A prayer for Owen Meany (31 page)

        
 
knew the words. As Owen finished knocking the
snow off his boots-as the little Lord Jesus stepped inside our house- Dan
half-sang, half-mumbled the refrain we knew so well: "Hark! the her-ald
an-gels sing, 'Glo-ry to the new-born King!' "

THE GHOST OF THE FUTURE

 
THUS DID OWEN MEANY
remodel Christmas. Denied his long-sought excursion to Sawyer Depot, he
captured the two most major, non-speaking roles in the only dramatic productions
offered in Gravesend that holiday season. As the Christ Child and as the Ghost
of Christmas Yet to Come, he had established himself as a
prophet-disquietingly, it was our future he seemed to know something about.
Once, he thought, he had seen into my mother's future; he had even become an
instrument of her future. I wondered what he thought he knew of Dan's or my
grandmother's future-or Hester's, or mine, or his own. God would tell me who my
father was, Owen Meany had assured me; but, so far, God had been silent. It was
Owen who'd been talkative. He'd talked Dan and me out of the dressmaker's
dummy; he'd stationed my mother's heartbreaking figure at his bedside-to stand
watch over him, to be his angel. Owen had talked himself down from the heavens
and into the manger-he'd made me a Joseph, he'd chosen a Mary for me, he'd
turned turtledoves to cows. Having revised the Holy Nativity, he had moved on;
he was reinterpreting Dickens-for even Dan had to admit that Owen had somehow
changed A Christmas Carol. The silent Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come had stolen
the penultimate scene from Scrooge.

        
 
Even The Gravesend News-Letter failed to
recognize that Scrooge was the main character; that Mr. Fish was the principal
actor was a fact that entirely eluded The News-Letter's drama critic, who
wrote, "The quintessential Christmas tale, the luster of which has been
dulled (at least, for this reviewer) by its annual repetition, has been given a
new sparkle." The critic added, "The shopworn ghost-story part of the
tale has been energized by the brilliant performance of little Owen Meany, who-
despite his diminutive size-is a huge presence onstage; the miniature Meany
simply dwarfs the other performers. Director Dan Needham should consider
casting the Tiny Tim-sized star as Scrooge in next year's A Christmas
Carol!"

There was not a word about this year's Scrooge, and Mr. Fish
fumed over his neglect. Owen responded crossly to any criticism.

"WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO REFER TO ME AS 'LITTLE,' AS
'DIMINUTIVE,' AS 'MINIATURE'?" Owen raved. "THEY DON'T MAKE SUCH
QUALIFYING REMARKS ABOUT THE OTHER ACTORS!"

"You forgot 'Tiny Tim-sized,' " I told him.

"I KNOW, I KNOW," he said. "DO THEY SAY, 'FORMER
DOG-OWNER FISH' IS A SUPERB SCROOGE? DO THEY SAY, 'VICIOUS SUNDAY-SCHOOL TYRANT
WALKER' MAKES A CHARMING MOTHER FOR TINY TIM?"

"They called you a 'star,' " I reminded him.
"They called you 'brilliant'-and a 'huge presence.' "

"THEY CALLED ME 'LITTLE,' THEY CALLED ME 'DIMINUTIVE,' THEY
CALLED ME 'MINIATURE'!" Owen cried.

"It's a good thing it wasn't a speaking part," I
reminded him.

"VERY FUNNY," Owen said. In the case of this
particular production, Dan wasn't bothered by the local press; what troubled
Dan was what Charles Dickens might have thought of Owen Meany. Dan was sure
that Dickens would have disapproved.

"Something's not right," Dan said. "Small
children burst into tears-they have to be removed from the audience before they
get to the happy ending. We've started warning mothers with small children at
the door. It's not quite the family entertainment it's supposed to be. Kids
leave the theater looking like they've seen Dracula!"

Dan was relieved to observe, however, that Owen appeared to be
coming down with a cold. Owen was susceptible to colds; and now he was
overtired all the time-rehearsing the Holy Nativity in the mornings, performing
as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come at night. Some afternoons Owen was so
exhausted that he fell asleep at my grandmother's house; he would drop off to
sleep on the rug in the den, lying under the big couch, or on a stack of the
couch pillows, where he'd been gunning down my metal soldiers with my toy
cannon. I would go to the kitchen to get us some cookies; and when I came back
to the den, Owen would be fast asleep. "He's getting to be like
Lydia," my grandmother observed-because Lydia could not stay awake in the
afternoons, either; she would nod off to sleep in her wheelchair, wherever
Germaine had left her, sometimes facing into a corner. This was a further indication
to my grandmother that Lydia's senility was in advance of her own. But as Owen
began to manifest the early signs of the common cold-a sneeze or a cough now
and then, and a runny nose-Dan Needham imagined that his production of A
Christmas Carol might be the beneficiary of Owen getting sick. Dan didn't want
Owen to be ill; it was just a small cough and a sneeze-and maybe even Owen
having to blow his nose-that Dan was wishing for. Such a human noise from under
the dark hood would surely put the audience at ease; Owen sneezing and snorting
might even draw a laugh or two. In Dan's opinion, a laugh or two wouldn't hurt.

"It might hurt Owen," I pointed out. "I don't
think Owen would appreciate any laughter."

"I don't mean that I want to make the Ghost of the Future a
comic character," Dan maintained. "I would just like to humanize him,
a little." For that was the problem, in Dan's view: Owen did not look
human. He was the size of a small child, but his movements were uncannily
adult; and his authority onstage was beyond "adult"-it was
supernatural.

"Look at it this way," Dan said to me. "A ghost
who sneezes, a ghost who coughs-a ghost who has to blow his nose-he's just not
quite so scary."

But what about a Christ Child who sneezes and coughs, and has to
blow his nose? I thought. If the Wiggins insisted that the Baby Jesus couldn't
cry, what would they think of a sick Prince of Peace? Everyone was sick that
Christmas: Dan got over bronchitis only to discover he had pinkeye; Lydia had
such a violent

        
 
cough that she would occasionally propel
herself backward in her wheelchair. When Mr. Early, who was Marley's Ghost,
began to hack and sniffle, Dan confided to me that it would be perfect
symmetry-for the play-if all the ghosts came down with something. Mr. Fish, who
had by far the most lines, pampered himself so that he wouldn't catch anyone
else's cold; thus Scrooge retreated from Marley's Ghost in an even more
exaggerated fashion. Grandmother complained that the weather was too slippery
for her to go out; she was not worried about colds, but she dreaded falling on
the ice. "At my age," she told me, "it's one fall, one broken
hip, and then a long, slow death-from pneumonia." Lydia coughed and
nodded, nodded and coughed, but neither woman would share her elderly wisdom
with me ... concerning why a broken hip produced pneumonia; not to mention,
"a long, slow death."

"But you have to see Owen in A Christmas Carol," I
said.

"I see quite enough of Owen," Grandmother told me.

"Mister Fish is also quite good," I said.

"I see quite enough of Mister Fish, too," Grandmother
remarked. The rave review that Owen received from The Gravesend News-Letter
appeared to drive Mr. Fish into a silent depression; when he came to 
Front Street after dinner, he sigtied often and said nothing. As for our morose
mailman, Mr. Morrison, it is incalculable how much he suffered to hear of
Owen's success. He stooped under his leather sack as if he shouldered a burden
much more demanding than the excess of Christmas mail. How did it make him feel
to deliver all those copies of The Gravesend News-Letter, wherein Mr.
Morrison's former role was described as "not only pivotal but
principal"-and Owen Meany was showered with the kind of praise Mr.
Morrison might have imagined for himself? In the first week, Dan told me, Mr.
Morrison did not come to watch the production. To Dan's surprise, Mr. and Mrs.
Meany had not made an appearance, either.

"Don't they read The News-LetterT' Dan asked me. I could
not imagine Mrs. Meany reading; the demands on her time were too severe. With
all her staring-at walls, into corners, not quite out the window, into the
dying fire, at my mother's dummy-when would Mrs. Meany have the time to read a
newspaper? And Mr. Meany was not even one of those men who read about sports. I
imagined, too, that the Meanys would never have heard about A Christmas Carol
from Owen; after all, he hadn't wanted them to know about the pageant. Perhaps
one of the quarrymen would say something about the play to Mr. Meany; maybe a
stonecutter or the derrick-man's wife had seen it, or at least read about it in
The News-Letter.

"Hear your boy's the star of the theater," someone
might say. But I could hear, too, how Owen would dismiss it.

"I'M JUST HELPING DAN OUT. HE GOT IN A FIX-ONE OF THE
GHOSTS QUIT. YOU KNOW MORRISON, THE COWARDLY MAILMAN? WELL, FT WAS A CASE OF
STAGE FRIGHT. IT'S A VERY SMALL PART-NOT EVEN A SPEAKING PART. I WOULDN'T
RECOMMEND THE PLAY, EITHER-IT'S NOT VERY BELIEVABLE. AND BESIDES, YOU NEVER GET
TO SEE MY FACE. I DON'T THINK I'M ONSTAGE FOR MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES. . .
."

I was sure that was how Owen would have handled it. I thought he
was excessively proud of himself-and that he treated his parents harshly. We
all go through a phase-it lasts a lifetime, for some of us-when we're
embarrassed by our parents; we don't want them hanging around us because we're
afraid they'll do or say something that will make us feel ashamed of them. But
Owen seemed to me to suffer this embarrassment more than most; that's why I
thought he held his parents at such a great distance from himself. And he was,
in my opinion, exceedingly bossy toward his father. At an age when most of our
peers were enduring how much their parents bossed them around, Owen was always
telling his father what to do. My sympathy for Owen's embarrassment was slight.
After all, I missed my mother, I would have enjoyed her hanging around me.
Because Dan wasn't my real father, I had never developed any resentment toward
Dan; I always loved having Dan around-my grandmother, although she was a loving
grandmother, was aloof.

"Owen," Dan said one evening. "Would you like me
to invite your parents to see the play? Maybe for our last performance-on
Christmas Eve?"

"I THINK THEY'RE BUSY ON CHRISTMAS EVE," Owen said.

"How about one of the earlier evenings, then?" Dan
asked.

"Some evening soon-shall I invite them? Any evening would
be fine."

' 'THEY'RE NOT EXACTLY THEATERGOING TYPES,'' Owen said. "I
DON'T MEAN TO INSULT YOU, DAN, BUT I'M AFRAID MY PARENTS WOULD BE BORED."

"But surely they'd enjoy seeing you, Owen," Dan said.
"Wouldn't they like your performance?"

"THE ONLY STORIES THEY LIKE ARE TRUE STORIES," Owen
said. "THEY'RE RATHER REALISTIC, THEY DON'T GET TOO EXCITED ABOUT MADE-UP
STORIES. ANYTHING THAT'S SORT OF MAKE-BELIEVE-THAT'S NOT FOR THEM. AND ANYTHING
WITH GHOSTS-THAT'S OUT."

"Ghosts are out?" Dan asked.

"ALL THAT KIND OF STUFF IS OUT-WITH THEM," Owen said.
But-listening to him-I found I had just the opposite impression of his parents.
I thought that Owen Meany's mother and father believed only in the so-called
make-believe; that ghosts were all they believed in-that spirits were all they
listened to. "WHAT I MEAN IS, DAN," Owen said, "IS THAT I'D
RATHER NOT INVITE MY PARENTS. IF THEY COME, OKAY; BUT I THINK THEY WON'T."

"Sure, sure," Dan said. "Anything you say,
Owen."

Dan Needham suffered from my mother's affliction: he, too,
couldn't keep his hands off Owen Meany. Dan was not a hair-messer, not a patter
of butts or shoulders. Dan grabbed your hands and mashed them, sometimes until your
knuckles and his cracked together. But Dan's manifestations of physical
affection for Owen exceeded, even, his fondness for me; Dan had the good
instincts to keep his distance from me-to be like a father to me, but not to
assert himself too exactly in the role. Because of a physical caution that Dan
expressed when he touched me, he was less restrained with Owen, whose father
never once (at least, not in my presence) touched him. I think Dan Needham
knew, too, that Owen was not ever handled at home. There was a fourth curtain
call on Saturday night, and Dan sent Owen out onstage alone. It was apparent
that the audience wanted Owen aione; Mr. Fish had already been out onstage with
Owen, and by himself-it was clearly Owen whom the crowd adored. The audience
rose to greet him. The peak of his death-black hood was a trifle pointy, and
too tall for Owen's small head; it had flopped over to one side, giving Owen a
gnomish appearance and a slightly cocky, puckish attitude. When he flipped the
hood back and showed the audience his beaming face, a young girl in one of the
front rows fainted; she was about our age-maybe twelve or thirteen-and she
dropped down like a sack of grain.

"It was quite warm where we were sitting," the girl's
mother said, after Dan made sure the girl had recovered.

"STUPID GIRL!" Owen said, backstage. He was his own
makeup man. Even though his face remained concealed throughout his performance
by the overlarge, floppy hood, he whitened his face with baby powder and
blackened the already-dark sockets under his eyes with eyeliner. He wanted even
the merest glimpse that the audience might get of him to be properly ghostly;
that his cold was worsening enhanced the pallor he desired. He was coughing
pretty regularly by the time Dan drove him home. The last Sunday before
Christmas-the day of our pageant-was tomorrow.

"He sounds a little sicker than I had in mind," Dan
told me on our way back to town. "I may have to play the Ghost of
Christmas Yet to Come myself. Or maybe-if Owen's too sick-maybe you can take
the part."