A prayer for Owen Meany: a novel

by John Irving

  I am living proof that the waters of Loveless Lake are potable because I swallowed half the lake every summer while waterskiing with my cousins. Once I struck the surface of the lake with such force that my right eyelid was rolled up into my head in a funny way. My cousin Simon told me I had lost my eyelid-and my cousin Hester added that the lost eyelid would lead to blindness. But Uncle Alfred managed to locate the missing eyelid, after a few anxious minutes. Indoor life with my cousins was no less vigorous. The savagery of pillow-fighting would leave me breathless, and there was a game that involved Noah and Simon tying me up and stuffing me in Hester's laundry hamper, where Hester would always discover me; before she'd untie me, she'd accuse me of sniffing her underwear. I know that Hester especially looked forward to my visits because she suffered from being the constant inferior to her brothers-not that they abused her, or even teased her. Considering that they were boys, and older, and she was a girl, and younger, I thought they treated her splendidly, but every activity my cousins engaged in was competitive, and it clearly irked Hester to lose. Naturally, her brothers could "best" her at everything. How she must have enjoyed having me around, for she could "best" me at anything-even, when we went to the Eastman lumberyard and the sawmill, at log-rolling. There was also a game that involved taking possession of a sawdust pile-those piles were often twenty or thirty feet high, and the sawdust nearer the bottom, in contact with the ground, was often frozen or at least hardened to a crusty consistency. The object was to be king of the mountain, to hurl all comers off the top of the pile-or to bury one's attackers in the sawdust. The worst part about being buried in the pile-up to your chin -was that the lumberyard dog, the Eastmans' slobbering boxer, a mindlessly friendly beast with halitosis vile enough to give you visions of corpses uprooted from their graves . . . this dog with the mouth of death was then summoned to lick your face. And with the sawdust packed all around you-as armless as Wata-hantowet's totem-you were powerless to fend the dog off. But I loved being with my cousins; they were so vastly stimulating that I could rarely sleep in their house and would lie awake all night, waiting for them to pounce on me, or for them to let Firewater, the boxer, into my room, where he would lick me to death; or I would just lie awake imagining what exhausting contests I would encounter the next day. For my mother, our trips to Sawyer Depot were serene occasions-fresh air and girl-talk with Aunt Martha, and some doubtless needed relief from what must have been the claustrophobia of her life with Grandmother and Lydia and the maids at Front Street. Mother must have been dying to leave home. Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually; and almost everyone needs to. But, for me, Sawyer Depot was a training camp; yet the athleticism was not-all by itself -what was most thrilling to me about the time spent with my cousins. What made these contests thrilling was the presexual tension that I always associated with the competition-that I always associated with Hester in particular. To this day, I still engage in debate with Noah and Simon regarding whether Hester was "created" by her environment, which was almost entirely created by Noah and Simon-which is my opinion-or whether she was born with an overdose of sexual aggression and family animosity-which is what Noah and Simon say. We all agree that my Aunt Martha, as a model of womanhood, was no match for the superior impression my Uncle Alfred made-as a man. Felling trees, clearing the land,

  milling lumber-what a male business was the Eastman Lumber Company! The house in Sawyer Depot was spacious and pretty; for my Aunt Martha had acquired my grandmother's good taste, and she'd brought money of her own to the marriage. But Uncle Alfred made more money than we Wheelwrights were simply sitting on. Uncle Alfred was a paragon of maleness, too, in that he was rich and he dressed like a lumberjack; that he spent most of the day behind a desk did not influence his appearance. Even if he only briefly visited the sawmill-and not more than twice a week did he actually venture into the forests where they were logging-he looked the part. Although he was fiercely strong, I never saw him do an ounce of physical labor. He radiated a burly good health, and despite how little time he spent "in the field," there was always sawdust in his bushy hair, wood chips wedged between the laces of his boots, and a few fragrant pine needles ground into the knees of his blue jeans. Possibly he kept the pine needles, the wood chips, and the sawdust in his office desk drawer. What does it matter? While wrestling with my cousins and me, Uncle Alfred was an ever-friendly bruiser; and the cologne of his rough-and-ready business, the veritable scent of the woods, was always upon him. I don't know how my Aunt Martha tolerated it, but Firewater often slept in the king-size bed in my uncle and aunt's room-and that was an even further manifestation of Uncle Alfred's manliness: that when he wasn't snuggling up to my lovely Aunt Martha, he was lolling in bed with a big dog. I thought Uncle Alfred was terrific-a wonderful father; and, for boys, he was what today's idiots would call a superior "role model." He must have been a difficult "role model" for Hester, however, because I think her worshipful love of him-in addition to her constant losses in the daily competitions with her older brothers-simply overwhelmed her, and gave her an unwarranted contempt of my Aunt Martha. But I know what Noah would say to that; he would say "bullshit," that his mother was a model of sweetness and caring-and she was I I don't argue with that!-and that Hester was born to her antagonism toward her mother, that she was born to challenge her parents' love with hostility toward both of them, and that the only way she could repay her brothers for outskiing her (on water and on snow), and for hurting her off sawdust piles, and for cramming her cousin into a basket with her old underwear, was to intimidate every girlfriend either of them ever had and to fuck the brains out of every boy they ever knew. Which she appeared to do. It's a no-win argument-that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth. Privately, I continue to be more forgiving of Hester than her own family is. I think she was up against a stacked deck from the start, and that everything she would become began for her when Noah and Simon made me kiss her-because they made it clear that kissing Hester was punishment, the penalty part of the game; to have to kiss Hester meant you had lost. I don't remember exactly how old we were when we were first forced to kiss, Hester and I, but it was sometime after my mother had met Dan Needham-because Dan was spending Christmas vacation with us at the Eastmans' in Sawyer Depot-and it was sometime before my mother and Dan Needham were married, because Mother and I were still living at Front Street. Whenever it was, Hester and I were still in our preadolescent years-our presexual years, if that's safe to say; perhaps that is never safe to say in regard to Hester, but I promise it is safe to say of me. Anyway, there'd been a thaw in the north country, and some rain, and then an ice storm, which froze the slush in deep-grooved rats. The snow was the texture of jagged glass, which made skiing all the more exciting for Noah and Simon but made it entirely out of the question for me. So Noah and Simon went up north to brave the elements, and I stayed in the Eastmans' extremely comfortable house; I don't remember why Hester stayed home, too. Perhaps she was in a cranky temper, or else she just wanted to sleep in. For whatever reason, we were there together, and by the end of the day, when Noah and Simon returned, Hester and I were in her room, playing Monopoly. I hate Monopoly, but even a capitalist board game was welcome relief from the more strenuous activities my cousins subjected me to-and Hester was either in a rare mood to be calm, or else I rarely saw her without the company of Noah and Simon, around whom it was impossible to remain calm. We were lounging on the thick, soft rug in Hester's room, with some of her old stuffed animals for pillows, when the boys-then- hands and faces bitter cold from skiing-attacked

  us. They trod across the Monopoly game so effectively that there was no hope of re-creating where our houses and hotels and tokens might have been.

  ' 'Whoa!'' Noah yelled. ' 'Look at this hanky-panky going on here!"

  "There's no hanky-panky going on!" Hester said angrily.

  "Whoa!" Simon yelled. "
Watch out for Hester the Mo/ester!"

  "Get out of my room!" Hester shouted.

  "Last one through the house has to kiss Hester the Mo-lester!" Noah said, and he and Simon were off running. In a panic, I looked at Hester and took off after them.' 'Through the house'' was a racing game that meant we had to travel through the back bedrooms-Noah and Simon's room and the back guest room, which was mine-down the back stairs, around the landing by the maid's room, where May the maid was likely to shout at us, and into the kitchen by May's usual entrance (she was also the cook). Then we chased each other through the kitchen and dining room, through the living room and the sun room, and through Uncle Alfred's study-provided he wasn't in his study-and up the front stairs, past the front guest rooms, which were off the main hall, and through my aunt and uncle's bedroom-provided they weren't in their bedroom-and then into the back hall, the first room off of which was Hester's bathroom. The next room that we came to was the finish line: Hester's room itself. Of course, May emerged from her room to shout at Noah and Simon for running on the stairs, but only I was there on the landing to be shouted at-and only I had to slow down and say ' 'Excuse me'' to May. And they closed the swinging door from the kitchen to the dining room after they ran through the doorway, so that only I had to pause long enough to open it. Uncle Alfred was not in his study, but Dan Needham was reading in there, and only I paused long enough to say "Hello" to Dan. At the top of the front stairs, Firewater blocked my way; he'd doubtless been asleep when Noah and Simon had raced by him, but now he was alert enough to play. He managed to get the heel of my sock in his mouth as I attempted to run around him, and I could not travel far down the main hall-dragging him after me-before I had to stop to give him my sock. So I was the last one through the house-I was always the last one through the house-and therefore I was expected to pay the loser's price, which was to kiss Hester. In order to bring this forced intercourse about, it had been necessary for Noah and Simon to prevent Hester from locking herself in her bathroom-which she attempted-and then it was necessary for them to tie her to her bed, which they managed to do after a violent struggle that included the decapitation of one of Hester's more fragile stuffed animals, which she had futilely ruined by beating her brothers with it. At last she was strapped prone to her bed, where she threatened to bite the lips off anyone who dared to kiss her-the thought of which filled me with such dread that Noah and Simon needed to use more mountain-climbing rope to tie me on top of Hester. We were bound uncomfortably face-to-face-and chest-to-chest, hips-to-hips, to make our humiliation more complete-and we were told that we would not be untied until we did it.

  "Kiss her!" Noah cried to me.

  "Let him kiss you, Hester!" Simon said. It occurs to me now that this suggestion was even less compelling to Hester than it was to me, and I could think only that Hester's snarling mouth was about as inviting as Firewater's; yet I think we both realized that the potential embarrassment of being mated to this conjugal position for any duration of time, while Noah and Simon observed our breathing and minor movements, would perhaps lead to even greater suffering than indulging in a single kiss. What fools we were to think that Noah and Simon were dull enough fellows to be satisfied with one kiss! We tried a tiny one, but Noah said, "That wasn't on the lips!" We tried a small, close-lipped one, on the lips-so brief that it was unnecessary to breathe-but this failed to satisfy Simon, who said, "Open your mouths!" We opened our mouths. There was the problem of arranging the noses before we could enjoy the nervous exchange of saliva-the slithery contact of tongues, the surprising click of teeth. We were joined so long we had to breathe, and I was astonished at how sweet my cousin's breath was; to this day, I hope mine wasn't too bad. As abruptly as they had conceived of this game, my cousins announced that the game was over. They never marshaled as much enthusiasm for the many repeats of the game called "Last One Through the House Has to Kiss Hester"; maybe they realized, later, that I began to intentionally lose the game. And what did they make of the time they untied us and Hester said to me, "I felt your hard-on"?

  "You did not!" I said.

  "I did. It wasn't much of a hard-on," she said. "It was no big deal. Bull felt it."

  "You didn't!" I said.

  "I did," she said. And it's true-it was no big deal, to be sure; it wasn't much of a hard-on, maybe; but I had one. Did Noah and Simon ever consider the danger of the game? The way they skied, on water and on snow-and, later, the way they drove their cars-suggested to me that they thought nothing was dangerous. But Hester and I were dangerous. And they started it: Noah and Simon started it. Owen Meany rescued me. As you shall see, Owen was always rescuing me; but he began the lifelong process of rescuing me by rescuing me from Hester. Owen was extremely irritable regarding the time I spent with my cousins. He would be grouchy for several days before I left for Sawyer Depot, and he would be peevish and aloof for several days after I got back. Although I made a point of describing how physically damaging and psychologically upsetting the time spent with my cousins was, Owen was crabby; I thought he was jealous.

  "YOU KNOW, I WAS THINKING," he said to me. "YOU KNOW HOW WHEN YOU ASK ME TO SPEND THE NIGHT, I ALMOST ALWAYS DO FT-AND WE HAVE A GOOD TIME, DON'T WE?"

  "Sure we do, Owen," I said.

  "WELL, IF YOU ASKED ME TO COME WITH YOU AND YOUR MOTHER TO SAWYER DEPOT, I PROBABLY WOULD COME-YOU KNOW," he said. "OR DO YOU THINK YOUR COUSINS WOULDN'T LIKE ME?"

  "Of course they'd like you," I said, "but I don't know if you'd like them." I didn't know how to tell him that I thought he'd have a terrible time with my cousins-that if we picked him up and passed him over our heads in Sunday school, it was frightening to imagine what games my cousins might devise to play with Owen Meany. "You don't know how to ski," I told him. "Or water-ski," I added. "And I don't think you'd like the log-rolling-or the sawdust piles." I could have added, "Or kissing Hester," but I couldn't imagine Owen doing that. My God, I thought: my cousins would kill him!

  "WELL, MAYBE YOUR MOTHER COULD TEACH ME HOW TO SKI. AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THE LOG-ROLLING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO, DO YOU?" he asked.

  "Well, my cousins kind of make everything happen so fast," I said. "You don't always have time to say 'Yes' or 'No' to something."

  "WELL, MAYBE IF YOU ASKED THEM NOT TO BE SO ROUGH WITH ME-UNTIL I GOT USED TO IT," he said. "THEY'D LISTEN TO YOU, WOULDN'T THEY?"

  I could not imagine it-Owen together with my cousins! It seemed to me that they would be driven insane by the sight of him, and when he spoke-when they first encountered that voice-I could visualize their reaction only in terms of their inventing ways for Owen to be a projectile: they would make him the birdie for a badminton game; they would bind him to a single ski, launch him off the mountaintop, and race him to the bottom. They would make him sit in a salad bowl, and tow him-at high speeds-across Loveless Lake. They would bury him in sawdust and lose him; they'd never find him. Firewater would eat him.

  "They're sort of hard to control-my cousins," I said. "That's the problem."

  "YOU MAKE THEM SOUND LIKE WILD ANIMALS," Owen said.

  "They are-kind of," I said.

  "BUT YOU HAVE FUN WITH THEM," Owen said. "WOULDN'T I HAVE FUN, TOO?"

  "I have fun, and I don't have fun," I told him. "I just think my cousins might be too much for you."

  "YOU THINK I MIGHT BE TOO MUCH OF A WIMP FOR THEM," he said.

  "I don't think you're a wimp, Owen," I said.

  "BUT YOU THINK YOUR COUSINS WOULD THINK SO?" he said.

  "I don't know," I said.

  "MAYBE I COULD MEET THEM AT YOUR HOUSE, WHEN THEY COME FOR THANKSGIVING," he suggested. "IT'S FUNNY HOW YOU DON'T INVITE ME OVER WHEN THEY'RE STAYING HERE."

  ' 'My grandmother thinks there're too many kids in the house already-when they're here," I explained, but Owen sulked about it so moodily that I invited him to spend the night, which he always enjoyed. He went through this ritual of calling his father to ask if it was all right, but it was always all right with

  Mr. Meany; Owen stayed
at Front Street so frequently that he kept a toothbrush in my bathroom, and a pair of pajamas in my closet. And after Dan Needham gave me the armadillo, Owen grew almost as attached to the little animal-and to Dan-as I was. When Owen would sleep in the other twin bed in my room, with the night table between us, we would carefully arrange under the bedside lamp; in exact profile to both of us, the creature stared at the feet of our beds. The night-light, which was attached to one of the legs of the night table, shone upward, illuminating the armadillo's chin and the exposed nostrils of its thin snout. Owen and I would talk until we were drowsy; but in the morning, I always noticed that had been moved -its face was turned more toward Owen than to me; its profile was no longer perfect. And once when I woke up, I saw that Owen was already awake; he was staring back at the armadillo, and he was smiling. After Dan Needham's armadillo came into my life, and the first occasion for me to travel to Sawyer Depot arose, I was not surprised that Owen took this opportunity to express his concern for the armadillo's well-being.