The World According to Garp

“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