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Margie Tallworth was ignorant, but she was not ignorant of Michael Milton's relationship with Helen. She was ignorant of many things but she knew about that. She was ignorant in that she thought her own shallow infatuation with Michael Milton had "surpassed," as she would say, "the sexual"; whereas, she assumed, Helen was merely amusing herself with Michael. In truth, Margie Tallworth had absolutely wallowed in, as she would say, "the sexual"; it is difficult, in fact, to know what else her relationship with Michael Milton had been about. But she was not altogether wrong in assuming that this was what Helen's relationship with Michael Milton was also about. Margie Tallworth was ignorant in that she assumed too much, too much of the time; but in this case she had assumed correctly.
Back when Michael Milton and Helen were actually talking about Michael's "work," Margie assumed--even then--that they were fucking. Margie Tallworth did not believe there was another kind of relationship that one could have with Michael Milton. In this one way, she was not ignorant. She may have known the kind of relationship Helen had with Michael before Helen knew it herself.
And through the one-way glass of the fourth-floor ladies' room, in the English and Literature Building, it was possible for Margie Tallworth to look through the tinted windshield of the three-ton Buick, gliding like the coffin of a king out of the parking lot. Margie could see Mrs. Garp's slender legs stretched along the long front seat. It was a peculiar way to ride in a car with other than the best of friends.
Margie knew their habits better than she understood her own; she took long walks, to try to forget Michael Milton, and to familiarize herself with the whereabouts of Helen's house. She was soon familiar with the habits of Helen's husband, too, because Garp's habits were much more constant than anyone's: he padded back and forth, from room to room, in the mornings; perhaps he was out of a job. That fitted Margie Tallworth's assumptions of the likely cuckold: a man who was out of work. At midday he burst out the door in track clothes and ran away; miles later, he returned and read his mail, which nearly always came when he was gone. Then he padded back and forth in the house again; he undressed, in pieces, on the way to the shower, and he was slow to dress when he was out of the shower. One thing did not fit her image of the cuckold: Garp had a good body. And why did he spend so much time in the kitchen? Margie Tallworth wondered if perhaps he was an unemployed cook.
Then his children came home and they broke Margie Tallworth's soft little heart. He looked quite nice when he played with his children, which also fitted Margie's assumptions of what a cuckold was like: someone who had witless good fun with his children while his wife was out getting planked. "Planked" was also a word that the wrestlers Garp knew used, and they had used it back at those blood-and-blue days at Steering, too. Someone was always bragging about planking a wet, split beaver.
So one day, when Garp burst out the door in his track clothes, Margie Tallworth waited only as long as it took him to run away; then she went up on the Garps' porch with a perfumed note, which she intended to drop in his mail. She had thought very carefully that he would have time to read the note and (hopefully) recover himself before his children came home. This was how she assumed such news was absorbed: suddenly! Then there was a reasonable period of recovery and one got ready to face the children. Here was another case of something Margie Tallworth was ignorant of.
The note itself had given her trouble because she was not good with words. And it was perfumed not by intention but simply because every piece of paper Margie Tallworth owned was perfumed; if she had thought about it, she would have realized perfume was inappropriate to this note, but that was another of the things she was ignorant of. Even her schoolwork was perfumed; when Helen had read Margie Tallworth's first essay for Comp. Lit. 205, she had cringed at its scent.
What Mar
gie's note to Garp said was:
Your Wife Is "Involved with" Michael Milton
Margie Tallworth would grow up to be the sort of person who said that someone "passed away" instead of died. Thus she sought delicacy with the words that Helen was "involved with" Michael Milton. And she had this sweetly smelling note in her hand, and she was poised on the Garps' porch with it, when it began to rain.
Nothing made Garp turn back from a run faster than rain. He hated getting his running shoes wet. He would run in the cold, and run in the snow, but when it rained, Garp ran home, swearing, and cooked for an hour in a foul-weather mood. Then he put on a poncho and caught the bus to the gym in time for wrestling practice. On the way, he picked up Walt from day care and took Walt to the gym with him; he called home when he got to the gym to see if Duncan was back from school. Sometimes he gave Duncan instructions, if the meal was still cooking, but usually he just cautioned Duncan about riding his bike and he quizzed him about emergency phone numbers: did Duncan know what to dial in case of fire, explosion, armed robbery, mayhem in the streets?
Then he wrestled, and after practice he popped Walt into the shower with himself; by the time he called home again, Helen was there to come pick them up.
Therefore, Garp did not like rain; although he enjoyed wrestling, rain complicated his simple plans. And Margie Tallworth was unprepared to see him suddenly panting and angry behind her on the porch.
"Aaahhh!" she cried; she clutched her scented note as tightly as if it were the main artery of an animal whose blood flow she wished she could stop.
"Hello," said Garp. She looked like a baby-sitter to him. He had trained himself off baby-sitters some time ago. He smiled at her with frank curiosity--that is all.
"Aaa," said Margie Tallworth; she couldn't speak. Garp looked at the crushed message in her hand; she shut her eyes and held the note out to him, as if she were putting her hand into a fire.
If at first Garp had thought she was one of Helen's students, wanting something, now he thought something else. He saw that she couldn't speak, and he saw the extreme self-consciousness of her handing him the note. Garp's experience with speechless women who handed out notes self-consciously was limited to Ellen Jamesians, and he suppressed a momentary flame of anger--that another creepy Ellen Jamesian was introducing herself to him. Or had she come to bait him about something--the reclusive son of the exciting Jenny Fields?
Hi! I'm Margie. I'm an Ellen Jamesian,
her stupid note would say.
Do You Know What an Ellen Jamesian Is?
The next thing you know, Garp thought, they'll be organized like the religious morons who bring those righteous pamphlets about Jesus to one's very door. It sickened him, for example, that the Ellen Jamesians were now reaching girls as young as this one; she was too young to know, he thought, whether she wanted a tongue in her life or not. He shook his head and waved the note away.
"Yes, yes, I know, I know," Garp said. "So what?"
Poor Margie Tallworth was unprepared for this. She had come like an avenging angel--her terrible duty, and what a burden it was to her!--to bring the bad news that somehow must be made known. But he knew already! And he didn't even care.
She clutched her note in both her hands, so tightly to her pretty, trembling breasts that more of the perfume was expressed from it--or from her--and a wave of her young-girl smell passed over Garp, who stood glaring at her.
"I said, 'So what?'" Garp said. "Do you actually expect me to have respect for someone who cuts her own tongue off?"
Margie forced a word out. "What?" she said; she was frightened now. Now she guessed why the poor man padded around his house all day, out of work: he was insane.
Garp had distinctly heard the word; it was not a gagged "Aaahhh" or even a little "Aaa"--it was not the word of an amputated tongue. It was a whole word.
"What?" he said.
"What?" she said, again.
