A prayer for Owen Meany (65 page)

I wrote a letter to Caroline O'Day; she never answered me. It
was August, . I remember one very hot day-humid, with a hazy sky; a
thunderstorm was threatening, but it never came. It was very much like the day
of my mother's wedding, before the storm; it was what Owen Meany and I called
typical Gravesend weather. Noah and Simon and I were logging; the deer flies
were driving us crazy, and there were mosquitoes, too. Simon was the easiest to
drive crazy; of the three of us, the deer flies and mosquitoes liked Simon the
best. Logging is most dangerous if you're impatient; saws and axes, peaveys and
cant dogs-these tools belong in patient hands. Simon got a little sloppy and
reckless with his cant dog-he chased after a deer fly with the hook end and
speared himself in the calf. It was a deep gash, about three or four inches
long-not serious; but he would require some stitches to close the wound, and a
tetanus shot. Noah and I were elated; even Simon, who had a high tolerance for
pain, was pretty pleased-the injury meant we could all get out of the woods. We
drove the Jeep out the logging road to Noah's Chevy; we took the Chevy out on
the highway, through Sawyer Depot and Conway, to the emergency entrance of the
North Conway Hospital. There'd been an automobile accident somewhere near the
Maine border, so Simon rated a low priority in the emergency room; that was
fine with all of us, because the longer it took for Simon to get his tetanus
shot and his stitches, the longer we would be away from the deer flies and the
mosquitoes and the heat. Simon even pretended not to know if he was allergic to
anything; Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred had to be called, and that took more
time. Noah started flirting with one of the nurses; with any luck, Noah knew,
we could fart around the whole rest of the day, and never go back to work. One
of the less-mangled victims of the auto accident sat in the waiting room with
us. He was someone Noah and Simon knew vaguely-a type not uncommon in the north
country, one of those ski bums who don't seem to know what to do with
themselves when there isn't any snow. This was a guy who'd been drinking a
bottle of beer when one car hit another; he'd been the driver of one of the
cars, he said, and the bottleneck had broken in his mouth on impact-he had
lacerations on the roof of his mouth, and his gums were slashed, and the broken
neck of the bottle had pierced his cheek. He proudly showed us the lacerations
inside his mouth, and the hole in his cheek-all the while mopping up his mouth
and face with a blood-soaked wad of gauze, which he periodically wrung out in a
blood-soaked towel. He was precisely the sort of north country lunatic who gave
Hester great disdain for Sawyer Depot, and led her to maintain her residence in
the college community of Durham year 'round.

"Did you hear about Marilyn Monroe?" the ski bum asked
us. We were prepared for a dirty joke-an absolutely filthy joke. The ski bum's
smile was a bleeding gash in his face; his smile was the repulsive equal to his
gaping wound in his cheek. He was lascivious, depraved-our much-appreciated
holiday in the emergency room had taken a nasty turn. We tried to ignore him.

"Did you hear about Marilyn Monroe?" he asked us
again. Suddenly, it didn't sound like a joke. Maybe it's about the Kennedys! I
thought.

"No. What about her?" I said.

"She's dead," the ski bum said. He took such a
sadistic pleasure in his announcement, his smile appeared to pump the blood out
of his mouth and the hole in his cheek; I thought that he was as pleased by the
shock value of what he had to say as he was thrilled by the spectacle of
wringing his own blood from the sodden gauze pad into the sodden towel. Forever
after, I would see his bleeding face whenever I imagined how Larry Lish and his
mother must have responded to this news; how eagerly, how greedily they must
have spread the word! "Have you heard? You mean, you haven't heard!"
The rapture of so much amateur conjecturing and surmising would flush their
faces as irrepressibly as blood!

"How?" I asked the ski bum.

"An overdose," he said; he sounded disappointed-as if
he'd been hoping for something bloodier. "Maybe it was an accident, maybe
it was suicide," he said. Maybe it was the Kennedys, I thought. It made me
feel afraid; at first, that summer, it was something vague that had made me
feel afraid. Now something concrete made me feel afraid-but my fear itself was
still vague: what could Marilyn Monroe's death ever have to do with me!

"IT HAS TO DO WITH ALL OF US," said Owen Meany, when I
called him that night. "SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR

        
 
WHOLE COUNTRY-NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT
NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID,
MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING-I THINK
SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE-JOE DIMAG-GIO, ARTHUR
MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEMl LOOK AT HOW DESIRABLE
SHE WAS! THAT'S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY-AND SHE
WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE
OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY," he repeated; he was on a
roll. I could hear Hester playing her guitar in the background, as if she were
trying to improvise a folk song from everything he said. "AND THOSE
MEN," he said. "THOSE FAMOUS, POWERFUL MEN-DID THEY REALLY LOVE HER?
DID THEY TAKE CARE OF HER? IF SHE WAS EVER WITH THE KENNEDYS, THEY COULDN'T
HAVE LOVED HER-THEY WERE JUST USING HER, THEY WERE JUST BEING CARELESS AND
TREATING THEMSELVES TO A THRILL. THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS
COUNTRY-IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO
TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT.
THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD-THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR
MORAL. THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT KENNEDY WAS: A MORALIST. BUT HE WAS JUST GIVING US
A SNOW JOB, HE WAS JUST BEING A GOOD SEDUCER. I THOUGHT HE WAS A SAVIOR. I
THOUGHT HE WANTED TO USE HIS POWER TO DO GOOD. BUT PEOPLE WILL SAY AND DO
ANYTHING JUST TO GET THE POWER; THEN THEY'LL USE THE POWER JUST TO GET A
THRILL. MARILYN MONROE WAS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST MAN-MAYBE SHE WANTED THE
MAN WITH THE MOST INTEGRITY, MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST ABILITY TO
DO GOOD. AND SHE WAS SEDUCED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN-SHE GOT FOOLED, SHE WAS
TRICKED, SHE GOT USED, SHE WAS USED UP. JUST LIKE THE COUNTRY. THE COUNTRY
WANTS A SAVIOR. THE COUN- TRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE
THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. THAT'S WHAT'S GOING TO
HAPPEN TO YOU AND ME," said Owen Meany. "WE'RE GOING TO BE
USED."

Georgian Bay: July , -The Toronto Star says that President
Reagan "actually led the first efforts to conceal essential details of his
secret arms-for-hostages program and keep it alive after it became
public." The Toronto Star added that "the President subsequently made
misleading statements about the arms sales"-on four separate occasions'.
Owen used to say that the most disturbing thing about the antiwar
movement-against the Vietnam War-was that he suspected self-interest motivated
many of the protesters; he thought that if the issue of many of the protesters
being drafted was removed from the issue of the war, there would be very little
protest at all. Look at the United States today. Are they drafting young Americans
to fight in Nicaragua? No; not yet. Are masses of young Americans outraged at
the Reagan administration's shoddy and deceitful behavior? Ho hum; not hardly.
I know what Owen Meany would say about that; I know what he did say-and it
still applies.

"THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN GET AMERICANS TO NOTICE ANYTHING IS
TO TAX THEM OR DRAFT THEM OR KILL THEM," Owen said. He said that once-when
Hester proposed abolishing the draft. "IF YOU ABOLISH THE DRAFT,"
said Owen Meany, "MOST AMERICANS WILL SIMPLY STOP CARING ABOUT WHAT WE'RE
DOING IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD."

I saw a mink run under the boathouse today; it had such a
slender body, it was only slightly larger than a weasel-with a weasel's
undulating movement. It had such a thick, glossy coat of fur, I was instantly
reminded of Larry Lish's mother. Where is she now? I wondered. I know where
Larry Lish is; he's a well-known journalist in New York-"an investigative
reporter" is what he's called. I've read a few of his pieces; they're not
bad-he was always clever-and I notice that he's acquired a necessary quality in
his voice ("necessary," I think, if a journalist is going to make a
name for himself, and gain an audience, and so forth). Larry Lish has become
particularly self-righteous, and the quality in

 
 
his voice that I
call "necessary" is a tone of moral indignation. Larry Lish has
become a moralist-imagine that! I wonder what his mother has become. If she got
the right guy to marry her-before it was too late-maybe Mitzy Lish has become a
moralist, too! In the fall of ' when Owen Meany and I began our life as
freshmen at the University of New Hampshire, we enjoyed certain advantages that
set us apart from our lowly, less-experienced peers. We were not subject to
dormitory rules because we lived at home-we were commuters from Graves-end and
were permitted to park our own means of transportation on campus, which other
freshmen were not allowed to do. I divided my at-home time between Dan and my
grandmother; this had an added advantage, in that when there was a late-night
university party in Durham, I could tell Dan I was staying with my grandmother
and tell Grandmother I was staying with Dan-and never come home! Owen was not
required to be home at any special time; considering that he spent every night
of the summer at Hester's apartment, I was surprised that he was going through
the motions of living at home at all. Hester's roommates were back, however; if
Owen stayed at Hester's, there was no question regarding the bed in which he
spent the night-whether he and Hester "did it" or not, they were at
least familiar with the intimate proximity that Hester's queen-size mattress
forced upon them. But once our classes began, Owen didn't sleep at Hester's
apartment more than once or twice a week. Our other advantages over our fellow
freshmen were several. We had suffered the academic rigors of Gravesend
Academy; the course work at the University of New Hampshire was very easy in
comparison. I benefited greatly from this, because-as Owen had taught me-I
chiefly needed to give myself more time to do the work assigned. So much less
work was assigned than what I had learned to expect from the academy that-for
once-I had ample time. I got good grades, almost easily; and for the first
time-although this took two or three years-I began to think of myself as
"smart." But the relatively undemanding expectations of the
university had quite a different effect on Owen Meany. He could do everything
he was asked without half trying, and this made him lazy. He quickly fell into
a habit of getting no better grades than he needed to satisfy his ROTC
"schol- arship"; to my surprise, his best grades were always in the
ROTC courses-in so-called Military Science. We took many of the same classes;
in English and History, I actually got better grades than Owen-had become
indifferent about his writing!

"I AM DEVELOPING A MINIMALIST'S STYLE," he told our
English teacher, who'd complained that Owen never expanded a single point in
any of his papers; he never employed more than one example for each point he
made. "FIRST YOU TELL ME I CAN'T WRITE USING ONLY CAPITAL LETTERS, NOW YOU
WANT ME TO 'ELABORATE'-TO BE MORE 'EXPANSIVE.' IS THAT CONSISTENT?" he
asked our English teacher. "MAYBE YOU WANT ME TO CHANGE MY PERSONALITY,
TOO?"

If, at Gravesend Academy, had persuaded the majority of the
faculty that his eccentricities and peculiarities were not only his individual
rights but were inseparable from his generally acknowledged brilliance, the
more diverse but also more specialized faculty at the University of New
Hampshire were not interested in "the whole boy," not at all; they
were not even a community, the university faculty, and they shared no general
opinion that Owen Meany was brilliant, they expressed no general concern that
his individual rights needed protection, and they had no tolerance for
eccentricities and peculiarities. The classes they taught were for no student's
special development; their interests were the subject themselves-their passions
were for the politics of the university, or of their own departments within
it-and their overall view of us students was that we should conform ourselves
to their methods of their disciplines of study. Owen Meany, who had been so
conspicuous-all my life-was easily overlooked at the University of New
Hampshire. He was in none of his classes as distinguished as the tomato-red
pickup, which was so readily distinguishable among the many economy-model cars
that most parents bought for most students who had their own cars-my
grandmother had bought me a Volkswagen Beetle; in the campus parking lots,
there were so many VWs of the same year and navy-blue color that I could
identify mine only by its license plate or by the familiarity of whatever I had
left on the back seat. And although Owen and I first counted Hester's
friendship as an advantage, her friendship was another means by which

        
 
Owen Meany became lost in Durham; Hester had
a lot of friends among the seniors in what was our first year. These seniors
were the people Owen and I hung out with; we didn't have to make any friends
among the freshmen-and when Hester and her friends graduated, Owen and I didn't
have any friends. As for whatever had made me feel afraid in the summer of
'-whatever that fear was, it was replaced by a kind of solitariness, a feeling
of being oddly set apart, but without loneliness; the loneliness would come
later. And as for fear, you would have thought the Cuban Missile Crisis-that
October-would have sufficed; you would have thought that would have scared the
shit out of us, as people in New Hampshire are a/ways untruthfully claiming.
But Owen said to Hester and me, and to a bunch of hangers-on in Hester's
apartment, "DON'T BE AFRAID. THIS IS NO BIG DEAL, THIS IS JUST A BIT OF
NUCLEAR BLUFFING-NOTHING HAPPENS AS A RESULT OF THIS. BELIEVE ME. I KNOW."