The World According to Garp

"He bit me," Garp reminded her.

"I remember," Cushie said. She squeezed his hand and he led her where he wanted to go.

"What the hell is going on here?" they heard Stewart Percy yelling.

"It's Bonkie, it's Bonkie!" Pooh Percy called into the night.

"Bonkers!" called Fat Stew. "Here, Bonkers! Here, Bonkers!" And they all heard the deaf dog's resounding caterwaul.

It was a commotion capable of carrying across an empty campus. It woke Jenny Fields, who peered out her window in the infirmary annex. Fortunately for Garp, he saw her turn on a light. He made Cushie hide behind him, in a corridor of the unoccupied annex, while he sought Jenny's medical advice.

"What happened to you?" Jenny asked him. Garp wanted to know if the blood running down his chin was his own or entirely Bonkers'. At the kitchen table, Jenny washed away a black scab-like thing that was st

uck to Garp. It fell off Garp's throat and landed on the table--it was the size of a silver dollar. They both stared at it.

"What is it?" Jenny asked.

"An ear," Garp said. "Or part of one."

On the white enamel table lay the black leathery remnant of an ear, curling slightly at the edges and cracked like an old, dry glove.

"I ran into Bonkers," Garp said.

"An ear for an ear," said Jenny Fields.

There was not a mark on Garp; the blood belonged solely to Bonkers.

When Jenny went back to her bedroom, Garp snuck Cushie into the tunnel that led to the main infirmary. For eighteen years he had learned the way. He took her to the wing farthest from his mother's apartment in the annex; it was over the main admittance room, near the rooms for surgery and anesthesia.

Thus sex for Garp would forever be associated with certain smells and sensations. The experience would remain secretive but relaxed: a final reward in harrowing times. The odor would stay in his mind as deeply personal and yet vaguely hospital. The surroundings would forever seem to be deserted. Sex for Garp would remain in his mind as a solitary act committed in an abandoned universe--sometime after it had rained. It was always an act of terrific optimism.

Cushie, of course, evoked for Garp many images of cannons. When the third condom of the three-pack was exhausted, she asked if that was all he had--if he'd bought only one package. A wrestler loves nothing so much as hard-earned exhaustion; Garp fell asleep to Cushie complaining.

"The first time you don't have any," she was saying, "and now you run out? It is lucky we're such old friends."

It was still dark and far from dawn when Stewart Percy woke them. Fat Stew's voice violated the old infirmary like an unnameable disease. "Open up!" they heard him hollering, and they crept to the window to see.

On the green, green lawn, in his bathrobe and slippers--and with Bonkers leashed beside him--Cushie's father bleated at the windows of the infirmary annex. It was not long before Jenny appeared in the light.

"Are you ill?" she asked Stewart.

"I want my daughter!" Stewart yelled.

"Are you drunk?" Jenny asked.

"You let me in!" Stewart screamed.

"The doctor is out," said Jenny Fields, "and I doubt there is anything I can treat you for."

"Bitch!" Stewart bellowed. "Your bastard son has seduced my daughter! I know they're in there, in that fucking infirmary!"

It is a fucking infirmary now, Garp thought, delighting in the touch and scent of Cushie trembling beside him. In the cool air, through the dark window, they shivered in silence.

"You should see my dog!" Stewart screeched to Jenny. "Blood everywhere! The dog hiding under the hammock! Blood on the porch!" Stewart croaked. "What the hell did that bastard do to Bonkers?"

Garp felt Cushie flinch beside him when his mother spoke. What Jenny said must have made Cushie Percy remember her remark, thirteen years earlier. What Jenny Fields said was, "Garp bit Bonkie." Then her light went out, and in the darkness cast over the infirmary and its annex only Fat Stew's breathing was audible with the runoff from the rain--washing over the Steering School, rinsing everything clean.

5