The World According to Garp

by John Winslow Irving

  Sometimes she imagined taking him into her mouth while they drove across town in the big car with the gaping chrome grille like the mouth of a feeding fish—Buick Eight in script across the teeth. But that, Helen knew, would not be safe.

  The first indication that the whole thing might not be safe was when Margie Tallworth dropped Helen's Comp. Lit. 205, without so much as a note of explanation concerning what she might not have liked about the course. Helen feared it was not the course that Margie hadn't liked, and she called the young Miss Tallworth into her office to ask her for an explanation.

  Margie Tallworth, a junior, knew enough about school to know that no explanation was required; up to a certain point in any semester, a student was free to drop any course without the instructor's permission. “Do I have to have a reason?” the girl asked Helen, sullenly.

  “No, you don't,” Helen said. “But if you had a reason, I just wanted to hear it.”

  “I don't have to have a reason,” Margie Tallworth said. She held Helen's gaze longer than most students could hold it; then she got up to leave. She was pretty and small and rather well dressed for a student, Helen thought. If there was any consistency to Michael Milton's former girl friend and his present taste, it appeared only that he liked women to wear nice clothes.

  “Well, I'm sorry it didn't work out,” Helen said, truthfully, as Margie was leaving; she was still fishing for what the girl might actually know.

  She knew, Helen thought, and quickly accused Michael.

  “You've blown it already,” she told him coldly, because she could speak coldly to him—over the phone. “Just how did you drop Margie Tallworth?”

  “Very gently,” Michael Milton said, smugly. “But a drop is a drop, no matter how different the ways of doing it are.” Helen did not appreciate it when he attempted to instruct her—except sexually; she indulged the boy that, and he seemed to need to be dominant there. That was different for her, and she didn't really mind. He was sometimes rough, but not ever dangerous, she thought; and if she firmly resisted something, he stopped. Once she had had to tell him, “No! I don't like that, I won't do that.” But she had added, “Please,” because she wasn't that sure of him. He had stopped; he had been forceful with her, but in another way—in a way that was all right with her. It was exciting that she couldn't trust him completely. But not trusting him to be silent was another matter; if she knew he had talked about her, that would be that.

  “I didn't tell her anything,” Michael insisted. “I said, “Margie, it's all over,” or something like that. I didn't even tell her there was another woman, and I certainly said nothing about you.”

  “But she's probably heard you talk about me, before,” Helen said. “Before this started, I mean.”

  “She never liked your course, anyway,” Michael said. “We did talk about that once.”

  “She never liked the course?” Helen said. This truly surprised her.

  “Well, she's not very bright,” Michael said, impatiently.

  “She'd better not know,” Helen said. “I mean it: you better find out.”

  But he found out nothing. Margie Tallworth refused to speak to him. He tried to tell her, on the phone, that it was all because an old girl friend had come back to him—she had arrived from out of town; she'd had no place to stay; one thing had led to another. But Margie Tallworth had hung up on him before he could polish the story.

  Helen smoked a little more. She watched Garp anxiously for a few days—and once she felt actual guilt, when she made love to Garp; she felt guilty that she had made love to him not because she wanted to but because she wanted to reassure him, if he had been thinking that anything was wrong.

  He hadn't been thinking, not much. Or: he had thought, but only once, about the bruises on the small, tight backs of Helen's thighs; though he was strong, Garp was a very gentle man with his children and his wife. He also knew what fingermark bruises looked like because he was a wrestler. It was a day or so later that he noticed the same small fingermark bruises on the backs of Duncan's arms—just where Garp held him when Garp wrestled with the boy—and Garp concluded that he gripped the people he loved harder than he meant to. He concluded that the fingermarks on Helen were also his.

  He was too vain a man to be easily jealous. And the name he had woken with—on his lips, one morning—had eluded him. There were no more papers by Michael Milton around the house, keeping Helen up at night. In fact, she was going to bed earlier and earlier; she needed her rest.

  As for Helen, she developed a fondness for the bare, sharp shaft of the Volvo's stick shift; its bite at the end of the day, driving home from her office, felt good against the heel of her hand, and she often pressed against it until she felt it was only a hair away from the pressure necessary to break her skin. She could bring tears to her eyes, this way, and it made her feel clean again, when she arrived home—when the boys would wave and shout at her, from the window where the TV was; and when Garp would announce what dinner he had prepared for them all, when Helen walked into the kitchen.

  Margie Tallworth's possible knowledge had frightened Helen, because although Helen had said to Michael—and to herself—that it would be over the instant anyone knew, Helen now knew that it would be more difficult to end than she had first imagined. She hugged Garp in his kitchen and hoped for Margie Tallworth's ignorance.

  Margie Tallworth was ignorant, but she was not ignorant of Michael Milton's relationship with Helen. She was ignorant of many things but she knew about that. She was ignorant in that she thought her own shallow infatuation with Michael Milton had “surpassed,” as she would say, “the sexual"; whereas, she assumed, Helen was merely amusing herself with Michael. In truth, Margie Tallworth had absolutely wallowed in, as she would say, “the sexual"; it is difficult, in fact, to know what else her relationship with Michael Milton had been about. But she was not altogether wrong in assuming that this was what Helen's relationship with Michael Milton was also about. Margie Tallworth was ignorant in that she assumed too much, too much of the time; but in this case she had assumed correctly.

  Back when Michael Milton and Helen were actually talking about Michael's “work,” Margie assumed—even then—that they were fucking. Margie Tallworth did not believe there was another kind of relationship that one could have with Michael Milton. In this one way, she was not ignorant. She may have known the kind of relationship Helen had with Michael before Helen knew it herself.

  And through the one-way glass of the fourth-floor ladies' room, in the English and Literature Building, it was possible for Margie Tallworth to look through the tinted windshield of the three-ton Buick, gliding like the coffin of a king out of the parking lot. Margie could see Mrs. Garp's slender legs stretched along the long front seat. It was a peculiar way to ride in a car with other than the best of friends.

  Margie knew their habits better than she understood her own; she took long walks, to try to forget Michael Milton, and to familiarize herself with the whereabouts of Helen's house. She was soon familiar with the habits of Helen's husband, too, because Garp's habits were much more constant than anyone's: he padded back and forth, from room to room, in the mornings; perhaps he was out of a job. That fitted Margie Tallworth's assumptions of the likely cuckold: a man who was out of work. At midday he burst out the door in track clothes and ran away; miles later, he returned and read his mail, which nearly always came when he was gone. Then he padded back and forth in the house again; he undressed, in pieces, on the way to the shower, and he was slow to dress when he was out of the shower. One thing did not fit her image of the cuckold: Garp had a good body. And why did he spend so much time in the kitchen? Margie Tallworth wondered if perhaps he was an unemployed cook.

  Then his children came home and they broke Margie Tallworth's soft little heart. He looked quite nice when he played with his children, which also fitted Margie's assumptions of what a cuckold was like: someone who had witless good fun with his children while his wife was out getting planked. “Planke
d” was also a word that the wrestlers Garp knew used, and they had used it back at those blood-and-blue days at Steering, too. Someone was always bragging about planking a wet, split beaver.

  So one day, when Garp burst out the door in his track clothes, Margie Tallworth waited only as long as it took him to run away; then she went up on the Garps' porch with a perfumed note, which she intended to drop in his mail. She had thought very carefully that he would have time to read the note and (hopefully) recover himself before his children came home. This was how she assumed such news was absorbed: suddenly! Then there was a reasonable period of recovery and one got ready to face the children. Here was another case of something Margie Tallworth was ignorant of.

  The note itself had given her trouble because she was not good with words. And it was perfumed not by intention but simply because every piece of paper Margie Tallworth owned was perfumed; if she had thought about it, she would have realized perfume was inappropriate to this note, but that was another of the things she was ignorant of. Even her schoolwork was perfumed; when Helen had read Margie Tallworth's first essay for Comp. Lit. 205, she had cringed at its scent.

  What Margie's note to Garp said was:

  Your wife is “involved with” Michael Milton.

  Margie Tallworth would grow up to be the sort of person who said that someone “passed away” instead of died. Thus she sought delicacy with the words that Helen was “involved with” Michael Milton. And she had this sweetly smelling note in her hand, and she was poised on the Garps' porch with it, when it began to rain.

  Nothing made Garp turn back from a run faster than rain. He hated getting his running shoes wet. He would run in the cold, and run in the snow, but when it rained, Garp ran home, swearing, and cooked for an hour in a foul-weather mood. Then he put on a poncho and caught the bus to the gym in time for wrestling practice. On the way, he picked up Walt from day care and took Walt to the gym with him; he called home when he got to the gym to see if Duncan was back from school. Sometimes he gave Duncan instructions, if the meal was still cooking, but usually he just cautioned Duncan about riding his bike and he quizzed him about emergency phone numbers: did Duncan know what to dial in case of fire, explosion, armed robbery, mayhem in the streets?

  Then he wrestled, and after practice he popped Walt into the shower with himself; by the time he called home again, Helen was there to come pick them up.

  Therefore, Garp did not like rain; although he enjoyed wrestling, rain complicated his simple plans. And Margie Tallworth was unprepared to see him suddenly panting and angry behind her on the porch.

  “Aaahhh!” she cried; she clutched her scented note as tightly as if it were the main artery of an animal whose blood flow she wished she could stop.

  “Hello,” said Garp. She looked like a baby-sitter to him. He had trained himself off baby-sitters some time ago. He smiled at her with frank curiosity—that is all.

  “Aaa,” said Margie Tallworth; she couldn't speak. Garp looked at the crushed message in her hand; she shut her eyes and held the note out to him, as if she were putting her hand into a fire.

  If at first Garp had thought she was one of Helen's students, wanting something, now he thought something else. He saw that she couldn't speak, and he saw the extreme self-consciousness of her handing him the note. Garp's experience with speechless women who handed out notes self-consciously was limited to Ellen Jamesians, and he suppressed a momentary flame of anger—that another creepy Ellen Jamesian was introducing herself to him. Or had she come to bait him about something—the reclusive son of the exciting Jenny Fields?

  Hi! I'm Margie. I'm an Ellen Jamesian,

  her stupid note would say.

  Do you know what an Ellen Jamesian is?

  The next thing you know, Garp thought, they'll be organized like the religious morons who bring those righteous pamphlets about Jesus to one's very door. It sickened him, for example, that the Ellen Jamesians were now reaching girls as young as this one; she was too young to know, he thought, whether she wanted a tongue in her life or not. He shook his head and waved the note away.

  “Yes, yes, I know, I know,” Garp said. “So what?” Poor Margie Tallworth was unprepared for this. She had come like an avenging angel—her terrible duty, and what a burden it was to her!—to bring the bad news that somehow must be made known. But he knew already! And he didn't even care.

  She clutched her note in both hands, so tightly to her pretty, trembling breasts that more of the perfume was expressed from it—or from her—and a wave of her young-girl smell passed over Garp, who stood glaring at her.

  “I said, “So what?” Garp said. “Do you actually expect me to have respect for someone who cuts her own tongue off?”

  Margie forced a word out. “What?” she said; she was frightened now. Now she guessed why the poor man padded around his house all day, out of work: he was insane.

  Garp had distinctly heard the word; it was not a gagged “Aaahhh” or even a little “Aaa"—it was not the word of an amputated tongue. It was a whole word.

  “What?” he said.

  “What?” she said, again.

  He stared at the note she held against herself. “You can talk?” he said.

  “Of course,” she croaked.

  “What's that?” he asked, and pointed to her note. But now she was afraid of him—an insane cuckold. God knows what he might do. Murder the children, or murder her; he looked strong enough to murder Michael Milton with one arm. And every man looked evil when he was questioning you. She backed away from him, off the porch.

  “Wait!” Garp cried. “Is that a note for me? What is that? Is it something for Helen? Who are you?”

  Margie Tallworth shook her head. “It's a mistake,” she whispered, and when she turned to flee, she collided with the wet mailman, spilling his bag and knocking herself back into Garp. Garp had a vision of Duna, the senile bear, bowling a mailman down a Viennese staircase—outlawed forever. But all that happened to Margie Tallworth was that she fell to the floor of the porch; her stockings tore and she skinned one knee.

  The mailman, who assumed he'd arrived at an awkward moment, fumbled for Garp's mail among his strewn letters, but Garp was now only interested in what message the crying girl had for him. “What is it?” he asked her, gently; he tried to help her to her feet, but she wanted to sit where she was. She kept sobbing.

  “I'm sorry,” Margie Tallworth said. She had lost her nerve; she had spent a minute too long around Garp, and now that she thought she rather liked him, it was hard for her to imagine giving him this news.

  “Your knee's not too bad,” Garp said, “but let me get something to clean you up.” He went inside for antiseptic for her cut, and bandages, but she took this opportunity to limp away. She could not face him with this news, but she could not withhold it from him, either. She left her note for him. The mailman watched her hobble down the side street toward the corner where the buses stopped; he wondered briefly what the Garps were up to. They seemed to get more mail than other families, too.

  It was all those letters Garp wrote, which poor John Wolf, his editor, struggled to answer. And there were copies of books to review; Garp gave them to Helen, who at least read them. There were Helen's magazines; it seemed to Garp there were a great many. There were Garp's two magazines, his only subscriptions: Gourmet and Amateur Wrestling News. There were, of course, bills. And a letter rather frequently from Jenny; it was all she wrote these days. And a letter now and then, short and sweet, from Ernie Holm.

  Sometimes Harry Fletcher wrote them both, and Alice still wrote with exquisite fluency, about nothing at all, to Garp.

  And now among the usual was a note, reeking of perfume and wet with tears. Garp put down the bottle of antiseptic and the bandages; he did not bother to look for the girl. He held the crumpled note and thought he knew, more or less, what it would be about.

  He wondered why he hadn't thought of it before, because there were so many things that pointed to it; now that he thou
ght of it, he supposed he had thought of it before, only not quite this consciously. The slow unwrapping of the note—so it wouldn't tear—made sounds as crisp as autumn, though all around Garp it was a cold March, the hurt ground thawing to mud. The little note snapped like bones as he opened it. With the escaping perfume, Garp imagined he could still hear the girl's sharp little yelp: “What?"

  He knew “what"; what he didn't know was “with whom"—that name, which had kicked around in his mind, one morning, but then was gone. The note, of course, would provide him with the name: Michael Milton. It sounded to Garp like a special kind of new ice cream at that shop he took the boys to. There was Strawberry Swirl, Chock-full of Chocolate, Mocha Madness, and Michael Milton. It was a disgusting name—a flavor Garp could taste—and Garp tramped to the storm sewer and wadded the vile-smelling note into pieces and stuffed them through the grate. Then he went inside the house and read the name in a phone book, over and over again.

  It seemed to him now that Helen had been “involved with” someone for a long time; it seemed that he had known it for some time, too. But the name! Michael Milton! Garp had classified him—to Helen—at a party where Garp had been introduced to him. Garp had told Helen that Michael Milton was a “wimp"; they had discussed his mustache. Michael Milton! Garp read the name so many times, he was still peering into the phone book when Duncan got home from school and assumed that his father was once more searching a directory for his make-believe people.

  “Didn't you get Walt yet?” Duncan asked.

  Garp had forgotten. And Walt has a cold, too, Garp thought. The boy shouldn't have to wait for me, with a cold.