John Irving - The World According to Garp

Garp didn't know who Manda Horton-Jones was; he shrugged, enduring her. The speeches had ranged from strident, political calls for unity to disturbed, painful, personal reminiscences of Jenny Fields. The audience did not know whether to applaud or to pray—whether to voice approval or to nod grimly. The atmosphere was both one of mourning and one of urgent togetherness—with a strong sense of marching forth. Thinking about it, Garp supposed this was natural and fitting, both to his mother and to his dim perception of what the women's movement was.

“This is Sally Devlin,” Roberta whispered. The woman now climbing to the speakers' platform looked pleasant and wise and vaguely familiar. Garp felt immediately the need to defend himself from her. He didn't mean it, but solely to goad Roberta, Garp whispered, “She has nice legs.”

“Nicer than yours,” Roberta said, pinching his thigh painfully between her strong thumb and her long, pass-catching index finger—one of the fingers, Garp supposed, that had been broken so many times during Roberta's fling as a Philadelphia Eagle.

Sally Devlin looked down on them with her soft, sad eyes as if she were silently scolding a classroom of children who were not paying attention—not even sitting still.

“That senseless murder does not really merit all this,” she said, quietly. “But Jenny Fields simply helped so many individuals , she simply was so patient and generous with women who were having a bad time. Anyone who's ever been helped by someone else should feel terrible about what's happened to her.”

Garp felt truly terrible, at that moment; he heard a combined sigh and sob of hundreds of women. Beside him, Roberta's broad shoulders shook against him. He felt a hand, perhaps of the woman sitting directly behind him, grip his own shoulder, cramped in the terrible turquoise jump suit. He wondered if he was about to be slapped for his offensive, inappropriate attire, but the hand just held on to his shoulder. Perhaps the woman needed support. At this moment, Garp knew, they all felt like sisters, didn't they?

He looked up to see what Sally Devlin was saying, but his own eyes were teary and he could not see Ms. Devlin clearly. He could hear her, though: she was sobbing. Great heartfelt and heaving cries! She was trying to get back to her speech but her eyes couldn't find her place on the page; the page rattled against the microphone. Some very powerful-looking woman, whom Garp thought he had seen before—one of those bodyguard types he had often seen with his mother—tried to help Sally Devlin off the platform, but Ms. Devlin didn't want to leave.

“I wasn't going to do this,” she said, still crying—meaning her sobs, her loss of control. “I had more to say,” she protested, but she could not get hold of her voice. “Damn it,” she said, with a dignity that moved Garp.

The big tough-looking woman found herself alone at the microphone. The audience waited quietly. Garp felt a tremble, or maybe a tug, from the hand on his shoulder. Looking at Roberta's large hands, folded in her lap, Garp knew that the hand on his shoulder must be very small. The big tough-looking woman wanted to say something, and the audience waited. But they would wait forever to hear a word from her. Roberta knew her. Roberta stood up beside Garp and began to applaud the big, hard-looking woman's silence—her exasperating quiet in front of the microphone. Other people joined Roberta's applause—even Garp, though he had no idea why he was clapping.

“She's an Ellen Jamesian,” Roberta whispered to him. “She can't say anything.” Yet the woman melted the audience with her pained, sorry face. She opened her mouth as if she were singing, but no sound came out. Garp imagined he could see the severed stump of her tongue. He remembered how his mother supported them—these crazies; Jenny was wonderful to every single one of them who came to her. But Jenny had finally admitted her disapproval of what they had done—perhaps only to Garp. “They're making victims of themselves,” Jenny had said, “and yet that's the same thing they're angry at men for doing to them. Why don't they just take a vow of silence, or never speak in a man's presence?” Jenny said. “It's not logical: to maim yourself to make a point.”

But Garp, now touched by the mad woman in front of him, felt the whole history of the world's self-mutilation—though violent and illogical, it expressed, perhaps like nothing else, a terrible hurt . “I am really hurt,” said the woman's huge face, dissolving before him in his own swimmy tears.

Then the little hand on his shoulder hurt him ; he remembered himself—a man at a ritual for women—and he turned around to see the rather tired-looking young woman behind him. Her face was familiar, but he didn't recognize her.

“I know you,” the young woman whispered to him. She did not sound happy that she knew him, either.

Roberta had warned him not to open his mouth to anyone, not even to try to speak. He was prepared for handling that problem. He shook his head. He took a pad of paper out of the flap pocket, which was crushed against his mammoth, false bosom, and he snatched a pencil out of his absurd purse. The sharp, clawlike fingers of the woman bit into his shoulder, as if she were keeping him from running away.

Hi! I'm an Ellen Jamesian,

Garp scribbled on the pad; he tore the slip off and handed it to the young woman. She didn't take it.

“Like hell you are,” she said. “You're T. S. Garp.”

The word Garp bounced like the burp of an unknown animal into the silence of the suffering auditorium, still conducted by the quiet Ellen Jamesian on stage. Roberta Muldoon turned around and looked panic-stricken; she had never seen this particular young woman in her life.

“I don't know who your big playmate is,” the young woman told Garp, “but you're T. S. Garp. I don't know where you got that dumb wig or those big tits, but I'd know you anywhere. You haven't changed a bit since you were fucking my sister—fucking her to death ,” the young woman said. And Garp knew who his enemy was: the last and youngest of the Percy Family Horde. Bainbridge! Little Pooh Percy, who was wearing diapers as a preteen, and, for all Garp knew, might be wearing them still.

Garp looked at her; Garp had bigger tits than she did. Pooh was asexually attired, her haircut was similar to a popular and unisexual style, her features were neither delicate nor coarse. Pooh wore a U.S. Army shirt with sergeant stripes and a campaign button for the woman who'd hoped to be the new governor of the State of New Hampshire. With a shock, Garp realized that the woman running for governor was Sally Devlin. He wondered if she'd won!

“Hello, Pooh,” Garp said, and saw her wince—a hated nickname, obviously, and one she was never called anymore. “Bainbridge,” Garp muttered, but it was too late to make friends. It was years too late. It was too late from the night Garp had bitten off Bonkers' ear, had violated Cushie in the Steering School infirmary, had not ever really loved her—had not come to her wedding, and not to her funeral.

Whatever grudge against Garp this was, or whatever loathing for men in general, Pooh Percy had her enemy at her mercy—at last.

Roberta's big warm hand was at the small of Garp's back and her heavy voice urged him, “Get out of here, move fast, don't say a word.”

“There's a man here!” Bainbridge Percy shouted to the grieving silence of School of Nursing Hall. That even brought a small sound—perhaps a grunt—from the troubled Ellen Jamesian on stage. “There's a man here!” Pooh screamed. “And he's T. S. Garp. Garp is here!” she cried.