A prayer for Owen Meany (52 page)

It was Christmas vacation, , and we were alone in the gym-except
for our old friend (and our only audience) the retarded janitor, who operated
the official scorer's clock whenever Owen was in the mood to get serious about
timing the shot. I wish I could remember his name; he was often the only
janitor on duty during school holidays and summer weekends, and there was a
universal understanding that he was retarded or "brain damaged"-and
Owen had heard that the janitor had suffered "shell shock" in the
war. We didn't even know which war-we didn't know what "shell shock"
even was. Owen sat on the basketball court, rubbing his knee.

"I SUPPOSE YOU HEARD THAT FAITH CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS,"
he said. "THE TROUBLE WITH YOU IS, YOU DON'T HAVE ANY FAITH."

"The trouble with you is, you're crazy," I told him;
but I retrieved the basketball. "It's simply irresponsible," I said-
"for someone your age, and of your education, to go around thinking he's
God's instrument!"

"I FORGOT I WAS TALKING TO MISTER RESPONSIBILITY," he
said. He'd started calling me Mr. Responsibility in the fall of ', when we were
engaged in that senior-year agony commonly called college-entrance applications
and interviews; because I'd applied to only the state university, Owen said I'd
taken zero responsibility for my own self-improvement. Naturally, he'd applied
to Harvard and Yale; as for the state university, the University of New
Hampshire had offered him a so-called Honor Society Scholarship-and Owen hadn't
even applied for admission there. The New Hampshire Honor Society gave a
special scholarship each year to someone they selected as the state's best
high-school or prep-school student. You had to be a bona fide resident of the
state, and the prize scholarship was usually awarded to a public-school kid who
was at the top of his or her graduating class; but Owen was at the top of our
Gravesend Academy graduating class, the first time a New Hampshire resident had
achieved such distinction- "Competing Against the Nation's Best, Gravesend
Native Wins!" was the headline in The Gravesend News-Letter: the story
appeared in many of New Hampshire's papers. The University of New Hampshire
never imagined that Owen would accept the scholarship; indeed, the Honor
Society Scholarship was offered every year to New Hampshire's ' 'best''-with
the tragic understanding that the recipient would probably go to Harvard or
Yale, or to some other "better" school. It was obvious to me that
Owen would be accepted- and orfered full scholarships-at Harvard and Yale;
Hester was the only reason he might accept the scholarship to the University of
New Hampshire-and what would be the point of that? Owen would begin his
university career in the fall of ' and Hester would graduate in the spring of
'.

"YOU MIGHT AT LEAST TRY TO GET INTO A BETTER
UNIVERSITY," Owen told me. I was not asking him to give up Harvard or Yale
to keep me company at the University of New Hampshire. I thought it was unfair
of him to expect me to go through the motions of applying to Harvard and
Yale-just to experience the rejections. Although Owen had substantially
improved my abilities as a student, he could do little to improve my mediocre
college-board scores; I simply wasn't Harvard or Yale material. I had become a
good student in English and History courses; I was a slow but thorough reader,
and I could write a readable, well-organized paper; but Owen was still holding
my hand through the Math and Science courses, and I still plodded my dim way
through foreign languages-as a student, I would never be what Owen was: a
natural. Yet he was cross with me for accepting that I could do no better than
the University of New Hampshire; in truth, I liked the University of New
Hampshire. Durham, the town, was no more threatening than Gravesend; and it was
near enough to Gravesend so that I could continue to see a lot of Dan and
Grandmother-I could even continue to live with them.

"I'M SURE I'LL END UP IN DURHAM, TOO," Owen said-with
just the smallest touch of self-pity in his voice; but it infuriated me.
"I DON'T SEE HOW I CAN LET YOU FEND FOR YOURSELF," he added.

"I'm perfectly capable offending for myself," I said.
"And I'll come visit you at Harvard or Yale."

"NO, WE'LL BOTH MAKE OTHER FRIENDS, WE'LL DRIFT
APART-THAT'S THE WAY IT HAPPENS," he said philosophically. "AND
YOU'RE NO LETTER-WRITER-YOU DON'T EVEN KEEP A DIARY,'' he added.

"If you lower your standards and come to the University of
New Hampshire for my sake, I'll kill you," I told him.

"THERE ARE ALSO MY PARENTS TO CONSIDER," he said.
"IF I WERE IN SCHOOL AT DURHAM, I COULD STILL LIVE AT HOME-AND LOOK AFTER
THEM."

"What do you need to look after them for?" I asked
him. It appeared to me that he spent as little time with his parents as
possible!

"AND THERE'S ALSO HESTER TO CONSIDER," he added.

"Let me get one thing straight," I said to him.
"You and Hester-it seems to be the most on-again, off-again thing. Are you
even sleeping with her-have you ever slept with her?"

"FOR SOMEONE YOUR AGE, AND OF YOUR EDUCATION, YOU'RE
AWFULLY CRUDE," Owen said. When he got up off the basketball court, he was
limping. I passed him the basketball; he passed it back. The idiot janitor
reset the scorer's clock: the numbers were brightly lit and huge.

:

That's what the clock said. I was so sick of it! I held the
ball; he held out his hands.

"READY?" Owen said. On that word, the janitor started
the clock. I passed Owen the ball; he jumped into my hands; I lifted him; he
reached higher and higher, and-pivoting in the air-stuffed the stupid
basketball through the hoop. He was so precise, he never touched the rim. He
was midair, returning to earth-his hands still above his head but empty, his
eyes on the scorer's clock at midcourt-when he shouted, "TIME!" The
janitor stopped the clock. That was when I would turn to look; usually, our
time had expired.

:

But this time, when I looked, there was one second left on the
clock.

:

He had sunk the shot in under four seconds!

"YOU SEE WHAT A LITTLE FAITH CAN DO?" said Owen Meany.
The brain-damaged janitor was applauding. "SET THE CLOCK TO THREE
SECONDS!" Owen told him.

"Jesus Christ!" I said.

"IF WE CAN DO IT IN UNDER FOUR SECONDS, WE CAN DO IT IN
UNDER THREE," he said. "IT JUST TAKES A LITTLE MORE FAITH."

"It takes more practice," I told him irritably.

"FAITH TAKES PRACTICE," said Owen Meany. Nineteen
sixty-one was the first year of our friendship that was marred by unfriendly
criticism and quarreling. Our most basic dispute began in the fall when we
returned to the academy for our senior year, and one of the privileges extended
to seniors at Gravesend was responsible for an argument that left Owen and me
feeling especially uneasy. As seniors, we were permitted to take the train to
Boston on either Wednesday or Saturday afternoon; we had no classes on those
afternoons; and if we told the Dean's Office where we were going, we were
allowed to return to Gravesend on the Boston & Maine-as late as : P.M. on
the same day. As day boys, Owen and I didn't really have to be back to school
until the Thursday morning meeting-or the Sunday service at Kurd's Church, if
we chose to go to Boston on a Saturday. Even on a Saturday, Dan and my
grandmother frowned upon the idea of our spending most of the night in the
"dreaded" city; there was a so-called milk train that left Boston at
two o'clock in the morning-it stopped at every town between Boston and
Gravesend, and it didn't get us home until : A.M. (about the time the school
dining hall opened for breakfast)-but Dan and my grandmother said that Owen and
I should live this "wildly" on only the most special occasions. Mr.
and Mrs. Meany didn't make any rules for Owen, at all; Owen was content to
abide by the rules Dan and Grandmother made for me. But he was not content to
spend his time in the dreaded city in the manner that most Gravesend seniors
spent their time. Many Gravesend graduates attended Harvard. A typical outing
for a Gravesend senior began with a subway ride to Harvard Square; there-with
the use of a fake draft card, or with the assistance of an older Gravesend
graduate (now attending Harvard)-booze was purchased in abundance and consumed
with abandon. Sometimes-albeit, rarely-girls were met. Fortified by the former
(and never in the company of the latter), our senior class then rode the subway
back to Boston, where-once again, falsifying our age-we gained

        
 
admission to the striptease performances that
were much admired by our age group at an establishment known as Old Freddy's. I
saw nothing that was morally offensive in this rite of passage. At nineteen, I
was a virgin. Caroline O'Day had not permitted the advance of even so much as
my hand-at least not more than an inch or so above the hem of her pleated skirt
or her matching burgundy knee socks. And although Owen had told me that it was
only Caroline's Catholicism that prevented me access to her
favors-"ESPECIALLY IN HER SAINT MICHAEL'S UNIFORM!"-I had been no
more successful with Police Chief Ben Pike's daughter, Lorna, who was not
Catholic, and not wearing a uniform of any kind when I snagged my lip on her
braces. Apparently, it was either my blood or my pain-or both-that disgusted
her with me. At nineteen, to experience lust-even in its shabbiest forms at Old
Freddy's-was at least to experience something; and if Owen and I had at first
imagined what love was at The Idaho, I saw nothing wrong in lusting at a
burlesque show. Owen, I imagined, was not a virgin; how could he have remained
a virgin with Hester? So I found it sheer hypocrisy for him to label Old
Freddy's DISGUSTING and DEGRADING. At nineteen, I drank infrequently-and
entirely for the maturing thrill of becoming drunk. But Owen Meany didn't
drink; he disapproved of losing control. Furthermore, he had interpreted
Kennedy's inaugural charge-to do something for his country-in a typically
single-minded and literal fashion. He would falsify no more draft cards; he
would produce no more fake identification to assist the illegal drinking and
burlesque-show attendance of his peers-and he was loudly self-righteous about
his decision, too. Fake draft cards were WRONG, he had decided. Therefore, we
walked soberly around Harvard Square-a part of Cambridge that is not necessarily
enhanced by sobriety. Soberly, we looked up our former Gravesend schoolmates-
and, soberly, I imagined the Harvard community (and how it might be morally
altered) with Owen Meany in residence. One of our former schoolmates even told
us that Harvard was a depressing experience-when sober. But Owen insisted that
our journeys to the dreaded city be conducted as joyless research; and so they
were. To maintain sobriety and to attend the striptease perfor- mances at Old
Freddy's was a form of unusual torture; the women at Old Freddy's were only
watchable to the blind drunk. Since Owen had made fake draft cards for himself
and me before his lofty, Kennedy-inspired resolution not to break the law, we
used the cards to be admitted to Old Freddy's.

"THIS IS DISGUSTING!" Owen said. We watched a
heavy-breasted woman in her forties remove her pasties with her teeth; she then
spat them into the eager audience.

"THIS IS DEGRADING!" Owen said. We watched another
unfortunate pick up a tangerine from the dirty floor of the stage; she lifted
the tangerine almost to knee level by picking it up from the floor with the
labia of her vulva-but she could raise it no higher. She lost her grip on the
tangerine, and it rolled off the stage and into the crowd-where two or three of
our schoolmates fought over it. Of course it was DISGUSTING and DEGRADING-we
were sober I

"LET'S FIND A NICE PART OF TOWN," Owen said.

"And do what" I asked him.

"LOOK AT IT," Owen said. It occurs to me now that most
of the seniors at Gravesend Academy had grown up looking at the nice parts of
towns; but quite apart from stronger motives, Owen Meany was interested in what
that was like. That was how we ended up on Newbury Street-one Wednesday
afternoon in the fall of '. know now that it was NO ACCIDENT that we ended up
there. There were some art galleries on Newbury Street-and some very posh
stores selling pricey antiques, and some very fancy clothing stores. There was
a movie theater around the corner, on Exeter Street, where they were showing a
foreign film-not the kind of thing that was regularly shown in the vicinity of
Old Freddy's; at The Exeter, they were showing movies you had to read, the kind
with subtitles.

"Jesus!" I said. "What are we going to do
here?"

"YOU'RE SO UNOBSERVANT," Owen said. He was looking at
a mannequin in a storefront window-a disturbingly faceless mannequin, severely
modern for the period in that she was bald. The mannequin wore a hip-length,
silky blouse; the blouse was fire-engine red and it was cut along the sexy lines
of a camisole. The mannequin wore nothing else; Owen stared at her.

         A PRAYER FOR
OWEN ME ANY

"This is really great," I said to him. "We come
two hours on the train - we're going to ride two more hours to get back - and
here you are, staring at another dressmaker's dummy! If that's all you want to
do, you don't even have to leave your own bedroom\"

"NOTICE ANYTHING FAMILIAR?" he asked me. The name of
the store, "Jerrold's," was painted in vivid-red letters across the
window - in a flourishing, handwritten style.

"Jerrold's," I said. "So what's 'familiar'?"
He put his little hand in his pocket and brought out the label he had removed
from my mother's old red dress; it was the dummy's red dress, really, because
my mother had hated it. It was FAMILIAR - what the label said. Everything I
could see in the store's interior was the same vivid shade of fire-engine
noinsettia red.

"She said the store burned down, didn't she?" I asked
Owen.

"SHE ALSO SAID SHE COULDN'T REMEMBER THE STORE'S NAME, THAT
SHE HAD TO ASK PEOPLE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD," Owen said. "BUT THE NAME
WAS ON THE LABEL-IT WAS ALWAYS ON THE BACK OF THE DRESS."