Page 147

The words come and come,

she wrote. She waited for his approval, line by line. He would nod; she would go on. She wrote him her whole life. Her high school English teacher, the only one who mattered. Her mother's eczema. The Ford Mustang that her father drove too fast.

I have read everything,

she wrote. Garp told her that Helen was a big reader, too; he thought she would like Helen. The girl looked very hopeful.

Who was your favorite writer when you were a boy?

"Joseph Conrad," Garp said. She sighed her approval.

Jane Austen was mine.

"That's fine," Garp said to her.

At Logan Airport she was almost asleep on her feet; Garp steered her up the aisles and leaned her on the counters while he filled out the necessary forms for the rental car.

"T. S.?" the rental-car person asked. One of Garp's falsies was slipping sideways and the rental-car person appeared anxious that this entire turquoise body might self-destruct.

In the car north, on the dark road to Steering, Ellen James slept like a kitten curled in the back seat. In the rear-view mirror Garp noted that her knee was skinned, and that the girl sucked her thumb while she slept.

It had been a proper funeral for Jenny Fields, after all; some essential message had passed from mother to son. Here he was, playing nurse to someone. More essentially, Garp finally understood what his mother's talent had been; she had right instincts--Jenny Fields always did what was right. One day, Garp hoped, he would see the connection between this lesson and his own writing, but that was a personal goal--like others, it would take a little time. Importantly, it was in the car north to Steering, with the real Ellen James asleep and in his care, that T. S. Garp decided he would try to be more like his mother, Jenny Fields.

A thought, it occurred to him, that would have pleased his mother greatly if it had only come to him when she was alive.

* * *

> --

"Death, it seems," Garp wrote, "does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic."

Thus Garp, with his defenses down and his sense of the Under Toad fled from him--at least, since his arrival in Boston--walked into the house of Ernie Holm, his father-in-law, carrying the sleeping Ellen James in his arms. She might have been nineteen, but she was easier to carry than Duncan.

Garp was not prepared for the grizzled face of Dean Bodger, alone in Ernie's dim living room, watching TV. The old dean, who would soon retire, seemed to accept that Garp was dressed as a whore, but he stared with horror at the sleeping Ellen James.

"Is she..."

"She's asleep," Garp said. "Where's everyone?" And with the voicing of his question, Garp heard the cold hop of the Under Toad thudding across the cold floors of the silent house.

"I tried to reach you," Dean Bodger told him. "It's Ernie."

"His heart," Garp guessed.

"Yes," Bodger said. "They gave Helen something to help her sleep. She's upstairs. And I thought I'd stay until you got here--you know: so that if the children woke up and needed anything, they wouldn't disturb her. I'm sorry, Garp. These things sometimes come all at once, or they seem to."

Garp knew how Bodger had liked his mother, too. He put the sleeping Ellen James on the living-room couch and turned off the sickly TV, which was turning the girl's face bluish.

"In his sleep?" Garp asked Bodger, pulling off his wig. "Did you find Ernie here?"

Now the poor dean looked nervous. "He was on the bed upstairs," Bodger said. "I called up the stairs, but I knew I'd have to go up and find him. I fixed him up a little before I called anyone."

"Fixed him up?" Garp said. He unzipped the terrible turquoise jump suit and ripped off his breasts. The old dean perhaps thought this was a common traveling disguise of the now-famous writer.

"Please don't ever tell Helen," Bodger said.

"Tell her what?" Garp asked.

Bodger brought out the magazine--out from under his bulging vest. It was the issue of Crotch Shots where the first chapter of The World According to Bensenhaver had been published. The magazine looked very worn and used.