The World According To Garp (41 page)

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 naïve 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 smart-mouthed 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 tight-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 cones. 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 half-hearted 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-chasing condition, that is not what intimidates the speeders. No, they are almost always intimidated by my
parenthood
, because they are almost always young. Yes, my parenthood is what sobers them, almost every time. I begin simply. “Did you see my children back there?” I ask them, loudly and anxiously. Veteran speeders, upon being asked such a question, are immediately frightened that they have
run
over my children. They are instantly defensive.

“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 upsidedown 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 come another Land Rover, as if they were a separated twosome from a column of an army on the move. Roger’s Land Rover come 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 bothering the person who reports the crime than they are interested in bothering the criminals. And sure enough, when they arrived, they went straight after Roger. I could see them all arguing under the streetlamps, but I could catch only snatches of their conversation.

“
He’s
Roger,” the fat bowler kept saying. “He’s Roger through and through.”