The World According to Garp

by John Irving

  "High school?" Garp wondered aloud. Could it have been that long ago?

  "Oh no, junior high," the girl said, laughing nervously.

  "Wonderful!" Garp said. And without knowing why, he said, "I'll try to come."

  But the girl looked suddenly stricken. "No, please," she said. "Please don't come."

  "Okay, I won't," Garp agreed quickly.

  He saw her several times after this meeting, but she never recognized him again because he shaved off his beard. "Why don't you grow another beard?" Helen occasionally asked him. "Or at least a mustache." But whenever Garp encountered the molested girl, and escaped unrecognized, he was convinced he should remain clean-shaven.

  * * *

  --

  "I feel uneasy," Garp wrote, "that my life has come in contact with so much rape." Apparently, he was referring to the ten-year-old in the city park, to the eleven-year-old Ellen James and her terrible society--his mother's wounded women with their symbolic, self-inflicted speechlessness. And later he would write a novel, which would make Garp more of "a household product," which would have much to do with rape. Perhaps rape's offensiveness to Garp was that it was an act that disgusted him with himself--with his own very male instincts, which were otherwise so unassailable. He never felt like raping anyone; but rape, Garp thought, made men feel guilty by association.

  In Garp's own case, he likened his guilt for the seduction of Little Squab Bones to a rapelike situation. But it was hardly a rape. It was deliberate, though. He even bought the condoms weeks in advance, knowing what he would use them for. Are not the worst crimes premeditated? It would not be a sudden passion for the baby-sitter that Garp would succumb to; he would plan, and be ready when Cindy succumbed to her passion for him. It must have given him a twinge, then, to know what those rubbers were for when he dropped them in front of the gentleman from the city park and heard the old man accuse him: "Looking for innocence to violate and defile!" How true.

  Still, he arranged obstacles in the path of his desire for the girl; he twice hid the prophylactics, but he also remembered where he'd hidden them. And the day of the last evening that Cindy would baby-sit for them, Garp made desperate love to Helen in the late afternoon. When they should have been dressing for dinner, or fixing Duncan's supper, Garp locked the bedroom and wrestled Helen out of her closet.

  "Are you crazy?" she asked him. "We're going out."

  "Terrible lust," he pleaded. "Don't deny it."

  She teased him. "Please, sir, I make a point of never doing it before the hors d'oeuvres."

  "You're the hors d'oeuvres," Garp said.

  "Oh, thanks," said Helen.

  "Hey, the door's locked," Duncan said, knocking.

  "Duncan," Garp called, "go tell us what the weather is doing."

  "The weather?" Duncan said, trying to force the bedroom door.

  "I think it's snowing in the backyard!" Garp called. "Go see."

  Helen stifled her laughter, and her other sounds, against his hard shoulder; he came so quickly he surprised her. Duncan trotted back to the bedroom door, reporting that it was springtime in the backyard, and everywhere else. Garp let him in the bedroom now that he was finished.

  But he wasn't finished. He knew it--driving home with Helen from the party, he knew exactly where the rubbers were: under his typewriter, quiet these dull months since the publication of Procrastination.

  "You look tired," Helen said. "Want me to take Cindy home?"

  "No, that's okay," he mumbled. "I'll do it."

  Helen smiled at him and nuzzled her cheek against his mouth. "My wild afternoon lover," she whispered. "You can always take me out to dinner that way, if you like."

  He sat a long time with Little Squab Bones in the car outside her dark apartment. He had chosen the time well--the college was letting out; Cindy was leaving town. She was already upset at having to say good-bye to her favorite writer; he was, at least, the only writer she'd actually met.

  "I'm sure you'll have a good year, next year, Cindy," he said. "And if you come back to see anyone, please stop and see us. Duncan will miss you." The girl stared into the cold lights of the dashboard, then looked over at Garp, miserably--tears and the whole flushed story on her face.

  "I'll miss you," she whined.

  "No, no," Garp said. "Don't miss me."

  "I love you," she whispered, and let her slim head bump awkwardly against his shoulder.

  "No, don't say that," he said, not touching her. Not yet.

  The three-pack of condoms nestled patiently in his pocket, coiled like snakes.

  In her musty apartment, he used only one of them. To his surprise, all her furniture had been moved out; they jammed her lumpy suitcases together and made an uncomfortable bed. He was careful not to stay a second more than necessary, lest Helen think he'd spent too long a time for even a literary good-bye.

  A thick swollen stream ran through the women's college grounds and Garp discarded the remaining two prophylactics there, throwing them furtively out the window of his moving car--imagining that an alert campus cop might have seen him and would already be scrambling down the bank to retrieve the evidence: the rubbers plucked out of the current! The discovered weapon that leads back to the crime for which it was used.

  But no one saw him, no one found him out. Even Helen, already asleep, would not have found the smell of sex peculiar; after all, only hours before, he had legitimately acquired the odor. Even so, Garp showered, and slipped cleanly into his own safe bed; he curled against Helen, who murmured some affection; instinctively, she thrust one long thigh over his hip. When he failed to respond, she forced her buttocks back against him. Garp's throat ached at her trust, and at his love for her. He felt fondly the slight swell of Helen's pregnancy.

  Duncan was a healthy, bright child. Garp's first novel had at least made him what he said he wanted to be. Lust still troubled Garp's young life, but he was fortunate that his wife still lusted for him, and he for her. Now a second child would join their careful, orderly adventure. He felt Helen's belly anxiously--for a kick, a sign of life. Although he'd agreed with Helen that it would be nice to have a girl, Garp hoped for another boy.

  Why? he thought. He recalled the girl in the park, his image of the tongueless Ellen James, his own mother's difficult decisions. He felt fortunate to be with Helen; she had her own ambitions and he could not manipulate her. But he remembered the Karntnerstrasse whores, and Cushie Percy (who would die making a baby). And now--her scent still on him, or at least on his mind, although he had washed--the plundered Little Squab Bones. Cindy had cried under him, her back bent against a suitcase. A blue vein had pulsed at her temple, which was the translucent temple of a fair-skinned child. And though Cindy still had her tongue, she'd been unable to speak to him when he left her.

  Garp didn't want a daughter because of men. Because of bad men, certainly; but even, he thought, because of men like me.

  8

  SECOND CHILDREN, SECOND NOVELS, SECOND LOVE

  It was a boy; their second son. Duncan's brother was called Walt--it was never Walter, and never the German Valt; he was simply a t at the end of a wall. Walt: like a beaver's tail smacking water, like a well-hit squash ball. He dropped into their lives and they had two boys.

  Garp tried to write a second novel. Helen took her second job; she became an associate professor of English at the state university, in the town next-door to the women's college. Garp and his boys had a boys' gym to play in, and Helen had an occasional bright graduate student to relieve her of the monotony of younger people; she also had more, and more interesting, colleagues.

  One of them was Harrison Fletcher; his field was the Victorian Novel, but Helen liked him for other reasons--among them: he was also married to a writer. Her name was Alice; she was also working on her second novel, although she'd never finished her first. When the Garps met her, they thought she could easily be mistaken for an Ellen Jamesian--she simply didn't talk. Harrison, whom Garp called Harry, had never been called Harry
before--but he liked Garp and he appeared to enjoy his new name as if it were a present Garp had given him. Helen would continue to call him Harrison, but to Garp he was Harry Fletcher. He was Garp's first friend, though Garp and Harrison both sensed that Harrison preferred Helen's company.

  Neither Helen nor Garp knew what to make of Quiet Alice, as they called her. "She must be writing one hell of a book," Garp often said. "It's taken all her words away."

  The Fletchers had one child, a daughter whose age put her awkwardly between Duncan and Walt; it was implied that they wanted another. But the book, Alice's second novel, came first; when it was over, they would have a second child, they said.

  The couples had dinner together occasionally, but the Fletchers were strictly cookout people--which is to say, neither of them cooked--and Garp was in a period where he baked his own bread, he had a stockpot always simmering on the stove. Mostly, Helen and Harrison discussed books, teaching, and their colleagues; they ate lunch together at the university union, they conversed--at length--in the evening, on the phone. And Garp and Harry went to the football games, the basketball games, and the wrestling meets; three times a week they played squash, which was Harry's game--his only sport--but Garp could play even with him simply because Garp was a better athlete, in better shape from all his running. For the pleasure of these games, Garp suppressed his dislike of balls.

  In the second year of this friendship, Harry told Garp that Alice liked to go to movies. "I don't," Harry admitted, "but if you do--and Helen said that you did--why not take Alice?"

  Alice Fletcher giggled at movies, especially serious movies; she shook her head in disbelief at almost everything she saw. It took months for Garp to realize that Alice had something of an impediment or a nervous defect in her speech; perhaps it was psychological. At first Garp thought it was the popcorn.

  "You have a speech problem, I think, Alice," he said, driving her home one night.

  "Yeth," she said, nodding her head. Often it was a simple lisp; sometimes it was completely different. Occasionally, it wasn't there. Excitement seemed to aggravate it.

  "How's the book coming?" he asked her.

  "Good," she said. At one movie she had blurted out that she'd liked Procrastination.

  "Do you want me to read any of your work?" Garp asked her.

  "Yeth," she said, her small head bobbing. She sat with her short, strong fingers crushing her skirt in her lap, the way Garp had seen her daughter crinkle her clothes--the child would sometimes roll her skirt, like a window shade, right up above her panties (though Alice stopped short of this).

  "Was it an accident?" Garp asked her. "Your speech problem. Or were you born with it?"

  "Born with," Alice said. The car stopped at the Fletchers' house and Alice tugged Garp's arm. She opened her mouth and pointed inside, as if this would explain everything. Garp saw the rows of small, perfect teeth and a tongue that was fat and fresh-looking like the tongue of a child. He could see nothing peculiar, but it was dark in the car, and he wouldn't have known what was peculiar if he'd seen it. When Alice closed her mouth, he saw she was crying--and also smiling, as if this act of self-exposure had required enormous trust. Garp nodded his head as if he understood everything.

  "I see," he mumbled. She wiped her tears with the back of one hand, squeezed his hand with her other.

  "Harrithon is having an affair," she said.

  Garp knew that Harry wasn't having an affair with Helen, but he didn't know what poor Alice thought.

  "Not with Helen," Garp said.

  "Na, na," Alice said, shaking her head. "Thumone elth."

  "Who?" Garp asked.

  "A thtudent!" Alice wailed. "A thtupid little twat!"

  It had been a couple of years since Garp had molested Little Squab Bones, but in that time he had indulged himself in one other baby-sitter; to his shame, he had even forgotten her name. He felt, honestly, that baby-sitters were an appetite he was forever through with. Yet he sympathized with Harry--Harry was his friend, and he was an important friend to Helen. He also sympathized with Alice. Alice was alertly lovable; a kind of terminal vulnerability was clearly a part of her, and she wore it as visibly as a too-tight sweater on her compact body.

  "I'm sorry," Garp said. "Can I do anything?"

  "Tell him to thtop," Alice said.

  It had never been hard for Garp to stop, but he had never been a teacher--with "thtudents" on his mind, or on his hands. Perhaps what Harry was involved with was something else. The only thing Garp could think of--that would perhaps make Alice feel better--was to confess his own mistakes.

  "It happens, Alice," he said.

  "Not to you," Alice said.

  "Twice to me," Garp said. She looked at him, shocked.

  "Tell the truth," she insisted.

  "The truth," he said, "is that it happened twice. A baby-sitter, both times."

  "Jesuth Chritht," said Alice.

  "But they weren't important," Garp said. "I love Helen."

  "Thith is important," Alice said. "He hurth me. And I can't white."

  Garp knew about writers who couldn't white; this made Garp love Alice, on the spot.

  "Fucking Harry is having an affair," Garp told Helen.

  "I know," Helen said. "I've told him to stop, but he keeps going back for more. She's not even a very good student."

  "What can we do?" Garp asked her.

  "Fucking lust," Helen said. "Your mother was right. It is a man's problem. You talk to him."

  "Alice told me about your baby-sitters," Harry told Garp. "It's not the same. This is a special girl."

  "A student, Harry," Garp said. "Jesus Christ."

  "A special student," Harry said. "I'm not like you. I've been honest, I've told Alice from the first. She's just got to accommodate it. I've told her she's free to do this, too."

  "She doesn't know any students," Garp said.

  "She knows you," Harry told him. "And she's in love with you."

  "What can we do?" Garp asked Helen. "He's trying to set me up with Alice so he'll feel better about what he's doing."

  "At least he's been honest with her," Helen told Garp. There was one of those silences wherein a family can identify its separate, breathing parts in the night. Open doors off an upstairs hall: Duncan breathing lazily, an almost-eight-year-old with lots of time to live; Walt breathing those tentative two-year-old breaths, short and excited; Helen, even and cool. Garp held his breath. He knew she knew about the baby-sitters.

  "Harry told you?" he asked.

  "You might have told me before you told Alice," Helen said. "Who was the second one?"

  "I forget her name," Garp admitted.

  "I think it's shabby," Helen said. "It's really beneath me; it's beneath you. I hope you've outgrown it."

  "Yes, I have," Garp said. He meant he had outgrown baby-sitters. But lust itself? Ah, well. Jenny Fields had fingered a problem at the heart of her son's heart.

  "We've got to help the Fletchers," Helen said. "We're too fond of them to do nothing about this." Helen, Garp marveled, moved through their life together as if it were an essay she was structuring--with an introduction, a presentation of basic priorities, then the thesis.

  "Harry thinks the student is special," Garp pointed out.

  "Fucking men," Helen said. "You look after Alice. I'll show Harrison what's special."

  So one night, after Garp had cooked an elegant Paprika Chicken and spatzle, Helen said to Garp, "Harrison and I will do the dishes. You take Alice home."

  "Take her home?" Garp said. "Now?"

  "Show him your novel," Helen said to Alice. "Show him everything you want. I'm going to show your husband what an asshole he is."

  "Hey, come on," Harry said. "We're all friends, we all want to stay friends, right?"

  "You simple son of a bitch," Helen told him. "You fuck a student and call her special--you insult your wife, you insult me. I'll show you what's special."

  "Go easy, Helen," Garp said.

  "Go with Alice
," Helen said. "And let Alice drive her own baby-sitter home."

  "Hey, come on!" Harrison Fletcher said.

  "Shuth up, Harrithon!" Alice said. She grabbed Garp's hand and stood up from the table.

  "Fucking men," said Helen. Garp, as speechless as an Ellen Jamesian, took Alice home.

  "I can take the baby-sitter home, Alice," he said.

  "Jutht get back fatht," Alice said.

  "Very fast, Alice," Garp said.

  She made him read the first chapter of her novel aloud to her. "I want to hear it," she told him, "and I can't thay it mythelf." So Garp said it to her; it read, he was relieved to hear, beautifully. Alice wrote with such fluency and care that Garp could have sung her sentences, unselfconsciously, and they would have sounded fine.

  "You have a lovely voice, Alice," he told her, and she cried. And they made love, of course, and despite what everyone knows about such things, it was special.

  "Wasn't it?" asked Alice.

  "Yes, it was," Garp admitted.

  Now, he thought, here is trouble.

  "What can we do?" Helen asked Garp. She had made Harrison Fletcher forget his "special" student; Harrison now thought that Helen was the most special thing in his life.

  "You started it," Garp said to her. "If it's going to stop, you've got to stop it, I think."

  "That's easy to say," Helen said. "I like Harrison; he's my best friend, and I don't want to lose that. I'm just not very interested in sleeping with him."

  "He's interested," Garp said.

  "God, I know," Helen said.

  "He thinks you're the best he's had," Garp told her.

  "Oh, great," Helen said. "That must be lovely for Alice."

  "Alice isn't thinking about it," Garp said. Alice was thinking about Garp, Garp knew; and Garp was afraid the whole thing would stop. There were times when Garp thought that Alice was the best he'd ever had.

  "And what about you?" Helen asked him. ("Nothing is equal," Garp would write, one day.)

  "I'm fine," Garp said. "I like Alice, I like you, I like Harry."

  "And Alice?" Helen asked.

  "Alice likes me," Garp said.

  "Oh boy," Helen said. "So we all like each other, except that I don't care that much for sleeping with Harrison."

  "So it's over," Garp said, trying to hide the gloom in his voice. Alice had cried to him that it could never be over. ("Could it? Could it?" she had cried. "I can't jutht thtop!")