The World According To Garp (59 page)

“Not these, you won’t,” John Wolf said. “Take a trip. Please.” Then John Wolf sent the jacket flap copy to Jenny Fields. He asked her for her confidence, and her help in getting Garp to leave the country.

“Leave the country,” Jenny said to her son. “It’s the best thing you can do for yourself and your family.” Helen was actually keen on the idea; she’d never been abroad. Duncan had read his father’s first story, “The Pension Grillparzer,” and he wanted to go to Vienna.

“Vienna’s not
really
like that,” Garp told Duncan, but it touched Garp very much that the boy liked the old story. Garp liked it, too. In fact, he was beginning to wish that he liked everything else he had written half as much.

“With a new baby, why go to Europe?” Garp complained. “I don’t know. It’s complicated. The passports—and the baby will need lots of shots, or something.”

“You need some shots yourself,” said Jenny Fields. “The baby will be perfectly safe.”

“Don’t you want to see Vienna again?” Helen asked Garp.

“Ah, just imagine, the scene of your old crimes!” John Wolf said heartily.

“Old, crimes?” Garp mumbled. “I don’t know.”

“Please, Dad,” Duncan said. Garp was a sucker to what Duncan wanted; he agreed.

Helen cheered up and even took a glance at the galleys of
The World According to Bensenhaver
, though it was a quick, nervous glance, and she had no intention of doing any real reading therein. The first thing she saw was the dedication.

For Jillsy Sloper

“Who in God’s name is Jillsy Sloper?” she asked Garp.

“I don’t know, really,” Garp said; Helen frowned at him. “No,
really
,” he said. “It’s some girl friend of John’s; he said she loved the book—couldn’t put it down. Wolf took it as a kind of omen, I guess; it was his suggestion, anyway,” Garp said. “And I thought it was nice.”

“Hm,” said Helen; she put the galleys aside.

They both imagined John Wolf’s girl friend in silence. John Wolf had been divorced before they met him; though the Garps had gotten to meet some of Wolf’s grown-up children, they had never met his first and only wife. There had been a conservative number of girl friends, all smart and sleekly attractive women—all younger than John Wolf. Some working girls, in the publishing business, but mostly young women with divorces of their own, and money—always money, or always the look of money. Garp remembered most of them by how nicely they smelled, and how their lipstick tasted—and the high-gloss, touchable quality of their clothes.

Neither Garp nor Helen could ever have imagined Jillsy Sloper, the offspring of a white person and a quadroon—which made Jillsy an octoroon, or one eighth Negro. Her skin was a sallow brown, like a lightly stained pine board. Her hair was straight and short and waxy-black, beginning to gray at her bangs, which were coarsely chopped above her shining, wrinkled forehead. She was short, with long arms, and her ring finger was missing from her left hand. By the deep scar on her right cheek, one could imagine that the ring finger had been cut off in the same battle, by the same weapon—perhaps during a bad marriage, for she had certainly had a bad marriage. Which she never spoke of.

She was about forty-five and looked sixty. She had the trunk of a Labrador retriever about to have puppies, and she shuffled whenever and wherever she walked because her feet killed her. In a few years she would so long ignore the lump she could feel in her own breast, which no one else ever felt, that she would die needlessly of cancer.

She had an unlisted phone number (as John discovered) only because her former husband threatened to kill her every few months, and she tired of hearing from him; the reason she had a phone at all was that her children needed a place to call collect so that they could ask her to send them money.

But Helen and Garp, when they imagined Jillsy Sloper, did not for a moment see anyone approximating this sad, hard-working octoroon. “John Wolf seems to be doing everything for this book except writing it,” Helen said.

“I wish he
had
written it,” Garp suddenly said. Garp had reread the book, and he felt full of doubt. In “The Pension Grillparzer,” Garp thought, there was a certainty concerning how the world behaved. In
The World According to Bensenhaver
, Garp had felt less certain—an indication he was getting older, of course; but artists, he knew, should also get
better
.

With baby Jenny and one-eyed Duncan, Garp and Helen left for Europe out of a cool New England August; most transatlantic travelers were headed the other way.

“Why not wait until after Thanksgiving?” Ernie Holm asked them. But
The World According to Bensenhaver
would be published in October. John Wolf had received various responses to the uncorrected proofs he circulated through the summer; they had all been enthusiastic responses—enthusiastically praising the book, or enthusiastically condemning it.

He’d had difficulty keeping Garp from seeing the advance copies of the actual book—the book jacket, for example. But Garp’s own enthusiasm for the book was so sporadic, and generally low, that John Wolf had been able to stall him.

Garp was now excited about the trip, and he was talking about other books he was going to write. (“A good sign,” John Wolf told Helen.)

Jenny and Roberta drove the Garps to Boston, where they took a plane to New York. “Don’t worry about the airplane,” Jenny said. “It won’t fall.”

“Jesus, Mom,” Garp said. “What do you know about airplanes? They fall all the time.”

“Keep your arms in constant motion, like wings,” Roberta told Duncan.

“Don’t scare him, Roberta,” Helen said.

“I’m not scared,” Duncan said.

“If your father keeps
talking
, you can’t fall,” Jenny said.

“If he keeps talking,” Helen said, “we’ll never
land
.” They could see that Garp was all wound up.

“I’ll
fart
all the way, if you don’t leave me alone,” Garp said, “and we’ll go in a great explosion.”

“You better write often,” Jenny said.

Remembering dear old Tinch, and his last trip to Europe, Garp told his mother, “This time I’m just going to
ab-ab-absorb
a lot, Mom. I’m not going to write a w-w-word.” They both laughed at this, and Jenny Fields even cried a little, although only Garp noticed; he kissed his mother good-bye. Roberta, whose sex reassignment had made her a dynamite kisser, kissed everyone several times.

“Jesus, Roberta,” Garp said.

“I’ll look after the old girl while you’re gone,” Roberta said, her giant arm dwarfing Jenny, who looked so small and suddenly very gray beside her.

“I don’t need any looking after,” Jenny Fields said.

“It’s Mom who looks after everyone else,” Garp said.

Helen hugged Jenny, because she knew how true that was. From the airplane, Garp and Duncan could see Jenny and Roberta waving from the observation deck. There had been some seat changes because Duncan had wanted a window seat on the left-hand side of the plane. “The right-hand side is just as nice,” a stewardess said.

“Not if you don’t have a right eye,” Duncan told her, pleasantly, and Garp admired how the boy was feeling so bold about himself.

Helen and the baby sat across the aisle from them. “Can you see Grandma?” Helen asked Duncan.

“Yes,” Duncan said.

Although the observation deck was suddenly overrun with people wanting to see the takeoff, Jenny Fields—as always—stood out in her white uniform, even though she was short. “Why does Nana look so tall?” Duncan asked Garp, and it was true: Jenny Fields towered head and shoulders above the crowd. Garp, realized that Roberta was lifting his mother up as if his mother were a child. “Oh,
Roberta’s
got her!” Duncan cried. Garp looked at his mother hefted up in the air to wave goodbye to him, safe in the arms of the old tight end; Jenny’s shy, confident smile touched him, and he waved out the window to her, although Garp knew that Jenny couldn’t see inside the plane. For the first time, his mother looked old to him; he looked away—across the aisle, at Helen with their new child.

“Here we go,” Helen said. Helen and Garp held hands across the aisle when the plane lifted off, because, Garp knew, Helen was terrified of flying.

In New York, John Wolf put them up in his apartment; he gave Garp and Helen and baby Jenny his own bedroom and graciously offered to share the guest room with Duncan.

The grownups had a late dinner and too much cognac. Garp told John Wolf about the next three novels he was going to write.

“The first one is called
My Father’s Illusions
,” Garp said. “It’s about an idealistic father who has many children. He keeps establishing little utopias for his kids to grow up in, and after his kids grow up he becomes a founder of small colleges. But all of them go broke—the colleges and the kids. The father keeps trying to give a speech at the U.N., but they keep throwing him out; it’s the same speech—he keeps revising and revising it. Then he tries to run a free hospital; it’s a disaster. Then he tries to institute a nationwide free-transportation system. Meanwhile, his wife divorces him and his children keep growing older, and turning out unhappy, or fucked-up—or just perfectly normal, you know. The only thing the children have in common are these dreadful memories of the utopias their father tried to have them grow up in. Finally, the father becomes the governor of Vermont.”

“Vermont?” John Wolf asked.

“Yes, Vermont,” Garp said. “He becomes governor of Vermont, but he really thinks of himself as a king. More utopias, you see.”

“
The King of Vermont!
” John Wolf said. “That’s a better title.”

“No, no,” Garp said. “That’s another book. No relation. The second book, after
My Father’s Illusions
, will be called
The Death of Vermont
.”

“Same cast of characters?” Helen asked.

“No, no,” Garp said. “Another story. It’s about the death of Vermont.”

“Well, I like something that is what it says it is,” John Wolf said. “One year spring doesn’t come,” Garp said.

“Spring never does come to Vermont, anyway,” Helen said.

“No, no,” Garp said, frowning. “This year summer doesn’t come, either. Winter never stops. It warms up one day and all the buds appear. Maybe in May. One day in May there are buds on the trees, the next day there are leaves, and the next day the leaves have all turned. It’s fall already. The leaves fall off the trees.”

“A short foliage season,” Helen said.

“Very funny,” Garp said. “But that’s what happens. It’s winter again; it will be winter forever.”

“The people die?” John Wolf asked.

“I’m not sure about the people,” Garp said. “Some leave Vermont, of course.”

“Not a bad idea,” Helen said.

“Some stay, some die. Maybe they all die,” Garp said.

“What’s it mean?” John Wolf asked.

“I’ll know when I get there,” Garp said. Helen laughed.

“And there’s a
third
novel, after that?” John Wolf asked.

“It’s called
The Plot against the Giant
,” Garp said.

“That’s a poem by Wallace Stevens,” Helen said.

“Yes, of course,” Garp said, and he recited the poem for them.

The Plot against the Giant

First Girl

When this yokel comes maundering,

Whetting his hacker,

I shall run before him,

Difusing the civilest odors

Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.

It will check him.

Second Girl

I shall run before him,

Arching cloths besprinkled with colors

As small as fish-eggs.

The threads

Will abash him.

Third Girl

Oh, la… le pauvre!

__]
I shall run before him,

With a curious puffing.

He will bend his ear then.

I shall whisper

Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals.

It will undo him.

__]

“What a nice poem,” Helen said.

“The novel is in three parts,” Garp said.

“Girl One, Girl Two, Girl Three?” John Wolf asked.

“And is the giant undone?” Helen asked.

“Is he ever,” Garp said.

“Is he a
real
giant, in the novel?” John Wolf asked.

“I don’t know, yet,” Garp said.

“Is he
you
?” Helen asked.

“I hope not,” Garp said.

“I hope not, too,” said Helen.

“Write that one first,” John Wolf said.

“No, write it last,” Helen said.

“
The Death of Vermont
seems the logical one to write last,” John Wolf said.

“No, I see
The Plot against the Giant
as last,” Garp said.

“Wait and write it after I’m dead,” Helen said.

Everyone laughed.

“But there are only three,” John Wolf said. “What then? What happens after the three?”

“I die,” Garp said. “That will make six novels altogether, and that’s enough.”

Everyone laughed again.

“And do you also know
how
you die?” John Wolf asked him.

“Let’s stop this,” Helen said. And to Garp she said, “If you say, “In an airplane,” I will not forgive you.” Behind the lightly drunk humor in her voice, John detected a seriousness; it made him stretch his legs. “You two better go to bed,” he said. “And get rested for your trip.”

“Don’t you want to know how I die?” Garp asked them.

They didn’t say anything.

“I kill myself,” Garp said, pleasantly. “In order to become fully established, that seems almost necessary. I mean it,
really
,” Garp said. “In the present fashion, you’ll agree this is one way of recognizing a writer’s seriousness? Since the
art
of the writing doesn’t always make the writer’s seriousness apparent, it’s sometimes necessary to reveal the depth of one’s personal anguish by other means. Killing yourself seems to mean that you were serious after all. “It’s
true
,” Garp said, but his sarcasm was unpleasant and Helen sighed; John Wolf stretched again. “And thereafter,” Garp said, “much seriousness is suddenly revealed in the work—where it had escaped notice before.”