The World According to Garp

foppish body?

“But the movie isn't half over,” Duncan protested. “There's going to be a duel.”

“I want to see the duel,” Walt said. “What's a duel?”

“We're leaving,” Garp told them.

“No!” Duncan hissed.

“Walt's sick,” Garp mumbled. “He shouldn't be here.”

“I'm not sick,” Walt said.

“He's not that sick,” Duncan said.

“Get out of those seats,” Garp told them; he had to grab the front of Duncan's shirt, which made Walt get up and stumble into the aisle first. Duncan, grumbling, scuffed after him.

“What's a duel?” Walt asked Duncan.

“It's real neat,” Duncan said. “Now you won't ever see it.”

“Cut it out, Duncan,” Garp said. “Don't be mean.”

“You're the one who's mean,” Duncan said.

“Yeah, Dad,” said Walt.

The Volvo was shrouded in ice, the windshield solid with it; there were various scrapers and broken snow brushes and junk of that sort, somewhere in the trunk, Garp supposed. But by March the winter driving had worn out much of this equipment, or the children had played with it and lost it. Garp wasn't going to take the time to clean the windshield, anyway.

“How can you see?” Duncan asked.

“I live here,” Garp said. “I don't have to see.”

But, in fact, he had to roll down the driver's-side window and stick his face out into the raining sleet, as hard as hail; he drove toward home that way.

“It's cold,” Walt shivered. “Shut the window!”

“I need it open to see,” Garp said.

“I thought you didn't have to see,” Duncan said.

“I'm too cold!” Walt cried. Dramatically, he coughed.

But all of this, as Garp saw it, was Helen's fault. She was to blame—for however Walt suffered his cold, or for its growing worse: it was her fault. And for Duncan's disappointment in his father, for that unforgivable way in the theater that Garp had grabbed the boy and stood him up out of his seat: she was to blame. The bitch with her runt lover!

But at the moment his eyes were teary in the cold wind and the sleet, and he thought to himself how he loved Helen and would never be unfaithful to her again—never hurt her like this, he would promise her that.

At the same moment Helen felt her conscience clear. Her love for Garp was very fine. And she sensed that Michael Milton was about to be released; he was exhibiting the familiar signs. The angle that he bent at the waist and the peculiar way he pointed his hips; the straining of that muscle, used for little else, on the inside of his thigh. It's almost over, Helen thought. Her nose touched the cold brass of his belt buckle and the back of her head bumped the bottom of the steering wheel, which Michael Milton gripped as if he expected the three-ton Buick to suddenly leave the ground.

Garp hit the bottom of his driveway at about forty miles per hour. He came off the downhill road in third gear and accelerated just as he exited; he glimpsed how the driveway was glazed with frozen slush, and he worried momentarily that the Volvo might slip on the short uphill curve. He held the car in gear until he felt what grip he had of the road; it was good enough, and he popped the sharp stick shift into neutral—a second before he killed the engine and flicked out the headlights.

They coasted up, into the black rain. It was like that moment when you feel an airplane lift off the runway; the children both cried out in excitement. Garp could feel the children at his elbow, crowding each other for the one favored position in the gap between the bucket seats.

“How can you see now?” Duncan asked.

“He doesn't have to see,” Walt said. There was a high thrill in Walt's voice, which suggested to Garp that Walt wished to reassure himself.

“I know this by heart,” Garp assured them.

“It's like being underwater!” cried Duncan; he held his breath.

“It's like a dream!” said Walt; he reached for his brother's hand.

14. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MARCUS AURELIUS

THAT was how Jenny Fields became a kind of nurse again; after all her years in her white uniform, nursing the women's movement, Jenny was appropriately dressed for her role. It was at Jenny's suggestion that the Garp family moved into the Fields estate at Dog's Head Harbor. There were many rooms for Jenny to take care of them in, and there was the healing sound of the sea, rushing in and out, rinsing everything clean.

All his life, Duncan Garp would associate the sound of the sea with his convalescence. His grandmother would remove the bandage; there was a kind of tidal irrigation of the hole where Duncan's right eye had been. His father and mother could not stand the sight of that empty hole, but Jenny was an old hand at staring down wounds until they went away. It was with his grandmother, Jenny Fields, that Duncan would see his first glass eye. “See?” Jenny said. “It's big and brown; it's not quite as pretty as your left one, but you just make sure the girls see your left one first.” It was not a very feminist thing to say, she supposed, but Jenny always said that she was, first and foremost, a nurse.

Duncan's eye was gouged out when he was flung forward between the bucket seats; the uncovered tip of the stick-shift shaft was the first thing to break his fall. Garp's right arm, reaching into the gap between the seats, was too late; Duncan passed under it, putting out his right eye and breaking three fingers of his right hand, which was jammed into the seat-belt release mechanism.

By no one's estimate could the Volvo have been moving faster than twenty-five—at the most, thirty-five— miles per hour, but the collision was astonishing. The three-ton Buick did not yield quite an inch to Garp's coasting car. Inside the Volvo the children were like eggs out of the egg box—loose inside the shopping bag—at the moment of impact. Even inside the Buick, the jolt had surprising ferocity.

Helen's head was flung forward, narrowly missing the steering column, which caught her at the back of her neck. Many wrestlers' children have hardy necks, because Helen's did not break—though she wore a brace for almost six weeks, and her back would bother her the rest of her life. Her right collarbone was broken, perhaps by the rising slam of Michael Milton's knee, and her nose was gashed across the bridge—requiring nine stitches—by what must have been Michael Milton's belt buckle. Helen's mouth was snapped shut with such force that she broke two teeth and required two neat stitches in her tongue.

At first she thought she had bitten her tongue off, because she could feel it swimming in her mouth, which was full of blood; but her head ached so severely that she didn't dare open her mouth, until she had to breathe, and she couldn't move her right arm. She spat what she thought was her tongue into the palm of her left hand. It wasn't her tongue, of course. It was what amounted to three quarters of Michael Milton's penis.

The warm wash of blood over her face felt, to Helen, like gasoline; she began to scream—not for her own safety, but for Garp's and the children's. She knew what had hit the Buick. She struggled to get out of Michael Milton's lap because she had to see what had happened to her family. She dropped what she thought was her tongue on the floor of the Buick and with her good left arm she punched Michael Milton, whose lap pinned her against the steering column. It was only then that she heard other screams above her own. Michael Milton was screaming, of course, but Helen heard beyond him—to the Volvo. That was Duncan who was screaming, she was sure, and Helen fought her left arm across Michael Milton's bleeding lap to the door handle. When the door opened, she pushed Michael out of the Buick; she felt incredibly strong. Michael never once corrected his bent-double, sitting-up position; he lay on his side in the freezing slush as if he were still in the driver's seat, though he bellowed and bled like a steer.

When the door light came on in the huge Buick, Garp could dimly see the gore in the Volvo—Duncan's