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"When I called his office at the gym, they said he was at home," Helen told Garp. "And when I called home, there was no answer."
"We'll rent a car at the airport," Garp said. "And anyway, we can't leave until tonight. I have to go to this damn funeral."
"No, you don't have to," Roberta insisted.
"In fact," Helen said, "you can't."
Roberta and John Wolf again looked stricken and gray; Garp simply looked uninformed.
"What do you mean, I can't?" he as
ked.
"It's a feminist funeral," Helen said. "Did you read the paper, or did you stop at the headlines?"
Garp looked accusingly at Roberta Muldoon, but she looked at Duncan looking out the window. Duncan had his telescope out, spying on Manhattan.
"You can't go, Garp," Roberta admitted. "It's true. I didn't tell you because I thought it would really piss you off. I didn't think you'd want to go, anyway."
"I'm not allowed?" Garp said.
"It's a funeral for women," Roberta said. "Women loved her, women will mourn her. That's how we wanted it."
Garp glared at Roberta Muldoon. "I loved her," he said. "I'm her only child. Do you mean I can't go to this wingding because I'm a man?"
"I wish you wouldn't call it a wingding," Roberta said.
"What's a wingding?" Duncan asked.
Jenny Garp squawked again, but Garp didn't listen to her. Helen took her from him.
"Do you mean no men are allowed at my mother's funeral?" Garp asked Roberta.
"It's not exactly a funeral, as I told you," Roberta said. "It's more like a rally--it's a kind of reverent demonstration."
"I'm going, Roberta," Garp said. "I don't care what you call it."
"Oh boy," Helen said. She walked out of the office with baby Jenny. "I'm going to try to get my father again," she said.
"I see a man with one arm," Duncan said.
"Please don't go, Garp," Roberta said softly.
"She's right," John Wolf said. "I wanted to go, too. I was her editor, after all. But let them have it their way, Garp. I think Jenny would have liked the idea."
"I don't care what she would have liked," Garp said.
"That's probably true," Roberta said. "That's another reason you shouldn't be there."
"You don't know, Garp, how some of the women's movement people have reacted to your book," John Wolf advised him.
Roberta Muldoon rolled her eyes. The accusation that Garp was cashing in on his mother's reputation, and the women's movement, had been made before. Roberta had seen the advertisement for The World According to Bensenhaver, which John Wolf had instantly authorized upon Jenny's assassination. Garp's book appeared to cash in on that tragedy, too--the ad conveyed a sick sense of a poor author who's lost a son "and now a mother, too."
It is fortunate Garp never saw that ad; even John Wolf regretted it.
The World According to Bensenhaver sold and sold and sold. For years it would be controversial; it would be taught in colleges. Fortunately, Garp's other books would be taught in colleges, sporadically, too. One course taught Jenny's autobiography together with Garp's three novels and Stewart Percy's A History of Everett Steering's Academy. The purpose of that course, apparently, was to figure out everything about Garp's life by hunting through the books for those things that appeared to be true.
It is fortunate Garp never knew anything about that course, either.
