The World According to Garp

would perhaps make Alice feel better—was to confess his own mistakes.

“It happens, Alice,” he said.

“Not to you,” Alice said.

“Twice to me,” Garp said. She looked at him, shocked.

“Tell the truth,” she insisted.

“The truth,” he said, “is that it happened twice. A baby-sitter, both times.”

“Jesuth Chritht,” said Alice.

“But they weren't important,” Garp said. “I love Helen.”

“Thith is important,” Alice said. “He hurth me. And I can't white.”

Garp knew about writers who couldn't white; this made Garp love Alice, on the spot.

“Fucking Harry is having an affair,” Garp told Helen.

“I know,” Helen said. “I've told him to stop, but he keeps going back for more. She's not even a very good student.”

“What can we do?” Garp asked her.

“Fucking lust,” Helen said. “Your mother was right. It is a man's problem. You talk to him.”

“Alice told me about your baby-sitters,” Harry told Garp. “It's not the same. This is a special girl.”

“A student, Harry,” Garp said. “Jesus Christ.”

“A special student,” Harry said. “I'm not like you. I've been honest, I've told Alice from the first. She's just got to accommodate it. I've told her she's free to do this, too.”

“She doesn't know any students,” Garp said.

“She knows you,” Harry told him. “And she's in love with you.”

“What can we do?” Garp asked Helen. “He's trying to set me up with Alice so he'll feel better about what he's doing.”

“At least he's been honest with her,” Helen told Garp. There was one of those silences wherein a family can identify its separate, breathing parts in the night. Open doors off an upstairs hall: Duncan breathing lazily, an almost-eight-year-old with lots of time to live; Walt breathing those tentative two-year-old breaths, short and excited; Helen, even and cool. Garp held his breath. He knew she knew about the baby-sitters.

“Harry told you?” he asked.

“You might have told me before you told Alice,” Helen said. “Who was the second one?”

“I forget her name,” Garp admitted.

“I think it's shabby,” Helen said. “It's really beneath me; it's beneath you. I hope you've outgrown it.”

“Yes, I have,” Garp said. He meant he had outgrown baby-sitters. But lust itself? Ah, well. Jenny Fields had fingered a problem at the heart of her son's heart.

“We've got to help the Fletchers,” Helen said. “We're too fond of them to do nothing about this.”

Helen, Garp marveled, moved through their life together as if it were an essay she was structuring—with an introduction, a presentation of basic priorities, then the thesis.

“Harry thinks the student is special,” Garp pointed out.

“Fucking men,” Helen said. “You look after Alice. I'll show Harrison what's special.”

So one night, after Garp had cooked an elegant Paprika Chicken and spдtzle, Helen said to Garp, “Harrison and I will do the dishes. You take Alice home.”

“Take her home?” Garp said. “Now?”

“Show him your novel,” Helen said to Alice. “Show him everything you want. I'm going to show your husband what an asshole he is.”

“Hey, come on,” Harry said. “We're all friends, we all want to stay friends, right?”

“You simple son of a bitch,” Helen told him. “You fuck a student and call her special—you insult your wife, you insult me. I'll show you what's special.”

“Go easy, Helen,” Garp said.

“Go with Alice,” Helen said. “And let Alice drive her own baby-sitter home.”

“Hey, come on!” Harrison Fletcher said.

“Shuth up, Harrithon!” Alice said. She grabbed Garp's hand and stood up from the table.

“Fucking men,” said Helen. Garp, as speechless as an Ellen Jamesian, took Alice home.

“I can take the baby-sitter home, Alice,” he said. “Jutht get back fatht,” Alice said.

“Very fast, Alice,” Garp said.

She made him read the first chapter of her novel aloud to her. “I want to hear it,” she told him, “and I can't thay it mythelf.” So Garp said it to her; it read, he was relieved to hear, beautifully. Alice wrote with such fluency and care that Garp could have sung her sentences, unselfconsciously, and they would have sounded fine.

“You have a lovely voice, Alice,” he told her, and she cried. And they made love, of course, and despite what everyone knows about such things, it was special.

“Wasn't it?” asked Alice.

“Yes, it was,” Garp admitted.

Now, he thought, here is trouble.

“What can we do?” Helen asked Garp. She had made Harrison Fletcher forget his “special” student; Harrison now thought that Helen was the most special thing in his life.

“You started it,” Garp said to her. “If it's going to stop, you've got to stop it, I think.”

“That's easy to say,” Helen said. “I like Harrison; he's my best friend, and I don't want to lose that. I'm just not very interested in sleeping with him.”

“He's interested,” Garp said.

“God, I know,” Helen said.

“He thinks you're the best he's had,” Garp told her. “Oh, great,” Helen said. “That must be lovely for Alice.”

“Alice isn't thinking about it,” Garp said. Alice was thinking about Garp, Garp knew; and Garp was afraid the whole thing would stop. There were times when Garp thought that Alice was the best he'd ever had. “And what about you?” Helen asked him. ('Nothing is equal,” Garp would write, one day.)

“I'm fine,” Garp said. “I like Alice, I like you, I like Harry.”

“And Alice?” Helen asked.

“Alice likes me,” Garp said.

“Oh boy,” Helen said. “So we all like each other, except that I don't care that much for sleeping with Harrison.”

“So it's over,” Garp said, trying to hide the gloom in his voice. Alice had cried to him that it could never be over. ('Could it? Could it?” she had cried. “I can't jutht thtop!')

“Well, isn't it still better than it was?” Helen asked Garp.

“You made your point,” Garp said. “You got Harry off his damn student. Now you've just got to let him down easy.”

“And what about you and Alice?” Helen asked.

“If it's over for one of us, it's over for all of us,” Garp said. “That's only fair.”

“I know what's fair,” Helen said. “I also know what's human.”

The good-byes that Garp imagined conducting with Alice were violent scenarios, fraught with Alice's incoherent speech and always ending in desperate lovemaking—another failed resolution, wet with sweat and