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Helen looked puzzled. "I wouldn't say that was even an issue," she said.

"Of course it isn't!" Garp yelled. "This woman is an idiot! My mother would love her."

"Oh, poor Jenny," Helen said. "Don't start on her."

"Finish your pasta, Walt," Garp said.

"Up your wazoo," Walt said.

"Nice talk," Garp said. "Walt, I don't have a wazoo."

"Yes, you do," Walt said.

"He doesn't know what it means," Helen said. "I'm not sure what it means, either."

"Five years old," Garp said. "It's not nice to say that to people," Garp told Walt.

"He heard it from Duncan, I'm sure," Helen said.

"Well, Duncan gets it from Ralph," Garp said, "who no doubt gets it from his goddamn mother!"

"Watch your own language," Helen said. "Walt could as easily have gotten his 'wazoo' from you."

"Not from me, he couldn't have," Garp declared. "I'm not sure what it means, either. I never use that word."

"You use plenty just like it," Helen said.

"Walt, eat your pasta," Garp said.

"Calm down," Helen said.

Garp eyed Walt's uneaten pasta as if it were a personal insult. "Why do I bother?" he said. "The child eats nothing."

They finished their meal in silence. Helen knew Garp was thinking up a story to tell Walt after dinner. She knew Garp did this to calm himself whenever he was worried about the children--as if the act of imagining a good story for children was a way to keep children safe forever.

With the children Garp was instinctively generous, loyal as an animal, the most affectionate of fathers; he understood Duncan and Walt deeply and separately. Yet, Helen felt sure, he saw nothing of how his anxiety for the children made the children anxious--tense, even immature. On the one hand he treated them as grownups, but on the other hand he was so protective of them that he was not allowing them to grow up. He did not accept that Duncan was ten, that Walt was five; sometimes the children seemed fixed, as three-year-olds, in his mind.

Helen listened to the story Garp made up for Walt with her usual interest and concern. Like many of the stories Garp told the children, it began as a story for the children and ended up as a story Garp seemed to have made up for Garp. You would think that the children of a writer would have more stories read to them than other children, but Garp preferred that his children listen only to his stories.

"There was a dog," Garp said.

"What kind of dog?" said Walt.

"A big German shepherd dog," said Garp.

"What was his name?" Walt asked.

"He didn't have a name," Garp said. "He lived in a city in Germany, after the war."

"What war?" said Walt.

"World War II," Garp said.

"Oh sure,"

Walt said.

"The dog had been in the war," Garp said. "He had been a guard dog, so he was very fierce and very smart."