The Cider House Rules Read Online Free PDF Page B

coming to {37} open the door. For some reason, he reached out arid took the pregnant woman's hand. Maybe it was the tear frozen to her face that the new light had allowed him to see, but he wanted a hand to hold himself. He wais calm —Homer Wells—as Nurse Angela peered into the snowy night in disbelief while she struggled to open the frozen door. To the pregnant woman, and to her unwanted child, Homer said, 'Don't worry. Everyone is nice here.'
    He felt the pregnant woman squeeze his hand so hard that it hurt. The word 'Mother!' was strangely on his lips when Nurse Angela finally got the door open and seized Homer Wells in her arms.
    'Oh, ohY she cried. 'Oh, Homer —my Homer, our Homer! I knew you'd be back!'
    And because the pregnant woman's hand still firmly held Homer's hand—neither one of them felt able to let go—Nurse Angela turned and included the woman in her embrace. It seemed to Nurse Angela that this pregnant woman was just another orphan who belonged (like Homer Wells) exactly where she was.
    What he told Dr. Larch was that he'd felt of no use in Waterville. Because of what the Drapers had said, when they'd called Larch to say that Homer had run away, Homer had to explain about the buggery—afterward, St. Larch explained all about buggery to Homer. The professor's drinking surprised Dr. Larch (he was good, as a rule, at detecting that), and the prayers baffled Larch. Dr. Larch's note to the Drapers was of a brevity the professor's own language rarely allowed.
    'Repent,' the note said. Larch might have left it at that, but he couldn't resist adding, 'You are vile, you should abhor yourselves.'
    Wilbur Larch knew that a fourth foster family for Homer Wells would not be easy to find. The search took Dr. Larch three years, by which time Homer was twelve—almost thirteen. Larch knew what the danger {38} would be: it would take Homer a great many years to feel as comfortable anywhere else as he felt at St. Cloud's.
    'Here in St. Cloud's,' Larch wrote in his journal, 'we have only one problem. That there will always be orphans is not in the category of a problem; that is simply not to be solved—one; does the best one can with that, one takes care of them. That our budget will always be too small is also not a problem; that won't be solved, either—an orphanage goes down to the wire; by definition, that is what should happen. And it is not a problem that every woman who gets pregnant doesn't necessarily want her baby; perhaps we can look ahead to a more enlightened time, when women will have the right to abort the birth of an unwanted child—but some women will always be uneducated, will always be confused, will always be frightened. Even in enlightened times, unwanted babies will manage to be born.
    'And there will always be babies, who were very much wanted, who will end up orphans—by accident, by both planned and random acts of violence, which are not problems either. Here in St. Cloud's we would waste our limited energy and our limited imagination by regarding the sordid facts of life as if they were problems. Here in St. Cloud's we have only one problem. His name is Homer Wells. We have been very successful with Homer. We have managed to make the orphanage his home, and that is the problem. If you try to give an institution of the state, or of any government, anything like the love one is meant to invest in a family—and if the institution is an orphanage and you succeed in giving it love—then you will create a monster: an orphanage that is not a way-station to a better life, but an orphanage that is the first and last stop, and the only station the orphan will accept.
    There is no excuse for cruelty, but—at an orphanage —perhaps we are obliged to withhold love; if you fail to withhold love at an orphanage, you will create an orphanage that no orphan will willingly leave. You will {39} create a Homer Wells—a true orphan, because his only home will always be at St. Cloud's. God (or whoever)