by John Irving
"I'll go get the two-by-fours now," Helen said.
"And if the peculiarities of my art weren't qualification enough," Garp said, "I have, as you know, been married myself." He paused. "I've had children." He paused again. "I've had a variety of marriage-related experiences--we both have."
"Springfield Avenue?" Helen said. "I'll be home soon."
"I have more than enough experience for the job," he insisted. "I've known financial dependency, I've experienced infidelity."
"Good for you," Helen said. She hung up.
But Garp thought: Maybe marriage counseling is a charlatan field even if a genuine and qualified person is giving the advice. He replaced the phone on the hook. He knew he could advertise himself in the Yellow Pages most successfully--even without lying.
MARRIAGE PHILOSOPHY
& FAMILY ADVICE--
T. S. GARP
author of Procrastination and Second Wind of the Cuckold
Why add that they were novels? They sounded, Garp realized, like marriage-counsel manuals.
But would he see his poor patients at home or in an office?
Garp took a green pepper and propped it in the center of the gas burner; he turned up the flame and the pepper began to burn. When it was black all over, Garp would let it cool, then scrape off all the charred skin. Inside would be a roasted pepper, very sweet, and he would slice it and let it marinate in oil and vinegar and a little marjoram. That would be his dressing for the salad. But the main reason he liked to make dressing this way was that the roasting pepper made the kitchen smell so good.
He turned the pepper with a pair of tongs. When the pepper was charred, Garp snatched it up with the tongs and flipped it into the sink. The pepper hissed at him. "Talk all you want to," Garp told it. "You don't have much time left."
He was distracted. Usually he liked to stop thinking about other things while he cooked--in fact, he forced himself to. But he was suffering a crisis of confidence about marriage counseling.
"You're suffering a crisis of confidence about your writing," Helen told him, walking into the kitchen with even more than her usual authority--the freshly cut two-by-fours slung over and under her arm like matching shotguns.
Walt said, "Daddy burned something."
"It was a pepper and Daddy meant to," Garp said.
"Every time you can't write you do something stupid," Helen said. "Though I'll confess this is a better idea for a diversion than your last diversion."
Garp had expected her to be ready, but he was surprised that she was so ready. What Helen called his last "diversion" from his stalled writing had been a baby-sitter.
Garp drove a wooden spoon deep into his tomato sauce. He flinched as some fool took the corner by the house with a roaring downshift and a squeal of tires that cut through Garp with the sound of a struck cat. He looked instinctively for Walt, who was right there--safe in the kitchen.
Helen said, "Where's Duncan?" She moved to the door but Garp cut in front of her.
"Duncan went to Ralph's," he said; he was not worried, this time, that the speeding car meant Duncan had been hit, but it was Garp's habit to chase down speeding cars. He had properly bullied every fast driver in the neighborhood. The streets around Garp's house were cut in squares, bordered every block by stop signs; Garp could usually catch up to a car, on foot, provided that the car obeyed the stop signs.
He raced down the street after the sound of the car. Sometimes, if the car was going really fast, Garp would need three or four stop signs to catch up to it. Once he sprinted five blocks and was so out of breath when he caught up to the offending car that the driver was sure there'd been a murder in the neighborhood and Garp was either trying to report it or had done it himself.
Most drivers were impressed with Garp, and even if they swore about him later, they were polite and apologetic to his face, assuring him they would not speed in the neighborhood again. It was clear to them that Garp was in good physical shape. Most of them were high school kids who were easily embarrassed--caught hot-rodding around with their girl friends, or leaving little smoking-rubber stains in front of their girl friends' houses. Garp was not such a fool as to imagine that he changed their ways; all he hoped to do was make them speed somewhere else.
The present offender turned out to be a woman (Garp saw her earrings glinting, and the bracelets on her arm, as he ran up to her from behind). She was just ready to pull away from a stop sign when Garp rapped the wooden spoon on her window, startling her. The spoon, dribbling tomato sauce, looked at a glance as if it had been dipped in blood.
Garp waited for her to roll down her window, and was already phrasing his opening remarks ("I'm sorry I startled you, but I wanted to ask you a personal favor...") when he recognized that the woman was Ralph's mother--the notorious Mrs. Ralph. Duncan and Ralph were not with her; she was alone, and it was obvious that she had been crying.
"Yes, what is it?" she said. Garp couldn't tell if she recognized him as Duncan's father, or not.
"I'm sorry I startled you," Garp began. He stopped. What else could he say to her? Smeary-faced, fresh from a fight with her ex-husband or a lover, the poor woman looked to be suffering her approaching middle age like the flu; her body looked rumpled with misery, her eyes were red and vague. "I'm sorry," Garp mumbled; he was sorry for her whole life. How could he tell her that all he wanted was for her to slow down?
"What is it?" she asked him.
"I'm Duncan's father," Garp said.
"I know you are," she said. "I'm Ralph's mother."
"I know," he said; he smiled.
"Duncan's father meets Ralph's mother," she said, caustically. Then she burst into tears. Her face flopped forward and struck the horn. She sat up straight, suddenly hitting Garp's hand, resting on her rolled-down window; his fingers opened and he dropped the long-handled spoon into her lap. They both stared at it; the tomato sauce produced a stain on her wrinkled beige dress.
"You must think I'm a rotten mother," Mrs. Ralph said. Garp, ever-conscious of safety, reached across her knees and turned off the ignition. He decided to leave the spoon in her lap. It was Garp's curse to be unable to conceal his feelings from people, even from strangers; if he thought contemptuous thoughts about you, somehow you knew.
"I don't know anything about what kind of mother you are," Garp told her. "I think Ralph's a nice boy."
"He can be a real shit," she said.
"Perhaps you'd rather Duncan not stay with you tonight?" Garp asked--Garp hoped. To Garp, she didn't appear to know that Duncan was spending the night with Ralph. She looked at the spoon in her lap. "It's tomato sauce," Garp said. To his surprise, Mrs. Ralph picked up the spoon and licked it.
"You're a cook?" she asked.
"Yes, I like to cook," Garp said.
"It's very good," Mrs. Ralph told him, handing him his spoon. "I should have gotten one like you--some muscular little prick who likes to cook."
Garp counted in his head to five; then he said, "I'd be glad to go pick up the boys. They could spend the night with us, if you'd like to be alone."
"Alone!" she cried. "I'm usually alone. I like having the boys with me. And they like it, too," she said. "Do you know why?" Mrs. Ralph looked at him wickedly.
"Why?" Garp said.
"They like to watch me take a bath," she said. "There's a crack in the door. Isn't it sweet that Ralph likes to show off his old mother to his friends?"
"Yes," Garp said.
"You don't approve, do you, Mr. Garp?" she asked him. "You don't approve of me at all."
"I'm sorry you're so unhappy," Garp said. On the seat beside her in her messy car was a paperback of Dostoevsky's The Eternal Husband; Garp remembered that Mrs. Ralph was going to school. "What are you majoring in?" he asked her, stupidly. He recalled she was a never-ending graduate student; her problem was probably a thesis that wouldn't come.
Mrs. Ralph shook her head. "You really keep your nose clean, don't you?" she asked Garp. "How long have you been married?"
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"Almost eleven years," Garp said. Mrs. Ralph looked more or less indifferent; Mrs. Ralph had been married for twelve.
"Your kid's safe with me," she said, as if she were suddenly irritated with him, and as if she were reading his mind with utter accuracy. "Don't worry, I'm quite harmless--with children," she added. "And I don't smoke in bed."
"I'm sure it's good for the boys to watch you take a bath," Garp told her, then felt immediately embarrassed for saying it, though it was one of the few things he'd told her that he meant.
"I don't know," she said. "It didn't seem to do much good for my husband, and he watched me for years." She looked up at Garp, whose mouth hurt from all his forced smiles. Just touch her cheek, or pat her hand, he thought; at least say something. But Garp was clumsy at being kind, and he didn't flirt.
"Well, husbands are funny," he mumbled. Garp the marriage counselor, full of advice. "I don't think many of them know what they want."
Mrs. Ralph laughed bitterly. "My husband found a nineteen-year-old cunt," she said. "He seems to want her."
"I'm sorry," Garp told her. The marriage counselor is the I'm-sorry man, like a doctor with bad luck--the one who gets to diagnose all the terminal cases.
"You're a writer," Mrs. Ralph said to him, accusingly; she waved her copy of The Eternal Husband at him. "What do you think of this?"
"It's a wonderful story," Garp said. It was fortunately a book he remembered--neatly complicated, full of perverse and human contradiction.
"I think it's a sick story," Mrs. Ralph told him. "I'd like to know what's so special about Dostoevsky."
"Well," Garp said, "his characters are so complex, psychologically and emotionally; and the situations are so ambiguous."
"His women are less than objects," Mrs. Ralph said, "they don't even have any shape. They're just ideas that men talk about and play with." She threw the book out the window at Garp; it hit his chest and fell by the curb. She clenched her fists in her lap, staring at the stain on her dress, which marked her crotch with a tomato-sauce bull's-eye. "Boy, that's me all over," she said, staring at the spot.
"I'm sorry," Garp said again. "It may leave a permanent stain."
"Everything leaves a stain!" Mrs. Ralph cried out. A laughter so witless escaped her that it frightened Garp. He didn't say anything and she said to him, "I'll bet you think that all I need is a good lay."
To be fair, Garp rarely thought this of people, but when Mrs. Ralph mentioned it, he did think that, in her case, this oversimple solution might apply.
"And I'll bet you think I'd let you do it," she said, glaring at him. Garp, in fact, did think so.
"No, I don't think you would," he said.
"Yes, you think I would love to," Mrs. Ralph said.
Garp hung his head. "No," he said.
"Well, in your case," she said, "I just might." He looked at her and she gave him an evil grin. "It might make you a little less smug," she told him.
"You don't know me well enough to talk to me like this," Garp said.
"I know that you're smug," Mrs. Ralph said. "You think you're so superior." True, Garp knew; he was superior. He would make a lousy marriage counselor, he now knew.
"Please drive carefully," Garp said; he pushed himself away from her car. "If there's anything I can do, please call."
"Like if I need a good lover?" Mrs. Ralph asked him, nastily.
"No, not that," Garp said.
"Why did you stop me?" she asked him.
"Because I thought you were driving too fast," he said.
"I think you're a pompous fart," she told him.
"I think you're an irresponsible slob," Garp told her. She cried out as if she were stabbed.
"Look, I'm sorry," he said (again), "but I'll just come pick up Duncan."
"No, please," she said. "I can look after him, I really want to. He'll be all right--I'll look after him like he was my own!" This didn't truly comfort Garp. "I'm not that much of a slob--with kids," she added; she managed an alarmingly attractive smile.
"I'm sorry," Garp said--his litany.
"So am I," said Mrs. Ralph. As if the matter were resolved between them, she started her car and drove past the stop sign and through the intersection without looking. She drove away--slowly, but more or less in the middle of the road--and Garp waved his wooden spoon after her.
Then he picked up The Eternal Husband and walked home.
10
THE DOG IN THE ALLEY, THE CHILD IN THE SKY
We've got to get Duncan out of that mad woman's house," Garp told Helen.
"Well, you do it," Helen said. "You're the one who's worried."
"You should have seen how she drove," Garp said.
"Well," said Helen, "presumably Duncan isn't going to be riding around with her."
"She may take the boys out for a pizza," Garp said. "I'm sure she can't cook."
Helen was looking at The Eternal Husband. She said, "It's a strange book for a woman to give to another woman's husband."
"She didn't give it to me, Helen. She threw it at me."
"It's a wonderful story," Helen said.
"She said it was just sick," Garp said, despairingly. "She thought it was unfair to women."
Helen looked puzzled. "I wouldn't say that was even an issue," she said.
"Of course it isn't!" Garp yelled. "This woman is an idiot! My mother would love her."
"Oh, poor Jenny," Helen said. "Don't start on her."
"Finish your pasta, Walt," Garp said.
"Up your wazoo," Walt said.
"Nice talk," Garp said. "Walt, I don't have a wazoo."
"Yes, you do," Walt said.
"He doesn't know what it means," Helen said. "I'm not sure what it means, either."
"Five years old," Garp said. "It's not nice to say that to people," Garp told Walt.
"He heard it from Duncan, I'm sure," Helen said.
"Well, Duncan gets it from Ralph," Garp said, "who no doubt gets it from his goddamn mother!"
"Watch your own language," Helen said. "Walt could as easily have gotten his 'wazoo' from you."
"Not from me, he couldn't have," Garp declared. "I'm not sure what it means, either. I never use that word."
"You use plenty just like it," Helen said.
"Walt, eat your pasta," Garp said.
"Calm down," Helen said.
Garp eyed Walt's uneaten pasta as if it were a personal insult. "Why do I bother?" he said. "The child eats nothing."
They finished their meal in silence. Helen knew Garp was thinking up a story to tell Walt after dinner. She knew Garp did this to calm himself whenever he was worried about the children--as if the act of imagining a good story for children was a way to keep children safe forever.
With the children Garp was instinctively generous, loyal as an animal, the most affectionate of fathers; he understood Duncan and Walt deeply and separately. Yet, Helen felt sure, he saw nothing of how his anxiety for the children made the children anxious--tense, even immature. On the one hand he treated them as grownups, but on the other hand he was so protective of them that he was not allowing them to grow up. He did not accept that Duncan was ten, that Walt was five; sometimes the children seemed fixed, as three-year-olds, in his mind.
Helen listened to the story Garp made up for Walt with her usual interest and concern. Like many of the stories Garp told the children, it began as a story for the children and ended up as a story Garp seemed to have made up for Garp. You would think that the children of a writer would have more stories read to them than other children, but Garp preferred that his children listen only to his stories.
"There was a dog," Garp said.
"What kind of dog?" said Walt.
"A big German shepherd dog," said Garp.
"What was his name?" Walt asked.
"He didn't have a name," Garp said. "He lived in a city in Germany, after the war."
"What war?" said Walt.
"World War II," Garp said.
"Oh sure,"
Walt said.
"The dog had been in the war," Garp said. "He had been a guard dog, so he was very fierce and very smart."
"Very mean," said Walt.
"No," Garp said, "he wasn't mean and he wasn't nice, or sometimes he was both. He was whatever his master trained him to be, because he was trained to do whatever his master told him to do."
"How did he know who his master was?" Walt asked.
"I don't know," Garp said. "After the war, he got a new master. This master owned a cafe in the city; you could get coffee and tea and drinks there, and read the newspapers. At night the master would leave one light on, inside the cafe, so that you could look in the windows and see all the wiped-off tables with the chairs upside-down on the table tops. The floor was swept clean, and the big dog paced back and forth across the floor every night. He was like a lion in his cage at the zoo, he was never still. Sometimes people would see him in there and they'd knock on the window to get his attention. The dog would just stare at them--he wouldn't bark, or even growl. He'd just stop pacing and stare, until whoever it was went away. You had the feeling that if you stayed too long, the dog might jump through the window at you. But he never did; he never did anything, in fact, because no one ever broke into that cafe at night. It was enough just having the dog there; the dog didn't have to do anything."
"The dog looked very mean," said Walt.
"Now you've got the picture," Garp told him. "Every night was the same for that dog, and every day he was tied up in an alley beside the cafe. He was tied to a long chain, which was tied to the front axle of an old army truck, which had been backed into the alley and left there--for good. This truck didn't have any wheels.
"And you know what cinder blocks are," Garp said. "The truck was set on blocks so it wouldn't roll an inch on its axles. There was just enough room for the dog to crawl under the truck and lie down out of the rain and the sun. The chain was just long enough so that the dog could walk to the end of the alley and watch the people on the sidewalk and the cars in the street. If you were coming along the sidewalk, you could sometimes see the dog's nose poking out of the alley; that was as far as the chain would reach, and no farther.