A prayer for Owen Meany (5 page)

"Yes, Grandmother," I would say.

"Oh, what do you know?" she would say. "Who are
you, anyway?" she would ask.

"HE IS YOUR GRANDSON, JOHNNY," I would say, in my best
imitation of Owen Meany's voice. And my Grandmother would say, "My God, is
he still here? Is that funny little guy still here? Did you lock him in the
passageway, Johnny?"

Later, in that summer when we were ten, Owen told me that my
mother had been to the quarry to visit his parents.

"What did they say about it?" I asked him. They hadn't
mentioned the visit, Owen told me, but he knew she'd been there. "I COULD
SMELL HER PERFUME," Owen said. "SHE MUST HAVE BEEN THERE QUITE A
WHILE BECAUSE THERE WAS ALMOST AS MUCH OF HER PERFUME AS THERE IS IN YOUR
HOUSE. MY MOTHER DOESN'T WEAR PERFUME," he added. This was unnecessary to
tell me. Not only did Mrs. Meany not go outdoors; she refused to look outdoors.
When I saw her positioned in the various windows of Owen's house, she was
always in profile to the window, determined not to be observing the world-yet
making an obscure point: by sitting in profile, possibly she meant to suggest
that she had not entirely turned her back on the world, either. It occurred to
me that the Catholics had done this to her-whatever it was, it surely qualified
for the unmentioned UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE that Owen claimed his father and mother
had suffered. There was something about Mrs. Meany's obdurate self-imprisonment
that smacked of religious persecution-if not eternal damnation.

"How did it go with the Meanys?" I asked my mother.

"They told Owen I was there?" she asked.

"No, they didn't tell him. He recognized your
perfume."

"He would," she said, and smiled. I think she knew
Owen had a crash on her-all my friends had crashes on my mother. And if she had
lived until they'd all been teenagers, their degrees of infatuation with her
would doubtless have deepened, and worsened, and been wholly unbearable-both to
them, and to me. Although my mother resisted the temptation of my
generation-that is to say, she restrained herself from picking up Owen
Meany-she could not resist touching Owen. You simply had to put your hands on
Owen. He was mortally cute; he had a furry-animal attractiveness-except for the
nakedness of his nearly transparent ears, and the rodentlike way they protruded
from his sharp face. My grandmother said that Owen resembled an embryonic fox.
When touching Owen, one avoided his ears; they looked as if they would be cold
to the touch. But not my mother; she even rubbed warmth into his rubbery ears.
She hugged him, she kissed him, she touched noses with him. She did all these
things as naturally as if she were doing them to me, but she did none of these
things to my other friends-not even to my cousins. And Owen responded to her
quite affectionately; he'd blush sometimes, but he'd always smile. His
standard, nearly constant frown would disappear; an embarrassed beam would
overcome his face. I remember him best when he stood level to my mother's
girlish waist; the top of his head, if he stood on his toes, would brush
against her breasts. When she was sitting down and he would go over to her, to
receive his usual touches and hugs, his face would be dead-even with her
breasts. My mother was a sweater girl; she had a lovely figure, and she knew
it, and she wore those sweaters of the period that showed it. A measure of
Owen's seriousness was that we could talk about the mothers of all our friends,
and Owen could be extremely frank in his appraisal of my mother to me; he could
get away with it, because I knew he wasn't joking. Owen never joked.

"YOUR MOTHER HAS THE BEST BREASTS OF ALL THE MOTHERS."
No other friend could have said this to me without starting a fight.

'You really think so?" I asked him.

'ABSOLUTELY, THE BEST," he said.

'What about Missus Wiggin?" I asked him.

'TOO BIG," Owen said.

'Missus Webster?" I asked him.

'TOO LOW," Owen said.

'Missus Merrill?" I asked.

'VERY FUNNY," Owen said.

'Miss Judkins?" I said.

'I DON'T KNOW," he said. "I CAN'T REMEMBER THEM. BUT
SHE'S NOT A MOTHER "

"Miss Farnum!" I said.

"YOU'RE JUST FOOLING AROUND," Owen said peevishly.

"Caroline Perkins!" I said.

"MAYBE ONE DAY," he said seriously. "BUT SHE'S
NOT A MOTHER, EITHER."

"Irene Babson!" I said.

"DON'T GIVE ME THE SHIVERS," Owen said. "YOUR
MOTHER'S THE ONE," he said worshipfully. "AND SHE SMELLS BETTER THAN
ANYONE ELSE, TOO," he added. I agreed with him about this; my mother
always smelted wonderful. Your own mother's bosom is a strange topic of
conversation in which to indulge a friend, but my mother was an acknowledged
beauty, and Owen possessed a completely reliable frankness; you could trust
him, absolutely. My mother was often our driver. She drove me out to the quarry
to play with Owen; she picked Owen up to come play with me-and she drove him
home. The Meany Granite Quarry was about three miles out of the center of town,
not too far for a bike ride-except that the ride was all uphill. Mother would
often drive me out there with my bike in the car, and then I could ride my bike
home; or Owen would ride his bike to town, and she'd take him and his bike
back. The point is, she was so often our chauffeur that he might have seemed to
her like a second son. And to the extent that mothers are the chauffeurs of
small-town life, Owen had reason to identify her as more his mother than his
own mother was. When we played at Owen's, we rarely went inside. We played in
the rock piles, in and around the pits, or down by the river, and on Sundays we
sat in or on the silent machinery, imagining ourselves in charge of the
quarry-or in a war. Owen seemed to find the inside of his house as strange and
oppressive as I did. When the weather was inclement, we played at my house-and
since the weather in New Hampshire is inclement most of the time, we played
most of the time at my house. And play is all we did, it seems to me now. We
were both eleven the summer my mother died. It was our last year in Little
League, which we were already bored with. Baseball, in my opinion, is boring;
one's last year in Little League is only a preview of the boring moments in
baseball that lie ahead for many Americans. Unfortunately, Canadians play and
watch baseball, too. It is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game
with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action. At
least, Little Leaguers play the game more quickly than grown-ups-thank God! We
never devoted the attention to spitting, or to tugging at our armpits and
crotches, that is the essential expression of nervousness in the adult sport.
But you still have to wait between pitches, and wait for the catcher and umpire
to examine the ball after the pitch-and wait for the catcher to trot out to the
mound to say something to the pitcher about how to throw the ball, and wait for
the manager to waddle onto the field and worry (with the pitcher and the
catcher) about the possibilities of the next pitch. That day, in the last
inning, Owen and I were just waiting for the game to be over. We were so bored,
we had no idea that someone's life was about to be over, too. Our side was up.
Our team was far behind-we had been substituting second-string players for
first-string players so often and so randomly that I could no longer recognize
half of our own batters-and I had lost track of my place in the batting order.
I wasn't sure when I got to be up to bat next, and I was about to ask our nice,
fat manager and coach, Mr. Chickering, when Mr. Chickering turned to Owen Meany
and said, "You bat for Johnny, Owen."

"But I don't know when I bat," I said to Mr.
Chickering, who didn't hear me; he was looking off the field somewhere. He was
bored with the game, too, and he was just waiting for it to be over, like the
rest of us.

• KNOW WHEN YOU BAT," Owen said. That was forever
irritating about Owen; he kept track of things like that. He hardly ever got to
play the stupid game, but he paid attention to all the boring details, anyway.

"IF HARRY GETS ON, I'M ON DECK," Owen said. "IF
BUZZY GETS ON, I'M UP."

"Fat chance," I said. "Or is there only one
out?"

"TWO OUT," Owen said. Everyone on the bench was
looking off the field, somewhere-even Owen, now-and I turned my attention to
the intriguing object of their interest. Then I saw hen my mother. She'd just
arrived. She was always late; she found the game boring, too. She had an
instinct for arriving just in time to take me and Owen home. She was even a
sweater girl in the summer, because she favored those summer-weight jersey

 
 
dresses; she had a
nice tan, and the dress was a simple, white-cotton one-clinging about the bosom
and waist, full skirt below-and she wore a red scarf to hold her hair up, off
her bare shoulders. She wasn't watching the game. She was standing well down
the left-field foul line, past third base, looking into the sparse stands, the
almost-empty bleacher seats-trying to see if there was anyone she knew there, I
guess. I realized that everyone was watching her. This was nothing new for me.
Everyone was always staring at my mother, but the scrutiny seemed especially
intense that day, or else I am remembering it acutely because it was the last
time I saw her alive. The pitcher was looking at home plate, the catcher was
waiting for the ball; the batter, I suppose, was waiting for the ball, too; but
even the fielders had turned their heads to gape at my mother. Everyone on our
bench was watching her-Mr. Chickering, the hardest; maybe Owen, the next
hardest; maybe me, the least. Everyone in the stands stared back at her as she
looked them over. It was ball four. Maybe the pitcher had one eye on my mother,
too. Harry Hoyt walked. Buzzy Thurston was up, and Owen was on deck. He got up
from the bench and looked for the smallest bat. Buzzy hit an easy grounder, a
sure out, and my mother never turned her head to follow the play. She started
walking parallel to the third-base line; she passed the third-base coach; she
was still gazing into the stands when the shortstop bobbled Buzzy Thurston's
easy grounder, and the runners were safe all around. Owen was up. As a
testimony to how boring this particular game was-and how very much lost it was,
too-Mr. Chickering told Owen to swing away; Mr. Chickering wanted to go home,
too. Usually, he said, "Have a good eye, Owen!" That meant, Walk!
That meant, Don't lift the bat off your shoulders. That meant, Don't swing at
anything. But this day, Mr. Chickering said, "Hit away, kid!"

"Knock the cover off the ball, Meany!" someone on the
bench said; then he fell off the bench, laughing. Owen, with dignity, stared at
the pitcher.

"Give it a ride, Owen!" I called.

"Swing away, Owen!" said Mr. Chickering. "Swing
away!"

The Foui Ball
 
Now the
guys on our bench got into it; it was time to go home. Let Owen swing and miss
the next three pitches, and then we were free. In addition, we awaited the
potential comedy of his wild, weak swings. The first pitch was way outside and
Owen let it go.

"Swing!" Mr. Chickering said. "Swing away!"

"THAT WAS TOO FAR AWAY!" Owen said. He was strictly by
the book, Owen Meany; he did everything by the rules. The second pitch almost
hit him in the head and he had to dive forward-across the dirt surrounding home
plate and into the infield grass. Ball two. Everyone laughed at the explosion
of dust created by Owen whacking his uniform; yet Owen made us all wait while
he cleaned himself off. My mother had her back to home plate; she had caught
someone's eye-someone in the bleacher seats-and she was waving to whoever it
was. She was past the third-base bag-on the third-base line, but still nearer
third base than home plate-when Owen Meany started his swing. He appeared to
start his swing before the ball left the pitcher's hand-it was a fast ball,
such as they are in Little League play, but Owen's swing was well ahead of the
ball, with which he made astonishing contact (a little in front of home plate,
about chest-high). It was the hardest I'd ever seen him hit a ball, and the
force of the contact was such a shock to Owen that he actually stayed on his
feet-for once, he didn't fall down. The crack of the bat was so unusually sharp
and loud for a Little League game that the noise captured even my mother's
wandering attention. She turned her head toward home plate-I guess, to see who
had hit such a shot-and the ball struck her left temple, spinning her so
quickly that one of her high heels broke and she fell forward, facing the
stands, her knees splayed apart, her face hitting the ground first because her
hands never moved from her sides (not even to break her fall), which later gave
rise to the speculation that she was dead before she touched the earth. Whether
she died that quickly, I don't know; but she was dead by the time Mr.
Chickering reached her. He was the first one to her. He lifted her head, then
turned her face to a slightly more comfortable position; someone said later
that he closed her eyes before he let her head rest back on the ground. I

 
 
remember that he
pulled the skirt of her dress down-it was as high as midthigh-and he pinched
her knees together. Then he stood up, removing his warm-up jacket, which he
held in front of him as a bullfighter holds his cape. I was the first of the
players to cross the third-base line, but-for a fat man-Mr. Chickering was
agile. He caught me, and he threw the warm-up jacket over my head. I could see
nothing; it was impossible to struggle effectively.

"No, Johnny! No, Johnny!" Mr. Chickering said.
"You don't want to see her, Johnny," he said. Your memory is a
monster; you forget-it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things
for you, or hides things from you-and summons them to your recall with a will
of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you! Later, I would
remember everything. In revisiting the scene of my mother's death, I can
remember everyone who was in the stands that day; I remember who wasn't there,
too-and what everyone said, and didn't say, to me. But the first visit to that
scene was very bare of details. I remember Chief Pike, our Gravesend chief of
police-in later years, I would date his daughter. Chief Pike got my attention
only because of what a ridiculous question he asked-and how much more absurd
was his elaboration on his question!