The World According to Garp

by John Winslow Irving

  “Let's go get him together,” Garp said to Duncan. To Duncan's surprise, Garp threw the phone book into the trash barrel. Then they walked to the bus stop.

  Garp was still in his track clothes, and it was still raining; Duncan found this odd, too, but he didn't say anything about it. He said, “I got two goals today.” For some reason, all they played at Duncan's school was soccer—fall, winter, and spring, they played only soccer. It was a small school, but there was another reason for all the soccer; Garp forgot what it was. He had never liked the reason, anyway. “Two goals,” Duncan repeated.

  “That's great,” Garp said.

  “One was a header,” Duncan said.

  “With your head?” Garp said. “That's wonderful.”

  “Ralph gave me a perfect pass,” Duncan said.

  “That's still wonderful,” Garp said. “And good for Ralph.” He put his arm around Duncan, but he knew Duncan would be embarrassed if he tried to kiss him; it is Walt who lets me kiss him, Garp thought. Then he thought of kissing Helen and almost stepped in front of the bus.

  “Dad!” Duncan said. And in the bus he asked his father, “Are you okay?”

  “Sure,” Garp said.

  “I thought you'd be up at the wrestling room,” Duncan said. “It is raining.”

  From Walt's day care you could look across the river and Garp tried to place the exact location, there, of Michael Milton's address, which he had memorized from the phone book.

  “Where were you?” Walt complained. He coughed; his nose dripped; he felt hot. He expected to go wrestling whenever it rained.

  “Why don't we all go to the wrestling room, as long as we're downtown?” Duncan said. He was increasingly logical, but Garp said no, he didn't want to wrestle today. “Why not?” Duncan wanted to know.

  “Because he's got his running stuff on, dummy,” Walt said.

  “Oh, shut up, Walt,” Duncan said. They more or less fought on the bus, until Garp told them they couldn't. Walt was sick, Garp reasoned, and fighting was bad for his cold.

  “I'm not sick,” Walt said.

  “Yes, you are,” Garp said.

  “Yes, you are,” Duncan teased.

  “Shut up, Duncan,” Garp said.

  “Boy, you're in a great mood,” Duncan said, and Garp wanted to kiss him; Garp wished to assure Duncan that he wasn't really in a bad mood, but kissing embarrassed Duncan, so Garp kissed Walt instead.

  “Dad!” Walt complained. “You're all wet and sweaty.”

  “Because he's got his running stuff on, dummy,” Duncan said.

  “He called me a dummy,” Walt told Garp.

  “I heard him,” Garp said.

  “I'm not a dummy,” Walt said.

  “Yes, you are,” Duncan said.

  “Shut up, both of you,” Garp said.

  “Dad's in a great mood, isn't he, Walt?” Duncan asked his brother.

  “Sure is,” Walt said, and they decided to tease their father, instead of fight among themselves, until the bus deposited them—a few blocks from the house in the increasing rain. They were a soggy threesome when they were still a block from home, and a car that had been going too fast slowed suddenly beside them; the window was rolled down, after a struggle, and in the steamy interior Garp saw the frazzled, glistening face of Mrs. Ralph. She grinned at them.

  “You seen Ralph?” she asked Duncan.

  “Nope,” Duncan said.

  “The moron doesn't know enough to come out of the rain,” she said. “I guess you don't, either,” she said sweetly, to Garp; she was still grinning and Garp tried to smile back at her, but he couldn't think of anything to say. He must have had poor control of his expression, he suspected, because Mrs. Ralph wouldn't usually pass up the opportunity to go on teasing him in the rain. Yet, instead, she looked suddenly shocked by Garp's ghastly smile; she rolled her window back up.

  “See ya,” she called, and drove off. Slowly.

  “See ya,” Garp mumbled after her; he admired the woman but he was thinking that maybe even this horror would eventually come to pass: that he would see Mrs. Ralph.

  In the house he gave Walt a hot bath, slipping into the tub with him—an excuse, which he often took, to wrestle with that little body. Duncan was too big for Garp to fit in the tub with him anymore.

  “What's for supper?” Duncan called upstairs.

  Garp realized he had forgotten supper.

  “I forgot supper,” Garp called.

  “You forgot?” Walt asked him, but Garp dunked Walt in the tub, and tickled him, and Walt fought back and forgot about the issue.

  “You forgot supper?” Duncan hollered from downstairs.

  Garp decided he was not going to get out of the tub. He kept adding more hot water; the steam was good for Walt's lungs, he believed. He would try to keep the child in the tub with him as long as Walt was content to play.

  They were still in the bath together when Helen got home.

  “Dad forgot supper,” Duncan told her immediately.

  “He forgot supper?” Helen said.

  “He forgot all about it,” Duncan said.

  “Where is he?” Helen asked.

  “He's taking a bath with Walt,” Duncan said. “They've been taking a bath for hours.”

  “Heavens,” said Helen. “Maybe they've drowned.”

  “Wouldn't you love that?” Garp hollered from his bath, upstairs. Duncan laughed.

  “He's in a great mood,” Duncan told his mother.

  “I can see that he is,” Helen said. She put her hand softly on Duncan's shoulder, being careful not to let him know that she was actually leaning on him for support. She felt suddenly unsure of her balance. Poised at the bottom of the stairs, she called up to Garp, “Had a bad day?”

  But Garp slipped underwater; it was a gesture of control, because he felt such hatred for her and he didn't want Walt to see it or hear it.

  There was no answer and Helen tightened her grip on Duncan's shoulder. Please, not in front of the children, she thought. It was a new situation for her—that she should find herself in the defensive position in a matter of some contention with Garp—and she felt frightened.

  “Shall I come up?” she called.

  There was still no answer; Garp could hold his breath a long time.

  Walt shouted back downstairs to her, “Dad's underwater!”

  “Dad is so weird,” Duncan said.

  Garp came up for air just as Walt yelled again, “He's holding his breath!”

  I hope so, Helen thought. She didn't know what to do, she couldn't move.

  In a minute or so, Garp whispered to Walt, “Tell her I'm still underwater, Walt. Okay?”

  Walt appeared to think this was a fiendishly clever trick and he yelled downstairs to Helen, “Dad's still underwater!”

  “Wow,” Duncan said. “We should time him. It must be a record.”

  But now Helen felt panicked. Duncan moved out from under her hand—he was starting up the stairs to see this breath-holding feat—and Helen felt that her legs were lead.

  “He's still underwater!” Walt shrieked, though Garp was drying Walt with a towel and had already started to drain the tub; they stood naked on the bathmat by the big mirror together. When Duncan came into the bathroom, Garp silenced him by putting a finger to his lips.

  “Now, say it together,” Garp whispered. “On the count of three, “He's still under!” One, two, three.”

  “He's still under!” Duncan and Walt howled together, and Helen felt her own lungs burst. She felt a scream escape her but no sound emerged, and she ran up the stairs thinking that only her husband could have conceived of such a plot to pay her back: drowning himself in front of their children and leaving her to explain to them why he did it.

  She ran crying into the bathroom, so surprising Duncan and Walt that she had to recover almost immediately—in order not to frighten them. Garp was naked at the mirror, slowly drying between his toes and watching her in a way she remembered that Ernie Holm had taugh
t his wrestlers how to look for openings.

  “You're too late,” he told her. “I already died. But it's touching, and a little surprising, to see that you care.”

  “We'll talk about this later?” she asked him, hopefully—and smiling, as if it had been a good joke.

  “We fooled you!” Walt said, poking Helen on that sharp bone above her hip.

  “Boy, if we'd pulled that on you,” Duncan said to his father, “you'd have really been pissed at us.”

  “The children haven't eaten,” Helen said.

  “Nobody's eaten,” Garp said. “Unless you have.”

  “I can wait,” she told him.

  “So can I,” Garp told her.

  “I'll get the kids something,” Helen offered, pushing Walt out of the bathroom. “There must be eggs, and cereal.”

  “For supper?” Duncan said. “That sounds like a great supper,” he said. “I just forgot, Duncan,” Garp said.

  “I want toast,” Walt said.

  “You can have toast, too,” Helen said.

  “Are you sure you can handle this?” Garp asked Helen.

  She just smiled at him.

  “God, even I can handle toast,” Duncan said. “I think even Walt can fix cereal.”

  “The eggs are tricky,” Helen said; she tried to laugh.

  Garp went on drying between his toes. When the kids were out of the bathroom, Helen poked her head back in. “I'm sorry, and I love you,” Helen said, but he wouldn't look up from his deliberate procedure with the towel. “I never wanted to hurt you,” she went on. “How did you find out? I have never once stopped thinking of you. Was it that girl?” Helen whispered, but Garp gave all his attention to his toes.

  When she had set out food for the children (as if they were pets! she would think to herself, later), she went back upstairs to him. He was still in front of the mirror, sitting naked on the edge of the tub.

  “He means nothing; he never took anything away from you,” she told him. “It's all over now, really it is.”

  “Since when?” he asked her.

  “As of now,” she said to Garp. “I just have to tell him.”

  “Don't tell him,” Garp said. “Let him guess.”

  “I can't do that,” Helen said.

  “There's shell in my egg!” Walt hollered from downstairs.

  “My toast is burnt!” Duncan said. They were plotting together to distract their parents from each other—whether they knew it or not. Children, Garp thought, have some instinct for separating their parents when their parents ought to be separated.

  “Just eat it!” Helen called to them. “It's not so bad.”

  She tried to touch Garp but he slipped past her, out of the bathroom; he started to dress.

  “Eat up and I'll take you to a movie!” he called to the kids.

  “What are you doing that for?” Helen asked him. “I'm not staying here with you,” he said. “We're going out. You call that wimpish asshole and say good-bye.”

  “He'll want to see me,” Helen said, dully—the reality of having it over, now that Garp knew about it, was working on her like Novocain. If she had been sensitive to how much she'd hurt Garp, at first, now her feelings for him were deadening slightly and she was feeling for herself again.

  “Tell him to eat his heart out,” Garp said. “You won't see him. No last fucks for the road, Helen. Just tell him good-bye. On the phone.”

  “Nobody said anything about “last fucks",” Helen said.

  “Use the phone,” Garp said. “I'll take the kids out. We'll see a movie. Please have it over with before we come back. You won't see him again.”

  “I won't, I promise,” Helen said. “But I should see him, just once—to tell him.”

  “I suppose you feel you've handled this very decently,” Garp said.

  Helen, to a point, did feel so; she didn't say anything. She felt she had never lost sight of Garp and the children during this indulgence; she felt justified in handling it her way, now.

  “We should talk about this later,” she said to him. “Some perspective will be possible, later.”

  He would have struck her if the children hadn't burst into the room.

  “One, two, three,” Duncan chanted to Walt.

  “The cereal is stale!” Duncan and Walt hollered together.

  “Please, boys,” Helen said. “Your father and I are having a little fight. Go downstairs.”

  They stared at her.

  “Please,” Garp said to them. He turned away from them so they wouldn't see him crying, but Duncan probably knew, and surely Helen knew. Walt probably didn't catch it.

  “A fight?” Walt said.

  “Come on,” Duncan said to him; he took Walt's hand. Duncan pulled Walt out of the bedroom. “Come on, Walt,” Duncan said, “or we won't get to see the movie.”

  “Yeah, the movie!” Walt cried.

  To his horror, Garp recognized the attitude of their leaving—Duncan leading Walt away, and down the stairs; the smaller boy turning and looking back. Walt waved, but Duncan pulled him on. Down and gone, into the bomb shelter. Garp hid his face in his clothes and cried.

  When Helen touched him, he said, “Don't touch me,” and went on crying. Helen shut the bedroom door.

  “Oh, don't,” she pleaded. “He isn't worth this; he wasn't anything. I just enjoyed him,” she tried to explain, but Garp shook his head violently and threw his pants at her. He was still only half dressed—an attitude that was perhaps, Helen realized, the most compromising for men: when they were not one thing and also not another. A woman half dressed seemed to have some power, but a man was simply not as handsome as when he was naked, and not as secure as when he was clothed. “Please get dressed,” she whispered to him, and handed him back his pants. He took them, he pulled them on; and went on crying.

  “I'll do just what you want,” she said.

  “You won't see him again?” he said to her.

  “No, not once,” she said. “Not ever again.”

  “Walt has a cold,” Garp said. “He shouldn't even be going out, but it's not too bad for him at a movie. And we won't be late,” he added to her. “Go see if he's dressed warmly enough.” She did.

  He opened her top drawer, where her lingerie was, and pulled the drawer from the dresser; he pushed his face into the wonderful silkiness and scent of her clothes—like a bear holding a great trough of food in his forepaws, and then losing himself in it. When Helen came back into the room and caught him at this, it was almost as if she'd caught him masturbating. Embarrassed, he brought the drawer down across his knee and cracked it; her underwear flew about. He raised the cracked drawer over his head and smacked it down against the edge of the dresser, snapping what felt like the spine of an animal about the size of the drawer. Helen ran from the room and he finished dressing.

  He saw Duncan's fairly well finished supper on Duncan's plate; he saw Walt's uneaten supper on Walt's plate, and on various parts of the table and floor. “If you don't eat, Walt,” Garp said, “you'll grow up to be a wimp.”

  “I'm not going to grow up,” Walt said.

  That gave Garp such a shiver that he turned on Walt and startled the child. “Don't ever say that,” Garp said.

  “I don't want to grow up,” Walt said.

  “Oh, I see,” Garp said, softening. “You mean, you like being a kid?”

  “Yup,” Walt said.

  “Walt is so weird,” Duncan said.

  “I am not!” Walt cried.

  “You are so,” Duncan said.

  “Go get in the car,” Garp said. “And stop fighting.”

  “You were fighting,” Duncan said, cautiously; no one reacted and Duncan tugged Walt out of the kitchen. “Come on,” he said.

  “Yeah, the movie!” Walt said. They went out.

  Garp said to Helen, “He's not to come here, under any circumstances. If you let him in this house, he won't get out alive. And you're not to go out,” he said. “Under any circumstances. Please,” he added, and
he had to turn away from her.

  “Oh, darling,” Helen said.

  “He's such an asshole!” Garp moaned.

  “It could never be anyone like you, don't you see?” Helen said. “It could only be someone who wasn't at all like you.”

  He thought of the baby-sitters and Alice Fletcher, and his inexplicable attraction to Mrs. Ralph, and of course he knew what she meant; he walked out the kitchen door. It was raining outside, and already dark; perhaps the rain would freeze. The mud in the driveway was wet but firm. He turned the car around; then, by habit, he edged the car to the top of the driveway and cut the engine and the lights. Down the Volvo rolled, but he knew the driveway's dark curve by heart. The kids were thrilled by the sound of the gravel and the slick mud in the growing blackness, and when he popped the clutch at the bottom of the driveway, and flicked on the lights, both Walt and Duncan cheered.

  “What movie are we going to see?” Duncan asked.

  “Anything you want,” Garp said. They drove downtown to have a look at the posters.

  It was cold and damp in the car and Walt coughed; the windshield kept fogging over, which made it hard to see what was playing at the movie houses. Walt and Duncan continued to fight about who got to stand in the gap between the bucket seats; for some reason, this had always been the prime spot in the back seat for them, and they had always fought over who got to stand or kneel there—crowding each other and bumping Garp's elbow when he used the stick shift.

  “Get out of there, both of you,” Garp said:

  “It's the only place you can see,” Duncan said.

  “I'm the only one who has to see,” Garp said. “And this defroster is such junk,” he added, “that no one can see out the windshield anyway.”

  “Why don't you write the Volvo people?” Duncan suggested.

  Garp tried to imagine a letter to Sweden about the inadequacies of the defrost system, but he couldn't sustain the idea for very long. On the floor, in back, Duncan kneeled on Walt's foot and pushed him out of the gap between the bucket seats; now Walt cried and coughed.

  “I was here first,” Duncan said.

  Garp downshifted, hard, and the uncovered tip of the stick-shift shaft bit into his hand.

  “You see this, Duncan?” Garp asked, angrily. “You see this gearshift? It's like a spear. You want to fall on that if I have to stop hard?”