A prayer for Owen Meany: a novel

by John Irving

  "WELL, I'VE BEEN THINKING THAT INDOORS WOULD BE BEST, TOO," Owen said, "AND UNFORTUNATELY I REALLY CAN'T INVITE YOU TO MY HOUSE, BECAUSE THERE'S REALLY NOTHING TO DO IN THE HOUSE, AND BECAUSE MY FATHER RUNS A GRANITE QUARRY, HE'S RATHER STRICT ABOUT THE EQUIPMENT AND THE QUARRIES THEMSELVES, WHICH ARE OUTDOORS, ANYWAY. INDOORS, AT MY HOUSE, WOULD NOT BE A LOT OF FUN BECAUSE MY PARENTS ARE RATHER STRANGE ABOUT CHILDREN."

  "That's no problem!" Noah blurted.

  "Don't worry!" Simon said. "There's lots to do here, in this house."

  "Everyone's parents are strange!" Hester told Owen reassuringly, but I couldn't think of anything to say. In the years I'd known Owen, the issue of how strange his parents were-not only "about children"-had never been discussed between us. It seemed, rather, the accepted knowledge of the town, not to be mentioned-except in passing, or in parentheses, or as an aside among intimates.

  "WELL, I'VE BEEN THINKING THAT WE COULD PUT ON YOUR GRANDFATHER'S CLOTHES-YOU'VE TOLD YOUR COUSINS ABOUT THE CLOTHES?" Owen

  asked me; but I hadn't. I thought they would think that dressing up in Grandfather's clothes was either baby play, or morbid, or both; or that they would surely destroy the clothes, discovering that merely dressing up in them was insufficiently violent -therefore leading them to a game, the object of which was to rip the clothes off each other; whoever was naked last won.

  "Grandfather's clothes?" Noah said with unaccustomed reverence. Simon shivered; Hester nervously plucked purple thread from here and there. And Owen Meany-at the moment, our leader-said, "WELL, THERE'S ALSO THE CLOSET WHERE THE CLOTHES ARE KEPT. IT CAN BE SCARY IN THERE, IN THE DARK, AND WE COULD PLAY SOME KIND OF GAME WHERE ONE OF US HIDES AND ONE OF US HAS TO FIND WHOEVER IT IS-IN THE DARK. WELL," Owen said, "THAT COULD BE INTERESTING."

  "Yes! Hiding in the dark!" Simon said.

  "I didn't know those were Grandfather's clothes in there," Hester said.

  "Do you think the clothes are haunted, Hester?" Noah asked.

  "Shut up," Hester said.

  "Let Hester hide in there, in the dark," Simon said, "and we'll take turns trying to find her."

  "I don't want you pawing around in the dark for me," Hester said.

  "Hester, we just have to find you before you find us," Noah said.

  "No, it's who touches who first!" Simon said.

  "You touch me, I'll pull your doink, Simon," Hester said.

  "Whoa!" Noah said. "That's it! That's the game! We got to find Hester before she pulls our doinks.''

  "Hester the Molester!" Simon said predictably.

  "Only if I'm allowed to get used to the dark!" Hester said. "I get to have an advantage! I'm allowed to get used to the dark-and whoever's looking for me comes into the closet with no chance to get used to how dark it is."

  "THERE'S A FLASHLIGHT," Owen Meany said nervously. "MAYBE WE COULD USE A FLASHLIGHT, BECAUSE IT WOULD STILL BE PRETTY DARK."

  "No flashlight!" Hester said.

  "No!" Simon said. "Whoever goes into the closet after Hester gets the flashlight shined in his face before he goes in-so he's blind, so he's the opposite of being used to the dark!"

  "Good idea!" Noah said.

  "I get as long as I need to get myself hidden," Hester said. "And to get used to the dark."

  "No!" Simon said. "We'll count to twenty."

  "A hundred!" Hester said.

  "Fifty," Noah said; so it was fifty. Simon started counting, but Hester hit him.

  "You've got to wait till I'm completely inside the closet," she said. As she moved toward the closet, she had to brush past Owen Meany, and a curious thing happened to her when she was next to him. Hester stood still and put her hand out to Owen-her big paw, uncharacteristically tentative and gentle, reached out and touched his face, as if there were a force in Owen's immediate vicinity that compelled the passerby to touch him. Hester touched him, and she smiled-Owen's little face was level with those nubbins of Hester's early bosom, which appeared to be implanted under her T-shirt. Owen was quite accustomed to people feeling compelled to touch him, but in Hester's case he retreated a trifle anxiously from her touch-though not so much that she was offended. Then Hester went clomping into the closet, stumbling over the shoes, and we heard her rustling among the clothes, and the hangers squeaking on the metal rods, and what sounded like the hatboxes sliding over the overhead shelves-once she said, "Shit!" And another time, "What's that?" By the time the noises quieted down, we had Simon completely dazed under the flashlight's close-up glare; Simon was eager to be first, and by the time we shoved him into the closet, he was certifiably blind-even if he'd been trying to walk around in the daylight. No sooner was Simon inside the closet, and we'd closed the door behind him, than we heard Hester attack him; she must have grabbed his "doink" harder than she'd meant to, because he howled with more pain than surprise, and there were tears in his eyes, and he was still doubled over and holding fast to his private parts when he tumbled out of the closet and rolled upon the attic floor.

  "Jesus, Hester!" Noah said. "What did you do to him?"

  "I didn't mean to," came her voice from the dark closet.

  "No fair pulling the doink and the balls!" Simon cried, still doubled up on the floor.

  "I didn't mean to," she repeated sweetly.

  "You bitch!" Simon said.

  "You're always rough with me, Simon," Hester said.

  "You can't be rough with balls and doinksV Noah said. But Hester was not talking; we could hear her positioning herself for her next attack, and Noah whispered to Owen and me that since there were two doors to the closet, we should surprise Hester by entering from the other door.

  "WHO IS WE?" Owen whispered. Noah pointed to him, silently, and I shone the flashlight into Owen's wide and darting eyes, which gave his face the sudden anxiety of a cornered mouse.

  "No fair grabbing so hard, Hester!" Noah called, but Hester didn't answer.

  "SHE'S JUST TRYING TO CONCEAL HER HIDING PLACE," Owen whispered-to reassure himself. Then Noah and I flung Owen into the closet through the other door: the closet was L-shaped, and by Owen's entering on the short arm of the L, Noah and I figured that he would not encounter Hester before the first corner-and only then if Hester managed to move, because her hiding place would surely be nearer the top of the L.

  "No fair using the other door!" Hester promptly called, which Noah and I felt was further to Owen's advantage, since she must have given away her position in the closet-at least, to some general degree. Then there was silence. I knew what Owen was doing: he was hoping that his eyes would grow used to the dark before Hester found him, and he wasn't going to begin to move-to try to find her-until he could see a little.

  "What in hell's going on in there?" Simon asked, but there was no sound. Then we detected the occasional bumping of one of Grandfather's hundreds of shoes. Then silence. Then another slight movement of shoes. As I learned later, Owen was crawling on all fours, because he most feared-and expected-an attack from one of the large, overhead shelves. He had no way of knowing that Hester had stretched herself out on the floor of the closet, and that she had covered herself with one of Grandfather's topcoats, over which she'd positioned the usual number of shoes. She lay motionless, and-except for her head and her hands-invisible. But her head was pointed the wrong way; that is, she had to roll her eyes up into the top of her head and watch Owen Meany approaching her by staring at him upside down, looking over her own forehead and her considerable head of hair. What Owen touched first, as he approached her on all fours, was that live and kinky tangle of Hester's hair, which suddenly moved under his little hand-and Hester's arms reached up over her head, seizing Owen around his waist. To her credit, Hester never had any intention of grabbing Owen's "doink"; but finding it so easy to hold Owen around the waist, Hester decided to run her hands up his ribs and tickle him. Owen looked extremely susceptible to tickling, which he was, and Hester's gesture was of the friendliest of intentions-especially for Hester-but the combination of putting his hand on live hair, in the dark, co
upled with being tickled by a girl who, Owen thought, was merely tickling him en route to grabbing his doink, was too much for him; he wet his pants. The instant recognition of Owen's accident surprised Hester so much that she dropped him. He fell on top of her-and he wriggled free of her, and out of the closet, and through the trapdoor and down the stairs. Owen ran through the house so fast and noiselessly that even my grandmother failed to notice him; and if my mother hadn't happened to be looking out the kitchen window, she would not have seen him-with his jacket unzipped, and his boots unlaced, and his hat on crooked-mounting his bicycle with some difficulty in the icy wind.

  "Jesus, Hester!" Noah said. "What did you do to him?"

  "I know what she did to him!" Simon said.

  "It wasn't that," Hester said simply. "I just tickled him, and he wet his pants." She did not report this to mock Owen, and-as a testimony to my cousins' basically decent natures-the news was not greeted with their usual rowdiness, which I associated with Sawyer Depot as firmly as various forms of skiing and collision.

  "The poor little guy]" Simon said.

  "I didn't mean to," Hester said. My mother called to me and I had to go tell her what had happened to Owen, whereupon she made me put on my outdoor clothes while she started the car. I thought I knew the route Owen would take home, but he must have been pedaling very hard because we did not overtake him by the Gas Works on Water Street, and when we passed Dewey Street without

  sighting him-and there was no sign of him at Salem Street, either-I began to think he had taken the Swasey Parkway out of town. And so we doubled back, along the Squamscott, but he wasn't there. We finally found him, already out of town, laboring up Maiden Hill; we slowed down when we saw his red-and-black wool hunter's jacket and the matching checkered cap with the earflaps protruding, and by the time we pulled alongside him, he had run out of steam and had gotten off to walk his bicycle. He knew it was us without looking at us but he wouldn't stop walking-so my mother drove slowly beside him, and rolled down the window.

  "IT WAS AN ACCIDENT, I JUST GOT TOO EXCITED, I HAD TOO MUCH ORANGE JUICE FOR BREAKFAST-AND YOU KNOW I CAN'T STAND BEING TICKLED," Owen said. "NOBODY SAID ANYTHING ABOUT TICKLING."

  "Please don't go home, Owen," my mother said.

  "Everything's all right," I told him. "My cousins are very sorry."

  "I PEED ON HESTER!" Owen said. "AND I'M GOING TO GET IN TROUBLE AT HOME," he said-still walking his bike at a good pace. "MY FATHER GETS MAD ABOUT PEEING. HE SAYS I'M NOT A BABY ANYMORE, BUT SOMETIMES I GET EXCITED."

  "Owen, I'll wash and dry your clothes at our house," my mother told him. "You can wear something of Johnny's while yours are drying."

  "NOTHING OF JOHNNY'S WILL FIT ME," Owen said. "AND I HAVE TO TAKE A BATH."

  "You can take a bath at our house, Owen," I told him. "Please come back."

  "I have some outgrown things of Johnny's that will fit you, Owen," my mother said.

  "BABY CLOTHES, I SUPPOSE," Owen said, but he stopped walking; he leaned his head on his bike's handlebars.

  "Please get in the car, Owen," my mother said. I got out and helped him put his bicycle in the back, and then he slid into the front seat, between my mother and me.

  "I WANTED TO MAKE A GOOD IMPRESSION BECAUSE I WANTED TO GO TO SAWYER DEPOT," he said. "NOW YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME."

  I found it incredible that he still wanted to go, but my mother said, "Owen, you can come with us to Sawyer Depot, anytime."

  "JOHNNY DOESN'T WANT ME TO COME," he told Mother-as if I weren't there in the car with them.

  "It's not that, Owen," I said. "It's that I thought my cousins would be too much for you." And on the evidence of him wetting his pants, I did not say, it struck me that my cousins were too much for him. "That was a very mild game for my cousins, Owen," I added.

  "DO YOU THINK I CARE WHAT THEY DO TO ME?" he shouted; he stamped his little foot on the drive-shaft hump.

  "DO YOU THINK I CARE IF THEY START AN AVALANCHE WITH ME?" he screamed. "WHEN DO I GET TO GO ANYWHERE! IF I DIDN'T GO TO SCHOOL OR TO CHURCH OR TO EIGHTY FRONT STREET, I'D NEVER GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" he cried. "IF YOUR MOTHER DIDN'T TAKE ME TO THE BEACH, I'D NEVER GET OUT OF TOWN. AND I'VE NEVER BEEN TO THE MOUNTAINS," he said. "I'VE NEVER EVEN BEEN ON A TRAIN! DON'T YOU THINK I MIGHT LIKE GOING ON A TRAIN-TO THE MOUNTAINS?" he yelled. My mother stopped the car and hugged him, and kissed him, and told him he was always welcome to come with us, anywhere we went; and I rather awkwardly put my arm around him, and we just sat that way in the car, until he had composed himself sufficiently for his return to Front Street, where he marched in the back door, past Lydia's room and the maids fussing in the kitchen, up the back stairs past the maids' rooms, to my room and my bathroom, where he closed himself in and drew a deep bath. He handed me his sodden clothes, and I brought the clothes to the maids, who began their work on them. My mother knocked on the bathroom door, and, looking the other way, she extended her arm into the room, where Owen took a stack of my outgrown clothes from her-they were not baby clothes, as he had feared; they were just extremely small clothes.

  "What shall we do with him?" Hester asked while we were waiting for Owen to join us in the upstairs den-or so it had been called, "the den," when my grandfather was alive; it was a children's room whenever my cousins visited.

  "We'll do whatever he wants," Noah said.

  "That's what we did the last time!" Simon said.

  "Not quite," Hester said.

  "WELL, I'VE BEEN THINKING," Owen said when he walked into the den-even pinker than usual; he was spanking clean, as they say, with his hair slicked back. In his stocking feet, he was slipping a little on the hardwood floor; and when he reached the old Oriental, he stood with one foot balanced on top of the other, twisting his hips back and forth as he talked-his hands, like butterflies, flitting up and down between his waist and his shoulders. "I APOLOGIZE FOR BECOMING OVEREXCITED. I THINK I KNOW A GAME THAT WOULD NOT BE QUITE AS EXCITING FOR ME, BUT AT THE SAME TIME I THINK IT WOULD NOT BE BORING FOR YOU," he said. "YOU SEE, ONE OF YOU GETS TO HIDE ME- SOMEWHERE, IT COULD BE ANYWHERE-AND THE OTHERS HAVE TO FIND ME. AND WHOEVER CAN FIND A PLACE TO HIDE ME THAT TAKES THE LONGEST TIME FOR THE OTHERS TO FIND ME-WHOEVER THAT IS WINS. YOU SEE, IT'S PRETTY EASY TO FIND PLACES IN THIS HOUSE TO HIDE ME-BECAUSE THIS HOUSE IS HUGE AND I'M SMALL," Owen added.

  "I go first," Hester said. "I get to hide him first." No one argued; wherever she hid him, we never found him. Noah and Simon and I-we thought it would be easy to find him. I knew every inch of my grandmother's house, and Noah and Simon knew almost everything about Hester's diabolical mind; but we couldn't find him. Hester stretched out on the couch in the den, looking at old issues of Life magazine, growing more and more content as we searched and searched, and darkness fell; I even expressed to Hester my concern that she had put Owen somewhere where he might have run out of air, or-as the hours dragged on-where he would suffer severe cramps from having to maintain an uncomfortable position. But Hester dismissed these concerns with a wave of her hand, and when it was suppertime, we had to give up; Hester made us wait in the downstairs front hall, and she went and got Owen, who was very happy and walking without a limp, and breathing without difficulty-although his hair looked slept on. He stayed for supper, and he told me after we'd eaten that he wouldn't mind staying overnight, too-my mother invited him to stay, because (she said) his clothes hadn't completely dried. And although I asked him-"Where'd she hide you? Just give me a clue! Tell me what part of the house, just tell me which floor"-he wouldn't disclose his triumph. He was wide awake, and in no mood to sleep, and he was irritatingly philosophic regarding the true character of my cousins, whom he said I had failed to present fairly to him.

  "YOU HAVE REALLY MISJUDGED THEM," he lectured me. "PERHAPS WHAT YOU CALL THEIR WILD-NESS IS JUST A MATTER OF LACK OF DIRECTION. SOMEONE HAS TO GIVE ANY GROUP OF PEOPLE DIRECTION, YOU KNOW." I lay there thinking I couldn't wait until he came to Sawyer Depot, and my cousins got him on skis and simply pointed him downhill; that might shut
him up about providing adequate "direction." But there was no turning him off; he just babbled on and on. I got drowsy, and turned my back to him, and therefore I was confused when I heard him say, "IT'S HARD TO GO TO SLEEP WITHOUT IT, ONCE YOU GET USED TO IT- ISN'T IT?"

  "Without what?" I asked him. "Used to what, Owen?"

  "THE ARMADILLO," he said. And so that day after Thanksgiving, when Owen Meany met my cousins, provided me with two very powerful images of Owen-especially on the night I tried to get to sleep after had killed my mother. I lay in bed knowing that Owen would be thinking about my mother, too, and that he would be thinking not only of me but also of Dan Needham-of how much we both would miss her-and if Owen was thinking of Dan, I knew that he would be thinking about the armadillo, too. It was also important: that day when my mother and I chased after Owen in the car-and I saw the posture of his body jerking on his bicycle, trying to pedal up Maiden Hill; and I saw how he faltered, and had to get off the bike and walk it the rest of the way. That day provided me with a cold-weather picture of how Owen must have looked on that warm, summer evening when he was struggling home after the Little League game-with his baseball uniform plastered to his back. What was he going to tell his parents about the game? It would take years for me to remember the decision regarding whether I should spend the night after that fatal game with Dan Needham, in the apartment that he and my mother had moved into, with me, after they'd married-it was a faculty apartment in one of the academy dormitories-or whether I would be more comfortable spending that terrible night back in my old room in my grandmother's house at

  Front Street. So many of the details surrounding that game would take years to remember! Anyway, Dan Needham and my grandmother agreed that it would be better for me to spend the night at Front Street, and so-in addition to the disorientation of waking up the next morning, after very little sleep, and gradually realizing that the dream of my mother being killed by a baseball that Owen Meany hit was not a dream-I faced the further disorientation of not immediately knowing where I was. It was very much like waking up as a kind of traveler in science fiction, someone who had traveled "back in time"-because I had grown used to waking up in my room in Dan Needham's apartment. And as if all this weren't sufficiently bewildering, there was a noise I had never before associated with Front Street; it was a noise in the driveway, and my bedroom windows didn't face the driveway, so I had to get out of bed and leave my room to see what the noise was. I was pretty sure I knew. I had heard that noise many times at the Meany Granite Quarry; it was the unmistakable, very lowest gear of the huge, flatbed hauler-the truck Mr. Meany used to carry the granite slabs, the curbstones and cornerstones, and the monuments. And sure enough, the Meany Granite Company truck was in my grandmother's driveway-taking up the whole driveway-and it was loaded with granite and gravestones. I could easily imagine my grandmother's indignation-if she was up, and saw the truck there. I could just hear her saying, "How incredibly tasteless of that man! My daughter not dead a day and what is he doing-giving us a tombstone? I suppose he's already carved the letters!" That is actually what / thought. But Mr. Meany did not get out of the cab of his track. It was Owen who got out on the passenger side, and he walked around to the rear of the flatbed and removed several large cartons from the rest of the load; the cartons were Clearly not full of granite or Owen would not have been able to lift them off by himself. But he managed this, and brought all the cartons to the step by the back door, where I was sure he was going to ring the bell. I could still hear his voice saying "I'M SORRY!"-while my head was hidden under Mr. Chicker-ing's warm-up jacket-and as much as I wanted to see Owen, I knew I would burst into tears as soon as he spoke, or as soon as I had to speak to him. And therefore I was relieved when he didn't ring the bell; he left the cartons at the back door and ran quickly to the cab, and Mr. Meany drove the granite truck out of the driveway, still in the very lowest gear. In the cartons were all of Owen's baseball cards, his entire collection. My grandmother was appalled, but for several years she didn't understand Owen or appreciate him; to her, he was "that boy," or "that little guy," or "that voice." I knew the baseball cards were Owen's favorite things, they were what amounted to his treasure-I could instantly identify with how everything connected to the game of baseball had changed for him, as it had changed for me (although I'd never loved the game as Owen had loved it). I knew without speaking to Owen that neither of us would ever play Little League ball again, and that there was some necessary ritual ahead of us both-wherein we would need to throw away our bats and gloves and uniforms, and every stray baseball there was to be found around our houses and yards (except for that baseball, which I suspected Owen had relegated to a museum-piece status). But I needed to talk to Dan Needham about the baseball cards, because they were Owen's most prized possessions -indeed, his only prized possessions-and since my mother's accident had made baseball a game of death, what did Owen want me to do with his baseball cards? Did they merely represent how he was washing his hands of the great American pastime, or did he want me to assuage my grief by indulging in the pleasure I would derive from burning all those baseball cards? On that day, it would have been a pleasure to burn them.