"What did you do to your mustache?" she asked him.
"I thought you didn't like it," he said. "I did it for you."
"But I liked it," she said, and shivered in the freezing rain.
"Please, get in with me," he said.
She shook her head; her blouse clung to her cold skin and her long corduroy skirt felt as heavy as chain mail; her tall boots slipped in the stiffening slush.
"I won't take you anywhere," he promised. "We'll just sit here, in the car. We can't just stop," he repeated.
"We knew we'd have to," Helen said. "We knew it was just for a little while."
Michael Milton let his head sink against the glinting ring of the horn; but there was no sound, the big Buick was shut off. The rain began to stick to the windows--the car was slowly being encased in ice.
"Please get in," Michael Milton moaned. "I'm not leaving here," he added, sharply. "I'm not afraid of him. I don't have to do what he says."
"It's what I say, too," Helen said. "You have to go."
"I'm not going," Michael Milton said. "I know about your husband. I know everything about him."
They had never talked about Garp; Helen had forbidden it. She didn't know what Michael Milton meant.
"He's a minor writer," Michael said, boldly. Helen looked surprised; to her knowledge, Michael Milton had never read Garp. He'd told her once that he never read living writers; he claimed to value the perspective he said one could gain only when a writer had been dead for a while. It is fortunate that Garp didn't know this about him--it would certainly have added to Garp's contempt for the young man. It added somewhat to Helen's disappointment with poor Michael, now.
"My husband is a very good writer," she said softly, and a shiver made her twitch so hard that her folded arms sprang open and she had to fold them closed at her breasts again.
"He's not a major writer," Michael declared. "Higgins said so. You certainly must be aware of how your husband is regarded in the department."
Higgins, Helen was aware, was a singularly eccentric and troublesome colleague, who managed at the same time to be dull and cloddish to the point of sleep. Helen hardly felt Higgins was representative of the department--except that like many of her more insecure colleagues, Higgins habitually gossiped to the graduate students about his fellow department members; in this desperate way, perhaps, Higgins felt he gained the students' trust.
"I was not aware that Garp was regarded by the department, one way or another," Helen said coolly. "Most of them don't read anything very contemporary."
"Those who do say he's minor," Michael Milton said.
This competitive and pathetic stand did not warm Helen's heart to the boy and she turned to go back inside the house.
"I won't go!" Michael Milton screamed. "I'll confront him about us! Right now. He can't tell us what to do."
"I'm telling you, Michael," Helen said.
He slumped against the horn and began to cry. She went over and touched his shoulder through the window.
"I'll sit with you a minute," Helen told him. "But you must promise me that you'll leave. I won't have him or my children see this."
He promised.
"Give me the keys," Helen said. His look of baleful hurt--that she didn't trust him not to drive off with her--touched Helen all over again. She put the keys in the deep flap pocket of her long skirt and walked around to the passenger side and let herself in. He rolled up his window, and they sat, not touching, the windows fogging around them, the car creaking under a coat of ice.
Then he completely broke down and told her that she had meant more to him than all of France--and she knew what France had meant to him, of course. She held him, then, and wildly feared how much time had passed, or was passing there in the frozen car. Even if it was not a long movie, they must still have a good half hour, or forty-five minutes; yet Michael Milton was nowhere near ready to leave. She kissed him, strongly, hoping this would help, but he only began to fondle her wet, cold breasts. She felt all over as frozen to him as she had felt outside in the hardening sleet. But she let him touch her.
"Dear Michael," she said, thinking all the while.
"How can we stop?" was all he said.
But Helen had already stopped; she was only thinking about how to stop him. She shoved him up straight in the driver's position and stretched across the long seat, pulling her skirt back down to cover her knees, and putting her head in his lap.
"Please remember," she said. "Please try. This was the nicest part for me--just letting you drive me in the car, when I knew where we were going. Can't you be happy--can't you just remember that, and let it go?"