by John Irving
"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' again," 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 I do."
"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 cra
mmed 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 neighborhood, 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?"