A Prayer for Owen Meany

by John Irving

  Think of how much time he spent in that creepy monument shop on Water Street, the unfinished lettering of the names of the dead surrounding him—is it any wonder that he SAW his own name and the date of his death on Scrooge’s grave? No; it’s a wonder he didn’t SEE such horrors every day! And when he put on those crazy-looking safety goggles and lowered the diamond wheel into cutting position, the terribly consistent scream of that blade must have reminded him of the “permanent scream,” which was his own unchanging voice—to use Mr. McSwiney’s term for it. After my summer in the monument shop, I could appreciate what might have appealed to Owen Meany about the quiet of churches, the peace of prayer, the easy cadence of hymns and litanies—and even the simplistic, athletic ritual of practicing the shot.

  As for the rest of the summer of 1963—when the Buddhists in Vietnam were torching themselves, and time was running out on the Kennedys—Hester was working as a lobster-house waitress again.

  “So much for a B.A. in Music,” she said.

  At least I could appreciate what Owen Meany meant, when he said of Randy White: “I’D LIKE TO GET HIM UNDER THE DIAMOND WHEEL—ALL I’D NEED IS JUST A FEW SECONDS. I’D LIKE TO PUT HIS DOINK UNDER THE DIAMOND WHEEL,” Owen said.

  As for doinks—as for mine, in particular—I had another slow summer. The Catholic Church had reason to be proud of the insurmountable virtue of Caroline O’Day, with or without her St. Michael’s uniform—and of the virtue of countless others, any church could be proud; they were all virtuous with me. I felt someone’s bare breast, briefly—only once, and it was an accident—one warm night when we went swimming off the beach at Little Boar’s Head and the phosphorescence, in my opinion, was especially seductive. The girl was a musical friend of Hester’s, and in the tomato-red pickup, on the ride back to Durham, Hester volunteered to be the one to sit on my lap, because my date was so displeased by my awkward, amateurish advances.

  “Here, you sit in the middle, I’ll sit on him,” Hester told her friend. “I’ve felt his silly hard-on before, and it doesn’t bother me.”

  “THERE’S NO NEED TO BE CRUDE,” said Owen Meany.

  And so I rode from Little Boar’s Head to Durham with Hester on my lap—once again, humiliated by my hard-on. I thought that just a few seconds under the diamond wheel would certainly suffice for me; and if someone were to put my doink under the wheel, I considered that it would be no great loss.

  I was twenty-one and I was still a Joseph; I was a Joseph then, and I’m just a Joseph now.

  Georgian Bay: July 27, 1987—why can’t I just enjoy all the nature up here? I coaxed one of the Keeling kids to take me in one of the boats to Pointe au Baril Station. Miraculously, no one on the island needed anything from the station: not an egg, not a scrap of meat, or a bar of soap; not even any live bait. I was the only one who needed anything; I “needed” a newspaper, I’m ashamed to say. Needing to know the news—it’s such a weakness, it’s worse than many other addictions, it’s an especially debilitating illness.

  The Toronto Star said the White House was so frustrated by both Congress and the Pentagon that a small, special-forces group within the military was established; and that actual, active-duty American troops fired rockets and machine guns at Nicaraguan soldiers—all this was unknown to the Congress or the Pentagon. Why aren’t Americans as disgusted by themselves—as fed up with themselves—as everyone else is? All their lip service to democracy, all their blatantly undemocratic behavior! I’ve got to stop reading about this whole silly business! All these headlines can turn your mind to mush—headlines that within a year will seem most unmemorable; and if memorable, merely quaint. I live in Canada, I have a Canadian passport—why should I waste my time caring what the Americans are doing, especially when they don’t care themselves?

  I’m going to try to interest myself in something more cosmic—in something more universal, although I suppose that a total lack of integrity in government is “universal,” isn’t it?

  There was another story in The Toronto Star, more appropriate to the paradisiacal view of the universe one can enjoy from Georgian Bay. It was a story about black holes: scientists say that black holes could engulf two whole galaxies! The story was about the potential “collapse of the star system”—what could be more important than that?

  Listen to this: “Black holes are concentrations of matter so dense they have collapsed upon themselves. Nothing, not even light, can escape their intense gravitational pull.” Imagine that! Not even light—my God! I announced this news to the Keeling family; but one of the middle children—a sort of science-prize student—responded to me rather rudely.

  “Yeah,” he said, “but all the black holes are about two million light-years away from Earth.”

  And I thought: That is about as far away from Earth as Owen Meany is; that is about as far away from Earth as I would like to be.

  And where is JFK today? How far away is he?

  On November 22, 1963, Owen Meany and I were in my room at 80 Front Street, studying for a Geology exam. I was angry with Owen for manipulating me into taking Geology, the true nature of which was concealed—at the University of New Hampshire—in the curriculum catalog under the hippie-inspired title of Earth Science. Owen had misled me into thinking that the course would be an easy means of satisfying a part of our science requirement—he knew all about rocks, he assured me, and the rest of the course would concern itself with fossils. “IT’LL BE NEAT TO KNOW ALL ABOUT THE DINOSAURS!” Owen had said; he seduced me. We spent less than a week with the dinosaurs—and far less time with fossils than we spent learning the horrible names of the ages of the earth. And it turned out that Owen Meany didn’t know a metamorphic schist from an igneous intrusion—unless the latter was granite.

  On November 22, 1963, I had just confused the Paleocene epoch with the Pleistocene, and I was further confused by the difference between an epoch and an era.

  “The Cenozoic is an era, right?” I asked him.

  “WHO CARES?” said Owen Meany. “YOU CAN FORGET THAT PART. AND YOU CAN FORGET ABOUT ANYTHING AS BROAD AS THE TERTIARY OR THE QUATERNARY—THAT’S TOO BROAD, TOO. WHAT YOU’VE GOT TO KNOW IS MORE SPECIFIC, YOU’VE GOT TO KNOW WHAT CHARACTERIZED AN EPOCH—FOR EXAMPLE, WHICH EPOCH IS CHARACTERIZED BY THE TRIUMPH OF BIRDS AND PLACENTAL MAMMALS?”

  “Jesus, how’d I ever let you talk me into this?” I said.

  “PAY ATTENTION,” said Owen Meany. “THERE ARE WAYS TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING. THE WAY TO REMEMBER PLEISTOCENE IS TO REMEMBER THAT THIS EPOCH WAS CHARACTERIZED BY THE APPEARANCE OF MAN AND WIDESPREAD GLACIAL ICE—REMEMBER THE ICE, IT RHYMES WITH PLEIS IN PLEISTOCENE.”

  “Jesus Christ!” I said.

  “I’M JUST TRYING TO HELP YOU REMEMBER,” Owen said. “IF YOU’RE CONFUSING THE BLOSSOMING OF BIRDS AND PLACENTAL MAMMALS WITH THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF MAN, YOU’RE ABOUT SIXTY MILLION YEARS OFF—YOU’RE MAKING A PRETTY BIG MISTAKE!”

  “The biggest mistake I made was to take Geology!” I said. Suddenly, Ethel was in my room; we hadn’t heard her knock or open the door—I don’t remember ever seeing Ethel in my room before (or since).

  “Your grandmother wishes to see you in the TV room,” Ethel said.

  “IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE TV?” Owen asked her.

  “Something is wrong with the president,” Ethel said.

  When we found out what was wrong with Kennedy—when we saw him shot, and, later, when we learned he was dead—Owen Meany said, “IF WE FIRST APPEAR IN THE PLEISTOCENE, I THINK THIS IS WHEN WE DISAPPEAR—I GUESS A MILLION YEARS OF MAN IS ENOUGH.”

  What we witnessed with the death of Kennedy was the triumph of television; what we saw with his assassination, and with his funeral, was the beginning of television’s dominance of our culture—for television is at its most solemnly self-serving and at its mesmerizing best when it is depicting the untimely deaths of the chosen and the golden. It is as witness to the butchery of heroes in their prime—and of all holy-seeming innocents—that television achieves its deplorab
le greatness. The blood on Mrs. Kennedy’s clothes and her wrecked face under her veil; the fatherless children; LBJ taking the oath of office; and brother Bobby—looking so very much the next in line.

  “IF BOBBY WAS NEXT IN LINE FOR MARILYN MONROE, WHAT ELSE IS HE NEXT IN LINE FOR?” said Owen Meany.

  Not even five years later, when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, Hester would say, “Television gives good disaster.” I suppose this was nothing but a more vernacular version of my grandmother’s observation of the effect of TV on old people: that watching it would hasten their deaths. If watching television doesn’t hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something—just by staying alive.

  At 80 Front Street, that November of ’63, my grandmother and Owen Meany and I watched the president be killed for hours; for days we watched him be killed and re-killed, again and again.

  “I GET THE POINT,” said Owen Meany. “IF SOME MANIAC MURDERS YOU, YOU’RE AN INSTANT HERO—EVEN IF ALL YOU WERE DOING IS RIDING IN A MOTORCADE!”

  “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 waste!” 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 Hurd’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 Gravesend. Pastor Merrill had always been “liked”; but before his prayer he had lacked respect. I’m sure that Owen, too, was grateful for Mr. Merrill’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 Church! 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 FINDLEY’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—IF 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 I were in Owen’s damn dream, or so I imagined).

  In my opinion, 1964 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 Admi
ral 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 ’64 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 prostitute—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.