A prayer for Owen Meany (23 page)

"We'd all have been better off in Sawyer Depot," Dan
Needham announced, in his cups. Owen sighed. "I GUESS I'LL NEVER GET TO GO
TO SAWYER DEPOT," he said morosely. Where Owen and I went instead was into
every room of every boy who'd gone home for Christmas from Waterhouse

        
 
Hall; Dan Needham had a master key. Almost
every afternoon, Dan rehearsed The Gravesend Players for their annual version
of A Christmas Carol; it was becoming old hat for many of the players, but-to
freshen their performances-Dan made them change roles from one Christmas to the
next. Hence, Mr. Fish, who one year had been Marley's Ghost-and another year,
the Ghost of Christmas Past-was now Scrooge himself. After years of using
conventionally adorable children who muffed their lines, Dan had begged Owen to
be Tiny Tim, but Owen said that everyone would laugh at him-if not on sight, at
least when he first spoke-and besides: Mrs. Walker was playing Tiny Tim's
mother. That, Owen, claimed, would give him THE SHIVERS. It was bad enough,
Owen maintained, that he was subject to seasonal ridicule for the role he
played in the Christ Church Christmas Pageant. "JUST YOU WAIT," he
said darkly to me. "THE WIGGINS ARE NOT GOING TO MAKE ME THE STUPID ANGEL
AGAIN!"

It would be my first Christmas pageant, since I was usually in
Sawyer Depot for the last Sunday before Christmas; but Owen repeatedly
complained that he was always cast as the Announcing Angel-a role forced upon
him by the Rev. Captain Wiggin and his stewardess wife, Barbara, who maintained
that there was "no one cuter" for the part than Owen, whose chore it
was to descend-in a' 'pillar of light'' (with the substantial assistance of a
cranelike apparatus to which he was attached, with wires, like a puppet). Owen
was supposed to announce the wondrous new presence that lay in the manger in
Bethlehem, all the while flapping his arms (to draw attention to the giant
wings glued to his choir robe, and to attempt to quiet the giggles of the
congregation). Every year, a grim group of shepherds huddled at the communion
railing and displayed their cowardice to God's Holy Messenger; a motley crew,
they tripped on their robes and knocked off each other's turbans and false
beards with their staffs and shepherding crooks. Barb Wiggin had difficulty
locating them in the "pillar of light," while simultaneously
illuminating the Descending Angel, Owen Meany. Reading from Luke, the rector
said, " 'And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping
watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and
the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with/ear.' "
Whereupon, Mr. Wiggin paused for the full effect of the shepherds cringing at
the sight of Owen struggling to get his feet on the floor-Barb Wiggin operated
the creaky apparatus that lowered Owen, too, placing him dangerously near the
lit candles that simulated the campfires around which the shepherds watched
their flock.

" 'BE NOT AFRAID,' " Owen announced, while still
struggling in the air; " 'FOR BEHOLD, I BRING YOU GOOD NEWS OF A GREAT JOY
WHICH WILL COME TO ALL THE PEOPLE; FOR TO YOU IS BORN THIS DAY IN THE CITY OF
DAVID A SAVIOR, WHO IS CHRIST THE LORD. AND THIS WILL BE A SIGN FOR YOU: YOU
WILL FIND A BABE WRAPPED IN SWADDLING CLOTHES AND LYING IN A MANGER.' "
Whereupon, the dazzling, if jerky, "pillar of light" flashed, like lightning,
or perhaps Christ Church suffered an electrical surge, and Owen was raised into
darkness-sometimes, yanked into darkness; and once, so quickly that one of his
wings was torn from his back and fell among the confused shepherds. The worst
of it was that Owen had to remain in the air for the rest of the pageant-there
being no method of lowering him out of the light. If he was to be concealed in
darkness, he had to stay suspended from the wires-above the babe lying in the
manger, above the clumsy, nodding donkeys, the stumbling shepherds, and the
unbalanced kings staggering under the weight of their crowns. An additional
evil, Owen claimed, was that whoever played Joseph was always smirking-as if
Joseph had anything to smirk about. "WHAT DOES JOSEPH HAVE TO DO WITH ANY
OF IT?" Owen asked crossly. "I SUPPOSE HE HAS TO STAND AROUND THE
MANGER, BUT HE SHOULDN'T SMIRK!" And always the prettiest girl got to play
Mary. "WHAT DOES PRETTY HAVE TO DO WITH IT?" Owen asked. "WHO
SAYS MARY WAS PRETTY?"

And the individual touches that the Wiggins brought to the
Christmas Pageant reduced Owen to incoherent fuming-for example, the smaller
children disguised as turtledoves. The costumes were so absurd that no one knew
what these children were supposed to be; they resembled science-fiction angels,
spectacular life-forms from another galaxy, as if the Wiggins had decided that
the Holy Nativity had been attended by beings

         A PRAYER FOR
OWEN ME ANY from faraway planets (or should have been so attended).
"NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THE STUPID TURTLEDOVES ARE!" Owen complained. As
for the Christ Child himself, Owen was outraged. The Wiggins insisted that the
Baby Jesus not shed a tear, and in this pursuit they were relentless in
gathering dozens of babies backstage; they substituted babies so freely that
the Christ Child was whisked from the manger at the first unholy croak or
gurgle-instantly replaced by a mute baby, or at least a stuporous one. For this
chore of supplying a fresh, silent baby to the manger-in an instant-an extended
line of ominous-looking grown-ups reached into the shadows beyond the pulpit,
behind the purple-and-maroon curtains, under the cross. These large and
sure-handed adults, deft at baby-handling, or at least certain not to drop a
quickly moving Christ Child, were strangely out of place at the Nativity. Were
they kings or shepherds-and why were they so much bigger than the other kings
and shepherds, if not exactly larger than life? Their costumes were childish,
although some of their beards were real, and they appeared less to relish the
spirit of Christmas man they seemed resigned to their task-like a bucket
brigade of volunteer firemen. Backstage, the mothers fretted; the competition
for the most properly behaved Christ Child was keen. Every Christmas, in addition
to the Baby Jesus, the Wiggins' pageant gave birth to many new members of that
most monstrous sorority: stage mothers. I told Owen that perhaps he was better
off to be "above" these proceedings, but Owen hinted that I and other
members of our Sunday school class were at least partially responsible for his
humiliating elevation-for hadn't we been the first to lift Owen into the air?
Mrs. Walker, Owen suggested, might have given Barb Wiggin the idea of using
Owen as the airborne angel. It's no wonder that Owen was not tickled by Dan's
notion of casting him as Tiny Tim. "WHENISAY, 'BENOT AFRAID; FOR BEHOLD, I
BRING YOU GOOD NEWS,' ALL THE BABIES CRY AND EVERYONE ELSE LAUGHS. WHAT DO YOU
THINK THEY'LL DO IF I SAY, 'GOD BLESS US, EVERY ONE!'?"

It was his voice, of course; he could have said, "HERE
COMES THE END OF THE WORLD!" People still would have fallen down,
laughing. It was torture to Owen that he was without much humor-he was only
serious-while at the same time he had a chiefly comic effect on the multitude.
No wonder he commenced worrying about the Christmas Pageant as early as the end
of November, for in the service bulletin of the Last Sunday After Pentecost
there was already an announcement, "How to Participate in the Christmas
Pageant." The first rehearsal was scheduled after the Annual Parish
Meeting and the Vestry elections-almost at the beginning of our Christmas
vacation. ' 'What would you like to be?'' the sappy bulletin asked. "We
need kings, angels, shepherds, donkeys, turtledoves, Mary, Joseph, babies, and
morel"

" 'FATHER, FORGIVE THEM; FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO,'
" Owen said. Grandmother was testy about our playing at  Front
Street; it's no wonder that Owen and I sought the solitude of Waterhouse Hall.
With Dan out of the dorm in the afternoons, Owen and I had the place almost to
ourselves. There were four floors of boys' rooms, the communal showers and
urinals and crapper stalls on every floor, and one faculty apartment at the end
of the hall on each floor, too. Dan's apartment was on the third floor. The
second-floor faculty occupant had gone home for Christmas-like one of the boys
himself, young Mr. Peabody, a fledgling Math instructor, and a bachelor not
likely to improve upon his single status, was what my mother had called a "Nervous
Nelly." He was fastidious and timid and easily teased by the boys on his
floor; on the nights he was given dorm duty-for the entire four
floors-Waterhouse Hall seethed with revolution. It was during an evening of Mr.
Peabody's duty that a first-year boy was dangled by his heels from the yawning
portal of the fourth-floor laundry chute; his muffled howls echoed through the
dorm, and Mr. Peabody, opening the laundry portal on the second floor, was
shocked to peer two floors up and see the youngster's screaming face looking
down at him. Mr. Peabody reacted in a fashion that could have been imitated
from Mrs. Walker. "Van Arsdale!" he shouted upward. "Get out of
the laundry chute! Get a grip on yourself, man! Get your feet on the floor!"

He never dreamed, poor Mr. Peabody, that Van Arsdale was held
fast at both ankles by two brutal linemen from the Gravesend football team;
they tortured Van Arsdale daily.

        
 
So Mr. Peabody had gone home to his parents,
which left the second floor free of faculty; and the Physical Education fanatic
on the fourth floor-the track-and-field coach, Mr. Tubulari- was also away for
Christmas, He was also a bachelor, and he had insisted on the fourth floor-for
his health; he claimed to relish running upstairs. He had many female visitors;
when they wore dresses or skirts, the boys loved to watch them ascending and
descending the stairwell from one of the lower floors. The nights that
Waterhouse Hall suffered his turn at dorm duty, the boys were very well
behaved. Mr. Tubulari was fast and silent and thrived on catching boys "in
the act"-in the act of anything: shaving-cream fights, smoking in their
rooms, even masturbation. Each floor had a designated common room, a butt room,
so-called, for the smokers; but smoking in the dorm rooms was forbidden-as was
sex in any form, alcohol in any form, and drugs that had not been prescribed by
the school physician. Mr. Tubulari even had reservations about aspirin.
According to Dan, Mr. Tubulari was off competing in some grueling athletic event
over Christmas-actually, a pentathlon of the harshest-possible wintertime
activities; a "winterthon," Mr. Tubulari had called it. Dan Needham
hated made-up words, and he became quite boisterous on the subject of what
wintertime events Mr. Tubulari was competing in; the fanatic had gone to
Alaska, or maybe Minnesota. Dan would entertain Owen and me by describing Mr.
Tubulari's pentathlon, his "winterthon."

"The first event," Dan Needham said, "is
something wholesome, like splitting a cord of wood-points off, if you break
your ax. Then you have to run ten miles in deep snow, or snowshoe for thirty.
Then you chop a hole in the ice, and-carrying your ax-swim a mile under a
frozen lake, chopping your way out at the opposite shore. Then you build an
igloo-to get warm. Then comes the dogsledding. You have to mush a team of
dogs-from Anchorage to Chicago. Then you build another igloo-to rest."

"THAT'S SIX EVENTS," Owen said. "A PENTATHLON IS
ONLY FIVE."

"So forget the second igloo," Dan Needham said.

"I WONDER WHAT MISTER TUBULARI DOES FOR NEW YEAR'S
EVE," Owen said.

"Carrot juice," Dan said, fixing himself another
whiskey. "Mister Tubulari makes his own carrot juice."

Anyway, Mr. Tubulari was gone. When Dan was out in the
afternoons, Owen and I were in total control of the top three floors of
Waterhouse Hall. As for the first floor, we had only the Brinker-Smiths to
contend with, and they were no match for us-if we were quiet. A young British
couple, the Brinker-Smiths had recently launched twins; they were entirely and,
for the most part, cheerfully engaged in how to survive life with twins. Mr.
Brinker-Smith, who was a biologist, also fancied himself an inventor; he
invented a double-seater high chair, a double-seater stroller, a double-seater
swing-the latter hung in a doorway, where the twins could dangle like monkeys
on a vine, in close enough proximity to each other to pull each other's hair.
In the double-seater high chair, they could throw food into each other's faces,
and so Mr. Brinker-Smith improvised a wall between them-too high for them to
throw their food over it. Yet the twins would knock at this wall, to assure
themselves that the other was really there, and they would smear their food on
the wall, almost as a form of finger painting-a preliterate communication among
siblings. Mr. Brinker-Smith found the twins' methods of thwarting his various
inventions "fascinating"; he was a true scientist-the failures of his
experiments were almost as interesting to him as his successes, and his determination
to press forward, with more and more twin-inspired inventions, was resolute.
Mrs. Brinker-Smith, on the other hand, appeared a trifle tired. She was too
pretty a woman to look harried; her exhaustion at the hands of her twins-and
with Mr. Brinker-Smith's inventions for a better life with them-manifested
itself in fits of distraction so pronounced that Owen and Dan and 
suspected her of sleepwalking. She literally did not notice us. Her name was
Ginger, in reference to her fetching freckles and her strawberry-blond hair;
she was an object of lustful fantasies for Gravesend boys, both before and
after my time at the academy-given the need of Gravesend boys to indulge in
lustful fantasies, I believe that Ginger Brinker-Smith was seen as a sex object
even when she was pregnant with her twins. But for Owen and me-during the
Christmas of '-Mrs. Brinker-Smith's appearance was only mildly alluring; she
looked as if she slept in her clothes, and I'm sure she did. And her fabled
voluptuousness, which I would later possess as firm a memory of as any
Gravesend boy, was quite concealed by the great, loose blouses she wore-for
such clothes, no doubt, enhanced the speed with which she could snap open her
nursing bra. In