A prayer for Owen Meany (9 page)

I am living proof that the waters of Loveless Lake are potable
because I swallowed half the lake every summer while waterskiing with my
cousins. Once I struck the surface of the lake with such force that my right
eyelid was rolled up into my head in a funny way. My cousin Simon told me I had
lost my eyelid-and my cousin Hester added that the lost eyelid would lead to
blindness. But Uncle Alfred managed to locate the missing eyelid, after a few
anxious minutes. Indoor life with my cousins was no less vigorous. The savagery
of pillow-fighting would leave me breathless, and there was a game that
involved Noah and Simon tying me up and stuffing me in Hester's laundry hamper,
where Hester would always discover me; before she'd untie me, she'd accuse me
of sniffing her underwear. I know that Hester especially looked forward to my
visits because she suffered from being the constant inferior to her
brothers-not that they abused her, or even teased her. Considering that they
were boys, and older, and she was a girl, and younger, I thought they treated
her splendidly, but every activity my cousins engaged in was competitive, and
it clearly irked Hester to lose. Naturally, her brothers could "best"
her at everything. How she must have enjoyed having me around, for she could
"best" me at anything-even, when we went to the Eastman lumberyard
and the sawmill, at log-rolling. There was also a game that involved taking
possession of a sawdust pile-those piles were often twenty or thirty feet high,
and the sawdust nearer the bottom, in contact with the ground, was often frozen
or at least hardened to a crusty consistency. The object was to be king of the
mountain, to hurl all comers off the top of the pile-or to bury one's attackers
in the sawdust. The worst part about being buried in the pile-up to your chin
-was that the lumberyard dog, the Eastmans' slobbering boxer, a mindlessly
friendly beast with halitosis vile enough to give you visions of corpses
uprooted from their graves . . . this dog with the mouth of death was then
summoned to lick your face. And with the sawdust packed all around you-as
armless as Wata-hantowet's totem-you were powerless to fend the dog off. But I
loved being with my cousins; they were so vastly stimulating that I could
rarely sleep in their house and would lie awake all night, waiting for them to
pounce on me, or for them to let Firewater, the boxer, into my room, where he
would lick me to death; or I would just lie awake imagining what exhausting
contests I would encounter the next day. For my mother, our trips to Sawyer
Depot were serene occasions-fresh air and girl-talk with Aunt Martha, and some
doubtless needed relief from what must have been the claustrophobia of her life
with Grandmother and Lydia and the maids at  Front Street. Mother must
have been dying to leave home. Almost everyone is dying to leave home,
eventually; and almost everyone needs to. But, for me, Sawyer Depot was a
training camp; yet the athleticism was not-all by itself -what was most
thrilling to me about the time spent with my cousins. What made these contests
thrilling was the presexual tension that I always associated with the
competition-that I always associated with Hester in particular. To this day, I
still engage in debate with Noah and Simon regarding whether Hester was
"created" by her environment, which was almost entirely created by
Noah and Simon-which is my opinion-or whether she was born with an overdose of
sexual aggression and family animosity-which is what Noah and Simon say. We all
agree that my Aunt Martha, as a model of womanhood, was no match for the
superior impression my Uncle Alfred made-as a man. Felling trees, clearing the
land,

 
 
milling
lumber-what a male business was the Eastman Lumber Company! The house in Sawyer
Depot was spacious and pretty; for my Aunt Martha had acquired my grandmother's
good taste, and she'd brought money of her own to the marriage. But Uncle Alfred
made more money than we Wheelwrights were simply sitting on. Uncle Alfred was a
paragon of maleness, too, in that he was rich and he dressed like a lumberjack;
that he spent most of the day behind a desk did not influence his appearance.
Even if he only briefly visited the sawmill-and not more than twice a week did
he actually venture into the forests where they were logging-he looked the
part. Although he was fiercely strong, I never saw him do an ounce of physical
labor. He radiated a burly good health, and despite how little time he spent
"in the field," there was always sawdust in his bushy hair, wood
chips wedged between the laces of his boots, and a few fragrant pine needles
ground into the knees of his blue jeans. Possibly he kept the pine needles, the
wood chips, and the sawdust in his office desk drawer. What does it matter?
While wrestling with my cousins and me, Uncle Alfred was an ever-friendly
bruiser; and the cologne of his rough-and-ready business, the veritable scent
of the woods, was always upon him. I don't know how my Aunt Martha tolerated
it, but Firewater often slept in the king-size bed in my uncle and aunt's
room-and that was an even further manifestation of Uncle Alfred's manliness:
that when he wasn't snuggling up to my lovely Aunt Martha, he was lolling in
bed with a big dog. I thought Uncle Alfred was terrific-a wonderful father;
and, for boys, he was what today's idiots would call a superior "role
model." He must have been a difficult "role model" for Hester,
however, because I think her worshipful love of him-in addition to her constant
losses in the daily competitions with her older brothers-simply overwhelmed
her, and gave her an unwarranted contempt of my Aunt Martha. But I know what
Noah would say to that; he would say "bullshit," that his mother was
a model of sweetness and caring-and she was I I don't argue with that!-and that
Hester was born to her antagonism toward her mother, that she was born to
challenge her parents' love with hostility toward both of them, and that the
only way she could repay her brothers for outskiing her (on water and on snow),
and for hurting her off sawdust piles, and for cramming her cousin into a
basket with her old underwear, was to intimidate every girlfriend either of
them ever had and to fuck the brains out of every boy they ever knew. Which she
appeared to do. It's a no-win argument-that business of what we're born with
and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it
simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth. Privately,
I continue to be more forgiving of Hester than her own family is. I think she
was up against a stacked deck from the start, and that everything she would
become began for her when Noah and Simon made me kiss her-because they made it
clear that kissing Hester was punishment, the penalty part of the game; to have
to kiss Hester meant you had lost. I don't remember exactly how old we were
when we were first forced to kiss, Hester and I, but it was sometime after my
mother had met Dan Needham-because Dan was spending Christmas vacation with us
at the Eastmans' in Sawyer Depot-and it was sometime before my mother and Dan
Needham were married, because Mother and I were still living at  Front
Street. Whenever it was, Hester and I were still in our preadolescent years-our
presexual years, if that's safe to say; perhaps that is never safe to say in
regard to Hester, but I promise it is safe to say of me. Anyway, there'd been a
thaw in the north country, and some rain, and then an ice storm, which froze
the slush in deep-grooved rats. The snow was the texture of jagged glass, which
made skiing all the more exciting for Noah and Simon but made it entirely out
of the question for me. So Noah and Simon went up north to brave the elements,
and I stayed in the Eastmans' extremely comfortable house; I don't remember why
Hester stayed home, too. Perhaps she was in a cranky temper, or else she just
wanted to sleep in. For whatever reason, we were there together, and by the end
of the day, when Noah and Simon returned, Hester and I were in her room,
playing Monopoly. I hate Monopoly, but even a capitalist board game was welcome
relief from the more strenuous activities my cousins subjected me to-and Hester
was either in a rare mood to be calm, or else I rarely saw her without the
company of Noah and Simon, around whom it was impossible to remain calm. We
were lounging on the thick, soft rug in Hester's room, with some of her old
stuffed animals for pillows, when the boys-then- hands and faces bitter cold
from skiing-attacked

 
 
us. They trod
across the Monopoly game so effectively that there was no hope of re-creating
where our houses and hotels and tokens might have been.

' 'Whoa!'' Noah yelled. ' 'Look at this hanky-panky going on
here!"

"There's no hanky-panky going on!" Hester said
angrily.

"Whoa!" Simon yelled. "Watch out for Hester the
Mo/ester!"

"Get out of my room!" Hester shouted.

"Last one through the house has to kiss Hester the
Mo-lester!" Noah said, and he and Simon were off running. In a panic, I
looked at Hester and took off after them.' 'Through the house'' was a racing
game that meant we had to travel through the back bedrooms-Noah and Simon's
room and the back guest room, which was mine-down the back stairs, around the
landing by the maid's room, where May the maid was likely to shout at us, and
into the kitchen by May's usual entrance (she was also the cook). Then we
chased each other through the kitchen and dining room, through the living room
and the sun room, and through Uncle Alfred's study-provided he wasn't in his
study-and up the front stairs, past the front guest rooms, which were off the
main hall, and through my aunt and uncle's bedroom-provided they weren't in
their bedroom-and then into the back hall, the first room off of which was
Hester's bathroom. The next room that we came to was the finish line: Hester's
room itself. Of course, May emerged from her room to shout at Noah and Simon
for running on the stairs, but only I was there on the landing to be shouted
at-and only I had to slow down and say ' 'Excuse me'' to May. And they closed
the swinging door from the kitchen to the dining room after they ran through
the doorway, so that only I had to pause long enough to open it. Uncle Alfred
was not in his study, but Dan Needham was reading in there, and only I paused
long enough to say "Hello" to Dan. At the top of the front stairs,
Firewater blocked my way; he'd doubtless been asleep when Noah and Simon had
raced by him, but now he was alert enough to play. He managed to get the heel
of my sock in his mouth as I attempted to run around him, and I could not
travel far down the main hall-dragging him after me-before I had to stop to
give him my sock. So I was the last one through the house-I was always the last
one through the house-and therefore I was expected to pay the loser's price,
which was to kiss Hester. In order to bring this forced intercourse about, it
had been necessary for Noah and Simon to prevent Hester from locking herself in
her bathroom-which she attempted-and then it was necessary for them to tie her
to her bed, which they managed to do after a violent struggle that included the
decapitation of one of Hester's more fragile stuffed animals, which she had
futilely ruined by beating her brothers with it. At last she was strapped prone
to her bed, where she threatened to bite the lips off anyone who dared to kiss
her-the thought of which filled me with such dread that Noah and Simon needed
to use more mountain-climbing rope to tie me on top of Hester. We were bound uncomfortably
face-to-face-and chest-to-chest, hips-to-hips, to make our humiliation more
complete-and we were told that we would not be untied until we did it.

"Kiss her!" Noah cried to me.

"Let him kiss you, Hester!" Simon said. It occurs to
me now that this suggestion was even less compelling to Hester than it was to
me, and I could think only that Hester's snarling mouth was about as inviting
as Firewater's; yet I think we both realized that the potential embarrassment
of being mated to this conjugal position for any duration of time, while Noah
and Simon observed our breathing and minor movements, would perhaps lead to
even greater suffering than indulging in a single kiss. What fools we were to
think that Noah and Simon were dull enough fellows to be satisfied with one
kiss! We tried a tiny one, but Noah said, "That wasn't on the lips!"
We tried a small, close-lipped one, on the lips-so brief that it was
unnecessary to breathe-but this failed to satisfy Simon, who said, "Open
your mouths!" We opened our mouths. There was the problem of arranging the
noses before we could enjoy the nervous exchange of saliva-the slithery contact
of tongues, the surprising click of teeth. We were joined so long we had to
breathe, and I was astonished at how sweet my cousin's breath was; to this day,
I hope mine wasn't too bad. As abruptly as they had conceived of this game, my
cousins announced that the game was over. They never marshaled as much
enthusiasm for the many repeats of the game called "Last One Through the House
Has to Kiss Hester"; maybe they realized, later, that I began to
intentionally lose the game. And what did they make of the time they untied us
and Hester said to me, "I felt your hard-on"?

"You did not!" I said.

"I did. It wasn't much of a hard-on," she said.
"It was no big deal. Bull felt it."

"You didn't!" I said.

"I did," she said. And it's true-it was no big deal,
to be sure; it wasn't much of a hard-on, maybe; but I had one. Did Noah and
Simon ever consider the danger of the game? The way they skied, on water and on
snow-and, later, the way they drove their cars-suggested to me that they
thought nothing was dangerous. But Hester and I were dangerous. And they
started it: Noah and Simon started it. Owen Meany rescued me. As you shall see,
Owen was always rescuing me; but he began the lifelong process of rescuing me
by rescuing me from Hester. Owen was extremely irritable regarding the time I
spent with my cousins. He would be grouchy for several days before I left for
Sawyer Depot, and he would be peevish and aloof for several days after I got
back. Although I made a point of describing how physically damaging and
psychologically upsetting the time spent with my cousins was, Owen was crabby;
I thought he was jealous.