The World According to Garp

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.

“Please get in,” Michael Milton moaned. “I'm not leaving here,” he added, sharply. “I'm not afraid of him. I don't have to do what he says.”

“It's what I say, too,” Helen said. “You have to go.”

“I'm not going,” Michael Milton said. “I know about your husband. I know everything about him.”

They had never talked about Garp; Helen had forbidden it. She didn't know what Michael Milton meant.

“He's a minor writer,” Michael said, boldly. Helen looked surprised; to her knowledge, Michael Milton had never read Garp. He'd told her once that he never read living writers; he claimed to value the perspective he said one could gain only when a writer had been dead for a while. It is fortunate that Garp didn't know this about him—it would certainly have added to Garp's contempt for the young man. It added somewhat to Helen's disappointment with poor Michael, now.

“My husband is a very good writer,” she said softly, and a shiver made her twitch so hard that her folded arms sprang open and she had to fold them closed at her breasts again.

“He's not a major writer,” Michael declared. “Higgins said so. You certainly must be aware of how your husband is regarded in the department.”

Higgins, Helen was aware, was a singularly eccentric and troublesome colleague, who managed at the same time to be dull and cloddish to the point of sleep. Helen hardly felt Higgins was representative of the department— except that like many of her more insecure colleagues, Higgins habitually gossiped to the graduate students about his fellow department members; in this desperate way, perhaps, Higgins felt he gained the students” trust.

“I was not aware that Garp was regarded by the department, one way or another,” Helen said coolly. “Most of them don't read anything very contemporary.”

“Those who do say he's minor,” Michael Milton said. This competitive and pathetic stand did not warm Helen's heart to the boy and she turned to go back inside the house.

“I won't go!” Michael Milton screamed. “I'll confront him about us! Right now. He