The Cider House Rules

by John Irving

There was never any spring in that part of Maine, except that period of time in March and April distinguished by thawing mud. The heavy equipment of the lumbering business was immobilized; the work of the town shut down. The impassable roads kept everyone at home—and the springtime river was so swollen, and ran so fast, that no one dared to travel on it. Spring in St. Cloud’s meant trouble: drinking trouble, brawling trouble, whoring and raping trouble. Spring was the suicide season. In spring, the seeds for an orphanage were planted and overplanted.

Sometimes the mind didn’t want the babies, but sometimes the mind was so perverse that it made other people have babies they knew they didn’t want. For whom was this insisting done? Dr. Larch wondered. For whom did some minds insist that babies, even clearly unwanted ones, must be brought, screaming, into the world?

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.

“In other parts of the world,” Dr. Larch wrote, “delirious happiness is thought to be a state of mind. Here in St. Cloud’s we recognize that delirious happiness is possible only for the totally mindless. I would call it, therefore, that thing most rare: a state of the soul.”

Homer knew that the mystery baby’s parents weren’t looking for her; that may have been why he decided he’d look for her. If that baby girl was growing up, and if she was playing the old orphans’ game, wouldn’t it be better if there was at least someone who was looking for her—even if it was just another orphan?

How the boy had changed! How does one mark the passage of time in an orphanage? 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.

But no one encounters the presence of a soul so casually that one can permit the accompanying sense of mission to pass without remarking upon it; and a sense of mission usually requires a gesture more demonstrative than a passing remark.

“You are involved in a process,” said Dr. Larch. “Birth, on occasion, and interrupting it—on other occasions. Your disapproval is noted. It is legitimate. You are welcome to disapprove. But you are not welcome to be ignorant, to look the other way, to be unable to perform—should you change your mind.”

“I want you to be happier than you are,

Dr. Larch pointed out that Melony had taken Jane Eyre with her; he accepted this as a hopeful sign—wherever Melony went, she would not be without guidance, she would not be without love, without faith; she had a good book with her. If only she’ll keep reading it, and reading it, Larch thought.

(He never believed the part about Pip and Estella being happy ever after; he never believed that about anyone.)

And how do I say, “I miss you”? he wondered—when I don’t mean, “I want to come back!”?

What do you do when you recognize evil? he wondered.

People in Heart’s Haven and in Heart’s Rock always said that Wally had everything: money, looks, goodness, charm, the girl of his dreams—but he had courage, too, and he had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and restlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.

“A chance is enough,” said Homer Wells, who did not immediately recognize the tone in his own voice. “A chance is all we get, right? In the air, or underwater, or right here, from the minute we’re born.” Or from the minute we’re not born, he thought; now he recognized his tone of voice—it was Dr. Larch’s.

In Wilbur Larch’s opinion, love was certainly not safe—not ever.

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?

How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.