The Cider House Rules (34 page)

Nurse Edna tried her best with the nightly benediction; Dr. Larch refused to leave Nurse Angela's office; he said he was listening to an owl, and he wanted to keep listening. Nurse Edna felt extremely self-conscious with the benediction, which she'd never fully understood in the first place—she took it to be a kind of private joke between Dr. Larch and the universe. Her voice was too shrill, and startled sick little Smoky Fields out of sleep, and produced a long, loud wail from Curly Day—before Curly returned to his more steady sobbing.

'Good night, you Princes of Maine! You Kings of New {274} England!' Nurse Edna peeped. Where is Homer? several voices whispered, while Nurse Angela continued to rub Curly Day between his shoulder blades in the darkness.

Nurse Edna, extremely agitated by Dr. Larch's behavior, got up the nerve to march right down to Nurse Angela's office. She was going to walk right in and tell Dr. Larch that he should go give himself a good snort of ether and then get a good night's sleep! But Nurse Edna grew more timid as she approached the solitary light shining from the office. Nurse Edna hadn't known about the fetal autopsy, either, and when she rather cautiously peered into Nurse Angela's office, she was given quite a turn by the gruesome fetus. Dr. Larch just sat at the typewriter, unmoving. He was composing in his mind the first of many letters he would write to Homer Wells. He was attempting to gentle his anxieties and calm his thoughts. Please be healthy, please be happy, please be careful, Wilbur Larch was thinking—the darkness edging in around him, the supplicant hands of the murdered baby from Three Mile Falls reaching out to him. {275}

6. Ocean View

For the first two weeks that Homer Wells was gone from St. Cloud's, Wilbur Larch let the mail pile up unanswered, Nurse Angela struggled with the longer and denser sentences of Charles Dickens (which had a curious effect on the boys' attention; they hung on her every word, holding their breath for the errors they anticipated), and Mrs. Grogan suffered Melony's deadpan rendition of Charlotte Bronte. Near the end of Chapter Twenty-seven, Mrs. Grogan could detect a bare minimum of Jane Eyre's 'indomitable' spirit in Melony's voice.

'I care for myself,' Melony read. 'The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.'

Good girl, thought Mrs. Grogan, please be a good girl. She told Dr. Larch that, although Melony's reading voice depressed her, Melony should be encouraged; she should be given more responsibility.

Nurse Angela said she'd be glad to give up on Dickens. Dr. Larch surprised them all. When Homer Wells had been gone for three weeks, Dr. Larch announced that he didn't give a damn who read what to whom. He had ceased to care about the benediction altogether, and so Nurse Edna—although it would never feel quite natural to her—persisted with the nightly salutation to the imagined Princes of Maine, 'the dear little Kings of New England.'

Mrs. Grogan became so firmly transfixed by Melony's {276} reading voice that she now accompanied Melony to the boys' division and listened, with the nervous boys, to Melony read Dickens. Melony's voice was too evenpitched for Dickens; she plodded her way—she made no mistakes but she never adjusted her cadence; she presented bustle and sunshine with the same heavy speech she used for gloom and fog. By her stern countenance, Mrs. Grogan saw that Melony was analyzing as she read—but the subject of her analysis was not Charles Dickens; Melony was searching through Dickens for specific characteristics she associated with Homer Wells. Sometimes, by the intense concentration on Melony's face, Melony seemed close to discovering Homer's whereabouts in the England of another century. (Dr. Larch had told Melony that Homer's actual whereabouts were not her business.)

Never mind that Melony murdered every moment of Dickensian wit with her ferocity, or that the rich and colorful details of character and place were turned uniformly drab by her voice. 'The girl has no lilt,' Nurse Edna complained. Never mind: the boys were terrified of Melony, and their fears made them pay more attention to her than they had ever paid to Homer Wells. Sometimes the interest in the literature isn't in the literature—the boys' division was an audience like any other: self-interest, personal memories, their secret anxieties crept into their perceptions of what they heard (regardless of what Charles Dickens had done and what Melony did to him). |

Not feeling completely comfortable with leaving the girls' division unattended while she trotted to the boys' to hear Melony read, Mrs. Grogan developed the habit of following the excerpt from
Jane Eyre
with a short prayer that clung, both lovely and ominous, to the pale and stained bedspreads on which the moonlight glowed long after Melony and Mrs. Grogan had left the girls to themselves. Even Mary Agnes Cork was struck silent—if not exactly rendered well behaved—by Mrs. Grogan's prayer.

If Mrs. Grogan had known that the prayer was English {277} in origin, she might not have used it; she had heard it on the radio and memorized it. and she always spoke it to herself before she allowed herself to sleep. The jprayer was written by Cardinal Newman. When Melony started reading to the boys, Mrs. Grogan made her personal prayer public.

'Oh Lord,' she said in the hall light, in the open doorway, while Melony stood restlessly beside her. 'Oh Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.'

'Amen,' Melony would say—not quite facetiously, but certainly not reverentially. She said it the way she read from Charlotte Bronte and from Charles Dickens —it gave Mrs. Grogan a chill, although the summer nights were warm and humid and she needed to take two steps for every one of Melony's, just to keep pace with Melony on her determined journey to the boys' division. The way Melony said 'Amen' was the way she said everything. Hers was a voice without a soul, Mrs. Grogan thought—her teeth chattering as she sat in a chair in the boys' division, slightly out of the light, behind Melony, watching her broad back. Something in Mrs Grogan's transfixed appearance may have been responsible for the rumor begun in the boys' division, possibly by Curly Day: that Mrs. Grogan had never gone to school, was actually illiterate, was incapable of reading even a newspaper to herself—and was, therefore, in Melony's control.

The little boys, lying frightened in their beds, felt that they were in Melony's control, too.

Nurse Edna was so disquieted by Melony's reading that she couldn't wait to launch into her Princes of Maine and Kings of New England refrain (even if she didn't know what it meant). Nurse Edna suggested that Melony was to blame for an increase in nightmares in the boys' division and that she should be removed from her responsibilities {278} as reader. Nurse Angela disagreed; if Melony persisted in casting an evil presence, it was because she'd not been given enough responsibility. Also, Nurse Angela said, maybe there weren't more nightmares; with Homer Wells gone (it had now been a month), perhaps it was simply that Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela heard those suffering from night terrors—in the past, Homer heard them first and tended to them.

Mrs Grogan was in favor of increasing Melony's responsibilities; she felt the girl was at the threshold of a change—she might either rise above her own bitterness or descend more deeply into it. It was Nurse Angela who suggested to Dr. Larch that Melony might be of use.

'Of
more
use, you mean?' Dr. Larch asked.

'Right,' Nurse Angela said, but Dr. Larch didn't appreciate anyone imitating the speech habits of Homer Wells; he gave Nurse Angela such a look that she never said 'Right' again. He also didn't appreciate the suggestion that Melony could be taught to replace Homer— not even in usefulness. I

Nurse Edna took up Melony's cause. 'If she were a
boy,
Wilbur,' Nurse Edna said, 'you would already have given her more to do.'

The hospital is connected to the boys' division,' Larch said. 'It's impossible to keep what's happening here a secret from the boys. But the
girls
are another matter,' he concluded weakly.

'Melony knows what's happening here,' Nurse Angela said.

Wilbur Larch knew he was cornered. He was also angry at Homer Wells—he had given the boy permission to extend his time away from St. Cloud's as long as possible, but he hadn't expected he wouldn't
hear
from Homer (not a word!) in nearly six weeks.

'I don't know that I have the patience to work with a teen-ager, anymore,' Larch said peevishly.

'I think Melony is twenty-four or twenty-five,' Mrs. Grogan said. i {279}

How could someone that old still be in an orphanage? Larch wondered. The same way that I can still be here, he answered himself. Who else would take the job? Who else would take Melony? 'All right. Let's ask her if she's interested,' Larch said.

He dreaded the meeting with Melony; he couldn't help himself, but he blamed her for whatever sullenness had crept into Homer's personality—and the rebellion Homer had manifested toward him recently. Larch knew he was being unfair, and this made him feel guilty; he began to answer the mail.

There was a long (albeit businesslike) letter from Olive Worthington, and a check—a rather sizable donation to the orphanage. Mrs. Worthington said she was happy her son had been so 'taken' by the good work at St. Cloud's that he'd seen fit to bring one of Dr. Larch's 'boys' home with him. It was fine with the Worthingtons that Homer stay through the summer. They frequently hired 'schoolboy help,' and she was frankly grateful that her son Wally had 'the opportunity to mingle with someone his own age—but of less fortunate circumstances.' Olive Worthington wanted Larch to know that she and her husband thought Homer was a fine boy, polite and a good worker, and that he seemed 'altogether a sobering influence on Wally.' She concluded that she hoped 'Wally might even learn the value of a day's work from his proximity to Homer,' and that Homer had 'clearly profited from a rigorous education'—she based this judgment on Homer's ability to learn the apple business 'as if he were used to more demanding studies.'

Olive wanted Dr. Larch to know that Homer had requested to be paid in the form of a monthly donation to St. Cloud's, minus only what she fairly judged
were
his expenses; since he shared a room with Wally and could fit into Wally's clothes, and since he ate his meals
with
the Worthington family, Olive said the boy's expenses were minimal. She was delighted that her son had 'such manly and honorable company' for the summer, and she was {280} pleased to have the opportunity to contribute what little she could to the well-being of the orphans of St. Cloud's. 'The kids,' Olive said (it was how she referred to Wally and Candy), '…tell me you are doing great things there. They're so happy they stumbled upon you.'

Wilbur Larch could tell that Olive Worthington didn't know she had an accomplished obstetrician tending to her apple trees, and he grumbled to himself about the 'rigorous education' he felt had been quite wasted on Homer Wells—given his present occupation—but Dr. Larch calmed himself sufficiently to compose a cordial, albeit formal, letter in response to Mrs. Worthington.

Her donation was very gratefully received, and he was glad that Homer Wells was representing his upbringing at St. Cloud's in so positive a manner—he would expect no less of the boy, which Mrs. Worthington might be so kind as to tell him. Also, that it would be nice if Homer would write. Dr. Larch was happy that there was such healthy summer employment for Homer; the boy would be missed at St. Cloud's, where he had always been of use, but Larch emphasized his pleasure at Homer's good fortune. He congratulated Olive Worthington on the good manners and the generosity of her son; he said he would welcome those 'kids' back at St. Cloud's— anytime What luck—for everyone!—that they had 'stumbled upon' the orphanage.

Wilbur Larch gritted his teeth and tried to imagine a harder place to stumble upon than St. Cloud's; he managed a supreme effort at concentration and proceeded with the part of the letter he had waited more than a month to write.

There is one thing I must tell you about Homer Wells,' Wilbur Larch wrote. 'There is a problem with his heart,' the doctor wrote; he elaborated. He was more careful than he'd been when he discussed Homer's heart defect with Wally and Candy; he tried to be as precise but as elusive as he knew he'd eventually have to be when he {281} described the ailment to Homer Wells. His letter to Olive Worthington about Homer's heart was a kind ol : warmup exercise. He was sowing seeds (an infuriating phrase, but he found himself thinking it—ever since his inheritance of the stationmaster's catalogues); he wanted Homer treated with kid gloves, as they say in Maine.