A prayer for Owen Meany: a novel

by John Irving

  "I wish some maniac would murder me," my grandmother said.

  "MISSUS WHEELWRIGHT! WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" Owen said.

  "I mean, why can't some maniac murder someone old-like me?" Grandmother said. "I'd rather be murdered by a maniac than have to leave my home-and that's what will happen to me," she said. "Maybe Dan, maybe Martha-maybe you,"

  she said accusingly to me. "One of you, or all of you-either way, you're going to force me to leave this house. You're going to put me in a place with a bunch of old people who are crazy," Grandmother said. "And I'd rather be murdered by a maniac instead-that's all I mean. One day, Ethel won't be able to manage-one day, it will take a hundred Ethels just to clean up the mess I make!" my grandmother said. "One day, not even you will want to watch television with me," she said to Owen. "One day," she said to me, "you'll come to visit me and I won't even know who you are. Why doesn't someone train the maniacs to murder old people and leave the young people alone? What a waster" she cried. A lot of people were saying this about the death of President Kennedy-with a slightly different meaning, of course. "I'm going to be an incontinent idiot," my grandmother said; she looked directly at Owen Meany. "Wouldn't you rather be murdered by a maniac?" she asked him.

  "IF IT WOULD DO ANY GOOD-YES, I WOULD," said Owen Meany.

  "I think we've been watching too much television," I said.

  "There's no remedy for that," my grandmother said. But after the murder of President Kennedy, it seemed to me that there was "no remedy" for Owen Meany, either; he succumbed to a state of mind that he would not discuss with me-he went into a visible decline in communication. I would often see the tomato-red pickup parked behind the vestry of Kurd's Church; Owen had kept in touch with the Rev. Lewis Merrill, whose silent and extended prayer for Owen had gained him much respect among the faculty and students at Graves-end. Pastor Merrill had always been "liked"; but before his prayer he had lacked respect. I'm sure that Owen, too, was grateful for Mr. MerriH's gesture-even if the gesture had been a struggle, and not of the minister's own initiative. But after JFK's death, Owen appeared to see more of the Rev. Mr. Merrill; and Owen wouldn't tell me what they talked about. Maybe they talked about Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys. They talked about "the dream," I suppose; but I had not yet been successful in coaxing that dream out of Owen Meany.

  "What's this I hear about a dream you keep having?" I asked him once.

  "I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'VE HEARD," he said. And shortly before that New Year's Eve, I asked Hester if she knew anything about any dream. Hester had had a few

  drinks; she was getting into her throwing-up mood, but she was rarely caught off-guard. She eyed me suspiciously.

  "What do you know about it?" she asked me.

  "I just know that he has a dream-and that it bothers him," I added.

  "I know that it bothers me," she said. "It wakes me up-when he has it. And I don't like to look at him when he's having it, or after it's over. Don't ask me what it's about!" she said. "I can tell you one thing: you don't want to know."

  And occasionally I saw the tomato-red pickup parked at St. Michael's-not at the school, but by the curb at the rectory for St. Michael's Catholic ChurcM I figured he was talking to Father Findley; maybe because Kennedy had been a Catholic, maybe because some kind of ongoing dialogue with Father Findley had actually been required of Owen-in lieu of his being obliged to compensate the Catholic Church for the damage done to Mary Magdalene.

  "How's it going with Father Findley?" I asked him once.

  "I BELIEVE HE MEANS WELL," Owen said cautiously. "BUT THERE'S A FUNDAMENTAL LEAP OF FAITH THAT ALL HIS TRAINING-ALL THAT CATHOLIC BACKGROUND-SIMPLY CANNOT ALLOW HIM TO MAKE. I DON'T THINK HE'LL EVER UNDERSTAND THE MAGNITUDE . . . THE UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE ..." Then he stopped talking.

  "Yes?" I said. "You were saying . . . 'the unspeakable outrage' . . . was that to your parents, do you mean?"

  "FATHER FINDLEY SIMPLY CANNOT GRASP HOW THEY HAVE BEEN MADE TO SUFFER," said Owen Meany.

  "Oh," I said. "I see." I was joking, of course! But either my humor eluded him, or else Owen Meany had no intention of making himself any clearer on this point.

  "But you like Father Findley?" I asked. "I mean, sort of ... 'he means well,' you say. You enjoy talking to him- I guess."

  "IT TURNS OUT IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO RESTORE MARY MAGDALENE EXACTLY AS SHE WAS-I MEAN, THE STATUE," he said. "MY FATHER KNOWS A COMPANY THAT MAKES SAINTS, AND OTHER HOLY FIGURES-I MEAN, GRANITE, YOU KNOW," he said. "BUT THEIR PRICES ARE RIDICULOUS. FATHER FIND-LEY'S BEEN VERY PATIENT. I'M GETTING HIM GOOD GRANITE-AND SOMEONE WHO SCULPTS THESE SAINTS A LITTLE CHEAPER, AND MAKES THEM A LITTLE MORE PERSONALLY . . . YOU KNOW, NOT ALWAYS EXACTLY THE SAME GESTURE OF SUPPLICATION, SO THAT THEY DON'T ALWAYS LOOK LIKE BEGGARS. I'VE TOLD FATHER FINDLEY THAT I CAN MAKE HIM A MUCH BETTER PEDESTAL THAN THE ONE HE'S GOT, AND I'VE BEEN TRYING TO CONVINCE HIM TO GET RID OF THAT STUPID ARCHWAY- BF SHE DOESN'T LOOK LIKE A GOALIE IN A GOAL, MAYBE KIDS WON'T ALWAYS BE TAKING SHOTS AT HER. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN."

  "It's been almost two years!" I said. "I didn't know you were still involved in replacing Mary Magdalene-I didn't know you were ever this involved," I added.

  "WELL, SOMEONE'S GOT TO TAKE CHARGE," he said. "FATHER FINDLEY DID ME A FAVOR-I DON'T LIKE TO SEE THESE GRANITE GUYS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF HIM. SOMEONE NEEDS A SAINT OR A HOLY FIGURE IN A HURRY, AND WHAT DO THEY DO? THEY MAKE YOU PAY FOR IT, OR THEY MAKE YOU WAIT FOREVER-THEY FIGURE THEY'VE GOT YOU BY THE BALLS. AND WHO CAN AFFORD MARBLE! I'M JUST TRYING TO RETURN A FAVOR."

  And was he asking Father Findley about the dream? I wondered. It bothered me that he was seeing someone I didn't even know-and maybe talking to this person about things he wouldn't discuss with me. I suppose that bothered me about Hester, too-and even the Rev. Lewis Merrill began to irritate me. I didn't run into him very often-although he was a regular in attendance at the rehearsals and performances of The Gravesend Players-but whenever I did run into him, he looked at me as if he knew something special about me (as if Owen had been talking about me to him, as if/ were in Owen's damn dream, or so I imagined). In my opinion, was not a very exciting year. General Greene replaced General Shoup; Owen told me lots of military news-as a good ROTC student, he prided himself on knowing these things. President Johnson ordered the withdrawal of American dependents from South Vietnam.

  "THIS ISN'T GENERALLY AN OPTIMISTIC SIGN," said Owen Meany. If the majority of his professors at the University of New Hampshire found Owen less than brilliant,

  his professors of Military Science were completely charmed. It was the year when Admiral Sharp replaced Admiral Felt, when General Westmoreland replaced General Harkins, when General Wheeler replaced General Taylor, when General Johnson replaced General Wheeler-when General Taylor replaced Henry Cabot Lodge as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam.

  "LOTS OF STUFF IS IN THE WORKS," said Owen Meany. It was the year of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which prompted Owen to ask: "DOES THAT MEAN THE PRESIDENT CAN DECLARE A WAR WITHOUT DECLARING IT?" It was the year when Owen's grade-point average fell below mine; but in Military Science, his grades were perfect. Even the summer of ' was uninspired-except for the completion of the replacement Mary Magdalene, which was firmly set upon Owen Meany's formidable pedestal in the St Michael's schoolyard, more than two years after the attack upon her predecessor.

  "YOU'RE SO UNOBSERVANT," Owen told me. "THE GOALIE'S BEEN OUT OF THE GOAL FOR TWO YEARS, AND YOU HAVEN'T EVEN NOTICED!"

  What I noticed straightaway was that he'd talked Father Findley into removing the goal. The whitewashed stone archway was gone; so was the notion of whitewash. The new Mary Magdalene was granite-gray, gravestone-gray, a color Owen Meany called NATURAL. Her face, like her color, was slightly downcast, almost apologetic; and her arms were not outstretched in obvious supplication-rather, she clasped her hands together at her slight breast, her hands just barely emerging from the sleeves of her robe, which shapelessly draped her body to her small, bare, plain-gray feet. She seemed altogether too demure for a former p
rostitute-and too withholding of any gesture for a saint. Yet she radiated a certain compliance; she looked as easy to get along with as my mother. And the pedestal upon which Owen had stood her-in contrast to Mary's own rough finish (granite is never as smooth as marble)-was highly polished, exquisitely beveled; Owen had cut some very fine edges with the diamond wheel, creating the impression that Mary Magdalene either stood upon or was rising from her grave.

  "WHAT DO YOU THINK?" Owen asked Hester and me. "FATHER FINDLEY WAS VERY PLEASED."

  "It's sick-it's all sick," said Hester. "It's just death and more death-that's all it is with you, Owen."

  "HESTER'S SO SENSITIVE," Owen said.

  "I like it better than the other one," I ventured cautiously.

  "THERE'S NO COMPARISON!" said Owen Meany.

  "I like the pedestal," I said. "It's almost as if she's . . . well, you know . . . stepping out of her own grave."

  Owen nodded vigorously. "YOU HAVE A GOOD EYE," he said. "THAT'S EXACTLY THE EFFECT I WANTED. THAT'S WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A SAINT, ISN'T IT? A SAINT SHOULD BE AN EMBLEM OF IMMORTALITY!"

  "What a lot of shitl" said Hester. It was an uninspired year for Hester, too; here she was, a college graduate, still living in her squalid apartment in her old college town, still waitressing in the lobster-house restaurant in Kittery or Portsmouth. I had never eaten there, but Owen said it was nice enough-on the harbor, a little overquaint with the seafood theme (lobster pots and buoys and anchors and mooring ropes were prevalent in the decor). The problem was, Hester hated lobster-she called them "insects of the sea," and she washed her hair every night with lemon juice because she thought her hair smelled fishy. I think that her late hours (she waitressed only at night) were in part responsible for Owen Meany's decline as a student; he was loyal about picking her up-and it seemed to me that she worked most nights. Hester had her own driver's license and her own car-actually, it was Noah's old ' Chevy-but she hated to drive; that Uncle Alfred and Aunt Martha had given her a hand-me-down might have had something to do with it. In Owen's view, the ' Chevy was in better shape than his tomato-red pickup; but Hester knew it had been secondhand when the Eastmans gave it to Noah, who had passed it to Simon, who'd had a minor accident with it before he'd handed it down to Hester. But by picking up Hester after work, Owen Meany rarely got back to Hester's apartment before one o'clock in the morning; Hester was so keyed up after waitressing that she wasn't ready to go to bed before two-first, she had to wash her hair, which further woke her up; and then she needed to complain. Often someone had insulted her; sometimes it had been a customer who'd tried to pick her up-and failing that, had left her a rotten tip. And the other waitresses were "woefully unaware," Hester said; what they were unaware of, she wouldn't say-but they often insulted Hester, too. And if Owen Meany didn't

  spend the night in her apartment-if he drove home to Gravesend-he sometimes didn't get to bed before three. Hester slept all morning; but Owen had morning classes- or, in the summer, he was at work very early in the quarries. Sometimes he looked like a tired, old man to me-a tired, old, married man. I tried to nag him into taking more of an interest in his studies; but, increasingly, he spoke of school as something to get out of.

  "WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE," he said, "I'VE GOT MY ACTIVE DUTY TO SERVE, AND I DON'T WANT TO SERVE IT AT A DESK-WHO WANTS TO BE IN THE ARMY FOR THE PAPERWORK!"

  "Who wants to be in the Army at all!" I asked him. "You ought to sit at a desk a little more often than you do-the way you're going to college, you might as well be in the Army already. I don't understand you-with your natural ability, you ought to be sailing through this place with the highest honors."

  "IT DID ME A LOT OF GOOD TO SAIL THROUGH GRAVESEND ACADEMY WITH THE HIGHEST HONORS, DIDN'T IT?" he said.

  "Maybe if you weren't a stupid Geology major, you could be a little more enthusiastic about your courses," I told him.

  "GEOLOGY IS EASY FOR ME," Owen said. "AT LEAST, I ALREADY KNOW~ SOMETHING ABOUT ROCKS."

  "You didn't used to do things just because they were easy,'' I said. He shrugged. Remember when people "dropped out"- remember that? Owen Meany was the first person I ever saw "drop out." Hester, of course, was born "dropped out"; maybe Owen got the idea from Hester, but I think he was more original than that. He was original, and stubborn. I was stubborn, too; twenty-two-year-olds are stubborn. Owen tried to keep me working in the monument shop the whole summer of '. I said that one whole summer in the monument shop was enough-either he would let me work in the quarries or I would quit.

  "IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD," he said. "IT'S THE BEST WORK IN THE BUSINESS-AND THE EASIEST."

  "So maybe I don't want what's 'easiest,' " I said. "So maybe you should let me decide what's 'best.' "

  "GO AHEAD AND QUIT," he said.

  "Fine," I said. "I guess I should speak to your father."

  "MY FATHER DIDN'T HIRE YOU," said Owen Meany. Naturally, I didn't quit; but I matched his stubbornness sufficiently-I hinted that I was losing my interest in practicing the shot. In the summer of ', Owen Meany resembled a dropout-in many ways-but his fervor for practicing the shot had reappeared. We compromised: I apprenticed myself to the diamond wheel until August; and that August-when the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy were attacked in the Tonkin Gulf-Owen set me to work as a signalman in the quarries. When it rained, he let me work with the sawyers, and by the end of die summer he apprenticed me to the channel-bar drillers.

  "NEXT SUMMER, I'LL LET YOU TRY THE DERRICK," he said. "NEXT AUGUST, I'LL GIVE YOU A LITTLE DYNAMITE LESSON-WHEN I GET BACK FROM BASIC TRAINING."

  Just before we began our junior year at the University of New Hampshire-just before the students returned to Graves-end Academy, and to all the nation's other schools and universities-Owen Meany slam-dunked the basketball in the Gravesend Academy gym in under three seconds. I suggested that the retarded janitor might have started the official scorer's clock a little late; but Owen insisted that we had sunk the shot in record time-he said that the clock had been accurate, that our success was official.

  "I COULD FEEL THE DIFFERENCE-IN THE AIR," he said excitedly. "EVERYTHING WAS JUST A LITTLE QUICKER, A LITTLE MORE SPONTANEOUS."

  "Now I suppose you'll tell me that under two seconds is possible," I said. He was dribbling the ball-crazily, in a frenzy, like a speeded-up film of one of the Harlem Globetrotters. I didn't think he'd heard me.

  "I suppose you think that under two seconds is possible!" I shouted. He stopped dribbling. "DON'T BE RIDICULOUS," he said. "THREE SECONDS IS FAST ENOUGH."

  I was surprised. "I thought the idea was to see how fast we can get. We can always get faster," I said.

  "THE IDEA IS TO BE FAST ENOUGH," he said. "THE TRICK IS, CAN WE DO IT IN UNDER THREE SECONDS EVERY TIME! THAT'S THE IDEA."

  So we kept practicing. When there were students in the

  Gravesend Academy gym, we went to the playground at St. Michael's. We had no one to time us-we had nothing resembling the official scorer's clock in the gym, and Hester was unwilling to participate in our practices; she was no substitute for the retarded janitor. And the rusty hoop of the basket was a little crooked, and the net long gone-and the macadam of the playground was so broken up, we couldn't even dribble the ball; but we could still practice. Owen said he could FEEL when we were dunking the shot in under three seconds. And although there was no retarded janitor to cheer us on, the nuns in the saltbox at the far end of the playground often noticed us; sometimes, they even waved, and Owen Meany would wave back-although he said that nuns still gave him the shivers. And always Mary Magdalene watched over us; we could feel her silent encouragement. When it snowed, Owen would brush her off. It snowed early that fall-long before Thanksgiving. I remember practicing the shot with my ski hat and my gloves on; but Owen Meany would always do it bare-handed. And in the afternoons, when it grew dark early, the lights in the nuns' house would be lit before we finished practicing. Mary Magdalene would turn a darker shade of gray; she would almost disappear in the shadows. Once, when it was
almost too dark to see the basket, I caught just a glimpse of her-standing at the edge of total darkness. I imagined that she resembled mat Owen thought he had seen at my mother's bed. I said this to him, and he looked at Mary Magdalene; blowing on his cold, bare hands, he looked at her very intently.

  "NO, THERE'S NOT REALLY ANY RESEMBLANCE," he said. "THAT ANGEL WAS VERY BUSY-SHE WAS MOVING, ALWAYS MOVING. ESPECIALLY, HER HANDS -SHE KEPT REACHING OUT WITH HER HANDS."

  It was the first I'd heard that had been moving- about what a busy angel he thought he'd seen.

  "You never said it was moving," I said.

  "IT WAS MOVING, ALL RIGHT," said Owen Meany. "THAT'S WHY I NEVER HAD ANY DOUBT. IT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN THE DUMMY BECAUSE IT WAS MOVING," he said. "AND DSf ALL THESE YEARS THAT I'VE HAD THE DUMMY, THE DUMMY HAS NEVER MOVED."

  Since when, I wondered, did Owen Meany ever have ANY DOUBT? And how often had he stared at my mother's dressmaker's dummy? He expected it to move, I thought. When it was so dark at the St. Michael's playground that we couldn't see the basket, we couldn't see Mary Magdalene, either. What Owen liked best was to practice the shot until we lost Mary Magdalene in the darkness. Then he would stand under the basket with me and say, "CAN YOU SEE HER?"

  "Not anymore," I'd say.

  "YOU CAN'T SEE HER, BUT YOU KNOW SHE'S STILL THERE-RIGHT?" he would say.

  "Of course she's still there!" I'd say.

  "YOU'RE SURE?" he'd ask me.

  "Of course I'm sure!" I'd say.

  "BUT YOU CANT SEE HER," he'd say-very teasingly. "HOW DO YOU KNOW SHE'S STILL THERE IF YOU CAN'T ACTUALLY SEE HER?"

  "Because I know she's still there-because I know she couldn't have gone anywhere-because I just knowl" I would say. And one cold, late-fall day-it was November or even early December, Johnson had defeated Goldwater for the presidency; Khrushchev had been replaced by Brezhnev and Kosygin; five Americans had been killed in a Viet Cong attack on the air base at Bien Hoa-I was especially exasperated by this game he played about not seeing Mary Magdalene but still knowing she was there.