by John Irving
Even the oafs took notice. The assistant was stricken by a flood of sudden and conflicting feelings: that the stationmaster was dead might mean that he, the assistant, would be the next stationmaster; that it was possible for someone to suffer a heart attack lasting several hours was unimaginably painful; and what was this promise—or threat—about an automobile?
What relatives, what friends? the two louts wondered.
“What’s that about an automobile?” the assistant asked Curly Day. Curly suspected that he’d made a mistake but decided to bluff it out. It was not advisable to display weakness or indecision before a bully, and Curly’s crafty instincts for survival led him to choose confidence over the truth.
“It means there’s a car coming for him,” said Curly Day. The two clods looked mildly impressed; they had not thought the stationmaster was important enough to warrant a car to carry him away.
“You mean a hearse?” asked the assistant. There was a hearse in Three Mile Falls—he had seen it once: a long, black car that moved slowly enough to have been pulled by mules.
“I mean a car,” said Curly Day, for whom the word “hearse” meant nothing at all. “I mean an automobile.”
No one moved, no one spoke; perhaps the symptoms of the special heart attack, reputed to last for several hours, were slowly beginning in all of them. They were all just waiting for the next event of the day, when Senior Worthington’s oyster-white Cadillac crept into view.
In the many poor and isolated towns they had driven through, Wally and Candy had drawn more than their share of stares, but they were still unprepared for the stunned gaping of the stationmaster’s assistant and the extremes of gawking they provoked from the two louts who sat on the bench in front of the station house as if they’d been nailed there.
“Here we are: Saint Cloud’s,” Wally said to Candy with a clearly false enthusiasm. Candy could not help herself; she reached for his leg and gripped him at midthigh—Little Dorrit plunged from her lap, grazing her locked-together ankles on its way to the Cadillac’s floor. The faces of Curly Day and David Copperfield were what struck Candy with the most force. In spite of his grime and dishevelment, Curly Day’s face was shining—his smile was a lucky beam of sunlight; it pierced the garbage and revealed the hidden glitter. It was the hugeness of the expectation in Curly’s dirty face that took Candy’s breath away; her eyes swam, her vision blurred—but not before the wide-openness of David Copperfield’s mouth astonished her. From the teardrop shape of his fat lower lip there hung a clear, healthy string of drool, suspended nearly to his tight little fists, which he clenched against his stomach as if the blinding white Cadillac had knocked the wind out of him, as solidly as a punch.
Wally wasn’t sure, but he thought that the stationmaster’s assistant appeared to be in charge of this strange assemblage of people. “Excuse me,” Wally said to the assistant, whose mouth didn’t move, whose eyes didn’t blink. “Could you tell me the way to the orphanage?”
“You sure got here in a hurry,” said the assistant lifelessly. A white hearse! he was thinking. Not to mention the beauty of the body-snatchers; the assistant found he was unable to look at the girl; his mind’s eye would never forget its actual brief glimpse of her.
“Pardon me?” Wally said. The man is deranged, Wally was thinking; I should be talking to someone else. A passing look at the oafs upon the bench was enough to tell Wally that he should not ask them anything. And the littlest child, with the crystal string of slobber now winking like an icicle in the sunlight and reaching nearly to the grass-stained dimples on the child’s knees, appeared to be too young for speech. “Hello,” Wally ventured pleasantly.
“Dead!” said David Copperfield, the drool dancing like tinsel on a Christmas tree.
Not him, Wally thought, and sought the eyes of Curly Day; Curly’s eyes were easy to find—they were riveted on Candy. “Hello,” Candy said to him, and Curly Day swallowed visibly—and with apparent pain. The wet end of his nose looked raw, but he rubbed it vigorously anyway.
“Could you tell us the way to the orphanage?” Wally asked Curly Day, who, unlike the louts and the assistant, knew that this Cadillac and these angelic specimens of the living had not been sent to retrieve the unwanted body of the dead stationmaster. They want the orphanage, thought Curly Day. They’ve come here to adopt someone! his pounding heart told him. Oh, God, thought Curly Day—let it be me!
David Copperfield, in his typical trance, reached his hand out to touch the perfect monogram on the Cadillac’s door: Senior Worthington’s gold monogram on the face of a gleaming Red Delicious apple—with a leaf of spring-green brightness, the artless shape of a tear. Curly batted young Copperfield’s hand away.
I got to take charge of things, Curly was thinking, if I want them to pick me.
“I’ll show you the orphanage,” said Curly Day. “Give us a ride.”
Candy smiled and opened the rear door for them. She was a little surprised when Curly picked up young Copperfield and shoved him in the car—not on the seat but on the floor. Copperfield seemed content on the floor; in fact, when he touched the strangely mottled scarlet upholstery of the seat, he pulled back his hand with alarm—he’d never touched leather before—and he jumped as if he feared the seat might be alive. It had been a startling day for young Copperfield: most of the morning confined in an enema-bag carton; his first attempt at flight; his long fall through the weeds; and then sitting on that dead man’s face. What next? young Copperfield wondered. When the Cadillac began to move, he screamed. He’d never been inside a car before.
“He don’t know about cars,” Curly Day explained to Candy. Curly himself had never felt leather before either, but he tried to sit on the luxurious seat as if he were born to ride forever in this fashion. He didn’t realize that the bleached-out stains that striped the scarlet were the result of an accident with chemicals—it would often be Curly Day’s misfortune to mistake an accident for something artistically intended.
“Slow down, Wally,” Candy said. “The little one is frightened.” She leaned over the front seat and extended her arms to young Copperfield, whose howling abruptly ceased. He recognized the way her hair fell forward to either side of her face—this together with her outstretched arms and a certain comfort in her smile were familiar to Copperfield from Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna. Men, Copperfield thought, picked you up in one arm and carried you over a hip; by “men” he meant Homer Wells and Dr. Larch. Curly Day sometimes lugged Copperfield around in this fashion, but Curly wasn’t quite strong enough and often dropped him.
“Come here, come here, don’t be afraid,” Candy said to Copperfield, swinging him over the seat and putting him in her lap. Copperfield smiled and touched Candy’s hair; he had never felt blond hair before, he wasn’t quite sure if it was real. He had never smelled anyone who smelled this good either; he drove his face into the side of her neck and took a great big sniff of her. She actually hugged him, even kissed him on the blue dent of his temple. She looked at Wally and almost cried.
Curly Day, sick with envy, gripped the leather seat and wondered what he could say that would make them want him. Why would anyone want me? he began to wonder, but he fought off the thought. He sought Wally’s eyes in the Cadillac’s rearview mirror; it was too painful for him to see the way Candy held David Copperfield.
“You’re one of the orphans?” Wally asked—he hoped, tactfully.
“You bet!” Curly Day said, too loudly; he sounded too enthusiastic about it, he thought. “I’m not just one of the orphans,” he blurted out suddenly, “I’m the best one!” This made Candy laugh; she turned around in the front seat and smiled at him, and Curly felt he was losing his grip on the leather upholstery. He knew he should say something else, but his nose was running so violently he was sure that whatever he said would be grotesque; before he could drag his sleeve across his face, there was her hand with her handkerchief extended to him. And she wasn’t just handing the handkerchief to him, he realized; she was actually
pressing the handkerchief to his nose and holding it correctly in place.
“Blow,” Candy said. Only once had anyone done this for Curly Day—Nurse Edna, he thought. He shut his eyes and blew his nose—at first, cautiously.
“Come on,” Candy said. “Really blow it!” He really blew it—he blew his nose so emphatically that his head was instantly clear. The delicious scent of her perfume made him giddy; he shut his eyes and wet his pants. Then he lost control and flung himself back in the huge scarlet seat. He saw that he’d blown his nose all over her hand—and she didn’t even look angry; she looked concerned, and that made him pee even harder. He couldn’t stop himself. She looked completely surprised.
“Left or right?” Wally asked heartily, pausing at the driveway to the boys’ division delivery entrance.
“Left!” Curly shouted; then he opened the rear door on Candy’s side, and said to her, “I’m sorry! I don’t even wet my bed. I never have! I ain’t a bed-wetter. I just got a cold! And I got excited! I’m just having a bad day. I’m really good!” he cried. “I’m the best one!”
“It’s all right, it’s all right, get back in,” she said to him, but Curly was already sprinting through the weeds and around the far corner of the building.
“The poor kid just wet his pants,” Candy said to Wally, who saw the way Candy held David Copperfield in her lap and felt himself breaking.
“Please,” he whispered to her, “you don’t have to do this. You can have the baby. I want the baby—I want your baby. It would be fine. We can just turn around,” he pleaded with her.
But she said, “No, Wally. I’m all right. It’s not the time for us to have a baby.” She put her face down on David Copperfield’s damp neck; the boy smelled both sweet and mildewed.
The car stood still. “Are you sure?” Wally whispered to her. “You don’t have to.” She loved him for saying just the right thing at the right time, but Candy Kendall was more practical than Wally Worthington, and she had her father’s stubbornness when her mind was made up; she was no waffler.
“The boy said you go left,” Candy said to Wally. “Go left.”
Mrs. Grogan, across the road in the girls’ division entrance, observed the Cadillac’s hesitation. She had not seen Curly Day flee from the car and she did not recognize the small child in the pretty girl’s lap. Mrs. Grogan assumed that the child belonged to the pretty girl—she wondered if she’d ever seen a girl that pretty. And her young man was certainly handsome—almost too handsome for a husband, as they say in Maine.
In Mrs. Grogan’s opinion, they looked too young to be adopting anyone—too bad, she mused, because they certainly seemed well off. A Cadillac meant nothing to Mrs. Grogan; it was the people themselves who appeared expensive to her. She was puzzled by how charmed she felt to be looking at these lovely people. Her few glimpses of the very rich had not charmed Mrs. Grogan in the past; those glimpses had only made her feel bitter—on behalf of the unadopted girls. She was all for her girls, Mrs. Grogan was; there was nothing personal in her bitterness—and very little that was personal in her whole life, really.
The car stood still, giving Mrs. Grogan a long view. Oh, the poor dears, she thought. They are not married, they have had this child together, either he or she is being disinherited—they have both, clearly, been disgraced—and now they have come to give up their child. But they are hesitating! She wanted to rush out and tell them: keep the child! Drive away! She felt paralyzed by the drama she was imagining. Don’t do it! she whispered, mustering the strength for an enormous telepathic signal.
It was the signal Wally felt when he told Candy that she didn’t have to. But then the car started up again—it was not turning around, it was heading straight for the hospital entrance of the boys’ division—and Mrs. Grogan’s heart sank. Boy or girl? she wondered, numbly.
What the fuck is going on? wondered Melony, at her bitter window.
Because of the harsh overhead light in the dormitory, Melony could see her own face reflected in the window; she watched the white Cadillac halt on her upper lip. Curly Day escaped across her cheek, and the pretty blond girl’s arms enclosed David Copperfield at Melony’s throat.
It was as close as Melony came to looking in a mirror. It was not that she was troubled by the heaviness of her face, or how close together her eyes were, or how her hair rebelled; it was her own expression that upset her—the vacantness, the absence of energy (formerly, she imagined, she had at least had energy). She couldn’t remember when she’d last looked at herself in a mirror.
What troubled her, now, was that she’d just seen this familiar vacantness on the face of Homer Wells when he’d lifted the stationmaster’s body—it wasn’t the absence of strain, it was that look of zero surprise. Melony was afraid of Homer. How things had changed! she thought. She’d wanted to remind him of his promise. You won’t leave, will you? she’d almost asked. You’ll take me, if you run away, she’d wanted to say, but her familiarity with his new expression (because it was her nearly constant expression, she was sure) had paralyzed her.
Now who are these pretty people? she wondered. Some car, she thought. She’d not seen their faces, but even the backs of their heads had discomforted her. The man’s blond hair had contrasted so perfectly with the smooth, tanned back of his neck that it had given her a shiver. And how could the back of the girl’s head be so perfect—the bounce and swing of her hair so accurate? Was there some trick to aligning the length of the hair so exactly with the girl’s straight but small shoulders? And it was positively graceful how she’d picked up young Copperfield and held him in her lap—that little runt, thought Melony. She must have said the word “runt” half aloud, because her breath fogged the window at that instant; she lost sight of her own mouth and nose. When the window cleared, she saw the car move on, toward the hospital entrance. People like that are too perfect to need an abortion, Melony imagined. They’re too perfect to fuck, she thought bitterly. They’re too clean to do it. The pretty girl wonders why she can’t get pregnant. She doesn’t know you have to fuck first. They’re considering adopting someone, but they won’t find anyone here. There’s no one who’s good enough for them, thought Melony—hating them. She spat straight into her own dull reflection and watched her spit run down the pane. She hadn’t the energy to move. There was a time, she thought, when I would have at least gone outdoors and poked around the Cadillac. Maybe they would leave something in the car—something good enough to steal. But now, not even the thought of something to steal could move Melony from her window.
Dr. Larch had performed the first abortion with Nurse Edna’s assistance; Larch had asked Homer to check on the contractions of the expectant mother from Damariscotta. Nurse Angela was assisting Larch with the second abortion, but Dr. Larch had insisted on Homer’s presence, too. He had supervised Homer’s ether application; Dr. Larch had such a light touch with ether that the first abortion patient had been speaking to Nurse Edna throughout the operation and yet the woman hadn’t felt a thing. She talked and talked: a kind of airy list of non sequiturs to which Nurse Edna responded with enthusiasm.
Homer had put the second woman out, and he was clearly cross with himself for sedating the woman more heavily than he’d meant to. “Better safe than sorry,” Nurse Angela said encouragingly—her hands on the woman’s pale temples, which she instinctively smoothed with her soft hands. Larch had asked Homer to insert the vaginal speculum, and Homer now stared darkly at the woman’s shiny cervix, at the puckered opening of the uterus. Bathed in a clear mucus, it had an aura of morning mist, of dew, of the pink clouds of a sunrise gathered around it. If Wally Worthington had peered through the speculum, he would have imagined that he was viewing an apple in some pale, ethereal phase of its development. But what is that little opening? he might have wondered.
“How’s it look?” Larch asked.
“It looks fine,” said Homer Wells. To his surprise, Larch handed him the cervical stabilizer—a simple instrument. It was for grabbing the upper
lip of the cervix and stabilizing the cervix, which was then sounded for depth and dilated.
“Didn’t you get what I told you?” Homer asked Dr. Larch.
“Do you disapprove of touching the cervix, Homer?” Larch asked.
Homer reached for the lip of the woman’s cervix and seized it, correctly. I won’t touch a single dilator, he thought. He won’t make me.
But Larch didn’t even ask. He said, “Thank you, that’s a help.” He sounded and dilated the cervix himself. When he asked for the curette, Homer handed it to him.
“You remember that I asked you if it was necessary for me to even be here?” Homer asked quietly. “I said that, if it was all the same to you, I’d just as soon not watch. You remember?”
“It’s necessary for you to watch,” said Wilbur Larch, who listened to the scrape of his curette; his breathing was shallow but regular.
“I believe,” said Dr. Larch, “that you should participate to the degree of watching, of lending some amateur assistance, of understanding the process, of learning how to perform it—whether you ever choose to perform it or not.
“Do I interfere?” Larch asked. “When absolutely helpless women tell me that they simply can’t have an abortion, that they simply must go through with having another—and yet another—orphan: do I interfere? Do I?
“I do not,” he said, scraping. “I deliver it, Goddamn it. And do you think there are largely happy histories for the babies born here? Do you think the futures of these orphans are rosy? Do you?
“You don’t,” Larch said. “But do I resist? I do not. I do not even recommend. I give them what they want: an orphan or an abortion,” Larch said.
