A prayer for Owen Meany (41 page)

"EITHER WAY," said Owen Meany, "THAT'S WHEN
HESTER WENT ON THE WARPATH."

"What warpath?" Grandmother asked Owen; but Owen and I
were careful not to discuss Hester with my grandmother. A new bond had
developed between Owen and Grandmother because of Liberace; they also watched
lots of old movies together and encouraged each other's constant comments. It
was Grandmother's appreciation of Owen's commentary, which was as ripe with
complaint as her own, that enlisted my grandmother's support of Owen as
Gravesend Academy "material."

"Just what do you mean, you think you 'might not' go to the
academy?" she asked him.

"WELL, I KNOW I'LL GET IN-AND I KNOW I'LL GET A FULL
SCHOLARSHIP, TOO," Owen said.

"Of course you will!" my grandmother said.

"BUT I DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT KIND OF CLOTHES," Owen said.
"ALL THOSE COATS AND TIES, AND DRESS SHIRTS, AND SHOES."

"Do you mean, they don't make them in your size?"
Grandmother asked him. "Nonsense! One just has to go shopping in the right
places."

' 'I MEAN MY PARENTS CAN'T AFFORD THOSE KIND OF CLOTHES,"
Owen said. We were watching an old Alan Ladd movie on The Early Show. It was
called Appointment with Danger, and Owen thought it was ridiculous that all the
men in Gary, Indiana, wore suits and hats.

"They used to wear them here," my grandmother said;
but, probably, they never wore them at the Meany Granite Quarry. Jack Webb,
before he was the good cop in Dragnet, was a bad guy in Appointment with
Danger; he was, among his other endeavors, attempting to murder a nun. This
gave Owen the shivers. The movie gave my grandmother the shivers, too, because
she recalled that she had seen it at The Idaho in -with my mother.

"The nun will be all right, Owen," she told him.

"IT'S NOT THE IDEA OF MURDERING HER THAT GIVES ME THE
SHIVERS," Owen explained. "IT'S THE IDEA OF NUNS-IN GENERAL."

"I know what you mean," my grandmother said; she
harbored her own misgivings about the Catholics.

"WHAT WOULD IT COST TO HAVE A COUPLE OF SUITS AND A COUPLE
OF JACKETS AND A COUPLE OF PAIRS OF DRESS PANTS, AND SHIRTS, AND TIES, AND
SHOES-YOU KNOW, THE WORKS?" Owen asked.

"I'm going to take you shopping myself," Grandmother
told him. "You let me worry about what it will cost. Nobody needs to know
what it costs."

"MAYBE, IN MY SIZE, IT'S NOT SO EXPENSIVE," Owen said.
And so-even without my mother alive to urge him-Owen Meany agreed that he was
Gravesend Academy "material.'' The academy agreed, too. Even without Dan
Needham's recommendation, they would have admitted Owen with a full
scholarship; he was obviously in need of a scholarship, and he had all A's at
Gravesend Junior High School. The problem was-though Dan Needham had legally
adopted me, and I therefore had the privileged status of a faculty son-the
academy was reluctant to accept me. My junior-high-school performance was so
undistinguished that the academy admissions officers advised Dan to have me
attend the ninth grade at Gravesend High School; the academy would admit me to
their ninth-grade class the following year-when, they said, it would be easier
for me to make the adjustment because I would be repeating the ninth grade. I
had always known I was a weak student; this was less a blow to my self-esteem
than it was painful for me to think of Owen moving ahead of me-we wouldn't be
in the same class, we wouldn't graduate together. There was another, more
practical consideration: that, in my senior year, I wouldn't have Owen around
to help me with my homework. That was a promise Owen had made to my motnen that
he would always help me with my homework. And so, before Grandmother took Owen
shopping for his academy clothes, Owen announced his decision to attend the
ninth grade at Gravesend High School, too. He would stay wkh me; he would enter
the academy the following year-he could have skipped a grade, yet he
volunteered to repeat the ninth grade with me! Dan convinced the admissions
officers that although Owen was academically quite advanced, it would also be
good for him to repeat a grade, to be a year older as a ninth
grader-"because of his physical immaturity," Dan argued. When the
admissions officers met Owen, of course they agreed with Dan-they didn't know
that a year older, in Owen's case, didn't mean that he'd be a year bigger. Dan
and my grandmother were quite touched by Owen's loyalty to me; Hester,
naturally, denounced Owen's behavior as "queer"; naturally, I loved
him, and I thanked him for his sacrifice-but in my heart I resented his power
over me.

"DON'T GIVE IT ANOTHER THOUGHT," he said: "WE'RE
PALS, AREN'T WE? WHAT ARE FRIENDS FOR? I'LL NEVER LEAVE YOU."

Toronto: February , -Liberace died yesterday; he was
sixty-seven. His fans had been maintaining a candlelit vigil outside his Palm
Springs mansion, which was formerly a convent. Wouldn't that have given Owen
the shivers? Liberace had revised his former opposition to homosexuality.
"If you swing with chickens, that is your perfect right," he said.
Yet he denied the allegations in a  palimony suit that he had paid for the
sexual services of a male employee-a former valet and live-in chauffeur. There
was a settlement out of court. And Liberace's manager denied that the
entertainer was a victim of AIDS; Liberace's recent weight loss was the result,
the manager said, of a watermelon-only diet. What would my grandmother and Owen
Meany have said about that ?

"LIBERACE!" Owen would have cried."WHO WOULD HAVE
BELIEVED IT POSSIBLE? LIBERACE! KILLED BY WATERMELONS!"

It was Thanksgiving, , before my cousins visited Gravesend and
saw Grandmother's TV at  Front Street for

        
 
themselves. Noah had started at the academy
that fall, so he'd watched television with Owen and me on occasional weekends;
but no judgment on the culture around us could ever be complete without Simon's
automatic approval of every conceivable form of entertainment, and Hester's
similarly automatic disapproval.

"Neat!" Simon said; he also thought that Liberace was
"neat."

"It's shit, all of it," said Hester. "Until
everything's in color, and the color's perfect, TV's not worth watching."
But Hester was impressed by the energy of Grandmother's constant criticism of
nearly everything she saw; that was a style Hester sought to imitate-for even
"shit" was worth watching if it afforded one the opportunity to
elaborate on what sort of shit it was. Everyone agreed that the movie reruns
were more interesting than the actual TV programs; yet in Hester's view, the
movies selected were "too old." Grandmother liked them old-"the
older the better!"-but she disliked most movie stars. After watching
Captain Blood, she announced that Errol Flynn was "no brains, all
chest"; Hester thought that Olivia de Havilland was "cow-eyed."
Owen suggested that pirate movies were all the same.

"STUPID SWORD FIGHTS!" he said. "AND LOOK AT THE
CLOTHES THEY WEAR! IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE FIGHTING WITH SWORDS, IT'S STUPID TO
WEAR LOOSE, BAGGY SHIRTS-OF COURSE YOUR SHIRTS ARE GOING TO GET ALL SLASHED TO
PIECES!"

Grandmother complained that the choice of movies wasn't even
"seasonal." What was the point of showing It Happens Every Spring in
November? No one is thinking about baseball at Thanksgiving, and It Happens
Every Spring is such a stupid baseball movie that I think I could watch it
every night and even fail to be reminded of my mother's death. Ray Milland is a
college professor who becomes a phenomenal baseball player after discovering a
formula that repels wood; how could this remind anyone of anything real ?

"Honestly, who thinks up these things?" Grandmother
asked.

"Peckerheads," said Hester, who was forever expanding
her vocabulary. If Gravesend Academy had begun the process of saving Noah from
himself, we could scarcely tell; it was Simon who seemed subdued, perhaps
because he had missed Noah during the fall and was overwhelmed by the instant
renewal of their athletic rivalry. Noah was experiencing considerable academic
difficulties at the academy, and Dan Needham had several long heart-to-heart
talks with Uncle Alfred and Aunt Martha. The Eastmans decided that Noah was
intellectually exhausted; the family would spend that Christmas holiday on some
recuperative beach in the Caribbean.

"IN THE RELAXING SETTING OF CAPTAIN BLOOD!" Owen
observed. Owen was disappointed that the Eastmans were spending Christmas in
the Caribbean; another opportunity to go to Sawyer Depot had eluded him. After
Thanksgiving, he was depressed; and-like me-he was thinking about Hester. We
went to The Idaho for the usual fare at the Saturday matinee-a double feature:
Treasure of the Golden Condor, wherein Cornel Wilde is a dashing
eighteenth-century Frenchman seeking hidden Mayan riches in Guatemala; and Drum
Beat, wherein Alan Ladd is a cowboy and Audrey Dalton is an Indian. Between
tales of ancient treasure and scalping parties, it was repeatedly clear to Owen
and me that we lived in a dull age-that adventure always happened elsewhere,
and long ago. Tarzan fit this formula-and so did the dreaded biblical epics.
These, in combination with his Christmas pageant experiences, contributed to
the newly sullen and withdrawn persona that Owen presented to the world at
Christ Church. That the Wiggins had actually liked' The Robe made up Owen's
mind: whether he ever got to go to Sawyer Depot for Christmas or not, he would
never participate in another Nativity. I'm sure his decision did not upset the
Wiggins greatly, but Owen was unforgiving on the subject of biblical epics in
general and The Robe in particular. Although he thought that Jean Simmons was
"PRETTY, LIKE HESTER," he also thought that Audrey Dalton-in Drum
Beat-was "LIKE HESTER IF HESTER HAD BEEN AN INDIAN." Beyond all three
having dark hair, I failed to see any resemblance. The Robe, to be fair, had
hit Owen and me one Saturday afternoon at The Idaho with special force; my
mother had been dead less than a year, and Owen and I were not comforted to see
Richard Burton and Jean Simmons walk off to their deaths quite so happily.
Furthermore, they appeared to exit the movie

        
 
and life itself by walking up into the sky!
This was especially offensive. Richard Burton is a Roman tribune who converts
to Christianity after crucifying Christ; both Burton and Jean Simmons take
turns clutching Christ's robe a lot.

"WHAT A BIG FUSS ABOUT A BLANKET!" Owen said.
"THAT'S SO CATHOLIC," he added-"TO GET VERY RELIGIOUS ABOUT
OBJECTS."

This was a theme of Owen's-the Catholics and their adoration of
OBJECTS. Yet Owen's habit of collecting objects that he made (in his own way)
RELIGIOUS was well known: I had only to remember my armadillo's claws. In all
of Gravesend, the object that most attracted Owen's contempt was the stone
statue of Mary Magdalene, the reformed prostitute who guarded the playground of
St. Michael's-the parochial school. The life-sized statue stood in a
meaningless cement archway-"meaningless" because the archway led
nowhere; it was a gate without a place to be admitted to; it was an entrance
without a house. The archway, and Mary Magdalene herself, overlooked the rutted
macadam playground of the schoolyard-a surface too broken up to dribble a
basketball on; the bent and rusted basket hoops had long ago been stripped of
their nets, and the foul lines had been erased or worn away with sand. It was a
forlornly unattended playground on weekends and school holidays; it was used
strictly for recesses during school days, when the parochial students loitered
mere-they were unmoved to play many games. The stern look of Mary Magdalene
rebuked them; her former line of work and her harsh reformation shamed them.
For although the playground reflected an obdurate disrepair, the statue itself
was whitewashed every spring, and even on the dullest, grayest days- despite
being dotted here and there with birdshit and occasional stains of human
desecration-Mary Magdalene attracted and reflected more light than any other
object or human presence at St. Michael's. Owen looked upon the school as a
prison to which he was nearly sent; for had his parents not RENOUNCED the
Catholics, St. Michael's would have been Owen's school. It had an altogether
bleak, reformatory atmosphere; its life was punctuated by the sounds of an
adjacent gas station-the bell that announced the arriving and departing
vehicles, the accounting of the gas pumps themselves, and the multifarious din
from the mechanics laboring in the pits. But over this unholy, unstudious,
unsuitable ground the stone Mary Magdalene stood her guard; under her odd,
cement archway, she at times appeared to be tending to an elaborate but crudely
homemade barbecue; at other times, she seemed to be a goalie-poised in the
goal. Of course, no Catholic would have fired a ball or a puck or any other
missile at her; if the parochial students themselves were tempted, the grim,
alert presence of the nuns would have discouraged them. And although the
Gravesend Catholic Church was in another part of town, the shabby saltbox where
the nuns and some other teachers at St. Michael's lived was positioned like a
guardhouse at a corner of the playground-in full view of Mary Magdalene. If a
passing Protestant felt inclined to show the statue some small gesture of
disrespect, the vigilant nuns would exit their guardhouse on the fly-their
black habits flapping with the defiant rancorousness of crows. Owen was afraid
of nuns.

"THEY'RE UNNATURAL," he said; but what, I thought,
could be more UNNATURAL than the squeaky falsetto of The Granite Mouse or his
commanding presence, which was so out of proportion to his diminutive size?
Every fall, the horse-chestnut trees between Tan Lane and Garfield Street
produced many smooth, hard, dark-brown missiles; it was inevitable that Owen
and I should pass by the statue of Mary Magdalene with our pockets full of
chestnuts. Despite his fear of nuns, Owen could not resist the target that the
holy goalie presented; I was a better shot, but Owen threw his chestnuts more
fervently. We left scarcely any marks on Mary Magdalene's ground-length robe,
on her bland, snowy face, or on her open hands-outstretched in apparent
supplication. Yet the nuns, in a fury that only religious persecution can
account for, would attack us; their pursuit was erratic, their shrieks like the
cries of bats surprised by sunlight-Owen and I had no trouble outrunning them.