by John Irving
In New York, John Wolf put them up in his apartment; he gave Garp and Helen and baby Jenny his own bedroom and graciously offered to share the guest room with Duncan.
The grownups had a late dinner and too much cognac. Garp told John Wolf about the next three novels he was going to write.
"The first one is called My Father's Illusions," Garp said. "It's about an idealistic father who has many children. He keeps establishing little utopias for his kids to grow up in, and after his kids grow up he becomes a founder of small colleges. But all of them go broke--the colleges and the kids. The father keeps trying to give a speech at the U.N., but they keep throwing him out; it's the same speech--he keeps revising and revising it. Then he tries to run a free hospital; it's a disaster. Then he tries to institute a nationwide free-transportation system. Meanwhile, his wife divorces him and his children keep growing older, and turning out unhappy, or fucked-up--or just perfectly normal, you know. The only thing the children have in common are these dreadful memories of the utopias their father tried to have them grow up in. Finally, the father becomes the governor of Vermont."
"Vermont?" John Wolf asked.
"Yes, Vermont," Garp said. "He becomes governor of Vermont, but he really thinks of himself as a king. More utopias, you see."
"The King of Vermont!" John Wolf said. "That's a better title."
"No, no," Garp said. "That's another book. No relation. The second book, after My Father's Illusions, will be called The Death of Vermont."
"Same cast of characters?" Helen asked.
"No, no," Garp said. "Another story. It's about the death of Vermont."
"Well, I like something that is what it says it is," John Wolf said.
"One year spring doesn't come," Garp said.
"Spring never does come to Vermont, anyway," Helen said.
"No, no," Garp said, frowning. "This year summer doesn't come, either. Winter never stops. It warms up one day and all the buds appear. Maybe in May. One day in May there are buds on the trees, the next day there are leaves, and the next day the leaves have all turned. It's fall already. The leaves fall off the trees."
"A short foliage season," Helen said.
"Very funny," Garp said. "But that's what happens. It's winter again; it will be winter forever."
"The people die?" John Wolf asked.
"I'm not sure about the people," Garp said. "Some leave Vermont, of course."
"Not a bad idea," Helen said.
"Some stay, some die. Maybe they all die," Garp said.
"What's it mean?" John Wolf asked.
"I'll know when I get there," Garp said. Helen laughed.
"And there's a third novel, after that?" John Wolf asked.
"It's called The Plot against the Giant," Garp said.
"That's a poem by Wallace Stevens," Helen said.
"Yes, of course," Garp said, and he recited the poem for them.
THE PLOT AGAINST THE GIANT
FIRST GIRL
When this yokel comes maundering,
Whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him,
Diffusing the civilest odors
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
It will check him.
SECOND GIRL
I shall run before him,
Arching cloths besprinkled with colors
As small as fish-eggs.
The threads
Will abash him.
THIRD GIRL
Oh, la...le pauvre!
I shall run before him,
With a curious puffing.
He will bend his ear then.
I shall whisper
Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals.
It will undo him.
"What a nice poem," Helen said.
"The novel is in three parts," Garp said.
"Girl One, Girl Two, Girl Three?" John Wolf asked.
"And is the giant undone?" Helen asked.
"Is he ever," Garp said.
"Is he a real giant, in the novel?" John Wolf asked.
"I don't know, yet," Garp said.
"Is he you?" Helen asked.
"I hope not," Garp said.
"I hope not, too," said Helen.
"Write that one first," John Wolf said.
"No, write it last," Helen said.
"The Death of Vermont seems the logical one to write last," John Wolf said.
"No, I see The Plot against the Giant as last," Garp said.
"Wait and write it after I'm dead," Helen said.
Everyone laughed.
"But there are only three," John Wolf said. "What then? What happens after the three?"
"I die," Garp said. "That will make six novels altogether, and that's enough."
Everyone laughed again.
"And do you also know how you die?" John Wolf asked him.
"Let's stop this," Helen said. And to Garp she said, "If you say, 'In an airplane,' I will not forgive you." Behind the lightly drunk humor in her voice, John Wolf detected a seriousness; it made him stretch his legs.
"You two better go to bed," he said. "And get rested for your trip."
"Don't you want to know how I die?" Garp asked them.
They didn't say anything.
"I kill myself," Garp said, pleasantly. "In order to become fully established, that seems almost necessary. I mean it, really," Garp said. "In the present fashion, you'll agree this is one way of recognizing a writer's seriousness? Since the art of the writing doesn't always make the writer's seriousness apparent, it's sometimes necessary to reveal the depth of one's personal anguish by other means. Killing yourself seems to mean that you were serious after all. It's true," Garp said, but his sarcasm was unpleasant and Helen sighed; John Wolf stretched again. "And thereafter," Garp said, "much seriousness is suddenly revealed in the work--where it had escaped notice before."
Garp had often remarked, irritably, that this would be his final duty as a father and provider--and he was fond of citing examples of the middling writers who were now adored and read with great avidity because of their suicides. Of those writer-suicides whom he, too--in some cases--truly admired, Garp only hoped that, at the moment the act was accomplished, at least some of them had known about this lucky aspect of their unhappy decision. He knew perfectly well that people who really killed themselves did not romanticize suicide in the least; they did not respect the "seriousness" that the act supposedly lent to their work--a nauseating habit in the book world, Garp thought. Among readers and reviewers.
Garp also knew he was no suicide; he knew it somewhat less surely after the accident to Walt, but he knew it. He was as distant from suicide as he was from rape; he could not imagine actually doing it. But he liked to imagine the suicidal writer grinning at his successful mischief, while once more he read and revised the last message he would leave--a note aching with despair, and appropriately humorless. Garp liked to imagine that moment, bitterly: when the suicide note was perfect, the writer took the gun, the poison, the plunge--laughing hideously, and full of the knowledge that he had at last got the better of the readers and reviewers. One note he imagined was: "I have been misunderstood by you idiots for the last time."
"What a sick idea," Helen said.
"The perfect writer's death," said Garp.
"It's late," John Wolf said. "Remember your flight."
In the guest room, where John Wolf wanted to fall asleep, he found Duncan Garp still wide-awake.
"Excited by the trip, Duncan?" Wolf asked the boy.
"My father's been to Europe before," Duncan said. "But I haven't."
"I know," John Wolf said.
"Is my father going to make a lot of money?" Duncan asked.
"I hope so," John Wolf said.
"We don't really need it, because my grandmother has so much," Duncan said.
"But it's nice to have your own," John Wolf said.
"Why?" Duncan asked.
"Well, it's nice to be famous," John Wolf said.
&n
bsp; "Do you think my father's going to be famous?" Duncan asked.
"I think so," John Wolf said.
"My grandmother's already famous," Duncan said.
"I know," John Wolf said.
"I don't think she likes it," Duncan said.
"Why?" John Wolf asked.
"Too many strangers around," Duncan said. "That's what Nana says; I've heard her. 'Too many strangers in the house.'"
"Well, your dad probably won't be famous in quite the same way that your grandmother is," John Wolf said.
"How many different ways are there to be famous?" Duncan asked.
John Wolf expelled a long, restrained breath. Then he began to tell Duncan Garp about the differences between very popular books and just successful ones. He talked about political books, and controversial books, and works of fiction. He told Duncan the finer points of book publishing; in fact, he gave Duncan the benefit of more of his personal opinions about publishing than he had ever given Garp. Garp wasn't really interested. Duncan wasn't, either. Duncan would not remember one of the finer points; he fell asleep rather quickly after John Wolf started explaining.
It was simply John Wolf's tone of voice that Duncan loved. The long story, the slow explanation. It was the voice of Roberta Muldoon--of Jenny Fields, of his mother, of Garp--telling him stories at night in the house at Dog's Head Harbor, putting him to sleep so soundly that he wouldn't have any nightmares. Duncan had gotten used to that tone of voice, and he had been unable to fall asleep in New York without it.
* * *
--
In the morning, Garp and Helen were amused by John Wolf's closet. There was a pretty nightgown belonging, no doubt, to one of John Wolf's recent, sleek women--someone who had not been asked to spend last night. There were about thirty dark suits, all with pinstripes, all quite elegant, and all failing to fit Garp by about three extra inches in the pantlegs. Garp wore one he liked to breakfast, with the pants rolled up.
"Jesus, you have a lot of suits," he said to John Wolf.
"Take one," John Wolf said. "Take two or three. Take the one you're wearing."
"It's too long," Garp said, holding up a foot.
"Have it shortened," John Wolf said.
"You don't have any suits," Helen told Garp.
Garp decided he liked the suit so well that he wanted to wear it to the airport, with the pantlegs pinned up.
"Jesus," Helen said.
"I'm slightly embarrassed to be seen with you," John Wolf confessed, but he drove them to the airport. He was making absolutely certain that the Garps got out of the country.
"Oh, your book," he said to Garp, in the car. "I keep forgetting to get you a copy."
"I noticed," Garp said.
"I'll send you one," John Wolf said.
"I never even saw what went on the jacket," Garp said.
"A photograph of you, on the back," John Wolf said. "It's an old one--it's one you've seen, I'm sure."
"What's on the front?" Garp said.
"Well, the title," John Wolf said.
"Oh, really?" Garp said. "I thought maybe you decided to leave the title off."
"Just the title," John Wolf said, "over a kind of photograph."
"'A kind of photograph,'" Garp said. "What kind of photograph?"
"Maybe I have one in my briefcase," Wolf said. "I'll look, at the airport."
Wolf was being careful; he had already let it slip that he thought The World According to Bensenhaver was an "X-rated soap opera." Garp hadn't seemed bothered. "Mind you, it's awfully well written," Wolf had said, "but it's still, somehow, soap opera; it's too much, somehow." Garp had sighed. "Life," Garp had said, "is too much, somehow. Life is an X-rated soap opera, John," Garp had said.
In John Wolf's briefcase was a snip-out of the front cover of The World According to Bensenhaver, missing the back-jacket photograph of Garp and, of course, the jacket flaps. John Wolf planned to hand this snip-out to Garp just moments before they said good-bye. This snip-out of the front cover was sealed in an envelope; the envelope was sealed in another envelope. John Wolf felt pretty certain that Garp would not be able to undo the thing and look at it until he was safely seated in the plane.
When Garp got to Europe, John Wolf would send him the rest of the book jacket for The World According to Bensenhaver. Wolf felt certain that it would not make Garp quite angry enough to fly home.
"This is bigger than the other plane," Duncan said, at the window on the left-hand side, a little in front of the wing.
"It has to be bigger because it's going all the way across the ocean," Garp said.
"Please don't mention that again," Helen said. Across the aisle from Duncan and Garp, a stewardess was fashioning an intriguing sling for baby Jenny, who hung on the back of the seat in front of Helen like someone else's baby or a papoose.
"John Wolf said you were going to be rich and famous," Duncan told his father.
"Hm," Garp said. He was involved in the tedious process of opening the envelopes John Wolf had given him; he was having a hell of a time with them.
"Are you?" Duncan asked.
"I hope so," Garp said. At last he looked at the cover of The World According to Bensenhaver. He could not tell if it was the sudden, apparent weightlessness of the great airplane, leaving the ground, that gave him such a chill--or if it was the photograph.
Blown up in black and white, with grains as fat as flakes of snow, was a picture of an ambulance unloading at a hospital. The glum futility on the gray faces of the attendants expressed the fact that there was no need to hurry. The body under the sheet was small and completely covered. The photograph had the quick, fearful quality of the entrance marked EMERGENCY at any hospital. It was any hospital, and any ambulance--and any small body arriving too late.
A kind of wet finish glazed the photograph, which--with its grainy aspect, and the fact that this accident appeared to have happened on a rainy night--made it a picture out of any cheap newspaper; it was any catastrophe. It was any small death, anywhere, anytime. But of course it only reminded Garp of the gray despairing on all their faces when they were struck by the sight of Walt lying broken.
The cover of The World According to Bensenhaver, an X-rated soap opera, shouted a grim warning: this was a disaster story. The cover called for your cheap but immediate attention; it got it. The cover promised you a sudden, sickening sadness; Garp knew that the book would deliver it.
If he could have read the jacket-flap description of his novel and his life, at that time, he might very well have taken the next plane back to New York as soon as he landed in Europe. But he would have time to resign himself to this kind of advertising--just as John Wolf had planned. By the time Garp read the jacket flaps, he'd already have absorbed that horrible front-cover photograph.
Helen would never absorb it, and she never forgave John Wolf for it, either. Nor would she ever forgive him for the back-cover photograph of Garp. It was a picture, taken several years before the accident, of Garp with Duncan and Walt. Helen had taken the picture, and Garp had sent it to John Wolf instead of a Christmas card. Garp was on a dock in Maine. He was wearing nothing but a bathing suit and he looked in terrific physical shape. He was. Duncan stood behind him, his lean arm rested on his father's shoulder; Duncan also wore a bathing suit, he was very tan, with a white sailor's cap cocked jauntily on his head. He grinned into the camera, staring it down with his beautiful eyes.
Walt sat on Garp's lap. Walt was so fresh out of the water that he was as slick as a seal puppy; Garp was trying to wrap him warmly in a towel, and Walt was squirming. Wildly happy, his clownish, round face beamed at the camera--at his mother taking the picture.
When Garp looked at that picture, he could feel Walt's cold, wet body growing warm and dry against him.
Beneath the photograph, the caption cashed in on one of the least noble instincts of human beings.
T. S. GARP WITH HIS CHILDREN (BEFORE THE ACCIDENT)
The implication was that if you read the book, you wo
uld find out what accident. Of course, you wouldn't. The World According to Bensenhaver would tell you nothing about that accident, really--although it is fair to say that accidents play an enormous part in the novel. The only thing you would really learn about the accident referred to under the photograph was contained in the garbage that John Wolf wrote on the jacket flap. But, even so, that photograph--of a father with his doomed children--had a way of hooking you.
People bought the book by the sad son of Jenny Fields in droves.
On the airplane to Europe, Garp had only the picture of the ambulance to use his imagination on. Even at that altitude, he could imagine people buying the book in droves. He sat feeling disgusted at the people he imagined buying the book; he also felt disgusted that he had written the kind of book that could attract people in droves.
"Droves" of anything, but especially of people, were not comforting to T. S. Garp. He sat in the airplane wishing for more isolation and privacy--for himself and for his family--than he would ever know again.
"What will we do with all the money?" Duncan asked him suddenly.
"All the money?" Garp said.
"When you're rich and famous," Duncan said. "What will we do?"
"We'll have lots of fun," Garp told him, but his handsome son's one eye pierced him with doubt.
"We'll be flying at an altitude of thirty-five thousand feet," the pilot said.
"Wow," said Duncan. And Garp reached for his wife's hand across the aisle. A fat man was making his unsure way down the aisle to the lavatory; Garp and Helen could only look at each other and convey a kind of hand-in-hand contact with their eyes.
In his mind's eye, Garp saw his mother, Jenny Fields, all in white, held up in the sky by the towering Roberta Muldoon. He did not know what it meant, but his vision of Jenny Fields raised above a crowd chilled him in the same way that the ambulance on the cover of The World According to Bensenhaver had chilled him. He began talking to Duncan, about anything at all.
Duncan began talking about Walt and the undertow--a famous family story. For as far back as Duncan could remember, the Garps had gone every summer to Dog's Head Harbor, New Hampshire, where the miles of beach in front of Jenny Fields' estate were ravaged by a fearful undertow. When Walt was old enough to venture near the water, Duncan said to him--as Helen and Garp had, for years, said to Duncan--"Watch out for the undertow." Walt retreated, respectfully. And for three summers Walt was warned about the undertow. Duncan recalled all the phrases.