by John Irving
Then he remembered that Melony had the questionnaire. There was no time to fool around. He told Nurse Angela that there would be a meeting after supper, after the children had been put to bed.
Nurse Angela could not recall that there had ever been a meeting at St. Cloud’s, except that most uncomfortable meeting with the board of trustees; she assumed that if there was going to be another meeting, the board was probably involved.
“Oh dear, a meeting,” Nurse Edna said; she fretted all day.
Mrs. Grogan was worried, too. She was concerned about where the meeting would take place—as if it would be possible to miss it or not find it.
“I think we can narrow down the possibilities,” Nurse Caroline assured her.
All day Wilbur Larch worked in Nurse Angela’s office. No babies were born that day; and the one woman who wanted an abortion was welcomed, and made comfortable, and told that she could have her abortion tomorrow. Wilbur Larch would not leave Nurse Angela’s office, not even for lunch, not even for tea, and not even for the Lord’s work.
He was reviewing and putting the finishing touches to the history of Fuzzy Stone, that good doctor; Larch was also writing the obituary of Homer Wells. Poor Homer’s heart: the rigors of an agricultural life and a high-cholesterol diet—“An orphan is a meat eater, an orphan is always hungry,” wrote Wilbur Larch.
Dr. Stone, on the other hand, was not a typical orphan. Larch characterized Fuzzy Stone as “lean and mean.” After all, who among the orphans had ever dared to challenge Dr. Larch? And here was Fuzzy Stone threatening to turn his old mentor in! Not only did he dare to attack Dr. Larch’s beliefs regarding the abortions, but also Fuzzy had such strong views on the subject that he repeatedly threatened to expose Dr. Larch to the board. And now Fuzzy’s zeal was fired with the self-righteousness of a true missionary, for Larch knew that the safest place for Dr. Stone to be practicing medicine was where the board could never trace him. Fuzzy was fighting diarrhea amid the dying children of Asia. Larch had just read an article in The Lancet about diarrhea being the number one killer of kids in that part of the world. (Homer Wells, who did not know that his heart had given out, had read the same article.) The other little details about Burma and India—which lent such a missionary authenticity to Fuzzy’s angry letters to Wilbur Larch—were things that Larch remembered hearing about Wally’s excruciating travels there.
It had been an exhausting day for Larch, who had also written—in other voices—to the board of trustees. He would have preferred ether to supper, although supper, he knew, would make him more stable for the meeting that his bullied staff was dreading. Larch read such a short passage from Jane Eyre that every girl in the girls’ division was still awake when he left them, and he read such a short section of David Copperfield that two of the boys complained.
“I’m sorry, that’s all that happened to David Copperfield today,” Dr. Larch told them. “David didn’t have a very big day.”
Wilbur Larch had had a big day, and Mrs. Grogan and his nurses knew it. He made them all meet in Nurse Angela’s office, as if he took comfort from the litter of paper and the gloomy, surrounding presence of his massive A Brief History of St. Cloud’s, which was gathered around him. He leaned on his overworked typewriter as if the machine were a podium.
“Now!” he said, because the women were chatting. “Now!” he repeated, using the word like a gavel to call the meeting to order. “Now we’re going to head them off at the pass.”
Nurse Edna wondered if he’d been sneaking down to the train station to watch the Westerns on the TV with the stationmaster; Nurse Edna did this quite often. She liked Roy Rogers better than Hopalong Cassidy; she wished Roy wouldn’t sing; she preferred Tom Mix to them all. Although she loathed the Lone Ranger, she had a soft spot in her heart for Tonto—for all the world’s sidekicks.
“Whom are we heading off?” Nurse Caroline asked aggressively.
“And you!” Dr. Larch said to Nurse Caroline, pointing his finger at her. “You’re my top gun. You’re the one who’s going to pull the trigger. You get to fire the first shot.”
Mrs. Grogan, who feared for her own sanity, feared that Dr. Larch had finally lost his. Nurse Angela suspected Larch had been slipping for a long time. Nurse Edna loved him so much that she couldn’t judge him. Nurse Caroline just wanted the facts.
“Okay,” Nurse Caroline said. “Let’s begin at the beginning. Whom do I shoot?”
“You’re going to turn me in,” Larch told her. “You’re going to blow the whistle on me—on all of us here.”
“I’ll do no such thing!” Nurse Caroline said.
Very patiently, he explained it to them. It was so simple—to him it was simple because he’d been thinking of it for years. It was not simple to the rest of them, and he had to take them very slowly through the steps toward their salvation.
They must assume that Melony would respond to the questionnaire. They must believe that her response would be negative—not because Melony was necessarily negative, as Larch pointed out to Mrs. Grogan (who was ready to defend her), but because Melony was angry. “She was born angry, she will always be angry, and even if she means us no harm, one day she will be angry enough—about something, about anything—so that she will respond to the questionnaire. And she’ll say what she knows,” Larch added, “because, whatever else Melony is, she’s no liar.”
Therefore, he argued, he wanted the board to hear that he was an abortionist from someone else first. It was the only way they might be saved. Nurse Caroline was the logical betrayer; she was young, she was relatively new, she had struggled with her conscience for an acceptably short period of time, and she had decided that she could remain silent no longer. Mrs. Grogan and the older nurses had been bullied into accepting a doctor’s authority as absolute; Nurse Caroline would maintain that they were not to blame. Nurse Caroline, however, had a challenging attitude toward the authority figures of this (or of any) society. She would present her protest as a matter of women’s rights—that even nurses should never allow doctors to tyrannize them; that when a doctor was breaking the law, even if it was not a nurse’s role to challenge him, it was her right and her moral obligation to expose him. Larch was sure that Mrs. Goodhall would like that bit about “moral obligation”—Mrs. Goodhall doubtlessly labored under the illusion that her own moral obligations were the guiding lights of her life, and Dr. Larch felt that it was the overwhelming burden of these obligations that had made her a sour, joyless woman.
Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela listened to Larch as if they were baby birds awaiting a parent’s return to the nest; their heads were sunk into their shoulders, their faces were tilted up, their mouths silently forming the words they heard Larch speak—in anticipation of swallowing worms.
Mrs. Grogan wished that she’d brought her knitting; if this was what a meeting was, she never wanted to attend another. But Nurse Caroline began to see; she had a basically brave and a fundamentally political conscience; and once she grasped the portrait of the board as her enemy, she was most attentive to her commander who had so arduously plotted the board’s defeat. It was a kind of revolt, and Nurse Caroline was all for revolution.
“Also,” Larch pointed out to her, “you need to win a few points with the right-wingers on the board; they’ve colored you pink. Now you color yourself Christian. They’re not only going to end up forgiving you, they’re also going to want to promote you. They’re going to want you in charge.
“And you,” Larch said, pointing to Nurse Angela.
“Me?” said Nurse Angela; she looked frightened, but Larch knew that she would be the perfect one to recommend Fuzzy Stone. Hadn’t she named him? And hadn’t she almost dared, all those times, to join Fuzzy in his righteous debate with Dr. Larch? Because Fuzzy knew them all, and loved them all; he knew what they needed, and his beliefs (regarding the abortions) were so much more in sympathy with Nurse Angela’s own beliefs.
“They are?” Nurse Angela said. “But I believe in abortion!�
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“Of course you do!” Larch said. “And if you want Saint Cloud’s to continue to offer abortions, you better pretend that you’re on the other side. You’d better all pretend.”
“What do I pretend, Wilbur?” Nurse Edna asked.
“That it’s a great load off your conscience—that I have been caught,” Larch told her. Perhaps, if Fuzzy Stone came back, Nurse Edna’s conscience would let her sleep. And Mrs. Grogan could lighten up on the praying; perhaps she would not be so driven to pray, if they had that wonderfully decent Dr. Stone around.
Not that we don’t all adore Dr. Larch! Nurse Angela would tell the board. And not that the poor old man didn’t believe in himself, and in what he was doing—and for whom he was doing it. He was always devoted to the orphans. It was just that this social problem got the best of him and of his judgment. And how this issue has upset us all! How it has taken its toll!
How, indeed, Nurse Edna thought, her mouth still open, her head lolling between her shoulders—she was more in love with him than ever. He really was devoted to his orphans; he really would do anything for them.
“But what will happen to you, Wilbur—if we expose you?” Nurse Edna asked, a slim tear making its difficult way down her wrinkled cheek.
“I’m almost a hundred years old, Edna,” he said softly. “I suppose, I’ll retire.”
“You won’t go away, will you?” Mrs. Grogan asked him.
“I wouldn’t get very far, if I tried,” he said.
He had been so convincing about Fuzzy Stone—he had presented them with such marvelous details—that Nurse Caroline was the only one to spot the problem.
“What if Homer Wells won’t come here and pretend to be Fuzzy Stone?” she asked Dr. Larch.
“Homer belongs here,” Nurse Angela said, by rote; that Homer Wells belonged to St. Cloud’s was (to Nurse Angela) as obvious a fact as the weather—even if this fact (to Homer) had been his life’s crucible.
“But he doesn’t believe in performing abortions,” Nurse Caroline reminded all the old people. “When did you last talk to him about it?” she asked Larch. “I’ve talked to him pretty recently, and he believes in your right to perform them—he even sent me here, to help you. And he believes it should be legal—to have one. But he also says that he could never, personally, do it—to him, it’s killing someone. That’s how he sees it. That’s what he says.”
“He has near-perfect procedure,” Wilbur Larch said tiredly. When Nurse Caroline looked at all of them, she saw them as if they were dinosaurs—not just prehistoric but also almost willfully too large for the world. How could the planet ever provide enough for them? It was not a very socialist thought, but this was the conviction with which her heart sank as she looked at them.
“Homer Wells thinks it’s killing someone,” Nurse Caroline repeated.
As she spoke, she felt she was personally responsible for starving the dinosaurs; the old people looked gaunt and feeble to her—despite their size.
“Is the alternative just waiting and seeing?” Nurse Angela asked.
No one answered her.
“ ‘O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes,’ ” Mrs. Grogan began softly, but Dr. Larch wouldn’t hear her out.
“Whatever the alternative is—if there is one—it isn’t prayer,” he said.
“It’s always been an alternative for me,” Mrs. Grogan said defiantly.
“Then say it to yourself,” he said.
Dr. Larch moved slowly in the small room. He handed Nurse Angela the letter to the board he had written for her. He handed Nurse Caroline her letter, too.
“Just sign them,” he said. “Read them over, if you want.”
“You don’t know that Melony will expose you,” Mrs. Grogan said to him.
“Does it really matter?” Larch asked. “Just look at me. Do I have a lot of time?” They looked away. “I don’t want to leave it up to Melony. Or to old age,” he added. “Or to ether,” he admitted, which caused Nurse Edna to cover her face with her hands. “I prefer to take my chances with Homer Wells.”
Nurse Angela and Nurse Caroline signed the letters. Several examples of the correspondence between Wilbur Larch and Fuzzy Stone were also submitted to the board of trustees; Nurse Angela would include these in the envelope with her letter. The board would understand that all the nurses, and Mrs. Grogan, had discussed the matter together. Wilbur Larch would not need ether to help him sleep—not that night.
Mrs. Grogan, who usually slept like a stone, would be awake all night; she was praying. Nurse Edna took a long walk through the apple orchard on the hill. Even when they all pitched in for the harvest, it was hard to keep up with the apples Homer had provided. Nurse Caroline, who (everyone agreed) was the most alert, was assigned the task of familiarizing herself with the details of the life and training of the zealous missionary Dr. Stone; if the board asked questions—and surely they would—someone had to be ready with the right answers. Despite her youth and her energy, Nurse Caroline was forced to take Fuzzy’s history with her to her bed, where sleep overcame her before she got to the part about the children’s diarrhea.
Nurse Angela was on duty. She gave the woman who was expecting an abortion another sedative; she gave a woman who was expecting a baby a glass of water; she tucked one of the smaller boys back into his bed—he must have had a dream; he was completely on top of his covers and his feet were on his pillow. Dr. Larch had been so tired that he had gone to bed without kissing any of the boys, so Nurse Angela decided to do this for him—and, perhaps, for herself. When she’d kissed the last boy, her back was hurting her and she sat down on one of the unoccupied beds. She listened to the boys’ breathing; she tried to remember Homer Wells as a boy, to recall the particular sound of his breathing; she tried to get a picture of the postures of his style of sleep. It calmed her to think of him. Given old age, given ether, given Melony, she, too, would prefer to take her chances with Homer Wells.
“Please come home, Homer,” Nurse Angela whispered. “Please come home.”
It was one of the few times that Nurse Angela fell asleep when she was on duty, and the first time, ever, that she fell asleep in the boys’ sleeping room. The boys were astonished to discover her with them in the morning; she woke up with the boys climbing on her, and she needed to busy herself to assure the younger ones that no great change in the order of their lives was being heralded by her being found asleep among them. She hoped she was telling the truth. A particularly small and superstitious boy did not believe her; he believed in things he referred to as “woods creatures,” which he refused to describe, and he remained convinced that one of these demons had turned Nurse Angela into an orphan overnight.
“When you fall asleep, the bark grows over your eyes,” he explained to her.
“Heavens, no!” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “And then only the trees will adopt you.”
“Nonsense,” Nurse Angela told him. “The trees are just trees. And bark can’t hurt you.”
“Some of the trees used to be people,” the little boy told her. “They used to be orphans.”
“No, no, dear. No, they didn’t,” Nurse Angela said. She made him sit on her lap.
Although it was early in the morning, she could hear the typewriter; Dr. Larch had more to say. The little boy in her lap was trembling; he was listening to the typewriter, too.
“Do you hear that?” he whispered to Nurse Angela.
“The typewriter?” she asked him.
“The what?” he said.
“That’s a typewriter,” she said, but he shook his head.
“No, it’s the bark,” he said. “It gets in at night, and in the morning.”
Although her back still hurt her, Nurse Angela carried the boy all the way to her office; she showed him the noise he’d heard—Dr. Larch at the typewriter—but she wondered if Larch, in the state he was in when he was writing, was not even more terrifying to the little boy than
his imagined tree people.
“You see?” Nurse Angela asked the boy. “It’s a typewriter, and that’s Doctor Larch.” Larch scowled at them; irritated by the interruption, he grumbled something they couldn’t hear. “You know Doctor Larch, don’t you?” Nurse Angela asked the little boy.
But the child had no doubt. He threw his arms around Nurse Angela’s neck; then, tentatively, he let go with one hand, with which he pointed at the typewriter and at Dr. Larch. “Woods creature,” he whispered.
This time the letter was written in Larch’s most didactic voice; he wrote to Homer Wells; he told Homer everything. He didn’t beg. He did not characterize Fuzzy Stone as having an altogether more important job than Homer had; he did not point out that both Homer Wells and Fuzzy Stone were impostors. Larch said that he was sure Angel would accept his father’s sacrifice—“He’ll value your need to be of use,” was how Wilbur Larch put it.
“Young people find risk-taking admirable. They find it heroic,” Larch argued. “If abortions were legal, you could refuse—in fact, given your beliefs, you should refuse. But as long as they’re against the law, how can you refuse? How can you allow yourself a choice in the matter when there are so many women who haven’t the freedom to make the choice themselves? The women have no choice. I know you know that’s not right, but how can you—you of all people, knowing what you know—HOW CAN YOU FEEL FREE TO CHOOSE NOT TO HELP PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT FREE TO GET OTHER HELP? You have to help them because you know how. Think about who’s going to help them if you refuse.” Wilbur Larch was so tired that if he had allowed himself to go to sleep, the bark would have grown over his eyes.
“Here is the trap you are in,” Dr. Larch wrote to Homer. “And it’s not my trap—I haven’t trapped you. Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you—because you know how to perform them—have no choice, either. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman’s freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice—and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you’re trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you.
