by John Irving
"EITHER WAY," said Owen Meany, "THAT'S WHEN HESTER WENT ON THE WARPATH."
"What warpath?" Grandmother asked Owen; but Owen and I were careful not to discuss Hester with my grandmother. A new bond had developed between Owen and Grandmother because of Liberace; they also watched lots of old movies together and encouraged each other's constant comments. It was Grandmother's appreciation of Owen's commentary, which was as ripe with complaint as her own, that enlisted my grandmother's support of Owen as Gravesend Academy "material."
"Just what do you mean, you think you 'might not' go to the academy?" she asked him.
"WELL, I KNOW I'LL GET IN-AND I KNOW I'LL GET A FULL SCHOLARSHIP, TOO," Owen said.
"Of course you will!" my grandmother said.
"BUT I DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT KIND OF CLOTHES," Owen said. "ALL THOSE COATS AND TIES, AND DRESS SHIRTS, AND SHOES."
"Do you mean, they don't make them in your size?" Grandmother asked him. "Nonsense! One just has to go shopping in the right places."
' 'I MEAN MY PARENTS CAN'T AFFORD THOSE KIND OF CLOTHES," Owen said. We were watching an old Alan Ladd movie on The Early Show. It was called Appointment with Danger, and Owen thought it was ridiculous that all the men in Gary, Indiana, wore suits and hats.
"They used to wear them here," my grandmother said; but, probably, they never wore them at the Meany Granite Quarry. Jack Webb, before he was the good cop in Dragnet, was a bad guy in Appointment with Danger; he was, among his other endeavors, attempting to murder a nun. This gave Owen the shivers. The movie gave my grandmother the shivers, too, because she recalled that she had seen it at The Idaho in -with my mother.
"The nun will be all right, Owen," she told him.
"IT'S NOT THE IDEA OF MURDERING HER THAT GIVES ME THE SHIVERS," Owen explained. "IT'S THE IDEA OF NUNS-IN GENERAL."
"I know what you mean," my grandmother said; she harbored her own misgivings about the Catholics.
"WHAT WOULD IT COST TO HAVE A COUPLE OF SUITS AND A COUPLE OF JACKETS AND A COUPLE OF PAIRS OF DRESS PANTS, AND SHIRTS, AND TIES, AND SHOES-YOU KNOW, THE WORKS?" Owen asked.
"I'm going to take you shopping myself," Grandmother told him. "You let me worry about what it will cost. Nobody needs to know what it costs."
"MAYBE, IN MY SIZE, IT'S NOT SO EXPENSIVE," Owen said. And so-even without my mother alive to urge him-Owen Meany agreed that he was Gravesend Academy "material.'' The academy agreed, too. Even without Dan Needham's recommendation, they would have admitted Owen with a full scholarship; he was obviously in need of a scholarship, and he had all A's at Gravesend Junior High School. The problem was-though Dan Needham had legally adopted me, and I therefore had the privileged status of a faculty son-the academy was reluctant to accept me. My junior-high-school performance was so undistinguished that the academy admissions officers advised Dan to have me attend the ninth grade at Gravesend High School; the academy would admit me to their ninth-grade class the following year-when, they said, it would be easier for me to make the adjustment because I would be repeating the ninth grade. I had always known I was a weak student; this was less a blow to my self-esteem than it was painful for me to think of Owen moving ahead of me-we wouldn't be in the same class, we wouldn't graduate together. There was another, more practical consideration: that, in my senior year, I wouldn't have Owen around to help me with my homework. That was a promise Owen had made to my motnen that he would always help me with my homework. And so, before Grandmother took Owen shopping for his academy clothes, Owen announced his decision to attend the ninth grade at Gravesend High School, too. He would stay wkh me; he would enter the academy the following year-he could have skipped a grade, yet he volunteered to repeat the ninth grade with me! Dan convinced the admissions officers that although Owen was academically quite advanced, it would also be good for him to repeat a grade, to be a year older as a ninth grader-"because of his physical immaturity," Dan argued. When the admissions officers met Owen, of course they agreed with Dan-they didn't know that a year older, in Owen's case, didn't mean that he'd be a year bigger. Dan and my grandmother were quite touched by Owen's loyalty to me; Hester, naturally, denounced Owen's behavior as "queer"; naturally, I loved him, and I thanked him for his sacrifice-but in my heart I resented his power over me.
"DON'T GIVE IT ANOTHER THOUGHT," he said: "WE'RE PALS, AREN'T WE? WHAT ARE FRIENDS FOR? I'LL NEVER LEAVE YOU."
Toronto: February , -Liberace died yesterday; he was sixty-seven. His fans had been maintaining a candlelit vigil outside his Palm Springs mansion, which was formerly a convent. Wouldn't that have given Owen the shivers? Liberace had revised his former opposition to homosexuality. "If you swing with chickens, that is your perfect right," he said. Yet he denied the allegations in a palimony suit that he had paid for the sexual services of a male employee-a former valet and live-in chauffeur. There was a settlement out of court. And Liberace's manager denied that the entertainer was a victim of AIDS; Liberace's recent weight loss was the result, the manager said, of a watermelon-only diet. What would my grandmother and Owen Meany have said about that ?
"LIBERACE!" Owen would have cried."WHO WOULD HAVE BELIEVED IT POSSIBLE? LIBERACE! KILLED BY WATERMELONS!"
It was Thanksgiving, , before my cousins visited Gravesend and saw Grandmother's TV at Front Street for
themselves. Noah had started at the academy that fall, so he'd watched television with Owen and me on occasional weekends; but no judgment on the culture around us could ever be complete without Simon's automatic approval of every conceivable form of entertainment, and Hester's similarly automatic disapproval.
"Neat!" Simon said; he also thought that Liberace was "neat."
"It's shit, all of it," said Hester. "Until everything's in color, and the color's perfect, TV's not worth watching." But Hester was impressed by the energy of Grandmother's constant criticism of nearly everything she saw; that was a style Hester sought to imitate-for even "shit" was worth watching if it afforded one the opportunity to elaborate on what sort of shit it was. Everyone agreed that the movie reruns were more interesting than the actual TV programs; yet in Hester's view, the movies selected were "too old." Grandmother liked them old-"the older the better!"-but she disliked most movie stars. After watching Captain Blood, she announced that Errol Flynn was "no brains, all chest"; Hester thought that Olivia de Havilland was "cow-eyed." Owen suggested that pirate movies were all the same.
"STUPID SWORD FIGHTS!" he said. "AND LOOK AT THE CLOTHES THEY WEAR! IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE FIGHTING WITH SWORDS, IT'S STUPID TO WEAR LOOSE, BAGGY SHIRTS-OF COURSE YOUR SHIRTS ARE GOING TO GET ALL SLASHED TO PIECES!"
Grandmother complained that the choice of movies wasn't even "seasonal." What was the point of showing It Happens Every Spring in November? No one is thinking about baseball at Thanksgiving, and It Happens Every Spring is such a stupid baseball movie that I think I could watch it every night and even fail to be reminded of my mother's death. Ray Milland is a college professor who becomes a phenomenal baseball player after discovering a formula that repels wood; how could this remind anyone of anything real ?
"Honestly, who thinks up these things?" Grandmother asked.
"Peckerheads," said Hester, who was forever expanding her vocabulary. If Gravesend Academy had begun the process of saving Noah from himself, we could scarcely tell; it was Simon who seemed subdued, perhaps because he had missed Noah during the fall and was overwhelmed by the instant renewal of their athletic rivalry. Noah was experiencing considerable academic difficulties at the academy, and Dan Needham had several long heart-to-heart talks with Uncle Alfred and Aunt Martha. The Eastmans decided that Noah was intellectually exhausted; the family would spend that Christmas holiday on some recuperative beach in the Caribbean.
"IN THE RELAXING SETTING OF CAPTAIN BLOOD!" Owen observed. Owen was disappointed that the Eastmans were spending Christmas in the Caribbean; another opportunity to go to Sawyer Depot had eluded him. After Thanksgiving, he was depressed; and-like me-he was thinking about Hester. We went to The Ida
ho for the usual fare at the Saturday matinee-a double feature: Treasure of the Golden Condor, wherein Cornel Wilde is a dashing eighteenth-century Frenchman seeking hidden Mayan riches in Guatemala; and Drum Beat, wherein Alan Ladd is a cowboy and Audrey Dalton is an Indian. Between tales of ancient treasure and scalping parties, it was repeatedly clear to Owen and me that we lived in a dull age-that adventure always happened elsewhere, and long ago. Tarzan fit this formula-and so did the dreaded biblical epics. These, in combination with his Christmas pageant experiences, contributed to the newly sullen and withdrawn persona that Owen presented to the world at Christ Church. That the Wiggins had actually liked' The Robe made up Owen's mind: whether he ever got to go to Sawyer Depot for Christmas or not, he would never participate in another Nativity. I'm sure his decision did not upset the Wiggins greatly, but Owen was unforgiving on the subject of biblical epics in general and The Robe in particular. Although he thought that Jean Simmons was "PRETTY, LIKE HESTER," he also thought that Audrey Dalton-in Drum Beat-was "LIKE HESTER IF HESTER HAD BEEN AN INDIAN." Beyond all three having dark hair, I failed to see any resemblance. The Robe, to be fair, had hit Owen and me one Saturday afternoon at The Idaho with special force; my mother had been dead less than a year, and Owen and I were not comforted to see Richard Burton and Jean Simmons walk off to their deaths quite so happily. Furthermore, they appeared to exit the movie
and life itself by walking up into the sky! This was especially offensive. Richard Burton is a Roman tribune who converts to Christianity after crucifying Christ; both Burton and Jean Simmons take turns clutching Christ's robe a lot.
"WHAT A BIG FUSS ABOUT A BLANKET!" Owen said. "THAT'S SO CATHOLIC," he added-"TO GET VERY RELIGIOUS ABOUT OBJECTS."
This was a theme of Owen's-the Catholics and their adoration of OBJECTS. Yet Owen's habit of collecting objects that he made (in his own way) RELIGIOUS was well known: I had only to remember my armadillo's claws. In all of Gravesend, the object that most attracted Owen's contempt was the stone statue of Mary Magdalene, the reformed prostitute who guarded the playground of St. Michael's-the parochial school. The life-sized statue stood in a meaningless cement archway-"meaningless" because the archway led nowhere; it was a gate without a place to be admitted to; it was an entrance without a house. The archway, and Mary Magdalene herself, overlooked the rutted macadam playground of the schoolyard-a surface too broken up to dribble a basketball on; the bent and rusted basket hoops had long ago been stripped of their nets, and the foul lines had been erased or worn away with sand. It was a forlornly unattended playground on weekends and school holidays; it was used strictly for recesses during school days, when the parochial students loitered mere-they were unmoved to play many games. The stern look of Mary Magdalene rebuked them; her former line of work and her harsh reformation shamed them. For although the playground reflected an obdurate disrepair, the statue itself was whitewashed every spring, and even on the dullest, grayest days- despite being dotted here and there with birdshit and occasional stains of human desecration-Mary Magdalene attracted and reflected more light than any other object or human presence at St. Michael's. Owen looked upon the school as a prison to which he was nearly sent; for had his parents not RENOUNCED the Catholics, St. Michael's would have been Owen's school. It had an altogether bleak, reformatory atmosphere; its life was punctuated by the sounds of an adjacent gas station-the bell that announced the arriving and departing vehicles, the accounting of the gas pumps themselves, and the multifarious din from the mechanics laboring in the pits. But over this unholy, unstudious, unsuitable ground the stone Mary Magdalene stood her guard; under her odd, cement archway, she at times appeared to be tending to an elaborate but crudely homemade barbecue; at other times, she seemed to be a goalie-poised in the goal. Of course, no Catholic would have fired a ball or a puck or any other missile at her; if the parochial students themselves were tempted, the grim, alert presence of the nuns would have discouraged them. And although the Gravesend Catholic Church was in another part of town, the shabby saltbox where the nuns and some other teachers at St. Michael's lived was positioned like a guardhouse at a corner of the playground-in full view of Mary Magdalene. If a passing Protestant felt inclined to show the statue some small gesture of disrespect, the vigilant nuns would exit their guardhouse on the fly-their black habits flapping with the defiant rancorousness of crows. Owen was afraid of nuns.
"THEY'RE UNNATURAL," he said; but what, I thought, could be more UNNATURAL than the squeaky falsetto of The Granite Mouse or his commanding presence, which was so out of proportion to his diminutive size? Every fall, the horse-chestnut trees between Tan Lane and Garfield Street produced many smooth, hard, dark-brown missiles; it was inevitable that Owen and I should pass by the statue of Mary Magdalene with our pockets full of chestnuts. Despite his fear of nuns, Owen could not resist the target that the holy goalie presented; I was a better shot, but Owen threw his chestnuts more fervently. We left scarcely any marks on Mary Magdalene's ground-length robe, on her bland, snowy face, or on her open hands-outstretched in apparent supplication. Yet the nuns, in a fury that only religious persecution can account for, would attack us; their pursuit was erratic, their shrieks like the cries of bats surprised by sunlight-Owen and I had no trouble outrunning them.
"PENGUINS!" Owen would cry as he ran; everyone called nuns "penguins." We'd run up Cass Street to the railroad tracks and follow the tracks out of town. Before we reached Maiden Hill, or the quarries, we would pass the Fort Rock Farm and throw what remained of our chestnuts at the black angus cattle grazing there; despite their threatening size and their blue lips and tongues, the black angus wouldn't chase us as enthusiastically as the penguins, who always gave up their pursuit before Cass Street.
And every spring, the swamp between Tan Lane and Garfield Street produced a pondful of tadpoles and toads. Who hasn't already told you that boys of a certain age are cruel? We filled a tennis-ball can with tadpoles and-under the cover of darkness-poured them over the feet of Mary Magdalene. The tadpoles-those that didn't turn quickly into toads-would dry up and die there. We even slaughtered toads and indelicately placed their mutilated bodies in the holy goalie's upturned palms, staining her with amphibian gore, God forgive us! We were such delinquents only in these few years of adolescence before Gravesend Academy could save us from ourselves. In the spring of ', Owen was especially destructive to the helpless swamplife of Gravesend, and to Mary Magdalene; just before Easter, we'd been to The Idaho, where we suffered through Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments-the life of Moses, represented by Charlton Heston undergoing various costume changes and radical hairstyles.
"IT'S ANOTHER MALE-NIPPLE MOVIE," Owen said; and, indeed, in addition to Charlton Heston's nipples, there is evidence of Yul Brynner and John Derek and even Edward G. Robinson having nipples, too. That The Idaho should show The Ten Commandments so close to Easter was another example of what my grandmother called the poor "seasonal" taste of nearly everyone in the entertainment business: that we should see the Exodus of the Chosen People on the eve of our Lord's Passion and Resurrection was outrageous-"ALL THAT OLD-TESTAMENT HARSHNESS WHEN WE SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT JESUS!" as Owen put it. The parting of the Red Sea especially offended him.
