The World According to Garp

by John Winslow Irving

  When the phone rang, Garp knew it was Helen. It suddenly occurred to him—all the terrible things she could have on her mind.

  “Hello,” Garp said.

  “Would you tell me what's going on, please?” Helen asked. Garp knew she had been awake a long time. It was four o'clock in the morning.

  “Nothing's going on, Helen,” Garp said. “There was a little trouble here, and I didn't want to leave Duncan.”

  “Where is that woman?” Helen asked.

  “In bed,” Garp admitted. “She passed out.”

  “From what?” Helen asked.

  “She'd been drinking,” Garp said. “There was a young man here, with her, and she wanted me to get him to leave.”

  “So then you were alone with her?” Helen asked.

  “Not for long,” Garp said. “She fell asleep.”

  “I don't imagine it would take very long,” Helen said, “with her.”

  Garp let there be silence. He had not experienced Helen's jealousy for a while, but he had no trouble remembering its surprising sharpness.

  “Nothing's going on, Helen,” Garp said.

  “Tell me what you're doing, exactly, at this moment,” Helen said.

  “I'm washing the dishes,” Garp told her. He heard her take a long, controlled breath.

  “I wonder why you're still there,” Helen said.

  “I didn't want to leave Duncan,” Garp told her.

  “I think you should bring Duncan home,” Helen said. “Right now.”

  “Helen,” Garp said. “I've been good.” It sounded defensive, even to Garp; also, he knew he hadn't been quite good enough. “Nothing has happened,” he added, feeling a little more sure of the truth of that.

  “I won't ask you why you're washing her filthy dishes,” Helen said.

  “To pass the time,” Garp said.

  But in truth he had not examined what he was doing, until now, and it seemed pointless to him—waiting for dawn, as if accidents only happened when it was dark. “I'm waiting for Duncan to wake up,” he said, but as soon as he spoke he felt there was no sense to that either.

  “Why not just wake him up?” Helen asked.

  “I'm good at washing dishes,” Garp said, trying to introduce some levity.

  “I know all the things you're good at,” Helen told him, a little too bitterly to pass as a joke.

  “You'll make yourself sick, thinking like this,” Garp said. “Helen, really, please stop it. I haven't done anything wrong.” But Garp had a puritan's niggling memory of the hard-on Mrs. Ralph had given him.

  “I've already made myself sick,” Helen said, but her voice softened. “Please come home now,” she told him.

  “And leave Duncan?”

  “For Christ's sake, wake him up!” she said. “Or carry him.”

  “I'll be right home,” Garp told her. “Please don't worry, don't think what you're thinking. I'll tell you everything that happened. You'll probably love this story.” But he knew he would have trouble telling her all this story, and that he would have to think very carefully about the parts to leave out.

  “I feel better,” Helen said. “I'll see you, soon. Please don't wash another dish.” Then she hung up and Garp reviewed the kitchen. He thought that his half hour of work hadn't made enough of a difference for Mrs. Ralph to notice that any effort to approach the debris had even been begun.

  Garp sought Duncan's clothes among the many, forbidding clots of clothing flung about the living room. He knew Duncan's clothes but he couldn't spot them anywhere; then he remembered that Duncan, like a hamster, stored things in the bottom of his sleeping bag and crawled into the nest with them. Duncan weighed about eighty pounds, plus the bag, plus his junk, but Garp believed he could carry the child home; Duncan could retrieve his bicycle another day. At least, Garp decided, he would not wake Duncan up inside Ralph's house. There might be a scene; Duncan would be fussy about leaving. Mrs. Ralph might even wake up.

  Then Garp thought of Mrs. Ralph. Furious at himself, he knew he wanted one last look; his sudden, recurring erection reminded him that he wanted to see her thick, crude body again. He moved quickly to the back staircase. He could have found her fetid room with his nose.

  He looked straight at her crotch, her strangely twisted navel, her rather small nipples (for such big breasts). He should have looked first at her eyes; then he might have realized she was wide-awake and staring back at him.

  “Dishes all done?” asked Mrs. Ralph. “Come to say good-bye?”

  “I wanted to see if you were all right,” he told her.

  “Bullshit,” she said. “You wanted another look.”

  “Yes,” he confessed; he looked away. “I'm sorry.”

  “Don't be,” she said. “It's made my day.” Garp tried to smile.

  “You're too “sorry” all the time,” Mrs. Ralph said. “What a sorry man you are. Except to your wife,” Mrs. Ralph said. “You never once said you were sorry to her.”

  There was a phone beside the water bed. Garp felt he had never so badly misread a person's condition as he had misread Mrs. Ralph's. She was suddenly no drunker than Bill; or she had become miraculously undrunk, or she was enjoying that half hour of clarity between stupor and hangover—a half hour Garp had read about, but had always believed was a myth. Another illusion.

  “I'm taking Duncan home,” Garp told her. She nodded.

  “If I were you,” she said, “I'd take him home, too.”

  Garp fought back another “I'm sorry,” suppressing it after a short but serious struggle.

  “Do me one favor?” said Mrs. Ralph. Garp looked at her; she didn't mind. “Don't tell your wife everything about me, okay? Don't make me out to be such a pig. Maybe you could draw a picture of me with a little sympathy.”

  “I have pretty good sympathy,” Garp mumbled.

  “You have a pretty good rod on, too,” said Mrs. Ralph, staring at Garp's elevated track shorts. “You better not bring that home.” Garp said nothing. Garp the puritan felt he deserved to take a few punches. “Your wife really looks after you, doesn't she?” said Mrs. Ralph. “I guess you haven't always been a good boy. You know what my husband would have called you?” she asked. “My husband would have called you “pussy-whipped."”

  “Your husband must have been some asshole,” Garp said. It felt good to get a punch in, even a weak punch, but Garp felt foolish that he had mistaken this woman for a slob.

  Mrs. Ralph got off the bed and stood in front of Garp. Her tits touched his chest. Garp was anxious that his hard-on might poke her. “You'll be back,” Mrs. Ralph said. “Want to bet on it?” Garp left her without a word.

  He wasn't farther than two blocks from Mrs. Ralph's house—Duncan crammed down in the sleeping bag, wriggling over Garp's shoulder—when the squad car pulled to the curb and its police-blue light flickered over him where he stood caught. A furtive, half-naked kidnapper sneaking away with his bright bundle of stolen goods and stolen looks—and a stolen child.

  “What you got there, fella?” a policeman asked him. There were two of them in the squad car, and a third person who was hard to see in the back seat.

  “My son,” Garp said. Both policemen got out of the car.

  “Where are you going with him?” one of the cops asked Garp. “Is he all right?” He shined a flashlight in Duncan's face. Duncan was still trying to sleep; he squinted away from the light.

  “He was spending the night at a friend's house,” Garp said. “But it didn't work out. I'm carrying him home.” The policeman shined his light over Garp—in his running costume. Shorts, shoes with racing stripes, no shirt.

  “You got identification?” the policeman asked. Garp set Duncan and the sleeping bag, gently, on someone's lawn.

  “Of course not,” Garp said. “If you give me a ride home, I'll show you something.” The policemen looked at each other. They had been called into the neighborbood, hours ago, when a young woman had reported that she was approached by an exhibitionist—at least, by a str
eaker. Possibly it was a matter of attempted rape. She had escaped him on a bicycle, she said.

  “You been out here a long time?” one of the policemen asked Garp.

  The third person, in the back seat of the police car, looked out the window at what was going on. When he saw Garp, he said, “Hey, man, how you doing?” Duncan started to wake up.

  “Ralph?” Duncan said.

  One policeman knelt beside the boy and pointed the flashlight up at Garp. “Is this your father?” the cop asked Duncan. The boy was rather wild-eyed; he darted his eyes from his father to the cops to the blue light flashing on the squad car.

  The other policeman went over to the person in the back seat of the car. It was the boy in the purple caftan. The police had picked him up while they were cruising the neighborhood for the exhibitionist. The boy hadn't been able to tell them where he lived—because he didn't really live anywhere. “Do you know that man with the child there?” the policeman asked the boy.

  “Yeah, he's a real tough guy,” the kid said.

  “It's all right, Duncan,” Garp said. “Don't be scared. I'm just taking you home.”

  “Son?” the policeman asked Duncan. “Is this your father?”

  “You're scaring him,” Garp told the cop.

  “I'm not scared,” Duncan said. “Why are you taking me home?” he asked his father. It seemed that everyone wanted to hear this.

  “Ralph's mother was upset,” Garp said; he hoped that would be enough, but the rejected lover in the police car started to laugh. The policeman with the flashlight shone his light on the lover boy and asked Garp if he knew him. Garp thought: There is no end to this in sight.

  “My name is Garp,” Garp said, irritably. “T. S. Garp. I am married. I have two children. One of them—this one, named Duncan, the older—was spending the night with a friend. I was convinced that this friend's mother was unfit to look after my son. I went to the house and took my son home. Or, I'm still trying to get home.

  “That boy,” Garp said, pointing to the police car, “was visiting the mother of the friend of my son when I arrived. The mother wanted the boy to leave—that boy,” Garp said, again pointing at the kid in the police car, “and he left.”

  “What is this mother's name?” a policeman asked; he was trying to write everything down in a giant pad. After a polite silence, the policeman looked up at Garp.

  “Duncan?” Garp asked his son. “What is Ralph's name?”

  “Well, it's being changed,” Duncan said. “He used to have his father's name, but his mother's trying to get it changed.”

  “Yes, but what is his father's name?” Garp asked. “Ralph,” Duncan said. Garp shut his eyes.

  “Ralph Ralph?” the policeman with the pad said.

  “No, Duncan, please think,” Garp said. “Ralph's last name is what?”

  “Well, I think that's the name being changed,” Duncan said.

  “Duncan, what is it being changed from?” Garp asked.

  “You could ask Ralph,” Duncan suggested. Garp wanted to scream.

  “Did you say your name was Garp?” one of the policemen asked.

  “Yes,” Garp admitted.

  “And the initials are T. S.?” the policeman asked. Garp knew what would happen next; he felt very tired.

  “Yes, T. S.,” he said. “Just T. S.”

  “Hey, Tough Shit!” howled the kid in the car, falling back in the seat, swooning with laughter.

  “What does the first initial stand for, Mr. Garp?” the policeman asked. “Nothing,” Garp said.

  “Nothing?” the policeman said.

  “They're just initials,” Garp said. “They're all my mother gave me.”

  “Your first name is T?” the policeman asked.

  “People call me Garp,” Garp said.

  “What a story, man!” cried the boy in the caftan, but the policeman nearest the squad car rapped on the roof at him.

  “You put your dirty feet on that seat again, sonny,” he said, “and I'll have you licking the crud off.”

  “Garp?” said the policeman interviewing Garp. “I know who you are!” he cried suddenly. Garp felt very anxious. “You're the one who got that molester in that park!”

  “Yes!” said Garp. “That was me. But it wasn't here, and it was years ago.”

  “I remember it as if it were yesterday,” the policeman said.

  “What's this?” the other policeman asked.

  “You're too young,” the cop told him. “This is man named Garp who grabbed that molester in that park—where was it? That child molester, that's who it was. And what was it you did?” he asked Garp, curiously. “I mean, there was something funny, wasn't there?”

  “Funny?” said Garp.

  “For a living,” the policeman said. “What did you do for a living?”

  “I'm a writer,” Garp said.

  “Oh, yeah,” the policeman remembered. “Are you still a writer?”

  “Yes,” Garp confessed. He knew, at least, that he wasn't a marriage counselor.

  “Well, I'll be,” the policeman said, but something was still bothering him; Garp could tell something was wrong.

  “I had a beard then,” Garp offered.

  “That's it!” the policeman cried. “And you've shaved it or”

  “Right,” said Garp.

  The policemen had a conference in the red glow of the taillights of the squad car. They decided to give Garp and Duncan a ride home, but they said Garp would still have to show them some information regarding his identity.

  “I just don't recognize you—from the pictures—without the beard,” the older policeman said.

  “Well, it was years ago,” Garp said, sadly, “and in another town.”

  Garp felt uneasy that the young man in the caftan would get to see the house the Garps lived in. Garp imagined the young man would show up one day, asking for something.

  “You remember me?” the kid asked Duncan.

  “I don't think so,” Duncan said, politely.

  “Well, you were almost asleep,” the boy admitted. To Garp he said, “You're too uptight about children, man. Children make it just fine. This your only child?”

  “No, I have another one,” Garp said.

  “Man, you ought to have a dozen other ones,” the boy said. “Then maybe you wouldn't get so uptight about just one, you know?” This sounded to Garp like what his mother called the Percy Theory of Children.

  “Take your next left,” Garp told the policeman who was driving, “then a right, and it's on the corner.” The other policeman handed Duncan a lollipop.

  “Thank you,” Duncan said.

  “What about me?” the kid in the caftan asked. “I like lollipops.” The policeman glared; when he turned his back, Duncan gave the kid his lollipop. Duncan was no fan of lollipops, he never had been.

  “Thank you,” the boy whispered. “You see, man?” he said to Garp. “Kids are just beautiful.”

  So is Helen, Garp tbought—in the doorway with the light behind her. Her blue, floor-length robe had a high, roll-up collar; Helen had the collar turned up as if she were cold. She also had her glasses on, so that Garp knew she'd been watching for them.

  “Man,” whispered the kid in the caftan, elbowing Garp as he got out of the car. “What's that lovely lady like when she gets her glasses off?”

  “Mom! We got arrested,” Duncan called to Helen. The squad car waited at the curb for Garp to get his identification.

  “We did not get arrested,” Garp said. “We got a ride, Duncan. Everything's fine,” he said angrily, to Helen. He ran upstairs to find his wallet among his clothes.

  “Is that how you went out?” Helen called after him. “Dressed like that?”

  “The police thought he was kidnapping me,” Duncan said.

  “Did they come to the house?” Helen asked him.

  “No, Dad was carrying me home,” Duncan said. “Boy, is Dad weird.”

  Garp thundered down the stairs and ran out the door. “A c
ase of mistaken identity,” Garp muttered to Helen. “They must have been looking for someone else. For God's sake, don't get upset.”

  “I'm not upset,” Helen said, sharply.

  Garp showed the police his identification.

  “Well, I'll be,” the older policeman said. “It is just T. S., isn't it? I suppose it's easier that way.”

  “Sometimes it isn't,” Garp said.

  As the police car was leaving, the kid called out to Garp. “You're not a bad guy, man, if you'd just learn to relax!”

  Garp's impression of Helen's body, lean and tense and shivering in the blue robe, did not relax him. Duncan was wide-awake and jabbering: he was hungry, too. So was Garp. In the pre-dawn kitchen, Helen coolly watched them eat. Duncan told the plot of a long TV movie: Garp suspected that it was actually two movies, and Duncan had fallen asleep before one was over and woken up after the other one had begun. He tried to imagine where and when Mrs. Ralph's activities fitted into Duncan's movies.

  Helen didn't ask any questions. In part, Garp knew, this was because there was nothing she could say in front of Duncan. But in part, like Garp, she was severely editing what she wanted to say. They were both grateful for Duncan's presence; by the time they got to speak freely to each other, the long wait might make them kinder, and more careful.

  At dawn they couldn't wait any longer and they began to talk to each other through Duncan.

  “Tell Mommy what the kitchen looked like,” Garp said. “And tell her about the dog.”

  “Bill?”

  “Right,” Garp said. “Tell her about old Bill.”

  “What was Ralph's mother wearing while you were there?” Helen asked Duncan. She smiled at Garp. “I hope she wore more clothes than Daddy.”

  “What did you have for supper?” Garp asked Duncan.

  “Are the bedrooms upstairs or downstairs?” Helen asked. “Or both?” Garp tried to give her a look that said: Please don't get started. He could feel her edging the old, worn weapons into easy reach. She had a baby-sitter or two she could recall for him, and he felt her moving the baby-sitters into place. If she brought up one of the old, wounding names, Garp had no names ready for retaliation. Helen had no baby-sitters against her; not yet. In Garp's mind, Harrison Fletcher didn't count.