by John Irving
It was the first time he’d broken the law—unless you count the business with the tadpoles and toads, and Mary Magdalene in her goal.
Toronto: May 14, 1987—another sunny morning, but rain developing.
President Reagan is now taking the tack that he’s proud of every effort he’s made for the contras, whom he calls “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.” The president confirmed that he had “discussed” the matter of aid with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia; he’s changed his story from only two days ago. The Globe and Mail pointed out that “the king had brought up the subject”; does it matter who brought it up? “My diary shows I never brought it up,” the president said. “I expressed pleasure that he was doing that.” I never thought the president could do anything that would make me feel at all close to him; but Mr. Reagan keeps a diary, too!
Owen kept a diary.
The first entry was as follows: “THIS DIARY WAS GIVEN TO ME FOR CHRISTMAS, 1960, BY MY BENEFACTOR, MRS. HARRIET WHEELWRIGHT; IT IS MY INTENTION TO MAKE MRS. WHEELWRIGHT PROUD OF ME.”
I don’t believe that Dan Needham and I thought of my grandmother as Owen’s BENEFACTOR, although—quite literally—that is what she’d become; but that Christmas of 1960, Dan and I—and Grandmother—had reason to be especially proud of Owen Meany. He’d had a busy fall.
Randy White, our new headmaster, had also been busy; he’d been making decisions, left and right, and The Voice had not allowed a single headmasterly move to pass unchallenged. The first decision had actually been Mrs. White’s; she’d not liked the Thorndikes’ old home—it was, traditionally, the headmaster’s house, it had already housed three headmasters (two of them had died there; old Thorny, when he retired, had moved to his former summer home in Rye, where he planned to live year-round). But the traditional house was not up to the Lake Forest standards that the Whites were used to; it was a well-kept, colonial house on Pine Street, but it was “too old” for the Whites—and “too dark,” she said, and “too far from the main campus,” he said; and a “poor place to entertain,” they both agreed. Apparently, Sam White liked to “entertain.”
“WHOM ARE THEY GOING TO ENTERTAIN?” asked The Voice, who was critical of what he called “THE WHITES’ SOCIAL PRIORITIES.” Indeed, it was an expensive decision, too; a new house was built for the headmaster—so central in its location that its ongoing construction was a campus eyesore throughout Owen’s and my eleventh-grade year. There had been some problems with the architect—or else Mrs. White had changed her mind about a few of the interior particulars—after the construction was in progress; hence the delay. It was a rather plain saltbox—“NOT IN KEEPING WITH THE OLDER FACULTY HOUSES,” as Owen pointed out; also, its positioning interrupted a broad, beautiful expanse of lawn between the old library and the Main Academy Building.
“There’s going to be a new library one day soon, anyway,” the headmaster said; he was working up an expanded building proposal that included a new library, two new dormitories, a new dining hall, and—“down the road”—a new gym with coeducational facilities. “Coeducation,” the headmaster said, “is a part of the future of any progressive school.”
The Voice said: “IT IS IRONIC AND SELF-SERVING THAT THE SO-CALLED ‘EXPANDED BUILDING PROPOSAL’ SHOULD BEGIN WITH A NEW HOUSE FOR THE HEADMASTER. IS HE GOING TO ‘ENTERTAIN’ ENOUGH HIGH-INCOME ALUMNI IN THAT HOUSE TO GET THE SO-CALLED ‘CAPITAL FUND DRIVE’ OFF THE GROUND? IS THIS THE HOUSE THAT PAYS FOR EVERYTHING—FROM THE GYM ON DOWN?”
When the headmaster’s house was finally ready for occupancy, the Rev. Mr. Merrill and his family were moved out of a rather crowded dormitory apartment and into the former headmaster’s house on Pine Street. It was, impractically, at some distance from Hurd’s Church; but the Rev. Lewis Merrill, as a newcomer to the school, must have been grateful to have been given such a nice, old home. As soon as Randy White had done Mr. Merrill this favor, the headmaster made another decision. Morning chapel, which was daily, had always been held in Hurd’s Church; it was not really a religious service, except for the ritual of singing an opening and closing hymn—and concluding the morning remarks or announcements with a prayer. The school minister did not usually officiate morning chapel; the most frequent officiant was the headmaster himself. Sometimes a faculty member gave us a mini-lecture in his field, or one of the students delivered an impassioned plea for a new club. Occasionally, something exciting happened: I remember a fencing demonstration; another time, one of the alumni—who was a famous magician—gave us a magic show, and one of the rabbits escaped in Hurd’s Church and was never found.
What Mr. White decided was that Hurd’s Church was too gloomy a place for us to start our mornings; he moved our daily assembly to the theater in the Main Academy Building—The Great Hall, it was called. Although the morning light was more evident there and the room had a high-ceilinged loftiness to it, it was, at the same time, austere—the towering portraits of former headmasters and faculty frowned grimly down upon us in their deep-black academic regalia. The faculty who chose to attend morning chapel (they were not required to be there, as we were) now sat on the elevated stage and looked down upon us, too. When the stage was set for a school play, the curtain was drawn and there was little room for the faculty on the narrow front of the stage. That was the first thing that Owen criticized about the decision: in Hurd’s Church, the faculty had sat in pews with the students—the faculty felt encouraged to attend. But in The Great Hall, when one of Dan’s plays was set on the stage, there was room for so few chairs that faculty attendance was discouraged. In addition, Owen felt that “THE ELEVATION OF THE STAGE AND THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE MORNING LIGHT PROVIDE THE HEADMASTER WITH SUCH AN EXAGGERATED PLATFORM FROM WHICH TO SPEAK; AND OFTEN, THERE’S A KIND OF SPOTLIGHT, PROVIDED BY THE SUN, THAT GIVES US ALL THE FEELING THAT WE’RE IN THE PRESENCE OF AN EXALTED PERSONAGE. I WONDER IF THIS IS THE INTENDED EFFECT,” wrote The Voice.
I confess, I rather liked the change, which was popular with most students. The Great Hall was on the second floor of the Main Academy Building; it could be approached from two directions—up two wide and sweeping marble staircases, through two high and wide double doors. There was no lining up to enter or leave; and many of us were already in the building for our first morning class. In the winter, especially, it was a tramp to Hurd’s Church, which was set off from all the classroom buildings. But Owen insisted that the headmaster was GRANDSTANDING—and that Randy White had skillfully manipulated the Rev. Mr. Merrill into a position where the minister would have felt ungrateful if he complained; after all, he had a good house to live in. If taking morning chapel from Hurd’s Church was a move away from the Rev. Mr. Merrill’s territory—and if the minister resented the change—we did not hear a word of protest from the quiet Congregationalist about it; only The Voice complained.
But Randy White was just warming up; his next decision was to abolish the Latin requirement—a requirement that everyone (except the members of the Latin Department) had moaned about for years. The old logic that Latin helped one’s understanding of all languages was not a song that was often sung outside the Latin Department. There were six members in the Latin Department and three of them were within a year or two of retirement. White anticipated that enrollment in Latin would drop to half of what it was (three years of the language had been a graduation requirement); in a year or two, there would be the correctly reduced number of teachers in the department to teach Latin, and new faculty could be hired in the more popular Romance languages—French and Spanish. There were cheers in morning meeting when White announced the change—in quite a short time, we had begun to call “morning chapel” by another name; White called it “morning meeting,” and the new name stuck.
It was the way he had scrapped the Latin that was wrong, Owen pointed out.
“IT IS SHREWD OF THE NEW HEADMASTER TO MAKE SUCH A POPULAR DECISION—AND WHAT COULD BE MORE POPULAR WITH STUDENTS THAN ABOLISHING A REQUIREMENT? LATIN, ESPECIALLY! BUT THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN ACCOMPLISHED BY A VO
TE—IN FACULTY MEETING. I’M SURE THAT IF THE HEADMASTER HAD PROPOSED THE CHANGE, THE FACULTY WOULD HAVE ENDORSED IT. THE HEADMASTER HAS A CERTAIN SINGULAR POWER: BUT WAS IT NECESSARY FOR HIM TO DEMONSTRATE HIS POWER SO WHIMSICALLY? HE COULD HAVE ACHIEVED THIS GOAL MORE DEMOCRATICALLY; WAS IT NECESSARY TO SHOW THE FACULTY THAT HE DIDN’T NEED THEIR APPROVAL? AND WAS IT ACTUALLY LEGAL, UNDER OUR CHARTER OR OUR CONSTITUTION, FOR THE HEADMASTER TO CHANGE A GRADUATION REQUIREMENT ALL BY HIMSELF?”
That occasioned the first instance of the headmaster using the platform of morning meeting to answer The Voice. We were, after all, a captive audience. “Gentlemen,” Mr. White began. “I do not have the advantage of what amounts to a weekly editorial column in The Grave, but I should like to use my brief time—between hymns, and before our prayer—to enlighten you on the subject of our dear old school’s charter, and its constitution. In neither document is the faculty empowered with any authority over the school’s chosen headmaster, who is designated as the principal, meaning the principal faculty member; in neither the charter nor the constitution are the decision-making powers of the headmaster or principal inhibited in any way. Let Us Pray …”
Mr. White’s next decision was to replace our school attorney—a local lawyer—with an attorney-friend from Lake Forest, the former head of a law firm that had successfully fought off a food-poisoning suit against one of the big Chicago meat companies; tainted meat had made a lot of people sick, but the Lake Forest attorney steered the blame away from the meat company, and the packager, and rested the fault upon a company of refrigeration trucks. On the advice of this attorney, Randy White changed the dismissal policy at Gravesend Academy.
In the past, a so-called Executive Committee listened to the case of any boy who faced dismissal; that committee made its recommendation to the faculty, and the whole faculty voted for the boy to stay or go. The Lake Forest attorney suggested that the school was vulnerable to a lawsuit in the case of a dismissal; that the whole faculty was “acting as a jury without the in-depth understanding of the case that was afforded to the Executive Committee.” The attorney advised that the Executive Committee make the entire decision regarding the boy’s dismissal and the faculty not be involved. This was approved by Headmaster White, and the change was announced—in the manner of dropping the Latin requirement—in morning meeting.
“FOR THE SAKE OF AVOIDING A HYPOTHETICAL LAWSUIT,” wrote Owen Meany, “THE HEADMASTER HAS CHANGED A DEMOCRACY TO AN OLIGARCHY—HE HAS TAKEN THE FUTURE OF A BOY IN TROUBLE OUT OF THE HANDS OF MANY AND PLACED THE FATE OF THAT BOY INTO THE HANDS OF A FEW. AND LET US EXAMINE THESE FEW. THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE IS COMPOSED OF THE HEADMASTER, THE DEAN OF STUDENTS, THE DIRECTOR OF SCHOLARSHIPS, AND FOUR MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY—ONLY TWO OF WHOM ARE ELECTED BY THE WHOLE FACULTY; THE OTHER TWO ARE APPOINTED BY THE HEADMASTER. I SUGGEST THAT THIS IS A STACKED DECK! WHO KNOWS ANY BOY BEST? HIS DORM ADVISER, HIS CURRENT TEACHERS AND COACHES. IN THE PAST, IN FACULTY MEETING, THESE WERE THE PEOPLE WHO SPOKE UP IN A BOY’S DEFENSE—OR THEY WERE THE PEOPLE WHO KNEW BEST THAT THE BOY DID NOT DESERVE DEFENDING. I SUGGEST THAT ANY BOY WHO IS DISMISSED BY THIS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE SHOULD SUE THE SCHOOL. WHAT BETTER GROUNDS ARE THERE FOR A LAWSUIT IN THE CASE OF A DISMISSAL THAN THESE: THE PEOPLE IN A POSITION TO KNOW BEST THE VALUE OF YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO THE SCHOOL ARE NOT IN A POSITION TO EVEN SPEAK IN YOUR DEFENSE—NOT TO MENTION, VOTE?
“I WARN YOU: ANYONE WHO GETS SENT UP BEFORE THIS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE IS ALREADY A GONER! THE HEADMASTER AND HIS TWO APPOINTEES VOTE AGAINST YOU; THE TWO ELECTED FACULTY MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE VOTE FOR YOU. NOW YOU’RE BEHIND, 3–2. AND WHAT DO THE DEAN OF STUDENTS AND THE DIRECTOR OF SCHOLARSHIPS DO? THEY DON’T KNOW YOU FROM THE CLASSROOM, OR FROM THE GYM, OR FROM THE DORM; THEY’RE ADMINISTRATORS—LIKE THE HEADMASTER. MAYBE THE DIRECTOR OF SCHOLARSHIPS LOOKS KINDLY ON YOU IF YOU’RE A SCHOLARSHIP BOY; THAT WAY, YOU LOSE 4–3 INSTEAD OF 5–2. EITHER WAY, YOU LOSE.
“LOOK UP ‘OLIGARCHY’ IN THE DICTIONARY IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I MEAN: ‘A FORM OF GOVERNMENT IN WHICH THE POWER IS VESTED IN A FEW PERSONS OR IN A DOMINANT CLASS OR CLIQUE; GOVERNMENT BY THE FEW.’”
But there were other issues of “government” that captured everyone’s attention at the time; even Owen was distracted from the decision-making capacities of the new headmaster. Everyone was talking about Kennedy or Nixon; and it was Owen who initiated a mock election among the Gravesend Academy students—he organized it, he set up the balloting in the school post office, he seated himself behind a big table and checked off every student’s name. He caught a few kids voting twice, he sent “runners” to bother kids in the dorm who had not yet voted. For two days, he spent all his time between classes behind that big table; he wouldn’t let anyone else be the checker. The ballots themselves were secured in a locked box that was kept in the director of scholarships’ office—whenever it was out of Owen’s sight. There he sat at the table, with a campaign button as big as a baseball on the lapel of his sport jacket:
ALL THE WAY
WITH J F K
He wanted a Catholic!
“THERE’S NO MONKEY BUSINESS ABOUT THIS ELECTION,” he told the voters. “IF YOU’RE ENOUGH OF AN ASSHOLE TO VOTE FOR NIXON, YOUR DUMB VOTE WILL BE COUNTED—JUST LIKE ANYBODY ELSE!”
Kennedy won, in a landslide, but The Voice predicted that the real vote—in November—would be much closer; yet Owen believed that Kennedy would, and should, triumph. “THIS IS AN ELECTION THAT YOUNG PEOPLE CAN FEEL A PART OF,” announced The Voice; indeed, although Owen and I were too young to vote, we felt very much a part of all that youthful “vigor” that Kennedy represented. “WOULDN’T IT BE NICE TO HAVE A PRESIDENT WHOM PEOPLE UNDER THIRTY WON’T LAUGH AT? WHY VOTE FOR EISENHOWER’S FIVE O’CLOCK SHADOW WHEN YOU CAN HAVE JACK KENNEDY?”
Once again, the headmaster saw fit to challenge the “editorial nature” of The Voice in morning meeting. “I’m a Republican,” Randy White told us. “So that you don’t think that The Grave represents Republicans with even marginal objectivity, allow me to take a minute of your time—while, perhaps, the euphoria of John Kennedy’s landslide election here is still high but (I hope) subsiding. I’m not surprised that so youthful a candidate has charmed many of you with his ‘vigah,’ but—fortunately—the fate of the country is not decided by young men who are not old enough to vote. Mr. Nixon’s experience may not seem so glamorous to you; but a presidential election is not a sailing race, or a beauty contest between the candidates’ wives.
“I’m an Illinois Republican,” the headmaster said. “Illinois is the Land of Lincoln, as you boys know.”
“ILLINOIS IS THE LAND OF ADLAI STEVENSON,” Owen Meany wrote. “AS FAR AS I KNOW, ADLAI STEVENSON IS A MORE RECENT RESIDENT OF ILLINOIS THAN ABRAHAM LINCOLN—AS FAR AS I KNOW, ADLAI STEVENSON IS A DEMOCRAT AND HE’S STILL ALIVE.”
And this little difference of opinion, as far as I know, was what prompted Randy White to make another decision. He replaced Mr. Early as the faculty adviser to The Grave; Mr. White made himself the faculty adviser—and so The Voice was presented with a more adversarial censor than Owen had ever faced in Mr. Early.
“You’d better be careful, Owen,” Dan Needham advised.
“You better watch your ass, man,” I told him.
It was a very cold evening after Christmas when he pulled the tomato-red pickup into the parking lot behind St. Michael’s—the parochial school. His headlights shone across the playground, which had been flooded by an earlier, unseasonable rain that had now frozen to the black, reflecting sheen of a pond. “TOO BAD WE DON’T HAVE OUR SKATES,” Owen said. At the far end of the smooth sheet of ice, the truck’s headlights caused the statue of Mary Magdalene to glow in her goal. “TOO BAD WE DON’T HAVE OUR HOCKEY STICKS, AND A PUCK,” Owen said. A light went on—and then another light—in the saltbox where the nuns lived; then the porch light was turned on, too, and two of the nuns came out on the porch and stared at our headlights. “EVER SEE PENGUINS ON ICE?” Owen said.
“Better not do anything,” I advise
d him, and he turned the truck around in the parking lot and drove to 80 Front Street. There was a “creature feature” on The Late Show; Owen and I were now of the opinion that the only good movies were the really bad ones.
He never showed me what he wrote in his diary—not then. But after that Christmas he often carried it with him, and I knew it was important to him because he kept it by his bed, on his night table, right next to his copies of Robert Frost’s poems and under the guardianship of my mother’s dressmaker’s dummy. When he spent the night with me, at Dan’s or at 80 Front Street, he always wrote in the diary before he allowed me to turn out the light.
The night I remember him writing most furiously was the night following President Kennedy’s inauguration; that was in January of 1961, and I kept begging him to turn the light out, but he went on, just writing and writing, and I finally fell asleep with the light on—I don’t know when he stopped. We’d watched the inauguration on television at 80 Front Street; Dan and my grandmother watched with us, and although my grandmother complained that Jack Kennedy was “too young and too handsome”—that he looked “like a movie star” and that “he should wear a hat”—Kennedy was the first Democrat that Harriet Wheelwright had ever voted for, and she liked him. Dan and Owen and I were crazy about him.
It was a bright, cold, and windy day in Washington—and in Gravesend—and Owen was worried about the weather. “IT’S TOO BAD IT COULDN’T BE A NICER DAY,” Owen said.
“He should learn to wear a hat—it won’t kill him,” my grandmother complained. “In this weather, he’ll catch his death.”
When our old friend Robert Frost tried to read his inaugural poem, Owen became most upset; maybe it was the wind, maybe Frost’s eyes were tearing in the cold, or else it was the glare from the sun, or simply that the old man’s eyesight was failing—whatever, he looked very feeble and he couldn’t read his poem properly.