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"Ernie had been looking at it, you know," Bodger said. "When his heart stopped."
Garp took the magazine from Bodger and imagined the death scene. Ernie Holm had been masturbating to the split-beaver pictures when his heart quit. There was a joke during Garp's days at Steering that this was the preferred way to "go." So Ernie had gone that way, and the kindly Bodger had pulled up the coach's pants and hidden the magazine from the coach's daughter.
"I had to tell the medical examiner, you know," Bodger said.
A nasty metaphor from his mother's past came up to Garp in a wave, like nausea, but he did not express it to the old dean. Lust lays another good man low! Ernie's lonely life depressed Garp.
"And your mom," sighed Bodger, shaking his head under the cold porch light that glowed into the black Steering campus. "Your mom was someone special," the old man mused. "She was a real fighter," the scrappy Bodger said, with pride. "I still have copies of the notes she wrote to Stewart Percy."
"You were always nice to her," Garp reminded him.
"She was worth a hundred Stewart Percys, you know, Garp," Bodger said.
"She sure was," Garp said.
"You know he's gone, too?" Bodger said.
"Fat Stew?" said Garp.
"Yesterday," Bodger said. "After a long illness--you know what that usually means, don't you?"
"No," Garp said. He hadn't ever thought about it.
"Cancer, usually," Bodger said, gravely. "He had it for a long time."
"Well, I'm sorry," Garp said. He was thinking of Pooh, and of course of Cushie. And his old challenger, Bonkers, whose ear in his dreams he could still taste.
"There's going to be some confusion about the Steering chapel," Bodger explained. "Helen can tell you, she understands. Stewart has a service in the morning; Ernie has his later in the day. And, of course, you know the bit about Jenny?"
"What bit?" Garp asked.
"The memorial?"
"God, no," Garp said. "A memorial here?"
"There are girls here now, you know," Bodger said. "I should say women," he added, shaking his head. "I don't know; they're awfully young. They're girls to me."
"Students?" Garp said.
"Yes, students," Bodger said. "The girl students voted to name the infirmary after her."
"The infirmary?" Garp said.
"Well, it's never had a name, you know," Bodger said. "Most of our buildings have names."
"The Jenny Fields Infirmary," Garp said, numbly.
"Sort of nice, isn't it?" Bodger asked; he wasn't too sure if Garp would think so, but Garp didn't care.
In the long night, baby Jenny woke up once; by the time Garp had moved himself away from Helen's warm and deeply sleeping body, he saw that Ellen James had already found the crying baby and was warming a bottle. Odd cooing and grunting sounds, appropriate to babies, came softly out of the tongueless mouth of Ellen James. She had worked in a day-care center in Illinois, she had written Garp on the plane. She knew all about babies, and could even make noises like them.
Garp smiled at her and went back to bed.
* * *
--
In the morning he told Helen about Ellen James and they talked about Ernie.
