And to himself, or as an entry in A Brief History of St. Cloud's, Wilbur Larch wrote: 'Here in St. Cloud's we have just one problem. His name is Homer Wells. He's a problem, wherever he goes.'

Aside from the darkness in his eyes and an ability to {573} sustain a pensive, faraway look that was both alert and dreaming, Angel Wells resembled his father very little. He never thought of himself as an orphan, he knew he had been adopted, and he knew he came from where his father came from. And he knew he was loved; he had always felt it. What did it matter that he called Candy 'Candy' and Homer 'Dad'- and Wally 'Wally'?

This was the second summer that Angel Wells had been strong enough to carry Wally-up some steps, or into the surf, or out of the shallow end of the pool and back into the wheelchair. Homer had taught Angel how to carry Wally into the surf, when they went to the beach. Wally was a better swimmer than any of them, but he needed to get into deep enough water so that he could either float over a wave or duck under one.

'You just can't let him get dragged around in the shallow water,' Homer had explained to his son.

There were some rules regarding Wally (there were always rules;, Angel had observed). As good a swimmer as he was, Wally was never allowed to swim alone, and for many summers now, Angel Wells had been Wally's lifeguard whenever Wally swam his laps or just floated in the pool. Almost half the physical contact between Wally and Angel occurred in the water, where they resembled otters or seals. They wrestled and dunked each other so ferociously that Candy couldn't help being anxious at times for both of them.

And Wally was not allowed to drive alone; even though the Cadillac had hand-operated controls, someone else had to collapse the wheelchair and put it in or take it out of the back of the car. The first collapsible wheelchairs were quite heavy. Although Wally would occasionally drag himself through the ground floor of the house using one of those metal walkers, his legs were mere props; in unfamiliar terrain, he needed his wheelchair-and in rough terrain, he needed a pusher.

So many times the pusher had been Angel; and so many times Angel had been the passenger in the {574} Cadillac. Although Homer and Candy might have complained if they had known, Wally had long ago taught Angel to drive the Cadillac.

'The hand controls make it easy, kiddo,' Wally would say. 'Your legs don't have to be long enough to reach the pedals.' That was not what Candy had told Angel about teaching him to drive in the Jeep. 'Just as soon as your legs are long enough to reach the pedals,' she had told him, kissing him (which she did whenever she had the excuse), Til teach you how to drive.'

When the time came, it never occurred to Candy that Angel had been so easy to teach because he'd been driving the Cadillac for years.

'Some rules are good rules, kiddo,' Wally would tell the boy, kissing him (which Wally did a lot, especially in the water). 'But some rules are just rules. You just got to break them carefully.'

'It's dumb that I have to be sixteen before I get a driver's license,' Angel told his father.

'Right,' said Homer Wells. 'They should make an exception for kids who grow up on farms.'

Sometimes Angel played tennis with Candy, but more often he hit balls back to Wally, who maintained his good strokes even sitting down. The club members had complained a little about the wheelchair tracks on the clay-but what would the Haven Club have been without tolerating one or another Worthington eccentricity? Wally would set the wheelchair in a fixed position and hit only forehands for fifteen or twenty minutes; Angel's responsibility was to get the ball exactly to him. Then Wally would move the chair and hit only backhands.

'It's actually better practice for you than for me, kiddo,' Wally would tell Angel. 'At least, I'm not getting any better.' Angel got a lot better; he was so much better than Candy that it sometimes hurt his mother's feelings when she detected how boring it was for Angel to play with her.

Homer Wells didn't play tennis. He had never been a {575} games man, he had resisted even the indoor football at St. Cloud's-although he occasionally dreamed of stickball, usually with Nurse Angela pitching; she was always the hardest to hit. And Homer Wells had no hobbies- nothing beyond following Angel around, as if Homer were his son's pet, a dog waiting to be played with. Pillow fights in the dark; they'd been popular for a few years. Kissing each other good night, and then finding excuses to repeat the ritual-and finding novel ways to wake each other in the mornings. If Homer was bored, he was also busy. He had continued his volunteer work for Cape Kenneth Hospital; in a sense, he had never stopped his; war effort, his service as a nurses' aide. And he was a veteran reader of medical literature. The Journal of the American Medical Association and The New England Journal of Medicine were very acceptably piled up on the tables and in the bookcases of the Ocean View house. Candy objected to the illustrations in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

'I need a little intellectual stimulation around here,' Homer Wells would say whenever Candy complained about the graphic nature of this material.

'I just don't think that Angel has to see it,' Candy said.

'He knows I have a little background in the subject,' Homer said.

'I don't object to what he knows, I object to the pictures,' Candy said.

'There's no reason to mystify the subject for the child,' Wally said, taking Homer's side.

'There's no need to make the subject grotesque, either,' Candy argued.

'I don't think it's either a mystery or grotesque,' Angel said, that summer he was fifteen. 'It's just interesting.'

'You're not even going out with girls, yet,' Candy said, laughing, and taking the opportunity to kiss him. But when she bent over him to kiss him, she saw in her son's lap the illustration that was featured in an article on vaginal operations. The illustration indicated the lines of {576} incision for the removal of the vulva and a primary tumor in an extended radical vulvectomy.

'Homer!' Candy shouted. Homer was upstairs in his very spare bedroom. His life was so spare, he'd tacked only two things on his walls-and one of those was in his bathroom. By his bed he had a picture of Wally in his flier's scarf and sheepskin. Wally was posing with the crew of Opportunity Knocks; the shadow from the wing of the dark plane completely obscured the face of the radioman, and the glare of the Indian sun completely whited out the face of the crew chief (who had eventually died of his colon complication); only Wally and the co-pilot were correctly illuminated, although Homer had seen better pictures of them both. The copilot sent Wally a picture of himself and his growing family every Christmas; he had five or six children and a plump wife; but every year the co-pilot looked thinner (the amoeba he'd contracted in Burma had never entirely left him).

And in the bathroom Homer had tacked up the blank questionnaire, the extra copy-the one he'd never sent to the board of trustees of St. Cloud's. The exposure to the steam from the shower had given to the paper of the questionnaire the texture of a parchment lampshade, but each question had remained readable and idiotic.

The master bed was higher than most (because, in his day, Senior Worthington had enjoyed looking out the window while lying down); it was a feature Homer also appreciated about the bed. He could oversee the pool from up there, and he could see the cider house roof; he liked to lie on that bed for hours, just looking out the window. 'Homer!' Candy called to him. 'Please come see what your son is reading!'

That was the way they all talked. Candy said 'your son' to Homer, and that's how Wally spoke, too, and Angel always said 'Dad' or 'Pop' when he addressed his father. It had been an uninterrupted, fifteen-year relationship -Homer and Angel upstairs, Wally and Candy {577} in the former dining room downstairs. The four of them ate their meals together.