The Cider House Rules (56 page)

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 the 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,” Mary 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.”

“Oh, shut up,” Melony said tiredly. She stood on the curb, her hands on her hips, her nostrils flared; she was trying to pick up a scent, the way a dog guesses in the air for the history of intrusions upon its territory.

“What is it?” Lorna asked Melony. “Was your fella here with his rich cunt?”

Ted and Patty Callahan were anxious to take Mary Agnes home, but Melony stopped them as they were leaving. She reached into her tight pocket and produced the horn-rimmed barrette that Mary Agnes had stolen from Candy, which Melony had taken for herself. Melony gave the barrette to Mary Agnes.

“Keep it,” Melony said. “You took it, it’s yours.”

Mary Agnes clutched the barrette as if it were a medal for bravery, for valorous conduct in the only arena that Melony respected.

“I hope I see ya!” Mary Agnes called after Melony, who was stalking away—the escaping Homer Wells might be around the next corner.

“What color was the van?” Melony called.

“Green!” said Mary Agnes. “I hope I see ya!” she repeated.

“You ever hear of an Ocean View?” Melony yelled back at the Callahans; they hadn’t. What are apples to antiques dealers?

“Can I see ya sometime?” Mary Agnes asked Melony.

“I’m at the shipyards,” Melony told the girl. “If you ever hear of an Ocean View, you can see me.”

“You don’t know it was him,” Lorna said to Melony later. They were drinking beer. Melony wasn’t talking. “And you don’t know if the rich cunt is still with him.”

They stood on the bank of the foggy Kennebec, near the boardinghouse where Lorna lived; when they’d finish a beer, they’d throw the bottle into the river. Melony was good at throwing things into rivers. She kept her face turned up; she was still smelling the wind—as if even that wisp of Candy’s pubic hair could not escape her powers of detection.

Homer Wells was also making a deposit in the water.
Ploink!
said the snails he threw off Ray Kendall’s dock; the sea made just the smallest sound in swallowing snails.
Ploink!
Ploink!

Candy and Homer sat with their backs against opposite corner posts at the end of the dock. If they’d both stretched out their legs to each other, the soles of their feet could have touched, but Candy sat with her knees slightly bent—in a position familiar to Homer Wells from his many views of women in stirrups.

“Is it okay?” Candy asked quietly.

“Is what okay?” he asked.

“Your heart,” she whispered.

How could he tell? “I guess so,” he said.

“It’ll be okay,” she said.

“What will be okay?” asked Homer Wells.

“Everything,” Candy said hurriedly.

“Everything,” repeated Homer Wells. “Me loving you—that’s okay. And you loving me,
and
Wally—that’s okay, too? Right,” he said.

“You have to wait and see,” Candy said. “For everything—you have to wait and see.”

“Right.”

“I don’t know what to do, either,” said Candy helplessly.

“We have to do the right thing,” Homer Wells said. Wally would want to do the right thing, and Dr. Larch was doing what he thought was the right thing, too. If you could be patient enough to wait and see, the right thing must present itself—mustn’t it? What else does an orphan do, anyway, but wait and see?