by John Irving
Garp handed the man a note.
There's a nice fire in the wood stove in the kitchen; turn left.
But it was August; that was the wrong note.
"What's this shit?" the man said. And Garp handed him another note, the first one to fly out of his pocket.
Don't be upset. My mother will be back very soon. There are other women here. Would you like to see them?
"Fuck your mother!" the man said. He started toward the big screen door. "Laurel!" he screamed. "You in there? You bitch!"
But it was Jenny Fields who met him in the doorway.
"Hello," she said.
"I know who you are," the man said. "I recognize the dumb uniform. My Laurel's not your type, sweetie; she likes to fuck."
"Perhaps not with you," said Jenny Fields.
Whatever abuse the man in the SHAPE UP! T-shirt was then prepared to deliver to Jenny Fields went unsaid. Roberta Muldoon threw a cross-body block on the surprised man, hitting him from behind and a little to one side of the backs of his knees. It was a flagrant clip, worthy of a fifteen-yard penalty in Roberta's days as a Philadelphia Eagle. The man hit the gray boards of the porch deck with such force that the hanging flowerpots were set swinging. He tried but could not get up. He appeared to have suffered a knee injury common to the sport of football--the very reason, in fact, why clipping was a fifteen-yard penalty. The man was not plucky enough to hurl further abuse, at anyone, from his back; he lay with a calm, moonlike expression upon his face, which whitened slightly in his pain.
"That was too hard, Roberta," Jenny said.
"I'll get Laurel," Roberta said, sheepishly, and she went inside. In Roberta's heart of hearts, Garp and Jenny knew, she was more feminine than anyone; but in her body of bodies, she was a highly trained rock.
Garp had found another note and he dropped it on the New York man's chest, right where it said SHAPE UP! It was a note Garp had many duplicates of.
Hello, my name is Garp. I have a broken jaw.
"My name is Harold," the man said. "Too bad about your jaw."
Garp found a pencil and wrote another note.
Too bad about your knee, Harold.
Laurel was fetched.
"Oh, baby," she said. "You found me!"
"I don't think I can drive the fucking car," Harold said. Out on Ocean Lane the man's sport car still chugged like an animal interested in eating sand.
"I can drive, baby," Laurel said. "You just never let me."
"Now I'll let you," Harold groaned. "Believe me."
"Oh, baby," Laurel said.
Roberta and Garp carried the man to the car. "I think I really need Laurel," the man confided to them. "Fucking bucket seats," the man complained, when they had gingerly squeezed him in. Harold was large for his car. It was the first time in what seemed like years, to Garp, that Garp had been this near to an automobile. Roberta put her hand on Garp's shoulder, but Garp turned away.
"I guess Harold needs me," Laurel told Jenny Fields, and gave a little shrug.
"But why does she need him?" said Jenny Fields, to no one in particular, as the little car drove away. Garp had wandered off. Roberta, punishing herself for her momentarily lapsed femininity, went to find Duncan and mother him.
Helen was talking on the phone to the Fletchers, Harrison and Alice, who wanted to come visit. That might help us, Helen thought. She was right, and it must have boosted Helen's confidence in herself--to be right about something again.
* * *
--
The Fletchers stayed a week. There was at last a child for Duncan to play with, even if it was not his age and not his sex; it was, at least, a child who knew about his eye, and Duncan lost most of his self-consciousness about the eye patch. When the Fletchers left, he was more willing to go to the beach by himself, even at those times of the day when he might encounter other children--who might ask him or, of course, tease him.
Harrison provided Helen with a confidant, as he had been for her before; she was able to tell Harrison things about Michael Milton that were simply too raw to tell Garp, and yet she needed to say them. She needed to talk about her anxieties for her marriage, now; and how she was dealing with the accident so differently from Garp. Harrison suggested another child. Get pregnant, he advised. Helen confided that she was no longer taking the pills, but she did not tell Harrison that Garp had not slept with her--not since it had happened. She didn't really need to tell Harrison that; Harrison noted the separate rooms.
Alice encouraged Garp to stop the silly notes. He could talk if he tried, if he wasn't so vain about how he sounded. If she could talk, certainly he could spit the words out, Alice reasoned--teeth wired together, delicate tongue, and all; he could at least try.
"Alish," Garp said.
"Yeth," said Alice. "That'th my name. What'th yours?"
"Arp," Garp managed to say.
Jenny Fields, passing whitely to another room, shuddered like a ghost and moved on.
"I mish him," Garp confessed to Alice.
"You mith him, yeth, of courth you do," said Alice, and she held him while he cried.
It was quite some time after the Fletchers left when Helen came to Garp's room in the night. She was not surprised to find him lying awake, because he was listening to what she'd heard, too. It was why she couldn't sleep.
Someone, one of Jenny's late arrivals--a new guest--was taking a bath. First the Garps had heard the tub being drawn, then they'd heard the plunking in the water--now the splashing and soapy sounds. There was even a little light singing, or the person was humming.
They remembered, of course, the years Walt had washed himself within their hearing, how they would listen for any telltale slipping sounds, or for the most frightening sound of all--which was no sound. And then they'd call, "Walt?" And Walt would say, "What?" And they would say, "Okay, just checking!" To make sure that he hadn't slipped under and drowned.
Walt liked to lie with his ears underwater, listening to his fingers climbing the walls of the tub, and often he wouldn't hear Garp or Helen calling him. He'd look up, surprised, to see their anxious faces suddenly above him, peering over the rim of the tub. "I'm all right," he'd say, sitting up.
"Just answer, for God's sake, Walt," Garp would tell him. "When we call you, just answer us."
"I didn't hear you," Walt said.
"Then keep your head out of the water," Helen said.
"But how can I wash my hair?" Walt asked.
"That's a lousy way to wash your hair, Walt," Garp said. "Call me. I'll wash your hair."
"Okay," said Walt. And when they left him alone, he'd put his head underwater again and listen to the world that way.
Helen and Garp lay beside each other on Garp's narrow bed in one of the guest rooms in one of the garrets at Dog's Head Harbor. The house had so many bathrooms--they couldn't even be sure which bathroom they were listening to, but they listened.
"It's a woman, I think," Helen said.
"Here?" Garp said. "Of course it's a woman."
"I thought at first it was a child," Helen said.
"I know," Garp said.
"The humming, I guess," Helen said. "You know how he used to talk to himself?"
"I know," Garp said.
They held each other in the bed that was always a little damp, so close to the ocean and with so many windows open all day, and the screen doors swinging and banging.
"I want another child," said Helen.
"Okay," Garp said.
"As soon as possible," Helen said.
"Right away," said Garp. "Of course."
"If it's a girl," Helen said, "we'll name her Jenny, because of your mother."
"Good," said Garp.
"I don't know, if it's a boy," said Helen.
"Not Walt," Garp said.
"Okay," Helen said.
"Not ever another Walt," said Garp. "Although I know some people do that."
"I wouldn't want to," Helen said.
"Some other name, if it's a boy," G
arp said.
"I hope it's a girl," said Helen.
"I won't care," Garp said.
"Of course. Neither will I, really," said Helen.
"I'm so sorry," Garp said; he hugged her.
"No, I'm so sorry," she said.
"No, I'm so sorry," said Garp.
"I am," Helen said.
"I am," he said.
They made love so carefully. Helen imagined that she was Roberta Muldoon, fresh out of surgery, trying out a brand-new vagina. Garp tried not to imagine anything.
Whenever Garp began imagining, he only saw the bloody Volvo. There were Duncan's screams, and outside he could hear Helen calling; and someone else. He twisted himself from behind the steering wheel and kneeled on the driver's seat; he held Duncan's face in his hands, but the blood would not stop and Garp couldn't see everything that was wrong.
"It's okay," he whispered to Duncan. "Hush, you're going to be all right." But because of his tongue, there were no words--only a soft spray.
Duncan kept screaming, and so did Helen, and someone else kept groaning--the way a dog dreams in its sleep. But what did Garp hear that frightened him so? What else?
"It's all right, Duncan, believe me," he whispered, incomprehensibly. "You're going to be all right." He wiped the blood from the boy's throat with his hand; nothing at the boy's throat was cut, he could see. He wiped the blood from the boy's temples, and saw that they were not bashed in. He kicked open the driver's-side door, to be sure; the door light went on and he could see that one of Duncan's eyes was darting. The eye was looking for help, but Garp could see that the eye could see. He wiped more blood with his hand, but he could not find Duncan's other eye. "It's okay," he whispered to Duncan, but Duncan screamed even louder.
Over his father's shoulder, Duncan had seen his mother at the Volvo's open door. Blood streamed from her gashed nose and her sliced tongue, and she held her right arm as if it had broken off somewhere near her shoulder. But it was the fright in her face that frightened Duncan. Garp turned and saw her. Something else frightened him.
It was not Helen's screaming, it was not Duncan's screaming. And Garp knew that Michael Milton, who was grunting, could grunt himself to death--for all Garp cared. It was something else. It was not a sound. It was no sound. It was the absence of sound.
"Where's Walt?" Helen said, trying to see into the Volvo. She stopped screaming.
"Walt!" cried Garp. He held his breath. Duncan stopped crying.
They heard nothing. And Garp knew Walt had a cold you could hear from the next room--even two rooms away, you could hear that wet rattle in the child's chest.
"Walt!" they screamed.
Both Helen and Garp would whisper to each other, later, that at that moment they imagined Walt with his ears underwater, listening intently to his fingers at play in the bathtub.
"I can still see him," Helen whispered, later.
"All the time," Garp said. "I know."
"I just shut my eyes," said Helen.
"Right," Garp said. "I know."
But Duncan said it best. Duncan said that sometimes it was as if his missing right eye was not entirely gone. "It's like I can still see out of it, sometimes," Duncan said. "But it's like memory, it's not real--what I see."
"Maybe it's become the eye you see your dreams with," Garp told him.
"Sort of," Duncan said. "But it seems so real."
"It's your imaginary eye," Garp said. "That can be very real."
"It's the eye I can still see Walt with," Duncan said. "You know?"
"I know," Garp said.
* * *
--
Many wrestlers' children have hardy necks, but not all the children of wrestlers have necks that are hardy enough.
For Duncan and Helen, now, Garp seemed to have an endless reservoir of gentleness; for a year, he spoke softly to them; for a year, he was never impatient with them. They must have grown impatient with his delicacy. Jenny Fields noticed that the three of them needed a year to nurse each other.
In that year, Jenny wondered, what did they do with the other feelings human beings have? Helen hid them; Helen was very strong. Duncan saw them only with his missing eye. And Garp? He was strong, but not that strong. He wrote a novel called The World According to Bensenhaver, into which all his other feelings flew.
When Garp's editor, John Wolf, read the first chapter of The World According to Bensenhaver, he wrote to Jenny Fields. "What in hell is going on out there?" Wolf wrote to Jenny. "It is as if Garp's grief has made his heart perverse."
But T. S. Garp felt guided by an impulse as old as Marcus Aurelius, who had the wisdom and the urgency to note that "in the life of a man, his time is but a moment...his sense a dim rushlight."
15
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BENSENHAVER
Hope Standish was at home with her son, Nicky, when Oren Rath walked into the kitchen. She was drying the dishes and she saw immediately the long, thin-bladed fisherman's knife with the slick cutting edge and the special, saw-toothed edge that they call a disgorger-scaler. Nicky was not yet three; he still ate in a high chair, and he was eating his breakfast when Oren Rath stepped up behind him and nudged the ripper teeth of his fisherman's knife against the child's throat.
"Set them dishes aside," he told Hope. Mrs. Standish did as she was told. Nicky gurgled at the stranger; the knife was just a tickle under his chin.
"What do you want?" Hope asked. "I'll give you anything you want."
"You sure will," said Oren Rath. "What's your name?"
"Hope."
"Mine's Oren."
"That's a nice name," Hope told him.
Nicky couldn't turn in the high chair to see the stranger who was tickling his throat. He had wet cereal on his fingers, and when he reached for Oren Rath's hand, Rath stepped up beside the high chair and touched the fine, slicing edge of his fisherman's blade to the fleshy pouch of the boy's cheek. He made a quick cut there, as if he were briefly outlining the child's cheekbone. Then he stepped back to observe Nicky's surprised face, his simple cry; a thread-thin line of blood appeared, like the stitching for a pocket, on the boy's cheek. It was as if the child had suddenly developed a gill.
"I mean business," said Oren Rath. Hope started toward Nicky but Rath waved her back. "He don't need you. He just don't care for his cereal. He wants a cookie." Nicky bawled.
"He'll choke on it, when he's crying," Hope said.
"You want to argue with me?" said Oren Rath. "You want to talk about choking? I'll cut his pecker off and stuff it down his throat--if you want to talk about choking."
Hope gave Nicky a zwieback and he stopped crying.
"You see?" said Oren Rath. He picked up the high chair with Nicky in it and hugged it to his chest. "We're going to the bedroom now," he said; he nodded to Hope. "You first."
They went down the hall together. The Standish family lived in a ranch house then; with a new baby, they had agreed that ranch houses were safer in the case of a fire. Hope went into the bedroom and Oren Rath put down the high chair with Nicky in it, just outside the bedroom door. Nicky had almost stopped bleeding; there was just a little blood on his cheek; Oren Rath wiped this off with his hand, then wiped his hand on his pants. Then he stepped into the bedroom after Hope. When he closed the door, Nicky started to cry.
"Please," Hope said. "He really might choke, and he knows how to get out of that high chair--or it might tip over. He doesn't like to be alone."
Oren Rath went to the night table and slashed through the phone cord with his fisherman's knife as easily as a man halving a very ripe pear. "You don't want to argue with me," he said.
Hope sat down on the bed. Nicky was crying, but not hysterically; it sounded as if he might stop. Hope started crying, too.
"Just take off your clothes," Oren said. He helped her undress. He was tall and reddish-blond, his hair as lank and as close to his head as high grass beaten down by a flood. He smelled like silage and Hope remembered the turquoise pickup she'd noticed in
the driveway, just before he appeared in her kitchen. "You've even got a rug in the bedroom," he said to her. He was thin but muscular; his hands were large and clumsy, like the feet of a puppy who's going to be a big dog. His body seemed almost hairless, but he was so pale, so very blond, that his hair was hard to see against his skin.
"Do you know my husband?" Hope asked him.
"I know when he's home and when he ain't," Rath said. "Listen," he said suddenly; Hope held her breath. "You hear? Your kid don't even mind it." Nicky was murmuring vowel sounds outside the bedroom door, talking wetly to his zwieback. Hope began crying harder. When Oren Rath touched her, awkward and fast, she thought she was so dry that she wouldn't even get big enough for his horrible finger.
"Please wait," she said.
"No arguing with me."
"No, I mean I can help you," she said. She wanted him in and out of her as fast as possible; she was thinking of Nicky in the high chair in the hall. "I can make it nicer, I mean," she said, unconvincingly; she did not know how to say what she was saying. Oren Rath grabbed one of her breasts in such a way that Hope knew he had never touched a breast before; his hand was so cold, she flinched. In his awkwardness, he butted her in the mouth with the top of his head.
"No arguing," he grunted.
"Hope!" someone called. They both heard it and froze. Oren Rath gaped at the cut phone cord.
"Hope?"
It was Margot, a neighbor and a friend. Oren Rath touched the cool, flat blade of his knife to Hope's nipple.
"She's going to walk right in here," Hope whispered. "She's a good friend."
"My God, Nicky," they could hear Margot say, "I see you're eating all over the house. Is your mother getting dressed?"
"I'll have to fuck you both and kill everybody," whispered Oren Rath.
Hope scissored his waist with her good legs and hugged him, knife and all, to her breasts. "Margot!" she screamed. "Grab Nicky and run! Please!" she shrieked. "There's a crazy man who's going to kill us all! Take Nicky, take Nicky!"
Oren Rath lay stiffly against her as if it were the first time he'd ever been hugged. He did not struggle, he did not use his knife. They both lay rigid and listened to Margot dragging Nicky down the hall and out the kitchen door. One leg of the high chair was snapped off against the refrigerator, but Margot didn't stop to remove Nicky from the chair until she was half a block down the street and kicking open her own door.