The World According to Garp

She told Ellen James the news. Helen forgave Ellen, immediately, and even allowed herself to be excited with her. They took a drive to the shore with Duncan and little Jenny. They bought lobsters—Ellen's favorite—and enough scallops for Garp, who was not crazy about lobster.

Champagne!

Ellen wrote in the car.

Does champagne go with lobster and scallops?

“Of course,” Helen said. “It can.” They bought champagne. They stopped at Dog's Head Harbor and invited Roberta to dinner. “When will Dad be back?” Duncan asked.

“I don't know where North Mountain, New Hampshire, is,” Helen said, “but he said he'd be back in time to eat with us.”

That's what he told me, too, said Ellen James.

NANETTE'S BEAUTY SALON in North Mountain, New Hampshire, was really the kitchen of Mrs. Kenny Truckenmiller, whose first name was Harriet.

“Are you Nanette?” Garp asked her timidly, from the outside steps, frosted with salt and crunchy with melting slush.

“There ain't no Nanette,” she told him. “I'm Harriet Truckenmiller.” Behind her, in the dark kitchen, a large dog strained and snarled; Mrs. Truckenmiller kept the dog from getting to Garp by thrusting her long hip back against the lunging beast. Her pale, scarred ankle wedged open the kitchen door. Her slippers were blue; in her long robe, her figure was lost, but Garp could see she was tall—and that she had been taking a bath.

“Uh, do you do men's hair?” he asked her.

“No,” she said.

“But would you?” Garp asked her. “I don't trust barbers.”

Harriet Truckenmiller looked suspiciously at Garp's black knit ski hat, which was pulled down over his ears and concealed all his hair but the thick tufts that touched his shoulders from the back of his short neck.

“I can't see your hair,” she said. He took the stocking hat off, his hair wild with static electricity and tangled in the cold wind.

“I don't want just a haircut,” Garp said, neutrally, eyeing the woman's sad, drawn face and the soft wrinkles beside her gray eyes. Her own hair, a washed-out blond, was in curlers.

“You don't have no appointment,” Harriet Truckenmiller said.

The woman was no whore, he could plainly see. She was tired and frightened of him.

“What exactly do you want done to your hair, anyway?” she asked him.

“Just a trim,” Garp mumbled, “but I like a slight curl in it.”

“A curl?” said Harriet Truckenmiller, trying to imagine this from Garp's crown of very straight hair. “Like a permanent, you mean?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, running his hand sheepishly through the snarls. “Whatever you can do with it, you know?”

Harriet Truckemniller shrugged. “I have to get dressed,” she said. The dog, devious and strong, thrust most of his stout body between her legs and jammed his broad, grimacing face into the opening between the storm and the main door. Garp tensed for the attack, but Harriet Truckenmiller brought her big knee up sharply and staggered the animal with a blow to its muzzle. She twisted her hand into the loose skin of its neck; the dog moaned and melted into the kitchen behind her.

The frozen yard, Garp saw, was a mosaic of the dog's huge turds captured in ice. There were also three cars in the yard; Garp, doubted if any of them ran. There was a woodpile, but no one had stacked it. There was a TV antenna, which at one time might have been on the roof; now it leaned against the beige aluminum siding of the house, its wires running like a spider web out a cracked window.

Mrs. Truckenmiller stepped back and opened the door for Garp. In the kitchen he felt his eyes dry from the heat of the wood stove; the room smelled of baking cookies and hair rinse—in fact, the kitchen seemed divided between the functions of a kitchen and the paraphernalia of Harriet's business. A pink sink with a shampoo hose; cans of stewed tomatoes; a three-way mirror framed with stage lights; a wooden rack with spices and meat tenderizer; the rows of ointments, lotions, and goo. And a steel stool over which a hair dryer hung suspended from a steel rod—like an original invention of an electric chair.

The dog was gone, and so was Harriet Truckenmiller; she had slipped away to dress herself, and her surly companion appeared to have gone with her. Garp combed his hair; he looked in the mirror as if he were trying to remember himself. He was about to be altered and rendered unrecognizable to all, he imagined.

Then the door to the outside opened and a big man in a hunting coat with a hunter's red cap walked in; he had an enormous armload of wood, which he carried to the wood box by the stove. The dog, who all along had been crouched under the sink—inches away from Garp's trembling knees—moved quickly to intercept the man. The dog slunk quietly, not even growling; the man was known here.

“Go lie down, you damn fool,” he said, and the dog did as it was told. “Is that you, Dickie?” called Harriet Truckenmiller, from somewhere in another part of the house.

“Who else was you expectin'?” he shouted; then he turned and saw Garp in front of the mirror.

“Hello,” Garp said. The big man called Dickie stared. He was perhaps fifty; his huge red face looked scraped by ice, and Garp recognized immediately, from his familiarity with Duncan's expressions, that the man had a glass eye.

“'Lo,” Dickie said.

“I got a customer!” Harriet called.

“I see you do,” said Dickie. Garp nervously touched his hair, as if he could suggest to Dickie how important his hair was to him—to have come all the way to North Mountain, New Hampshire, and NANETTE'S BEAUTY SALON, for what must have appeared to Dickie to be the simple need of a haircut.

“He wants a curl!” called Harriet. Dickie kept his red cap on, though Garp could plainly see that the man was bald.

“I don't know what you really want, fella,” Dickie whispered to Garp, “but a curl is all you get. You hear?”

“I don't trust barbers,” Garp said.

“I don't trust you,” Dickie said.

“Dickie, he hasn't done anything,” Harriet Truckenmiller said. She was dressed in rather tight turquoise slacks, which reminded Garp of his discarded jump suit, and a print blouse full of flowers that never grow in New Hampshire. Her hair was tied back with a scarf of unmatching plants, and she had done her face, but not overdone it; she looked “nice,” like somebody's mother who bothered to keep herself up. She was, Garp guessed, a few years younger than Dickie, but just a few.

“He don't want no curl, Harriet,” Dickie said. “What's he want to have his hair played with for, huh?”

“He don't trust barbers,” Harriet Truckenmiller said. For a brief moment Garp wondered if Dickie were a barber; he didn't think so.

“I really don't mean any disrespect,” Garp said. He had seen all he needed to see; he wanted to go tell the Fields Foundation to give Harriet Truckermiller all the money she needed. “If this makes anyone uncomfortable,” Garp said, “I'll just forget it.” He reached for his parka, which he'd put on an empty chair, but the big dog had the parka pinned down on the floor.

“Please, you can stay,” Mrs. Truckenmiller said. “Dickie's just lookin” after me.” Dickie looked ashamed of himself; he stood with one mighty boot on top of the other.

“I brung you some dry wood,” he said to Harriet. “I guess I shoulda knocked.” He pouted by the stove.

“Don't, Dickie,” Harriet said to him, and she kissed him fondly on his big pink cheek.

He left the kitchen with one last glare for Garp. “Hope you get a good haircut,” Dickie said.

“Thank you,” said Garp. When he spoke, the dog shook his parka.

“Here, stop that,” Harriet told the dog; she put Garp's parka back on the chair. “You can go if you want to,” Harriet said, “but Dickie won't bother you. He's just lookin' after me.”

“Your husband?” Garp asked, though he doubted it. “My husband was Kenny Truckenmiller,” Harriet said.