A prayer for Owen Meany (6 page)

"Where's the ball?" the police chief asked-after the
area had been cleared, as they say. My mother's body was gone and I was sitting
on the bench in Mr. Chickering's lap, his warm-up jacket still over my
head-now, because I liked it that way: because / had put it there.

"The ball?" Mr. Chickering said. "You want the
fucking baUT'

"Well, it's the murder weapon, kind of," Chief Pike
said. His Christian name was Ben. "The instrument of death, I guess you'd
call it," Ben Pike said.

"The murder weapon!" Mr. Chickering said, squeezing me
as he spoke. We were waiting for either my grandmother or my mother's new
husband to come get me. "The instrument of death!" Mr. Chickering
said. "Jesus Christ, Ben-it was a baseball!''

"Well, where is it?" Chief Pike said. "If it
killed somebody, I'm supposed to see it-actually, I'm supposed to possess
it."

"Don't be an asshole, Ben," Mr. Chickering said.

"Did one of your kids take it?" Chief Pike asked our
fat coach and manager.

"Ask them-don't ask me!" Mr. Chickering said. All the
players had been made to stand behind the bleachers while the police took
photographs of my mother. They were still standing there, peering out at the
murderous field through the empty seats. Several townspeople were standing with
the players-mothers and dads and ardent baseball fans. Later, I would remember
Owen's voice, speaking to me in the darkness-because my head was under the
warm-up jacket.

"I'M SORRY!"

Bit by bit, over the years, all of it would come back to
me-everyone who was standing there behind the bleachers, and everyone who had
gone home. But then I took the warm-up jacket off my head and all I knew was
that Owen Meany was not standing there behind the bleachers. Mr. Chickering
must have observed the same thing.

"Owen!" he called.

"He went home!" someone called back.

"He had his bike!" someone said. I could easily
imagine him, struggling with his bike up the Maiden Hill Road-first pedaling,
then wobbling, then getting off to walk his bike; all the while, in view of the
river. In those days, our baseball uniforms were an itchy wool, and I could see
Owen's uniform, heavy with sweat, the number  too big for his back-when he
tucked his shirt into his pants, he tucked in half the number, too, so that
anyone passing him on the Maiden Hill Road would have thought he was number . I
suppose there was no reason for him to wait; my mother always gave Owen and his
bike a ride home after our Little League games. Of course, I thought, Owen has
the ball. He was a collector; one had to consider only his baseball cards.
"After all," Mr. Chickering would say-in later years-' 'it was the
only decent hit the kid ever made, the only real wood he ever got on the ball.
And even then, it was a foul ball. Not to mention that it killed someone."

So what if Owen has the ball? I was thinking. But at the time I
was mainly thinking about my mother; I was already

 
 
beginning to get
angry with her for never telling me who my father was. At the time, I was only
eleven; I had no idea who else had attended that Little League game, and that
death-and who had his own reason for wanting to possess the ball that Owen
Meany hit.

THE ARMADILLO

MY MOTHER'S NAME was Tabitha, although no one but my grandmother
actually called her that. Grandmother hated nicknames-with the exception that
she never called me John; I was always Johnny to her, even long after I'd
become just plain John to everyone else. To everyone else, my mother was Tabby.
I recall one occasion when the Rev. Lewis Merrill said "Tabitha," but
that was spoken in front of my mother and grandmother-and the occasion was an
argument, or at least a plea. The issue was my mother's decision to leave the
Congregational Church for the Episcopal, and the Rev. Mr. Merrill-speaking to
my grandmother, as if my mother weren't in the room-said, "Tabitha
Wheelwright is the one truly angelic voice in our choir, and we shall be a
choir without a soul if she leaves us." I must add, in Pastor MerrilFs
defense, that he didn't always speak with such Byzantine muddiness, but he was
sufficiently worked up about my mother's and my own departure from his church
to offer his opinions as if he were speaking from the pulpit. In New Hampshire,
when I was a boy, Tabby was a common name for house cats, and there was
undeniably a feline quality to my mother-never in the sly or stealthy sense of
that word, but in the word's other catlike qualities: a clean, sleek,
self-possessed, strokable quality. In quite a different way from

 
 
Owen Meany, my
mother looked touchable; I was always aware of how much people wanted, or
needed, to touch her. I'm not talking only about men, although-even at my age-I
was aware of how restlessly men moved their hands in her company. I mean that
everyone liked to touch her-and depending on her attitude toward her toucher,
my mother's responses to being touched were feline, too. She could be so
chillingly indifferent that the touching would instantly stop; she was well
coordinated and surprisingly quick and, like a cat, she could retreat from
being touched-she could duck under or dart away from someone's hand as
instinctively as the rest of us can shiver. And she could respond in that other
way that cats can respond, too; she could luxuriate in being touched-she could
contort her body quite shamelessly, putting more and more pressure against the
toucher's hand, until (I used to imagine) anyone near enough to her could hear
her purr. Owen Meany, who rarely wasted words and who had the
conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of
water . . . remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they
would remain, untouchable . . . Owen said to me once, "YOUR MOTHER IS SO
SEXY, I KEEP FORGETTING SHE'S ANYBODY'S MOTHER."

As for my Aunt Martha's insinuations, leaked to my cousins, who
dribbled the suggestion, more than ten years late, to me-that my mother was
"a little simple''-I believe this is the result of a jealous elder
sister's misunderstanding. My Aunt Martha failed to understand the most basic
thing about my mother: that she was born into the entirely wrong body. Tabby
Wheelwright looked like a starlet-lush, whimsical, easy to talk into anything;
she looked eager to please, or "a little simple," as my Aunt Martha
observed; she looked touchable. But I firmly believe that my mother was of an
entirely different character man her appearance would suggest; as her son, I
know, she was almost perfect as a mother-her sole imperfection being that she
died before she could tell me who my father was. And in addition to being an
almost perfect mother, I also know that she was a happy woman-and a truly happy
woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy. If her
body looked restless, she wasn't. She was content-she was feline in that
respect, too. She appeared to want nothing from life but a child and a loving
husband; it is important to note these singulars-she did not want children, she
wanted me, just me, and she got me; she did not want men in her life, she
wanted a man, the right man, and shortly before she died, she found him. I have
said that my Aunt Martha is a "lovely woman," and I mean it: she is
warm, she is attractive, she is decent and kind and honorably intentioned-and
she has always been loving to me. She loved my mother, too; she just never
understood her-and when however small a measure of jealousy is mixed with misunderstanding,
there is going to be trouble. I have said that my mother was a sweater girl,
and that is a contradiction to the general modesty with which she dressed; she
did show off her bosom-but never her flesh, except for her athletic,
almost-innocent shoulders. She did like to bare her shoulders. And her dress
was never slatternly, never wanton, never garish; she was so conservative in
her choice of colors that I remember little in her wardrobe that wasn't black
or white, except for some accessories-she had a fondness for red (in scarves,
in hats, in shoes, in mittens and gloves). She wore nothing that was tight
around her hips, but she did like her small waist and her good bosom to
show-she did have THE BEST BREASTS OF ALL THE MOTHERS, as Owen observed. I do
not think that she flirted; she did not "come on" to men-but how much
of that would I have seen, up to the age of eleven? So maybe she did flirt-a
little. I used to imagine that her flirting was reserved for the Boston &
Maine, that she was absolutely and properly my mother in every location upon
this earth-even in Boston, the dreaded city-but that on the train she might
have looked for men. What else could explain her having met the man who
fathered me there? And some six years later-on the same train-she met the man
who would marry her! Did the rhythm of the train on the tracks somehow unravel
her and make^her behave out of character? Was she altered in transit, when her
feet were^not upon the ground? I expressed this absurd fear only once, and only
to Owen. He was shocked.

"HOW COULD YOU THINK SUCH A THING ABOUT YOUR OWN
MOTHER?" he asked me.

"But yew say she's sexy, you're the one who raves about her
breasts," I told him.

"I DON'T RAVE," Owen told me.

"Well, okay-I mean, you like her," I said. "Men,
and boys-they like her."

"FORGET THAT ABOUT THE TRAIN," Owen said

"YOUR MOTHER IS A PERFECT WOMAN. NOTHING HAPPENS TO HER ON
THE TRAIN."

Well, although she said she "met" my father on the
Boston & Maine, I never imagined that my conception occurred there; it is a
fact, however, that she met the man she would marry on that train. That story
was neither a lie nor a secret. How many times I asked her to tell me that
story! And she never hesitated, she never lacked enthusiasm for telling that
story-which she told the same way, every time. And after she was dead, how many
times I asked him to tell me the story-and he would tell it, with enthusiasm,
and the same way, every time. His name was Dan Needham. How many times I have
prayed to God that he was my real father! My mother and my grandmother and
I-and Lydia, minus one of her legs-were eating dinner on a Thursday evening in
the spring of . Thursdays were the days my mother returned from Boston, and we
always had a better-than-average dinner those nights. I remember that it was
shortly after Lydia's leg had been amputated, because it was still a little
strange to have her eating with us at the table (in her wheelchair), and to
have the two new maids doing the serving and the clearing that only recently Lydia
had done. And the wheelchair was still new enough to Lydia so that she wouldn't
allow me to push her around in it; only my grandmother and my mother-and one of
the two new maids-were allowed to. I don't remember all the trivial intricacies
of Lydia's wheel-chair rules-just that the four of us were finishing our
dinner, and Lydia's presence at the dinner table was as new and noticeable as
fresh paint. And my mother said, "I've met another man on the good old
Boston and Maine."

It was not intended, I think, as an entirely mischievous remark,
but the remark took instant and astonishing hold of Lydia and my grandmother
and me. Lydia's wheelchair surged in reverse away from the table, dragging the
tablecloth after her, so that all the dishes and glasses and silverware
jumped-and the candlesticks wobbled. My grandmother seized the large brooch at
the throat of her dress-she appeared to have suddenly choked on it-and I
snapped so substantial a piece of my lower lip between my teeth that I could
taste my blood. We all thought that my mother was speaking euphemisti- cally. I
wasn't present when she'd announced the particulars of the case of the first
man she claimed she'd met on the train. Maybe she'd said, "I met a man on
the good old Boston and Maine-and now I'm pregnant!" Maybe she said,
"I'm going to have a baby as a result of a fling I had with a total
stranger I met on the good old Boston and Maine-someone I never expect to see
again!"

Well, anyway, if I can't re-create the first announcement, the
second announcement was spectacular enough. We all thought that she was telling
us that she was pregnant again-by a different man! And as an example of how
wrong my Aunt Martha was, concerning her point of view that my mother was
"a little simple," my mother instantly saw what we were thinking, and
laughed at us, very quickly, and said, "No, no! I'm not going to have a
baby. I'm never going to have another baby-I have my baby. I'm just telling you
that I've met a man. Someone I like."

"A different man, Tabitha?" my grandmother asked,
still holding her brooch.

"Oh, not that man! Don't be silly," my mother said,
and she laughed again-her laughter drawing Lydia's wheelchair, ever so
cautiously, back toward the table.

"A man you like, you mean, Tabitha?" my grandmother
asked.

"I wouldn't mention him if I didn't like him," my
mother said. "I want you to meet him," she said to us all.

"You've dated him?" my grandmother asked.

"No! I just met him-just today, on today's train!" my
mother said.

"And already you like him?" Lydia asked, in a tone of
voice so perfectly copied from my grandmother that I had to look to see which
one of them was speaking.

"Well, yes," my mother said seriously. "You know
such things. You don't need that much time."

"How many times have you known such things-before?" my
grandmother asked.

"This is the first time, really," my mother said.
"That's why I know."

Lydia and my grandmother instinctively looked at me, perhaps to
ascertain if I'd understood my mother correctly: that the time
"before," when she'd had her "fling," which had led to me,
was not a time when my mother had enjoyed any special

 
 
feelings toward
whoever my father was. But I had another idea. I was thinking that maybe this
was my father, that maybe this was the first man she'd met on the train, and
he'd heard about me, and he was curious about me and wanted to see me-and
something very important had kept him away for the last six years. There had,
after all, been a war back when I'd been born, in . But as another example of
how wrong my Aunt Martha was, my mother seemed to see what I was imagining,
immediately, because she said, "Please understand, Johnny, that this man
has no relationship whatsoever to the man who is your father-this is a man I
saw for the first time today, and I like him. That's all: I just like him, and
I think you'll like him, too."