John Irving - The World According to Garp

Helen, Garp marveled, moved through their life together as if it were an essay she was structuring—with an introduction, a presentation of basic priorities, then the thesis.

“Harry thinks the student is special ,” Garp pointed out.

“Fucking men ,” Helen said. “You look after Alice. I'll show Harrison what's special.”

So one night, after Garp had cooked an elegant Paprika Chicken and spдtzle, Helen said to Garp, “Harrison and I will do the dishes. You take Alice home.”

“Take her home?” Garp said. “Now?”

“Show him your novel,” Helen said to Alice. “Show him everything you want. I'm going to show your husband what an asshole he is.”

“Hey, come on,” Harry said. “We're all friends, we all want to stay friends, right?”

“You simple son of a bitch,” Helen told him. “You fuck a student and call her special—you insult your wife, you insult me. I'll show you what's special.”

“Go easy, Helen,” Garp said.

“Go with Alice,” Helen said. “And let Alice drive her own baby-sitter home.”

“Hey, come on!” Harrison Fletcher said.

“Shuth up, Harrithon!” Alice said. She grabbed Garp's hand and stood up from the table.

“Fucking men ,” said Helen. Garp, as speechless as an Ellen Jamesian, took Alice home.

“I can take the baby-sitter home, Alice,” he said. “Jutht get back fatht ,” Alice said.

“Very fast, Alice,” Garp said.

She made him read the first chapter of her novel aloud to her. “I want to hear it,” she told him, “and I can't thay it mythelf.” So Garp said it to her; it read, he was relieved to hear, beautifully. Alice wrote with such fluency and care that Garp could have sung her sentences, unselfconsciously, and they would have sounded fine.

“You have a lovely voice, Alice,” he told her, and she cried. And they made love, of course, and despite what everyone knows about such things, it was special.

“Wasn't it?” asked Alice.

“Yes, it was ,” Garp admitted.

Now, he thought, here is trouble.

“What can we do?” Helen asked Garp. She had made Harrison Fletcher forget his “special” student; Harrison now thought that Helen was the most special thing in his life.

“You started it,” Garp said to her. “If it's going to stop, you've got to stop it, I think.”

“That's easy to say,” Helen said. “I like Harrison; he's my best friend, and I don't want to lose that. I'm just not very interested in sleeping with him.”

“ He's interested,” Garp said.

“God, I know,” Helen said.

“He thinks you're the best he's had,” Garp told her. “Oh, great,” Helen said. “That must be lovely for Alice.”

“Alice isn't thinking about it,” Garp said. Alice was thinking about Garp , Garp knew; and Garp was afraid the whole thing would stop. There were times when Garp thought that Alice was the best he'd ever had. “And what about you?” Helen asked him. ("Nothing is equal,” Garp would write, one day.)

“I'm fine,” Garp said. “I like Alice, I like you, I like Harry.”

“And Alice?” Helen asked.

“Alice likes me,” Garp said.

“Oh boy,” Helen said. “So we all like each other, except that I don't care that much for sleeping with Harrison.”

“So it's over,” Garp said, trying to hide the gloom in his voice. Alice had cried to him that it could never be over. ("Could it? Could it?” she had cried. “I can't jutht thtop !")

“Well, isn't it still better than it was ?” Helen asked Garp.

“You made your point,” Garp said. “You got Harry off his damn student. Now you've just got to let him down easy.”

“And what about you and Alice?” Helen asked.

“If it's over for one of us, it's over for all of us,” Garp said. “That's only fair.”

“I know what's fair ,” Helen said. “I also know what's human .”

The good-byes that Garp imagined conducting with Alice were violent scenarios, fraught with Alice's incoherent speech and always ending in desperate lovemaking—another failed resolution, wet with sweat and sweet with the lush stickum of sex, oh yeth.

“I think Alice is a little loony ,” Helen said.

“Alice is a pretty good writer,” Garp said. “She's the real thing.”

“Fucking writers ,” Helen mumbled.

“Harry doesn't appreciate how talented Alice is,” Garp heard himself say.

“Oh boy,” Helen murmured. “This is the last time I try to save anyone's marriage except my own.”

It took six months for Helen to let Harry down easy, and in that time Garp saw as much of Alice as he could, while still trying to forewarn her that their foursome was going to be short-lived. He also tried to forewarn himself, because he dreaded the knowledge that he would have to give Alice up.

“It's not the same, for all four of us,” he told Alice. “It will have to stop, and pretty soon.”

“Tho what?” Alice said. “It hasn't thtopped yet, has it?”

“Not yet,” Garp admitted. He read all her written words aloud to her, and they made love so much he stung in the shower and couldn't stand to wear a jock when he ran.

“We've got to do and do it,” Alice said, fervently. “Do it while we can.”

“You know, this can't last,” Garp tried to warn Harry, while they were playing squash.

“I know, I know,” Harry said, “but it's great while it lasts, isn't it?”

“Isn't it?” Alice demanded. Did Garp love Alice? Oh yeth.

“Yes, yes,” Garp said, shaking his head. He thought he did.

But Helen, enjoying it the least of them, suffered it the most; when she finally called an end to it, she couldn't help but show her euphoria. The other three couldn't help but show their resentment: that she should appear so uplifted while they were cast into such gloom. Without formal imposition there existed a six-month moratorium on the couples' seeing each other, except by chance. Naturally, Helen and Harry ran into each other at the English Department. Garp encountered Alice in the supermarket. Once she deliberately crashed her shopping cart into his; little Walt was jarred among the produce and the juice cans, and Alice's daughter looked equally alarmed at the collision.

“I felt the need of thum contact ,” Alice said. And she called the Garps one night, very late, after Garp and Helen had gone to bed. Helen answered the phone.

“Is Harrithon there?” she asked Helen.

“No, Alice,” Helen said. “Is something wrong?”

“He's not here ,” Alice said. “I haven't theen Harrithon all night!”

“Let me come over and sit with you,” Helen suggested. “Garp can go look for Harrison.”

“Can't Garp come over and thit with me?” Alice asked. “ You look for Harrithon.”

“No, I'll come over and sit with you,” Helen said. “I think that's better. Garp can go look for Harrison.”

“I want Garp,” Alice said.

“I'm sorry that you can't have him,” Helen said.

“I'm thorry, Helen,” Alice said. She cried into the phone and said a stream of things that Helen couldn't understand. Helen gave the phone to Garp.

Garp talked to Alice, and listened to her, for about an hour. Nobody looked for “Harrithon.” Helen felt she had done a good job of holding herself together for the six months she'd allowed it all to continue; she expected them all to at least control themselves adequately, now that it was over.

“If Harrison is out screwing students, I'm really going to cross him off,” Helen said. “That asshole! And if Alice calls herself a writer, why isn't she writing? If she's got so much to thay , why waste saying it on the phone?”