The World According to Garp

by John Irving

  The hunters in their pickup trucks were of the opinion that to vote for this woman was to vote for faggotry--and lesbianism, and socialism, and alimony, and New York. And so forth. Garp had the feeling, watching the tele-cast, that those things were not tolerated in New Hampshire.

  Garp and Helen and Duncan, and baby Jenny, sat in the Viennese pension about to watch the murder of Jenny Fields. Their bewildered old landlady served them coffee and little cakes; only Duncan ate anything.

  Then Jenny Fields had her turn to speak to the assembled people in the parking lot. She spoke from the back of a pickup truck; Roberta Muldoon lifted her up to the tailgate and adjusted the microphone for her. Garp's mother looked very small in the pickup truck, especially beside Roberta, but Jenny's uniform was so white that she stood out, bright and clear.

  "I am Jenny Fields," she said--to some cheers and some whistles and some hoots. There was a blaring of horns from the pickup trucks circling the parking lot. The police were telling the pickup trucks to move on; they moved on, and came back, and moved on again. "Most of you know who I am," Jenny Fields said. There were more hoots, more cheers, more blowing of horns--and a single sharp gunshot as conclusive as a wave breaking on the beach.

  No one saw where it came from. Roberta Muldoon held Garp's mother under her arms. Jenny's white uniform seemed struck by a small dark splash. Then Roberta dropped down from the tailgate with Jenny in her arms and knifed through the breaking crowd like an old tight end carrying the ball for a hard first down. The crowd parted; Jenny's white uniform was almost concealed in Roberta's arms. There was a police car moving to intercept Roberta; when they neared each other, Roberta held out the body of Jenny Fields toward the squad car. For a moment Garp saw his mother's unmoving white uniform lifted above the crowd and into the arms of a policeman, who helped her and Roberta into the car.

  The car, as they say, sped away. The camera was distracted by an apparent shoot-out taking place among the circling pickup trucks and several more police cars. Later, there was the still body of a man in a hunting coat lying in a dark puddle of what looked like oil. Later still, there was a closeup of what the newsmen would only identify as "a deer rifle."

  It was pointed out that the deer season had not officially opened.

  Except for the fact that there had been no nudity in the tele-cast, the event was an X-rated soap opera from start to finish.

  Garp thanked the landlady for allowing them to watch the news. Within two hours they were in Frankfurt, where they changed planes for New York. The Under Toad was not on the plane with them--not even for Helen, who was so afraid of planes. For a while, they knew, the Under Toad was elsewhere.

  All Garp could think, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, was that his mother had delivered some adequate "last words." Jenny Fields had ended her life saying, "Most of you know who I am." On the airplane, Garp tried out the line.

  "Most of you know who I am," he whispered. Duncan was asleep, but Helen overheard him; she reached across the aisle and held Garp's hand.

  Thousands of feet above sea level, T. S. Garp cried in the airplane that was bringing him home to be famous in his violent country.

  17

  THE FIRST FEMINIST FUNERAL, AND OTHER FUNERALS

  Ever since Walt died," wrote T. S. Garp, "my life has felt like an epilogue."

  When Jenny Fields died, Garp must have felt his bewilderment increase--that sense of time passing with a plan. But what was the plan?

  Garp sat in John Wolf's New York office, trying to comprehend the plethora of plans surrounding his mother's death.

  "I didn't authorize a funeral," Garp said. "How can there be a funeral? Where is the body, Roberta?"

  Roberta Muldoon said patiently that the body was where Jenny wanted her body to go. It was not her body that mattered, Roberta said. There was simply going to be a kind of memorial service; it was better not to think of it as a "funeral."

  The newspapers had said it was to be the first feminist funeral in New York.

  The police had said that violence was expected.

  "The first feminist funeral?" Garp said.

  "She meant so much to so many women," Roberta said. "Don't be angry. You didn't own her, you know."

  John Wolf rolled his eyes.

  Duncan Garp looked out the window of John Wolf's office, forty floors above Manhattan. It probably felt to Duncan a little like being on the plane he had just got off.

  Helen was making a phone call in another office. She was trying to reach her father in the good old town of Steering; she wanted Ernie to meet their plane out of New York when it landed in Boston.

  "All right," Garp said, slowly; he held the baby, little Jenny Garp, on his knee. "All right. You know I don't approve of this, Roberta, but I'll go."

  "You'll go?" John Wolf said.

  "No!" Roberta said. "I mean, you don't have to," she said.

  "I know," Garp said. "But you're right. She probably would have liked such a thing, so I'll go. What's going to happen at it?"

  "There's going to be a lot of speeches," Roberta said. "You don't want to go."

  "And they're going to read from her book," John Wolf said. "We've donated some copies."

  "But you don't want to go, Garp," Roberta said, nervously. "Please don't go."

  "I want to go," Garp said. "I promise you I won't hiss or boo--no matter what the assholes say about her. I have something of hers I might read myself, if anyone's interested," he said. "Did you ever see that thing she wrote about being called a feminist?" Roberta and John Wolf looked at each other; they looked stricken and gray. "She said, 'I hate being called one, because it's a label I didn't choose to describe my feelings about men or the way I write.'"

  "I don't want to argue with you, Garp," Roberta said. "Not now. You know perfectly well she said other things, too. She was a feminist, whether she liked the label or not. She was simply one for pointing out all the injustices to women; she was simply for allowing women to live their own lives and make their own choices."

  "Oh?" said Garp. "And did she believe that everything that happened to women happened to them because they were women?"

  "You have to be stupid to believe that, Garp," Roberta said. "You make us all sound like Ellen Jamesians."

  "Please stop it, both of you," John Wolf said.

  Jenny Garp squawked briefly and slapped Garp's knee; he looked at her, surprised--as if he'd forgotten she was a live thing there in his lap.

  "What is it?" he asked her. But the baby was quiet again, watching some pattern in the landscape of John Wolf's office that was invisible to the rest of them.

  "What time is this wingding?" Garp asked Roberta.

  "Five o'clock in the afternoon," Roberta said.

  "I believe it was chosen," John Wolf said, "so that half the secretaries in New York could walk off their jobs an hour early."

  "Not all the working women in New York are secretaries," Roberta said.

  "The secretaries," said John Wolf, "are the only ones who'll be missed between four and five."

  "Oh boy," Garp said.

  Helen came in and announced that she could not reach her father on the phone.

  "He's at wrestling practice," Garp said.

  "The wrestling season hasn't begun yet," Helen said. Garp looked at the calendar on his watch, which was several hours out of sync with the United States; he had last set it in Vienna. But Garp knew that wrestling at Steering did not officially begin until after Thanksgiving. Helen was right.

  "When I called his office at the gym, they said he was at home," Helen told Garp. "And when I called home, there was no answer."

  "We'll rent a car at the airport," Garp said. "And anyway, we can't leave until tonight. I have to go to this damn funeral."

  "No, you don't have to," Roberta insisted.

  "In fact," Helen said, "you can't."

  Roberta and John Wolf again looked stricken and gray; Garp simply looked uninformed.

  "What do you mean, I can't?" he as
ked.

  "It's a feminist funeral," Helen said. "Did you read the paper, or did you stop at the headlines?"

  Garp looked accusingly at Roberta Muldoon, but she looked at Duncan looking out the window. Duncan had his telescope out, spying on Manhattan.

  "You can't go, Garp," Roberta admitted. "It's true. I didn't tell you because I thought it would really piss you off. I didn't think you'd want to go, anyway."

  "I'm not allowed?" Garp said.

  "It's a funeral for women," Roberta said. "Women loved her, women will mourn her. That's how we wanted it."

  Garp glared at Roberta Muldoon. "I loved her," he said. "I'm her only child. Do you mean I can't go to this wingding because I'm a man?"

  "I wish you wouldn't call it a wingding," Roberta said.

  "What's a wingding?" Duncan asked.

  Jenny Garp squawked again, but Garp didn't listen to her. Helen took her from him.

  "Do you mean no men are allowed at my mother's funeral?" Garp asked Roberta.

  "It's not exactly a funeral, as I told you," Roberta said. "It's more like a rally--it's a kind of reverent demonstration."

  "I'm going, Roberta," Garp said. "I don't care what you call it."

  "Oh boy," Helen said. She walked out of the office with baby Jenny. "I'm going to try to get my father again," she said.

  "I see a man with one arm," Duncan said.

  "Please don't go, Garp," Roberta said softly.

  "She's right," John Wolf said. "I wanted to go, too. I was her editor, after all. But let them have it their way, Garp. I think Jenny would have liked the idea."

  "I don't care what she would have liked," Garp said.

  "That's probably true," Roberta said. "That's another reason you shouldn't be there."

  "You don't know, Garp, how some of the women's movement people have reacted to your book," John Wolf advised him.

  Roberta Muldoon rolled her eyes. The accusation that Garp was cashing in on his mother's reputation, and the women's movement, had been made before. Roberta had seen the advertisement for The World According to Bensenhaver, which John Wolf had instantly authorized upon Jenny's assassination. Garp's book appeared to cash in on that tragedy, too--the ad conveyed a sick sense of a poor author who's lost a son "and now a mother, too."

  It is fortunate Garp never saw that ad; even John Wolf regretted it.

  The World According to Bensenhaver sold and sold and sold. For years it would be controversial; it would be taught in colleges. Fortunately, Garp's other books would be taught in colleges, sporadically, too. One course taught Jenny's autobiography together with Garp's three novels and Stewart Percy's A History of Everett Steering's Academy. The purpose of that course, apparently, was to figure out everything about Garp's life by hunting through the books for those things that appeared to be true.

  It is fortunate Garp never knew anything about that course, either.

  "I see a man with one leg," announced Duncan Garp, searching the streets and windows of Manhattan for all the crippled and misarranged--a task that could take years.

  "Please stop it, Duncan," Garp said to him.

  "If you really want to go, Garp," Roberta Muldoon whispered to him, "you'll have to go in drag."

  "If it's all that tough for a man to get in," Garp snapped at Roberta, "you better hope they don't have a chromosome check at the door." He felt instantly sorry he'd said that; he saw Roberta wince as if he'd slapped her and he took both her big hands in his and held them until he felt her squeeze him back. "Sorry," he whispered. "If I've got to go in drag, it's a good thing you're here to help me dress up. I mean, you're an old hand at that, right?"

  "Right," Roberta said.

  "This is ridiculous," John Wolf said.

  "If some of those women recognize you," Roberta told Garp, "they'll tear you limb from limb. At the very least, they won't let you in the door."

  Helen came back in the office with Jenny Garp squawking on her hip.

  "I've called Dean Bodger," she told Garp. "I asked him to try to reach Daddy. It's just not like him, to be nowhere."

  Garp shook his head.

  "We should just go to the airport now," Helen told him. "Rent a car in Boston, drive to Steering. Let the children rest," she said. "Then if you want to run back to New York on some crusade, you can do it."

  "You go," Garp said. "I'll take a plane and rent my own car later."

  "That's silly," Helen said.

  "And needlessly expensive," Roberta said.

  "I have a lot of money now," Garp said; his wry smile to John Wolf was not returned.

  John Wolf volunteered to take Helen and the kids to the airport.

  "One man with one arm, one man with one leg, two people who limped," said Duncan, "and someone without any nose."

  "You should wait awhile and get a look at your father," Roberta Muldoon said.

  Garp thought of himself: a grieving ex-wrestler, in drag for his mother's memorial service. He kissed Helen and the children, and even John Wolf. "Don't worry about your dad," Garp told Helen.

  "And don't worry about Garp," Roberta told Helen. "I'm going to disguise him so that everyone will leave him alone."

  "I wish you'd try to leave everyone alone," Helen told Garp.

  There was suddenly another woman in John Wolf's crowded office; no one had noticed her, but she had been trying to get John Wolf's attention. When she spoke, she spoke out in a single, clear moment of silence and everyone looked at her.

  "Mr. Wolf?" the woman said. She was old and brown-black-gray, and her feet appeared to be killing her; she wore an electrical extension cord, wrapped twice around her thick waist.

  "Yes, Jillsy?" John Wolf said, and Garp stared at the woman. It was Jillsy Sloper, of course; John Wolf should have known that writers remember names.

  "I was wonderin'," Jillsy said, "if I could get off early this afternoon--if you'd say a word for me, because I want to go to that funeral." She spoke with her chin down, a stiff mutter of bitten words--as few as possible. She did not like to open her mouth around strangers; also, she recognized Garp and she didn't want to be introduced to him--not ever.

  "Yes, of course you can," John Wolf said, quickly. He didn't want to introduce Jillsy Sloper to Garp any more than she wanted it.

  "Just a minute," Garp said. Jillsy Sloper and John Wolf froze. "Are you Jillsy Sloper?" Garp asked her.

  "No!" John Wolf blurted. Garp glared at him.

  "How do you do?" Jillsy said to Garp; she would not look at him.

  "How do you do?" Garp said. He could see at a glance that this sorrowful woman had not, as John Wolf said, "loved" his book.

  "I'm sorry about your mom," Jillsy said.

  "Thank you very much," Garp said, but he could see--they all could see!--that Jillsy Sloper was seething about something.

  "She was worth two or three of you!" Jillsy suddenly cried to Garp. There were tears in her muddy-yellow eyes. "She was worth four or five of your terrible books!" she crooned. "Lawd," she muttered, leaving them all in John Wolf's office. "Lawd, Lawd!"

  Another person with a limp, thought Duncan Garp, but he could see that his father did not want to hear about his body count.

  * * *

  --

  At the first feminist funeral held in the city of New York, the mourners appeared unsure how to behave. This was perhaps the result of the gathering's being not in a church but in one of those enigmatic buildings of the city university system--an auditorium, old with the echo of speeches no one had listened to. The giant space was slightly seedy with the sense of past cheering--for rock bands, and for the occasional, well-known poet. But the space was also serious with the certain knowledge that large lectures had taken place there; it was a room in which hundreds of people had taken notes.

  The name of the space was School of Nursing Hall--thus it was oddly appropriate as a place of tribute to Jenny Fields. It was hard to tell the difference between the mourners wearing their Jenny Fields Originals, with the little red hearts stitch
ed over the breast, and the real nurses, forever white and unfashionable, who had other reasons to be in the environs of the nursing school but had paused to peek in on the ceremonies--either curious or genuinely sympathetic, or both.

  There were many white uniforms among the enormous, milling, softly mumbling audience, and Garp immediately cursed Roberta. "I told you I could have dressed as a nurse," Garp hissed. "I could have been a little less conspicuous."

  "I thought you'd be conspicuous as a nurse," Roberta said. "I didn't know there'd be so many."

  "It's going to be a fucking national trend," Garp muttered. "Just wait and see," he said, but he said no more; he huddled small and garish beside Roberta, feeling that everyone was looking at him and somehow sensing his maleness--or at least, as Roberta had warned him, his hostility.

  They sat dead-center in the massive auditorium, only three rows back from the stage and the speakers' platform; a sea of women had moved in and sat behind them--rows and rows of them--and farther back, at the wide-open rear of the hall (where there were no seats), the women who were less interested in seating themselves for the entire ritual, but who'd wanted to come pay their respects, filed slowly in one door and slowly out another. It was as if the larger, seated audience were the open casket of Jenny Fields that the slow-walking women had come to observe.

  Garp, of course, felt that he was an open casket, and all the women were observing him--his pallor, his hue, his preposterous disguise.

  Roberta had done this to him, perhaps to get even with him for his bullying her into letting him come at all--or for his cruel crack concerning her chromosomes. Roberta had dressed Garp in a cheap turquoise jump suit, the color of Oren Rath's pickup truck. The jump suit had a gold zipper that ran from Garp's crotch to Garp's throat. Garp did not adequately fill the hips of the suit, but his breasts--or, rather, the falsies Roberta had fashioned for him--strained against the snap-flap pockets and twisted the vulnerable zipper askew.

  "What a set you have!" Roberta had told him.

  "You animal, Roberta," Garp had hissed to her.

  The shoulder straps of the huge, hideous bra dug into his shoulders. But whenever Garp felt that a woman was staring at him, perhaps doubting his sex, he would simply turn himself sideways to her and show off. Thus eliminating any possible doubt, or so he hoped.