The Cider House Rules (75 page)

'I mean a
new
fat woman,' Vernon said. He started walking back to his tractor. 'She says she wants to be
a
picker, and she asked for you. She knows you.'

Homer got slowly to his feet; he'd rolled over a root of the big tree, and the root had hurt him in the ribs. Also, Angel had stuffed grass down the back of his shirt. Angel said to his father, 'Oh, a fat woman, huh? I guess you {604} didn't tell me about the fat woman.' As Homer unbuttoned his shirt to shake out the grass, Angel poked his father's bare stomach. That was when Angel noticed that his father had aged. He was still a trim man, and strong from all the orchard work he'd done, but just a bit of belly rolled over the belt of his jeans, and his hair, tousled from the wrestling, was more flecked with gray than it was with grass. There was something grim around the corners of Homer's eyes that Angel had also never noticed before.

'Pop?' Angel asked him softly. 'Who's the woman?' But his father was looking at him in a panic; he started buttoning his shirt askew, and Angel had to help him with it. 'It can't be the bully, can it?' Angel was trying to joke with his father—their manner together was often full of joking; but Homer wouldn't speak, he wouldn't even smile. Half a trailer of apple crates still needed to be unloaded, but Homer drove too fast, dumping an occasional crate. They had an empty trailer in no time, and on the way back to the apple mart, Homer took the public road instead of winding through the back orchards. The public road was faster, although Homer had told all the drivers to keep off it whenever they could—to avoid any possible accidents with the beach traffic along that road in the summers.

Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parent's own rule.

'Do you think it's her?' Angel shouted to his father. He stood over his father's shoulders, his hands on the tractor seat, his feet braced against the trailer hitch. 'You've got to admit, it's a little exciting,' the boy added, but Homer looked grim.

Homer parked the tractor and trailer by the storage barns, next to the mart. 'You can start putting on another load,' he told Angel, but he was not going to get rid of Angel so easily. The boy dogged his footsteps to the apple mart, where Big Dot and Florence and Irene were surrounding the implacable and massive Melony.{605}

'It
is
her, isn't it?' Angel whispered to his father.

'Hello, Melony,' said Homer Wells. There was not a sound in the still, summer air.

'How you doin', Sunshine?' Melony asked him.

'Sunshine!' said Big Dot Taft.

Even Angel had to say it out loud. Imagine: his father a 'Sunshine'!

But although she had waited years to see him, Melony's gaze was riveted not on Homer Wells but on Angel. Melony could not take her eyes off the boy. Homer Wells, a pleasant-looking man in his forties, did not very precisely remind Melony of the Homer Wells she had known; rather, it was Angel who struck Melony with a force quite unexpected by her. She had not anticipated being swept off her feet by the near-spitting image of the boy she had known. Poor Angel felt a little wilted by the ruffian eye Melony cast over him, but he was a young gentleman and he smiled appealingly at the stranger.

'There's no doubt about who
you are,'
Melony said to the boy. 'You look more like your father than your father.' Big Dot and the apple-mart ladies were hanging on her every word.

'It's nice that you see a resemblance,' said Homer Wells, 'but my son is adopted.'

Hadn't Homer Wells learned anything? Through those years of hard knocks, those years of muscle and fat and betrayal and growing decidedly older, could he still not see in Melony's fierce, sad eyes that she possessed a quality that could never be bullshitted?

'Adopted?' Melony said, her yellow-gray eyes never once leaving Angel. She was disappointed in her oldest friend: that he should, after all these years, still try to deceive her.

That was when Candy—who had finally gotten rid of Bucky Bean—strolled into the apple mart, removed a Gravenstein from a basket on the first display table, took a sharp bite, noticed that no one seemed to be working and walked over to the small crowd.{606}

Since the most natural space for Candy to enter this gathering was between Homer and Angel, she stepped between them; and since her mouth was quite full of the new apple, she was a little embarrassed to speak to the stranger.

'Hi!' she managed to say to Melony, who recognized instantly—in Candy's face—those few parts of Angel she had failed to locate in her memory of Homer Wells.

'This is Melony,' Homer said to Candy, who had difficulty swallowing—long ago, on the cider house roof, she had heard all about Melony. 'This is Missus Worthington,' Homer mumbled to Melony.

'How do you do?' Candy managed to say.

'Missus Worthington?' Melony said, her lynxlike eyes now darting from Angel to Candy, and from Angel to Homer Wells.

That was when Wally wheeled himself out of the office and into the mart.

'Isn't anybody working today?' he asked, in his friendly way. When he saw there was a stranger, he was polite. 'Oh, hello!' he said.

'Hi,' said Melony.

'This is my husband,' Candy said, through lots of apple.

'Your husband?' Melony said.

'This is Mister Worthington,' mumbled Homer Wells.

'Everybody calls me Wally,' Wally said.

'Melony and I were in the orphanage together,' Homer explained.

'Really?' Wally said enthusiastically. 'That's great,' he said. 'Get them to show you around. Show her the house, too,' Wally told Homer. 'Maybe you'd like to take a swim?' he asked Melony, who, for once in her life, did not know what to say. 'Dot?' Wally said to Big Dot Taft. 'Get me a count of the number of bushels of Gravs we have in storage. I got a phone order waiting.' He turned the wheelchair very smoothly and started to roll back to the office.{607}

'Meany knows how many we got,' Florence Hyde said. 'He was just in there.'

'Then someone get Meany to tell me,' Wally said. 'It's nice to meet you!' he called to Melony. 'Please stay for supper.'

Candy almost choked, but she managed a hard swallow.

'Thank you!' Melony called after Wally.

He didn't need any help going in and out of the office, because Everett Taft had (years ago) taken the threshold off and arranged for the screen door to swing both ways—like a saloon door. Wally could come and go without assistance.

He's the only hero here, Melony thought, watching the door swing closed behind the wheelchair; she could not control her hands. She wanted to touch Angel, to hug him—she'd wanted to get her hands on Homer Wells for years, but now she didn't know what she wanted to do to him. If she'd suddenly dropped to all fours, or had crouched into a stance more suitable for a fight, she knew that Homer Wells would be prepared; she noticed he had no control of his hands, either—his fingers were playing pitty-pat against his thighs. Hardest for Melony was to recognize that there was no love for her in his eyes; he looked like a trapped animal—there was no enthusiasm or curiosity about seeing her in any part of him. She thought that if she'd opened her mouth, beginning with the boy—how he was clearly no orphan!—Homer Wells would be at her throat before she cold spit out the story.

No one seemed to remember that Melony had come— among other reasons—for a job. Angel said, 'Would you like to see the pool first?'

'Well, I don't swim,' Melony said, 'but it would be nice to see it.' She smiled at Homer with such an uncharacteristic warmth—which revealed everything about her bad teeth—that Homer shivered. The apple, from which only one, uncomfortable bite had been taken, {608} hung like a lead weight at the end of Candy's limp arm.

'I'll show you the house,' Candy said. 'After Angel's shown you the pool.' She dropped the uneaten apple, then laughed at herself.

'I'll show you the orchards,' Homer mumbled.

'You don't have to show me no orchards, Sunshine.' Melony said. 'I seen lots of orchards, before.'

'Oh,' he said.

'Sunshine,' Candy said blankly.

Angel poked his father in the back as they were walking toward the house and pool; Angel still thought that this surprise was great and unexpected fun. Homer turned briefly and frowned at his son, which Angel found all the more amusing. While the boy was showing Melony the swimming pool—and making special note of the ramp for Wally's wheelchair—Candy and Homer awaited her arrival in the kitchen.

'She knows,' Homer said to Candy.

'What?' Candy said. 'What does she know?'

'Melony knows everything,' said Homer Wells, in a trance of almost ether intensity.

'How could she?' Candy asked him. 'Did you tell her?'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Homer said. 'She just knows—she always knows.'

'Don't
you
be ridiculous,' Candy said crossly.

'Wally's a great swimmer,' Angel explained to Melony.

'In the ocean, he just needs to get carried out past the breakers. I can carry him.'

'You're a good-lookin' guy,' Melony said to Angel. 'You're better lookin' than your dad ever was.'

Angel was embarrassed; he took the temperature of the pool. 'It's warm,' he said. 'Too bad you don't swim. You could stay in the shallow end, or I could teach you how to float. Candy taught my dad how to swim.'

'Incredible,' Melony said. She walked out on the diving board and jounced a little; she needed to jounce very little to make the board dip close to the water. 'If I fell in, I'll bet you could save me,' she said to Angel, who {609} couldn't tell if the big woman was being flirtatious or threatening—of if she was idly fooling around. That was what was exciting about her, Angel thought: she gave him the impression that—from one minute to the next— she might do anything.

'I could probably save you, if you were drowning,' Angel offered cautiously. But Melony retreated from the end of the diving board, which lent to her step the sense of springing power that one detects in the larger members of the cat family.

'Incredible,' she repeated, her eyes trying to take in everything.

'Want to see the house now?' Angel asked her. She was making him nervous.

'Gee, it's some place you got,' Melony told Candy, who showed her the downstairs; Homer showed her the upstairs. In the hallway between Homer's and Angel's rooms, Melony whispered to him, 'Boy, you really done all right for yourself. How'd you manage it, Sunshine?' How she feasted on him with her tawny eyes! 'You even got a great view!' she pointed out, sitting on the master bed and looking out the window.

When she asked if she could use the bathroom, Homer went downstairs to have a word with Candy, but Angel was still hanging around—still very much enjoying himself, and still curious. The impact that the thuglike nature of his father's first girlfriend had made on the boy was considerable; if Angel had been troubled in trying to imagine why his father chose such a solitary life, the violent apparition that had presented herself today had done much to reassure him. If this menacing woman had been his father's first experience, it was more understandable (to Angel) why Homer had been reluctant to repeat the relationship.

Melony seemed to spend a long time in the bathroom, and Homer Wells was grateful for the time; he needed it—to convince Candy and Angel to go back to work, to leave him alone with Melony. 'She wants a
job,'
he told {610} them forcefully. 'I need to have a little time with her, alone.'

'A job,' Candy said—a new horror coming into her face; the thought of it made her squint her pretty eyes.

Mirrors had never been Melony's friends, but the mirror in Homer's bathroom was especially harsh to her. She went through the medicine cabinet quickly; for no reason, she dumped some of the pills down the toilet. She began ejecting razor blades from a crude, metal dispenser; she emptied the dispenser before she could make herself stop. She cut her finger trying to pick up one of the blades from the floor. She had her finger stuck in her mouth when she first looked at herself in the mirror. She held the razor blade in her other hand while she reviewed the forty-something years she saw in her face. Oh, she had never been attractive, she had never been nice, but once she had been an efficient weapon, she thought; now she wasn't so sure. She held the razor blade against the pouch under one eye; she shut that eye, as if the eye itself couldn't watch what she was going to do. Then she did nothing. After a while, she put the blade down on the edge of the sink and cried.

Later, she found a cigarette lighter; Candy must have left it in the bathroom; Homer didn't smoke; Wally couldn't climb stairs. She used the lighter to melt the handle of Homer's toothbrush; she sunk the razor blade in the softest part and waited for the handle to harden. When she clutched the brush end in her hand, she had quite a nice little weapon, she thought.

Then she saw the fifteen-year-old questionnaire from the St. Cloud's board of trustees; the paper was so old, she had to be careful not to tear it. How those questions spun her mind around! She threw the toothbrush with the razor blade in the sink, then she picked it up again, then she put it in the medicine cabinet, then she took it out. She was sick once and flushed the toilet twice.

Melony stayed upstairs in the bathroom a long time. When she came downstairs, she found Homer waiting {611} for her in the kitchen; she'd had enough time alone for her disposition to change and rechange—for her to grasp hold of her real feelings about finding Homer in these surroundings, and in what she presumed was a sleazy situation. She might have enjoyed a few minutes of the discomfort she had caused him, but by the time she came downstairs she was no longer enjoying herself and her disappointment in Homer Wells was even deeper than her steadfast anger—it was nearly level with grief.

'I somehow thought you'd end up doin' somethin' better than ballin' a poor cripple's wife and pretendin' your own child ain't your own,' Melony said to Homer Wells. 'You of all people—you, an orphan,' she reminded him.