The World According to Garp

whom Garp frequently crossed swords, although he admired her poems. He could never be that economical.

“What does Charlie Pulaski want?” Garp asked, by rote. Some of the applicants only wanted money; some of them wanted to live at Dog's Head Harbor for a while. Some of them wanted lots of money and a room at Dog's Head Harbor, forever.

“She just wants money,” Roberta said.

“To change her name?” asked Marcia Fox.

“She wants to quit her job and write a book,” Roberta said.

“Oh boy,” said Garp.

“Advise her to keep her job,” said Marcia Fox; she was one of those writers who resented other writers, and would-be writers.

“Marcia even resents dead writers,” Garp told Roberta.

But Marcia and Garp both read a manuscript submitted by Ms. Charlie Pulaski, and they agreed that she should hold on to whatever job she could get.

Applicant No. 1,073, an associate professor of microbiology, wanted time off from her job to write a book, too.

“A novel?” Garp asked.

“Studies in molecular virology,” said Dr. Joan Axe; she was on leave from the Duke University Medical Center to do some research of her own. When Garp asked her what it was, she had told him, mysteriously, that she was interested in “the unseen diseases of the bloodstream.”

Applicant No. 1,081 had an uninsured husband who was killed in a plane crash. She had three children under the age of five and she needed fifteen more semester hours to complete her M.A. degree, in French. She wanted to go back to school, get the degree, and find a decent job; she wanted money for this—and rooms enough for her children, and for a baby-sitter, at Dog's Head Harbor.

The Board of Trustees unanimously decided to award the woman sufficient money to complete her degree and to pay a live-in baby-sitter; but the children, the babysitter, and the woman would all have to live wherever the woman chose to complete her degree. Dog's Head Harbor was not for children and baby-sitters. There were women there who would go crazy upon the sight or sound of a single child. There were women there whose lives had been made miserable by baby- sitters.

That was an easy one to decide.

No. 1,088 caused some problems. She was the divorced wife of the man who had killed Jenny Fields. She had three children, one of whom was in a reform school for preteens, and her child-support payments had stopped when her husband, Jenny Fields' assassin, was shot by a barrage from the New Hampshire State Police and some other hunters with guns who had been cruising the parking lot.

The deceased, Kenny Truckenmiller, had been divorced less than a year. He'd told friends that the child support was breaking his ass; he said that women's lib had screwed up his wife so much that she divorced him. The lawyer who got the job done, in favor of Mrs. Truckenmiller, was a New York divorcee. Kenny Truckenmiller had beaten his wife at least twice weekly for almost thirteen years, and he had physically and mentally abused each of his three children on several occasions. But Mrs. Truckenmiller had not known enough about herself, or what rights she might possibly have, until she read A Sexual Suspect, the autobiography of Jenny Fields. That started her thinking that perhaps the suffering of her weekly beatings, and the abuse of her children, was actually Kenny Truckenmiller's fault; for thirteen years she had thought it was her problem, and her “lot in life.”

Kenny Truckenmiller had blamed the women's movement for the self-education of his wife. Mrs. Truckenmiller had always been self-employed, a “hair stylist” in the town of North Mountain, New Hampshire. She went right on being a hair stylist when Kenny was forced, by the court, to move out of her house. But now that Kenny was no longer driving a truck for the town, Mrs Truckenmiller found the support of her family difficult by hair styling alone. She wrote in her nearly illegible application that she had been forced to compromise herself “to make ends meet,” and that she did not care to repeat the act of compromising herself in the future.

Mrs. Truckenmiller, who never once referred to herself as having a first name, realized that the loathing for her husband was so great as to prejudice the board against her. She would understand, she wrote, if they chose to ignore her.

John Wolf, who was (against his will) an honorary member of the board—and valued for his shrewd financial head—said immediately that nothing could be better or wider publicity for the Fields Foundation than awarding “this unfortunate relation of Jenny's killer” what she asked for. It would be instant news; it would pay for itself, John Wolf decided, in that it would surely gain the foundation untold sums in gift donations.

“We're already doing pretty well on gift donations,” Garp hedged.

“Suppose she's just a whore?” Roberta suggested of the unfortunate Mrs. Truckenmiller; they all stared at her. Roberta had an advantage among them: of being able to think like a woman and like a Philadelphia Eagle. “Just think a minute,” Roberta said. “Suppose she's just a floozy, someone who compromises herself all the time, and always has—and thinks nothing of it. Then, suddenly, we're a joke; then we've been had.”

“So we need a character reference,” said Marcia Fox.

“Someone's got to see the woman, talk with her,” Garp suggested. “Find out if she's honorable, if she's really trying to live independently.”

They all stared at him.

“Well,” Roberta said, “I'm not about to discover whether she's a whore or not.”

“Oh no,” Garp said. “Not me.”

“Where's North Mountain, New Hampshire?” asked Marcia Fox.

“Not me,” John Wolf said. “I'm out of New York too much of the time as it is.”

“Oh boy,” Garp said. “Suppose she recognizes me? People do, you know.”

“I doubt she will,” said Hilma Bloch, a psychiatric social worker whom Garp detested. “Those people most motivated to read autobiographies, such as your mother's, are rarely attracted to fiction—or only tangentially. That is, if she read The World According to Bensenhaver she would have done so only because of who you are. And that would not have been sufficient reason to cause her to finish the book; in all probability— and given the fact that she's a hair stylist, after all—she would have bogged down and not read it. And not remembered your picture on the cover, either—only your face, and only vaguely (you were a face in the news, of course, but really only around the time of Jenny's murder). Surely, at that time, Jenny's face was the face to recall. A woman like this watches a lot of television; she's not a book-world person. I strongly doubt that a woman like this would even have a picture of you in her mind.”

John Wolf rolled his eyes away from I-Elma Bloch. Even Roberta rolled her eyes.

“Thank you, Hilma,” said Garp, quietly. It was decided that Garp, would visit Mrs. Truckenmiller “to determine something more concrete about her character.”

“At least find out her first name,” said Marcia Fox.

“I'll bet it's Charlie,” Roberta said.

They passed on to the reports: who was living, presently, at Dog's Head Harbor; whose tenancy was expiring; who was about to move in. And what were the problems there, if any?

There were two painters—one in the south garret, one in the north. The south-garret painter coveted the north-garret painter's light, and for two weeks they didn't get along; not a word to each other at breakfast, and accusations concerning lost mail. And so forth. Then, it appeared, they became lovers. Now only the north-garret painter was painting at all—studies of the south-garret painter, who modeled all day in the good light. Her nakedness, about the upstairs of the house, bothered at least one of the writers, an outspoken anti- lesbian playwright from Cleveland who had trouble sleeping, she said, because of the sound of the waves. It was probably the lovemaking of the painters that bothered her; she was described as “overextended,” anyway, but her complaints ceased once the other writer-in-residence suggested that all the Dog's Head Harbor guests read aloud the parts of the dramatist's play in progress. This was done, successfully for all, and the upper floors of the house were now happy.