The Cider House Rules (71 page)

“I’m packing up
your
things,” Melony said. “I’m not the one who’s pregnant. I don’t have to go nowhere.”

“Don’t throw me out,” Lorna said miserably. “Beat me, but don’t throw me out.”

“You take the train to Saint Cloud’s. When you get there, you ask for the orphanage,” Melony told her friend.

“It was just a guy—just one guy, and it was just once!” Lorna cried.

“No, it wasn’t,” Melony said. “A guy gets you pregnant
fast.
With women, it takes fifteen years.”

When she had packed up Lorna’s things, Melony stood over the bed and shook her friend, who tried to hide under the bedcovers. “Fifteen years!” Melony cried. She shook Lorna, and shook her, but that was all she did to her. She even walked Lorna to the train. Lorna looked very disheveled, and it was only the early morning of what would be a wilting summer day.

“I ask for the orphanage?” Lorna asked numbly. In addition to her suitcase, Melony handed Lorna a large carton.

“And you give this to an old woman named Grogan—if she’s still alive,” Melony said. “Don’t say nothing to her, just give it to her. And if she’s dead, or not there anymore,” Melony started to say; then she stopped. “Forget that,” she said. “She’s either there or she’s dead, and if she’s dead, bring the carton back. You can give it back to me when you pick up the rest of your stuff.”

“The rest of my stuff?” Lorna said.

“I was faithful to you. I was loyal as a dog,” Melony said, more loudly than she’d meant to speak, because a conductor looked at her strangely—as if she were a dog. “You see somethin’ you want, shitface?” Melony asked the conductor.

“The train is about to leave,” he mumbled.

“Please don’t throw me out,” Lorna whispered to Melony.

“I hope you have a real monster inside you,” Melony told her friend. “I hope it tears you to pieces when they drag it out your door.”

Lorna fell down in the aisle of the train, as if she’d been punched, and Melony left her in a heap. The conductor helped Lorna to her feet and into her seat; out the window of the moving train, he watched Melony walking away. That was when the conductor noticed that he was shaking almost as violently as Lorna.

Melony thought about Lorna arriving in St. Cloud’s—that turd of a stationmaster (would he still be there?), that long walk uphill with her suitcase and the large carton for Mrs. Grogan (could Lorna make it?), and would the old man still be in the business? She’d not been angry for fifteen years, but now here was another betrayal and Melony pondered how readily her anger had returned; it made all her senses keener. She felt the itch to pick apples again.

She was surprised that it was not with vengeance that she thought of Homer Wells. She remembered how she’d first loved having Lorna as a pal—in part, because she could complain to Lorna about what Homer had done to her. Now Melony imagined she’d like to complain about Lorna to Homer Wells.

“That little bitch,” she’d tell Homer. “If there was anybody with a bulge in his pants, she couldn’t keep her eyes off it.”

“Right,” Homer would say, and together they would demolish a building—just shove it into time. When time passes, it’s the people who knew you whom you want to see; they’re the ones you can talk to. When enough time passes, what’s it matter what they did to you?

Melony discovered that she could think like this for one minute; but in the next minute, when she thought of Homer Wells, she thought she’d like to kill him.

When Lorna came back from St. Cloud’s and went to the boardinghouse to retrieve her things, she found that everything had been neatly packed and boxed and gathered in one corner of the room; Melony was at work, so Lorna took her things and left.

After that, they would see each other perhaps once a week at the shipyard, or at the pizza bar in Bath where everyone from the yard went; on these occasions, they were polite but silent. Only once did Melony speak to her.

“The old woman, Grogan—she was alive?” Melony asked.

“I didn’t bring the box back, did I?” Lorna asked.

“So you gave it to her?” Melony asked. “And you didn’t say nothing?”

“I just asked if she was alive, and one of the nurses said she was, so I gave the carton to one of the nurses—as I was leavin’,” Lorna said.

“And the doctor?” Melony asked. “Old Larch—is he alive?”

“Barely,” Lorna said.

“I’ll be damned,” said Melony. “Did it hurt?”

“Not much,” Lorna said cautiously.

“Too bad,” Melony said. “It shoulda hurt a lot.”

In her boardinghouse, where she was now the sole superintendent, she took from a very old electrician’s catalogue a yellowed article and photograph from the local newspaper. She went to the antiques shop that was run by her old, dim-witted devotee, Mary Agnes Cork, whose adoptive parents had treated her well; they’d even put her in charge of the family store. Melony asked Mary Agnes for a suitable frame for the newspaper article and the photograph, and Mary Agnes was delighted to come up with something perfect. It was a genuine Victorian frame taken from a ship that had been overhauled in the Bath yards. Mary Agnes sold Melony the frame for much less than it was worth, even though Melony was rich. Electricians are well paid, and Melony had been working full-time for the shipyard for fifteen years; because she was the superintendent of the boardinghouse, she lived almost rent-free. She didn’t own a car and she bought all her clothes at Sam’s Army-Navy Men’s Store.

It was fitting that the frame was teak—the wood of the tree that had held Wally Worthington in the air over Burma for one whole night—because the newspaper article was about Captain Worthington, and the picture—which Melony had recognized, fifteen years ago—was also of Wally. The article was all about the miraculous rescue of the downed (and paralyzed) pilot, who had been awarded the Purple Heart. As far as Melony was concerned, the whole story resembled the plot of a cheap and unlikely adventure movie, but she liked the picture—and the part of the article that said Wally was a local hero, a Worthington from those Worthingtons who for years had owned and managed the Ocean View Orchards in Heart’s Rock.

In her bedroom, in her boardinghouse in Bath, Melony hung the antique frame containing the article and photograph over her bed. In the darkness she liked knowing it was there—over her head, like history. She liked that as much as looking at the photograph in the daylight hours. And in the darkness, she would linger over the syllables of that hero’s name.

“Worthington,” she liked to say aloud. “Ocean View,” she said, at other times; she was more familiar with saying this. “Heart’s Rock,” she would say, quickly spitting the short words out.

In those predawn hours, which are the toughest for insomniacs, Melony would whisper, “Fifteen years.” And just before she would fall asleep, she would ask of the first, flat light that crept into her bedroom, “Are you still there, Sunshine?” What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parentheses.

For fifteen years, Homer Wells had taken responsibility for the writing and the posting of the cider house rules. Every year, it was the last thing he attached to the wall after the fresh coat of paint had dried. Some years he tried being jolly with the rules; other years he tried sounding nonchalant; perhaps it had been Olive’s tone and not the rules themselves that had caused some offense, and thereby made it a matter of pride with the migrants that the rules should never be obeyed.

The rules themselves did not change much. The rotary screen had to be cleaned out. A word of warning about the drinking and the falling asleep in the cold-storage room was mandatory. And long after the Ferris wheel at Cape Kenneth was torn down and there were so many lights on the coast that the view from the cider house roof resembled a glimpse of some distant city, the migrants still sat on the roof and drank too much and fell off, and Homer Wells would ask (or tell) them not to. Rules, he guessed, never
asked;
rules
told.

But he tried to make the cider house rules seem friendly. He phrased the rules in a confiding voice. “There have been some accidents on the roof, over the years—especially at night, and especially in combination with having a great deal to drink while sitting on the roof. We recommend that you do your drinking with both feet on the ground,” Homer would write.

But every year, the piece of paper itself would become worn and tattered and used for other things—a kind of desperation grocery list, for example, always by someone who couldn’t spell.

CORN MEEL

REGULAR FLOWER

was written across Homer’s rules one year.

At times, the solitary sheet of paper gathered little insults and mockeries of a semi-literate nature.

“No fucking on the roof!” or “Beat-off only in cold storage!”

Wally told Homer that only Mr. Rose knew how to write; that the pranks, and insults, and shopping lists were all composed by Mr. Rose, but Homer could never be sure.

Every summer Mr. Rose would write to Wally and Wally would tell Mr. Rose how many pickers he needed—and Mr. Rose would say how many he was bringing and the day they would arrive (give or take). No contract ever existed—just the short, reliable assurances from Mr. Rose.

Some summers he came with a woman—large and soft and quiet, with a baby girl riding her hip. By the time the little girl could run around and get into trouble (she was about the age of Angel Wells), Mr. Rose stopped bringing her or the woman.

For fifteen years the only migrant who was as constant as Mr. Rose was Black Pan, the cook.

“How’s your little girl?” Homer Wells would ask Mr. Rose—every year that the woman and the daughter didn’t show up again.

“She growin’, like your boy,” Mr. Rose would say.

“And how’s your lady?” Homer would ask.

“She lookin’ after the little girl,” Mr. Rose would say.

Only once in fifteen years did Homer Wells approach Mr. Rose on the subject of the cider house rules. “I hope they don’t offend anyone,” Homer began. “I’m responsible—I write them, every year—and if anyone takes offense, I hope you’ll tell me.”

“No offense,” said Mr. Rose, smiling.

“They’re just little rules,” Homer said.

“Yes,” said Mr. Rose. “They are.”

“But it does concern me that no one seems to pay attention to them,” Homer finally said.

Mr. Rose, whose bland face was unchanged by the years and whose body had remained thin and lithe, looked at Homer mildly. “We got our own rules, too, Homer,” he said.

“Your own rules,” said Homer Wells.

“ ’Bout lots of things,” said Mr. Rose. “ ’Bout how much we can have to do with you, for one thing.”

“With me?” Homer said.

“With white people,” said Mr. Rose. “We got our rules about that.”

“I see,” Homer said, but he didn’t really see.

“And about fightin’,” said Mr. Rose.

“Fighting,” said Homer Wells.

“With each other,” said Mr. Rose. “One rule is, we can’t cut each other bad. Not bad enough for no hospital, not bad enough for no police. We can cut each other, but not bad.”

“I see,” Homer said.

“No, you don’t,” said Mr. Rose. “You
don’t
see—that’s the point. We can cut each other only so bad that you never see—you never know we was cut. You see?”

“Right,” said Homer Wells.

“When you gonna say something’ else?” Mr. Rose asked, smiling.

“Just be careful on the roof,” Homer advised him.

“Nothin’ too bad can happen up there,” Mr. Rose told him. “Worse things can happen on the ground.”

Homer Wells was on the verge of saying “Right,” again, when he discovered that he couldn’t talk; Mr. Rose had seized his tongue between his blunt, square-ended index finger and his thumb. A vague taste, like dust, was in Homer’s mouth; Mr. Rose’s hand had been so fast, Homer had never seen it—he never knew before that someone could actually catch hold of someone’s tongue.

“Caught ya,” said Mr. Rose, smiling; he let Homer’s tongue go.

Homer managed to say, “You’re very fast.”

“Right,” said Mr. Rose alertly. “Ain’t no one faster.”

Wally complained to Homer about the yearly wear and tear on the cider house roof. Every two or three years, they had to re-tin the roof, or fix the flashing, or put up new gutters.

“What’s having his own rules got to do with not paying attention to ours?” Wally asked Homer.

“I don’t know,” Homer said. “Write him a letter and ask him.”

But no one wanted to offend Mr. Rose; he was a reliable crew boss. He made the picking and the pressing go smoothly every harvest.

Candy, who managed the money at Ocean View, claimed that whatever costs they absorbed in repairs to the cider house roof were more than compensated for by Mr. Rose’s reliability.

“There’s something a little gangland style about the guy,” Wally said—not exactly complaining. “I mean, I don’t really want to know how he gets all those pickers to behave themselves.”

“But they
do
behave themselves,” Homer said.

“He does a good job,” Candy said. “Let him have his own rules.”

Homer Wells looked away; he knew that rules, for Candy, were all private contracts.

Fifteen years ago, they had made their own rules—or, really, Candy had made them (before Wally came home). They stood in the cider house (after Angel was born, on a night when Olive was looking after Angel). They had just made love, but not happily; something was wrong. It would be wrong for fifteen years, but that night Candy had said, “Let’s agree to something.”

“Okay,” Homer said.

“Whatever happens, we share Angel.”

“Of course,” Homer said.

“I mean, you get to be his father—you get all the father time you want to have—and I get to have all the mother time I need,” Candy said.

“Always,” said Homer Wells, but something was wrong.

“I mean, regardless of what happens—whether I’m with you, or with Wally,” Candy said.

Homer was quiet for a while. “So you’re leaning toward Wally?” he asked.

“I’m not
leaning
anywhere,” Candy said. “I’m standing right here, and we’re agreeing to certain rules.”