“You fooled me, for a minute,” Ernie said, politely; he had a shy grin, which be used sparingly.
Helen crouched in a corner of the wrestling room, fiercely eyeing Jenny as if Jenny were deliberately responsible for her embarrassment. Jenny felt moved by the girl; it had been years since Garp had hugged her like that, and it was a feeling that even a very selective mother, like Jenny, remembered missing.
“What's your name?” she asked Helen. “My name is Jenny Fields.”
It was a name Helen Holm knew, of course. She was the other mystery reader around the Steering School. Also, Helen had not previously given to anyone the feelings she reserved for a mother; even though it had been an accident that she'd flung those feelings around Jenny, Helen found it hard to call them back entirely. She had her father's shy smile and she looked thankfully at Jenny; oddly, Helen felt she would like to hug Jenny again, but she restrained herself. There were wrestlers shuffling back into the room, gasping from the drinking fountain, where those who were cutting weight had only rinsed their mouths.
“No more practice,” Ernie Holm told them, waving them out of the room. “That's it for today. Go run your laps!” Obediently, even relieved, they bobbed in the doorway of the crimson room; they picked up their headgear, their rubber sweat suits, their spools of tape. Ernie Holm waited for the room to clear, while his daughter and Jenny Fields waited for him to explain; at the very least, an explanation was in order, he felt, and there was nowhere Ernie felt as comfortable as he felt in a wrestling room. For him it was the natural place to tell someone a story, even a difficult story with no ending—and even to a stranger. So when his wrestlers had left to run their laps, Ernie very patiently began his father-and-daughter tale, the brief history of the nurse who left them, and of the Midwest they only recently had left. It was a story Jenny could appreciate, of course, because Jenny did not know an other single parent with a single child. And although she may have felt tempted to tell them her story—there being interesting similarities, and differences—Jenny merely repeated her standard version: the father of Garp was a soldier, and so forth. And who takes the time for weddings when there is a war? Though it was not the whole story, it clearly appealed to Helen and Ernie, who had met no one else in the Steering community as receptive and frank as Jenny.
There in the warm red wrestling room, on the soft mats, surrounded by those padded walls—in such an environment, sudden and inexplicable closeness is possible.
Of course Helen would remember that first hug her whole life; however her feelings for Jenny might change, and change back, from that moment in the wrestling room Jenny Fields was more of a mother to Helen than Helen had ever had. Jenny would also remember how it felt to be hugged like a mother, and would even note, in her autobiography, how a daughter's hug was different from a son's. It is at least ironic that her one experience for making such a pronouncement occurred that December day in the giant gymnasium erected to the memory of Miles Seabrook.
It is unfortunate if Ernie Holm felt any desire toward Jenny Fields, and if he imagined, even briefly, that here might be another woman with whom he might live his life. Because Jenny Fields was given to no such feelings; she thought only that Ernie was a nice, good man—perhaps, she hoped, he would be her friend. If he would be, he would be her first.
And it must have perplexed Ernie and Helen when Jenny asked if she could stay a moment, in the wrestling room, just by herself. What for? they must have wondered. Ernie then remembered to ask her why she had come.
“To sign my son up for wrestling,” Jenny said quickly. She hoped Garp would approve.
“Well, sure,” Ernie said. “And you'll turn out the lights, and the heaters, when you leave? The door locks itself.”
Thus alone, Jenny turned off the lights and heard the great blow heaters hum down to stillness. There in the dark room, the door ajar, she took off her shoes and she paced the mat. Despite the apparent violence of this sport, she was thinking, “why do I feel so safe here? Is it him?” she wondered, but Ernie passed quickly through her mind—simply a small, neat, muscular man with glasses. If Jenny thought of men at all, and she never really did, she thought they were more tolerable when they were small and neat, and she preferred men and women to have muscles—to be strong. She enjoyed people with glasses the way only someone who doesn't need to wear glasses can enjoy glasses on other people—can find them “nice.” But mostly it is this room, she thought—the red wrestling room, huge but contained, padded against pain, she imagined. She dropped thud! to her knees, just to hear the way the mats received her. She did a somersault and split her dress; then she sat on the mat and looked at the heavy boy who loomed in the doorway of the blackened room. It was Carlisle, the wrestler who'd lost his lunch; he had changed his equipment and come back for more punishment, and he peered across the dark crimson mats at the glowing white nurse who crouched like a she-bear in her cave.
“Excuse me, ma'am,” he said. “I was just looking for someone to work out with.”
“Well, don't look at me,” Jenny said. “Go run your laps!”
“Yes, ma'am,” Carlisle said, and he trotted off.
When she closed the door and it locked behind her, she realized she'd left her shoes inside. A janitor did not seem able to find the right key, but he lent her a large boy's basketball shoes that had turned up in Lost and Found. Jenny trudged across the frozen slush to the infirmary, feeling that her first trip to the world of sports had left her more than a little changed.
In the annex, in his bed, Garp still coughed and coughed. “Wrestling!” he croaked. “Good God, Mother, are you trying to get me killed?”
“I think you'll like the coach,” Jenny said. “I met him, and he's a nice man. I met his daughter, too.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Garp groaned. “His daughter wrestles?”
“No, she reads a lot,” Jenny said, approvingly.
“Sounds exciting, Mom,” Garp said. “You realize that setting me up with the wrestling coach's daughter may cost me my neck? Do you want that?”
But Jenny was innocent of such a scheme. She really had only been thinking about the wrestling room, and Ernie Holm; her feelings for Helen were entirely motherly, and when her crude young son suggested the possibility of matchmaking—of his taking an interest in young Helen Holm—Jenny was rather alarmed. She had not previously thought of the possibility of her son's being interested in anyone, in that way—at least, she'd thought, he wouldn't be interested for a long time. It was very disquieting to her and she could only say to him, “You're only fifteen-years old. Remember that.”
“Well, how old is the daughter?” Garp asked. “And what's her name?”
“Helen,” Jenny answered. “She's only fifteen, too. And she wears glasses,” she added, hypocritically. After all, she knew what she thought of glasses; maybe Garp liked them, too. “They're from Iowa,” she added, and felt she was being a more terrible snob than those hated dandies who thrived in the Steering School community.
“God, wrestling,” Garp groaned, again, and Jenny felt relieved that he had passed on from the subject of Helen. Jenny was embarrassed at herself for how much she clearly objected to the possibility. The girl is pretty, she thought—though not in an obvious way; and don't young boys like only obvious girls? And would I prefer it if Garp were interested in one of those?