The World According to Garp

13. WALT CATCHES COLD

WHEN Walt caught colds, Garp slept badly. It was as if he were trying to breathe for the boy, and for himself. Garp would get up in the night to kiss and nuzzle the child; anyone seeing Garp would have thought that he could make Walt's cold go away by catching it himself.

“Oh, God,” Helen said. “It's just a cold. Duncan had colds all winter when he was five.” Nearing eleven, Duncan seemed to have outgrown colds; but Walt, at five, was fully in the throes of cold after cold—or it was one long cold that went away and came back. By the March mud season, Walt's resistance struck Garp as altogether gone; the child hacked himself and Garp awake each night with a wet, wrenching cough. Garp sometimes fell asleep listening to Walt's chest, and he would wake up, frightened, when he could no longer hear the thump of the boy's heart; but the child had merely pushed his father's heavy head off his chest so that he could roll over and sleep more comfortably.

Both the doctor and Helen told Garp, “It's just a cough.”

But the imperfection in Walt's nightly breathing scared Garp right out of his sleep. He was usually awake, therefore, when Roberta called; the late-night anguish of the large and powerful Ms. Muldoon was no longer frightening to Garp—he had come to expect it—but Garp's own fretful sleeplessness made Helen short-tempered.

“If you were back at work, on a book, you'd be too tired to lie awake half the night,” she said. It was his imagination that was keeping him up, Helen told him; one sign that he hadn't been writing enough, Garp knew, was when he had too much imagination left over for other things. For example, the onslaught of dreams: Garp now dreamed only of horrors happening to his children.

In a dream, there was one horror that took place while Garp was reading a pornographic magazine. He was just looking at the same picture, over and over again; the picture was very pornographic. The wrestlers on the university team, with whom Garp occasionally worked out, had a peculiar vocabulary for such pictures. This vocabulary, Garp noted, had not changed since his days at Steering, when the wrestlers on Garp's team spoke of such pictures in the same fashion. What had changed was the increased availability of the pictures, but the names were the same.

The picture Garp looked at in the dream was considered among the highest in the rankings of pornographic pictures. Among pictures of naked women, there were names for how much you could see. If you could see the pubic hair, but not the sex parts, that was called a bush shot—or just a bush. If you could see the sex parts, which were sometimes partially hidden by the hair, that was a beaver; a beaver was better than just a bush; a beaver was the whole thing: the hair and the parts. If the parts were open, that was called a split beaver. And if the whole thing glistened, that was the best of all, in the world of pornography: that was a wet, split beaver. The wetness implied that the woman was not only naked and exposed and open, but she was also ready.

In his dream, Garp was looking at what the wrestlers called a wet, split beaver when he heard children crying. He did not know whose children they were, but Helen and his mother, Jenny Fields, were with them; they all came down the stairs and filed past him, where he struggled to hide from them what he'd been looking at. They had been upstairs and something terrible had awakened them; they were on their way farther downstairs—going to the basement as if the basement were a bomb shelter. And with that thought, Garp heard the dull crump of bombing—he noted the crumbling plaster, he saw the flickering lights—and he grasped the terror of what was approaching them. The children, two by two, marched whimpering after Helen and Jenny, who led them to the bomb shelter as soberly as nurses. If they looked at Garp at all, they regarded him with vague sadness and with scorn, as if he had let them all down and was powerless to help them now.

Perhaps he had been looking at the wet, split beaver instead of watching for enemy planes? This, true to the nature of dreams, was forever unclear: precisely why he felt so guilty, and why they looked at him as if they'd been so abused.

At the end of the line of children were Walt and Duncan, holding hands; the so-called buddy system, as it is employed at summer camps, appeared in Garp's dream to be the natural reaction to a disaster among children. Little Walt was crying, the way Garp had heard him cry when he was caught in the grip of a nightmare, unable to wake up. “I'm having a bad dream,” he sniveled. He looked at his father and almost shouted to him, “I'm having a bad dream!”

But in Garp's dream, Garp could not wake the child from this one. Duncan looked stoically over his shoulder at his father, a silent and bravely doomed expression on his beautiful young face. Duncan was appearing very grown-up lately. Duncan's look was a secret between Duncan and Garp: that they both knew it was not a dream, and that Walt could not be helped.

“Wake me up!” Walt cried, but the long file of children was disappearing into the bomb shelter. Twisting in Duncan's grip (Walt came to about the height of Duncan's elbow), Walt looked back at his father. “I'm having a dream!” Walt screamed, as if to convince himself. Garp could do nothing; he said nothing; he made no attempt to follow them—down these last stairs. And the dropping plaster coated everything white. The bombs kept falling.

“You're having a dream!” Garp screamed after little Walt. “It's just a bad dream!” he cried, though he knew he was lying.

Then Helen would kick him and he'd wake up.

Perhaps Helen feared that Garp's run-amuck imagination would turn away from Walt and turn on her. Because if Garp had given half the worry to Helen that he seemed compelled to give to Walt, Garp might have realized that something was going on.

Helen thought she was in control of what was going on; she at least had controlled how it began (opening her office door, as usual, to the slouching Michael Milton, and bidding him enter her room). Once inside, she closed the door behind him and kissed him quickly on the mouth, holding his slim neck so that he couldn't even escape for breath, and grinding her knee between his legs; he kicked over the wastebasket and dropped his notebook.

“There's nothing more to discuss,” Helen said, taking a breath. She raced her tongue across his upper lip; Helen was trying to decide if she liked his mustache. She decided she liked it; or, at least, she liked it for now. “We'll go to your apartment. Nowhere else,” she told him.

“It's across the river,” he said.

“I know where it is,” she said. “Is it clean?”

“Of course,” he said. “And it's got a great view of the river.”

“I don't care about the view,” Helen said. “I want it clean.”

“It's pretty clean,” he said. “I can clean it better.”

“We can only use your car,” she said.

“I don't have a car,” he said.

“I know you don't,” Helen said. “You'll have to get one.”

He was smiling now; he'd been surprised, but now he was feeling sure of himself again. “Well, I don't have to get one now, do I?” he asked, nuzzling his mustache against her neck; he touched her breasts. Helen unattached herself from his embrace.

“Get one whenever you want,” she said. “We'll never use mine, and I won't be seen walking with you all over town, or riding on the buses. If anyone knows about this, it's over. Do you understand?” She sat down at her desk, and he did not feel invited to walk around her desk to touch her; he sat in the chair her students usually sat in.

“Sure, I understand,” he said.

“I love my husband and will never hurt him,” Helen told him. Michael Milton knew better than to smile.

“I'll get a car, right away,” he said.

“And clean your apartment, or have it cleaned,” she said.

“Absolutely,” he said. Now he dared to smile, a little. “What kind of car do you want me to get?” he asked her.

“I don't care about that,” she told him. “Just get one that runs; get one that isn't in the garage all the time. And don't get one with bucket seats. Get one with a long seat in front.” He looked more surprised and puzzled than ever, so she explained to him: “I want to be able to lie down, comfortably, across the front seat,” she said. “I'll put my head in your lap so that no one will see me sitting up beside you. Do you understand?”

“Don't worry,” he said, smiling again.

“It's a small town,” Helen said. “No one must know.”

“It's not that small a town,” Michael Milton said, confidently.

“Every town is a small town,” Helen said, “and this one is smaller than you think. Do you want me to tell you?”

“Tell me what?” he asked her.

“You're sleeping with Margie Tallworth,” Helen said. “She's in my Comp. Lit. 205; she's a junior,” Helen said. “And you see another very young undergraduate—she's in Dirkson's English 150; I think she's a freshman, but I don't know if you've slept with her. Not for lack of trying, if you haven't,” Helen added. “To my knowledge you've not touched any of your fellow graduate students; not yet,” Helen said. “But there's surely someone I've missed, or there has been.”

Michael Milton was both sheepish and proud at the same time, and the usual command he held over his expressions escaped him so completely that Helen didn't like the expression she saw on his face and she looked away.

“That's how small this town, and every town, is,” Helen said. “If you have me,” she told him, “you can't have any of those others. I know what young girls notice, and I know how much they're inclined to say.”

“Yes,” Michael Milton said; he appeared ready to take notes.

Helen suddenly thought of something, and she looked momentarily startled. “You do have a driver's license?” she asked.

“Oh yes!” Michael Milton said. They both laughed, and Helen relaxed again; but when he came around her desk to kiss her, she shook her head and waved him back.

“And you won't ever touch me here,” she said. “There will be nothing intimate in this office. I don't lock my door. I don't even like to have it shut. Please open it, now,” she asked him, and he did as he was told.

He got a car, a huge Buick Roadmaster, the old kind of station wagon—with real wooden slats on the side. It was a 1951 Buick Dynaflow, heavy and shiny with pre-Korea chrome and real oak. It weighed 5,550 pounds, or almost three tons. It held seven quarts of oil and nineteen gallons of gasoline. Its original price was $2,850 but Michael Milton picked it up for less than six hundred dollars.

“It's a straight-eight cylinder, three-twenty cubic, power steering, with a single-throat Carter carb,” the salesman told Michael. “It's not too badly rusted.”

In fact, it was the dull, inconspicuous color of clotted blood, more than six feet wide and seventeen feet long. The front seat was so long and deep that Helen could lie across it, almost without having to bend her knees—or without having to put her head in Michael Milton's lap, though she did this anyway.

She did not put her head in his lap because she had to; she liked her view of the dashboard, and being close to the old smell of the maroon leather of the big, slick seat. She put her head in his lap because she liked feeling Michael's leg stiffen and relax, his thigh shifting just slightly between the brake and the accelerator. It was a quiet lap to put your head in because the car had no clutch; the driver needed to move just one leg, and just occasionally. Michael Milton thoughtfully carried his loose change in his left front pocket, so there were only the soft wales of his corduroy slacks, which made a faint impression on the skin of Helen's cheek—and sometimes his rising erection would touch her ear, or reach up into the hair on the back of her neck.

Sometimes she imagined taking him into her mouth while they drove across town in the big car with the gaping chrome grille like the mouth of a feeding fish—Buick Eight in script across the teeth. But that, Helen knew, would not be safe.

The first indication that the whole thing might not be safe was when Margie Tallworth dropped Helen's Comp. Lit. 205, without so much as a note of explanation concerning what she might not have liked about the course. Helen feared it was not the course that Margie hadn't liked, and she called the young Miss Tallworth into her office to ask her for an explanation.

Margie Tallworth, a junior, knew enough about school to know that no explanation was required; up to a certain point in any semester, a student was free to drop any course without the instructor's permission. “Do I have to have a reason?” the girl asked Helen, sullenly.

“No, you don't,” Helen said. “But if you had a reason, I just wanted to hear it.”

“I don't have to have a reason,” Margie Tallworth said. She held Helen's gaze longer than most students could hold it; then she got up to leave. She was pretty and small and rather well dressed for a student, Helen thought. If there was any consistency to Michael Milton's former girl friend and his present taste, it appeared only that he liked women to wear nice clothes.

“Well, I'm sorry it didn't work out,” Helen said, truthfully, as Margie was leaving; she was still fishing for what the girl might actually know.

She knew, Helen thought, and quickly accused Michael.

“You've blown it already,” she told him coldly, because she could speak coldly to him—over the phone. “Just how did you drop Margie Tallworth?”

“Very gently,” Michael Milton said, smugly. “But a drop is a drop, no matter how different the ways of doing it are.” Helen did not appreciate it when he attempted to instruct her—except sexually; she indulged the boy that, and he seemed to need to be dominant there. That was different for her, and she didn't really mind. He was sometimes rough, but not ever dangerous, she thought; and if she firmly resisted something, he stopped. Once she had had to tell him, “No! I don't like that, I won't do that.” But she had added, “Please,” because she wasn't that sure of him. He had stopped; he had been forceful with her, but in another way—in a way that was all right with her. It was exciting that she couldn't trust him completely. But not trusting him to be silent was another matter; if she knew he had talked about her, that would be that.

“I didn't tell her anything,” Michael insisted. “I said, “Margie, it's all over,” or something like that. I didn't even tell her there was another woman, and I certainly said nothing about you.”

“But she's probably heard you talk about me, before,” Helen said. “Before this started, I mean.”

“She never liked your course, anyway,” Michael said. “We did talk about that once.”

“She never liked the course?” Helen said. This truly surprised her.

“Well, she's not very bright,” Michael said, impatiently.

“She'd better not know,” Helen said. “I mean it: you better find out.”

But he found out nothing. Margie Tallworth refused to speak to him. He tried to tell her, on the phone, that it was all because an old girl friend had come back to him—she had arrived from out of town; she'd had no place to stay; one thing had led to another. But Margie Tallworth had hung up on him before he could polish the story.

Helen smoked a little more. She watched Garp anxiously for a few days—and once she felt actual guilt, when she made love to Garp; she felt guilty that she had made love to him not because she wanted to but because she wanted to reassure him, if he had been thinking that anything was wrong.

He hadn't been thinking, not much. Or: he had thought, but only once, about the bruises on the small, tight backs of Helen's thighs; though he was strong, Garp was a very gentle man with his children and his wife. He also knew what fingermark bruises looked like because he was a wrestler. It was a day or so later that he noticed the same small fingermark bruises on the backs of Duncan's arms—just where Garp held him when Garp wrestled with the boy—and Garp concluded that he gripped the people he loved harder than he meant to. He concluded that the fingermarks on Helen were also his.

He was too vain a man to be easily jealous. And the name he had woken with—on his lips, one morning—had eluded him. There were no more papers by Michael Milton around the house, keeping Helen up at night. In fact, she was going to bed earlier and earlier; she needed her rest.

As for Helen, she developed a fondness for the bare, sharp shaft of the Volvo's stick shift; its bite at the end of the day, driving home from her office, felt good against the heel of her hand, and she often pressed against it until she felt it was only a hair away from the pressure necessary to break her skin. She could bring tears to her eyes, this way, and it made her feel clean again, when she arrived home—when the boys would wave and shout at her, from the window where the TV was; and when Garp would announce what dinner he had prepared for them all, when Helen walked into the kitchen.

Margie Tallworth's possible knowledge had frightened Helen, because although Helen had said to Michael—and to herself—that it would be over the instant anyone knew, Helen now knew that it would be more difficult to end than she had first imagined. She hugged Garp in his kitchen and hoped for Margie Tallworth's ignorance.

Margie Tallworth was ignorant, but she was not ignorant of Michael Milton's relationship with Helen. She was ignorant of many things but she knew about that. She was ignorant in that she thought her own shallow infatuation with Michael Milton had “surpassed,” as she would say, “the sexual"; whereas, she assumed, Helen was merely amusing herself with Michael. In truth, Margie Tallworth had absolutely wallowed in, as she would say, “the sexual"; it is difficult, in fact, to know what else her relationship with Michael Milton had been about. But she was not altogether wrong in assuming that this was what Helen's relationship with Michael Milton was also about. Margie Tallworth was ignorant in that she assumed too much, too much of the time; but in this case she had assumed correctly.

Back when Michael Milton and Helen were actually talking about Michael's “work,” Margie assumed—even then—that they were fucking. Margie Tallworth did not believe there was another kind of relationship that one could have with Michael Milton. In this one way, she was not ignorant. She may have known the kind of relationship Helen had with Michael before Helen knew it herself.

And through the one-way glass of the fourth-floor ladies' room, in the English and Literature Building, it was possible for Margie Tallworth to look through the tinted windshield of the three-ton Buick, gliding like the coffin of a king out of the parking lot. Margie could see Mrs. Garp's slender legs stretched along the long front seat. It was a peculiar way to ride in a car with other than the best of friends.

Margie knew their habits better than she understood her own; she took long walks, to try to forget Michael Milton, and to familiarize herself with the whereabouts of Helen's house. She was soon familiar with the habits of Helen's husband, too, because Garp's habits were much more constant than anyone's: he padded back and forth, from room to room, in the mornings; perhaps he was out of a job. That fitted Margie Tallworth's assumptions of the likely cuckold: a man who was out of work. At midday he burst out the door in track clothes and ran away; miles later, he returned and read his mail, which nearly always came when he was gone. Then he padded back and forth in the house again; he undressed, in pieces, on the way to the shower, and he was slow to dress when he was out of the shower. One thing did not fit her image of the cuckold: Garp had a good body. And why did he spend so much time in the kitchen? Margie Tallworth wondered if perhaps he was an unemployed cook.

Then his children came home and they broke Margie Tallworth's soft little heart. He looked quite nice when he played with his children, which also fitted Margie's assumptions of what a cuckold was like: someone who had witless good fun with his children while his wife was out getting planked. “Planked” was also a word that the wrestlers Garp knew used, and they had used it back at those blood-and-blue days at Steering, too. Someone was always bragging about planking a wet, split beaver.

So one day, when Garp burst out the door in his track clothes, Margie Tallworth waited only as long as it took him to run away; then she went up on the Garps' porch with a perfumed note, which she intended to drop in his mail. She had thought very carefully that he would have time to read the note and (hopefully) recover himself before his children came home. This was how she assumed such news was absorbed: suddenly! Then there was a reasonable period of recovery and one got ready to face the children. Here was another case of something Margie Tallworth was ignorant of.

The note itself had given her trouble because she was not good with words. And it was perfumed not by intention but simply because every piece of paper Margie Tallworth owned was perfumed; if she had thought about it, she would have realized perfume was inappropriate to this note, but that was another of the things she was ignorant of. Even her schoolwork was perfumed; when Helen had read Margie Tallworth's first essay for Comp. Lit. 205, she had cringed at its scent.

What Margie's note to Garp said was:

Your wife is “involved with” Michael Milton.

Margie Tallworth would grow up to be the sort of person who said that someone “passed away” instead of died. Thus she sought delicacy with the words that Helen was “involved with” Michael Milton. And she had this sweetly smelling note in her hand, and she was poised on the Garps' porch with it, when it began to rain.

Nothing made Garp turn back from a run faster than rain. He hated getting his running shoes wet. He would run in the cold, and run in the snow, but when it rained, Garp ran home, swearing, and cooked for an hour in a foul-weather mood. Then he put on a poncho and caught the bus to the gym in time for wrestling practice. On the way, he picked up Walt from day care and took Walt to the gym with him; he called home when he got to the gym to see if Duncan was back from school. Sometimes he gave Duncan instructions, if the meal was still cooking, but usually he just cautioned Duncan about riding his bike and he quizzed him about emergency phone numbers: did Duncan know what to dial in case of fire, explosion, armed robbery, mayhem in the streets?

Then he wrestled, and after practice he popped Walt into the shower with himself; by the time he called home again, Helen was there to come pick them up.

Therefore, Garp did not like rain; although he enjoyed wrestling, rain complicated his simple plans. And Margie Tallworth was unprepared to see him suddenly panting and angry behind her on the porch.

“Aaahhh!” she cried; she clutched her scented note as tightly as if it were the main artery of an animal whose blood flow she wished she could stop.

“Hello,” said Garp. She looked like a baby-sitter to him. He had trained himself off baby-sitters some time ago. He smiled at her with frank curiosity—that is all.

“Aaa,” said Margie Tallworth; she couldn't speak. Garp looked at the crushed message in her hand; she shut her eyes and held the note out to him, as if she were putting her hand into a fire.

If at first Garp had thought she was one of Helen's students, wanting something, now he thought something else. He saw that she couldn't speak, and he saw the extreme self-consciousness of her handing him the note. Garp's experience with speechless women who handed out notes self-consciously was limited to Ellen Jamesians, and he suppressed a momentary flame of anger—that another creepy Ellen Jamesian was introducing herself to him. Or had she come to bait him about something—the reclusive son of the exciting Jenny Fields?

Hi! I'm Margie. I'm an Ellen Jamesian,

her stupid note would say.

Do you know what an Ellen Jamesian is?

The next thing you know, Garp thought, they'll be organized like the religious morons who bring those righteous pamphlets about Jesus to one's very door. It sickened him, for example, that the Ellen Jamesians were now reaching girls as young as this one; she was too young to know, he thought, whether she wanted a tongue in her life or not. He shook his head and waved the note away.

“Yes, yes, I know, I know,” Garp said. “So what?” Poor Margie Tallworth was unprepared for this. She had come like an avenging angel—her terrible duty, and what a burden it was to her!—to bring the bad news that somehow must be made known. But he knew already! And he didn't even care.

She clutched her note in both hands, so tightly to her pretty, trembling breasts that more of the perfume was expressed from it—or from her—and a wave of her young-girl smell passed over Garp, who stood glaring at her.

“I said, “So what?” Garp said. “Do you actually expect me to have respect for someone who cuts her own tongue off?”

Margie forced a word out. “What?” she said; she was frightened now. Now she guessed why the poor man padded around his house all day, out of work: he was insane.

Garp had distinctly heard the word; it was not a gagged “Aaahhh” or even a little “Aaa"—it was not the word of an amputated tongue. It was a whole word.

“What?” he said.

“What?” she said, again.

He stared at the note she held against herself. “You can talk?” he said.

“Of course,” she croaked.

“What's that?” he asked, and pointed to her note. But now she was afraid of him—an insane cuckold. God knows what he might do. Murder the children, or murder her; he looked strong enough to murder Michael Milton with one arm. And every man looked evil when he was questioning you. She backed away from him, off the porch.

“Wait!” Garp cried. “Is that a note for me? What is that? Is it something for Helen? Who are you?”

Margie Tallworth shook her head. “It's a mistake,” she whispered, and when she turned to flee, she collided with the wet mailman, spilling his bag and knocking herself back into Garp. Garp had a vision of Duna, the senile bear, bowling a mailman down a Viennese staircase—outlawed forever. But all that happened to Margie Tallworth was that she fell to the floor of the porch; her stockings tore and she skinned one knee.

The mailman, who assumed he'd arrived at an awkward moment, fumbled for Garp's mail among his strewn letters, but Garp was now only interested in what message the crying girl had for him. “What is it?” he asked her, gently; he tried to help her to her feet, but she wanted to sit where she was. She kept sobbing.

“I'm sorry,” Margie Tallworth said. She had lost her nerve; she had spent a minute too long around Garp, and now that she thought she rather liked him, it was hard for her to imagine giving him this news.

“Your knee's not too bad,” Garp said, “but let me get something to clean you up.” He went inside for antiseptic for her cut, and bandages, but she took this opportunity to limp away. She could not face him with this news, but she could not withhold it from him, either. She left her note for him. The mailman watched her hobble down the side street toward the corner where the buses stopped; he wondered briefly what the Garps were up to. They seemed to get more mail than other families, too.

It was all those letters Garp wrote, which poor John Wolf, his editor, struggled to answer. And there were copies of books to review; Garp gave them to Helen, who at least read them. There were Helen's magazines; it seemed to Garp there were a great many. There were Garp's two magazines, his only subscriptions: Gourmet and Amateur Wrestling News. There were, of course, bills. And a letter rather frequently from Jenny; it was all she wrote these days. And a letter now and then, short and sweet, from Ernie Holm.

Sometimes Harry Fletcher wrote them both, and Alice still wrote with exquisite fluency, about nothing at all, to Garp.

And now among the usual was a note, reeking of perfume and wet with tears. Garp put down the bottle of antiseptic and the bandages; he did not bother to look for the girl. He held the crumpled note and thought he knew, more or less, what it would be about.

He wondered why he hadn't thought of it before, because there were so many things that pointed to it; now that he thought of it, he supposed he had thought of it before, only not quite this consciously. The slow unwrapping of the note—so it wouldn't tear—made sounds as crisp as autumn, though all around Garp it was a cold March, the hurt ground thawing to mud. The little note snapped like bones as he opened it. With the escaping perfume, Garp imagined he could still hear the girl's sharp little yelp: “What?"

He knew “what"; what he didn't know was “with whom"—that name, which had kicked around in his mind, one morning, but then was gone. The note, of course, would provide him with the name: Michael Milton. It sounded to Garp like a special kind of new ice cream at that shop he took the boys to. There was Strawberry Swirl, Chock-full of Chocolate, Mocha Madness, and Michael Milton. It was a disgusting name—a flavor Garp could taste—and Garp tramped to the storm sewer and wadded the vile-smelling note into pieces and stuffed them through the grate. Then he went inside the house and read the name in a phone book, over and over again.

It seemed to him now that Helen had been “involved with” someone for a long time; it seemed that he had known it for some time, too. But the name! Michael Milton! Garp had classified him—to Helen—at a party where Garp had been introduced to him. Garp had told Helen that Michael Milton was a “wimp"; they had discussed his mustache. Michael Milton! Garp read the name so many times, he was still peering into the phone book when Duncan got home from school and assumed that his father was once more searching a directory for his make-believe people.

“Didn't you get Walt yet?” Duncan asked.

Garp had forgotten. And Walt has a cold, too, Garp thought. The boy shouldn't have to wait for me, with a cold.

“Let's go get him together,” Garp said to Duncan. To Duncan's surprise, Garp threw the phone book into the trash barrel. Then they walked to the bus stop.

Garp was still in his track clothes, and it was still raining; Duncan found this odd, too, but he didn't say anything about it. He said, “I got two goals today.” For some reason, all they played at Duncan's school was soccer—fall, winter, and spring, they played only soccer. It was a small school, but there was another reason for all the soccer; Garp forgot what it was. He had never liked the reason, anyway. “Two goals,” Duncan repeated.

“That's great,” Garp said.

“One was a header,” Duncan said.

“With your head?” Garp said. “That's wonderful.”

“Ralph gave me a perfect pass,” Duncan said.

“That's still wonderful,” Garp said. “And good for Ralph.” He put his arm around Duncan, but he knew Duncan would be embarrassed if he tried to kiss him; it is Walt who lets me kiss him, Garp thought. Then he thought of kissing Helen and almost stepped in front of the bus.

“Dad!” Duncan said. And in the bus he asked his father, “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” Garp said.

“I thought you'd be up at the wrestling room,” Duncan said. “It is raining.”

From Walt's day care you could look across the river and Garp tried to place the exact location, there, of Michael Milton's address, which he had memorized from the phone book.

“Where were you?” Walt complained. He coughed; his nose dripped; he felt hot. He expected to go wrestling whenever it rained.

“Why don't we all go to the wrestling room, as long as we're downtown?” Duncan said. He was increasingly logical, but Garp said no, he didn't want to wrestle today. “Why not?” Duncan wanted to know.

“Because he's got his running stuff on, dummy,” Walt said.

“Oh, shut up, Walt,” Duncan said. They more or less fought on the bus, until Garp told them they couldn't. Walt was sick, Garp reasoned, and fighting was bad for his cold.

“I'm not sick,” Walt said.

“Yes, you are,” Garp said.

“Yes, you are,” Duncan teased.

“Shut up, Duncan,” Garp said.

“Boy, you're in a great mood,” Duncan said, and Garp wanted to kiss him; Garp wished to assure Duncan that he wasn't really in a bad mood, but kissing embarrassed Duncan, so Garp kissed Walt instead.

“Dad!” Walt complained. “You're all wet and sweaty.”

“Because he's got his running stuff on, dummy,” Duncan said.

“He called me a dummy,” Walt told Garp.

“I heard him,” Garp said.

“I'm not a dummy,” Walt said.

“Yes, you are,” Duncan said.

“Shut up, both of you,” Garp said.

“Dad's in a great mood, isn't he, Walt?” Duncan asked his brother.

“Sure is,” Walt said, and they decided to tease their father, instead of fight among themselves, until the bus deposited them—a few blocks from the house in the increasing rain. They were a soggy threesome when they were still a block from home, and a car that had been going too fast slowed suddenly beside them; the window was rolled down, after a struggle, and in the steamy interior Garp saw the frazzled, glistening face of Mrs. Ralph. She grinned at them.

“You seen Ralph?” she asked Duncan.

“Nope,” Duncan said.

“The moron doesn't know enough to come out of the rain,” she said. “I guess you don't, either,” she said sweetly, to Garp; she was still grinning and Garp tried to smile back at her, but he couldn't think of anything to say. He must have had poor control of his expression, he suspected, because Mrs. Ralph wouldn't usually pass up the opportunity to go on teasing him in the rain. Yet, instead, she looked suddenly shocked by Garp's ghastly smile; she rolled her window back up.

“See ya,” she called, and drove off. Slowly.

“See ya,” Garp mumbled after her; he admired the woman but he was thinking that maybe even this horror would eventually come to pass: that he would see Mrs. Ralph.

In the house he gave Walt a hot bath, slipping into the tub with him—an excuse, which he often took, to wrestle with that little body. Duncan was too big for Garp to fit in the tub with him anymore.

“What's for supper?” Duncan called upstairs.

Garp realized he had forgotten supper.

“I forgot supper,” Garp called.

“You forgot?” Walt asked him, but Garp dunked Walt in the tub, and tickled him, and Walt fought back and forgot about the issue.

“You forgot supper?” Duncan hollered from downstairs.

Garp decided he was not going to get out of the tub. He kept adding more hot water; the steam was good for Walt's lungs, he believed. He would try to keep the child in the tub with him as long as Walt was content to play.

They were still in the bath together when Helen got home.

“Dad forgot supper,” Duncan told her immediately.

“He forgot supper?” Helen said.

“He forgot all about it,” Duncan said.

“Where is he?” Helen asked.

“He's taking a bath with Walt,” Duncan said. “They've been taking a bath for hours.”

“Heavens,” said Helen. “Maybe they've drowned.”

“Wouldn't you love that?” Garp hollered from his bath, upstairs. Duncan laughed.

“He's in a great mood,” Duncan told his mother.

“I can see that he is,” Helen said. She put her hand softly on Duncan's shoulder, being careful not to let him know that she was actually leaning on him for support. She felt suddenly unsure of her balance. Poised at the bottom of the stairs, she called up to Garp, “Had a bad day?”

But Garp slipped underwater; it was a gesture of control, because he felt such hatred for her and he didn't want Walt to see it or hear it.

There was no answer and Helen tightened her grip on Duncan's shoulder. Please, not in front of the children, she thought. It was a new situation for her—that she should find herself in the defensive position in a matter of some contention with Garp—and she felt frightened.

“Shall I come up?” she called.

There was still no answer; Garp could hold his breath a long time.

Walt shouted back downstairs to her, “Dad's underwater!”

“Dad is so weird,” Duncan said.

Garp came up for air just as Walt yelled again, “He's holding his breath!”

I hope so, Helen thought. She didn't know what to do, she couldn't move.

In a minute or so, Garp whispered to Walt, “Tell her I'm still underwater, Walt. Okay?”

Walt appeared to think this was a fiendishly clever trick and he yelled downstairs to Helen, “Dad's still underwater!”

“Wow,” Duncan said. “We should time him. It must be a record.”

But now Helen felt panicked. Duncan moved out from under her hand—he was starting up the stairs to see this breath-holding feat—and Helen felt that her legs were lead.

“He's still underwater!” Walt shrieked, though Garp was drying Walt with a towel and had already started to drain the tub; they stood naked on the bathmat by the big mirror together. When Duncan came into the bathroom, Garp silenced him by putting a finger to his lips.

“Now, say it together,” Garp whispered. “On the count of three, “He's still under!” One, two, three.”

“He's still under!” Duncan and Walt howled together, and Helen felt her own lungs burst. She felt a scream escape her but no sound emerged, and she ran up the stairs thinking that only her husband could have conceived of such a plot to pay her back: drowning himself in front of their children and leaving her to explain to them why he did it.

She ran crying into the bathroom, so surprising Duncan and Walt that she had to recover almost immediately—in order not to frighten them. Garp was naked at the mirror, slowly drying between his toes and watching her in a way she remembered that Ernie Holm had taught his wrestlers how to look for openings.

“You're too late,” he told her. “I already died. But it's touching, and a little surprising, to see that you care.”

“We'll talk about this later?” she asked him, hopefully—and smiling, as if it had been a good joke.

“We fooled you!” Walt said, poking Helen on that sharp bone above her hip.

“Boy, if we'd pulled that on you,” Duncan said to his father, “you'd have really been pissed at us.”

“The children haven't eaten,” Helen said.

“Nobody's eaten,” Garp said. “Unless you have.”

“I can wait,” she told him.

“So can I,” Garp told her.

“I'll get the kids something,” Helen offered, pushing Walt out of the bathroom. “There must be eggs, and cereal.”

“For supper?” Duncan said. “That sounds like a great supper,” he said. “I just forgot, Duncan,” Garp said.

“I want toast,” Walt said.

“You can have toast, too,” Helen said.

“Are you sure you can handle this?” Garp asked Helen.

She just smiled at him.

“God, even I can handle toast,” Duncan said. “I think even Walt can fix cereal.”

“The eggs are tricky,” Helen said; she tried to laugh.

Garp went on drying between his toes. When the kids were out of the bathroom, Helen poked her head back in. “I'm sorry, and I love you,” Helen said, but he wouldn't look up from his deliberate procedure with the towel. “I never wanted to hurt you,” she went on. “How did you find out? I have never once stopped thinking of you. Was it that girl?” Helen whispered, but Garp gave all his attention to his toes.

When she had set out food for the children (as if they were pets! she would think to herself, later), she went back upstairs to him. He was still in front of the mirror, sitting naked on the edge of the tub.

“He means nothing; he never took anything away from you,” she told him. “It's all over now, really it is.”

“Since when?” he asked her.

“As of now,” she said to Garp. “I just have to tell him.”

“Don't tell him,” Garp said. “Let him guess.”

“I can't do that,” Helen said.

“There's shell in my egg!” Walt hollered from downstairs.

“My toast is burnt!” Duncan said. They were plotting together to distract their parents from each other—whether they knew it or not. Children, Garp thought, have some instinct for separating their parents when their parents ought to be separated.

“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 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 can't tell us what to do.”

“I'm telling you, Michael,” Helen said.

He slumped against the horn and began to cry. She went over and touched his shoulder through the window.

“I'll sit with you a minute,” Helen told him. “But you must promise me that you'll leave. I won't have him or my children see this.”

He promised.

“Give me the keys,” Helen said. His look of baleful hurt—that she didn't trust him not to drive off with her—touched Helen all over again. She put the keys in the deep flap pocket of her long skirt and walked around to the passenger side and let herself in. He rolled up his window, and they sat, not touching, the windows fogging around them, the car creaking under a coat of ice.

Then he completely broke down and told her that she had meant more to him than all of France—and she knew what France had meant to him, of course. She held him, then, and wildly feared how much time had passed, or was passing there in the frozen car. Even if it was not a long movie, they must still have a good half hour, or forty-five minutes; yet Michael Milton was nowhere near ready to leave. She kissed him, strongly, hoping this would help, but he only began to fondle her wet, cold breasts. She felt all over as frozen to him as she had felt outside in the hardening sleet. But she let him touch her.

“Dear Michael,” she said, thinking all the while.

“How can we stop?” was all he said.

But Helen had already stopped; she was only thinking about how to stop him. She shoved him up straight in the driver's position and stretched across the long seat, pulling her skirt back down to cover her knees, and putting her head in his lap.

“Please remember,” she said. “Please try. This was the nicest part for me—just letting you drive me in the car, when I knew where we were going. Can't you be happy—can't you just remember that, and let it go?”

He sat rigid behind the steering wheel, both hands struggling to stay gripped to the wheel, both thighs tensed under her head, his erection pressing against her ear.

“Please try to just let it go at that, Michael,” she said softly. And they stayed this way a moment, imagining that the old Buick was carrying them to Michael's apartment again. But Michael Milton could not sustain himself on imagination. He let one hand stray to the back of Helen's neck, which he gripped very tightly; his other hand opened his fly.

“Michael!” she said, sharply.

“You said you always wanted to,” he reminded her.

“It's over, Michael.”

“Not yet, it isn't,” lie said. His penis grazed her forehead, bent her eyelashes, and she recognized that this was the old Michael—the Michael of the apartment, the Michael who occasionally liked to treat her with some force. She did not appreciate it now. But if I resist, she thought, there will be a scene. She had only to imagine Garp as part of the scene to convince herself that she should avoid any scene, at any cost.

“Don't be a bastard, don't be a prick, Michael,” she said. “Don't spoil it.”

“You always said you wanted to,” he said. “But it wasn't safe, you said. Well, now it's safe. The car isn't even moving. There can't be any accidents now,” he said.

Oddly, she realized, he had suddenly made it easier for her. She did not feel concerned anymore with letting him down gently; she felt grateful to him that he had helped her to sort her priorities so forcefully. Her priorities, she felt enormously relieved to know, were Garp and her children. Walt shouldn't be out in this weather, she thought, shivering. And Garp was more major to her, she knew, than all her minor colleagues and graduate students together.

Michael Milton had allowed her to see himself with what struck Helen as a necessary vulgarity. Suck him off, she thought bluntly, putting him into her mouth, and then he'll leave. She thought bitterly that men, once they had ejaculated, were rather quick to abandon their demands. And from her brief experience in Michael Milton's apartment, Helen knew that this would not take long.

Time was also a factor in her decision; there was at least twenty minutes remaining in even the shortest movie they could have gone to see. She set her mind to it as she might have done if it were the last task remaining to a messy business, which might have ended better but could also have turned out worse; she felt slightly proud that she had at least proved to herself that her family was her first priority. Even Garp might appreciate this, she thought; but one day, not right away.

She was so determined that she hardly noticed Michael Milton's grip loosen on her neck; he returned both hands to the steering wheel, as if he were actually piloting this experience. Let him think what he wants to think, she thought. She was thinking of her family, and she did not notice that the sleet was now nearly as hard as hail; it rattled off the big Buick like the tapping of countless hammers, driving little nails. And she did not sense the old car groaning and snapping under its thickening tomb of ice.

And she did not hear the telephone, ringing in her warm house. There was too much weather, and other interference, between her house and where she lay.

It was a stupid movie. Typical of the children's taste in films, Garp thought; typical of the taste in a university town. Typical of the entire country. Typical of the world! Garp raged, in his heart, and paid more attention to Walt's labored breathing—the thick rivulets of snot from his tiny nose.

“Be careful you don't choke on that popcorn,” he whispered to Walt.

“I won't choke,” Walt said, never taking his eyes from the giant screen.

“Well, you can't breathe very well,” Garp complained, “so just don't put too much in your mouth. You might inhale it. You can't breathe through your nose, at all—that's perfectly clear.” And he wiped the child's nose again. “Blow,” he whispered. Walt blew.

“Isn't this great?” Duncan whispered. Garp felt how hot Walt's snot was; the child must have a temperature of nearly 102°! he thought. Garp rolled his eyes at Duncan.

“Oh, just great, Duncan,” Garp said. Duncan had meant the movie.

“You should relax, Dad,” Duncan suggested, shaking his head. Oh, I should, Garp knew, but he couldn't. He thought of Walt, and what a perfect little ass he had, and strong little legs, and how sweet his sweat smelled when he'd been running and his hair was damp behind his ears. A body that perfect should not be sick, he thought. I should have let Helen go out on this miserable night; I should have made her call that twerp from her office—and tell him to put it in his ear, Garp thought. Or in a light socket. And turn on the juice!

I should have called that candy-ass myself, Garp thought. I should have visited him in the middle of the night. When Garp walked up the aisle to see if they had a phone in the lobby, he heard Walt still coughing.

If she hasn't already gotten in touch with him, Garp thought, I'll tell her not to keep trying; I'll tell her it's my turn. He was at that point in his feelings toward Helen where he felt betrayed but at the same time honestly loved and important to her; he had not had time enough to ponder how betrayed he felt—or how much, truly, she had been trying to keep him in her mind. It was a delicate point, between hating her and loving her terribly—also, he was not without sympathy for whatever she'd wanted; after all, he knew, the shoe on the other foot had also been worn (and was certainly thinner). It even seemed unfair, to Garp, that Helen, who had always meant so well, had been caught like this; she was a good woman and she certainly deserved better luck. But when Helen did not answer the phone, this point of delicacy in Garp's feelings toward her quite suddenly escaped him. He felt only rage, and only betrayal.

Bitch! he thought. The phone rang and rang.

She went out, to meet him. Or they're even doing it in our house! he thought—he could hear them saying, “One last time.” That puny fink with his pretentious short stories about fragile relationships, which almost developed in badly lit European restaurants. (Perhaps someone wore the wrong glove and the moment was lost forever; there was one where a woman decides not to, because the man's shirt was too tight at his throat.)

How could Helen have read that crap! And how could she have touched that 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.