The World According to Garp

by John Winslow Irving

  But the balance of this power in storytelling felt lost to Garp now. His first novel, Procrastination—in his opinion—suffered from the pretentious weight of all that fascist history he had taken no real part in. His second novel suffered his failure at imagining enough—that is, he felt he had not imagined far enough beyond his own fairly ordinary experience. Second Wind of the Cuckold came off rather coldly to him; it seemed just another “real” but rather common experience.

  In fact, it seemed to Garp now that he was too full of his own lucky life (with Helen and their children). He felt he was in danger of limiting his ability as a writer in a fairly usual way: writing, essentially, about himself. Yet when he looked very far outside himself, Garp saw there only the invitation to pretention. His imagination was failing him—"his sense a dim rushlight.” When anyone asked him how his writing was coming, he managed only a short, cruel imitation of poor Alice Fletcher.

  “I've thtopped,” Garp said.

  9. THE ETERNAL HUSBAND

  IN the Yellow Pages of Garp's phone directory, Marriage was listed near Lumber. After Lumber came Machine Shops, Mail Order Houses, Manholes, Maple Sugar, and Marine Equipment; then came Marriage and Family Counselors. Garp was looking for Lumber when be discovered Marriage; he had some innocent questions to ask about two-by-fours when Marriage caught his eye and raised more interesting and disturbing questions.

  Garp had never realized, for example, that there were more marriage counselors than lumberyards. But this surely depends on where you live, he thought. In the country, wouldn't people have more to do with lumber? Garp had been married nearly eleven years; in that time he had found little use for lumber, still less for counsel. It was not for personal problems that Garp took an interest in the long list of names in the Yellow Pages, it was because Garp spent a lot of time trying to imagine what it would be like to have a job.

  There was the Christian Counseling Center and the Community Pastoral Counseling Service; Garp imagined hearty ministers with their dry, fleshy hands constantly rubbing together. They spoke round, moist sentences, like soap bubbles, saying things like, “We have no illusions that the Church can be of very much assistance to individual problems, such as your own. Individuals must seek individual solutions, they must retain their individuality; however, it is our experience that many people have identified their own special individuality in the church.”

  There sat the baffled couple who had hoped to discuss the simultaneous orgasm—myth or reality?

  Garp noticed that members of the clergy went in for counseling; there was a Lutheran Social Service, there was a Reverend Dwayne Kuntz (who was “certified") and a Louise Nagle who was an “All Souls Minister” associated with something called the United States Bureau of Marriage and Family Counselors (who had “certified” her). Garp took a pencil and drew little zeroes beside the names of the marriage counselors with religious affiliations. They would all offer fairly optimistic counsel, Garp believed.

  He was less sure of the point of view of the counselors with more “scientific” training; he was less sure of the training, too. One was a “certified clinical psychologist,” another simply followed his name with “M.A., Clinical"; Garp knew that these things could mean anything, and that they could also mean nothing. A graduate student in sociology, a former business major. One said “B.S."—perhaps in Botany. One was a Ph.D.—in marriage? One was a “Doctor"—but a medical doctor or a Doctor of Philosophy? At marriage counseling, who would be better? One specialized in “group therapy"; someone, perhaps less ambitious, promised only “psychological evaluation.”

  Garp selected two favorites. The first was Dr. O. Rothrock—"self-esteem workshop; bank cards accepted.”

  The second was M. Neff—"by appointment only.” There was just a phone number after M. Neff's name. No qualifications, or supreme arrogance? Perhaps both. If I needed anybody, Garp thought, I would try M. Neff first. Dr. O. Rothrock with his bank cards and his self-esteem workshop was clearly a charlatan. But M. Neff was serious: M. Neff had a vision, Garp could tell.

  Garp wandered a bit past Marriage in the Yellow Pages. He came to Masonry, Maternity Apparel, and Mat Refinishing (only one listing, an out-of-town, Steering phone number: Garp's father-in-law, Ernie Holm, refinished wrestling mats as a slightly profitable hobby. Garp hadn't been thinking about his old coach, he passed over Mat Refinishing to Mattresses without recognizing Ernie's name). Then came Mausoleums and Meat Cutting Equipment—"See Saws.” That was enough. The world was too complicated. Garp wandered back to Marriage.

  Then Duncan came home from school. Garp's older son was now ten years old; he was a tall boy with Helen Garp's bony, delicate face and her oval yellow-brown eyes. Helen had skin of a light-oak color and Duncan had her wonderful skin, too. From Garp he had gotten his nervousness, his stubbornness, his moods of black self-pity.

  “Dad?” he said. “Can I spend the night at Ralph's? It's very important.”

  “What?” Garp said. “No. When?”

  “Have you been reading the phone book again?” Duncan asked his father. Whenever Garp read a phone book, Duncan knew, it was like trying to wake him up from a nap. He read the phone book often, for names. Garp got the names of his characters out of the phone book, when his writing was stuck, he read the phone book for more names; he revised the names of his characters over and over again. When Garp traveled, the first thing he looked for in the motel room was the phone book, he usually stole it.

  “Dad?” Duncan said—he assumed his father was in his phone book trance, living the lives of his fictional people. Garp had actually forgotten that he had nonfictional business with the phone book today; he had forgotten about the lumber and was thinking only about the audacity of M. Neff and what it would be like to be a marriage counselor. “Dad!” Duncan said. “If I don't call Ralph back before supper, his mother won't let me come over.”

  “Ralph?” said Garp. “Ralph isn't here.” Duncan tipped his fine jaw up and rolled his eyes; it was a gesture Helen had, too, and Duncan had her same lovely throat.

  “Ralph is at his house,” Duncan said, “and I am at my house and I would like to go spend the night at Ralph's house—with Ralph.”

  “Not on a school night,” Garp said.

  “It's Friday,” Duncan said. “Jesus.”

  “Don't swear, Duncan,” Garp said. “When your mother comes home from work, you can ask her.” He was stalling, he knew; Garp was suspicious of Ralph—worse, he was afraid for Duncan to spend the night at Ralph's house, although Duncan had done it before. Ralph was an older boy whom Garp distrusted; also, Garp didn't like Ralph's mother—she went out in the evening and left the boys alone (Duncan had admitted that). Helen had once referred to Ralph's mother as “slatternly,” a word that had always intrigued Garp (and a look, in women, that had its appeal to him). Ralph's father didn't live at home, so the “slatternly” look of Ralph's mother was enhanced by her status as a woman alone.

  “I can't wait for Mom to get home,” Duncan said. “Ralph's mother says she has to know before supper, or I can't come over.” Supper was Garp's responsibility and the idea of it distracted him; he wondered what time it was. Duncan seemed to come home from school at no special time. “Why not ask Ralph to spend the night here?” Garp said. A familiar ploy. Ralph usually spent the night with Duncan, thus sparing Garp his anxiety about the carelessness of Mrs. Ralph (he could never remember Ralph's last name).

  “Ralph always spends the night here,” Duncan said. “I want to stay there.” And do what? Garp wondered. Drink, smoke dope, torture the pets, spy on the sloppy lovemaking of Mrs. Ralph? But Garp knew that Duncan was ten years old and very sane—very careful. The two boys probably enjoyed being alone in a house where Garp wasn't smiling over them, asking them if there was anything they wanted.

  “Why not call Mrs. Ralph and ask her if you can wait until your mother comes home before you say whether you'll come or not?” Garp asked.

  “Jesus, “Mrs. Ralph"!” Duncan groa
ned. “Mom is just going to say, “It's all right with me. Ask your father.” That's what she always says.”

  Smart kid, Garp thought. He was trapped. Short of blurting out that he was terrified Mrs. Ralph would kill them all by burning them up in the night when her cigarette, with which she slept, set fire to her hair, Garp had nothing more he could say. “Okay, go ahead,” he said, sulkily. He didn't even know if Ralph's mother smoked. He simply disliked her, on sight, and he suspected Ralph—for no better reason than that the child was older than Duncan and therefore, Garp imagined, capable of corrupting Duncan in terrible ways.

  Garp suspected most people to whom his wife and children were drawn; he had an urgent need to protect the few people he loved from what he imagined “everyone else” was like. Poor Mrs. Ralph was not the only victim perhaps slandered by his paranoid assumptions. I should get out more, Garp thought. If I had a job, he thought—a thought he had every day, and rethought every day, since he wasn't writing.

  There was almost no job in the world that appealed to Garp, and certainly nothing he was qualified for; he was qualified, he knew, for very little. He could write; when he was writing, he believed he wrote very well. But one reason he thought about getting a job was that he felt he needed to know more about other people; he wanted to get over his distrust of them. A job would at least force him to come into contact—and if he weren't forced to be with other people, Garp would stay home.

  It was for his writing, in the beginning, that he had never taken the idea of a job seriously. Now it was for his writing that he was thinking he needed a job. I am running out of people I can imagine, he thought, but perhaps it was really that there had never been many people he liked; and he hadn't written anything he liked in too many years.

  “I'm going now!” Duncan called to him, and Garp stopped dreaming. The boy was wearing a bright orange rucksack on his back; a yellow sleeping bag was rolled and tied under the pack. Garp had chosen them both, for visibility.

  “I'll give you a ride,” Garp said, but Duncan rolled his eyes again.

  “Mom has the car, Dad,” he said, “and she's still at work.”

  Of course; Garp grinned foolishly. Then he saw that Duncan was going to take his bicycle and he called out the door to him. “Why don't you walk, Duncan?”

  “Why?” Duncan said, exasperated.

  So your spine won't be severed when a car driven by a crazed teenager, or a drunken man suffering a heart attack, swipes you off the street, Garp thought—and your wonderful, warm chest is cracked against the curbstone, your special skull split open when you land on the sidewalk, and some asshole wraps you in an old rug as if you were somebody's pet discovered in the gutter. Then the dolts from the suburbs come out and guess who owns it ("That green and white house on the corner of Elm and Dodge, I think"). Then someone drives you home, rings the bell and says to me, “Uh, sorry"; and pointing to the spillage in the bloody back seat, asks, “Is it yours?” But all Garp said was, “Oh, go ahead, Duncan, take the bike. Just be careful!”

  He watched Duncan cross the street, pedal up the next block, look before he turned (Good boy; note the careful hand signal—but perhaps this is only for my benefit). It was a safe suburb of a small, safe city; comfortable green plots, one-family houses—mostly university families, with an occasional big house broken into apartments for graduate students. Ralph's mother, for example, appeared certain to be a graduate student forever, though she had a whole house to herself—and although she was older than Garp. Her former husband taught one of the sciences and presumably paid her tuition. Garp remembered that Helen had been told the man was living with a student.

  Mrs. Ralph is probably a perfectly good person, Garp thought; she has a child, and she no doubt loves him. She is no doubt serious about wanting to do something with her life. If she were just more careful! Garp thought. You must be careful; people didn't realize. It's so easy to blow everything, he thought.

  “Hello!” someone said, or he thought someone said. He looked around, but whoever had spoken to him was gone—or was never there. He realized he was barefoot (his feet were cold; it was an early spring day), standing on the sidewalk in front of his house, a phone book in his hand. He would have liked to go on imagining M. Neff and the business of marriage counseling, but he knew it was late—he had to prepare the evening meal and he hadn't even been shopping. A block away he could hear the hum of the engines that powered the big freezers in the supermarket (that was why they had moved into this neighborhood—so that Garp could walk to the store and shop while Helen took the car to work. Also, they were nearer to a park for him to run in). There were fans on the back of the supermarket and Garp could hear them sucking the still air out of the aisles and blowing faint food smells over the block. Garp liked it. He had a cook's heart.

  He spent his day writing (or trying to write), running, and cooking. He got up early and fixed breakfast for himself and the children; nobody was home for lunch and Garp never ate that meal; he fixed dinner for his family every night. It was a ritual he loved, but the ambition of his cooking was controlled by how good a day he'd had writing, and how good a run he'd had. If the writing went poorly, he took it out on himself with a long, hard run; or, sometimes, a bad day with his writing would exhaust him so much that he could barely run a mile; then he tried to save the day with a splendid meal.

  Helen could never tell what sort of day Garp had experienced by what he cooked for them; something special might mean a celebration, or it might mean that the food was the only thing that had gone well, that the cooking was the only labor keeping Garp from despair. “If you are careful,” Garp wrote, “if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day: what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.”

  He went into the house and looked for a pair of shoes. About the only shoes be owned were running shoes—many pairs. They were in different phases of being broken in. Garp and his children wore clean but rumpled clothes; Helen was a smart dresser, and although Garp did her laundry, he refused to iron anything. Helen did her own ironing, and an occasional shirt for Garp—ironing was the only task of conventional housewifery that Garp rejected. The cooking, the kids, the basic laundry, the cleaning up—he did them. The cooking, expertly; the kids, a little tensely but conscientiously; the cleaning up, a little compulsively. He swore at errant clothes, dishes, and toys, but he left nothing lie; he was a maniac for picking things up. Some mornings, before he sat down to write, he raced over the house with a vacuum cleaner, or he cleaned the oven. The house never looked untidy, was never dirty, but there was always a certain haste to the neatness of it. Garp threw a lot of things away and the house was always missing things. For months at a time he would allow most of the light bulbs to burn out, unreplaced, until Helen would realize that they were living in almost total darkness, huddled around the two lamps that worked. Or when he remembered the lights, he forgot the soap and the toothpaste.

  Helen brought certain touches to the house, too, but Garp took no responsibilities for these: plants, for example; either Helen remembered them, or they died. When Garp saw that one appeared to be drooping, or was the slightest bit pale, he would whisk it out of the house and into the trash. Days later, Helen might ask, “Where is the red arronzo?”

  “That foul thing,” Garp would remark. “It had some disease. I saw worms on it. I caught it dropping its little spines all over the floor.”

  Thus Garp functioned at housekeeping.

  In the house Garp found his yellow running shoes and put them on. He put the phone book away in a cabinet where he kept the heavy cooking gear (he stashed phone books all over the house—then would tear the house down to find the one he wanted). He put some olive oil in a cast-iron skillet; he chopped an onio
n while he waited for the oil to get hot. It was late to be starting supper; he hadn't even gone shopping. A standard tomato sauce, a little pasta, a fresh green salad, a loaf of his good bread. That way he could go to the market after he started the sauce and he'd only need to shop for greens. He hurried the chopping (now some fresh basil) but it was important not to throw anything into the skillet until the oil was just right, very hot but not smoking. There are some things about cooking, like writing, that you don't hurry, Garp knew, and he never hurried them.

  When the phone rang, it made him so angry that he threw a handful of onions into the skillet and burned himself with the spattering oil. “Shit!” he cried; he kicked the cabinet beside the stove, snapping the little hinge on the cabinet door; a phone book slid out and he stared at it. He put all the onions and the fresh basil into the oil and lowered the flame. He ran his hand under cold water, and, reaching off-balance, wincing at the pain of the burn, he picked up the phone in his other hand.

  (Those fakers, Garp thought. What qualifications could there be for marriage counseling? No doubt, he thought, it is one more thing that those simplistic shrinks claim expertise in.)

  “You caught me right in the fucking middle of something,” he snapped to the phone; he eyed the onions wilting in the hot oil. There was no one who could be calling whom he feared he might offend; this was one of several advantages of being unemployed. His editor, John Wolf, would only remark that Garp's manner of answering the phone simply confirmed his notion of Garp's vulgarity. Helen was used to how he answered the phone; and if the call were for Helen, her friends and colleagues already pictured Garp as rather bearish. If it were Ernie Holm, Garp would experience a momentary twinge; the coach always apologized too much, which embarrassed Garp. If it were his mother, Garp knew, she would holler back at him, “Another lie! You're never in the middle of anything. You live on the fringes.” (Garp hoped it wasn't Jenny.) At the moment, there was no other woman who would have called him. Only if it were the daycare center, reporting an accident to little Walt; only if it were Duncan, calling to say that the zipper on his sleeping bag was broken, or that he'd just broken his leg, would Garp feel guilty for his bullying voice. One's children certainly have a right to catch one in the middle of something—they usually do.