A prayer for Owen Meany (15 page)

 
 
I remember waking
up from a nightmare, or waking up and feeling sick, and going down the dark
hall from my room to hers-feeling my way to her doorknob. Once in her room, I
sensed that I had traveled to another time zone; after the darkness of my room
and the black hall, my mother's room glowed-by comparison to the rest of the
house, it was always just before dawn in my mother's room. And there would be
the dummy, dressed for real life, dressed for the world. Sometimes I would
think the dummy was my mother, that she was already out of bed and on her way
to my room-possibly she'd heard me coughing, or crying out in my sleep; perhaps
she got up early; or maybe she was just coming home, very late. Other times,
the dummy would startle me; I would have forgotten all about it, and in the
gray half-light of that room I would think it was an assailant-for a figure
standing so still beside a sleeping body could as easily be an attacker as a
guard. The point is, it was my mother's body-exactly. "It can make you
look twice," Dan Needham used to say. Dan told some stories about the
dummy, after he married my mother. When we moved into Dan's dormitory apartment
at Gravesend Academy, the dummy-and my mother's sewing machine-became permanent
residents of the dining room, which we never once ate in. We ate most of our
meals in the school dining hall; and when we did eat at home, we ate in the
kitchen. Dan tried sleeping with the dummy in the bedroom only a few times.
"Tabby, what's wrong?" he asked it the first night, thinking my
mother was up. "Come back to bed," he said another time. And once he
asked the dummy, "Are you ill?" And my mother, not quite asleep
beside him, murmured, "No. AreyoM?"

Of course, it was Owen Meany who experienced the most poignant
encounters with my mother's dummy. Long before Dan Needham's armadillo changed
Owen's and my life, a game that Owen enjoyed at  Front Street involved
dressing and undressing my mother's dummy. My grandmother frowned upon this
game-on the basis that we were boys. My mother, in turn, was wary-at first, she
feared for her clothes. But she trusted us: we had clean hands, we returned
dresses and blouses and skirts to their proper hangers-and her lingerie,
properly folded, to its correct drawers. My mother grew so tolerant of our game
that she even complimented us-on occasion-for the creation of an outfit she
hadn't thought of. And several times, Owen was so excited by our creation that
he begged my mother to model the unusual combination herself. Only Owen Meany
could make my mother blush.

"I've had this old blouse and this old skirt for
years," she would say. "I just never thought of wearing them with
this belt! You're a genius, Owen!" she'd tell him.

"BUT EVERYTHING LOOKS GOOD ON YOU," Owen would tell
her, and she'd blush. If Owen had wanted to be less flattering, he might have
remarked that it was easy to dress my mother, or her dummy, because all her
clothes were black and white; everything went with everything else. There was
that one red dress, and we could never find a way to make her like it; it was never
meant to be a part of her wardrobe, but I believed the Wheelwright in my mother
made it impossible for her to give or throw the dress away. She'd found it in
an exceptionally posh Boston store; she loved the clingy material, its scooped
back, its fitted waist and full skirt, but she hated the color-a scarlet red, a
poinsettia red. She'd meant to copy it-in white or in black-like all the
others, but she liked the cut of the dress so much that she copied it in white
and in black. "White for a tan," she said, "and black in the
winter.'' When she went to Boston to return the red dress, she said she
discovered the store had burned to the ground. For a while, she couldn't
remember the store's name; but she asked people in the neighborhood, she wrote
to the former address. There was some crisis with insurance and it was months
before she finally got to talk with someone, and then it was only a lawyer.
"But I never paid for the dress!" my mother said. "It was very
expensive-I was just trying it out. And I don't want it. I don't want to be
billed for it, months later. It was very expensive," she repeated; but the
lawyer said it didn't matter. Everything was burned. Bills of sale were burned.
Inventory was burned. Stock was burned. "The telephone melted," he
said. "The cash register melted," he added. "That dress is the
least of their problems. It's your dress," the lawyer said. "You got
lucky," he told her, in a way that made her feel guilty.

"Good Heavens," my grandmother said, "it's so
easy to make Wheelwrights feel guilty. Get hold of yourself, Tabitha, and stop
complaining. It's a lovely dress-it's a Christmas color," my grandmother
decided. "There are always Christmas parties. It will be perfect."
But I never saw my mother

 
 
take the dress out
of her closet; the only way that dress ever found its way to the dressmaker's
dummy-after my mother had copied it-was when Owen dressed the dummy in it. Not
even Owen could find a way to make my mother like that red dress.

"It may t>e a Christmas color," she said, "but
I'm the wrong color-especially at Christmastime-in that dress." She meant
she looked sallow in red when she didn't have a tan, and who in New Hampshire
has a tan for Christmas?

"THEN WEAR IT IN THE SUMMER!" Owen suggested. But it
was a show-off thing to wear such a bright red color in the summer; that was
making too much of a tan, in my mother's opinion. Dan suggested that my mother
donate the red dress to his seedy collection of stage costumes. But my mother
thought this was wasteful, and besides: none of the Gravesend Academy boys, and
certainly no other woman from our town, had the figure to do that dress
justice. Dan Needham not only took over the dramatic performances of the
Gravesend Academy boys, he revitalized the amateur theatrical company of our small
town, the formerly lackluster Gravesend Players. Dan talked everyone into The
Gravesend Players; he got half the faculty at the academy to bring out the hams
in themselves, and he roused the histrionic natures of half the townspeople by
inviting them to try out for his productions. He even got my mother to be his
leading lady-if only once. As much as my mother liked to sing, she was
extremely shy about acting. She agreed to be in only one play under Dan's
direction, and I think she agreed only as an indication of her commitment to
their prolonged courtship, and only if Dan was cast opposite her-if he was the
leading man-and if he was not cast as her lover. She didn't want the town
imagining all sorts of things about their courtship, she said. After they were
married, my mother wouldn't act again; neither would Dan. He was always the
director; she was always the prompter. My mother had a good voice for a
prompter: quiet but clear. All those singing lessons were good for that, I
guess. Her one role, and it was a starring role, was in Angel Street. It was so
long ago, I can't remember the names of the characters, or anything about the
actual sets for the play. The Gravesend Players used the Town Hall, and sets
were never very specially attended to there. What I remember is the movie that
was made from Angel Street; it was called Gaslight, and I've seen it several
times. My mother had the Ingrid Bergman part; she was the wife who was being
driven insane by her villainous husband. And Dan was the villain-he was the
Charles Boyer character. If you know the story, although Dan and my mother were
cast as husband and wife, there is little love evidenced between them onstage;
it was the only time or place I ever saw Dan be hateful to my mother. Dan tells
me that there are still people in Gravesend who give him "evil looks"
because of that Charles Boyer role he played; they look at him as if he hit
that long-ago foul ball-and as if he meant to. And only once in that
production-it was actually in dress rehearsal-did my mother wear the red dress.
It might have been the evening when she is all dressed up to go to the theater
(or somewhere) with her awful husband, but he has hidden the painting and
accuses her of hiding it, and he makes her believe that she's hidden it, too-and
then he banishes her to her room and doesn't let her go out at all. Or maybe it
was when they go out to a concert and he finds his watch in her purse-he has
put it there, but he makes her break down and plead with him to believe her, in
front of all those snooty people. Anyway, my mother was supposed to wear the
red dress in just one scene, and it was the only scene in the play where she
was simply terrible. She couldn't leave the dress alone-she plucked imaginary
lint off it; she kept staring at herself, as if the cleavage of the dress, all
by itself, had suddenly plunged a foot; she never stopped itching around, as if
the material of the dress made her skin crawl. Owen and I saw every production
of Angel Street; we saw all of Dan's plays-both the academy plays and the
amateur theatricals of The Gravesend Players-but Angel Street was one of the
few productions that we saw every showing of. To watch my mother onstage, and
to watch Dan being awful to her, was such a riveting lie. It was not the play
that interested us-it was what a lie it was: that Dan was awful to my mother,
that he meant her harm. That was fascinating. Owen and I always knew everyone
in all the productions of The Gravesend Players. Mrs. Walker, the ogre of our
Episcopal Sunday school, played the flirtatious maid in Angel Street-the Angela
Lansbury character, if you can believe it. Owen and I couldn't. Mrs. Walker
acting like a tart! Mrs. Walker being vulgar! We kept expecting her to shout:
"Owen Meany, you get down from up there! You get back to your seat!"
And she wore a French maid's costume, with a very tight skirt and

        
 
black, patterned stockings, so that every
Sunday thereafter, Owen and I would search in vain for her legs-it was such a
surprise to see Mrs. Walker's legs; and even more of a surprise to discover
that she had pretty legs! The good guy role in Angel Street-the Joseph Cotten
part, I call it-was played by our neighbor Mr. Fish. Owen and I knew that he
was still in mourning over the untimely death of Sagamore; the horror of the
diaper truck disaster on Front Street was still visible in the pained
expression with which he followed my mother's every movement onstage. Mr. Fish
was not exactly Owen's and my idea of a hero; but Dan Needham, with his talent
for casting and directing the rankest amateurs, must have been inspired, in the
case of Mr. Fish, to tap our neighbor's sorrow and anger over Sagamore's
encounter with the diaper truck. Anyway, after the dress rehearsal of Angel
Street, it was back to the closet with the red dress-except for those many
occasions when Owen put it on the dummy. He must have felt especially
challenged by my mother's dislike of that dress. It always looked terrific on
the dummy. I tell all this only to demonstrate that Owen was as familiar with that
dummy as I was; but he was not familiar with it at night. He was not accustomed
to the semidarkness of my mother's room when she was sleeping, when the dummy
stood over her-that unmistakable body, in profile, in perfect silhouette. That
dummy stood so still, it appeared to be counting my mother's breaths. One night
at  Front Street, when Owen lay hi the other twin bed in my room, we were
a long while falling asleep because-down the hall-Lydia had a cough. Just when
we thought she was over a particular fit, or she had died, she would start up
again. When Owen woke me up, I had not been asleep for very long; I was in the
grips of such a deep and recent sleep that I couldn't make myself move-I felt
as if I were lying in an extremely plush coffin and my pallbearers were holding
me down, although I was doing my best to rise from the dead.

"I FEEL SICK," Owen was saying.

"Are you going to throw up?" I asked him, but I
couldn't move; I couldn't even open my eyes.

"I DON'T KNOW," he said. "I THINK I HAVE A FEVER."

"Go tell my mother," I said.

"IT FEELS LIKE A RARE DISEASE," Owen said.

"Go tell my mother," I repeated. I listened to him
bump into the desk chair. I heard my door open, and close. I could hear his
hands brushing against the wall of the hall. I heard him pause with his hand
trembling on my mother's doorknob; he seemed to wait there for the longest
time. Then I thought: He's going to be surprised by the dummy. I thought of
calling out, "Don't be startled by the dummy standing there; it looks
weird in that funny light." But I was sunk in my coffin of sleep and my
mouth was clamped shut. I waited for him to scream. That's what Owen would do,
I was sure; there would be a bloodcurdling
wail-"AAAAAAA-HHHHHHf"-•and the entire household would be awake for
hours. Or else, in a fit of bravery, Owen would tackle the dummy and wrestle it
to the floor. But while I was imagining the worst of Owen's encounter with the
dummy, I realized he was back in my room, beside my bed, pulling my hair.

"WAKE UP! BUT BE QUIET!" he whispered. "YOUR
MOTHER IS NOT ALONE. SOMEONE STRANGE IS IN HER ROOM. COME SEE! I THINK IT'S AN
ANGEL!"

"An angel?" I said.

"SSSSSSHHHHHH!"

Now I was wide awake and eager to see him make a fool of
himself, and so I said nothing about the dummy; I held his hand and went with
him through the hall to my mother's room. Owen was shivering.

"How do you know it's an angel?" I whispered.

"SSSSSSHHHHHH!"

So we stealthily crept into my mother's room, crawling on our
bellies like snipers in search of cover, until the whole picture of her bed-her
body in an inverted question mark, and the dummy standing beside her-was
visible. After a while, Owen said, "IT'S GONE. IT MUST HAVE SEEN ME THE
FIRST TIME."

I pointed innocently at the dummy. "What's that?" I
whispered.

"THAT'S THE DUMMY, YOU IDIOT!" Owen said. "WAS ON
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BED."

I touched his forehead; he was burning up. "You have a
fever, Owen," I said.