by John Irving
black, patterned stockings, so that every Sunday thereafter, Owen and I would search in vain for her legs-it was such a surprise to see Mrs. Walker's legs; and even more of a surprise to discover that she had pretty legs! The good guy role in Angel Street-the Joseph Cotten part, I call it-was played by our neighbor Mr. Fish. Owen and I knew that he was still in mourning over the untimely death of Sagamore; the horror of the diaper truck disaster on Front Street was still visible in the pained expression with which he followed my mother's every movement onstage. Mr. Fish was not exactly Owen's and my idea of a hero; but Dan Needham, with his talent for casting and directing the rankest amateurs, must have been inspired, in the case of Mr. Fish, to tap our neighbor's sorrow and anger over Sagamore's encounter with the diaper truck. Anyway, after the dress rehearsal of Angel Street, it was back to the closet with the red dress-except for those many occasions when Owen put it on the dummy. He must have felt especially challenged by my mother's dislike of that dress. It always looked terrific on the dummy. I tell all this only to demonstrate that Owen was as familiar with that dummy as I was; but he was not familiar with it at night. He was not accustomed to the semidarkness of my mother's room when she was sleeping, when the dummy stood over her-that unmistakable body, in profile, in perfect silhouette. That dummy stood so still, it appeared to be counting my mother's breaths. One night at Front Street, when Owen lay hi the other twin bed in my room, we were a long while falling asleep because-down the hall-Lydia had a cough. Just when we thought she was over a particular fit, or she had died, she would start up again. When Owen woke me up, I had not been asleep for very long; I was in the grips of such a deep and recent sleep that I couldn't make myself move-I felt as if I were lying in an extremely plush coffin and my pallbearers were holding me down, although I was doing my best to rise from the dead.
"I FEEL SICK," Owen was saying.
"Are you going to throw up?" I asked him, but I couldn't move; I couldn't even open my eyes.
"I DON'T KNOW," he said. "I THINK I HAVE A FEVER."
"Go tell my mother," I said.
"IT FEELS LIKE A RARE DISEASE," Owen said.
"Go tell my mother," I repeated. I listened to him bump into the desk chair. I heard my door open, and close. I could hear his hands brushing against the wall of the hall. I heard him pause with his hand trembling on my mother's doorknob; he seemed to wait there for the longest time. Then I thought: He's going to be surprised by the dummy. I thought of calling out, "Don't be startled by the dummy standing there; it looks weird in that funny light." But I was sunk in my coffin of sleep and my mouth was clamped shut. I waited for him to scream. That's what Owen would do, I was sure; there would be a bloodcurdling wail-"AAAAAAA-HHHHHHf"-•and the entire household would be awake for hours. Or else, in a fit of bravery, Owen would tackle the dummy and wrestle it to the floor. But while I was imagining the worst of Owen's encounter with the dummy, I realized he was back in my room, beside my bed, pulling my hair.
"WAKE UP! BUT BE QUIET!" he whispered. "YOUR MOTHER IS NOT ALONE. SOMEONE STRANGE IS IN HER ROOM. COME SEE! I THINK IT'S AN ANGEL!"
"An angel?" I said.
"SSSSSSHHHHHH!"
Now I was wide awake and eager to see him make a fool of himself, and so I said nothing about the dummy; I held his hand and went with him through the hall to my mother's room. Owen was shivering.
"How do you know it's an angel?" I whispered.
"SSSSSSHHHHHH!"
So we stealthily crept into my mother's room, crawling on our bellies like snipers in search of cover, until the whole picture of her bed-her body in an inverted question mark, and the dummy standing beside her-was visible. After a while, Owen said, "IT'S GONE. IT MUST HAVE SEEN ME THE FIRST TIME."
I pointed innocently at the dummy. "What's that?" I whispered.
"THAT'S THE DUMMY, YOU IDIOT!" Owen said. "WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BED."
I touched his forehead; he was burning up. "You have a fever, Owen," I said.
"I SAW AN ANGEL," he said.
"Is that you, boys?" my mother asked sleepily.
"Owen has a fever," I said. "He feels sick."
"Come here, Owen," my mother said, sitting up in bed. He went to her and she felt his forehead and told me to get him an aspirin and a glass of water.
"Owen saw an angel," I said.
"Did you have a nightmare, Owen?" my mother asked him, as he crawled into bed beside her. Owen's voice was muffled in the pillows. "NOT EXACTLY," he said. When I returned with the water and the aspirin, my mother had fallen asleep with her arm around Owen; with his protrusive ears spread on the pillow, and my mother's arm across his chest, he looked like a butterfly trapped by a cat. He managed to take the aspirin and drink the water without disturbing my mother, and he handed the glass back to me with a stoical expression.
"I'M GOING TO STAY HERE," he said bravely. "IN CASE IT COMES BACK."
He looked so absurd, I couldn't look at him. "I thought you said it was an angel," I whispered. "What harm would an angel do?"
"I DON'T KNOW WHAT KIND OF ANGEL IT WAS," he whispered, and my mother stirred in her sleep; she tightened her grip around Owen, which must have simultaneously frightened and thrilled him, and I went back to my room alone. From what nonsense did Owen Meany discern what he would later call a PATTERN? From his feverish imagination? Years later, when he would refer to THAT FATED BASEBALL, I corrected him too impatiently.
"That accident, you mean," I said. It made him furious when I suggested that anything was an "accident"-especially anything that had happened to him; on the subject of predestination, Owen Meany would accuse Calvin of bad faith. There were no accidents; there was a reason for that baseball-just as there was a reason for Owen being small, and a reason for his voice. In Owen's opinion, he had INTERRUPTED AN ANGEL, he had DISTURBED AN ANGEL AT WORK, he had UPSET THE SCHEME OF THINGS. I realize now that he never thought he saw a guardian angel; he was quite convinced, especially after THAT FATED BASEBALL, that he had interrupted of Death. Although he did not (at the time) delineate the plot of this Divine Narrative to me, I know that's what he believed: he, Owen Meany, had interrupted of Death at her holy work; she had reassigned the task-she gave it to him. How could these fantasies become so monstrous, and so convincing to him? My mother was too sleepy to take his temperature, but it's a fact that he had a fever, and that his fever led him to a night in my mother's bed-in her arms. And wouldn't his excitement to find himself there, with her-not to mention his fever-have contributed to his readiness to remain wide-eyed and wide awake, alert for the next intruder, be it angel or ghost or hapless family member? I think so. Several hours later, there came to my mother's room the second fearful apparition. I say "fearful" because Owen was, at that time, afraid of my grandmother; he must have sensed her distaste for the granite business. I had left the light on in my mother's bathroom and the door to her bathroom open-into the hall-and worse, I had left the cold-water tap running (when I'd fixed Owen a glass of water for his aspirin). My grandmother always claimed she could hear the electric meter counting each kilowatt; as soon as it was dark, she followed my mother through the house, turning off the lights that my mother had turned on. And this night, in addition to her sensing that a light had been left on, Grandmother heard the water running- either the pump in the basement, or the cold-water tap itself. Finding my mother's bathroom in such reckless abandon, Grandmother proceeded to my mother's room-anxious that my mother was ill or else indignant with budget-mindedness and determined to point out my mother's carelessness, even if she had to wake her up. Grandmother might have just turned out the light, turned off the water, and gone back to bed, if she hadn't made the mistake of turning the cold-water tap the wrong way-she turned it much more forcefully on, dousing herself in a spray of the coldest possible water; the tap had been left running for hours. Thus was her nightgown soaked; she would have to change it. This must have inspired her to wake my mother; not only had electricity and water been awasting, but here Grandmother was-soaked t
o the skin in her efforts to put a stop to all this escaping energy. I would guess, therefore, that her manner, upon entering my mother's room, was not calm. And although
Owen was prepared for an angel, he might have expected that even of Death would reappear in a serene fashion. My grandmother, dripping wet-her usually flowing nightgown plastered to her gaunt, hunched body, her hair arrayed in its nightly curlers, her face thickly creamed the lifeless color of the moon-burst into my mother's room. It was days before Owen could tell me what he thought: when you scare off of Death, the Divine Plan calls for the kind of angels you can't scare away; they even call you by name.
"Tabitha!" my grandmother said.
' 'AAAAAAHHHHHH!'' Owen Meany screamed so terribly that my grandmother could not catch her breath. Beside my mother on the bed, she saw a tiny demon spring bolt upright-propelled by such a sudden and unreal force that my grandmother imagined the little creature was preparing to fly. My mother appeared to levitate beside him. Lydia, who still had both her legs, leaped from her bed and ran straight into her dresser drawers; for days, she would display her bruised nose. Sagamore, who was a short time away from his appointment with the diaper truck, woke up Mr. Fish with his barking. Throughout the neighborhood, the lids of trash cans clattered-as cats and raccoons made good their escape from Owen Meany's alarm. A small segment of Gravesend must have rolled over in their beds, imagining that of Death had clearly come for someone.
"Tabitha," my grandmother said the next day. "I think it is most strange and improper that you should allow that little devil to sleep in your bed."
"He had a fever," my mother said. "And I was very sleepy."
"He has something more serious than a fever, all the time," my grandmother said. "He acts and sounds as if he's possessed."
"You find fault with everyone who isn't absolutely perfect," my mother said.
"Owen thought he saw an angel," I explained to Grandmother.
"He thought was an angel?" Grandmother asked. "I told you he was possessed."
"Owen is an angel," my mother said.
"He is no such thing," my grandmother said. "He is a mouse. The Granite Mouse!"
When Mr. Fish saw Owen and rne on our bicycles, he waved us over to him; he was pretending to mend a loose picket on his fence, but he was really just watching our house-waiting for someone to come down the driveway.
"Hello, boys!" he said. "That was some hullabaloo last night. I suppose you heard it?" Owen shook his head.
"I heard Sagamore barking," I said.
"No, no-before that!" Mr. Fish said. "I mean, did you hear what made him bark? Such cries! Such a yell! A real hullabaloo!"
Sometime after she'd managed to catch her breath, Grandmother had cried out, too, and of course Lydia had cried out as well-after she'd collided with her dresser drawers. Owen said later that my grandmother had been WAILING LIKE A BANSHEE, but there had been nothing of a caliber comparable to Owen's scream.
"Owen thought he saw an angel," I explained to Mr. Fish.
"It didn't sound like a very nice angel, Owen," Mr. Fish said.
"WELL, ACTUALLY," Owen admitted, "I THOUGHT MISSUS WHEELWRIGHT WAS A GHOST."
"Ah, that explains everything!" Mr. Fish said sympathetically. Mr. Fish was as afraid of my grandmother as Owen was; at least, regarding all matters concerning the zoning laws and the traffic on Front Street, he was always extremely deferential to her. What a phrase that is: "that explains everything!" I know better than to think that anything "explains everything" today. Later, of course, I would tell Dan Needham the whole story-including Owen's belief regarding his interruption of of Death and how he was assigned that angel's task. But one of the things I failed to notice about Owen was how exact he was-how he meant everything literally, which is not a usual feature of the language of children. For years he would say, "I WILL NEVER FORGET YOUR GRANDMOTHER, WAILING LIKE A BANSHEE." But I paid no attention; I could hardly remember Grandmother making much of a ruckus-what I remembered was Owen's scream. Also, I thought it was just an expression-"wailing like a banshee''- and I couldn't imagine why Owen remembered my grandmother's commotion with such importance, I must have repeated what Owen said to Dan Needham, because years later Dan asked me, "Did Owen say your grandmother was a banshee T'
"He said she was 'wailing like a banshee,' " I explained. Dan got out the dictionary, then; he was clucking his tongue and shaking his head, and laughing to himself, saying, "That boy! What a boy! Brilliant but preposterous!'' And that was the first time I learned, literally, what a banshee was-a banshee, in Irish folklore, is a female spirit whose wailing is a sign that a loved one will soon die. Dan Needham was right, as usual: "brilliant but preposterous"-that was such an apt description of The Granite Mouse; that was exactly what I thought Owen Meany was, "brilliant but preposterous." As time went on-as you shall see-maybe not so preposterous. It appeared to our town, and to us Wheelwrights ourselves, a strange reversal in my mother's character that she should conduct a four-year courtship with Dan Needham before consenting to marry him. As my Aunt Martha would say, my mother hadn't waited five minutes to have the "fling" that led to me! But perhaps that was the reason: if her own family, and all of Gravesend, had suspicions regarding my mother's morals-regarding the general ease with which, they might assume, she could be talked into anything-my mother's lengthy engagement to Dan Needham certainly showed them all a thing or two. Because it was obvious, from the start, that Dan and Mother were in love. He was devoted, she dated no one else, they were "engaged" within a few months-and it was clear to everyone how much I liked Dan. Even my grandmother, who was ever alert for what she feared was her wayward daughter's proclivity to jump into things, was impatient with my mother to set a date for the wedding. Dan Needham's personal charm, not to mention the speed with which he became a favorite in the Gravesend Academy community, had quickly won my grandmother over. Grandmother was not won over quickly, as a rule-not by anyone. Yet she became infatuated with the magic Dan wrought upon the amateurs at The Gravesend Players, so much so that she accepted a part in Maugham's The Constant Wife; she was the regal mother of the deceived wife, and she proved to have the perfect, frivolous touch for drawing-room comedy-she was a model of the kind of sophistication we could all do well without. She even discovered a British accent, with no prodding from Dan, who was no fool and fully realized that a British accent lay never very deeply concealed in the bosom of Harriet Wheelwright-it simply wanted an occasion to bring it out.
" 'I hate giving straight answers to a straight question,' " Grandmother, as Mrs. Culver, said imperiously-and completely in character. And at another memorable moment, commenting on her son-in-law's affair with her daughter's " 'greatest friend,' " she rationalized: " 'If John is going to deceive Constance, it's nice it should be somebody we all know.' " Well, Grandmother was so marvelous she brought the house down; it was a grand performance, rather wasted-in my opinion-on poor John and Constance, who were drearily played by a somewhat sheepish Mr. Fish, our dog-loving neighbor (and a regular choice of Dan's), and by the tyrannical Mrs. Walker, whose legs were her sexiest feature-and they were almost completely covered in the long dresses appropriate to this drawing-room comedy. Grandmother, who was rendered coy with false modesty, said simply that she had always had a special understanding of -and I don't doubt it: she would have been a beautiful young woman then; "and your mother," Grandmother told me, "would have been younger than you."
