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"Use the phone," Garp said. "I'll take the kids out. We'll see a movie. Please have it over with before we come back. You won't see him again."

"I won't, I promise," Helen said. "But I should see him, just once--to tell him."

"I suppose you feel you've handled this very decently," Garp said.

Helen, to a point, did feel so; she didn't say anything. She felt she had never lost sight of Garp and the children during this indulgence; she felt justified in handling it her way, now.

"We should talk about this later," she said to him. "Some perspective will be possible, later."

He would have struck her if the children hadn't burst into the room.

"One, two, three," Duncan chanted to Walt.

"The cereal is stale!" Duncan and Walt hollered together.

"Please, boys," Helen said. "Your father and I are having a little fight. Go downstairs."

They stared at her.

"Please," Garp said to them. He turned away from them so they wouldn't see him crying, but Duncan probably knew, and surely Helen knew. Walt probably didn't catch it.

"A fight?" Walt said.

"Come on," Duncan said to him; he took Walt's hand. Duncan pulled Walt out of the bedroom. "Come on, Walt," Duncan said, "or we won't get to see the movie."

"Yeah, the movie!" Walt cried.

To his horror, Garp recognized the attitude of their leaving--Duncan leading Walt away, and down the stairs; the smaller boy turning and looking back. Walt waved, but Duncan pulled him on. Down and gone, into the bomb shelter. Garp hid his face in his clothes and cried.

When Helen touched him, he said, "Don't touch me," and went on crying. Helen shut the bedroom door.

"Oh, don't," she pleaded. "He isn't worth this; he wasn't anything. I just enjoyed him," she tried to explain, but Garp shook his head violently and threw his pants at her. He was still only half dressed--an attitude that was perhaps, Helen realized, the most compromising for men: when they were not one thing and also not another. A woman half dressed seemed to have some power, but a man was simply not as handsome as when he was naked, and not as secure as when he was clothed. "Please get dressed," she whispered to him, and handed him back his pants. He took them, he pulled them on; and went on crying.

"I'll do just what you want," she said.

"You won't see him again?" he said to her.

"No, not once," she said. "Not ever again."

"Walt has a cold," Garp said. "He shouldn't even be going out, but it's not too bad for him at a movie. And we won't be late," he added to her. "Go see if he's dressed warmly enough." She did.

He opened her top drawer, where her lingerie was, and pulled the drawer from the dresser; he pushed his face into the wonderful silkiness and scent of her clothes--like a bear holding a great trough of food in his forepaws, and then losing himself in it. When Helen came back into the room and caught him at this, it was almost as if she'd caught him masturbating. Embarrassed, he brought the drawer down across his knee and cracked it; her underwear flew about. He raised the cracked drawer over his head and smacked it down against the edge of the dresser, snapping what felt like the spine of an animal about the size of the drawer. Helen ran from the room and he finished dressing.

He saw Duncan's fairly well finished supper on Duncan's plate; he saw Walt's uneaten supper on Walt's plate, and on various parts of the table and floor. "If you don't eat, Walt," Garp said, "you'll grow up to be a wimp."

"I'm not going to grow up," Walt said.

That gave Garp such a shiver that he turned on Walt and startled the child. "Don't ever say that," Garp said.

"I don't want to grow up," Walt said.

"Oh, I see," Garp said, softening. "You mean, you like being a kid?"

"Yup," Walt said.

"Walt is so weird," Duncan said.

"I am not!" Walt cried.