John Irving - The World According to Garp

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.