A prayer for Owen Meany (16 page)

"I SAW AN ANGEL," he said.

"Is that you, boys?" my mother asked sleepily.

"Owen has a fever," I said. "He feels sick."

"Come here, Owen," my mother said, sitting up in bed.
He went to her and she felt his forehead and told me to get him an aspirin and
a glass of water.

"Owen saw an angel," I said.

"Did you have a nightmare, Owen?" my mother asked him,
as he crawled into bed beside her. Owen's voice was muffled in the pillows.
"NOT EXACTLY," he said. When I returned with the water and the
aspirin, my mother had fallen asleep with her arm around Owen; with his protrusive
ears spread on the pillow, and my mother's arm across his chest, he looked like
a butterfly trapped by a cat. He managed to take the aspirin and drink the
water without disturbing my mother, and he handed the glass back to me with a
stoical expression.

"I'M GOING TO STAY HERE," he said bravely. "IN
CASE IT COMES BACK."

He looked so absurd, I couldn't look at him. "I thought you
said it was an angel," I whispered. "What harm would an angel
do?"

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT KIND OF ANGEL IT WAS," he
whispered, and my mother stirred in her sleep; she tightened her grip around
Owen, which must have simultaneously frightened and thrilled him, and I went
back to my room alone. From what nonsense did Owen Meany discern what he would
later call a PATTERN? From his feverish imagination? Years later, when he would
refer to THAT FATED BASEBALL, I corrected him too impatiently.

"That accident, you mean," I said. It made him furious
when I suggested that anything was an "accident"-especially anything
that had happened to him; on the subject of predestination, Owen Meany would
accuse Calvin of bad faith. There were no accidents; there was a reason for
that baseball-just as there was a reason for Owen being small, and a reason for
his voice. In Owen's opinion, he had INTERRUPTED AN ANGEL, he had DISTURBED AN
ANGEL AT WORK, he had UPSET THE SCHEME OF THINGS. I realize now that he never
thought he saw a guardian angel; he was quite convinced, especially after THAT
FATED BASEBALL, that he had interrupted of Death. Although he did not (at the
time) delineate the plot of this Divine Narrative to me, I know that's what he
believed: he, Owen Meany, had interrupted of Death at her holy work; she had
reassigned the task-she gave it to him. How could these fantasies become so
monstrous, and so convincing to him? My mother was too sleepy to take his
temperature, but it's a fact that he had a fever, and that his fever led him to
a night in my mother's bed-in her arms. And wouldn't his excitement to find
himself there, with her-not to mention his fever-have contributed to his
readiness to remain wide-eyed and wide awake, alert for the next intruder, be
it angel or ghost or hapless family member? I think so. Several hours later,
there came to my mother's room the second fearful apparition. I say
"fearful" because Owen was, at that time, afraid of my grandmother;
he must have sensed her distaste for the granite business. I had left the light
on in my mother's bathroom and the door to her bathroom open-into the hall-and
worse, I had left the cold-water tap running (when I'd fixed Owen a glass of
water for his aspirin). My grandmother always claimed she could hear the
electric meter counting each kilowatt; as soon as it was dark, she followed my
mother through the house, turning off the lights that my mother had turned on.
And this night, in addition to her sensing that a light had been left on,
Grandmother heard the water running- either the pump in the basement, or the
cold-water tap itself. Finding my mother's bathroom in such reckless abandon,
Grandmother proceeded to my mother's room-anxious that my mother was ill or
else indignant with budget-mindedness and determined to point out my mother's
carelessness, even if she had to wake her up. Grandmother might have just
turned out the light, turned off the water, and gone back to bed, if she hadn't
made the mistake of turning the cold-water tap the wrong way-she turned it much
more forcefully on, dousing herself in a spray of the coldest possible water;
the tap had been left running for hours. Thus was her nightgown soaked; she
would have to change it. This must have inspired her to wake my mother; not
only had electricity and water been awasting, but here Grandmother was-soaked
to the skin in her efforts to put a stop to all this escaping energy. I would
guess, therefore, that her manner, upon entering my mother's room, was not
calm. And although

        
 
Owen was prepared for an angel, he might have
expected that even of Death would reappear in a serene fashion. My grandmother,
dripping wet-her usually flowing nightgown plastered to her gaunt, hunched
body, her hair arrayed in its nightly curlers, her face thickly creamed the
lifeless color of the moon-burst into my mother's room. It was days before Owen
could tell me what he thought: when you scare off of Death, the Divine Plan
calls for the kind of angels you can't scare away; they even call you by name.

"Tabitha!" my grandmother said.

' 'AAAAAAHHHHHH!'' Owen Meany screamed so terribly that my
grandmother could not catch her breath. Beside my mother on the bed, she saw a
tiny demon spring bolt upright-propelled by such a sudden and unreal force that
my grandmother imagined the little creature was preparing to fly. My mother
appeared to levitate beside him. Lydia, who still had both her legs, leaped
from her bed and ran straight into her dresser drawers; for days, she would
display her bruised nose. Sagamore, who was a short time away from his
appointment with the diaper truck, woke up Mr. Fish with his barking.
Throughout the neighborhood, the lids of trash cans clattered-as cats and
raccoons made good their escape from Owen Meany's alarm. A small segment of
Gravesend must have rolled over in their beds, imagining that of Death had
clearly come for someone.

"Tabitha," my grandmother said the next day. "I
think it is most strange and improper that you should allow that little devil
to sleep in your bed."

"He had a fever," my mother said. "And I was very
sleepy."

"He has something more serious than a fever, all the
time," my grandmother said. "He acts and sounds as if he's possessed."

"You find fault with everyone who isn't absolutely
perfect," my mother said.

"Owen thought he saw an angel," I explained to
Grandmother.

"He thought  was an angel?" Grandmother asked.
"I told you he was possessed."

"Owen is an angel," my mother said.

"He is no such thing," my grandmother said. "He
is a mouse. The Granite Mouse!"

When Mr. Fish saw Owen and rne on our bicycles, he waved us over
to him; he was pretending to mend a loose picket on his fence, but he was
really just watching our house-waiting for someone to come down the driveway.

"Hello, boys!" he said. "That was some hullabaloo
last night. I suppose you heard it?" Owen shook his head.

"I heard Sagamore barking," I said.

"No, no-before that!" Mr. Fish said. "I mean, did
you hear what made him bark? Such cries! Such a yell! A real hullabaloo!"

Sometime after she'd managed to catch her breath, Grandmother
had cried out, too, and of course Lydia had cried out as well-after she'd
collided with her dresser drawers. Owen said later that my grandmother had been
WAILING LIKE A BANSHEE, but there had been nothing of a caliber comparable to
Owen's scream.

"Owen thought he saw an angel," I explained to Mr.
Fish.

"It didn't sound like a very nice angel, Owen," Mr.
Fish said.

"WELL, ACTUALLY," Owen admitted, "I THOUGHT
MISSUS WHEELWRIGHT WAS A GHOST."

"Ah, that explains everything!" Mr. Fish said
sympathetically. Mr. Fish was as afraid of my grandmother as Owen was; at
least, regarding all matters concerning the zoning laws and the traffic on
Front Street, he was always extremely deferential to her. What a phrase that
is: "that explains everything!" I know better than to think that
anything "explains everything" today. Later, of course, I would tell
Dan Needham the whole story-including Owen's belief regarding his interruption
of of Death and how he was assigned that angel's task. But one of the things I
failed to notice about Owen was how exact he was-how he meant everything
literally, which is not a usual feature of the language of children. For years
he would say, "I WILL NEVER FORGET YOUR GRANDMOTHER, WAILING LIKE A
BANSHEE." But I paid no attention; I could hardly remember Grandmother
making much of a ruckus-what I remembered was Owen's scream. Also, I thought it
was just an expression-"wailing like a banshee''- and I couldn't imagine
why Owen remembered my grandmother's commotion with such importance, I must
have repeated what Owen said to Dan Needham, because years later Dan asked me,
"Did Owen say your grandmother was a banshee T'

"He said she was 'wailing like a banshee,' " I
explained. Dan got out the dictionary, then; he was clucking his tongue and
shaking his head, and laughing to himself, saying, "That boy! What a boy!
Brilliant but preposterous!'' And that was the first time I learned, literally,
what a banshee was-a banshee, in Irish folklore, is a female spirit whose
wailing is a sign that a loved one will soon die. Dan Needham was right, as
usual: "brilliant but preposterous"-that was such an apt description
of The Granite Mouse; that was exactly what I thought Owen Meany was,
"brilliant but preposterous." As time went on-as you shall see-maybe
not so preposterous. It appeared to our town, and to us Wheelwrights ourselves,
a strange reversal in my mother's character that she should conduct a four-year
courtship with Dan Needham before consenting to marry him. As my Aunt Martha
would say, my mother hadn't waited five minutes to have the "fling"
that led to me! But perhaps that was the reason: if her own family, and all of
Gravesend, had suspicions regarding my mother's morals-regarding the general
ease with which, they might assume, she could be talked into anything-my
mother's lengthy engagement to Dan Needham certainly showed them all a thing or
two. Because it was obvious, from the start, that Dan and Mother were in love.
He was devoted, she dated no one else, they were "engaged" within a
few months-and it was clear to everyone how much I liked Dan. Even my
grandmother, who was ever alert for what she feared was her wayward daughter's
proclivity to jump into things, was impatient with my mother to set a date for
the wedding. Dan Needham's personal charm, not to mention the speed with which
he became a favorite in the Gravesend Academy community, had quickly won my grandmother
over. Grandmother was not won over quickly, as a rule-not by anyone. Yet she
became infatuated with the magic Dan wrought upon the amateurs at The Gravesend
Players, so much so that she accepted a part in Maugham's The Constant Wife;
she was the regal mother of the deceived wife, and she proved to have the
perfect, frivolous touch for drawing-room comedy-she was a model of the kind of
sophistication we could all do well without. She even discovered a British
accent, with no prodding from Dan, who was no fool and fully realized that a
British accent lay never very deeply concealed in the bosom of Harriet
Wheelwright-it simply wanted an occasion to bring it out.

" 'I hate giving straight answers to a straight question,'
" Grandmother, as Mrs. Culver, said imperiously-and completely in
character. And at another memorable moment, commenting on her son-in-law's
affair with her daughter's " 'greatest friend,' " she rationalized:
" 'If John is going to deceive Constance, it's nice it should be somebody
we all know.' " Well, Grandmother was so marvelous she brought the house
down; it was a grand performance, rather wasted-in my opinion-on poor John and
Constance, who were drearily played by a somewhat sheepish Mr. Fish, our
dog-loving neighbor (and a regular choice of Dan's), and by the tyrannical Mrs.
Walker, whose legs were her sexiest feature-and they were almost completely
covered in the long dresses appropriate to this drawing-room comedy.
Grandmother, who was rendered coy with false modesty, said simply that she had
always had a special understanding of -and I don't doubt it: she would have
been a beautiful young woman then; "and your mother," Grandmother
told me, "would have been younger than you."

So why did Dan and my mother wait four years? If there were
arguments, if they were sorting out some differences of opinion, I never saw or
heard them. Having been so improper as to have me, and never explain me, was
Mother simply being overly proper the second time around? Was Dan wary of her?
He never seemed wary. Was  the problem? I used to wonder. But I loved
Dan-and he gave me every reason to feel that he loved me. I know he loved me;
he still does.

"Is it about children, Tabitha?" my grandmother asked
one evening at dinner, and Lydia and I sat at attention to hear the answer.
"I mean, does he want them-do you not want another? Or is it the other way
around? I don't think you should trouble yourself about having or not having
children, Tabitha- not if it costs you such a lovely, devoted man."

"We're just waiting, to be sure," my mother said.

"Good Heavens, you must be sure, by now," Grandmother
said impatiently. "Even I'm sure, and Johnny's sure. Aren't you sure,
Lydia?" Grandmother asked.

"Sure, I'm sure," Lydia said.

"Children are not the issue," my mother said.
"There is no issue."

"People have joined the priesthood in less time than it
takes you to get married," Grandmother said to my mother. As for joining
the priesthood, that was a favorite expression of Harriet Wheelwright's; it was
always made in connection with some insupportable foolishness, some
self-created difficulty, some action as inhuman as it was bizarre. Grandmother
meant the Catholic priesthood; yet I know that one of the things that upset her
about the possibility of Mother's moving herself and me to the Episcopal Church
was that Episcopalians had priests and bishops-and even "low"
Episcopalians were much more like Catholics than like Congregationalists, in
her opinion. A good thing: Grandmother never knew much about Anglicans. In their
long courtship, Dan and my mother attended both the Congregational and the
Episcopal services, as if they were conducting a four-year theological seminar,
in private-and my introduction to the Episcopal Sunday school was also gradual;
at my mother's prompting, I attended several classes before Dan and my mother
were married, as if Mother already knew where we were headed. What was also
gradual was how my mother finally stopped going to Boston for her singing
lessons. I never had a hint that Dan was the slightest bothered by this ritual,
although I recall my grandmother asking my mother if Dan objected to her
spending one night a week in Boston.