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"Oh, baby," she said. "You found me!"
"I don't think I can drive the fucking car," Harold said. Out on Ocean Lane the man's sport car still chugged like an animal interested in eating sand.
"I can drive, baby," Laurel said. "You just never let me."
"Now I'll let you," Harold groaned. "Believe me."
"Oh, baby," Laurel said.
Roberta and Garp carried the man to the car. "I think I really need Laurel," the man confided to them. "Fucking bucket seats," the man complained, when they had gingerly squeezed him in. Harold was large for his car. It was the first time in what seemed like years, to Garp, that Garp had been this near to an automobile. Roberta put her hand on Garp's shoulder, but Garp turned away.
"I guess Harold needs me," Laurel told Jenny Fields, and gave a little shrug.
"But why does she need him?" said Jenny Fields, to no one in particular, as the little car drove away. Garp had wandered off. Roberta, punishing herself for her momentarily lapsed femininity, went to find Duncan and mother him.
Helen was talking on the phone to the Fletchers, Harrison and Alice, who wanted to come visit. That might help us, Helen thought. She was right, and it must have boosted Helen's confidence in herself--to be right about something again.
* * *
--
The Fletchers stayed a week. There was at last a child for Duncan to play with, even if it was not his age and not his sex; it was, at least, a child who knew about his eye, and Duncan lost most of his self-consciousness about the eye patch. When the Fletchers left, he was more willing to go to the beach by himself, even at those times of the day when he might encounter other children--who might ask him or, of course, tease him.
Harrison provided Helen with a confidant, as he had been for her before; she was able to tell Harrison things about Michael Milton that were simply too raw to tell Garp, and yet she needed to say them. She needed to talk about her anxieties for her marriage, now; and how she was dealing with the accident so differently from Garp. Harrison suggested another child. Get pregnant, he advised. Helen confided that she was no longer taking the pills, but she did not tell Harrison that Garp had not slept with her--not since it had happened. She didn't really need to tell Harrison that; Harrison noted the separate rooms.
Alice encouraged Garp to stop the silly notes. He could talk if he tried, if he wasn't so vain about how he sounded. If she could talk, certainly he could spit the words out, Alice reasoned--teeth wired together, delicate tongue, and all; he could at least try.
"Alish," Garp said.
"Yeth," said Alice. "That'th my name. What'th yours?"
"Arp," Garp managed to say.
Jenny Fields, passing whitely to another room, shuddered like a ghost and moved on.
"I mish him," Garp confessed to Alice.
"You mith him, yeth, of courth you do," said Alice, and she held him while he cried.
It was quite some time after the Fletchers left when Helen came to Garp's room in the night. She was not surprised to find him lying awake, because he was listening to what she'd heard, too. It was why she couldn't sleep.
Someone, one of Jenny's late arrivals--a new guest--was taking a bath. First the Garps had heard the tub being drawn, then they'd heard the plunking in the water--now the splashing and soapy sounds. There was even a little light singing, or the person was humming.
They remembered, of course, the years Walt had washed himself within their hearing, how they would listen for any telltale slipping sounds, or for the most frightening sound of all--which was no sound. And then they'd call, "Walt?" And Walt would say, "What?" And they would say, "Okay, just checking!" To make sure that he hadn't slipped under and drowned.
Walt liked to lie with his ears underwater, listening to his fingers climbing the walls of the tub, and often he wouldn't hear Garp or Helen calling him. He'd look up, surprised, to see their anxious faces suddenly above him, peering over the rim of the tub. "I'm all right," he'd say, sitting up.
"Just answer, for God's sake, Walt," Garp would tell him. "When we call you, just answer us."
"I didn't hear you," Walt said.
"Then keep your head out of the water," Helen said.
"But how can I wash my hair?" Walt asked.
"That's a lousy way to wash your hair, Walt," Garp said. "Call me. I'll wash your hair."
"Okay," said Walt. And when they left him alone, he'd put his head underwater again and listen to the world that way.
