A prayer for Owen Meany (21 page)

        
 
they held their ears, too. Even Lydia held
her ears in her hands. My grandmother glowered, but she would not raise her
hands; she made herself listen, although I could tell it was painful for her to
hear it-and that was when / heard it: the children on the high-school athletic
fields. They were playing baseball. There were the usual shouts, the occasional
arguments, the voices coming all at once; and then the quiet, or almost quiet,
was punctuated-as baseball games always are--by the crack of the bat. There it
went, a pretty solid-sounding hit, and I watched even the rocklike face of Mr.
Meany wince, his fingers close on Owen's shoulders. And Mr. Merrill, stuttering
worse than usual, said, " 'The Lord make his face to shine upon her and be
gracious unto her, the Lord lift up his countenance upon her and give her
peace. Amen.' "

He immediately bent down and took some loose dirt in his hand;
he was the first to cast earth upon my mother's coffin, where I knew she wore a
black dress-the one she'd copied from the red dress, which she'd hated. The
white copy, Dan had said, did not look so good on her; I guessed that her death
had ill-affected her tan. I'd already been told that the swelling at her
temple, and the surrounding discoloration, had made an open coffin
inadvisable-not that we Wheelwrights were much for open coffins, under any
circumstances; Yankees believe in closed doors. One by one, the mourners threw
dirt on the coffin; then it was awkward to return their hands to their
ears-although Hester did, before she thought better of it. The heel of her
dirty hand put a smudge on her ear and on the side of her face. Owen would not
throw a handful of dirt; I also saw that he would not take his hands from his
ears. He would not open his eyes, either, and his father had to walk him out of
the cemetery. Twice, I heard him say, "I'M SORRY!"

I heard a few more cracks of the bat before Dan Needham took me
to  Front Street. At Grandmother's, there was just "family." My
Aunt Martha led me up to my old room and we sat on my old bed together. She
told me that I could come live with her and Uncle Alfred and Noah and Simon and
Hester, "up north," where I would always be welcome; she hugged me
and kissed me and told me to never forget that there was always that option.
Then my grandmother came to my room: she shooed Aunt Martha away and she sat
beside me. She told me that if I didn't mind living with an old woman, I was certainly
welcome to have my room back-that it would always be my room, that no one else
would ever have any claim to it. She hugged me and kissed me, too; she said
that we both had to be sure that we gave a lot of love and attention to Dan.
Dan was next. He sat on my bed, too. He reminded me that he had legally adopted
me; that although I was Johnny Wheelwright to everyone in Gravesend, I was as
good as a Johnny Needham, to the school, and that meant that I could go to
Graveseriti Academy-when the time came, and just as my mother had wanted me
to-as a legitimate faculty child, just as if I were Dan's actual son. Dan said
he thought of me as his son, anyway, and he would never take a job that took
him away from Gravesend Academy until I'd had the chance to graduate. He said
he'd understand if I found  Front Street more comfortable than his
dormitory apartment, but that he liked having me live in his apartment, with
him, if I wasn't too bored with the confinement of the place. Maybe I'd prefer
to spend some nights every week with him, and some nights at  Front
Street-any nights I wished, in either place. I said I thought that would be
fine, and I asked him to tell Aunt Martha-in a way that wouldn't hurt her
feelings-that I really was a Gravesend boy and I didn't want to move "up
north." Actually, the very thought of living with my cousins exhausted and
terrified me, and I was convinced I should be consumed by sinful longing for
unnatural acts with Hester if I permitted myself to move in with the Eastmans.
(I did not tell Dan that he should tell Aunt Martha that.) When someone you
love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you
lose her in pieces over a long time-the way the mail stops coming, and her
scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and
drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when
the day comes-when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with
the feeling that she's gone, forever- there comes another day, and another
specifically missing part. The evening after her funeral, I felt she was gone
when it was time for Dan to go home to the dorm. I realized that Dan had
choices-he could return to his dormitory apartment, alone, or I could offer to
go back with him; or he could stay at  Front Street, he could even stay in
the other twin bed in my room because I'd already told my grandmother that I
didn't want Noah or Simon sleeping there that night. But as soon as I realized
what Dan's choices were, I also knew they were-

        
 
each of them-imperfect in their own way. I
realized that the choices available to Dan, regarding where he would sleep,
would be imperfect, forever; and that, forever, there would be something
unsatisfying about thinking of him alone-and something also incomplete about
him being with me.

"Do you want me to come back to the dorm with you?" I
asked him.

"Would you like me to stay with you?" he asked me. But
what did it matter? I watched him walk down Front Street toward the lights of
the academy buildings. It was a warm night, with the frequent banging of screen
doors and the sounds of rocking chairs on the screened-in porches. The
neighborhood kids were playing some game with a flashlight; fortunately, it was
too dark for even the most American of kids to be hitting a baseball. My
cousins were uncharacteristically subdued by the tragedy. Noah kept saying
"I can't believe it!" Then he'd put his hand on my shoulder. And
Simon rather tactlessly, but innocently, added: "Who would have thought he
could hit a ball hard enough?"

My Aunt Martha curled up on the living-room couch with her head
in Uncle Alfred's lap; she lay there not moving, like a little girl with an
earache. My grandmother sat in her usual thronelike chair in the same room; she
and Alfred would occasionally exchange glances and shake their heads. Once Aunt
Martha sat up with her hair a mess and pounded her fist on the coffee table.
"It doesn't make any sense I" she shouted; then she put her head back
down in Uncle Alfred's lap, and cried for a while. To this outburst, my
grandmother neither shook nor nodded her head; she looked at the ceiling,
ambiguously-either seeking restraint or patience there, or seeking some
possible sense, which Martha had found to be lacking. Hester had not changed
out of her funeral dress; it was black linen, of a simplicity and good fit that
my mother might have favored, and Hester looked especially grown-up in it,
although it was badly wrinkled. She kept pinning her hair up on top of her
head, because of the heat, but wild strands of it would fall down on her face
and neck until, exasperated, she would let it all down again. The fine beads of
sweat on her upper lip gave her skin the smoothness and the shine of glass.

"Want to take a walk?" she asked me.

"Sure," I said.

"Want Noah and me to go with you?" Simon asked.

"No," Hester said. Most of the houses on Front Street
still had their downstairs lights on; dogs were still outside, and barking; but
the kids who'd been playing the flashlight game had been called inside. The
heat off the sidewalk still radiated up at you; on hot summer nights, in
Gravesend, the heat hit your crotch first. Hester took my hand as we walked.

"It's only the second time I've seen you in a dress,"
I said.

"I know," she said. It was an especially dark night,
cloudy and starless; the moon was just an opaque sliver in the fog.

"Just remember," she said, "your friend Owen
feels worse than you."

"I know," I said; but I felt no small surge of
jealousy at my admission-and at the knowledge that Hester was thinking about
Owen, too. We left Front Street at the Gravesend Inn; I hesitated before
crossing Pine Street, but Hester seemed to know our destination-her hand tugged
me along. Once we were on Linden Street, passing the dark high school, it was
clear to both of us where we were going. There was a police car in the
high-school parking lot-on the lookout for vandals, I suppose, or else to
prevent the high-school students from using the parking lot and the athletic
fields for illicit purposes at night. We could hear a motor running; it seemed
too deep and throaty a motor to be the squad car, and after we passed the high
school, the engine noise grew louder. I didn't believe that a motor was
required to run the cemetery, but that's where the sound was coming from. I
think now that I must have wanted to see her grave at night, knowing how she
hated the darkness; I believe I wanted to reassure myself that some light
penetrated even the cemetery at night. The streetlights on Linden Street shone
some distance into the cemetery and clearly illuminated the Meany Granite
Company truck, which was parked and idling at the main gate; Hester and I could
observe Mr. Meany's solemn face behind the steering wheel, his face illuminated
by the long drags he took from his cigarette. He was alone in the cab of the
truck, but I knew where Owen was. Mr. Meany seemed unsurprised to see me,
although Hester made him nervous. Hester made everyone nervous: in good light,
in close-up, she looked her age-like a large, overly

        
 
mature twelve-year-old. But from any
distance, with any assistance from the shadows, she looked eighteen-and like a
lot of trouble, too.

"Owen had some more to say," Mr. Meany confided to us.
"But he's been at it a while. I'm sure he's about finished."

I felt another rush of jealousy, to think that Owen's concerns
for my mother's first night underground had preceded my own. In the humid air,
the diesel exhaust was heavy and foul, but I was sure that Mr. Meany could not
be prevailed upon to turn the engine off; probably he was keeping the engine
running in an effort to hurry up Owen's prayers.

"I want you to know somethin'," Mr. Meany said.
"I'm gonna listen to what your mother said. She told me not to interfere
if Owen wanted to go to the academy. And I won't," he said. "I
promised her," he added. It would take me years to realize that from the
moment Owen hit that ball, Mr. Meany wouldn't "interfere" with
anything Owen wanted.

"She told me not to worry about the money, too," Mr.
Meany said. "I don't know what happens about that-now," he added.

"Owen will get a full scholarship," I said.

"I don't know about that," Mr. Meany said. "I
guess so, if he wants one," he added. "Your mother was speakin' about
his clothes," Mr. Meany said. "All them coats and ties."

"Don't worry," I told him.

"Oh, I ain't worryin'!" he said. "I'm just
promisin' you I ain't interferin'-that's the point."

A light blinked from the cemetery, and Mr. Meany saw Hester and
me look in its direction.

"He's got a light with him," Mr. Meany said. "I
don't know what's takin' him so long," he said. "He's been in there
long enough." He stepped on the accelerator then, as if a little rev would
hurry Owen along. But after a while, he said, "Maybe you better go see what's
keepin' him."

The light in the cemetery was faint and Hester and I walked
toward it cautiously, not wanting to tread on other people's flowers or bark
our shins on one of the smaller graves. The farther we walked from the Meany
Granite Company truck, the more the engine noise receded-but it seemed deeper,
too, as if it were the motor at the core of the earth, the one that turned the
earth and changed day to night. We could hear snatches of Owen's prayers; I
thought he must have brought the flashlight so he could read The Book of Common
Prayer-perhaps he was reading every prayer in it.

" 'INTO PARADISE MAY THE ANGELS LEAD YOU,' " he read.
Hester and I stopped; she stood behind me and locked her arms around my waist.
I could feel her breasts against my shoulder blades, and-because she was a
little taller-I could feel her throat against the back of my head; her chin
pushed my head down.

" 'FATHER OF ALL,' " Owen read. " 'WE PRAY TO YOU
FOR THOSE WE LOVE, BUT SEE NO LONGER.' " Hester squeezed me, she kissed my
ears. Mr. Meany revved the truck, but Owen did not appear to notice; he knelt
in front of the first bank of flowers, at the foot of the mound of new earth,
in front of my mother's gravestone. He had the prayer book flat upon the ground
in front of him, the flashlight pinched between his knees.

"Owen?" I said, but he didn't hear me.
"Owen!" I said more loudly. He looked up, but not at me; I mean, he
looked up-he'd heard his name called, but he hadn't recognized my voice.

"I HEAR YOU!" he shouted angrily. "WHAT DO YOU
WANT? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT DO YOU WANT OF ME?"

"Owen, it's me," I said; I felt Hester gasp behind me.
It had suddenly occurred to her-Whom Owen thought he was speaking to.

"It's me, and Hester," I added, because it occurred to
me that the figure of Hester standing behind me, and appearing to loom over me,
might also be misunderstood by Owen Meany, who was ever-watchful for that angel
he had frightened from my mother's room.

"OH, IT'S YOU," Owen said; he sounded disappointed.
"HELLO, HESTER. I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE YOU-YOU LOOK SO GROWN-UP IN A DRESS.
I'M SORRY," Owen said.

"It's okay, Owen," I said.

"HOW'S DAN?" he asked. I told him that Dan was okay,
but that he'd gone to his dormitory, alone, for the night; this news made Owen
very businesslike.

"I SUPPOSE THE DUMMY'S STILL THERE? IN THE DINING
ROOM?" he asked.

"Of course," I said.

"WELL, THAT'S VERY BAD," Owen said. "DAN
SHOULDN'T BE ALONE WITH THAT DUMMY. WHAT IF HE JUST SITS AROUND AND STARES AT
IT? WHAT IF HE WAKES UP IN THE NIGHT AND HE SEES IT STANDING THERE ON HIS WAY
TO THE REFRIGERATOR? WE SHOULD GO GET IT-RIGHT NOW."