The World According To Garp (46 page)

“He means nothing; he never took anything away from you,” she told him. “It’s all over now, really it is.”

“Since when?” he asked her.

“As of now,” she said to Garp. “I just have to tell him.”

“
Don’t
tell him,” Garp said. “Let him guess.”

“I can’t do that,” Helen said.

“There’s shell in my egg!” Walt hollered from downstairs.

“My toast is burnt!” Duncan said. They were plotting together to distract their parents from each other—whether they knew it or not. Children, Garp thought, have some instinct for separating their parents when their parents ought to be separated.

“Just eat it!” Helen called to them. “It’s not so bad.”

She tried to touch Garp but he slipped past her, out of the bathroom; he started to dress.

“Eat up and I’ll take you to a movie!” he called to the kids.

“What are you doing that for?” Helen asked him. “I’m not staying here with you,” he said. “We’re going out. You call that wimpish asshole and say good-bye.”

“He’ll want to see me,” Helen said, dully—the reality of having it over, now that Garp knew about it, was working on her like Novocain. If she had been sensitive to how much she’d hurt Garp, at first, now her feelings for him were deadening slightly and she was feeling for herself again.

“Tell him to eat his heart out,” Garp said. “You won’t see him. No last fucks for the road, Helen. Just tell him good-bye. On the phone.”

“Nobody said anything about “last fucks”,” Helen said.

“Use the phone,” Garp said. “I’ll take the kids out. We’ll see a movie. Please have it over with before we come back. You
won’t
see him again.”

“I won’t, I promise,” Helen said. “But I
should
see him, just once—to tell him.”

“I suppose you feel you’ve handled this very decently,” Garp said.

Helen, to a point,
did
feel so; she didn’t say anything. She felt she had never lost sight of Garp and the children during this indulgence; she felt justified in handling it
her
way, now.

“We should talk about this later,” she said to him. “Some perspective will be possible, later.”

He would have struck her if the children hadn’t burst into the room.

“One, two, three,” Duncan chanted to Walt.

“The cereal is stale!” Duncan and Walt hollered together.

“Please, boys,” Helen said. “Your father and I are having a little fight. Go downstairs.”

They stared at her.

“Please,” Garp said to them. He turned away from them so they wouldn’t see him crying, but Duncan probably knew, and surely Helen knew. Walt probably didn’t catch it.

“A fight?” Walt said.

“Come on,” Duncan said to him; he took Walt’s hand. Duncan pulled Walt out of the bedroom. “Come
on
, Walt,” Duncan said, “or we won’t get to see the movie.”

“Yeah, the movie!” Walt cried.

To his horror, Garp recognized the attitude of their leaving—Duncan leading Walt away, and down the stairs; the smaller boy turning and looking back. Walt waved, but Duncan pulled him on. Down and gone, into the bomb shelter. Garp hid his face in his clothes and cried.

When Helen touched him, he said, “Don’t touch me,” and went on crying. Helen shut the bedroom door.

“Oh,
don’t
,” she pleaded. “He isn’t worth this; he wasn’t
anything
. I just
enjoyed
him,” she tried to explain, but Garp shook his head violently and threw his pants at her. He was still only half dressed—an attitude that was perhaps, Helen realized, the most compromising for men: when they were not one thing and also not another. A woman half dressed seemed to have some power, but a man was simply not as handsome as when he was naked, and not as secure as when he was clothed. “Please get dressed,” she whispered to him, and handed him back his pants. He took them, he pulled them on; and went on crying.

“I’ll do just what you want,” she said.

“You won’t see him again?” he said to her.

“No, not once,” she said. “Not ever again.”

“Walt has a cold,” Garp said. “He shouldn’t even be going out, but it’s not too bad for him at a movie. And we won’t be late,” he added to her. “Go see if he’s dressed warmly enough.” She did.

He opened her top drawer, where her lingerie was, and pulled the drawer from the dresser; he pushed his face into the wonderful silkiness and scent of her clothes—like a bear holding a great trough of food in his forepaws, and then losing himself in it. When Helen came back into the room and caught him at this, it was almost as if she’d caught him masturbating. Embarrassed, he brought the drawer down across his knee and cracked it; her underwear flew about. He raised the cracked drawer over his head and smacked it down against the edge of the dresser, snapping what felt like the spine of an animal about the size of the drawer. Helen ran from the room and he finished dressing.

He saw Duncan’s fairly well finished supper on Duncan’s plate; he saw Walt’s uneaten supper on Walt’s plate, and on various parts of the table and floor. “If you don’t eat, Walt,” Garp said, “you’ll grow up to be a
wimp
.”

“I’m not going to grow up,” Walt said.

That gave Garp such a shiver that he turned on Walt and startled the child. “Don’t
ever
say that,” Garp said.

“I don’t
want
to grow up,” Walt said.

“Oh, I see,” Garp said, softening. “You mean, you like being a kid?”

“Yup,” Walt said.

“Walt is
so
weird,” Duncan said.

“I am
not!
” Walt cried.

“You are so,” Duncan said.

“Go get in the car,” Garp said. “And stop fighting.”

“
You
were fighting,” Duncan said, cautiously; no one reacted and Duncan tugged Walt out of the kitchen. “Come on,” he said.

“Yeah, the
movie!
” Walt said. They went out.

Garp said to Helen, “He’s not to come here, under any circumstances. If you let him in this house, he won’t get out alive. And you’re not to go out,” he said. “Under any circumstances. Please,” he added, and he had to turn away from her.

“Oh, darling,” Helen said.

“He’s such an
asshole!
” Garp moaned.

“It could never be anyone like
you
, don’t you see?” Helen said. “It could
only
be someone who wasn’t at all like you.”

He thought of the baby-sitters and Alice Fletcher, and his inexplicable attraction to Mrs. Ralph, and of course he knew what she meant; he walked out the kitchen door. It was raining outside, and already dark; perhaps the rain would freeze. The mud in the driveway was wet but firm. He turned the car around; then, by habit, he edged the car to the top of the driveway and cut the engine and the lights. Down the Volvo rolled, but he knew the driveway’s dark curve by heart. The kids were thrilled by the sound of the gravel and the slick mud in the growing blackness, and when he popped the clutch at the bottom of the driveway, and flicked on the lights, both Walt and Duncan cheered.

“What movie are we going to see?” Duncan asked.

“Anything you want,” Garp said. They drove downtown to have a look at the posters.

It was cold and damp in the car and Walt coughed; the windshield kept fogging over, which made it hard to see what was playing at the movie houses. Walt and Duncan continued to fight about who got to stand in the gap between the bucket seats; for some reason, this had always been the prime spot in the back seat for them, and they had always fought over who got to stand or kneel there—crowding each other and bumping Garp’s elbow when he used the stick shift.

“Get out of there, both of you,” Garp said:

“It’s the only place you can see,” Duncan said.

“
I’m
the only one who has to see,” Garp said. “And this defroster is such
junk
,” he added, “that
no
one can see out the windshield anyway.”

“Why don’t you write the Volvo people?” Duncan suggested.

Garp tried to imagine a letter to Sweden about the inadequacies of the defrost system, but he couldn’t sustain the idea for very long. On the floor, in back, Duncan kneeled on Walt’s foot and pushed him out of the gap between the bucket seats; now Walt cried
and
coughed.

“I was here first,” Duncan said.

Garp downshifted, hard, and the uncovered tip of the stick-shift shaft bit into his hand.

“You see this, Duncan?” Garp asked, angrily. “You see this gearshift? It’s like a
spear
. You want to fall on that if I have to stop hard?”

“Why don’t you get it fixed?” Duncan asked.

“Get
out
of the goddamn gap between the seats, Duncan!” Garp said.

“The stick shift has been like that for months,” Duncan said.

“For
weeks
, maybe,” Garp said.

“If it’s dangerous, you should get it fixed,” Duncan said.

“That’s your mother’s job,” Garp said.

“She says it’s
your
job, Dad,” Walt said.

“How’s your cough, Walt?” Garp asked.

Walt coughed. The wet rattle in his small chest seemed oversized for the child.

“Jesus,” Duncan said.

“That’s great, Walt,” Garp said.

“It’s not
my
fault,” Walt complained.

“Of course it isn’t,” Garp said.

“Yes, it is,” Duncan said. “Walt spends half his life in
puddles
.”

“I do not!” Walt said.

“Look for a movie that looks interesting, Duncan,” Garp said.

“I can’t see unless I kneel between the seats,” Duncan said.

They drove around. The movie houses were all on the same block but they had to drive past them a few times to decide upon
which
movie, and then they had to drive by them a few more times before they found a place to park.

The children chose to see the only film that had a line waiting to see it, extending out from under the cinema marquee along the sidewalk, streaked now with a freezing rain. Garp put his own jacket over Walt’s head, so that very quickly Walt resembled some ill-clothed street beggar—a damp dwarf seeking sympathy in bad weather. He promptly stepped in a puddle and soaked his feet; Garp then picked him up and listened to his chest. It was almost as if Garp thought the water in Walt’s wet shoes dripped immediately into his little lungs.

“You’re so
weird
, Dad,” Duncan said.

Walt saw a strange car and pointed it out. The car moved quickly down the soaked street; splashing through the garish puddles, it threw the reflected neon upon itself—a big dark car, the color of clotted blood; it had wooden slats on its sides, and the blond wood glowed in the streetlights. The slats looked like the ribs of the long, lit skeleton of a great fish gliding through moonlight. “Look at that car!” Walt cried.

“Wow, it’s a
hearse
,” Duncan said.

“No, Duncan,” Garp said. “It’s an old Buick. Before your time.”

The Buick that Duncan mistook for a hearse was on its way to Garp’s house, although Helen had done all she could to discourage Michael Milton from coming.

“I
can’t
see you,” Helen told him when she called. “It’s as simple as that. It’s over, just the way I said it would be if he ever found out. I won’t hurt him any more than I already have.”

“What about me?” Michael Milton said.

“I’m sorry,” Helen told him. “But you
knew
. We both knew.”

“I want to
see
you,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow?”

But she told him that Garp had taken the kids to a movie for the sole purpose that she finish it tonight.

“I’m coming over,” he told her.

“Not here, no,” she said.

“We’ll go for a drive,” he told her.

“I can’t go out, either,” she said.

“I’m coming,” Michael Milton said, and he hung up. Helen checked the time. It would be all right, she supposed, if she could get him to leave quickly. Movies were at least an hour and a half long. She decided she wouldn’t let him in the house—not under any circumstances. She watched for the headlights to come up the driveway, and when the Buick stopped—just in front of the garage, like a big ship docking at a dark pier—she ran out of the house and pushed herself against the driver’s-side door before Michael Milton could open it.

The rain was turning to a semisoft slush at her feet, and the icy drops were hardening as they fell—they had some sting as they struck her bare neck, when she bent over to speak to him through the rolled-down window.

He immediately kissed her. She tried to lightly peck his cheek but he turned her face and forced his tongue into her mouth. All over again she saw the corny bedroom of his apartment: the poster-sized print above his bed—Paul Klee’s
Sinbad the Sailor
. She supposed this was how he saw himself: a colorful adventurer, but sensitive to the beauty of Europe.

Helen pulled back from him and felt the cold rain soak her blouse.

“We can’t just
stop
,” he said, miserably. Helen couldn’t tell if it was the rain through the open window or tears that streaked his face. To her surprise, he had shaved his mustache off, and his upper lip looked slightly like the puckered, undeveloped lip of a child—like Walt’s little lip, which looked lovely on Walt, Helen thought; but it wasn’t her idea of the lip for a lover.

“What did you do to your mustache?” she asked him.

“I thought you didn’t like it,” he said. “I did it for you.”

“But I
liked
it,” she said, and shivered in the freezing rain.

“Please, get in with me,” he said.

She shook her head; her blouse clung to her cold skin and her long corduroy skirt felt as heavy as chain mail; her tall boots slipped in the stiffening slush.

“I won’t take you anywhere,” he promised. “We’ll just sit here, in the car. We can’t just
stop
,” he repeated.

“We knew we’d have to,” Helen said. “We knew it was just for a little while.”

Michael Milton let his head sink against the glinting ring of the horn; but there was no sound, the big Buick was shut off. The rain began to stick to the windows—the car was slowly being encased in ice.