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intelligence,” Jenny’s father told her, “he should eventually
attend
Steering, but in the meantime, I suppose, there’s no better atmosphere for a boy to be raised in.”
    “Native intelligence” was one of the ways her father had of referring to Garp’s dubious genetic background. The Steering School, where Jenny’s father and brothers had gone, was at that time an all-boys’ school. Jenny believed that if she could endure her confinement there—through young Garp’s prep school years—she would be doing her best for her son. “To make up for denying him a father,” as her father put it to her.
    “It’s odd,” Garp wrote, “that my mother, who perceived herself well enough to know that she wanted nothing to do with living with a man, ended up living with eight hundred boys.”
    So young Garp grew up with his mother in the infirmary annex of the Steering School. He was not exactly treated as a “faculty brat”—the students’ term for all the underage children of the faculty and staff. A school nurse was not considered in quite the same class or category as a faculty member. Moreover, Jenny made no attempt to invent a mythology for Garp’s father—to make up a marriage story for herself, to legitimize her son. She was a Fields, she made a point of telling you her name. Her son was a Garp. She made a point of telling you
his
name. “It’s his own name,” she said.
    Everyone got the picture. Not only were certain kinds of arrogance tolerated by the society of the Steering School, certain kinds were encouraged; but acceptable arrogance was a matter of taste and style.
What
you were arrogant about had to appear worthy—of higher purpose—and the manner in which you were arrogant was supposed to be charming. Wit did not come naturally to Jenny Fields. Garp wrote that his mother “never chose to be arrogant but was only arrogant under duress.” Pride was well loved in the community of the Steering School, but Jenny Fields appeared to be proud of an illegitimate child. Nothing to hang her head about, perhaps; however, she might show a
little
humility.
    But Jenny was not only proud of Garp, she was especially pleased with the manner in which she had gotten him. The world did not know that manner, yet; Jenny had not brought out her autobiography—she hadn’t begun to write it, in fact. She was waiting for Garp to be old enough to appreciate the story.
    The story Garp knew was all that Jenny would tell anyone who was bold enough to ask. Jenny’s story was a sober three sentences long.
    1. The father of Garp was a soldier.
    2. The war killed him.
    3. Who took the time for weddings when there was a war?
    Both the precision and mystery of this story might have been interpreted romantically. After all, given the mere facts, the father might have been a war hero. A doomed love affair could be imagined. Nurse Fields might have been a field nurse. She might have fallen in love “at the front.” And the father of Garp might have felt he owed one last mission “to the men.” But Jenny Fields did not inspire the imagination of such a melodrama. For one thing, she seemed too pleased with her aloneness; she didn’t appear in the least misty about the past. She was never distracted, she was simply all for little Garp—and for being a good nurse.
    Of course, the Fields name was known at the Steering School. The famous footwear king of New England was a generous alumnus, and whether or not it was suspected at the time, he would even become a trustee. His was not the oldest but not the newest of New England money, and his wife, Jenny’s mother—a former Boston Weeks—was perhaps still better known at Steering. Among the older faculty there were those who could remember years and years, without interruption, when there had always been a graduating Weeks. Yet, to the Steering School, Jenny Fields didn’t seem to have inherited all the credentials. She was handsome, they would admit, but she was plain; she