Page 139

The newspapers had said it was to be the first feminist funeral in New York.

The police had said that violence was expected.

"The first feminist funeral?" Garp said.

"She meant so much to so many women," Roberta said. "Don't be angry. You didn't own her, you know."

John Wolf rolled his eyes.

Duncan Garp looked out the window of John Wolf's office, forty floors above Manhattan. It probably felt to Duncan a little like being on the plane he had just got off.

Helen was making a phone call in another office. She was trying to reach her father in the good old town of Steering; she wanted Ernie to meet their plane out of New York when it landed in Boston.

"All right," Garp said, slowly; he held the baby, little Jenny Garp, on his knee. "All right. You know I don't approve of this, Roberta, but I'll go."

"You'll go?" John Wolf said.

"No!" Roberta said. "I mean, you don't have to," she said.

"I know," Garp said. "But you're right. She probably would have liked such a thing, so I'll go. What's going to happen at it?"

"There's going to be a lot of speeches," Roberta said. "You don't want to go."

"And they're going to read from her book," John Wolf said. "We've donated some copies."

"But you don't want to go, Garp," Roberta said, nervously. "Please don't go."

"I want to go," Garp said. "I promise you I won't hiss or boo--no matter what the assholes say about her. I have something of hers I might read myself, if anyone's interested," he said. "Did you ever see that thing she wrote about being called a feminist?" Roberta and John Wolf looked at each other; they looked stricken and gray. "She said, 'I hate being called one, because it's a label I didn't choose to describe my feelings about men or the way I write.'"

"I don't want to argue with you, Garp," Roberta said. "Not now. You know perfectly well she said other things, too. She was a feminist, whether she liked the label or not. She was simply one for pointing out all the injustices to women; she was simply for allowing women to live their own lives and make their own choices."

"Oh?" said Garp. "And did she believe that everything that happened to women happened to them because they were women?"

"You have to be stupid to believe that, Garp," Roberta said. "You make us all sound like Ellen Jamesians."

"Please stop it, both of you," John Wolf said.

Jenny Garp squawked briefly and slapped Garp's knee; he looked at her, surprised--as if he'd forgotten she was a live thing there in his lap.

"What is it?" he asked her. But the baby was quiet again, watching some pattern in the landscape of John Wolf's office that was invisible to the rest of them.

"What time is this wingding?" Garp asked Roberta.

"Five o'clock in the afternoon," Roberta said.

"I believe it was chosen," John Wolf said, "so that half the secretaries in New York could walk off their jobs an hour early."

"Not all the working women in New York are secretaries," Roberta said.

"The secretaries," said John Wolf, "are the only ones who'll be missed between four and five."

"Oh boy," Garp said.

Helen came in and announced that she could not reach her father on the phone.

"He's at wrestling practice," Garp said.

"The wrestling season hasn't begun yet," Helen said. Garp looked at the calendar on his watch, which was several hours out of sync with the United States; he had last set it in Vienna. But Garp knew that wrestling at Steering did not officially begin until after Thanksgiving. Helen was right.