The Cider House Rules

by John Irving

  Mrs. Grogan lay wide awake, momentarily frightened for her soul; the good woman had absolutely nothing to fear. It was an owl she heard--it made such a mournful sound.

  Wilbur Larch, who seemed always to be wide awake, passed his skillful, careful fingers across the keyboard of the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office. "Oh please, Mr. President," he wrote.

  Young Steerforth, who suffered allergies to dust and to mold, found the night oppressive; it seemed to him that he couldn't breathe. He was lazy about getting out of bed, and therefore blew his nose on his pillowcase. Nurse Edna rushed to him at the sound of such thick and troubled trumpeting. Although Steerforth's allergies were not severe, the last orphan who was allergic to dust and mold was Fuzzy Stone.

  "You have done so much good, already," Wilbur Larch wrote to Franklin D. Roosevelt. "And your voice on the radio gives me hope. As a member of the medical profession, I am aware of the insidiousness of the disease you have personally triumphed over. After you, anyone who holds your office will be ashamed if he fails to serve the poor and the neglected--or should be ashamed . . ."

  Ray Kendall, stretched out upon his dock as if the sea had cast him up there, could not make himself get up, go inside, and go to bed. It was rare for the coastal air to be so torpid; the air was simply air-as-usual at St. Cloud's.

  "I saw a picture of you and your wife--you were attending a church service. I think it was Episcopal," wrote Wilbur Larch to the President. "I don't know what they tell you in that church about abortion, but here is something you should know. Thirty-five to forty-five percent of our country's population growth can be attributed to unplanned, unwanted births. Couples who are well-to-do usually want their babies; only seventeen percent of the babies born to well-to-do parents are unwanted. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE POOR? Forty-two percent of the babies born to parents living in poverty are unwanted. Mr. President, that is almost half. And these are not the times of Ben Franklin, who (as you probably know) was so keen to increase the population. It has been the goal of your administration to find enough things for the present population to do, and to better provide for the present population. Those who plead for the lives of the unborn should consider the lives of the living. Mr. Roosevelt--you, of all people!--you should know that the unborn are not as wretched or as in need of our assistance as the born! Please take pity on the born!"

  Olive Worthington tossed and turned. Oh, take pity on my son! she prayed and prayed.

  Medium high in an apple tree in the orchard called Frying Pan--crouched warily in the crotch between the tree's largest branches--a red fox, its ears and nose alert, its tail poised as lightly as a feather, surveyed the orchard with a predatory eye. To the fox, the ground below twitched with rodents, although the fox had not climbed the tree for the view--it had run up the tree to eat a bird, a feather of which was thrust through the fox's whiskers and into the rust-colored goatee on the fierce little animal's pointed chin.

  Candy Kendall clung to Homer Wells--oh, how she clung!--as the breath left them both and stirred the otherwise unmoving air. And the trembling mice beneath the floor of the cider house stopped in their tracks between the cider house walls to listen to the lovers. The mice knew there was the owl to worry about, and the fox. But what animal was this whose sound was petrifying them? The owl does not hoot when it hunts, and the fox does not bark when it pounces. But what is this new animal? wondered the cider house mice--what new beast has charged and disturbed the air?

  And is it safe?

  In Wilbur Larch's opinion, love was certainly not safe--not ever. For his own advancing frailty since Homer Wells had departed St. Cloud's, he would have said love was to blame; how tentative he had become concerning some things and how suddenly irritable concerning others. Nurse Angela might have suggested to him that his more recent bouts of gloom and anger were as much the result of his fifty-year-old addiction to ether and of his advanced age as they were the result of his anxious love for Homer Wells. Mrs. Grogan, had she been asked, would have told him that he suffered more from what she called St. Cloud's syndrome than from love; Nurse Edna would never have held love to blame for anything.

  But Wilbur Larch viewed love as a disease even more insidious than the polio that President Roosevelt had stood up to so courageously. And could anyone blame Larch if he occasionally referred to the so-called products of conception as the "results of love"?--although his dear nurses were upset with him when he spoke like this. Did he not have a right to judge love harshly? After all, there was much evidence--in both the products of conception, and their attendant pain, and in the injured lives of many of Dr. Larch's orphans--to justify his view that there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.

  Had he felt the force of the collision between Candy Kendall and Homer Wells--had he tasted their sweat and touched the tension in the muscles of their shining backs; had he heard the agony and the release from agony that could be detected in their voices--Wilbur Larch would not have changed his mind. A passing glimpse of such passion would have confirmed his opinion of the danger of love; he would have been as petrified as the mice.

  In Dr. Larch's opinion, even when he could prevail on his patients to practice some method of birth control, love was never safe.

  "Consider the so-called rhythm method," wrote Wilbur Larch. "Here in St. Cloud's we see many results of the rhythm method."

  He had a pamphlet printed, in the plainest block letters:

  COMMON MISUSES OF THE PROPHYLACTIC

  He wrote as if he were writing for children; in some cases, he was.

  1. SOME MEN PUT THE PROPHYLACTIC ON JUST THE TIP OF THE PENIS: THIS IS A MISTAKE, BECAUSE THE PROPHYLACTIC WILL COME OFF. IT MUST BE PUT OVER THE WHOLE PENIS, AND IT MUST BE PUT ON WHEN THE PENIS IS ERECT.

  2. SOME MEN TRY TO USE THE PROPHYLACTIC A SECOND TIME: THIS IS ALSO A MISTAKE. ONCE YOU REMOVE A PROPHYLACTIC, THROW IT AWAY! AND WASH YOUR GENITAL AREA THOROUGHLY BEFORE ALLOWING YOURSELF FURTHER CONTACT WITH YOUR PARTNER--SPERM ARE LIVING THINGS (AT LEAST, FOR A SHORT TIME), AND THEY CAN SWIM!

  3. SOME MEN TAKE THE PROPHYLACTIC OUT OF ITS WRAPPER: THEY EXPOSE THE RUBBER TO LIGHT AND AIR FOR TOO LONG A TIME BEFORE USING IT; CONSEQUENTLY, THE RUBBER DRIES OUT AND IT DEVELOPS CRACKS AND HOLES. THIS IS A MISTAKE! SPERM ARE VERY TINY--THEY CAN SWIM THROUGH CRACKS AND HOLES!

  4. SOME MEN STAY INSIDE THEIR PARTNERS FOR A LONG TIME AFTER THEY HAVE EJACULATED; WHAT A MISTAKE THIS IS! THE PENIS SHRINKS! WHEN THE PENIS IS NO LONGER ERECT, AND WHEN THE MAN FINALLY PULLS HIS PENIS OUT OF HIS PARTNER, THE PROPHYLACTIC CAN SLIDE COMPLETELY OFF. MOST MEN CAN'T EVEN FEEL THIS HAPPENING, BUT WHAT A MESS! INSIDE THE WOMAN YOU HAVE JUST DEPOSITED A WHOLE PROPHYLACTIC, AND ALL THOSE SPERM!

  And some men, Homer Wells could have added--thinking of Herb Fowler--distribute prophylactics with holes in them to their fellow man.

  In the cider house at Ocean View, huddled with the huddled mice, Homer Wells and Candy Kendall could not move from their embrace. For one thing, the mattress was so narrow--it was only possible to share that mattress if they remained joined together--and for another, they had waited so long; they had anticipated so much. And, to both of them, so much was meant by having allowed themselves to come together. They shared both a love and a grief, for neither of them would have permitted each other this moment if there were not at least parts of each of them that had accepted Wally's death. And, after lovemaking, those parts of them that felt Wally's loss were forced to acknowledge the moment with reverence and with solemnity; therefore, their expressions were not so full of rapture and not so void of worry as the expressions of most lovers after lovemaking.

  Homer Wells, with his face pressed into Candy's hair, lay dreaming that he was only now arriving at the white Cadillac's original destination; he felt as if Wally were still driving him and Candy away from St. Cloud's--as if Wally were still in charge; surely Wally was a true benefactor to have driven him safely to this resting place. The pulse in Candy's temple, which lightly touched his own pulse,
was as soothing to Homer as the tire hum when the great white Cadillac had rescued him from the prison into which he was born. There was a tear on Homer's face; he would have thanked Wally, if he could.

  And if, in the darkness, he could have seen Candy's face, he would have known that a part of her was still over Burma.

  They lay still for so long--the first mouse bold enough to run across their bare legs surprised them. Homer Wells jerked up to a kneeling position; a moment passed before he realized that he had left a whole prophylactic, and all those sperm inside Candy. It was number 4 on Wilbur Larch's list of the COMMON MISUSES OF THE PROPHYLACTIC.

  "Oh-oh," said Homer Wells, whose fingers were quick, and sensitive, and trained; he needed only the index and middle fingers of his right hand to retrieve the lost rubber; although he was very fast, he doubted he'd been fast enough.

  Despite the careful detail of Homer's instructions to Candy, she cut him off. "I think I know how to douche myself, Homer," she said.

  And so their first night of passion, which had been so slowly building between them, ended in the haste typical of the measures taken to avoid an unwanted pregnancy--the possible cause of which was fairly typical, too.

  "I love you," Homer repeated, kissing her good night. There were both fervor and anger in Candy's good-night kiss, both ferocity and resignation in the way she clutched his hands. Homer stood for a while in the parking lot behind the lobster pound; the only sound was the aeration device that circulated fresh oxygen through the water tank that kept the lobsters alive. The quality of the air in the parking lot was divided between brine and motor oil. The night's heat was gone. A cool, damp fog rolled in from the sea; there was no more heat lightning to illuminate, however slightly, the view across the Atlantic.

  It seemed to Homer Wells that there had been so much waiting and seeing to his life, and now there was something else to wait and see about.

  Wilbur Larch, who was seventy-something and the grand master of Maine in the field of waiting and seeing, gazed once again upon the starry ceiling of the dispensary. One of ether's pleasures was its occasional transportation of the inhaler to a position that afforded him a bird's-eye view of himself; Wilbur Larch was thus permitted to smile from afar upon a vision of himself. It was the night that he blessed the adoption of young Copperfield, the lisper.

  "Let us be happy for young Copperfield," Dr. Larch had said. "Young Copperfield has found a family. Good night, Copperfield!"

  Only this time, in ether's memory, it was a joyous occasion. There was even unison in the responses, as if Larch conducted a choir of angels--all singing Copperfield merrily on his way. It hadn't been like that. Copperfield had been especially popular with the littlest orphans; he was what Nurse Angela called a "binder"--in his good-natured, lisping presence, the spirits of the other orphans rose and held together. That night no one had joined Larch in wishing Copperfield good night and good-bye. But Copperfield's departure had been especially hard for Dr. Larch, because with Copperfield's passing there went from St. Cloud's not only the last orphan to be named by Homer Wells but also the last orphan to have known Homer. With Copperfield's leaving, a little more of Homer Wells left, too. Little Steerforth--second-born and second-named--had been adopted first.

  But good for ether! How it allowed Dr. Larch to revise his history. Perhaps it had been the ether, all along, that had provided Dr. Larch with the impulse to be a revisionist with Fuzzy Stone. And in Larch's ether dreams he had many times rescued Wally Worthington--the exploding plane had reassembled itself and returned to the sky; the parachute had opened, and the gentle currents of the Burmese air had borne Wally all the way to China. Safely above the Japanese, above the tigers and the snakes, and above the dread diseases of Asia--how peacefully Wilbur Larch had seen Wally fly. And how the Chinese had been impressed with Wally's noble good looks--with those patrician bones in that handsome face. In time, the Chinese would help Wally to find his base, and he would come home to his girlfriend--this was what Wilbur Larch wanted most: he wanted Wally back with Candy, for only then would there be any hope of Homer Wells returning to St. Cloud's.

  Nearly three months after Wally's plane was shot down, the harvest at Ocean View began and Candy Kendall knew she was pregnant. After all, she was familiar with the symptoms; so was Homer Wells.

  A ragtag crew of pickers mauled the orchards that year; there were housewives and war brides falling out of trees, and students dismissed from the local schools so that they might contribute to the harvest. Even the apple harvest in 194_ was considered a part of the war effort. Olive made Homer a crew boss of the high school kids, whose methods of bruising the fruit were so various that Homer was kept very busy.

  Candy worked in the mart; she told Olive that her frequent bouts of nausea were probably caused by the smell of diesel fuel and exhaust that was constant around the farm vehicles. Olive remarked that she thought the daughter of a mechanic and lobsterman would be less sensitive to strong odors, and when she suggested that Candy might be more comfortable working in the fields, Candy admitted that climbing trees also made her feel queasy.

  "I never knew you were so delicate," Olive said. Olive had never been more active in a harvest, or more grateful for there being one. But the harvest that year reminded Homer Wells of learning to tread water; both Candy and Olive had taught him how. ("Swimming in place," Olive had called it.)

  "I'm just swimming in place," Homer told Candy. "We can't leave Olive during the harvest."

  "If I work as hard as I can," Candy told him, "it's possible that I'll miscarry."

  It was not very possible, Homer Wells knew.

  "What if I don't want you to miscarry?" Homer asked her.

  "What if?" Candy asked.

  "What if I want you to marry me, and to have the baby?" Homer asked.

  They stood at one end of the conveyor belt in the packinghouse; Candy was at the head of the line of women who sized and sorted the apples--who either packaged them or banished them to cider. Candy was retching, even though she had chosen the head of the line because that put her nearest the open door.

  "We have to wait and see," Candy said between retches.

  "We don't have long to wait," said Homer Wells. "We don't have long to see."

  "I shouldn't marry you for a year, or more," Candy said. "I really want to marry you, but what about Olive? We have to wait."

  "The baby won't wait," Homer said.

  "We both know where to go--to not have the baby," Candy said.

  "Or to have it," said Homer Wells. "It's my baby, too."

  "How do I have a baby without anyone knowing I've had it?" Candy asked; she retched again, and Big Dot Taft came up the packing line to see what was the matter.

  "Homer, ain't you got no better manners than to watch a young lady puke?" Big Dot asked him. She put her huge arm around Candy's shoulder. "You get away from the door, darlin'," Big Dot Taft said to Candy. "You come on and work down the line--there's only apples to smell down there. The tractor exhaust comes in the door."

  "I'll see you soon," Homer mumbled, to both Candy and Big Dot.

  "No one likes to be sick around the opposite sex, Homer," Big Dot informed him.

  "Right," said Homer Wells, orphan and would-be father.

  In Maine, it is considered wiser just to know something than to talk about it; that no one said Candy Kendall was pregnant didn't necessarily mean that they didn't know she was. In Maine, it is a given that any boy can get any girl in trouble. What they do about it is their business; if they want advice, they should ask.

  "If you were an orphan, what would you have?" Wilbur Larch once wrote in A Brief History of St. Cloud's. "An orphan, or an abortion?"

  "An abortion, definitely," Melony had said once, when Homer Wells had asked her. "How about you?"

  "I'd have the orphan," Homer had said.

  "You're just a dreamer, Sunshine," Melony had told him.

  Now he supposed it was true; he was just a dreamer. He confused the high school k
ids with each other, and gave some of them credit for picking bushels that other kids had picked. He stopped two of the boys from throwing apples at each other, and felt that he had to make an example of them--in order to protect the fruit and establish his authority. But while he was driving the boys back to the apple mart, where he forced them to wait without getting in any trouble--and to miss a morning's picking--a full-scale apple fight broke out among the other high school kids, and when Homer returned to the field, he interrupted a war. The crates that were already loaded on the flatbed were splattered with apple seeds, and the hot parts of the tractor gave off a burned-apple stench (someone must have tried to use the tractor for "cover"). Perhaps Vernon Lynch would have made a better foreman for the high school kids, Homer thought. All Homer wanted to do was to make things right with Candy.

  When they sat on Ray Kendall's dock now, they sat close together, and they didn't sit for long--it was getting cold. They sat huddled against one of the posts at the dock's end, where Ray had seen Candy sit with Wally--so many times--and in somewhat the same position (although, Ray noted, Wally had always sat up straighter, as if he were already fastened to the pilot's seat).

  Ray Kendall understood why it was necessary for them to brood about the process of falling in love, but he felt sorry for them; he knew that falling in love was never meant to be such a morose moment. Yet Ray had every respect for Olive, and it was for Olive, he knew, that Homer and Candy were forced to be mourners at their own love story. "You should just go away," Ray said out the window to Homer and Candy; he spoke very softly and the window was closed.

  Homer was afraid that if he insisted to Candy that she marry him--insisted that she have their baby--that he would force her to reject him completely. He also knew that Candy was afraid of Olive; it was not that Candy was so eager to have a second abortion--Homer knew that Candy would marry him, and have their baby on the same day, if she thought she could avoid telling Olive the truth. Candy was not ashamed of Homer; she was not ashamed of being pregnant, either. Candy was ashamed that Olive would judge her harshly for her insufficient feelings for Wally--Candy's faith (in Wally being alive) had not been as strong as Olive's. It is not unusual for the mother of an only son and the young woman who is the son's lover to envision themselves as competitors.