A prayer for Owen Meany (29 page)

"IT'S THE FLYING YANKEES Owen managed to scream above the
clamor. All trains were special to Owen Meany, who had never ridden on a train;
but The Flying Yankee-its terrifying speed and its refusal to stop in
Gravesend- represented to Owen the zenith of travel. Owen (who had never been
anywhere) was a considerable romantic on the subject of travel.

"What a coincidence!" I said, when The Flying Yankee
had gone; I meant that it was a farfetched piece of luck that had landed us
under the trestle bridge precisely at noon, but Owen smiled at me with his
especially irritating combination of mild pity and mild contempt. Of course, I
know now that Owen didn't believe in coincidences. Owen Meany believed that
"coincidence" was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow
people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a
terrifying and awesome design-more powerful and unstoppable than The Flying
Yankee. The maid who looked after my grandmother, the maid who was Lydia's
replacement after Lydia suffered her amputation, was named Ethel, and she was
forced to endure the subtle comparisons that both Lydia and my grandmother made
of her job-effectiveness. I say "subtle," only because my grandmother
and Lydia never discussed these comparisons with Ethel directly; but in Ethel's
company, Grandmother would say, "Do you remember, Lydia, how you used to
bring up the jams and jellies from those shelves in the secret passageway-where
they get so dusty-and line them all up in the kitchen, according to the dates
when you'd put them up?"

"Yes, I remember," Lydia would say.

"That way, I could look them over and say, 'Well, we should
throw out that one-it doesn't seem to be a favorite around here, and it's two
years old.' Do you remember?" my grandmother would ask.

"Yes. One year we threw out all the quince," Lydia
said.

"It was just pleasant to know what we had down there in the
secret passageway," my grandmother remarked.

"Don't let things get the upper hand on you, I always
say," Lydia said. And the next morning, of course, poor Ethel-properly,
albeit indirectly instructed-would haul out all the jams and jellies and dust
them off for my grandmother's inspection. Ethel was a short, heavyset woman
with an ageless, blocky strength; yet her physical power was undermined by a
slow mind and a brutal lack of confidence. Her forward motion, even with something
as basic as cleaning the house, was characterized by the strong swipes of her
stubby arms-but these confident efforts were followed or preceded by the
hesitant, off-balance steps of her short, broad feet upon her thick ankles; she
was a stumbler. Owen said she was too slow-witted to frighten properly, and
therefore we rarely bothered her-even when we discovered opportunities to
surprise her, in the dark, in the secret passageway. In this way, too, Ethel
was Lydia's inferior, for Lydia had been great fun to terrorize, when she had
two legs. The maid hired to look after Lydia was-as we used to say in
Gravesend-"a whole other ball game." Her name was Germaine, and both
Lydia and Ethel bullied her; my grandmother purposefully ignored her. Among these
contemptuous women, poor Germaine had the disadvantage of being young- and
almost pretty, in a shy, mousy way. She possessed the nonspecific clumsiness of
someone who makes such a constant effort to be inconspicuous that she is
creatively awkward- without meaning to, Germaine hoarded attention to herself;
her almost electric nervousness disturbed the atmosphere surrounding her.
Windows, when Germaine was attempting to slip past them, would suddenly shut
themselves; doors would open. Precious

        
 
vases would totter when Germaine approached
them; when she reached to steady them, they would shatter. Lydia's wheelchair
would malfunction the instant Germaine took tremulous command of it. The light
in the refrigerator would burn out the instant Germaine opened the door. And
when the garage light was left on all night, it would be discovered-in my
grandmother's early-morning investigation-that Germaine had been the last to
bed.

"Last one to bed turns out the lights," Lydia would
say, in her litanic fashion.

"I was not only in bed but I was asleep, when Germaine came
to bed," Ethel would announce. "I know I was asleep because she woke
me up."

"I'm sorry," Germaine would whisper. My grandmother
would sigh and shake her head, as if several rooms of the great house had been
consumed in a fire overnight and there was nothing to salvage-and nothing to
say, either. But I know why my grandmother sought to ignore Germaine.
Grandmother, in a fit of Yankee frugality, had given Germaine all my mother's
clothes. Germaine was a little too small for the clothes, although they were
the nicest clothes Germaine had ever owned and she wore them both happily and
reverentially-Germaine never realized that my grandmother resented seeing her
in such painfully familiar attire. Perhaps my grandmother never knew how much
she would resent seeing those clothes on Germaine when she gave them to her;
and Grandmother had too much pride to admit her error. She could only look
away. That the clothes didn't fit Germaine was referred to as Germaine's fault.

"You should eat more, Germaine," Grandmother would
say, not looking at her-and never noticing what Germaine ate; only that my
mother's clothes hung limply on her. But Germaine could have gorged herself and
never matched my mother's bosom.

"John?" Germaine would whisper, when she would enter
the secret passageway. The one overhead bulb at the bottom of those winding
stairs never lit that passageway very brightly. "Owen?" she would
ask. "Are you in here? Don't frighten me."

And Owen and I would wait until she had turned the L-shaped
corner between the tall, dusty shelves at shoulder level-the odd shadows of the
jam and jelly jars zigzagging across the cobwebbed ceiling; the higher, more
irregular shadows cast by the bigger jars of tomato and sweet-pepper relish,
and the brandied plums, were as looming and contorted as volcanic
conformations.

" 'BE NOT AFRAID,' " Owen would whisper to Ger-maine
in the dark; once, over that Christmas vacation, Ger-maine burst into tears.
"I'M SORRY!" Owen called after her. "IT'S JUST ME!"

But it was Owen whom Germaine was especially afraid of. She was
a girl who believed in the supernatural, in what she was always calling
"signs"-for example, the rather commonplace mutilation and murder of
a robin by one of the Front Street cats; to witness this torture' was "a
sure sign'' you would be involved with an even greater violence yet to come.
Owen himself was taken as a "sign" by poor Germaine; his diminutive
size suggested to her that Owen was small enough to actually enter the body and
soul of another person-and cause that person to perform unnatural acts. It was
a dinner table conversation about Owen's voice that revealed to me Germaine's
point of view concerning that unnatural aspect of him. My grandmother had asked
me if Owen or his family had ever taken any pains to inquire if something could
be "done" about Owen's voice-"I mean medically,"
Grandmother said, and Lydia nodded so vigorously that I thought her hair pins
might fall onto her dinner plate. I knew that my mother had once suggested to
Owen that her old voice and singing teacher might be able to offer Owen some
advice of a corrective kind-or even suggest certain vocal exercises, designed
to train Owen to speak more . . . well. . . normally. My grandmother and Lydia
exchanged their usual glances upon the mere mention of that voice and singing
teacher; I explained, further, that Mother had even written out the address and
telephone number of this mysterious figure, and she had given the information
to Owen. Owen, I was sure, had never contacted the teacher.

"And why not?" Grandmother asked. Why not, indeed!
Lydia appeared to ask, nodding and nodding. Lydia's nodding was the most
detectable manifestation of how her senility was in advance of my grandmother's
senility-or so my grandmother had observed, privately, to me. Grandmother was

        
 
extremely-almost clinically-interested in
Lydia's senility, because she took Lydia's behavior as a barometer regarding
what she could soon expect of herself. Ethel was clearing the table in her
curious combination of aggression and slow motion; she took too many dishes at
one time, but she lingered at the table with them for so long that you were
sure she was going to put some of them back. I think now that she was just
collecting her thoughts concerning where she would take the dishes. Germaine
was also clearing-the way a crippled swallow might swoop down for a crumb off
your plate at a picnic. Germaine took too little away-one spoon at a time, and
often the wrong spoon; or else she took your salad fork before you'd been
served your salad. But if her disturbance of your dinner area was slight and
fanciful, it was also fraught with Germaine's vast potential for accident. When
Ethel approached, you feared a landslide of plates might fall in your lap-but
this never happened. When Germaine approached, you guarded your plate and
silverware, fearing that something you needed would be snatched from you, and
that your water glass would be toppled during the sudden, flighty attack-and
this often happened. It was therefore within this anxious arena-of having the
dinner table cleared-that I announced to my grandmother and Lydia why Owen
Meany had not sought the advice of Mother's voice and singing teacher.

"Owen doesn't think it's right to try to change his
voice," I said. Ethel, lumbering away from the table under the
considerable burden of the two serving platters, the vegetable bowl, and all
our dinner plates and silver, held her ground. My grandmother, sensing Germaine's
darting presence, held her water glass in one hand, her wine glass in the
other. "Why on earth doesn't he think it's rightT' she asked, as Germaine
pointlessly removed the peppermill and let the salt shaker stay.

"He thinks his voice is for a purpose; that there's a
reason for his voice being like that," I said.

"What reason?" my grandmother asked. Ethel had
approached the kitchen door, but she seemed to be waiting, shifting her vast
armload of dishes, wondering- possibly-if she should take them into the living
room, instead. Germaine positioned herself directly behind Lydia's chair, which
made Lydia tense.

"Owen thinks his voice comes from God," I said
quietly, as Germaine-reaching for Lydia's unused dessert spoon- dropped the
peppermill into Lydia's water glass.

"Merciful Heavens!" Lydia said; this was a pet phrase
of my grandmother's, and Grandmother eyed Lydia as if this thievery of her
favorite language were another manifestation of Lydia's senility being in
advance of her own. To everyone's astonishment, Germaine spoke. "I think
his voice comes from the Devil," Germaine said.

"Nonsense!" my grandmother said. "Nonsense to it
coming from God-or from the Devil! It comes from granite, that's what it comes
from. He breathed in all that dirt when he was a baby! It made his voice queer
and it stunted his growth!"

Lydia, nodding, prevented Germaine from trying to extract the
peppermill from her water glass; to be safe, she did it herself. Ethel stumbled
into the kitchen door with a great crash; the door swung wide, and Germaine
fled the dining room- with absolutely nothing in her hands. My grandmother
sighed deeply; even to Grandmother's sighing, Lydia nodded-a more modest little
nod. "From God," my grandmother repeated contemptuously. And then she
said: "The address and phone number of the voice and singing teacher ... I
don't suppose your little friend would have kept it-not if he didn't intend to
use it, I mean?'' To this artful question, my grandmother and Lydia exchanged
their usual glances; but I considered the question carefully-its many levels of
seriousness were apparent to me. I knew this was information that my
grandmother had never known-and how it must have interested her! And, of
course, I also knew that Owen would never have thrown this information away;
that he never intended to make use of the information was not the point. Owen
rarely threw anything away; and something that my mother had given him would
not only have been saved--it would have been enshrined! I am indebted to my
grandmother for many things-among them the use of an artful question. "Why
would Owen have kept it?" I asked her innocently. Again, Grandmother
sighed; again, Lydia nodded. "Why indeed," Lydia said sadly. It was
my grandmother's turn to nod. They were both getting old and frail, I observed,
but what I was thinking was why I had decided to keep Owen's probable
possession of the singing teacher's address and phone number

        
 
to myself. I didn't know why-not then. What I
know now is that Owen Meany would have quickly said it was NO COINCIDENCE. And
what would he have said regarding our discovery that we were not alone in the
Christmas use we made of the empty rooms in Waterhouse Hall? Would he have
termed it NO COINCIDENCE, too, that we (one afternoon) were engaged in our usual
investigations of a second-floor room when we heard another master key engage
the lock on the door? I was into the closet in a hurry, fearful that the empty
coat hangers would not entirely have stopped chiming together by the time the
new intruder entered the room. Owen scooted under the bed; he lay on his back
with his hands crossed upon his chest, like a soldier in a hasty grave. At
first, we thought Dan had caught us-but Dan was rehearsing The Gravesend
Players, unless (in despair) he had fired the lot of them and canceled the
production. The only other person it could be was Mr. Brinker-Smith, the
biologist-but he was a first-floor resident: Owen and I were so quiet, we
didn't believe our presence could have been detected from the first floor.

"Nap time!" we heard Mr. Brinker-Smith say; Mrs.
Brinker-Smith giggled. It was instantly apparent to Owen and me that Ginger
Brinker-Smith had not brought her husband to this empty room in order to nurse
him; the twins were not with them-it was "nap time" for the twins,
too. It strikes me now that the Brinker-Smiths were blessed with good-spirited
initiative, with an admirable and inventive sense of mischief-for how else
could they have maintained one of the pleasures of conjugal relations without
disturbing their demanding twins? At the time, of course, it struck Owen and me
that the Brinker-Smiths were dangerously oversexed; that they should make such
reckless use of the dormitory beds, including-as we later learned-systematic
process through all the rooms of Waterhouse Hall . . . well, it was perverse
behavior for parents, in Owen's and my view. Day by day, nap by nap, bed by
bed, the Brinker-Smiths were working their way to the fourth floor of the dorm.
Since Owen and I were working our way to the first floor, it was perhaps
inevitable-as Owen would have suggested-and NO COINCIDENCE that we should have
encountered the Brinker-Smiths in a second-floor room. I saw nothing, but heard
much, through the closed closet door. (I had never heard Dan with my mother.) As
usual, Owen Meany had a closer, more intense perception of this passionate
event than I had: the Brinker-Smiths' clothes fell on both sides of Owen;
Ginger Brinker-Smith's legendary nursing bra was tossed within inches of Owen's
face. He had to turn his face to the side, Owen told me, in order to avoid the
sagging bedspring, which began to make violent, chafing contact with Owen's
nose. Even with his face sideways, the bedspring would occasionally plunge near
enough to the floor to scrape against his cheek.