The World According to Garp

11. MRS. RALPH

IF Garp could have been granted one vast and naпve wish, it would have been that he could make the world safe. For children and for grownups. The world struck Garp as unnecessarily perilous for both.

After Garp and Helen made love, and Helen fell asleep—after the dreams—Garp got dressed. When he sat on his bed to tie his track shoes, he sat on Helen's leg and woke her up. She reached out her hand to touch him, then felt his running shorts.

“Where are you going?” she asked him.

“To check on Duncan,” he said. Helen stretched up on her elbows, she looked at her watch. It was after one in the morning and she knew Duncan was at Ralph's house.

“How are you going to check on Duncan?” she asked Garp.

“I don't know,” Garp said.

Like a gunman hunting his victim, like the child molester the parent dreads, Garp stalks the sleeping spring suburbs, green and dark; the people snore and wish and dream, their lawn mowers at rest; it is too cool for their air conditioners to be running. A few windows are open, a few refrigerators are humming. There is the faint, trapped warble from some televisions tuned in to The Late Show, and the blue-gray glow from the picture tubes throbs from a few of the houses. To Garp this glow looks like cancer, insidious and numbing, putting the world to sleep. Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer's irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.

Garp moves lightly along the street; he wants to meet no one. His running shoes are loosely laced, his track shorts flap; he hasn't worn a jock because he hasn't planned to run. Though the spring air is cool, he wears no shirt. In the blackened houses an occasional dog snorfles as Garp passes by. Fresh from lovemaking, Garp imagines that his scent is as keen as a cut strawberry. He knows the dogs can smell him.

These are well-policed suburbs and for a moment Garp is apprehensive that he might be caught—in violation of some unwritten dress code, at least guilty of carrying no identification. He hurries, convinced he's coming to Duncan's aid, rescuing his son from the randy Mrs. Ralph.

A young woman on an unlighted bicycle almost collides with him, her hair floating behind her, her knees bare and shiny, her breath striking Garp as a startling mixture of a fresh-cut lawn and cigarettes. Garp crouches—she cries out and wobbles her bike around him; she stands up on her pedals and pumps fast away from him, not looking back. Perhaps she thinks he is a would-be exhibitionist—there with his torso and legs bare, ready to drop his shorts. Garp thinks she is coming from some place she shouldn't have been; she is headed for trouble, he imagines. But, thinking of Duncan and Mrs. Ralph, Garp has trouble on his mind at this hour.

When Garp first sees Ralph's house, he believes it should be given the Light of the Block award; every window is glaring, the front door is open, the cancerous television is violently loud. Garp suspects Mrs. Ralph is having a party, but as he creeps closer—her lawn festooned with dog messes and mangled sports equipment—he feels the house is deserted. The television's lethal rays pulsate through the living room, clogged with piles of shoes and clothes; and crammed against the sagging couch are the casual bodies of Duncan and Ralph, half in their sleeping bags, asleep (of course), but looking as if the television has murdered them. In the sickly TV light their faces look drained of blood.

But where is Mrs. Ralph? Out for the evening? Gone to bed with all the lights on and the door open, leaving the boys to be bathed by the television? Garp wonders if she's remembered to shut the oven off. The living room is pockmarked with ashtrays, Garp fears for cigarettes still smoldering. He stays behind the hedges and slinks to the kitchen window, sniffing for gas.

There is a litter of dishes in the sink, a bottle of gin on the kitchen table, the sour smell of slashed limes. The cord to the overhead light, at one time too short, has been substantially lengthened by one sheer leg and hip of a woman's pair of panty hose—severed up the middle, the whereabouts of the other half unclear. The nylon foot, spotted with translucent stains of grease, dangles in the breeze above the gin. There is nothing burning that Garp can smell, unless there's a slow fire under the cat, who lies neatly on top of the stove, artfully spread between burners, its chin resting on the handle of a heavy skillet, its furry belly warmed by the pilot lights. Garp and the cat stare at each other. The cat blinks.

But Garp believes that Mrs. Ralph hasn't the necessary—concentration to turn herself into a cat. Her home—her life—in utter disarray, the woman appears to have abandoned ship, or perhaps passed out upstairs. Is she in bed? Or in the bathtub, drowned? And where is the beast whose dangerous droppings have made a mine field out of the lawn?

Just then there is a thunderous approach down the back staircase of a heavy, falling body that bashes open the stairway entrance door to the kitchen, startling the cat into flight, skidding the greasy iron skillet to the floor. Mrs. Ralph sits bare-assed and wincing on the linoleum, a kimono-style robe wide open and roughly tugged above her thick waist, a miraculously unspilled drink in her hand. She looks at the drink, surprised, and sips it; her large, down-pointing breasts shine—they slouch across her freckled chest as she leans back on her elbows and burps. The cat, in a corner of the kitchen, yowls at her, complaining.

“Oh, shut up, Titsy,” Mrs. Ralph says to the cat. But when she tries to get up, she groans and lies down flat on her back. Her pubic hair is wet and glistens at Garp; her belly, furrowed with stretch marks, looks as white and parboiled as if Mrs. Ralph has been underwater for a long time. “I'll get you out of here if it's the last thing I do,” Mrs. Ralph tells the kitchen ceiling, though Garp assumes she's speaking to the cat. Perhaps she's broken an ankle and is too drunk to feel it, Garp thinks; perhaps she's broken her back.

Garp glides alongside the house to the open front door. He calls inside. “Anybody home?” he shouts. The cat bolts between his legs and is gone outside. Garp waits. He hears grunts from the kitchen—the strange sounds of flesh slipping.

“Well, as I live and breathe,” says Mrs. Ralph, veering into the doorway, her robe of faded flowers more or less drawn together; somewhere, she's ditched her drink.

“I saw all the lights on and thought there might be trouble,” Garp mumbles.

“You're too late,” Mrs. Ralph tells him. “Both boys are dead. I should never have let them play with that bomb.” She probes Garp's unchanging face for any signs of a sense of humor there, but she finds him rather humorless on this subject, “Okay, you want to see the bodies?” she asks. She pulls him toward her by the elastic waistband of his running shorts. Garp, aware he's not wearing a jock, stumbles quickly after his pants, bumping into Mrs. Ralph, who lets him go with a snap and wanders into the living room. Her odor confuses him—like vanilla spilled in the bottom of a deep, damp paper bag.

Mrs. Ralph seizes Duncan under his arms and with astonishing strength lifts him in his sleeping bag to the mountainous, lumpy couch; Garp helps her lift Ralph, who's heavier. They arrange the boys, foot to foot on the couch, tucking their sleeping bags around them and setting pillows under their heads. Garp turns off the TV and Mrs. Ralph stumbles through the room, killing lights, gathering ashtrays. They are like a married couple, cleaning up after a party. “Nighty night!” Mrs. Ralph whispers to the suddenly dark living room, as Garp trips over a hassock, groping his way toward the kitchen lights. “You can't go yet,” Mrs. Ralph hisses to him. “You've got to help me get someone out of here.” She takes his arm, drops an ashtray; her kimono opens wide. Garp, bending to pick up the ashtray, brushes one of her breasts with his hair. “I've got this lummox up in my bedroom,” she tells Garp, “and he won't go. I can't make him leave.”

“A lummox?” Garp says.

“He's a real oaf,” says Mrs. Ralph, “a fucking wingding.”

“A wingding?” Garp says.

“Yes, please make him go,” she asks Garp. She pulls out the elastic waistband of his shorts again, and this time she takes an unconcealed look. “God, you don't wear too much, do you?” she asks him. “Aren't you cold?” She lays her hand flat on his bare stomach. “No, you're not,” she says, shrugging.

Garp edges away from her. “Who is he?” Garp asks, fearing he might get involved in evicting Mrs. Ralph's former husband from the house.

“Come on, I'll show you,” she whispers. She draws him up the back staircase through a narrow channel that passes between the piled laundry and enormous sacks of pet food. No wonder she fell down here, he thinks.

In Mrs. Ralph's bedroom Garp looks immediately at the sprawled black Labrador retriever on Mrs. Ralph's undulating water bed. The dog rolls listlessly on his side and thumps his tail. Mrs. Ralph mates with her dog, Garp thinks, and she can't get him out of her bed. “Come on, boy,” Garp says. “Get out of here.” The dog thumps his tail harder and pees a little.

“Not him,” Mrs. Ralph says, giving Garp a terrific shove; he catches his balance on the bed, which sloshes. The great dog licks his face. Mrs. Ralph is pointing to an easy chair at the foot of the bed, but Garp first sees the young man reflected in Mrs. Ralph's dressing-table mirror. Sitting naked in the chair, he is combing out the blond end of his thin ponytail, which he holds over his shoulder and sprays with one of Mrs. Ralph's aerosol cans. His belly and thighs have the same slick buttered look that Garp saw on the flesh and fur of Mrs. Ralph, and his young cock is as lean and arched as the backbone of a whippet.

“Hey, how you doing?” the kid says to Garp.

“Fine, thank you,” Garp says.

“Get rid of him,” says Mrs. Ralph.

“I've been trying to get her to just relax, you know?” the kid asks Garp. “I'm trying to get her to just sort of go with it, you know?”

“Don't let him talk to you,” Mrs. Ralph says. “He'll bore the shit out of you.”

“Everyone's so tense,” the kid tells Garp; he turns in the chair, leans back, and puts his feet on the water bed; the dog licks his long toes. Mrs. Ralph kicks his legs off the bed. “You see what I mean?” the kid asks Garp.

“She wants you to leave,” Garp says.

“You her husband?” the kid asks.

“That's right,” says Mrs. Ralph, “and he'll pull your scrawny little prick off if you don't get out of here.”

“You better go,” Garp tells him. “I'll help you find your clothes.”

The kid shuts his eyes, appears to meditate. “He's really great at that shit,” Mrs. Ralph tells Garp. “All this kid's good for is shutting his damn eyes.”

“Where are your clothes?” Garp asks the boy. Perhaps he's seventeen or eighteen, Garp thinks. Maybe he's old enough for college, or a war. The boy dreams on and Garp gently shakes him by the shoulder.

“Don't touch me, man,” the boy says, eyes still closed. There is something foolishly threatening in his voice that makes Garp draw back and look at Mrs. Ralph. She shrugs.

“That's what he said to me, too,” she says. Like her smiles, Garp notices, Mrs. Ralph's shrugs are instinctual and sincere. Garp grabs the boy's ponytail and tugs it across his throat and around to the back of his neck; he snaps the boy's head into the cradle of his arm and holds him tightly there. The kid's eyes open.

“Get your clothes, okay?” Garp tells him.

“Don't touch me,” the boy repeats.

“I am touching you,” Garp says.

“Okay, okay,” says the boy. Garp lets him get up. The boy is several inches taller than Garp, but easily ten pounds lighter. He looks for his clothes but Mrs. Ralph has already found the long purple caftan, absurdly heavy with brocade. The boy climbs into it like armor.

“It was nice balling you,” he tells Mrs. Ralph, “but you should learn to relax more.” Mrs. Ralph laughs so harshly that the dog stops wagging his tail.

“You should go back to day one,” she tells the kid, “and learn everything all over again, from the beginning.” She stretches out on the water bed beside the Labrador, who lolls his head across her stomach. “Oh, cut it out, Bill!” she tells the dog crossly.

“She's very unrelaxed,” the kid informs Garp.

“You don't know shit about how to relax anybody,” Mrs. Ralph says. Garp steers the young man out of the room and down the treacherous back staircase, through the kitchen to the open front door.

“You know, she asked me in,” the boy explains. “It was her idea.”

“She asked you to leave, too,” Garp says.

“You know, you're as unrelaxed as she is,” the boy tells him.

“Did the children know what was up?” Garp asks him. “Were they asleep when you two went upstairs?”

“Don't worry about the kids,” the boy says. “Kids are beautiful, man. And they know much more than grownups think they know. Kids are just perfect people until grownups get their hands on them. The kids were just fine. Kids are always just fine.”

“You have kids?” Garp can't help but mutter; until now Garp has felt great patience toward the young man, but Garp isn't patient on the subject of children. He accepts no other authority there. “Good-bye.” Garp tells the boy. “And don't come back.” He shoves him, but lightly, out the open door.

“Don't push me!” the kid shouts, but Garp ducks under the punch and comes up with his arms locked around the kid's waist; to Garp it feels that the kid weighs seventy-five, maybe eighty pounds, though of course he's heavier than that. He bear-hugs the boy and pins his arms behind his back; then he carries him out to the sidewalk. When the kid stops struggling, Garp puts him down.

“You know where to go?” Garp asks him. “Do you need any directions?” The kid breathes deeply, feels his ribs. “And don't tell your friends where they can come sniffing around after it,” Garp says. “Don't even use the phone.”

“I don't even know her name, man,” the kid whines.

“And don't call me “man",” says Garp.

“Okay, man,” the kid says. Garp feels a pleasant dryness in his throat, which he recognizes as his readiness to touch someone, but he lets the feeling pass.

“Please walk away from here,” Garp says.

A block away, the boy calls, “Good-bye, man!” Garp knows how quickly he could run him down; anticipation of such a comedy appeals to him, but it would be disappointing if the boy weren't scared and Garp feels no pressing need to hurt him. Garp waves good-bye. The boy raises his middle finger and walks away, his silly robe dragging—an early Christian lost in the suburbs.

Look out for the lions, kid, Garp thinks, sending a blessing of protection after the boy. In a few years, he knows, Duncan will be that age; Garp can only hope that he'll find it easier to communicate with Duncan.

Back inside, Mrs. Ralph is crying. Garp hears her talking to the dog. “Oh, Bill,” she sobs. “I'm sorry I abuse you, Bill. You're so nice.”

“Good-bye!” Garp calls up the stairs. “Your friend's gone, and I'm going too.”

“Chickenshit!” yells Mrs. Ralph. “How can you leave me like this?” Her wailing grows louder; soon, Garp thinks, the dog will start to bay.

“What can I do?” Garp calls up the stairs.

“You could at least stay and talk to me!” Mrs. Ralph shouts. “You goody-goody chickenshit wingding!”

What's a wingding? Garp wonders, navigating the stairs.

“You probably think this happens to me all the time,” says Mrs. Ralph, in utter rumplement upon the water bed. She sits with her legs crossed, her kimono tight around her, Bill's large head in her lap.

Garp, in fact, does think so, but he shakes his head.

“I don't get my rocks off by humiliating myself, you know,” Mrs. Ralph says. “For God's sake, sit down.” She pulls Garp to the rocking bed. “There's not enough water in the damn thing,” Mrs. Ralph explains. “My husband used to fill it all the time, because it leaks.”

“I'm sorry,” Garp says. The marriage-counsel man.

“I hope you never walk out on your wife,” Mrs. Ralph tells Garp. She takes his hand and holds it in her lap; the dog licks his fingers. “It's the shittiest thing a man can do,” says Mrs. Ralph. “He just told me he'd been faking his interest in me, “for years"! he said. And then he said that almost any other woman, young or old, looked better to him than I did. That's not very nice, is it?” Mrs. Ralph asks Garp.

“No, it isn't,” Garp agrees.

“Please believe me, I never messed around with anyone until he left me,” Mrs. Ralph tells him.

“I believe you,” Garp says.

“It's very hard on a woman's confidence,” Mrs. Ralph says. “Why shouldn't I try to have some fun?”

“You should,” Garp says.

“But I'm so bad at it!” Mrs. Ralph confesses, holding her hands to her eyes, rocking on the bed. The dog tries to lick her face but Garp pushes him away; the dog thinks Garp is playing with him and lunges across Mrs. Ralph's lap. Garp whacks the dog's nose—too hard—and the poor beast whines and slinks away. “Don't you hurt Bill!” Mrs. Ralph shouts.

“I was just trying to help you,” Garp says.

“You don't help me by hurting Bill,” Mrs. Ralph says. “Jesus, is everyone bananas?”

Garp slumps back on the water bed, eyes shut tight; the bed rolls like a small sea, and Garp groans. “I don't know how to help you,” he confesses. “I'm very sorry about your troubles, but there's really nothing I can do, is there? If you want to tell me anything, go ahead,” he says, his eyes still shut tight, “but nobody can help the way you feel.”

“That's a cheerful thing to say to someone,” Mrs. Ralph says. Bill is breathing in Garp's hair. There is a tentative lick at his ear. Garp, wonders: Is it Bill or Mrs. Ralph? Then he feels her hand grab him under his track shorts, and he thinks, coldly: If I didn't really want her to do that, why did I lie down on my back?

“Please don't do that,” he says. She can certainly feel he's not interested, and she lets him go. She lies down beside him, then rolls away, putting her back to him. The bed sloshes violently as Bill tries to wriggle between them, but Mrs. Ralph elbows him so hard in his thick rib cage that the dog coughs and abandons the bed for the floor.

“Poor Bill. I'm sorry,” Mrs. Ralph says, crying softly. Bill's hard tail thumps the floor. Mrs. Ralph, as if to complete her self-humiliation, farts. Her sobbing is steady, like the kind of rain Garp knows can last all day. Garp, the marriage counselor, wonders what could give the woman a little confidence.

“Mrs. Ralph?” Garp says—then tries to bite back what he's said.

“What?” she says. “What'd you say?” She struggles up to her elbows and turns her head to glare at him. She heard him, he knows. “Did you say “Mrs. Ralph"?” she asks him. “Jesus, “Mrs. Ralph"!” she cries. “You don't even know my name!”

Garp sits up on the edge of the bed; he feels like joining Bill on the floor. “I find you very attractive,” he mumbles to Mrs. Ralph, but he's facing Bill. “Really!”

“Prove it,” Mrs. Ralph says. “You goddamn liar. Show me.”

“I can't show you,” Garp says, “but it's not because I don't find you attractive.”

“I don't even give you an erection!” Mrs. Ralph shouts. “Here I am half-naked, and when you're beside me—on my goddamn bed—you don't even have a respectable hard-on.”

“I was trying to conceal it from you,” Garp says.

“You succeeded,” Mrs. Ralph says. “What's my name?”

Garp feels he has never been so aware of one of his terrible weaknesses: how he needs to have people like him, how he wants to be appreciated. With every word, he knows, he is deeper in trouble, and deeper into an obvious lie. Now he knows what a wingding is.

“Your husband must be crazy,” Garp says. “You look better to me than most women.”

“Oh, please stop it,” says Mrs. Ralph. “You must be sick.”

I must be, Garp agrees, but he says, “You should have confidence in your sexuality, believe me. And more important, you should develop confidence in yourself in other ways.”

“There never were any other ways,” Mrs. Ralph admits. “I was never so hot at anything but sex, and now I'm not so hot at sex either.”

“But you're going to school,” Garp, says, groping.

“I'm sure I don't know why,” Mrs. Ralph says. “Or is that what you mean by developing confidence in other ways?” Garp squints hard, wishes for unconsciousness; when he hears the water bed sound like surf, he senses danger and opens his eyes. Mrs. Ralph has undressed, has spread herself out on the bed naked. The little waves are still lapping under her rough-tough body, which confronts Garp like a sturdy rowboat moored on choppy water. “Show me you've got a hard-on and you can go,” she says. “Show me your hard-on and I'll believe you like me.”

Garp tries to think of an erection; in order to do this, he shuts his eyes and thinks of someone else.

“You bastard,” says Mrs. Ralph, but Garp discovers he is already hard; it was not nearly so difficult as he imagined. Opening his eyes, he's forced to recognize that Mrs. Ralph is not without allure. He pulls down his track shorts and shows himself to her. The gesture itself makes him harder; he finds himself liking her damp, curly hair. But Mrs. Ralph seems neither disappointed nor impressed with the demonstration; she is resigned to being let down. She shrugs. She rolls over and turns her great round rump to Garp.

“Okay, so you can actually get it up,” she tells him. “Thank you. You can go home now.”

Garp feels like touching her. Sickened with embarrassment, Garp feels he could come by just looking at her. He blunders out the door, down the wretched staircase. Is the woman's self-abuse all over for this night? he wonders. Is Duncan safe?

He contemplates extending his vigil until the comforting light of dawn. Stepping on the fallen skillet and clanging it against the stove, he hears not even a sigh from Mrs. Ralph and only a moan from Bill. If the boys were to wake up and need anything, he fears Mrs. Ralph wouldn't hear them.

It's 3:30 A.M. in Mrs. Ralph's finally quiet house when Garp decides to clean the kitchen, to kill the time until dawn. Familiar with a housewife's tasks, Garp fills the sink and starts to wash the dishes.

When the phone rang, Garp knew it was Helen. It suddenly occurred to him—all the terrible things she could have on her mind.

“Hello,” Garp said.

“Would you tell me what's going on, please?” Helen asked. Garp knew she had been awake a long time. It was four o'clock in the morning.

“Nothing's going on, Helen,” Garp said. “There was a little trouble here, and I didn't want to leave Duncan.”

“Where is that woman?” Helen asked.

“In bed,” Garp admitted. “She passed out.”

“From what?” Helen asked.

“She'd been drinking,” Garp said. “There was a young man here, with her, and she wanted me to get him to leave.”

“So then you were alone with her?” Helen asked.

“Not for long,” Garp said. “She fell asleep.”

“I don't imagine it would take very long,” Helen said, “with her.”

Garp let there be silence. He had not experienced Helen's jealousy for a while, but he had no trouble remembering its surprising sharpness.

“Nothing's going on, Helen,” Garp said.

“Tell me what you're doing, exactly, at this moment,” Helen said.

“I'm washing the dishes,” Garp told her. He heard her take a long, controlled breath.

“I wonder why you're still there,” Helen said.

“I didn't want to leave Duncan,” Garp told her.

“I think you should bring Duncan home,” Helen said. “Right now.”

“Helen,” Garp said. “I've been good.” It sounded defensive, even to Garp; also, he knew he hadn't been quite good enough. “Nothing has happened,” he added, feeling a little more sure of the truth of that.

“I won't ask you why you're washing her filthy dishes,” Helen said.

“To pass the time,” Garp said.

But in truth he had not examined what he was doing, until now, and it seemed pointless to him—waiting for dawn, as if accidents only happened when it was dark. “I'm waiting for Duncan to wake up,” he said, but as soon as he spoke he felt there was no sense to that either.

“Why not just wake him up?” Helen asked.

“I'm good at washing dishes,” Garp said, trying to introduce some levity.

“I know all the things you're good at,” Helen told him, a little too bitterly to pass as a joke.

“You'll make yourself sick, thinking like this,” Garp said. “Helen, really, please stop it. I haven't done anything wrong.” But Garp had a puritan's niggling memory of the hard-on Mrs. Ralph had given him.

“I've already made myself sick,” Helen said, but her voice softened. “Please come home now,” she told him.

“And leave Duncan?”

“For Christ's sake, wake him up!” she said. “Or carry him.”

“I'll be right home,” Garp told her. “Please don't worry, don't think what you're thinking. I'll tell you everything that happened. You'll probably love this story.” But he knew he would have trouble telling her all this story, and that he would have to think very carefully about the parts to leave out.

“I feel better,” Helen said. “I'll see you, soon. Please don't wash another dish.” Then she hung up and Garp reviewed the kitchen. He thought that his half hour of work hadn't made enough of a difference for Mrs. Ralph to notice that any effort to approach the debris had even been begun.

Garp sought Duncan's clothes among the many, forbidding clots of clothing flung about the living room. He knew Duncan's clothes but he couldn't spot them anywhere; then he remembered that Duncan, like a hamster, stored things in the bottom of his sleeping bag and crawled into the nest with them. Duncan weighed about eighty pounds, plus the bag, plus his junk, but Garp believed he could carry the child home; Duncan could retrieve his bicycle another day. At least, Garp decided, he would not wake Duncan up inside Ralph's house. There might be a scene; Duncan would be fussy about leaving. Mrs. Ralph might even wake up.

Then Garp thought of Mrs. Ralph. Furious at himself, he knew he wanted one last look; his sudden, recurring erection reminded him that he wanted to see her thick, crude body again. He moved quickly to the back staircase. He could have found her fetid room with his nose.

He looked straight at her crotch, her strangely twisted navel, her rather small nipples (for such big breasts). He should have looked first at her eyes; then he might have realized she was wide-awake and staring back at him.

“Dishes all done?” asked Mrs. Ralph. “Come to say good-bye?”

“I wanted to see if you were all right,” he told her.

“Bullshit,” she said. “You wanted another look.”

“Yes,” he confessed; he looked away. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” she said. “It's made my day.” Garp tried to smile.

“You're too “sorry” all the time,” Mrs. Ralph said. “What a sorry man you are. Except to your wife,” Mrs. Ralph said. “You never once said you were sorry to her.”

There was a phone beside the water bed. Garp felt he had never so badly misread a person's condition as he had misread Mrs. Ralph's. She was suddenly no drunker than Bill; or she had become miraculously undrunk, or she was enjoying that half hour of clarity between stupor and hangover—a half hour Garp had read about, but had always believed was a myth. Another illusion.

“I'm taking Duncan home,” Garp told her. She nodded.

“If I were you,” she said, “I'd take him home, too.”

Garp fought back another “I'm sorry,” suppressing it after a short but serious struggle.

“Do me one favor?” said Mrs. Ralph. Garp looked at her; she didn't mind. “Don't tell your wife everything about me, okay? Don't make me out to be such a pig. Maybe you could draw a picture of me with a little sympathy.”

“I have pretty good sympathy,” Garp mumbled.

“You have a pretty good rod on, too,” said Mrs. Ralph, staring at Garp's elevated track shorts. “You better not bring that home.” Garp said nothing. Garp the puritan felt he deserved to take a few punches. “Your wife really looks after you, doesn't she?” said Mrs. Ralph. “I guess you haven't always been a good boy. You know what my husband would have called you?” she asked. “My husband would have called you “pussy-whipped."”

“Your husband must have been some asshole,” Garp said. It felt good to get a punch in, even a weak punch, but Garp felt foolish that he had mistaken this woman for a slob.

Mrs. Ralph got off the bed and stood in front of Garp. Her tits touched his chest. Garp was anxious that his hard-on might poke her. “You'll be back,” Mrs. Ralph said. “Want to bet on it?” Garp left her without a word.

He wasn't farther than two blocks from Mrs. Ralph's house—Duncan crammed down in the sleeping bag, wriggling over Garp's shoulder—when the squad car pulled to the curb and its police-blue light flickered over him where he stood caught. A furtive, half-naked kidnapper sneaking away with his bright bundle of stolen goods and stolen looks—and a stolen child.

“What you got there, fella?” a policeman asked him. There were two of them in the squad car, and a third person who was hard to see in the back seat.

“My son,” Garp said. Both policemen got out of the car.

“Where are you going with him?” one of the cops asked Garp. “Is he all right?” He shined a flashlight in Duncan's face. Duncan was still trying to sleep; he squinted away from the light.

“He was spending the night at a friend's house,” Garp said. “But it didn't work out. I'm carrying him home.” The policeman shined his light over Garp—in his running costume. Shorts, shoes with racing stripes, no shirt.

“You got identification?” the policeman asked. Garp set Duncan and the sleeping bag, gently, on someone's lawn.

“Of course not,” Garp said. “If you give me a ride home, I'll show you something.” The policemen looked at each other. They had been called into the neighborbood, hours ago, when a young woman had reported that she was approached by an exhibitionist—at least, by a streaker. Possibly it was a matter of attempted rape. She had escaped him on a bicycle, she said.

“You been out here a long time?” one of the policemen asked Garp.

The third person, in the back seat of the police car, looked out the window at what was going on. When he saw Garp, he said, “Hey, man, how you doing?” Duncan started to wake up.

“Ralph?” Duncan said.

One policeman knelt beside the boy and pointed the flashlight up at Garp. “Is this your father?” the cop asked Duncan. The boy was rather wild-eyed; he darted his eyes from his father to the cops to the blue light flashing on the squad car.

The other policeman went over to the person in the back seat of the car. It was the boy in the purple caftan. The police had picked him up while they were cruising the neighborhood for the exhibitionist. The boy hadn't been able to tell them where he lived—because he didn't really live anywhere. “Do you know that man with the child there?” the policeman asked the boy.

“Yeah, he's a real tough guy,” the kid said.

“It's all right, Duncan,” Garp said. “Don't be scared. I'm just taking you home.”

“Son?” the policeman asked Duncan. “Is this your father?”

“You're scaring him,” Garp told the cop.

“I'm not scared,” Duncan said. “Why are you taking me home?” he asked his father. It seemed that everyone wanted to hear this.

“Ralph's mother was upset,” Garp said; he hoped that would be enough, but the rejected lover in the police car started to laugh. The policeman with the flashlight shone his light on the lover boy and asked Garp if he knew him. Garp thought: There is no end to this in sight.

“My name is Garp,” Garp said, irritably. “T. S. Garp. I am married. I have two children. One of them—this one, named Duncan, the older—was spending the night with a friend. I was convinced that this friend's mother was unfit to look after my son. I went to the house and took my son home. Or, I'm still trying to get home.

“That boy,” Garp said, pointing to the police car, “was visiting the mother of the friend of my son when I arrived. The mother wanted the boy to leave—that boy,” Garp said, again pointing at the kid in the police car, “and he left.”

“What is this mother's name?” a policeman asked; he was trying to write everything down in a giant pad. After a polite silence, the policeman looked up at Garp.

“Duncan?” Garp asked his son. “What is Ralph's name?”

“Well, it's being changed,” Duncan said. “He used to have his father's name, but his mother's trying to get it changed.”

“Yes, but what is his father's name?” Garp asked. “Ralph,” Duncan said. Garp shut his eyes.

“Ralph Ralph?” the policeman with the pad said.

“No, Duncan, please think,” Garp said. “Ralph's last name is what?”

“Well, I think that's the name being changed,” Duncan said.

“Duncan, what is it being changed from?” Garp asked.

“You could ask Ralph,” Duncan suggested. Garp wanted to scream.

“Did you say your name was Garp?” one of the policemen asked.

“Yes,” Garp admitted.

“And the initials are T. S.?” the policeman asked. Garp knew what would happen next; he felt very tired.

“Yes, T. S.,” he said. “Just T. S.”

“Hey, Tough Shit!” howled the kid in the car, falling back in the seat, swooning with laughter.

“What does the first initial stand for, Mr. Garp?” the policeman asked. “Nothing,” Garp said.

“Nothing?” the policeman said.

“They're just initials,” Garp said. “They're all my mother gave me.”

“Your first name is T?” the policeman asked.

“People call me Garp,” Garp said.

“What a story, man!” cried the boy in the caftan, but the policeman nearest the squad car rapped on the roof at him.

“You put your dirty feet on that seat again, sonny,” he said, “and I'll have you licking the crud off.”

“Garp?” said the policeman interviewing Garp. “I know who you are!” he cried suddenly. Garp felt very anxious. “You're the one who got that molester in that park!”

“Yes!” said Garp. “That was me. But it wasn't here, and it was years ago.”

“I remember it as if it were yesterday,” the policeman said.

“What's this?” the other policeman asked.

“You're too young,” the cop told him. “This is man named Garp who grabbed that molester in that park—where was it? That child molester, that's who it was. And what was it you did?” he asked Garp, curiously. “I mean, there was something funny, wasn't there?”

“Funny?” said Garp.

“For a living,” the policeman said. “What did you do for a living?”

“I'm a writer,” Garp said.

“Oh, yeah,” the policeman remembered. “Are you still a writer?”

“Yes,” Garp confessed. He knew, at least, that he wasn't a marriage counselor.

“Well, I'll be,” the policeman said, but something was still bothering him; Garp could tell something was wrong.

“I had a beard then,” Garp offered.

“That's it!” the policeman cried. “And you've shaved it or”

“Right,” said Garp.

The policemen had a conference in the red glow of the taillights of the squad car. They decided to give Garp and Duncan a ride home, but they said Garp would still have to show them some information regarding his identity.

“I just don't recognize you—from the pictures—without the beard,” the older policeman said.

“Well, it was years ago,” Garp said, sadly, “and in another town.”

Garp felt uneasy that the young man in the caftan would get to see the house the Garps lived in. Garp imagined the young man would show up one day, asking for something.

“You remember me?” the kid asked Duncan.

“I don't think so,” Duncan said, politely.

“Well, you were almost asleep,” the boy admitted. To Garp he said, “You're too uptight about children, man. Children make it just fine. This your only child?”

“No, I have another one,” Garp said.

“Man, you ought to have a dozen other ones,” the boy said. “Then maybe you wouldn't get so uptight about just one, you know?” This sounded to Garp like what his mother called the Percy Theory of Children.

“Take your next left,” Garp told the policeman who was driving, “then a right, and it's on the corner.” The other policeman handed Duncan a lollipop.

“Thank you,” Duncan said.

“What about me?” the kid in the caftan asked. “I like lollipops.” The policeman glared; when he turned his back, Duncan gave the kid his lollipop. Duncan was no fan of lollipops, he never had been.

“Thank you,” the boy whispered. “You see, man?” he said to Garp. “Kids are just beautiful.”

So is Helen, Garp tbought—in the doorway with the light behind her. Her blue, floor-length robe had a high, roll-up collar; Helen had the collar turned up as if she were cold. She also had her glasses on, so that Garp knew she'd been watching for them.

“Man,” whispered the kid in the caftan, elbowing Garp as he got out of the car. “What's that lovely lady like when she gets her glasses off?”

“Mom! We got arrested,” Duncan called to Helen. The squad car waited at the curb for Garp to get his identification.

“We did not get arrested,” Garp said. “We got a ride, Duncan. Everything's fine,” he said angrily, to Helen. He ran upstairs to find his wallet among his clothes.

“Is that how you went out?” Helen called after him. “Dressed like that?”

“The police thought he was kidnapping me,” Duncan said.

“Did they come to the house?” Helen asked him.

“No, Dad was carrying me home,” Duncan said. “Boy, is Dad weird.”

Garp thundered down the stairs and ran out the door. “A case of mistaken identity,” Garp muttered to Helen. “They must have been looking for someone else. For God's sake, don't get upset.”

“I'm not upset,” Helen said, sharply.

Garp showed the police his identification.

“Well, I'll be,” the older policeman said. “It is just T. S., isn't it? I suppose it's easier that way.”

“Sometimes it isn't,” Garp said.

As the police car was leaving, the kid called out to Garp. “You're not a bad guy, man, if you'd just learn to relax!”

Garp's impression of Helen's body, lean and tense and shivering in the blue robe, did not relax him. Duncan was wide-awake and jabbering: he was hungry, too. So was Garp. In the pre-dawn kitchen, Helen coolly watched them eat. Duncan told the plot of a long TV movie: Garp suspected that it was actually two movies, and Duncan had fallen asleep before one was over and woken up after the other one had begun. He tried to imagine where and when Mrs. Ralph's activities fitted into Duncan's movies.

Helen didn't ask any questions. In part, Garp knew, this was because there was nothing she could say in front of Duncan. But in part, like Garp, she was severely editing what she wanted to say. They were both grateful for Duncan's presence; by the time they got to speak freely to each other, the long wait might make them kinder, and more careful.

At dawn they couldn't wait any longer and they began to talk to each other through Duncan.

“Tell Mommy what the kitchen looked like,” Garp said. “And tell her about the dog.”

“Bill?”

“Right,” Garp said. “Tell her about old Bill.”

“What was Ralph's mother wearing while you were there?” Helen asked Duncan. She smiled at Garp. “I hope she wore more clothes than Daddy.”

“What did you have for supper?” Garp asked Duncan.

“Are the bedrooms upstairs or downstairs?” Helen asked. “Or both?” Garp tried to give her a look that said: Please don't get started. He could feel her edging the old, worn weapons into easy reach. She had a baby-sitter or two she could recall for him, and he felt her moving the baby-sitters into place. If she brought up one of the old, wounding names, Garp had no names ready for retaliation. Helen had no baby-sitters against her; not yet. In Garp's mind, Harrison Fletcher didn't count.

“How many telephones are there?” Helen asked Duncan. “Is there a phone in the kitchen and one in the bedroom? Or is the only phone in the bedroom?”

When Duncan finally went to his room, Helen and Garp were left with less than half an hour before Walt would wake up. But Helen had the names of her enemies ready. There is plenty of time to do damage when you know where the war wounds are.

“I love you so much, and I know you so well,” Helen began.