The World According to Garp by John Irving
She also knew that not too many ways of showing him were open to her.
When she first shifted the Volvo, driving home, the point of the uncovered stick-shift shaft dug sharply into the heel of her hand. She knew exactly where Michael Milton had left the gear knob--on the window ledge above the wastebasket, where the janitor would find it and probably throw it away. It looked as if it ought to be thrown away, but Helen remembered that she had not phoned in the little numbers to the car garage. That would mean that she, or Garp, would have to call the car garage and try to order a new knob without the goddamn numbers--giving the year and model of the car, and so forth, and inevitably ending up with a knob that wasn't right.
But Helen decided she was not going back to her office, and she had enough on her mind already without trying to remember to call the janitor and tell him not to throw away the knob. Besides, it might already be too late.
And anyway, Helen thought, it's not just my fault. It's Garp's fault, too. Or, she thought, it's really nobody's fault. It's just one of those things.
* * *
--
But she did not quite feel guiltless; not yet. When Michael Milton gave her his papers to read--his old papers, from his other courses--she accepted them and read them, because at least this was an allowable, still-innocent subject for them to discuss: his work. When he grew bolder, and more attached to her, and he showed her even his creative work, his short stories and pathetic poems about France, Helen still felt that their long conversations were guided by the critical, constructive relationship between a student and a teacher.
It was all right to have lunch together; they had his work to talk about. Perhaps both of them knew that the work was not so special. For Michael Milton, any topic of conversation that justified his being with Helen was all right. For Helen, she was still anxious about the obvious conclusion--when he simply ran out of work; when they had consumed all the papers he'd had time to write; when they'd mentioned every book they had in common. Then Helen knew they would need a new subject. She also knew that this was only her problem--that Michael Milton already knew what the inevitable subject between them was. She knew he was smugly and irritatingly waiting for her to make up her mind; she occasionally wondered if he would be bold enough to raise his original answer to her questionnaire again, but she didn't think so. Perhaps both of them knew that he wouldn't have to--that the next move was hers. He would show her how grown-up he was by being patient. Helen wanted, above all, to surprise him.
But among these feelings that were new to her, there was one she disliked; she was most unused to feeling guilty--for Helen Holm always felt right about everything she did, and she needed to feel guiltless about this, too. She felt close to achieving this guilt-free state of mind, but she did not quite have it; not yet.
It would be Garp who provided her with the necessary feeling. Perhaps he sensed he had competition; Garp got started as a writer out of a sense of competition, and he finally broke out of his writing slump with a similar, competitive surge.
Helen, he knew, was reading someone else. It did not occur to Garp that she might be contemplating more than literature, but he saw with a typical writer's jealousy that someone else's words were keeping her up at night. Garp had first courted Helen with "The Pension Grillparzer." Some instinct told him to court her again.
If that had been an acceptable motive to get a young writer started, it was a dubious motive for his writing now--especially after he'd been stopped for so long. He might have been in a necessary phase, rethinking everything, letting the well refill, preparing a book for the future with a proper period of silence. Somehow the new story he wrote for Helen reflected the forced and unnatural circumstances of its conception. The story was written less out of any real reaction to the viscera of life than it was written to relieve the anxieties of the writer.
It was possibly a necessary exercise for a writer who had not written in too long, but Helen did not care for the urgency with which Garp shoved the story at her. "I finally finished something," he said. It was after dinner; the children were asleep; Helen wanted to go to bed with him--she wanted long and reassuring lovemaking, because she had come to the end of what Michael Milton had written; there was nothing more for her to read, or for them to talk about. She knew she should not show the slightest disappointment in the manuscript Garp gave her, but her tiredness overwhelmed her and she stared at it, crouching between dirty dishes.
"I'll do the dishes alone," Garp offered, clearing the way to his story for her. Her heart sank; she had read too much. Sex, or at least romance, was the subject she had at last come to; Garp had better provide it or Michael Milton would.
"I want to be loved," Helen told Garp; he was gathering up the dishes like a waiter who was confident of a large tip. He laughed at her.
"Read the story, Helen," he said. "Then we'll get laid."
She resented his priorities. There could be no comparison between Garp's writing and the student work of Michael Milton; though gifted among students, Michael Milton, Helen knew, would only be a student of writing all his life. The issue was not writing. The issue is me, Helen thought; I want someone paying attention to me. Garp's manner of courtship was suddenly offensive to her. The subject being courted was somehow Garp's writing. That is not the subject between us, Helen thought. Because of Michael Milton, Helen was way ahead of Garp at considering the spoken and unspoken subjects between people. "If people only told each other what was on their minds," wrote Jenny Fields--a naive but forgivable lapse; both Garp and Jenny knew how difficult it was for people to do that.
Garp cautiously washed the dishes, waiting for Helen to read his story. Instinctively--the trained teacher--Helen took out her red pencil and began. That is not how she should read my story, Garp thought; I'm not one of her students. But he went on quietly washing the dishes. He saw there was no stopping her.
VIGILANCE BY T. S. GARP
Running my five miles a day, I frequently encounter some smartmouthed motorist who will pull alongside me and ask (from the safety of the driver's seat), "What are you in training for?"
Deep and regular breathing is the secret; I am rarely out of breath; I never pant or gasp when I respond. "I am staying in shape to chase cars," I say.
At this point the responses of the motorists vary; there are degrees of stupidity as there are degrees of everything else. Of course, they never realize that I don't mean them--I'm not staying in shape to chase their cars; not out on the open road, at least. I let them go out there, though I sometimes believe that I could catch them. And I do not run on the open road, as some motorists believe, to attract attention.
In my neighborhood there is no place to run. One must leave the suburbs to be even a middle-distance runner. Where I live there are four-way stop signs at every intersection; the blocks are short, and those right-angle corners are hard on the balls of the feet. Also, the sidewalks are threatened by dogs, festooned with the playthings of children, intermittently splashed with lawn sprinklers. And just when there's some running room, there's an elderly person taking up the whole sidewalk, precarious on crutches or armed with quacking canes. With good conscience one does not yell "Track!" to such a person. Even passing the aged at a safe distance, but with my usual speed, seems to alarm them; and it's not my intention to cause heart attacks.
So it's the open road for training, but it's the suburbs I'm in training for. In my condition I am more than a match for a car caught speeding in my neighborhood. Provided they make an even halfhearted halt at the stop signs, they cannot hit over fifty before they have to brake for the next intersection. I always catch up to them. I can travel across lawns, over porches, through swing sets and the children's wading pools; I can burst through hedges, or hurdle them. And since my engine is quiet--and steady, and always in tune--I can hear if other cars are coming; I don't have to stop at the stop signs.
In the end I run them down, I wave them over; they always stop. Although I am clearly in impressive car-chas
"I have two young children," I tell them. The drama is deliberate in my voice--which, with this sentence, I allow to tremble a little. It is as if I am holding back tears, or unspeakable rage, or both. Perhaps they think I am hunting a kidnapper, or that I suspect them of being child molesters.
"What happened?" they invariably ask.
"You didn't see my children, did you?" I repeat. "A little boy pulling a little girl in a red wagon?" This is, of course, a fiction. I have two boys, and they're not so little; they have no wagon. They may have been watching television at the time, or riding their bikes in the park--where it's safe, where there are no cars.
"No," the bewildered speeder says. "I saw children, some children. But I don't think I saw those children. Why?"
"Because you almost killed them," I say.
"But I didn't see them!" the speeder protests.
"You were driving too fast to see them!" I say. This is sprung on them as if it were proof of their guilt; I always pronounce this sentence as if it were hard evidence. And they're never sure. I've rehearsed this part so well. The sweat from my hard sprint, by now, drips off my mustache and the point of my chin, streaking the driver's-side door. They know only a father who genuinely fears for his children would run so hard, would stare like such a maniac, would wear such a cruel mustache.
"I'm sorry," they usually say.
"This is a neighborhood full of children," I always tell them. "You have other places you can drive fast, don't you? Please, for the children's sake, don't speed here anymore." My voice, now, is never nasty; it is always beseeching. But they see that a restrained fanatic resides behind my honest, watering eyes.
Usually it's just a young kid. Those kids have a need to dribble a little oil; they want to race the frantic pace of the music on their radios. And I don't expect to change their ways. I only hope they'll do it somewhere else. I concede that the open road is theirs; when I train there, I keep my place. I run in the stuff of the soft shoulder, in the hot sand and gravel, in the beer-bottle glass--among the mangled cats, the maimed birds, the mashed condoms. But in my neighborhood, the car is not king; not yet.
Usually they learn.
After my five-mile run I do fifty-five push-ups, then five hundred-yard dashes, followed by fifty-five situps, followed by fifty-five neck bridges. It's not that I care so much for the number five; it's simply that strenuous and mindless exertion is easier if one doesn't have to keep track of too many different numbers. After my shower (about five o'clock), through the late afternoon, and in the course of the evening, I allow myself five beers.
I do not chase cars at night. Children should not be playing outside at night--in my neighborhood, or in any other neighborhood. At night, I believe, the car is king of the whole modern world. Even the suburbs.
At night, in fact, I rarely leave my house, or allow the members of my family to venture out. But once I went to investigate an obvious accident--the darkness suddenly streaked with headlights pointing straight up and exploding; the silence pierced with a metal screaming and the shriek of ground glass. Only half a block away, in the dark and perfect middle of my street, a Land Rover lay upside-down and bleeding its oil and gas in a puddle so deep and still I could see the moon in it. The only sound: the ping of heat in the hot pipes and the dead engine. The Land Rover looked like a tank tumbled by a land mine. Great juts and tears in the pavement revealed that the auto had rolled over and over before coming to rest here.
The driver's-side door could be opened only slightly, but enough to miraculously turn on the door light. There in the lit cab, still behind the steering wheel--still upside-down and still alive--was a fat man. He looked unharmed. The top of his head rested gingerly on the ceiling of the cab, which of course was now the floor, but the man seemed only dimly sensitive to this change in his perspective. He looked puzzled, chiefly, by the presence of a large brown bowling ball that sat alongside his head, like another head; he was, in fact, cheek to cheek with this bowling ball, which he perhaps felt touching him as he might have felt the presence of a lover's severed head--formerly resting on his shoulder.
"Is that you, Roger?" the man asked. I couldn't tell whether he was addressing me or the bowling ball.
"It is not Roger," I said, answering for us both.
"That Roger is a moron," the man explained. "We crossed our balls."
That the fat man was referring to a bizarre sexual experience seemed unlikely. I assumed that the fat man referred to bowling.
"This is Roger's ball," he explained, indicating the brown globe against his cheek. "I should have known it wasn't my ball because it wouldn't fit in my bag. My ball will fit in anyone's bag, but Roger's ball is really strange. I was trying to fit it in my bag when the Land Rover went off the bridge."
Although I knew there was no bridge in my entire neighborhood, I tried to visualize the occurrence. But I was distracted by the gurgle of spilling gasoline, like beer down a thirsty man's throat.
"You should get out," I told the upside-down bowler.
"I'll wait for Roger," he replied. "Roger will be right along."
And sure enough, along came another Land Rover, as if they were a separated twosome from a column of an army on the move. Roger's Land Rover came along with its headlights out and did not stop in time; it plowed into the fat bowler's Land Rover and together, like coupled boxcars, they jarred each other another tough ten yards down the street.
It appeared that Roger was a moron, but I merely asked him the expected question: "Is that you, Roger?"
"Yup," said the man, whose throbbing Land Rover was dark and creaking; little fragments of its windshield and headlights and grille dropped to the street like noisy confetti.
"That could only be Roger!" groaned the fat bowler, still upside-down--and still alive--in his lit cab. I saw that his nose bled slightly; it appeared that the bowling ball had bashed him.
"You moron, Roger!" he called out. "You've got my ball!"
"Well, someone's got my ball, then," Roger replied.
"I've got your ball, you moron," the fat bowler declared.
"Well, that's not the answer to everything," Roger said. "You've got my Land Rover." Roger lit a cigarette in the blackened cab; he did not appear interested in climbing out of the wreck.
"You should set up flares," I suggested to him, "and that fat man should get out of your Land Rover. There's gasoline everywhere. I don't think you should smoke." But Roger only continued smoking and ignoring me in the cavelike silence of the second Land Rover, and the fat bowler again cried out--as if he were having a dream that was starting over, at the beginning--"Is that you, Roger?"
I went back to my house and called the police. In the daytime, in my neighborhood, I would never have tolerated such mayhem, but people who go bowling in each other's Land Rovers are not the usual suburban speeders, and I decided they were legitimately lost.
"Hello, Police?" I said.
I have learned what you can and what you can't expect of the police. I know that they do not really support the notion of citizen arrest; when I have reported speeders to them, the results have been disappointing. They don't seem interested in learning the details. I am told there are people whom the police are interested in apprehending, but I believe the police are basically sympathetic to speeders; and they do not appreciate citizens who make arrests for them.
I reported the whereabouts of the bowlers' accident, and when the police asked, as they always ask, who was calling, I told them, "Roger."
That, I knew--knowing the police--would be interesting. The police are always more interested in bot
"He's Roger," the fat bowler kept saying. "He's Roger through and through."
"I'm not the Roger who called you fuckers," Roger told the police.
"That's true," the fat bowler declared. "This Roger wouldn't call the police for anything."
And after a while they began to call out into our dark suburb for another Roger. "Is there another Roger here?" one policeman called.
"Roger!" screamed the fat bowler, but my dark house and the dark houses of my neighbors were appropriately silent. In daylight, I knew, they would all be gone. Only their oil slicks and their broken glass would remain.
Relieved--and, as always, pleased with the destruction of automotive vehicles--I watched until almost dawn, when the hulking, coupled Land Rovers were finally separated and towed away. They were like two exhausted rhinos caught fornicating in the suburbs. Roger and the fat bowler stood arguing, and swinging their bowling balls, until the streetlamps in our block were extinguished; then, as if on signal, the bowlers shook hands and departed in different directions--on foot, and as if they knew where they were going.
The police came interrogating in the morning, still concerned with the possibility of another Roger. But they learned nothing from me--just as they learn nothing, apparently, whenever I report a speeder to them. "Well, if it happens again," they tell me, "be sure to let us know."
Fortunately, I have rarely needed the police; I am usually effective with first offenders. Only once have I had to stop the same driver--and him, only twice. He was an arrogant young man in a blood-red plumber's truck. Lurid-yellow lettering advertised on the cab that the plumber handled Roto-Rootering needs and all plumbing services: