by John Irving
“The land was ours before we were the land’s,” Frost began. It was “The Gift Outright,” and Owen knew it by heart.
“SOMEONE HELP HIM!” Owen cried, when Frost began to struggle. Someone tried to help him—maybe it was the president himself, or Mrs. Kennedy; I don’t remember.
It was not much help, in any case, and Frost went on struggling with the poem. Owen tried to prompt him, but Robert Frost could not hear The Voice—not all the way from Gravesend. Owen recited from memory; his memory of the poem was better than Frost’s.
SOMETHING WE WERE WITHHOLDING MADE US WEAK
UNTIL WE FOUND OUT THAT IT WAS OURSELVES
WE WERE WITHHOLDING FROM OUR LAND OF LIVING,
AND FORTHWITH FOUND SALVATION IN SURRENDER.
It was the same voice that had prompted the Announcing Angel, who’d forgotten his lines eight years ago; it was the Christ Child speaking from the manger again.
“JESUS, WHY CAN’T ANYONE HELP HIM?” Owen cried.
It was the president’s speech that really affected us; it left Owen Meany speechless and had him writing in his diary into the small hours of the night. Some years later—after everything—I would get to read what he had written; at the time, I knew only how excited he was—how he felt that Kennedy had changed everything for him.
“NO MORE SARCASM MASTER,” he wrote in the diary. “NO MORE CYNICAL, NEGATIVE, SMART-ASS, ADOLESCENT BULLSHIT! THERE IS A WAY TO BE OF SERVICE TO ONE’S COUNTRY WITHOUT BEING A FOOL; THERE IS A WAY TO BE OF USE WITHOUT BEING USED—WITHOUT BEING A SERVANT OF OLD MEN, AND THEIR OLD IDEAS.” There was more, much more. He thought that Kennedy was religious, and—incredibly—he didn’t mind that Kennedy was a Catholic. “I BELIEVE HE’S A KIND OF SAVIOR,” Owen wrote in his diary. “I DON’T CARE IF HE’S A MACKEREL-SNAPPER—HE’S GOT SOMETHING WE NEED.”
In Scripture class, Owen asked the Rev. Mr. Merrill if he didn’t agree that Jack Kennedy was “THE VERY THING ISAIAH HAD IN MIND—YOU KNOW, ‘THE PEOPLE WHO WALKED IN DARKNESS HAVE SEEN A GREAT LIGHT; THOSE WHO DWELT IN A LAND OF DEEP DARKNESS, ON THEM HAS LIGHT SHINED.’ YOU REMEMBER THAT?”
“Well, Owen,” Mr. Merrill said cautiously, “I’m sure Isaiah would have liked John Kennedy; I don’t know, however, if Kennedy was ‘the very thing Isaiah had in mind,’ as you say.”
“‘FOR TO US A CHILD IS BORN,’” Owen recited, “‘TO US A SON IS GIVEN; AND THE GOVERNMENT WILL BE UPON HIS SHOULDER’—REMEMBER THAT?”
I remember; and I remember how long it was after Kennedy’s inauguration that Owen Meany would still recite to me from Kennedy’s speech: “‘ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU—ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY.’”
Remember that?
7
The Dream
* * *
Owen and I were nineteen-year-old seniors at Gravesend Academy—at least a year older than the other members of our class—when Owen told me, point-blank, what he had expressed to me, symbolically, when he was eleven and had mutilated my armadillo.
“GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER,” he said to me, when I was complaining about practicing the shot; I thought he would never slam-dunk the ball in under four seconds, and I was bored with all our trying. “MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT,” he said. “GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD’S INSTRUMENT.”
That he might have thought such a thing when he was eleven—when the astonishing results of that foul ball were such a shock to us both, and when whatever UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE his parents had suffered had plunged his religious upbringing into confusion and rebellion—I could understand him thinking anything then. But not when we were nineteen! I was so surprised by the matter-of-fact way he simply announced his insane belief—“GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS”—that when he jumped into my hands, I dropped him. The basketball rolled out of bounds. Owen didn’t look much like GOD’S INSTRUMENT in his fallen position—holding his knee, which he’d twisted in his fall, and writhing around on the gym floor under the basket.
“If you’re God’s instrument, Owen,” I said, “how come you need my help to stuff a basketball?”
It was Christmas vacation, 1961, and we were alone in the gym—except for our old friend (and our only audience) the retarded janitor, who operated the official scorer’s clock whenever Owen was in the mood to get serious about timing the shot. I wish I could remember his name; he was often the only janitor on duty during school holidays and summer weekends, and there was a universal understanding that he was retarded or “brain damaged”—and Owen had heard that the janitor had suffered “shell shock” in the war. We didn’t even know which war—we didn’t know what “shell shock” even was.
Owen sat on the basketball court, rubbing his knee.
“I SUPPOSE YOU HEARD THAT FAITH CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS,” he said. “THE TROUBLE WITH YOU IS, YOU DON’T HAVE ANY FAITH.”
“The trouble with you is, you’re crazy,” I told him; but I retrieved the basketball. “It’s simply irresponsible,” I said—“for someone your age, and of your education, to go around thinking he’s God’s instrument!”
“I FORGOT I WAS TALKING TO MISTER RESPONSIBILITY,” he said.
He’d started calling me Mr. Responsibility in the fall of ’61, when we were engaged in that senior-year agony commonly called college-entrance applications and interviews; because I’d applied to only the state university, Owen said I’d taken zero responsibility for my own self-improvement. Naturally, he’d applied to Harvard and Yale; as for the state university, the University of New Hampshire had offered him a so-called Honor Society Scholarship—and Owen hadn’t even applied for admission there. The New Hampshire Honor Society gave a special scholarship each year to someone they selected as the state’s best high-school or prep-school student. You had to be a bona fide resident of the state, and the prize scholarship was usually awarded to a public-school kid who was at the top of his or her graduating class; but Owen was at the top of our Gravesend Academy graduating class, the first time a New Hampshire resident had achieved such distinction—“Competing Against the Nation’s Best, Gravesend Native Wins!” was the headline in The Gravesend News-Letter: the story appeared in many of New Hampshire’s papers. The University of New Hampshire never imagined that Owen would accept the scholarship; indeed, the Honor Society Scholarship was offered every year to New Hampshire’s “best”—with the tragic understanding that the recipient would probably go to Harvard or Yale, or to some other “better” school. It was obvious to me that Owen would be accepted—and offered full scholarships—at Harvard and Yale; Hester was the only reason he might accept the scholarship to the University of New Hampshire—and what would be the point of that? Owen would begin his university career in the fall of ’62 and Hester would graduate in the spring of ’63.
“YOU MIGHT AT LEAST TRY TO GET INTO A BETTER UNIVERSITY,” Owen told me.
I was not asking him to give up Harvard or Yale to keep me company at the University of New Hampshire. I thought it was unfair of him to expect me to go through the motions of applying to Harvard and Yale—just to experience the rejections. Although Owen had substantially improved my abilities as a student, he could do little to improve my mediocre college-board scores; I simply wasn’t Harvard or Yale material. I had become a good student in English and History courses; I was a slow but thorough reader, and I could write a readable, well-organized paper; but Owen was still holding my hand through the Math and Science courses, and I still plodded my dim way through foreign languages—as a student, I would never be what Owen was: a natural. Yet he was cross with me for accepting that I could do no better than the University of New Hampshire; in truth, I liked the University of New Hampshire. Durham, the town, was no more threatening than Gravesend; and it was near enough to Gravesend so that I could continue to see a lot of Dan and Grandmother—I could even continue to live with them.
“I’M SURE I’LL END UP IN DURHAM, TOO,” Owen said—with just the smallest touch of self-pity in his voice; but it infuriated me. “I DON’T SEE HOW I CAN LET Y
OU FEND FOR YOURSELF,” he added.
“I’m perfectly capable of fending for myself,” I said. “And I’ll come visit you at Harvard or Yale.”
“NO, WE’LL BOTH MAKE OTHER FRIENDS, WE’LL DRIFT APART—THAT’S THE WAY IT HAPPENS,” he said philosophically. “AND YOU’RE NO LETTER-WRITER—YOU DON’T EVEN KEEP A DIARY,” he added.
“If you lower your standards and come to the University of New Hampshire for my sake, I’ll kill you,” I told him.
“THERE ARE ALSO MY PARENTS TO CONSIDER,” he said. “IF I WERE IN SCHOOL AT DURHAM, I COULD STILL LIVE AT HOME—AND LOOK AFTER THEM.”
“What do you need to look after them for?” I asked him. It appeared to me that he spent as little time with his parents as possible!
“AND THERE’S ALSO HESTER TO CONSIDER,” he added.
“Let me get one thing straight,” I said to him. “You and Hester—it seems to be the most on-again, off-again thing. Are you even sleeping with her—have you ever slept with her?”
“FOR SOMEONE YOUR AGE, AND OF YOUR EDUCATION, YOU’RE AWFULLY CRUDE,” Owen said.
When he got up off the basketball court, he was limping. I passed him the basketball; he passed it back. The idiot janitor reset the scorer’s clock: the numbers were brightly lit and huge.
00:04
That’s what the clock said. I was so sick of it!
I held the ball; he held out his hands.
“READY?” Owen said. On that word, the janitor started the clock. I passed Owen the ball; he jumped into my hands; I lifted him; he reached higher and higher, and—pivoting in the air—stuffed the stupid basketball through the hoop. He was so precise, he never touched the rim. He was midair, returning to earth—his hands still above his head but empty, his eyes on the scorer’s clock at midcourt—when he shouted, “TIME!” The janitor stopped the clock.
That was when I would turn to look; usually, our time had expired.
00:00
But this time, when I looked, there was one second left on the clock.
00:01
He had sunk the shot in under four seconds!
“YOU SEE WHAT A LITTLE FAITH CAN DO?” said Owen Meany. The brain-damaged janitor was applauding. “SET THE CLOCK TO THREE SECONDS!” Owen told him.
“Jesus Christ!” I said.
“IF WE CAN DO IT IN UNDER FOUR SECONDS, WE CAN DO IT IN UNDER THREE,” he said. “IT JUST TAKES A LITTLE MORE FAITH.”
“It takes more practice,” I told him irritably.
“FAITH TAKES PRACTICE,” said Owen Meany.
Nineteen sixty-one was the first year of our friendship that was marred by unfriendly criticism and quarreling. Our most basic dispute began in the fall when we returned to the academy for our senior year, and one of the privileges extended to seniors at Gravesend was responsible for an argument that left Owen and me feeling especially uneasy. As seniors, we were permitted to take the train to Boston on either Wednesday or Saturday afternoon; we had no classes on those afternoons; and if we told the Dean’s Office where we were going, we were allowed to return to Gravesend on the Boston & Maine—as late as 10:00 P.M. on the same day. As day boys, Owen and I didn’t really have to be back to school until the Thursday morning meeting—or the Sunday service at Hurd’s Church, if we chose to go to Boston on a Saturday.
Even on a Saturday, Dan and my grandmother frowned upon the idea of our spending most of the night in the “dreaded” city; there was a so-called milk train that left Boston at two o’clock in the morning—it stopped at every town between Boston and Gravesend, and it didn’t get us home until 6:30 A.M. (about the time the school dining hall opened for breakfast)—but Dan and my grandmother said that Owen and I should live this “wildly” on only the most special occasions. Mr. and Mrs. Meany didn’t make any rules for Owen, at all; Owen was content to abide by the rules Dan and Grandmother made for me.
But he was not content to spend his time in the dreaded city in the manner that most Gravesend seniors spent their time. Many Graves-end graduates attended Harvard. A typical outing for a Gravesend senior began with a subway ride to Harvard Square; there—with the use of a fake draft card, or with the assistance of an older Gravesend graduate (now attending Harvard)—booze was purchased in abundance and consumed with abandon. Sometimes—albeit, rarely—girls were met. Fortified by the former (and never in the company of the latter), our senior class then rode the subway back to Boston, where—once again, falsifying our age—we gained admission to the striptease performances that were much admired by our age group at an establishment known as Old Freddy’s.
I saw nothing that was morally offensive in this rite of passage. At nineteen, I was a virgin. Caroline O’Day had not permitted the advance of even so much as my hand—at least not more than an inch or so above the hem of her pleated skirt or her matching burgundy knee socks. And although Owen had told me that it was only Caroline’s Catholicism that prevented me access to her favors—“ESPECIALLY IN HER SAINT MICHAEL’S UNIFORM!”—I had been no more successful with Police Chief Ben Pike’s daughter, Lorna, who was not Catholic, and not wearing a uniform of any kind when I snagged my lip on her braces. Apparently, it was either my blood or my pain—or both—that disgusted her with me. At nineteen, to experience lust—even in its shabbiest forms at Old Freddy’s—was at least to experience something; and if Owen and I had at first imagined what love was at The Idaho, I saw nothing wrong in lusting at a burlesque show. Owen, I imagined, was not a virgin; how could he have remained a virgin with Hester? So I found it sheer hypocrisy for him to label Old Freddy’s DISGUSTING and DEGRADING.
At nineteen, I drank infrequently—and entirely for the maturing thrill of becoming drunk. But Owen Meany didn’t drink; he disapproved of losing control. Furthermore, he had interpreted Kennedy’s inaugural charge—to do something for his country—in a typically single-minded and literal fashion. He would falsify no more draft cards; he would produce no more fake identification to assist the illegal drinking and burlesque-show attendance of his peers—and he was loudly self-righteous about his decision, too. Fake draft cards were WRONG, he had decided.
Therefore, we walked soberly around Harvard Square—a part of Cambridge that is not necessarily enhanced by sobriety. Soberly, we looked up our former Gravesend schoolmates—and, soberly, I imagined the Harvard community (and how it might be morally altered) with Owen Meany in residence. One of our former schoolmates even told us that Harvard was a depressing experience—when sober. But Owen insisted that our journeys to the dreaded city be conducted as joyless research; and so they were.
To maintain sobriety and to attend the striptease performances at Old Freddy’s was a form of unusual torture; the women at Old Freddy’s were only watchable to the blind drunk. Since Owen had made fake draft cards for himself and me before his lofty, Kennedy-inspired resolution not to break the law, we used the cards to be admitted to Old Freddy’s.
“THIS IS DISGUSTING!” Owen said.
We watched a heavy-breasted woman in her forties remove her pasties with her teeth; she then spat them into the eager audience.
“THIS IS DEGRADING!” Owen said.
We watched another unfortunate pick up a tangerine from the dirty floor of the stage; she lifted the tangerine almost to knee level by picking it up from the floor with the labia of her vulva—but she could raise it no higher. She lost her grip on the tangerine, and it rolled off the stage and into the crowd—where two or three of our schoolmates fought over it. Of course it was DISGUSTING and DEGRADING—we were sober!
“LET’S FIND A NICE PART OF TOWN,” Owen said.
“And do what?” I asked him.
“LOOK AT IT,” Owen said.
It occurs to me now that most of the seniors at Gravesend Academy had grown up looking at the nice parts of towns; but quite apart from stronger motives, Owen Meany was interested in what that was like.
That was how we ended up on Newbury Street—one Wednesday afternoon in the fall of ’61. I know now that it was NO ACCIDENT t
hat we ended up there.
There were some art galleries on Newbury Street—and some very posh stores selling pricey antiques, and some very fancy clothing stores. There was a movie theater around the corner, on Exeter Street, where they were showing a foreign film—not the kind of thing that was regularly shown in the vicinity of Old Freddy’s; at The Exeter, they were showing movies you had to read, the kind with subtitles.
“Jesus!” I said. “What are we going to do here?”
“YOU’RE SO UNOBSERVANT,” Owen said.
He was looking at a mannequin in a storefront window—a disturbingly faceless mannequin, severely modern for the period in that she was bald. The mannequin wore a hip-length, silky blouse; the blouse was fire-engine red and it was cut along the sexy lines of a camisole. The mannequin wore nothing else; Owen stared at her.
“This is really great,” I said to him. “We come two hours on the train—we’re going to ride two more hours to get back—and here you are, staring at another dressmaker’s dummy! If that’s all you want to do, you don’t even have to leave your own bedroom!”
“NOTICE ANYTHING FAMILIAR?” he asked me.
The name of the store, “Jerrold’s,” was painted in vivid-red letters across the window—in a flourishing, handwritten style.
“Jerrold’s,” I said. “So what’s ‘familiar’?”
He put his little hand in his pocket and brought out the label he had removed from my mother’s old red dress; it was the dummy’s red dress, really, because my mother had hated it. It was FAMILIAR—what the label said.
Everything I could see in the store’s interior was the same vivid shade of fire-engine poinsettia red.
“She said the store burned down, didn’t she?” I asked Owen.
“SHE ALSO SAID SHE COULDN’T REMEMBER THE STORE’S NAME, THAT SHE HAD TO ASK PEOPLE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD,” Owen said. “BUT THE NAME WAS ON THE LABEL—IT WAS ALWAYS ON THE BACK OF THE DRESS.”