by John Irving
“IT’S NOT JUST NEW—I BOILED IT,” he said. “AND THEN I WIPED IT WITH ALCOHOL.” That was the unfamiliar smell! I thought—alcohol. The block of wood on the saw table looked new—the cutting block, we called it; it didn’t have a nick in it. “I SOAKED THE WOOD IN ALCOHOL AFTER I BOILED IT, TOO,” Owen said.
I’ve always been pretty slow; I’m the perfect reader! It wasn’t until I caught the whiff of a hospital in the monument shop that I realized what he meant by JUST A LITTLE COURAGE. Behind the diamond wheel was a workbench for the lettering and edging tools; it was upon this bench that Owen had laid out the sterile bandages, and the makings for a tourniquet.
“NATURALLY, THIS IS YOUR DECISION,” he told me.
“Naturally,” I said.
“THE ARMY REGULATION IN QUESTION STATES THAT A PERSON WOULD NOT BE PHYSICALLY QUALIFIED TO SERVE IN THE CASE OF THE ABSENCE OF THE FIRST JOINT OF EITHER THUMB, OR THE ABSENCE OF THE FIRST TWO JOINTS ON EITHER THE INDEX, MIDDLE, OR RING FINGER. I KNOW TWO JOINTS WILL BE TOUGH,” said Owen Meany, “BUT YOU DON’T WANT TO BE WITHOUT A THUMB.”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
“YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THE MIDDLE OR RING FINGER IS A LITTLE HARDER FOR ME: I SHOULD SAY IT’S HARDER FOR THE DIAMOND WHEEL TO BE AS PRECISE AS I WOULD LIKE TO BE—IN THE CASE OF EITHER A MIDDLE OR A RING FINGER. I WANT TO PROMISE YOU THERE’LL BE NO MISTAKE. THAT’S AN EASIER PROMISE FOR ME TO MAKE IF IT’S AN INDEX FINGER,” he said.
“I understand you,” I said.
“THE ARMY REGULATION DOESN’T STATE THAT BEING RIGHT-HANDED OR LEFT-HANDED MATTERS—BUT YOU’RE RIGHT-HANDED, AREN’T YOU?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“THEN I THINK IT OUGHT TO BE THE RIGHT INDEX FINGER—JUST TO BE SAFE,” he said. “I MEAN, OFFICIALLY, WE’RE TALKING ABOUT YOUR TRIGGER FINGER.”
I froze. He walked to the table under the diamond wheel and demonstrated how I should put my hand on the block of wood—but he didn’t touch the wood; if he’d touched it, that would have spoiled his opinion that it was sterile. He made a fist, pinning his other fingers under his thumb, and he spread his index finger flat on its side. “LIKE THIS,” he said. “IT’S THE KNUCKLE OF YOUR MIDDLE FINGER YOU’VE GOT TO KEEP OUT OF MY WAY.” I couldn’t speak, or move, and Owen Meany looked at me. “BETTER HAVE ANOTHER BEER,” he said. “YOU CAN BE A READER WITH ALL YOUR OTHER FINGERS—YOU CAN TURN THE PAGES WITH ANY OLD FINGER,” he said. He could see I didn’t have the nerve for it.
“IT’S LIKE ANYTHING ELSE—IT’S LIKE LOOKING FOR YOUR FATHER. IT TAKES GUTS. AND FAITH,” he added. “FAITH WOULD HELP. BUT, IN YOUR CASE, YOU SHOULD CONCENTRATE ON THE GUTS. YOU KNOW, I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT YOUR FATHER—YOU REMEMBER THE SO-CALLED LUST CONNECTION? WHOEVER HE WAS, YOUR FATHER MUST HAVE HAD THAT PROBLEM—IT’S SOMETHING YOU DON’T LIKE IN YOURSELF. WELL, WHOEVER HE WAS—I’M TELLING YOU—HE WAS PROBABLY AFRAID. THAT’S SOMETHING YOU DON’T LIKE IN YOURSELF, TOO. WHOEVER YOUR MOTHER WAS, I’LL BET SHE WAS NEVER AFRAID,” said Owen Meany. I not only couldn’t speak, or move; I couldn’t swallow. “IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO HAVE ANOTHER BEER,” he said, “AT LEAST TRY TO FINISH THAT ONE!”
I finished it. He pointed to the sink.
“BETTER WASH YOUR HAND—SCRUB IT GOOD,” he said. “AND THEN RUB ON THE ALCOHOL.”
I did as I was told.
“YOU’RE GOING TO BE FINE,” he said. “I’LL HAVE YOU AT THE HOSPITAL IN FIVE MINUTES—UNDER TEN MINUTES, TOPS! WHAT’S YOUR BLOOD TYPE?” he asked me; I shook my head—I didn’t know my blood type. Owen laughed. “I KNOW WHAT IT IS—YOU DON’T REMEMBER ANYTHING! YOU’RE THE SAME TYPE AS ME! IF YOU NEED ANY, YOU CAN HAVE SOME OF MINE.” I couldn’t move away from the sink.
“I WASN’T GOING TO TELL YOU THIS—I DIDN’T WANT TO WORRY YOU—BUT YOU’RE IN THE DREAM. I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW YOU COULD BE IN IT, BUT YOU ARE—EVERY TIME, YOU’RE IN IT,” he said.
“In your dream?” I asked him.
“I KNOW YOU THINK IT’S ‘JUST A DREAM’—I KNOW, I KNOW—BUT IT BOTHERS ME THAT YOU’RE IN IT. I FIGURE,” said Owen Meany, “THAT IF YOU DON’T GO TO VIETNAM, YOU CAN’T BE IN THAT DREAM.”
“You’re absolutely crazy, Owen,” I told him; he shrugged—then he smiled at me.
“IT’S YOUR DECISION,” he told me.
I got myself from the sink to the saw table; the diamond wheel was so bright, I couldn’t look at it. I put my finger on the block of wood. Owen started the saw.
“DON’T LOOK AT THE BLADE, AND DON’T LOOK AT YOUR FINGER,” he told me. “LOOK RIGHT AT ME.” I shut my eyes when he put the safety goggles in place. “DON’T SHUT YOUR EYES—THAT MIGHT MAKE YOU DIZZY,” he said. “KEEP LOOKING AT ME. THE ONLY THING YOU SHOULD BE AFRAID OF IS MOVING—JUST DON’T MOVE,” he said. “BY THE TIME YOU FEEL ANYTHING, IT WILL BE OVER.”
“I can’t do it,” I said.
“DON’T BE AFRAID,” Owen told me. “YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WANT TO DO—IF YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN DO IT.”
The lenses of the safety goggles were very clean; his eyes were very clear.
“I LOVE YOU,” Owen told me. “NOTHING BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU—TRUST ME,” he said. As he lowered the diamond wheel in the gantry, I tried to put the sound of it out of my mind. Before I felt anything, I saw the blood spatter the lenses of the safety goggles, through which his eyes never blinked—he was such an expert with that thing. “JUST THINK OF THIS AS MY LITTLE GIFT TO YOU,” said Owen Meany.
9
The Shot
* * *
Whenever I hear someone generalizing favorably about “the sixties,” I feel like Hester, I feel like throwing up. I remember those ardent simpletons who said—and this was after the massacre of those 2,800 civilians in Hué, in ’68—that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese were our moral superiors. I remember a contemporary of mine asking me—with a killing lack of humor—if I didn’t sometimes think that our whole generation took itself too seriously; and didn’t I sometimes wonder if it was only the marijuana that made us more aware?
“MORE AWARE OF WHAT?” Owen Meany would have asked.
I remember the aggressiveness of the so-called flower children—yes, righteousness in the cause of peace, or in any other cause, is aggressive. And the mystical muddiness of so much of the thinking—I remember that, too; and talking to plants. And, with the exception of Owen Meany and the Beatles, I remember that there was precious little irony.
That’s why Hester failed as a singer and as a songwriter—a deadly absence of irony. Perhaps this is also why she’s so successful now: with the direction her music traveled, from folk to rock, and with the visual aid of those appalling rock videos—those lazy-minded, sleazy associations of “images” that pass for narrative on all the rock-video television channels around the world—irony is no longer necessary. Only the name that Hester took for herself reflects the irony with which she was once so familiar—in her relationship with Owen Meany. As a folksinger, she was Hester Eastman—an earnest nobody, a flop. But as an aging hard-rock star, a fading queen of the grittiest and randiest sort of rock ’n’ roll, she is Hester the Molester!
“Who would have believed it?” Simon says. “‘Hester the Molester’ is a fucking household word. The bitch should pay me a commission—it was my name for her!”
That I am the first cousin of Hester the Molester distinguishes me among my Bishop Strachan students, who are otherwise inclined to view me as fussy and curmudgeonly—a cranky, short-haired type in his corduroys and tweeds, eccentric only in his political tempers and in his nasty habit of tamping the bowl of his pipe with the stump of his amputated index finger. And why not? My finger is a perfect fit; we handicapped people must learn to make the best of our mutilations and disfigurements.
When Hester has a concert in Toronto, my students who number themselves among her adoring fans always approach me for tickets; they know I’m good for a dozen or so. And that I attend Hester’s occasional concerts here in the company of such attractive young girls allows me to infiltrate the crow
d of raving-maniac rowdies unnoticed; that I come to her concerts as the escort of these young girls also makes me almost “cool” in Hester’s eyes.
“There’s hope for you yet,” my cousin invariably says to me, while my students are crowding into her messy, backstage dressing room—naturally, speechless with awe at the sight of Hester in her typically lewd dishevelment.
“They’re my students,” I remind Hester.
“Don’t let that stop you,” Hester tells me. And to one or more of my students, Hester always says: “If you’re worried about ‘safe sex,’ you ought to try it with him—” and she then lays her heavy paw upon my shoulder. “He’s a virgin, you know,” she tells my students. “There’s no one safer!”
And they titter and giggle at her joke—they think it is a joke. It’s precisely the outrageous sort of joke that they would expect from Hester the Molester. I can tell: they don’t even consider that Hester’s claim—that I’m a virgin—might be true!
Hester knows it’s true. I don’t know why she finds my position offensive. After so many humiliating years of trying to lose my virginity, which no one but myself appeared even slightly interested in—hardly anyone has wanted to take it from me—I decided that, in the long run, my virginity was valuable only if I kept it. I don’t think I’m a “non-practicing homosexual,” whatever that means. What has happened to me has simply neutered me. I just don’t feel like “practicing.”
Hester, in her own fashion, has remained a kind of virgin, too. Owen Meany was the love of her life; after him, she never allowed herself to become so seriously involved.
She says: “I like a young boy, every so often. In keeping with the times, you know, I’m in favor of ‘safe sex’; therefore, I prefer a virgin. And those young boys don’t dare lie to me! And they’re easy to say good-bye to—in fact, they’re even kinda grateful. What could be better?” my cousin asks me. I have to smile back at her wicked smile.
Hester the Molester! I have all her albums, but I don’t have a record player; I have all her tapes, too, but I don’t own a tape deck—not even the kind that fits in a car. I don’t even own a car. My students can be relied upon to keep me informed about Hester’s new rock videos.
“Mister Wheelwright! Have you seen ‘Drivin’ with No Hands’?” I shudder at the idea. Eventually, I see them all—you can’t escape the damn things; Hester’s rock videos are notorious. The Rev. Katherine Keeling herself is addicted! She claims it’s because her children watch them, and Katherine wants to keep up with whatever new atrocity is on her children’s minds.
Hester’s videos are truly ugly. Her voice has gotten louder, if not better; her accompanying music is full of electric bass and other vibrations that lower her nasal tones to the vocal equivalent of an abused woman crying for help from the bottom of an iron barrel. And the visual accompaniment is a mystifying blend of contemporary, carnal encounters with unidentified young boys intercut with black-and-white, documentary footage from the Vietnam War. Napalm victims, mothers cradling their murdered children, helicopters landing and taking off and crashing in the midst of perilous ground fire, emergency surgeries in the field, countless GI’s with their heads in their hands—and Hester herself, entering and leaving different but similar hotel rooms, wherein a sheepish young boy is always just putting on or just taking off his clothes.
The age group of that young boy—especially, young girls!—thinks that Hester the Molester is both profound and humane.
“It’s not like it’s just her music, or her voice, you know—it’s her whole statement,” one of my students told me; I felt so sick to my stomach that I couldn’t speak.
“It’s not even her lyrics—it’s her whole, you know, like commentary,” said another student. And these are smart girls—these are educated young women from sophisticated families!
I don’t deny that Hester was damaged by what happened to Owen Meany; I’m sure she thinks she was damaged even more than I was damaged—and I wouldn’t argue the point with her. We were both damaged by what happened to Owen; who cares about more? But what an irony it is that Hester the Molester has converted her damage into millions of dollars and fame—that out of Owen’s suffering, and her own, Hester has made a mindless muddle of sex and protest, which young girls who have never suffered feel they can “relate to.”
What would Owen Meany have said about that? I can only imagine how Owen would have critiqued one of Hester the Molester’s rock videos:
“HESTER, ONE WOULD NEVER SUSPECT—FROM THIS MINDLESS MESS—THAT YOU WERE A MUSIC MAJOR, AND A SOCIALIST. ONE WOULD TEND TO CONCLUDE—UPON THE EVIDENCE OF THIS DISJOINTED WALLOWING—THAT YOU WERE BORN TONE-DEAF, AND THAT YOU ARE DRAWING, ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY, UPON YOUR EXPERIENCES AS A WAITRESS!”
And what would Owen Meany have made of the crucifixes? Hester the Molester likes crucifixes, or else she likes to mock them—all kinds, all sizes; around her neck and in her ears. Occasionally, she even wears one in her nose; her right nostril is pierced.
“Are you Catholic?” an interviewer asked her once.
“Are you kidding?” Hester said.
The English major in me must point out that Hester has an ear for titles, if not for music.
“Drivin’ with No Hands”; “Gone to Arizona”; “No Church, No Country, No More”; “Just Another Dead Hero”; “I Don’t Believe in No Soul”; “You Won’t See Me at His Funeral”; “Life After You”; “Why the Boys Want Me”; “Your Voice Convinces Me”; “There’s No Forgettin’ Nineteen Sixty-eight.”
I’ve got to admit, Hester’s titles are catchy; and she has as much of a right as I have to interpret the silence that Owen Meany left behind. I should be careful not to generalize “the silence”; in my case, Owen didn’t leave me in absolute peace and quiet. Twice, in fact, Owen has let me hear from him—I mean, in both cases, that he let me hear from him after he was gone.
Most recently—only this August—I heard from him in a manner typical of Owen; which is to say, in a manner open to interpretation and dispute.
I was staying up late at 80 Front Street, and I confess that my senses were impaired; Dan Needham and I were enjoying our usual vacation—we were drinking too much. We were recalling the measures we took, years ago, to allow Grandmother to go on living at 80 Front Street as long as possible; we were remembering the incidents that finally led us to commit Grandmother to the Gravesend Retreat for the Elderly. We hated to do it, but she left us no choice; she drove Ethel crazy—we couldn’t find a maid, or a nurse, whom Grandmother couldn’t drive crazy. After Owen Meany was gone, everyone was too dull-witted to keep Harriet Wheelwright company.
For years, her groceries had been delivered by the Poggio brothers—Dominic Poggio, and the dead one, whose name I no longer remember. Then the Poggios stopped making all home deliveries. Out of fondness for my grandmother—who was his oldest-living customer, and his only customer who always paid her bills on time—Dominic Poggio generously offered to continue to make deliveries to 80 Front Street.
Was Grandmother appreciative of Dominic’s generosity? She was not only unappreciative; she could not remember that the Poggios didn’t deliver to anyone else—that they were doing her a special favor. People had always done special favors for Harriet Wheelwright; Grandmother took such treatment for granted. And she was not only unappreciative; she was complaining. She telephoned Dominic Poggio almost daily, and she upbraided him that his delivery service was going to the dogs. In the first place, she reproached him, the delivery boys were “total strangers.” They were nothing of the kind; they were Dominic Poggio’s grandchildren—my grandmother simply forgot who they were, and that she had seen them delivering her groceries for years. Furthermore, my grandmother complained, these “total strangers” were guilty of startling her—she had no fondness for surprises, she reminded poor Dominic.
Couldn’t the Poggios telephone her before they made their frightening deliveries? Grandmother asked. That way she would at least be forewarned that the total strangers were comi
ng.
Dominic agreed. He was a sweet man who cherished my grandmother; also, probably, he had wrongly predicted that she would die any day now—and he would, he’d imagined, be rid of this nuisance.
But Grandmother lived on and on. When the Poggios called her and told her that the delivery boys were on their way, my grandmother thanked them politely, hung up the telephone, and promptly forgot that anyone was coming—or that she’d been forewarned. When the boys would “startle” her, she would telephone Dominic in a rage and say: “If you’re going to send total strangers to this house, you might at least have the courtesy to warn me when they’re coming!”
“Yes, Missus Wheelwright!” Dominic always said. Then he would call Dan to complain; he even called me a few times—in Toronto!
“I’m getting worried about your grandmother, John,” Dominic would say.
By this time, Grandmother had lost all her hair. She owned a chest of drawers that was full of wigs, and she abused Ethel—and several of Ethel’s replacements—by complaining that her wigs were badly treated by the chest of drawers, in addition to being inexpertly attached to her old bald head by Ethel and the others. Grandmother developed such contempt for Ethel—and for Ethel’s inept replacements—that she plotted with considerable cunning to undermine what she regarded as the already woefully inadequate abilities of her serving women. They were no match for her. Grandmother hid her wigs so that these luckless ladies could not find them; then she would abuse these fools for misplacing her vital headpieces.
“Do you actually expect me to wander the world as if I were an addlepated bald woman escaped from the circus?” she would say.
“Missus Wheelwright—where did you put your wigs?” the women would ask her.
“Are you actually accusing me of intentionally desiring to look like the lunatic victim of a nuclear disaster?” my grandmother would ask them. “I would rather be murdered by a maniac than be bald!”
