about the time that Candy and Homer Wells were crossing the bridge over the Kennebec and driving into downtown Bath, Lorna dropped a ball bearing down the cleavage of Melony's work shirt. It was their way of getting each other's attention.
"There's a Fred Astaire movie in town," Lorna said, snapping her chewing gum. "You wanna see it?"
Although her voice lacked the studied heartiness of Dr. Larch's, Mrs. Grogan did her best to inspire a welcome response to her announcement to the girls' division. "Let us be happy for Mary Agnes Cork," she said; there was general sniveling, but Mrs. Grogan pressed on. "Mary Agnes Cork has found a family. Good night, Mary Agnes!"
There were stifled moans, the sound of someone gagging in her pillow, and a few of the usual, wracking sobs.
"Let us be happy for Mary Agnes Cork!" Mrs. Grogan pleaded.
"Fuck you," someone said in the darkness.
"It hurts me to hear you say that," Mrs. Grogan said. "How that hurts us all. Good night, Mary Agnes!" Mrs. Grogan called.
"Good night, Mary Agnes," one of the smaller ones said.
"Be careful, Mary Agnes!" someone blubbered.
Goodness, yes! thought Mrs. Grogan, the tears running down her cheeks. Yes, be careful.
Larch had assured Mrs. Grogan that the adoptive family was especially good for an older girl like Mary Agnes. They were a young couple who bought and sold and restored antiques; they were too active in their business to look after a small child, but they had lots of energy to share with an older child on the weekends and in the evenings. The young wife had been very close to a kid sister; she was "devoted to girl talk," she told Dr. Larch. (Apparently, the kid sister had married a foreigner and was now living abroad.)
And Wilbur Larch had a good feeling for Bath; he'd always maintained a friendly correspondence with the pathologist at Bath Hospital; good old Clara had come from there. And so it seemed perfectly fine to him that Mary Agnes Cork had gone to Bath.
Mary Agnes was attached to her own name, and so they allowed her to keep it, not just the Mary Agnes but the Cork, too. After all, they were Callahans; a Cork went with a Callahan, didn't it? It sounded a little modern for Mrs. Grogan's tastes, although she allowed herself to be pleased at the thought that she'd named someone for keeps.
Ted and Patty Callahan wanted Mary Agnes Cork to view them as friends. The first friendly thing the young couple did was to take Mary Agnes to her first movie. They were a robust couple, and in their opinion they lived near enough to the movie theater in Bath to walk; it was a long walk, during which Ted and Patty demonstrated some of the basic differences between a fox-trot and a waltz. The December sidewalk was sloppy, but Ted and Patty wanted to prepare Mary Agnes for some of the dazzle of Fred Astaire.
Off the Kennebec a damp, chilling wind was blowing and Mary Agnes felt her collarbone ache; when she tried to join the Callahans at dancing, the old injury felt loose; then it throbbed; then it grew numb. The sidewalk was so slippery, she nearly fell--catching her balance on the fender of a dirty green van. Patty brushed her coat off for her. People were outside the movie house, buying tickets in the failing light. On the sliding panel door of the van, Mary Agnes Cork recognized the apple monogram--the W.W., and the OCEAN VIEW. She had first seen this emblem on a Cadillac--there had been a kind of hunger line; she remembered that beautiful girl standing aloof and that beautiful boy passing out t
he food. They're here! Mary Agnes thought, the beautiful people who took Homer Wells away! Maybe Homer was still with them. Mary Agnes began to look around.
Homer and Candy had not had much luck finding the Italian restaurant that Ray had recommended; they'd found two or three Italian restaurants, each one serving pizza and submarine sandwiches and beer, and each one so overrun with workers from the shipyards that there was no place to sit. They'd eaten some pizza in the van and had arrived at the movie early.
When Homer Wells opened his wallet in front of the ticket booth, he realized that he'd never opened his wallet outdoors--in a winter wind--before. He put his back to the wind, but still the loose bills flapped; Candy cupped her hands on either side of his wallet, as if she were protecting a flame in danger of going out, and that was how she was in a position to catch her own, treasured clump of pubic hair when it blew free from Homer's wallet and caught on the cuff of her coat. They both grabbed for it (Homer letting the wallet fall), but Candy was quicker. Some of the fine, blond hairs may have escaped in the wind, but Candy seized the clump tightly--Homer's hand closing immediately on hers.
They stepped away from the ticket booth; a small line moved into the theater past them. Candy continued to hold her pubic hair tightly, and Homer would not let her hand go--he would not let her open her hand to examine what she held; there was no need for that. Candy knew what she held in her hand; she knew it as much from Homer's expression as from the clump of pubic hair itself.
"I'd like to take a walk," she whispered.
"Right," said Homer Wells, not letting go of her hand. They turned away from the theater and walked downhill to the Kennebec. Candy faced the river and leaned against Homer Wells.
"Perhaps you're a collector," she said, as quietly as she could speak and still be heard over the river. "Perhaps you're a pubic hair collector," she said. "You certainly were in a position to be."
"No," he said.
"This is pubic hair," she said, wriggling her tightly clenched fist in his hand. "And it's mine, right?"
"Right," said Homer Wells.
"Only mine?" Candy asked. "You kept only mine?"
"Right," Homer said.
"Why?" Candy asked. "Don't lie."
He had never said the words: I am in love with you. He was unprepared for the struggle involved in saying them. No doubt he misunderstood the unfamiliar weight he felt upon his heart--he must have associated the constriction of that big muscle in his chest with Dr. Larch's recent news; what he felt was only love, but what he thought he felt was his pulmonary valve stenosis. He let go of Candy's hand and put both his hands to his chest. He had seen the sternum shears at work--he knew the autopsy procedure--but never had it been so hard and painful to breathe.
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," M
ary 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."
