March

March is the month in which Garp’s anxious care for Walt and the discovery of Helen’s involvement with Michael Milton overlap with the family’s ordinary routines. Its scenes move from recurring childhood illness to the rain-soaked arrival of a note, and then to a nighttime meeting that Garp approaches without knowing what is happening inside the car. The month’s domestic details become part of the pressure surrounding the marriage and the family.

Walt’s recurring illness

In March’s muddy season, five-year-old Walt suffers through repeated colds, or what seems to Garp like one long cold that keeps returning. His cough wakes both child and father night after night. Garp listens to Walt’s chest as he falls asleep, and sometimes wakes frightened when he can no longer hear the boy’s heartbeat; Walt has simply shifted his father’s heavy head so that he can sleep more comfortably.

Helen and the doctor regard the illness as an ordinary cough, and Helen points out that Duncan had colds at five but seems to have outgrown them by nearly eleven. Garp, however, experiences Walt’s breathing as a source of immediate danger. His nights are shaped by vigilance and interrupted sleep, a strain that also leaves Helen short-tempered. The contrast between the adults’ reassurance and Garp’s fear establishes how strongly his attention is fixed on the children’s safety.

A note and a name

The revelation reaches Garp through a note from Margie Tallworth. Margie arrives at the porch with the message as rain begins, using the delicate phrase that Helen is “involved with” Michael Milton. The note is wet with tears and perfume. Garp opens it carefully, then learns the name he had suspected but not consciously settled on: Michael Milton.

The name brings back an earlier encounter. Garp had met Michael at a party and dismissed him to Helen as a “wimp”; the two had discussed Michael’s mustache. Now Garp reads the name repeatedly in a phone book, while Duncan mistakes his attention to the directory for another search for the imaginary people his father invents. Garp tears up the note and pushes its pieces through a storm sewer, but the gesture does not dispose of what it tells him. The discovery turns an indistinct suspicion into a named fact.

Rain, routine, and the approaching meeting

Rain disrupts Garp’s predictable schedule. He dislikes getting his running shoes wet, so when rain sends him home from a run, he cooks for an hour in a foul-weather mood before taking the bus to wrestling practice. He picks up Walt from day care and brings him to the gym, calls home to check whether Duncan has returned from school, and gives Duncan reminders about riding his bicycle and calling emergency numbers. After practice, he showers with Walt; Helen comes to collect them when Garp calls again.

That routine also explains why Garp is not at home when Helen arranges to meet Michael. When Michael says he is coming, Helen decides she will not let him into the house and waits for the Buick. As it stops by the garage, she runs out and presses herself against the driver’s-side door before he can get out. The rain and slush frame a meeting she intends to keep brief and outside the home, but Michael immediately kisses her. The scene makes the private affair intersect with the family’s shared domestic space without yet bringing Garp into it.

The driveway and the shift in understanding

At the same time that Helen is with Michael, Garp returns in the Volvo with Duncan and Walt. He drives down the hill at about forty miles per hour, keeps the car in gear until he can judge its grip on the frozen slush, then shifts into neutral and switches off the headlights. The children crowd between the bucket seats, excited as the car coasts up the driveway in darkness. The family’s arrival is presented through the familiar practicalities of driving and keeping the children close, while Helen’s meeting is unfolding nearby.

March therefore gathers two kinds of attention around the Garp household: Garp’s watchfulness over the children and the new knowledge that Helen has been involved with Michael. The month does not make these concerns separate. Walt’s cough already keeps Garp awake and alert; the note gives that alertness a different object, a name that he cannot put out of mind. Rain, which interrupts his routine and brings him home, also helps set the circumstances in which the affair becomes known and its consequences draw closer.