A prayer for Owen Meany (53 page)

With a shudder, I thought again about my Aunt Martha's assertion
that my mother was a little simple; no one had ever said she was a liar.

"She said there was a lawyer who told her she could keep
the dress," I said. "She said that everything burned, didn't
she?"

"BILLS OF SALE WERE BURNED, INVENTORY WAS BURNED, STOCK WAS
BURNED-THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID," Owen said.

"The telephone melted-remember that part?" I asked
him.

"THE CASH REGISTER MELTED-REMEMBER THAT!" he asked me.

"Maybe they rebuilt the place-after the fire," I said.
"Maybe there was another store-maybe there's a chain of stores."

He didn't say anything; we both knew it was unlikely that the
public's interest in the color red would support a chain of stores like
Jerrold's.

"How'd you know the store was here?" I asked Owen.

"I SAW AN ADVERTISEMENT IN THE SUNDAY BOSTON HERALD,"
he said. "I WAS LOOKING FOR THE FUNNIES AND I RECOGNIZED THE HANDWRITING-
IT WAS THE SAME STYLE AS THE LABEL."

Leave it to Owen to recognize the handwriting; he had probably
studied the label in my mother's red dress for so many years that he could have
written "Jerrold's" in the exact same style himself!

"WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?" Owen asked me. "WHY
DON'T WE GO INSIDE AND ASK THEM IF THEY EVER HAD A FIRE?"

Inside the place, we were confronted by a spareness as eccentric
as the glaring color of every article of clothing in sight; if Jerrold's could
be said to have a theme, it appeared to be-stated, and overstated-that there
was only one of everything: one bra, one nightgown, one half-slip, one little
cocktail dress, one long evening dress, one long skirt, one short skirt, the
one blouse on the one mannequin we had seen in the window, and one counter of
four-sided glass that contained a single pair of red leather gloves, a pair of
red high heels, a garnet necklace (with a matching pair of earrings), and one
very thin belt (also red, and probably alligator or lizard). The walls were
white, the hoods of the indirect lights were black, and the one man behind the
one counter was about the age my mother would have been if she'd been alive.
The man regarded Owen and me disdainfully: he saw two teenage boys, not dressed
for Newbury Street, possibly (if so, pathetically) shopping for a mother or for
a girlfriend; I doubt that we could have afforded even the cheapest version of
the color red available in Jerrold's.

"DID YOU EVER HAVE A FIRE?" Owen asked the man. Now
the man looked less sure about us; he thought we were too young to be selling
insurance, but Owen's question-not to mention Owen's voice-hud disarmed him.

"It would have been a fire in the forties," I said.

"OR THE EARLY FIFTIES," said Owen Meany.

"Perhaps you haven't been here-at this location-for that
long?" I asked the man.

"ARE YOU JERROLD?" Owen asked the man; like a
miniature policeman, Owen Meany pushed the wrinkled label from my mother's
dress across the glass-topped counter.

"That's our label," the man said, fingering the
evidence cautiously. "We've been here since before the war-but  don't
think we've ever had a fire. What sorta fire do you mean?" he asked
Owen-because, naturally, Owen appeared to be in charge.

"ARE YOU JERROLD?" Owen repeated.

"That's my father-Giordano," the man said. "He
was Giovanni Giordano, but they fucked around with his name when he got off the
boat."

This was an immigration story, and not the story Owen and I were
interested in, so I asked the man, politely: "Is your father alive?"

"Hey, Poppa!" the man shouted. "You alive?"

A white door, fitted so flush to the white wall that Owen and I
had not noticed it was there, opened. An old man with a tailor's measuring tape
around his neck, and a tailor's many pins adorning the lapels of his vest, came
into the storeroom.

"Of course I'm alive!" he said. "You waitin' for
some miracle? You in a hurry for your inheritance?" He had a
mostly-Boston, somewhat-Italian accent.

"Poppa, these young men want to talk to 'Jerrold' about some
fire," the son said; he spoke laconically and with a more virulent Boston
accent than his father's.

"What fire?" Mr. Giordano asked us.

"We were told that your store burned down-sometime in the
forties, or the fifties," I said.

"This is big news to me!" said Mr. Giordano.

"My mother must have made a mistake," I explained. I
showed the old label to Mr. Giordano. "She bought a dress in your
store-sometime in the forties, or the fifties." I didn't know what else to
say. "It was a red dress," I added.

"No kiddin'," said the son. I said: "I wish I had
a picture of her-perhaps I could come back, with a photograph. You might
remember something about her if I showed you a picture," I said.

"Does she want the dress altered!" the old man asked
me.

"I don't mind makin' alterations-but she's got to come into
the store herself. I don't do alterations from pictures!"

"SHE'S DEAD," said Owen Meany. His tiny hand went into
his pocket again. He brought out a neatly folded envelope; in the envelope was
the picture my mother had given him-it was a wedding picture, very pretty of
her and not bad of Dan. My mother had included the photo with a thank-you note
to Owen and his father for their unusual wedding present. "I JUST HAPPEN
TO HAVE BROUGHT A PICTURE," Owen said, handing the sacred object to Mr.
Giordano.

"Frank Sinatra!" the old man cried; his son took the
picture from him.

"That don't look like Frank Sinatra to me," the son
said.

"No! No!" the old man cried; he grabbed the photo
back. "She loved those Sinatra songs-she sang 'em real good, too. We used
to talk about 'Frankie Boy'-your mother said he shoulda been a woman, he had
such a pretty voice," Mr. Giordano said.

"DO YOU KNOW WHY SHE BOUGHT THE DRESS?" Owen asked.

"Sure, I know!" the old man told us. "It was the
dress she always sung in! 'I need somethin' to sing in!'-that's what she said
when she walked in here. 'I need somethin' not like me\'-that's what she said.
I'll never forget her. But I didn't know who she was-not when she come in here,
not thenl" Mr. Giordano said.

"Who the fuck was she?" the son asked. I shuddered to
hear him ask; it had just occurred to me that I didn't know who my mother was,
either.

"She was 'The Lady in Red'-don't you remember her?"
Mr. Giordano asked his son. "She was still singin' in that place when you
got home from the war. What was that place?"

The son grabbed the photo back.

"It's feer!" he cried.

" 'The Lady in Red'!" the Giordanos cried together. I
was trembling. My mother was a singer-in some joint] She was someone called
"The Lady in Red"! She'd had a career-in nightlifel I looked at Owen;
he appeared strangely at ease-he was almost calm, and he was smiling.
"ISN'T THIS MORE INTERESTING THAN OLD FREDDY'S?" Owen asked me. What
the Giordanos told us was that my mother had been a

        
 
female vocalist at a supper club on Beacon
Street-"a perfectly proper sorta place!" the old man assured us.
There was a black pianist-he played an old-fashioned piano, which (the Gior-danos
explained) meant that he played the old tunes, and quietly, "so's you
could hear the singer!"

It was not a place where single men or women went; it was not a
bar; it was a supper club, and a supper club, the Giordanos assured us, was a
restaurant with live entertainment-'' somethin' relaxed enough to digest
to!" About ten o'clock, the singer and pianist served up music more
suitable for dancing than for dinner-table conversation-and there was dancing,
then, until midnight; men with their wives, or at least with
"serious" dates. It was "no place to take a floozy-or to find
one." And most nights there was "a sorta famous female vocalist,
someone you woulda heard of; although Owen Meany and I had never heard of
anyone the Giordanos mentioned. "The Lady in Red" sang only one night
a week; the Giordanos had forgotten which night, but Owen and I could provide
that information. It would have been Wednesday- always Wednesday. Supposedly,
the singing teacher my mother was studying with was so famous that he had time
for her only on Thursday mornings-and so early that she had to spend the
previous night in the "dreaded" city. Why she never sang under her
own name-why she was always "The Lady in Red"-the Giordanos didn't
know. Nor could they recall the name of the supper club; they just knew it
wasn't there anymore. It had always had the look of a private home; now it had,
in fact, become one-"some-wheres on Beacon Street," that was all they
could remember. It was either a private home or doctors' offices. As for the owner
of the club, he was a Jewish fellow from Miami. The Giordanos had heard that
the man had gone back to Miami. "I guess they still have supper clubs down
there," old Mr. Giordano said. He was sad and shocked to hear that my
mother was dead; "The Lady in Red" had become quite popular among the
local patrons of the club-"not famous, not like some of them others, but a
kinda regular feature of the place."

The Giordanos remembered that she had come, and that she had
gone away-for a while-and then she'd come back. Later, she had gone away for
good; but people didn't believe it and they would say, for years, that she was
coming back again. When she'd been away-"for a while"-that was when
she'd been having me, of course. The Giordanos could almost remember the name
of the black pianist; "he was there as long as the place was there,"
they said. But the closest they could come to the man's name was
"Buster."

"Big Black Buster!" Mr. Giordano said.

"I don't think he was from Miami," the son said.

"CLEARLY," said Owen Meany, when we were once more out
on Newbury Street, " 'BIG BLACK BUSTER' IS NOT YOUR FATHER!"

I wanted to ask Owen if he still had the name and address-and
even the phone number-of my mother's singing and voice teacher; I knew Mother
had given the particulars to Owen, and I doubted that Owen would have discarded
anything she gave him. But I didn't have to ask. Once more, his tiny hand shot
into his pocket. "THE ADDRESS IS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD," he told me.
"I MADE AN APPOINTMENT, TO HAVE MY VOICE 'ANALYZED'; WHEN THE GUY HEARD MY
VOICE-OVER THE PHONE-HE SAID HE'D GIVE ME AN APPOINTMENT WHENEVER I WANTED
ONE."

Thus had Owen Meany come to Boston, the dreaded city; he had
come prepared. There were some elegant town houses along the most densely
tree-lined part of Commonwealth Avenue where Graham McSwiney, the voice and
singing teacher, lived; but Mr. McSwiney had a small and cluttered walk-up
apartment in one of the less-restored old houses that had been divided and
subdivided almost as many times as the collective rent of the various tenants
had been withheld, or paid late. Since we were early for Owen's appointment, we
sat in a corridor outside Mr. McSwiney's apartment door, on which was posted
(by a thumbtack) a hand-lettered sign. Don't! ! ! ! Knock Or Ring Bell If You
Hear Singing! ! ! !

"Singing" was not quite what we heard, but some sort
of exercise was in progress behind Mr. McSwiney's closed door, and so Owen and
I didn't knock or ring the bell; we sat on a

        
 
comfortable but odd piece of furniture-not a
couch, but what appeared to be a seat removed from a public bus-and listened to
the singing or voice lesson we were forbidden to disturb. A man's powerful,
resonant voice said: "Me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me!'' A woman's absolutely
thrilling voice repeated: "Me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me!'' Then the man said:
"No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no!"

And the woman answered: 
"No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no!"

And then the man sang just a line from a song-it was a song from
My Fair Lady, the one that goes, "All I want is a room somewhere ..."

And the woman sang: "Far away from the cold night air . .
."

And together they sang: "With one enormous chair ..."

And the woman took it by herself: "Oh, wouldn't it be
lov-er-ly!"

"Me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me!" said the man again; now, a
piano was involved-just one key. Their voices, even in this silly exercise,
were the most wonderful voices Owen Meany and I had heard; even when she sang
"No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no!" the woman's voice was much more beautiful
than my mother's. I was glad that Owen and I had to wait, because it gave me
time to be grateful for at least this part of our discovery: that Mr. McSwiney
really was a voice and singing teacher, and that he seemed to have a perfectly
wonderful voice-and that he had a pupil with an even better voice than my
mother's . . . this at least meant that something I thought I knew about my
mother was true. The shock of our discovery in Jerrold's needed time to sink
in. It did not strike me that my mother's lie about the red dress was a
devastating sort of untruth; even that she had been an actual singer-an actual
performer!-didn't strike me as such an awful thing for her to have hidden from
me, or even from Dan (if she'd kept Dan in the dark, too). What struck me was
my memory of how easily and gracefully she had told that little lie about the
store burning down, how she had fretted so convincingly about the red dress.
Quite probably, it occurred to me, she had been a better liar than a singer.
And if she'd lied about the dress-and had never told anyone in her life in
Gravesend about "The Lady in Red"-what else had she lied about? In
addition to not knowing who my father was, what else didn't I know? Owen Meany,
who thought much more quickly than I did, put it very simply; he whispered, so
that he wouldn't disturb Mr. McSwiney's lesson. "NOW YOU DON'T KNOW WHO
YOUR MOTHER IS, EITHER," Owen said. Following the exit of a small,
flamboyantly dressed woman from Mr. McSwiney's apartment, Owen and I were
admitted to the teacher's untidy hovel; the disappointingly small size of the
departing singer's bosom was a contradiction to the power we had heard in her
voice-but we were impressed by the air of professional disorder that greeted us
in Graham McSwiney's studio. There was no door on the cubicle bathroom, in
which the bathtub appeared to be hastily, even comically placed; it was
detached from the plumbing and full of the elbow joints of pipes and their
fittings-a plumbing project was clearly in progress there; and progressing at
no great pace. There was no wall (or the wall had been taken down) between the
cubicle kitchen and the living room, and there were no doors on the kitchen
cabinets, which revealed little besides coffee cups and mugs-suggesting that
Mr. McSwiney either restricted himself to an all-caffeine diet or that he took
his meals elsewhere. And there was no bed in the living room-the only real room
in the tiny, crowded apartment-suggesting that the couch, which was covered
with sheet music, concealed a foldaway bed. But the placement of the sheet
music had the look of meticulous specificity, and the sheer volume of it argued
that the couch was never sat upon-not to mention, unfolded-and this evidence
suggested that Mr. McSwiney slept elsewhere, too. Everywhere, there were
mementos-playbills from opera houses and concert halls; newspaper clippings of
people singing; and framed citations and medals hung on ribbons, suggesting
golden-throat awards of an almost athletic order of recognition. Everywhere,
too, were framed, poster-sized drawings of the chest and throat, as clinical in
detail as the drawings in Gray' Anatomy, and as simplistic in their arrangement
around the apartment as the educational diagrams in certain doctors' offices.
Beneath these anatomical drawings were the kind of optimistic slogans that gung-ho
coaches hang in gyms: