by John Irving
"Who told you my father was Japanese?" Garp asked her.
"I don't know," Cushie said. "I don't know if he really is, either."
"I don't either," Garp admitted.
"I don't know why you don't ask your mother," Cushie said. But of course he had asked, and Jenny was absolutely unwavering from her first and only version.
* * *
--
When Garp phoned Cushie at Dibbs, she said, "Wow, it's you! My father just called and told me I was not to see you or write to you or talk to you. Or even read your letters--as if you wrote any. I think some golfer saw us leaving the cannons." She thought it was very funny, but Garp only saw that his future at the cannons had slipped from him. "I'll be home that weekend you graduate," Cushie told him. But Garp wondered: If he bought the condoms now, would they still be usable for graduation? Could rubbers go bad? In how many weeks? And should you keep them in the refrigerator? There was no one to ask.
Garp thought of asking Ernie Holm, but he was already fearful that Helen would hear of his being with Cushie Percy, and although he had no real relationship with Helen that he could be unfaithful to, Garp did have his imagination and his plans.
He wrote Helen a long confessional letter about his "lust," as he called it--and how it did not compare to his higher feelings for her, as he referred to them. Helen replied promptly that she didn't know why he was telling her all this, but that in her opinion he wrote about it very well. It was better writing than the story he'd shown her, for example, and she hoped he would continue to show her his writing. She added that her opinion of Cushie Percy, from what little she knew of the girl, was that she was rather stupid. "But pleasant," Helen wrote. And if Garp was given to this lust, as he called it, wasn't he fortunate to have someone like Cushie around?
Garp wrote back that he would not show her another story until he wrote one that was good enough for her. He also discussed his feelings for not going to college. First, he thought, the only reason to go to college was to wrestle, and he wasn't sure he cared enough about it to wrestle at that level. He saw no point in simply continuing to wrestle at some small college where the sport wasn't emphasized. "It's only worth doing," Garp wrote to Helen, "if I'm going to try to be the best." He thought that trying to be the best at wrestling was not what he wanted; also, he knew, it was not likely he could be the best. And whoever heard of going to college to be the best at writing?
And where did he get this idea of wanting to be the best?
Helen wrote him that he should go to Europe, and Garp discussed this idea with Jenny.
To his surprise, Jenny had never thought he would go to college; she did not accept that this was what prep schools were for. "If the Steering School is supposed to give everyone such a first-rate education," Jenny said, "what on earth do you need more education for? I mean, if you've been paying attention, now you're educated. Right?" Garp didn't feel educated but he said he supposed he was. He thought he had been paying attention. As for Europe, Jenny was interested. "Well, I'd certainly like to try that," she said. "It beats staying here."
It was then that Garp realized his mother meant to stay with him.
"I'll find out the best place for a writer to go in Europe," Jenny said to him. "I was thinking of writing something myself."
Garp felt so awful he went to bed. When he got up, he wrote Helen that he was doomed to be followed by his mother the rest of his life. "How can I write," he wrote to Helen, "with my mom looking over my shoulder?" Helen had no answers for that one; she said she would mention the problem to her father, and maybe Ernie would give Jenny some advice. Ernie Holm liked Jenny; he occasionally took her to a movie. Jenny had even become something of a wrestling fan, and although there couldn't have been anything more than friendship between them, Ernie was very sensitive to the unwed mother story--he had heard and accepted Jenny's version as all he needed to know, and he defended Jenny rather fiercely to those in the Steering community who suggested they were curious to know more.
But Jenny took her advice on cultural matters from Tinch. She asked him where a boy and his mother could go in Europe--which was the most artistic climate, the best place to write. Mr. Tinch had last been to Europe in 1913. He had stayed only for the summer. He had gone to England first, where there were several living Tinches, his British ancestry, but his old family frightened him by asking him for money--they asked for so much, and so rudely, that Tinch quickly fled to the Continent. But people were rude to him in France, and loud to him in Germany. He had a nervous stomach and was afraid of Italian cooking, so Tinch had gone to Austria. "In Vienna," Tinch told Jenny, "I found the real Europe. It was c-c-contemplative and artistic," Tinch said. "You could sense the sadness and the g-g-grandness."
A year later, World War I began. In 1918 the Spanish grippe would kill many of the Viennese who had survived the war. The flu would kill old Klimt, and it would kill young Schiele and Schiele's young wife. Forty percent of the remaining male population would not survive World War II. The Vienna that Tinch would send Jenny and Garp to was a city whose life was over. Its tiredness could still be mistaken for a c-c-contemplative nature, but Vienna was hard-put to show much g-g-grandness anymore. Among the half-truths of Tinch, Jenny and Garp would still sense the sadness. "And any place can be artistic," Garp later wrote, "if there's an artist working there."
"Vienna?" Garp said to Jenny. He said it in the way he had said "Wrestling?" to her, over three years ago, lying on his sickbed and doubtful of her ability to pick out a sport for him. But he remembered she had been right then, and he knew nothing about Europe, and very little about anyplace else. Garp had taken three years of German at Steering, so there was some help, and Jenny (who was not good with languages) had read a book about the strange bedfellows of Austrian history: Maria Theresa and fascism. From Empire to Anschluss! was the name of the book. Garp had seen it in the bathroom, for years, but now no one could find it. Perhaps it was lost to the whirlpool bath.
"The last person I saw with it was Ulfelder," Jenny told Garp.
"Ulfelder graduated three years ago, Mom," Garp reminded her.
* * *
--
When Jenny told Dean Bodger that she would be leaving, Bodger said that Steering would miss her and would always be glad to have her back. Jenny did not want to be impolite, but she mumbled that one could be a nurse almost anywhere, she supposed; she did not know, of course, that she would never be a nurse again. Bodger was puzzled by Garp's not going to college. In the dean's opinion, Garp had not been a disciplinary problem at Steering since he had survived the roof of the infirmary annex at the age of five, and Bodger's fondness for the role he played in that rescue had always given him a fondness for Garp. Also, Dean Bodger was a wrestling fan, and one of Jenny's few admirers. But Bodger accepted that the boy seemed convinced by "the writing business," as Bodger called it. Jenny did not tell Bodger, of course, that she planned to do some writing of her own.
This part of the plan made Garp the most uncomfortable, but he did not even say a word of it to Helen. Everything was happening very fast and Garp could express his apprehension only to his wrestling coach, Ernie Holm.
"Your mom knows what she's doing, I'm sure," Ernie told him. "You just be sure about you."
Even old Tinch was full of optimism for the plan. "It's a little ec-ec-eccentric," Tinch told Garp, "but many good ideas are." Years later Garp would recall that Tinch's endearing stutter was like a message to Tinch from Tinch's body. Garp wrote that Tinch's body was trying to tell Tinch that he was going to f-f-freeze to death one day.
Jenny was saying that they would leave shortly after graduation, but Garp had hoped to stay around Steering for the summer.
"What on earth for?" Jenny asked him.
For Helen, he wanted to tell her, but he had no stories good enough for Helen; he had already said so. There was nothing to do but go away and write them. And he could never expect Jenny to stay another summer in Steering so that he could keep his appointment
at the cannons with Cushie Percy; perhaps that was not meant to be. Still, he was hopeful that he could connect with Cushie on graduation weekend.
For Garp's graduation, it rained. The rain washed over the soggy Steering campus in sheets; the storm sewers bogged and the out-of-state cars plowed through the streets like yachts in a squall. The women looked helpless in their summer dresses; the loading of station wagons was hurried and miserable. A great crimson tent was erected in front of the Miles Seabrook Gymnasium and Field House, and the diplomas were handed out in this stale circus air; the speeches were lost in the rain beating the crimson canvas overhead.
Nobody stayed around. The big boats left town. Helen had not come because Talbot had its graduation the following weekend and she was still taking exams. Cushie Percy had been in attendance at the disappointing ceremony, Garp was sure; but he had not seen her. He knew she would be with her ridiculous family and Garp was wise to keep a safe distance from Fat Stew--an outraged father was still a father, after all, even if Cushman Percy's honor had long ago been lost.
When the late-afternoon sun came out, it hardly mattered. Steering was steamy and the ground--from Seabrook Stadium to the cannons--would be sodden for days. Garp imagined the deep ruts of water that he knew would be coursing through the soft grass at the cannons; even the Steering River would be swollen. The cannons themselves would be overflowing; the barrels were tilted up, and they filled with water every time it rained. In such weather, the cannons dribbled streams of broken glass and left slick puddles of old condoms on the stained concrete. There would be no enticing Cushie to the cannons this weekend, Garp knew.
But the three-pack of prophylactics crackled in his pocket like a tiny, dry fire of hope.
"Look," said Jenny. "I bought some beer. Go ahead and get drunk, if you want to."
"Jesus, Mom," Garp said, but he drank a few with her. They sat by themselves on his graduation night, the infirmary empty beside them, and every bed in the annex was empty and stripped of linen, too--except for the beds they would sleep in. Garp drank the beer and wondered if everything was an anticlimax; he reassured himself by thinking of the few good stories he had read, but though he had a Steering education, he was no reader--no match for Helen, or Jenny, for example. Garp's way with a story was to find one he liked and read it again and again; it would spoil him for reading any other story for a long while. When he was at Steering he read Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" thirty-four times. He also read D. H. Lawrence's "The Man Who Loved Islands" twenty-one times; he felt ready to read it again, now.
Outside the windows of the tiny apartment in the infirmary annex, the Steering campus lay dark and wet and deserted.
"Well, look at it this way," Jenny said; she could see he was feeling let down. "It took you only four years to graduate from Steering, but I've been going to this damn school for eighteen." She was not much of a drinker, Jenny: half the way through her second beer, she fell asleep. Garp carried her into her bedroom; she had already taken off her shoes, and Garp removed only her nurse's pin--so that she wouldn't roll over and stick herself with it. It was a warm night, so he didn't cover her.
He drank another beer and then took a walk.
Of course he knew where he was going.
The Percy family house--originally the Steering family house--sat on its damp lawn not far from the infirmary annex. Only one light was on in Stewart Percy's house, and Garp knew whose light it was: little Pooh Percy, now fourteen, could not sleep with her light out. Cushie had also told Garp that Bainbridge was still inclined to wear a diaper--perhaps, Garp thought, because her family still insisted on calling her Pooh.
"Well," Cushie said, "I don't see what's wrong with it. She doesn't use the diapers, you know; I mean, she's housebroken, and all that. Pooh just likes to wear diapers--occasionally."
Garp stood on the misty grass beneath Pooh Percy's window and tried to remember which room was Cushie's. Since he couldn't remember, he decided to wake up Pooh; she was sure to recognize him, and she was sure to tell Cushie. But Pooh came to her window like a ghost; she did not immediately appear to recognize Garp, who clung tenaciously to the ivy outside her window. Bainbridge Percy had eyes like a deer paralyzed in a car's headlights, about to be hit.
"For Christ's sake, Pooh, it's me," Garp whispered to her.
"You want Cushie, don't you?" Pooh asked him, sullenly.
"Yes!" Garp grunted. Then the ivy tore and he fell into the hedges below. Cushie, who slept in her bathing suit, helped extricate him.
"Wow, you're going to wake up the whole house," she said. "Have you been drinking?"
"I've been falling," Garp said, irritably. "Your sister is really weird."
"It's wet outside, all over," Cushie said to him. "Where can we go?"
Garp had thought of that. In the infirmary, he knew, were sixty empty beds.
But Garp and Cushie were not even past the Percy porch when Bonkers confronted them. The black beast was already out of breath, from descending the porch stairs, and his iron-gray muzzle was flecked with froth; his breath reached Garp like old sod flung in his face. Bonkers was growling, but even his growl had slowed down.
"Tell him to beat it," Garp whispered to Cushie.
"He's deaf," Cushie said. "He's very old."
"I know how old he is," Garp said.
Bonkers barked, a creaky and sharp sound, like the hinge of an unused door being forced open. He was thinner, but he easily weighed one hundred and forty pounds. A victim of ear mites and mange, old dog bite and barbed wire, Bonkers sniffed his enemy and held Garp cornered against the porch.
"Go away, Bonkie!" Cushie hissed.
Garp tried to sidestep the dog and noticed how slowly Bonkers reacted.
"He's half-blind," Garp whispered.
"And his nose doesn't smell much anymore," Cushie said.
"He ought to be dead," Garp whispered to himself, but he tried to step around the dog. Dimly, Bonkers followed. His mouth still reminded Garp of a steam shovel's power, and the loose flap of muscle on his black and shaggy chest indicated to Garp how hard the dog could lunge--but long ago.
"Just ignore him," Cushie suggested, just as Bonkers lunged.
The dog was slow enough so that Garp could spin behind him; he pulled the dog's forepaws from under him and dropped his own weight, from his chest, on the dog's back. Bonkers buckled forward, he slid into the ground nose first--his hind legs still clawing. Garp now controlled the crumpled forepaws but the great dog's head was held down only by the weight of Garp's chest. A terrifying snarling developed as Garp bore down on the animal's spine and drove his chin into the dog's dense neck. In the scuffle, an ear appeared--in Garp's mouth--and Garp bit it. He bit as hard as he could, and Bonkers howled. He bit Bonkers' ear in memory of his own missing flesh, he bit him for the four years he'd spent at Steering--and for his mother's eighteen years.
It was only when lights came on in the Percy house that Garp let old Bonkers go.
"Run!" Cushie suggested. Garp grabbed her hand and she came with him. A vile taste was in his mouth. "Wow, did you have to bite him?" Cushie asked.
"He bit me," Garp reminded her.
"I remember," Cushie said. She squeezed his hand and he led her where he wanted to go.
"What the hell is going on here?" they heard Stewart Percy yelling.
"It's Bonkie, it's Bonkie!" Pooh Percy called into the night.
"Bonkers!" called Fat Stew. "Here, Bonkers! Here, Bonkers!" And they all heard the deaf dog's resounding caterwaul.
It was a commotion capable of carrying across an empty campus. It woke Jenny Fields, who peered out her window in the infirmary annex. Fortunately for Garp, he saw her turn on a light. He made Cushie hide behind him, in a corridor of the unoccupied annex, while he sought Jenny's medical advice.
"What happened to you?" Jenny asked him. Garp wanted to know if the blood running down his chin was his own or entirely Bonkers'. At the kitchen table, Jenny washed away a black scab-like thing that was st
uck to Garp. It fell off Garp's throat and landed on the table--it was the size of a silver dollar. They both stared at it.
"What is it?" Jenny asked.
"An ear," Garp said. "Or part of one."
On the white enamel table lay the black leathery remnant of an ear, curling slightly at the edges and cracked like an old, dry glove.
"I ran into Bonkers," Garp said.
"An ear for an ear," said Jenny Fields.
There was not a mark on Garp; the blood belonged solely to Bonkers.
When Jenny went back to her bedroom, Garp snuck Cushie into the tunnel that led to the main infirmary. For eighteen years he had learned the way. He took her to the wing farthest from his mother's apartment in the annex; it was over the main admittance room, near the rooms for surgery and anesthesia.
Thus sex for Garp would forever be associated with certain smells and sensations. The experience would remain secretive but relaxed: a final reward in harrowing times. The odor would stay in his mind as deeply personal and yet vaguely hospital. The surroundings would forever seem to be deserted. Sex for Garp would remain in his mind as a solitary act committed in an abandoned universe--sometime after it had rained. It was always an act of terrific optimism.
Cushie, of course, evoked for Garp many images of cannons. When the third condom of the three-pack was exhausted, she asked if that was all he had--if he'd bought only one package. A wrestler loves nothing so much as hard-earned exhaustion; Garp fell asleep to Cushie complaining.
"The first time you don't have any," she was saying, "and now you run out? It is lucky we're such old friends."
It was still dark and far from dawn when Stewart Percy woke them. Fat Stew's voice violated the old infirmary like an unnameable disease. "Open up!" they heard him hollering, and they crept to the window to see.
On the green, green lawn, in his bathrobe and slippers--and with Bonkers leashed beside him--Cushie's father bleated at the windows of the infirmary annex. It was not long before Jenny appeared in the light.