The World According to Garp

by John Irving

  "What is it?" he asked. But, wordless as Ellen James, Helen hugged his hips; her teeth chattered against his chest and he hugged her until she stopped shivering.

  A "spokesperson" for the Ellen Jamesians remarked that this was an isolated act of violence, not sanctioned by the society of Ellen Jamesians but obviously provoked by the "typically male, aggressive, rapist personality of T. S. Garp." They were not taking responsibility for this "isolated act," the Jamesians declared, but they were not surprised or especially sorry about it, either.

  Roberta told Garp that, under the circumstances, if he didn't feel like reading to a group of women, she would understand. But Garp read to the assembled Fields Foundation fellows and their assorted guests at Dog's Head Harbor--a crowd of less than one hundred people, cozily comfortable in the sun room of Jenny's estate. He read them "The Pension Grillparzer," which he introduced by saying, "This is the first and best thing I ever wrote, and I don't even know how I thought it up. I think it is about death, which I didn't even know very much about when I wrote it. I know more about death now, and I'm not writing a word. There are eleven major characters in this story and seven of them die; one of them goes mad; one of them runs away with another woman. I'm not going to give away what happens to the other two characters, but you can see that the odds for surviving this story aren't great."

  Then he read to them. Some of them laughed; four of them cried; there were lots of sneezes and coughs, perhaps because of the ocean dampness; nobody left and everyone applauded. An older woman in the back, by the piano, slept soundly through the entire story, but even she applauded at the end; she woke up to the applause and joined in it, happily.

  The event seemed to charge Garp. Duncan had attended the reading--it was his favorite among his father's works (actually, one of the few things his father had written that Duncan had been allowed to read). Duncan was a talented young artist and he had more than fifty drawings of the characters and situations in his father's story, which he revealed to Garp after Garp drove them both home. Some of the drawings were fresh and unpretentious; all of them were thrilling to Garp. The old bear's withered flanks engulfing the absurd unicycle; the grandmother's matchstick ankles appearing frail and exposed under the W.C. door. The evil mischief in the dream man's excited eyes! The floozy beauty of Herr Theobald's sister ("...as if her life and her companions had never been exotic to her--as if they had always been staging a ludicrous and doomed effort at reclassification"). And the brave optimism of the man who could only walk on his hands.

  "How long have you been doing this?" Garp asked Duncan; he could have wept, he felt so proud.

  It charged him, very much. He proposed to John Wolf a special edition, a book of "The Pension Grillparzer," illustrated by Duncan. "The story's good enough to be a book all by itself," Garp wrote John Wolf. "And I'm certainly well known enough for it to sell. Except for a little magazine, and an anthology or two, it's really never been published before. Besides, the drawings are lovely! And the story really holds up.

  "I hate it when a writer starts cashing in on a reputation--publishing all the shit in his drawers, and republishing all the old shit that deserved to be missed. But this isn't a case of that, John; you know it isn't."

  John Wolf knew. He thought Duncan's drawings were fresh and unpretentious, but also not really very good; the boy was not yet thirteen--no matter how talented he was. But John Wolf also knew a good idea for publishing when he saw it. To be sure, of course, he gave the book the Secret Jillsy Sloper Test; Garp's story, and especially Duncan's drawings, passed Jillsy's scrutiny with the highest praise. Her only reservations concerned Garp's using too many words she didn't know.

  A father and son book, John Wolf thought, would be nice for Christmas. And the sad gentleness of the story, its full pity and its mild violence, would perhaps ease the tension of Garp's war with the Ellen Jamesians.

  The groin healed, and Garp ran the road from Steering to the sea all summer, nodding his recognition to the brooding Angus every day; they now had the safety of that fortunate stone wall in common, and Garp felt forever identified with these large, lucky animals. Happily grazed, and happily bred. And slaughtered, one day, quickly. Garp did not think of their slaughter. Or his own. He watched out for cars, but not nervously.

  "An isolated act," he told Helen and Roberta and Ellen James. They nodded, but Roberta ran with him whenever she could. Helen thought she would feel more at ease when the weather got cold again and Garp ran on the indoor track in the Miles Seabrook Field House. Or when he started wrestling again, and rarely went out at all. Those warm mats and that padded room were a safety symbol to Helen Holm, who had grown up in such an incubator.

  Garp, too, looked forward to another wrestling season. And to the father and son publication of The Pension Grillparzer--a tale by T. S. Garp, illustrated by Duncan Garp. At last, a Garp book for children and for grownups! It was also, of course, like starting over. Going back to the beginning and getting a fresh start. What a world of illusions blossoms with the idea of "starting over."

  Suddenly, Garp started writing again.

  He started by writing a letter to the magazine that had published his attack on the Ellen Jamesians. In the letter he apologized for the vehemence and self-righteousness of his remarks. "Although I believe Ellen James was used by these women, who had little concern for the real-life Ellen James, I can see that the need to use Ellen James in some way was genuine and great. I feel, of course, at least partially responsible for the death of that very needful and violent woman who felt provoked enough to try to kill me. I am sorry."

  Of course, apologies are rarely acceptable to true believers--or to anyone who believes in pure good, or in pure evil. The Ellen Jamesians who responded, in print, all said that Garp was obviously afraid for his own life; they said he obviously feared an endless line of hit men (or "hit persons") whom the Ellen Jamesians would send after him until they got him. They said that along with being a male swine, and a bully of women, T. S. Garp was clearly "a yellow chickenshit coward with no balls."

  If Garp saw these responses, he appeared not to care; it is likely that he never read them. He wrote to apologize, mainly, because of his writing; it was an act meant to clear his desk, not his conscience; he meant to rid his mind of the garden-tending, bookshelf-making trivia that had occupied his time while he was waiting to write seriously again. He thought he would make peace with the Ellen Jamesians and then forget them, although Helen could not forget them. Ellen James certainly could not forget them, either, and even Roberta was alert and edgy whenever she was out with Garp.

  * * *

  --

  About a mile beyond the bull farm, one fine day when they were running toward the sea, Roberta felt suddenly convinced that the approaching Volkswagen housed another would-be assassin; she threw a magnificent cross-body block on Garp and belted him off the soft shoulder and down a twelve-foot embankment into a muddy ditch. Garp sprained an ankle and sat howling at Roberta from the stream bed. Roberta seized a rock, with which she threatened the Volkswagen, which was full of frightened teenagers returning from a beach party; Roberta talked them into making room for Garp, whom they drove to the Jenny Fields Infirmary.

  "You are a menace!" Garp told Roberta, but Helen was especially happy for Roberta's presence--her tight end's instinct for blind-side hits and cheap shots.

  Garp's sprained ankle kept him off the road for two weeks and stepped up his writing. He was working on what he called his "father book," or "the book of fathers"; it was the first of the three projects he had jauntily described to John Wolf the night before he left for Europe--this one was the novel to be called My Father's Illusions. Because he was inventing a father, Garp felt more in touch with the spirit of pure imagination that he felt had kindled "The Pension Grillparzer." A long way from which he had been falsely led. He had been too impressed by what he now called the "mere accidents and casualties of daily life, and the understandable trauma resulting therefrom." He felt cocky a
gain, as if he could make up anything.

  "My father wanted us all to have a better life," Garp began, "but better than what--he was not so sure. I do not think that he knew what life was; only that he wanted it better."

  As he did in "The Pension Grillparzer," he made up a family; he gave himself brothers and sisters and aunts--both an eccentric and an evil uncle--and he felt he was a novelist again. A plot, to his delight, thickened.

  In the evenings Garp read aloud to Ellen James and Helen; sometimes Duncan stayed up and listened, and sometimes Roberta stayed for supper, and he would read to her, too. He became suddenly generous in all matters concerning the Fields Foundation. In fact, the other board members were exasperated with him: Garp wanted to give every applicant something. "She sounds sincere," he kept saying. "Look, she's had a hard life," he told them. "Isn't there enough money?"

  "Not if we spend it this way," Marcia Fox said.

  "If we don't discriminate between these applicants more than you suggest," said Hilma Bloch, "we are lost."

  "Lost?" Garp said. "How could we get lost?" Overnight, it seemed to them all (except Roberta), Garp had become the weakest sort of liberal: he would evaluate no one. But he was full of imagining the whole, sad histories of his fictional family; thus full of sympathy, he was a soft touch in the real world.

  The anniversary of Jenny's murder, and of the sudden funerals for Ernie Holm and Stewart Percy, passed quickly for Garp in the midst of his renewed creative energy. Then the wrestling season was again upon him; Helen had never seen him so taken up, so completely focused and relentless. He became again the determined young Garp who had made her fall in love, and she felt so drawn to him that she often cried when she was alone--without knowing why. She was alone too much; now that Garp was busy again, Helen realized she had kept herself inactive too long. She agreed to let the Steering School employ her, so that she could teach and use her mind for her own ideas again.

  She also taught Ellen James to drive a car and Ellen drove twice a week to the state university, where she took a creative writing course. "This family isn't big enough for two writers, Ellen," Garp teased her. How they all cherished the good mood he was in! And now that Helen was working again, she was much less anxious.

  In the world according to Garp, an evening could be hilarious and the next morning could be murderous.

  Later, they would often remark (Roberta, too) how good it was that Garp got to see the first edition of The Pension Grillparzer--illustrated by Duncan Garp, and out in time for Christmas--before he saw the Under Toad.

  19

  LIFE AFTER GARP

  He loved epilogues, as he showed us in "The Pension Grillparzer."

  "An epilogue," Garp wrote, "is more than a body count. An epilogue, in the disguise of wrapping up the past, is really a way of warning us about the future."

  That February day, Helen heard him telling jokes to Ellen James and Duncan at breakfast; he certainly sounded as if he felt good about the future. Helen gave little Jenny Garp a bath, and powdered her and oiled her scalp and clipped her tiny fingernails and zipped her into a yellow playsuit that Walt once wore. Helen could smell the coffee Garp had made, and she could hear Garp hurrying Duncan off to school.

  "Not that hat, Duncan, for Christ's sake," Garp said. "That hat couldn't keep a bird warm. It's twelve below."

  "It's twelve above, Dad," Duncan said.

  "That's academic," Garp said. "It's very cold, that's what it is."

  Ellen James must have come in through the garage door then, and written out a note, because Helen heard Garp say that he'd help her in a minute; obviously, Ellen couldn't start the car.

  Then it was quiet in the great house for a while; as if from far away, Helen heard only the squeak of boots in the snow and the slow cranking of the car's cold engine. "Have a good day!" she heard Garp call to Duncan, who must have been walking down the long driveway--off to school.

  "Yup!" Duncan called. "You, too!"

  The car started; Ellen James would be driving off to the university. "Drive carefully!" Garp called after her.

  Helen had her coffee alone. Occasionally, the inarticulateness with which baby Jenny talked to herself reminded Helen of the Ellen Jamesians--or of Ellen, when she was upset--but not this morning. The baby was playing quietly with some plastic things. Helen could hear Garp's typewriter--that was all.

  He wrote for three hours. The typewriter would burst for three or four pages, then be silent for such a long time that Helen imagined Garp had stopped breathing; then, when she had forgotten about it and was lost in her reading, or in some task with Jenny, the typewriter would burst out again.

  At eleven-thirty in the morning Helen heard him call Roberta Muldoon. Garp wanted a squash game before wrestling practice, if Roberta could get away from her "girls," as Garp called the Fields Foundation fellows.

  "How are the girls today, Roberta?" Garp said.

  But Roberta couldn't play. Helen heard the disappointment in Garp's voice.

  Later, poor Roberta would repeat and repeat how she should have played; if only she had played, she went on saying, maybe she would have spotted it coming--maybe she would have been around, alert and edgy, recognizing the spoor of the real world, the paw prints Garp had always overlooked or ignored. But Roberta Muldoon could not play squash.

  Garp wrote for another half hour. Helen knew he was writing a letter; somehow she could tell the difference in the sound of the typing. He wrote to John Wolf about My Father's Illusions; he was pleased with how the book was coming along. He complained that Roberta took her job too seriously and was letting herself get out of shape; no administrative job was worth as much time as Roberta gave to the Fields Foundation. Garp said that the low sales figures on The Pension Grillparzer were about what he expected; the main thing was that it was "a lovely book"--he liked looking at it, and giving it to people, and its rebirth had been a rebirth for him. He said he expected a better wrestling season than last year, although he had lost his starting heavyweight to a knee operation and his one New England champion had graduated. He said that living with someone who read as much as Helen was both irritating and inspiring; he wanted to give her something to read that would make her close her other books.

  At noon he came and kissed Helen, and fondled her breasts, and kissed baby Jenny, over and over again, while he dressed her in a snowsuit that had also been worn by Walt--and before Walt, even Duncan had gotten some wear out of it. Garp drove Jenny to the day-care center as soon as Ellen James came back with the car. Then Garp showed up at Buster's Snack and Grill for his customary cup of tea with honey, his one tangerine, and his one banana. That was all the lunch he ran or wrestled on; he explained why to a new teacher in the English Department--a young man fresh out of graduate school who adored Garp's work. His name was Donald Whitcomb, and his nervous stutter reminded Garp, affectionately, of the departed Mr. Tinch and the race in his pulse he still felt for Alice Fletcher.

  This particular day, Garp was eager to talk about writing to anyone, and young Whitcomb was eager to listen. Don Whitcomb would remember that Garp told him what the act of starting a novel felt like. "It's like trying to make the dead come alive," he said. "No, no, that's not right--it's more like trying to keep everyone alive, forever. Even the ones who must die in the end. They're the most important to keep alive." Finally, Garp said it in a way that seemed to please him. "A novelist is a doctor who sees only terminal cases," Garp said. Young Whitcomb was so awed that he wrote this down.

  It would be Whitcomb's biography, years later, that the would-be biographers of Garp would all envy and despise. Whitcomb reflected that this Bloom Period in Garp's writing (as Whitcomb called it) was really due to Garp's sense of mortality. The attempt on Garp's life by the Ellen Jamesian in the dirty-white Saab, Whitcomb claimed, had given Garp the urgency necessary to make him write again. Helen would endorse that thesis.

  It was not a bad idea, although Garp would surely have laughed at it. He really had forgotten the El
len Jamesians, and he was not on the lookout for more of them. But unconsciously, perhaps, he might have been feeling that urgency young Whitcomb expressed.

  In Buster's Snack and Grill, Garp held Whitcomb enthralled until it was time for wrestling practice. On his way out (leaving Whitcomb to pay, the young man later recalled, good-naturedly), Garp ran into Dean Bodger, who had just spent three days hospitalized with some heart complaint.

  "They found nothing wrong," Bodger complained.

  "But did they find your heart?" Garp asked him.

  The dean, young Whitcomb, and Garp all laughed. Bodger said he'd brought only The Pension Grillparzer with him to the hospital, and since it was so short a book, he'd been able to read it completely three times. It was a gloomy story to read in a hospital, Bodger said, though he was glad to report that he had not yet had the grandmother's dream; thus he knew he would live awhile longer. Bodger said he had loved the story.

  Whitcomb would remember that Garp then grew embarrassed, though he was obviously pleased by Bodger's praise. Whitcomb and Bodger waved good-bye to him. Garp forgot his skier's knit hat, but Bodger told Whitcomb he would bring it to Garp--at the gym. Dean Bodger said to Whitcomb that he liked dropping in on Garp in the wrestling room, occasionally. "He is so in his element there," Bodger said.

  Donald Whitcomb was no wrestling fan but he talked enthusiastically about Garp's writing. The young and the old man agreed: Garp was a man with remarkable energy.

  Whitcomb recalled that he returned to his small apartment in one of the dormitories and tried to write down everything that had impressed him about Garp; he had to stop, unfinished, in time for supper. When Whitcomb went to the dining hall, he was one of the few people at the Steering School who'd heard nothing about what had happened. It was Dean Bodger--his eyes red-rimmed, his face suddenly years older--who stopped young Whitcomb going into the dining hall. The dean, who had left his gloves at the gym, clutched Garp's ski hat in his cold hands. When Whitcomb saw that the dean still had Garp's hat, he knew--even before looking in Bodger's eyes--that something was wrong.