“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 asked.
“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!”