The World According To Garp Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Good! That’s
good
.”
    “Garp!” he’d agree.
    And when he spat out food on his bib and made a terrible face, she’d say, “Bad! That stuff’s
bad
, right?”
    “Garp!” he’d gag.
    The first sign Jenny had of his deterioration was when he seemed to lose the G. One morning he greeted her with an “Arp.”
    “Garp,” she said firmly to him. “G-arp.”
    “Arp,” he said. She knew she was losing him.
    Daily he seemed to grow younger. When he slept, he kneaded the air with his wriggling fists, his lips puckering, his cheeks sucking, his eyelids trembling. Jenny had spent a lot of time around babies; she knew that the ball turret gunner was nursing in his dreams. For a while she contemplated stealing a pacifier from maternity, but she stayed away from that place now; the jokes irritated her (“Here’s Virgin Mary Jenny, swiping a phony nipple for her child. Who’s the lucky father, Jenny?”). She watched Sergeant Garp suckle in his sleep and tried to imagine that his ultimate regression would be peaceful, that he would turn into his fetus phase and no longer breathe through his lungs; that his personality would blissfully separate, half of him turning to dreams of an egg, half of him to dreams of sperm. Finally, he simply wouldn’t
be
anymore.
    It was almost like that. Garp’s nursing phase became so severe that he seemed to wake up like a child on a four-hour feeding schedule; he even cried like a baby, his face scarlet, his eyes springing tears in an instant, and in an instant being pacified—by the radio, by Jenny’s voice. Once, when she rubbed his back, he burped. Jenny burst into tears. She sat at his bedside wishing him a swift, painless journey back into the womb and beyond.
    If only his hands would heal, she thought. Then he could suck his thumb. When he woke from his suckling dreams, hungry to nurse, or so he imagined, Jenny would put her own finger to his mouth and let his lips tug at her. Though he had real, grown-up teeth, in his
mind
he was toothless and he never bit her. It was this observation that led Jenny, one night, to offer him her breast, where he sucked inexhaustibly and didn’t seem to mind that there was nothing to be had there. Jenny thought that if he kept nursing at her, she
would
have milk; she felt such a firm tug in her womb, both maternal and sexual. Her feelings were so vivid—she believed for a while that she could possibly
conceive
a child simply by suckling the baby ball turret gunner.
    It was almost like that. But Gunner Garp was not
all
baby. One night, when he nursed at her, Jenny noticed he had an erection that lifted the sheet; with his clumsy, bandaged hands he fanned himself, yelping frustration while he wolfed at her breast. And so one night she helped him; with her cool, powdered hand she took hold of him. At her breast he stopped nursing, he just nuzzled her.
    “Ar,” he moaned. He had lost the
P
.
    Once a Garp, then an Arp, now only an Ar; she knew he was dying. He had just one vowel and one consonant left.
    When he came, she felt his shot wet and hot in her hand. Under the sheet it smelled like a greenhouse in summer, absurdly fertile, growth gotten out of hand. You could plant
anything
there and it would blossom. Garp’s sperm struck Jenny Fields that way: if you spilled a little in a greenhouse,
babies
would sprout out of the dirt.
    Jenny gave the matter twenty-four hours of thought.
    “Garp?” Jenny whispered.
    She unbuttoned the blouse of her dress and brought forth the breasts she had always considered too large. “Garp?” she whispered in his ear; his eyelids fluttered, his lips reached. Around them was a white shroud, a curtain on runners, which enclosed them in the ward. On one side of Garp was an External—a flame-thrower victim, slippery with salve, swaddled in gauze. He had no eyelids, so it appeared he was always watching, but he was blind. Jenny took off her sturdy nurse’s shoes, unfastened her white stockings, stepped out of her