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3. Princes of Maine, Kings of New England

“Here in St. Cloud's,” Dr Larch wrote, “we treat orphans like children from royal families.”

In the boys' division, after the bedtime reading Dr Larch shouted his nightly blessing over the beds standing in rows in the darkness.

In 193—, soon after Homer Wells saw his first fetus, he began reading David Copperfield, as a bedtime story, to the boys, just twenty minutes every night, no more, no less.

Then the lights were switched off and Dr Larch opened the door from the hall.

“Good night!” he said in a loud voice. “Good night, Princes of Maine, Kings of New England!”

Then the door closed, and the orphans were left in a new blackness. They were dreaming of their future. They imagined royal foster families and princesses who loved them.

For Homer Wells, it was different. The Princes of Maine that Homer saw, the Kings of New England that he imagined were at the court of St. Cloud's, they traveled nowhere. But even to Homer Wells Dr Larch's benediction was full of hope. These Princes of Maine, these Kings of New England, these orphans of St. Cloud's – they were the heroes of their own lives. Homer understood it clearly; Dr Larch, like a father, gave him that idea.

You can behave like a prince or like a king even at St. Cloud's, Dr Larch meant.

Homer Wells dreamed that he was a prince. He lifted up his eyes to his king: he watched St. Larch's every move. Homer couldn't forget the coolness of the fetus.

“Because it was dead, right?” he asked Dr Larch. “That's why it was cool, right?”

“Yes,” said Dr Larch. “I can tell you, Homer, it was never alive.”

“Never alive,” said Homer Wells.

“Sometimes,” Dr Larch said, “a woman just can't force herself to stop a pregnancy, she feels the baby is already a baby – and she has to have it – although she doesn't want it and she can't take care of it – and so she comes to us and has her baby here. She leaves it here, with us. She trusts us to find it a home.”

“She makes an orphan,” said Homer Wells. “Someone has to adopt it.”

“Someone usually adopts it,” Dr Larch said.

“Usually,” said Homer Wells. “Maybe.”

“Eventually,” Dr Larch said.

“And sometimes,” said Homer Wells, “the woman doesn't want to have a baby, right?”

“Sometimes,” said Dr Larch, “the woman knows very early in her pregnancy that this child is unwanted.”

“An orphan, from the start,” said Homer Wells.

“You can say so,” said Wilbur Larch.

“So she kills it,” said Homer Wells.

“You can say so,” said Wilbur Larch. “You can also say that she stops it before it becomes a child – she just stops it. In the first three or four months, the fetus – or the embryo (I don't say, then, “the child”) – it does not have a life of its own. It hasn't developed.”

“It has developed only a little,” said Homer Wells.

“It can't move,” said Dr Larch.

“It doesn't have a proper nose,” said Homer Wells, remembering it. On the thing which he found there was no nose; it had the nostrils of a pig.

“Sometimes,” said Dr Larch, “when a woman is very strong and knows that no one will care for this baby, and she doesn't want to bring a child into the world and try to find it a home – she comes to me and I stop it.”

Tell me again, what's stopping it called?” asked Homer Wells.

“An abortion,” Dr Larch said.

“Right,” said Homer Wells. “An abortion.”

“And what you held in your hand, Homer, was an aborted fetus,” Dr Larch said. “An embryo, about three to four months.”

“An aborted fetus, an embryo, about three to four months,” said Homer Wells, who usually repeated the last words of sentences.

“And that's why,” Dr Larch said patiently, “some of the women who come here don't look pregnant… the embryo, the fetus, is very small.”

“But they all are pregnant,” said Homer Wells. “All the women who come here either going to have an orphan, or they're going to stop it, right?”

“That's right,” Dr Larch said. “I'm just the doctor. I help them have what they want. An orphan or an abortion.”

“An orphan or an abortion,” said Homer Wells.

Nurse Edna teased Dr Larch about Homer Wells. “You have a new shadow, Wilbur,” she said.

“God, forgive me,” wrote Dr Larch. “I have created a disciple, I have a thirteen-year-old disciple.”

By the time Homer was fifteen, his reading of David Copperfield was so successful that some of the older girls in the girls' division asked Dr Larch to tell Homer to read to them.

“Shall I read just to the older girls?” Homer asked Dr Larch.

“Certainly not,” said Dr Larch. “You'll read to all of them.”

“In the girls' division?” Homer asked.

“Well, yes,” Dr Larch said. “All the girls can't come to the boys' division.”

“Right,” said Homer Wells. “But should I read to the girls first or to the boys first?”

“The girls,” Larch said. “The girls go to bed earlier than the boys.”

“Do they?” Homer asked.

“They do here,” Dr Larch said.

“And should I read them the same book?” Homer asked.

But Dr Larch decided that girl orphans should hear about girl orphans (he also believed that boy orphans should hear about boy orphans), and so he told Homer to read aloud Jane Eyre⁷ to the girls.

It struck Homer that the girls were more attentive than the boys. It surprised Homer, because he found Jane Eyre not as interesting as David Copperfield. He was sure that Charles Dickens was a better writer than Charlotte Bronte.

“The girls' division,” Homer thought, “had a different smell from the boys'.” On the one hand, it smelled sweeter; on the other hand, it smelled sicker – it was difficult for Homer to decide.

When children went to bed, the boys and girls dressed alike – undershirts and underpants. Every time when Homer arrived at the girls' division, the girls were already in their beds, with their legs covered, some of them were sitting, some of them were lying. One of the girls was both bigger and older than Homer Wells. Her name was Melony.

Melony always looked at Homer Wells when he was reading. She was bigger than Mrs Grogan; she was too big for the girls' division. She was too big to be adopted. “She's too big to be a girl,” thought Homer Wells. Bigger than Nurse Edna, bigger than Nurse Angela – almost as big as Dr Larch – she was fat, but her fat looked solid. Homer Wells also knew that Melony was strong.

While reading aloud from Jane Eyre, Homer needed to keep his eyes off Melony. He was afraid that she could feel how he liked her heaviness.

After reading to the girls Homer hurried to the boys' division: the boys were waiting for him. Some of the smaller ones had fallen asleep. The others were lying with open eyes and open mouths, like baby birds. Homer felt he was rushing from nest to nest; his voice was feeding them and they always cried for more. His reading, like food, made them sleepy, but it often woke Homer up. He usually lay awake after the nightly benediction. There were different irritating noises.

Little Fuzzy Stone had a constant dry cough. He had wet, red eyes. He slept inside a humidified tent; there was a special waterwheel with a battery and a fan to distribute the vapor. It worked all night. Fuzzy Stone's chest sounded like a tiny, bad motor. The waterwheel, the fan, Fuzzy Stone's dramatic gasps combined in Homer's mind.

Dr Larch told Homer that Fuzzy Stone was allergic to dust. A child with chronic bronchitis was not easily adoptable. Who wants to take home a cough?

When Fuzzy Stone's coughing was too much for Homer Wells, he quietly went to the baby room. Nurse Angela or Nurse Edna was always there, usually awake. Sometimes, when the babies were quiet, even the nurse on duty was sleeping, and Homer Wells tiptoed past them all.

One night he saw one of the mothers standing in the baby room. She was standing in her hospital gown in the middle of the baby room, her eyes were closed. She was absorbing the smells and sounds of the baby room. Homer was afraid that the woman would wake up Nurse Angela, who was sleeping on the duty bed. Slowly, he led the woman back to the mothers' room.

The mothers were often awake when he came to have a look at them. Sometimes he brought someone a glass of water.

The women who came to St. Cloud's for the abortions rarely stayed for the night. They needed less time to recover than the women who had delivered. So Dr Larch discovered that they were very comfortable if they arrived in the morning and left in the early evening, just after dark. In the daytime, the sound of the babies was not so clear because the noise that the older orphans made, and the talk among the mothers and the nurses, confused everything. Dr Larch noticed that the sound of the newborn babies upset the women who had the abortions. At night only the crying babies and the owls made sounds at St. Cloud's.

If one of those women spent the night, it was never in the room with the mothers. Homer Wells saw that the expressions on their faces were troubled when they were sleeping. Homer Wells tried to imagine his own mother among the women. Where did she go after the childbirth? Or was there no place she wanted to go? And what, when she was lying there, was his father thinking – if he even knew he was a father? If she even knew who he was.

These are the things the women usually asked him:

“Are you a medical student?”

“Are you going to be a doctor when you grow up?”

“Are you one of the orphans?”

“How old are you? Hasn't anyone adopted you yet?”

“Do you like it here?”

And he usually answered:

“Maybe I will become a doctor.”

“Of course Doctor Larch is a good teacher.”

“That's right: I am one of the orphans.”

“I am almost sixteen.”

“Adoption wasn't for me. I wanted to come back.”

“Of course I like it here!”

One of the women with a huge belly asked him, “Do you mean if someone wanted to adopt you, you wouldn't go?”

“I wouldn't go,” said Homer Wells. “Right.”

“You wouldn't even think about it?” the woman asked.

“Well, I guess I'd think about it,” Homer Wells said. “But I'd probably decide to stay, as long as I can be of use here.”

The pregnant woman began to cry. “Be of use,” she said. She put her hands on her great belly. “Look at that,” she whispered, “Do you want to be of use?”

“Right,” said Homer Wells, who held his breath.

“No one wanted to put his ear against my belly and listen,” the woman said. “You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel the baby, or listen to it.”

“I don't know,” said Homer Wells.

“Don't you want to touch it or put your ear down to it?” the woman asked him.

“Okay,” said Homer Wells, putting his hand on the woman's hot, hard belly.

“Put your ear down against it, too,” the woman advised him.

“Right,” Homer said. He touched his ear very lightly to her stomach but she strongly pressed his face against her; she was like a drum. She was a warm engine.

“No one should have a baby if there's no one who wants to sleep with his head right there,” the woman whispered, patting the place where she held Homer's face. Right where? Homer wondered, because there was no comfortable place to put his head. He found it hard to imagine that the woman was carrying only one baby.

“Do you want to be of use?” the woman asked him, crying gently now.

“Yes. Be of use,” he said.

“Sleep right here,” the woman told him. He pretended to sleep with his face against the noisy belly, where she held him.

Nurse Angela called Homer Wells “angelic,” and Nurse Edna spoke of the boy's “perfection” and of his “innocence,” but Dr Larch worried about Homer's contact with the damaged women who needed the services of St. Cloud's. What impression did they make on the boy?

Homer Wells had a good, open face; it was not a face that could hide feelings and thoughts. He had strong hands and kind eyes; Dr Larch was worried about the life stories Homer had to hear. He was worried not about the dirty details, but about the dirty philosophy.

There were no curtains at St. Cloud's. The hospital dispensary was a corner room; it had a south window and an east window. Nurse Edna thought that the east window made Dr Larch such an early riser. The white hospital bed always looked untouched; Dr Larch was the last one who went to bed and the first one who rose, so there was a rumor that he never slept at all. If he slept, he slept in the dispensary. He did his writing at night, at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office. The nurses had long ago forgotten why this room was called Nurse Angela's office; Dr Larch had always used it for his writing. Since the dispensary was where he slept, perhaps Dr Larch felt the need to say that the office belonged to someone else.

The dispensary had two doors (one leading to a toilet and shower). With a window on the south end and on the east wall, and a door on the north and on the west, there was no wall one could put anything against; the bed was under the east window. The closed and locked cupboards with their glass doors formed a strange labyrinth in the middle of the room. The labyrinth of cabinets blocked the bed from view of the hall door, which, like all the doors in the orphanage, had no lock.

The dispensary afforded Larch some privacy for his ether tricks. He was not always conscious of the moment when his fingers lost their grip on the mask and the cone fell from his face. He could usually hear voices outside the dispensary, calling him. He was sure that he always had time to recover.

“Doctor Larch?” Nurse Angela or Nurse Edna, or Homer Wells, called, which was all Larch needed to return from his ether voyage.

“I'm coming!” Larch answered. “I was just resting.”

It was the dispensary, after all; the dispensaries of surgeons always smell of ether. And for a man who worked so hard and slept so little (if he slept at all), it was natural that sometimes he needed a nap. But Melony suggested to Homer Wells that Dr Larch had a bad habit.

“What's the strange smell he has?” Melony asked.

“It's ether,” said Homer Wells. “He's a doctor. He smells like ether.”

“Are you saying this is normal?” Melony asked him.

“Right,” said Homer Wells.

“Wrong,” Melony said. “Your favorite doctor smells like he's got ether inside him – like he's got ether instead of blood.”

One day in the spring Melony said to Homer Wells, “Your favorite doctor knows more about you than you know. And he knows more about me than I know, maybe.”

Homer didn't say anything.

“Do you ever think about your mother?” Melony asked, looking at the sky. “Do you want to know who she was, why she didn't keep you, who your father was?”

“Right,” said Homer Wells.

“I was told I was left at the door,” Melony said. “Maybe it is so, maybe not.”

“I was born here,” said Homer Wells.

“So you were told,” Melony said.

“Nurse Angela named me,” Homer answered.

“Homer,” Melony said. “Just think about it: if you were born here in Saint Cloud's, they must have a record of it.

Your favorite doctor must know who your mother is. He knows her name. It is written down, on paper. It's a law.”

“A law,” Homer Wells said.

“It's a law that there must be a record of you,” Melony said. “They must have your history.”

“History,” said Homer Wells. He imagined Dr Larch sitting at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office; if there were records, they were in the office.

“If you want to know who your mother is,” Melony said, “find your file. And find my file, too. I'm sure they are more interesting than Jane Eyre.”

In fact, Dr Larch's papers included family histories – but only of the families who adopted the orphans. Contrary to Melony's belief, no records were kept of the orphans' actual mothers and fathers. An orphan's history began with its date of birth – its sex, its length in inches, its weight in pounds, its name. Then there was a record of the orphans' sicknesses. That was all. A much thicker file was kept on the orphans' adoptive families – any information about those families was important to Dr Larch.

“Here in St. Cloud's,” he wrote, “my first priority is an orphan's future. It is for his or her future, for example, that I destroy any record of the identity of his or her natural mother. The unfortunate women who give birth here have made a very difficult decision; they should not, later in their lives, make this decision again. And in almost every case the orphans should not look for the biological parents.

“I am thinking only of the orphans! Of course one day they will want to know. But how does it help anyone to look forward to the past? Orphans, especially, must look ahead to their futures. And what if his or her biological parent, in later years, feels sorry for the decision to give birth here? If there were records, it would always be possible for the real parents to trace their children. That is the storytelling business. That is not for the orphans. So that is not for me.”

That is the passage from A Brief History of St. Cloud's that Wilbur Larch showed to Homer Wells, when he caught Homer in Nurse Angela's office studying his papers.

“I was just looking for something, and I couldn't find it,” Homer said to Dr Larch.

“I know what you were looking for, Homer,” Dr Larch told him, “and it can't be found. I don't remember your mother. I don't even remember you when you were born; you didn't become you until later.”

“I thought there was a law,” Homer said. He meant a law of records, or written history – but Wilbur Larch was the only historian and the only law at St. Cloud's. It was an orphanage law: an orphan's life began when Wilbur Larch remembered it. That was Larch's law.

Homer knew that his simple note written to Melony “Cannot Be Found” would never satisfy her, although Homer had believed Dr Larch.

“What does he mean, Cannot Be Found?” Melony screamed at Homer; they were on the porch. “Is he playing God? He gives you your history, or he takes it away! If that's not playing God, what is?”

Homer Wells didn't answer. Homer thought that Dr Larch played God pretty well.

“Here in St. Cloud's,” Dr Larch wrote, “I have the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should wait for those moments when it is possible to play God. There won't be many such moments.”

“Goddamn him!” Melony screamed; but Homer Wells didn't react to this remark, either.

“Homer,” Melony said, “We've got nobody. If you tell me we've got each other, I'll kill you.”

Homer kept silent.

“If you tell me we've got your favorite Doctor Larch, or this whole place,” she said, “if you tell me that, I'll torture you before I kill you.”

“Right,” said Homer Wells.

“Goddamn you!” she screamed – at Dr Larch, at her mother, at St. Cloud's, at the world.

“Why aren't you angry?” she asked Homer. “What's wrong with you? You're never going to find out who did this to you! Don't you care?”

“I don't know,” said Homer Wells.

“Help me, or I'm going to run away,” she told him. “Help me, or I'm going to kill someone.” Homer realized that it was not easy for him, in the case of Melony, “to be of use,” but he tried.

“Don't kill anyone,” he said. “Don't run away.”

“Why should I stay?” she asked. “You're not staying – I mean that someone will adopt you.”

“No, they won't,” Homer said. “Besides, I won't go.”

“You'll go,” Melony said.

“I won't,” Homer said. “Please, don't run away – please don't kill anyone.”

“If I stay, you'll stay – is that what you're saying?” Melony asked him. “Is that what I mean?” thought Homer Wells. But Melony, as usual, gave him no time to think. “Promise me you'll stay as long as I stay, Homer,” Melony said. She moved closer to him. “Promise me you'll stay as long as I stay, Homer,” she said.

“Right,” said Homer Wells. “I promise,” Homer said.

“You promised me, Homer!” she screamed at him. “You promised you wouldn't leave me! As long as I stay, you stay!”

“I promise!” he said to her. He turned away and went to see Dr Larch.

Dr Larch was not in Nurse Angela's office, where Homer had expected to find him; Homer went to the dispensary to see if Dr Larch was there.

Wilbur Larch was on his hospital bed in the dispensary with a gauze cone saturated with ether.

“Doctor Larch!”

Wilbur Larch took the deepest possible breath. His hand lost the cone, which rolled off his face and under the bed.

“Doctor Larch?” Homer Wells said again. The smell of ether in the dispensary seemed unusually strong to Homer, who passed through the labyrinth of medicine chests to see if Dr Larch was on his bed.

“I'm sorry,” Dr Larch said when he saw Homer beside his bed. He sat up too fast; he felt very light-headed; the room was swimming. “I'm sorry,” he repeated.

“That's okay,” said Homer Wells. I'm sorry that I woke you up.”

“Sit down, Homer,” said Dr Larch; he was ready for the conversation.

“Listen, Homer,” Dr Larch said, you're old enough to be my assistant!” Homer thought it was a funny thing to say and he began to smile. “You don't understand it, do you?” Larch asked. “I'm going to teach you surgery, the Lord's work and the Devil's, Homer!” Larch said.

“Homer,” Larch said, “You're going to finish medical school before you start high school!” This was especially funny to Homer, but Dr Larch suddenly became serious. “Well?” Larch asked. “It's not in David Copperfield. It's not in Jane Eyre, either – what you need to know,” he added.

“Here,” Larch said, handing Homer the old copy of Gray's Anatomy⁸, “look at this. Look at it three or four times a day, and every night.”

“Here in St. Cloud's,” wrote Dr Wilbur Larch, “I have had little use for my Gray's Anatomy; but in France, in World War I, I used it every day.”

Larch also gave Homer his personal handbook of obstetrical procedure, his notebooks from medical school and from his internships; he began with the chemistry lectures and the standard textbook. He prepared a place in the dispensary for a few easy experiments in bacteriology.

Homer was impressed with the first childbirth that he watched – not so much with any special skill of Dr Larch. Homer was impressed by the natural rhythm of the labor and the power of the woman's muscles. He was shocked to see how unfriendly the child's new world was to the child.

In the evenings Homer continued the bedtime reading. One day, when he went back to the boys' division, Nurse Angela told him that John Wilbur was gone – adopted! “It is a nice family,” Nurse Angela told Homer happily.

When someone was adopted, Dr Larch changed the traditional benediction to the boys in the darkness. Before he addressed them as “Princes of Maine,” as “Kings of New England,” he made an announcement.

“Let us be happy for John Wilbur,” Wilbur Larch said. “He has found a family. Good night, John,” Dr Larch said, and the boys said after him:

“Good night, John!”

“Good night, John Wilbur.”

And Dr Larch paused before saying the usual: “Good night, Princes of Maine, Kings of New England!”

Homer Wells read Gray's Anatomy before he tried to go to sleep. Something was unusual that night. It took Homer some time to detect what was absent; the silence finally informed him. Fuzzy Stone and his noisy apparatus had been taken to the hospital. Apparently, Fuzzy required more careful monitoring, and Dr Larch had moved him into the private room, next to surgery, where Nurse Edna or Nurse Angela could look after Fuzzy.

Homer Wells thought that Fuzzy Stone looked like an embryo – like a walking, talking fetus. Dr Larch told Homer that Fuzzy had been born prematurely – that Fuzzy's lungs had not developed.

Homer couldn't sleep, he thought about Fuzzy Stone. He went down to the private room, next to surgery, but he couldn't hear the breathing apparatus. He stood quietly and listened, but the silence really frightened him.

“Where is he?” Homer asked Dr Larch. “Where's Fuzzy?”

Dr Larch was at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office, where he was almost every night.

“I was thinking how to tell you,” Larch said.

“You said I was your apprentice, right?” Homer asked him. “Then you should tell me everything. Right?”

“That's right, Homer,” Dr Larch agreed. How the boy had changed! Why hadn't Larch noticed that Homer Wells needed a shave? Why hadn't Larch taught him to do that? “I am responsible for everything – if I am going to be responsible at all,” Larch reminded himself.

“Fuzzy's lungs weren't strong enough, Homer,” Dr Larch said. “They never developed properly. He caught every respiratory infection.”

Homer Wells was growing up; he started to feel responsible for things. “What are you going to tell the little ones?” Homer asked Dr Larch.

Wilbur Larch looked at Homer; he loved him so much! He was proud as a father. “What do you think I should say, Homer?” Dr Larch asked.

It was Homer's first decision as an adult. He thought about it very carefully. In 193—, he was almost sixteen. He was learning how to be a doctor at a time when most boys of his age were learning how to drive a car. Homer had not yet learned how to drive a car; Wilbur Larch had never learned how to drive a car.

“I think,” said Homer Wells, “that you should tell the little ones what you usually tell them. You should tell them that Fuzzy has been adopted.”

Larch knew that Homer was right. The next night, Wilbur Larch followed the advice of his young apprentice. Perhaps because he was telling lies, he forgot the proper routine. Instead of the announcement about Fuzzy Stone, he gave the usual benediction.

“Good night, Princes of Maine, Kings of New England!” Dr Larch addressed them in the darkness. Then he remembered what he was going to say. “Oh!” he said aloud. He frightened the little orphans.

“What's wrong?” cried a boy called Snowy.

“Nothing's wrong!” Dr Larch said, but the whole room of boys was anxious. Larch tried to say the usual thing. “Let us be happy for Fuzzy Stone,” Dr Larch said in silence. “Fuzzy Stone has found a family,” Dr Larch said. “Good night, Fuzzy.”

“Good night, Fuzzy!” someone said. But Homer Wells heard a pause in the air; not everyone was absolutely convinced.

“Good night, Fuzzy!” Homer Wells said with confidence, and a few voices followed him.

“Good night, Fuzzy!”

“Good night, Fuzzy Stone!”

After Dr Larch had left them, little Snowy started speaking.

“Homer?” Snowy said.

“I'm here,” said Homer Wells in the darkness.

“How could anyone adopt Fuzzy Stone, Homer?” Snowy asked.

“Who could do it?” said another little boy.

“Someone with a better machine,” said Homer Wells. “It was someone who had a better breathing machine than the one Doctor Larch built for Fuzzy. It's a family that knows all about breathing machines. It's the family business,” he added, “breathing machines.”

“Lucky Fuzzy!” someone said.

Homer knew he had convinced them when Snowy said, “Good night, Fuzzy.”

Homer Wells, who was not yet sixteen, an apprentice surgeon, walked down to the river. The loudness of the river was a comfort to Homer, more comforting than the silence in the sleeping room that night. He stood on the riverbank. The boy was saying good-bye to his own childhood.

“Good night, Fuzzy,” Homer said over the river. The Maine woods let the remark without an answer. “Good night, Fuzzy!” Homer cried as loud as he could. And then he cried louder, “Good night, Fuzzy!” He, the grown-up boy, cried it again and again.

“Good night, Fuzzy Stone!”