The World According To Garp (36 page)

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.