The World According to Garp

“Well, you're no vestal virgin either,” the man said. “Where the fuck is Laurel?” He wore an orange T-shirt with bright green letters between his nipples.

SHAPE UP!

the letters read.

Garp searched his pockets for a pencil to scribble a note, but all he came up with was old notes: all the old standbys, which did not seem to apply to this rude person.

“Is Laurel expecting you?” Roberta Muldoon asked the man, and Garp knew that Roberta was having a sex- identity problem again; she was goading the moron in hopes that she could then feel justified in beating the shit out of him. But the man, to Garp, looked as if he might make a fair match for Roberta. All that estrogen had changed more than Roberta's shape, Garp thought—it had unmuscled the former Robert Muldoon, to a degree that Roberta seemed prone to forget.

“Look, sweethearts,” the man said, to both Garp and Roberta. “If Laurel doesn't get her ass out here, I'm going to clean house. What kind of fag joint is this, anyway? Everyone's heard of it. I didn't have any trouble finding out where she went. Every screwy bitch in New York knows about this cunt hangout.”

Roberta smiled. She was beginning to rock back and forth on the big porch swing in a way that was making Garp feel sick to his stomach. Garp clawed through his pockets at a frantic rate, scanning note after worthless note.

“Look, you clowns,” the man said. “I know what sort of douche bags hang out here. It's a big lesbian scene, right?” He prodded the edge of the big porch swing with his cowboy boot and set the swing to moving oddly. “And what are you?” he asked Garp. “You the man of the house? Or the court eunuch?”

Garp handed the man a note.

There's a nice fire in the wood stove in the kitchen; turn left.

But it was August; that was the wrong note.

“What's this shit?” the man said. And Garp handed him another note, the first one to fly out of his pocket.

Don't be upset. My mother will be back very soon. There are other women here. Would you like to see them?

“Fuck your mother!” the man said. He started toward the big screen door. “Laurel!” he screamed. “You in there? You bitch!”

But it was Jenny Fields who met him in the doorway.

“Hello,” she said.

“I know who you are,” the man said. “I recognize the dumb uniform. My Laurel's not your type, sweetie; she likes to fuck.”

“Perhaps not with you,” said Jenny Fields.

Whatever abuse the man in the SHAPE UP! T-shirt was then prepared to deliver to Jenny Fields went unsaid. Roberta Muldoon threw a cross-body block on the surprised man, hitting him from behind and a little to one side of the backs of his knees. It was a flagrant clip, worthy of a fifteen-yard penalty in Roberta's days as a Philadelphia Eagle. The man hit the gray boards of the porch deck with such force that the hanging flowerpots were set swinging. He tried but could not get up. He appeared to have suffered a knee injury common to the sport of football—the very reason, in fact, why clipping was a fifteen-yard penalty. The man was not plucky enough to hurl further abuse, at anyone, from his back; he lay with a calm, moonlike expression upon his face, which whitened slightly in his pain.

“That was too hard, Roberta,” Jenny said.

“I'll get Laurel,” Roberta said, sheepishly, and she went inside. In Roberta's heart of hearts, Garp and Jenny knew, she was more feminine than anyone; but in her body of bodies, she was a highly trained rock.

Garp had found another note and he dropped it on the New York man's chest, right where it said SHAPE UP! It was a note Garp had many duplicates of.

Hello, my name is Garp. I have a broken jaw.

“My name is Harold,” the man said. “Too bad about your jaw.”

Garp found a pencil and wrote another note.

Too bad about your knee, Harold.

Laurel was fetched.

“Oh, baby,” she said. “You found me!”

“I don't think I can drive the fucking car,” Harold said. Out on Ocean Lane the man's sport car still chugged like an animal interested in eating sand.

“I can drive, baby,” Laurel said. “You just never let me.

“Now I'll let you,” Harold groaned. “Believe me.”

“Oh, baby,” Laurel said.

Roberta and Garp carried the man to the car. “I think I really need Laurel,” the man confided to them. “Fucking bucket seats,” the man complained, when they had gingerly squeezed him in. Harold was large for his car. It was the first time in what seemed like years, to Garp, that Garp had been this near to an automobile. Roberta put her hand on Garp's shoulder, but Garp turned away.

“I guess Harold needs me,” Laurel told Jenny Fields, and gave a little shrug.

“But why does she need him?” said Jenny Fields, to no one in particular, as the little car drove away. Garp had wandered off. Roberta, punishing herself for her momentarily lapsed femininity, went to find Duncan and mother him.

Helen was talking on the phone to the Fletchers, Harrison and Alice, who wanted to come visit. That might help us, Helen thought. She was right, and it must have boosted Helen's confidence in herself—to be right about something again.

The Fletchers stayed a week. There was at last a child for Duncan to play with, even if it was not his age and not his sex; it was, at least, a child who knew about his eye, and Duncan lost most of his self-consciousness about the eye patch. When the Fletchers left, he was more willing to go to the beach by himself, even at those times of the day when he might encounter other children—who might ask him or, of course, tease him.

Harrison provided Helen with a confidant, as he had been for her before; she was able to tell Harrison things about Michael Milton that were simply too raw to tell Garp, and yet she needed to say them. She needed to talk about her anxieties for her marriage, now; and how she was dealing with the accident so differently from Garp. Harrison suggested another child. Get pregnant, he advised. Helen confided that she was no longer taking the pills, but she did not tell Harrison that Garp had not slept with her—not since it had happened. She didn't really need to tell Harrison that; Harrison noted the separate rooms.

Alice encouraged Garp to stop the silly notes. He could talk if he tried, if he wasn't so vain about how he sounded. If she could talk, certainly he could spit the words out, Alice reasoned—teeth wired together, delicate tongue, and all; he could at least try.

“Alish,” Garp said.

“Yeth,” said Alice. “That'th my name. What'th yours?”

“Arp,” Garp managed to say.

Jenny Fields, passing whitely to another room, shuddered like a ghost and moved on.

“I mish him,” Garp confessed to Alice.

“You mith him, yeth, of courth you do,” said Alice, and she held him while he cried.

It was quite some time after the Fletchers left when Helen came to Garp's room in the night. She was surprised to find him lying awake, because he was listening to what she'd heard, too. It was why she couldn't sleep.

Someone, one of Jenny's late arrivals—a new guest—was taking a bath. First the Garps had heard the tub being drawn, then they'd heard the plunking in the water—now the splashing and soapy sounds. There was even a little light singing, or the person was humming.

They remembered, of course, the years Walt had washed himself within their hearing, how they would listen for any telltale slipping sounds, or for the most frightening sound of all—which was no sound. And then they'd call,