THE GHOST OF THE FUTURE

 

 THUS DID OWEN MEANY remodel Christmas. Denied his long-sought excursion to Sawyer Depot, he captured the two most major, non-speaking roles in the only dramatic productions offered in Gravesend that holiday season. As the Christ Child and as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, he had established himself as a prophet-disquietingly, it was our future he seemed to know something about. Once, he thought, he had seen into my mother's future; he had even become an instrument of her future. I wondered what he thought he knew of Dan's or my grandmother's future-or Hester's, or mine, or his own. God would tell me who my father was, Owen Meany had assured me; but, so far, God had been silent. It was Owen who'd been talkative. He'd talked Dan and me out of the dressmaker's dummy; he'd stationed my mother's heartbreaking figure at his bedside-to stand watch over him, to be his angel. Owen had talked himself down from the heavens and into the manger-he'd made me a Joseph, he'd chosen a Mary for me, he'd turned turtledoves to cows. Having revised the Holy Nativity, he had moved on; he was reinterpreting Dickens-for even Dan had to admit that Owen had somehow changed A Christmas Carol. The silent Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come had stolen the penultimate scene from Scrooge.

          Even The Gravesend News-Letter failed to recognize that Scrooge was the main character; that Mr. Fish was the principal actor was a fact that entirely eluded The News-Letter's drama critic, who wrote, "The quintessential Christmas tale, the luster of which has been dulled (at least, for this reviewer) by its annual repetition, has been given a new sparkle." The critic added, "The shopworn ghost-story part of the tale has been energized by the brilliant performance of little Owen Meany, who- despite his diminutive size-is a huge presence onstage; the miniature Meany simply dwarfs the other performers. Director Dan Needham should consider casting the Tiny Tim-sized star as Scrooge in next year's A Christmas Carol!"

There was not a word about this year's Scrooge, and Mr. Fish fumed over his neglect. Owen responded crossly to any criticism.

"WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO REFER TO ME AS 'LITTLE,' AS 'DIMINUTIVE,' AS 'MINIATURE'?" Owen raved. "THEY DON'T MAKE SUCH QUALIFYING REMARKS ABOUT THE OTHER ACTORS!"

"You forgot 'Tiny Tim-sized,' " I told him.

"I KNOW, I KNOW," he said. "DO THEY SAY, 'FORMER DOG-OWNER FISH' IS A SUPERB SCROOGE? DO THEY SAY, 'VICIOUS SUNDAY-SCHOOL TYRANT WALKER' MAKES A CHARMING MOTHER FOR TINY TIM?"

"They called you a 'star,' " I reminded him. "They called you 'brilliant'-and a 'huge presence.' "

"THEY CALLED ME 'LITTLE,' THEY CALLED ME 'DIMINUTIVE,' THEY CALLED ME 'MINIATURE'!" Owen cried.

"It's a good thing it wasn't a speaking part," I reminded him.

"VERY FUNNY," Owen said. In the case of this particular production, Dan wasn't bothered by the local press; what troubled Dan was what Charles Dickens might have thought of Owen Meany. Dan was sure that Dickens would have disapproved.

"Something's not right," Dan said. "Small children burst into tears-they have to be removed from the audience before they get to the happy ending. We've started warning mothers with small children at the door. It's not quite the family entertainment it's supposed to be. Kids leave the theater looking like they've seen Dracula!"

Dan was relieved to observe, however, that Owen appeared to be coming down with a cold. Owen was susceptible to colds; and now he was overtired all the time-rehearsing the Holy Nativity in the mornings, performing as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come at night. Some afternoons Owen was so exhausted that he fell asleep at my grandmother's house; he would drop off to sleep on the rug in the den, lying under the big couch, or on a stack of the couch pillows, where he'd been gunning down my metal soldiers with my toy cannon. I would go to the kitchen to get us some cookies; and when I came back to the den, Owen would be fast asleep. "He's getting to be like Lydia," my grandmother observed-because Lydia could not stay awake in the afternoons, either; she would nod off to sleep in her wheelchair, wherever Germaine had left her, sometimes facing into a corner. This was a further indication to my grandmother that Lydia's senility was in advance of her own. But as Owen began to manifest the early signs of the common cold-a sneeze or a cough now and then, and a runny nose-Dan Needham imagined that his production of A Christmas Carol might be the beneficiary of Owen getting sick. Dan didn't want Owen to be ill; it was just a small cough and a sneeze-and maybe even Owen having to blow his nose-that Dan was wishing for. Such a human noise from under the dark hood would surely put the audience at ease; Owen sneezing and snorting might even draw a laugh or two. In Dan's opinion, a laugh or two wouldn't hurt.

"It might hurt Owen," I pointed out. "I don't think Owen would appreciate any laughter."

"I don't mean that I want to make the Ghost of the Future a comic character," Dan maintained. "I would just like to humanize him, a little." For that was the problem, in Dan's view: Owen did not look human. He was the size of a small child, but his movements were uncannily adult; and his authority onstage was beyond "adult"-it was supernatural.

"Look at it this way," Dan said to me. "A ghost who sneezes, a ghost who coughs-a ghost who has to blow his nose-he's just not quite so scary."

But what about a Christ Child who sneezes and coughs, and has to blow his nose? I thought. If the Wiggins insisted that the Baby Jesus couldn't cry, what would they think of a sick Prince of Peace? Everyone was sick that Christmas: Dan got over bronchitis only to discover he had pinkeye; Lydia had such a violent

          cough that she would occasionally propel herself backward in her wheelchair. When Mr. Early, who was Marley's Ghost, began to hack and sniffle, Dan confided to me that it would be perfect symmetry-for the play-if all the ghosts came down with something. Mr. Fish, who had by far the most lines, pampered himself so that he wouldn't catch anyone else's cold; thus Scrooge retreated from Marley's Ghost in an even more exaggerated fashion. Grandmother complained that the weather was too slippery for her to go out; she was not worried about colds, but she dreaded falling on the ice. "At my age," she told me, "it's one fall, one broken hip, and then a long, slow death-from pneumonia." Lydia coughed and nodded, nodded and coughed, but neither woman would share her elderly wisdom with me ... concerning why a broken hip produced pneumonia; not to mention, "a long, slow death."

"But you have to see Owen in A Christmas Carol," I said.

"I see quite enough of Owen," Grandmother told me.

"Mister Fish is also quite good," I said.

"I see quite enough of Mister Fish, too," Grandmother remarked. The rave review that Owen received from The Gravesend News-Letter appeared to drive Mr. Fish into a silent depression; when he came to  Front Street after dinner, he sigtied often and said nothing. As for our morose mailman, Mr. Morrison, it is incalculable how much he suffered to hear of Owen's success. He stooped under his leather sack as if he shouldered a burden much more demanding than the excess of Christmas mail. How did it make him feel to deliver all those copies of The Gravesend News-Letter, wherein Mr. Morrison's former role was described as "not only pivotal but principal"-and Owen Meany was showered with the kind of praise Mr. Morrison might have imagined for himself? In the first week, Dan told me, Mr. Morrison did not come to watch the production. To Dan's surprise, Mr. and Mrs. Meany had not made an appearance, either.

"Don't they read The News-LetterT' Dan asked me. I could not imagine Mrs. Meany reading; the demands on her time were too severe. With all her staring-at walls, into corners, not quite out the window, into the dying fire, at my mother's dummy-when would Mrs. Meany have the time to read a newspaper? And Mr. Meany was not even one of those men who read about sports. I imagined, too, that the Meanys would never have heard about A Christmas Carol from Owen; after all, he hadn't wanted them to know about the pageant. Perhaps one of the quarrymen would say something about the play to Mr. Meany; maybe a stonecutter or the derrick-man's wife had seen it, or at least read about it in The News-Letter.

"Hear your boy's the star of the theater," someone might say. But I could hear, too, how Owen would dismiss it.

"I'M JUST HELPING DAN OUT. HE GOT IN A FIX-ONE OF THE GHOSTS QUIT. YOU KNOW MORRISON, THE COWARDLY MAILMAN? WELL, FT WAS A CASE OF STAGE FRIGHT. IT'S A VERY SMALL PART-NOT EVEN A SPEAKING PART. I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND THE PLAY, EITHER-IT'S NOT VERY BELIEVABLE. AND BESIDES, YOU NEVER GET TO SEE MY FACE. I DON'T THINK I'M ONSTAGE FOR MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES. . . ."

I was sure that was how Owen would have handled it. I thought he was excessively proud of himself-and that he treated his parents harshly. We all go through a phase-it lasts a lifetime, for some of us-when we're embarrassed by our parents; we don't want them hanging around us because we're afraid they'll do or say something that will make us feel ashamed of them. But Owen seemed to me to suffer this embarrassment more than most; that's why I thought he held his parents at such a great distance from himself. And he was, in my opinion, exceedingly bossy toward his father. At an age when most of our peers were enduring how much their parents bossed them around, Owen was always telling his father what to do. My sympathy for Owen's embarrassment was slight. After all, I missed my mother, I would have enjoyed her hanging around me. Because Dan wasn't my real father, I had never developed any resentment toward Dan; I always loved having Dan around-my grandmother, although she was a loving grandmother, was aloof.

"Owen," Dan said one evening. "Would you like me to invite your parents to see the play? Maybe for our last performance-on Christmas Eve?"

"I THINK THEY'RE BUSY ON CHRISTMAS EVE," Owen said.

"How about one of the earlier evenings, then?" Dan asked.

        

"Some evening soon-shall I invite them? Any evening would be fine."

' 'THEY'RE NOT EXACTLY THEATERGOING TYPES,'' Owen said. "I DON'T MEAN TO INSULT YOU, DAN, BUT I'M AFRAID MY PARENTS WOULD BE BORED."

"But surely they'd enjoy seeing you, Owen," Dan said. "Wouldn't they like your performance?"

"THE ONLY STORIES THEY LIKE ARE TRUE STORIES," Owen said. "THEY'RE RATHER REALISTIC, THEY DON'T GET TOO EXCITED ABOUT MADE-UP STORIES. ANYTHING THAT'S SORT OF MAKE-BELIEVE-THAT'S NOT FOR THEM. AND ANYTHING WITH GHOSTS-THAT'S OUT."

"Ghosts are out?" Dan asked.

"ALL THAT KIND OF STUFF IS OUT-WITH THEM," Owen said. But-listening to him-I found I had just the opposite impression of his parents. I thought that Owen Meany's mother and father believed only in the so-called make-believe; that ghosts were all they believed in-that spirits were all they listened to. "WHAT I MEAN IS, DAN," Owen said, "IS THAT I'D RATHER NOT INVITE MY PARENTS. IF THEY COME, OKAY; BUT I THINK THEY WON'T."

"Sure, sure," Dan said. "Anything you say, Owen."

Dan Needham suffered from my mother's affliction: he, too, couldn't keep his hands off Owen Meany. Dan was not a hair-messer, not a patter of butts or shoulders. Dan grabbed your hands and mashed them, sometimes until your knuckles and his cracked together. But Dan's manifestations of physical affection for Owen exceeded, even, his fondness for me; Dan had the good instincts to keep his distance from me-to be like a father to me, but not to assert himself too exactly in the role. Because of a physical caution that Dan expressed when he touched me, he was less restrained with Owen, whose father never once (at least, not in my presence) touched him. I think Dan Needham knew, too, that Owen was not ever handled at home. There was a fourth curtain call on Saturday night, and Dan sent Owen out onstage alone. It was apparent that the audience wanted Owen aione; Mr. Fish had already been out onstage with Owen, and by himself-it was clearly Owen whom the crowd adored. The audience rose to greet him. The peak of his death-black hood was a trifle pointy, and too tall for Owen's small head; it had flopped over to one side, giving Owen a gnomish appearance and a slightly cocky, puckish attitude. When he flipped the hood back and showed the audience his beaming face, a young girl in one of the front rows fainted; she was about our age-maybe twelve or thirteen-and she dropped down like a sack of grain.

"It was quite warm where we were sitting," the girl's mother said, after Dan made sure the girl had recovered.

"STUPID GIRL!" Owen said, backstage. He was his own makeup man. Even though his face remained concealed throughout his performance by the overlarge, floppy hood, he whitened his face with baby powder and blackened the already-dark sockets under his eyes with eyeliner. He wanted even the merest glimpse that the audience might get of him to be properly ghostly; that his cold was worsening enhanced the pallor he desired. He was coughing pretty regularly by the time Dan drove him home. The last Sunday before Christmas-the day of our pageant-was tomorrow.

"He sounds a little sicker than I had in mind," Dan told me on our way back to town. "I may have to play the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come myself. Or maybe-if Owen's too sick-maybe you can take the part."

But I was just a Joseph; I felt that Owen Meany had already chosen me for the only part I could play. It snowed overnight, not a major storm; then the temperature kept dropping, until it was too cold to snow. A new coat of flat-white, flatter than church-white, lay spread over Gravesend that Sunday morning; the wind, which is the crudest kind of cold, kicked up wisps and kite tails of the dry powder and made the empty rain gutters at  Front Street rattle and moan; the gutters were empty because the new snow was too cold to cling. The snowplows were in no hurry to be early on Sunday mornings, and the only vehicle that didn't slip and skid as it made its way up Front Street was the heavy truck from the Meany Granite Company. Owen had so many clothes on, he had difficulty bending his knees as he trudged up the driveway-and his arms did not swing close to his sides, but protruded stiffly, like the limbs of a scarecrow. He was so

          muffled up in a long, dark-green scarf that I couldn't see his face at all-but who could ever mistake Owen Meany for anyone else? It was a scarf my mother had given him-when she'd discovered, one winter, that he didn't own one. Owen called it his LUCKY scarf, and he saved it for important occasions or for when it was especially cold. The last Sunday before Christmas called for my mother's scarf-on both counts. As Owen and I tramped down Front Street toward Christ Church, the birds took flight at Owen's barking cough; there was a phlegmy rattle in his chest, loud enough for me to hear through his many layers of winter clothes.

"You don't sound very well, Owen," I pointed out to him.

"IF JESUS HAD TO BE BORN ON A DAY LIKE THIS, I DON'T THINK HE'D HAVE LASTED LONG ENOUGH TO BE CRUCIFIED," Owen said. On Front Street's almost-virgin sidewalk, only one set of footprints had broken the snow before us; except for the clumsy peeing of dogs, the sidewalk was an unmarred path of white. The figure who had made the morning's first human tracks in the snow was too bundled up and too far ahead of Owen and me for us to recognize him.

"YOUR GRANDMOTHER ISN'T COMING TO THE PAGEANT?" Owen asked me.

"She's a Congregationalist," I reminded him.

"BUT IS SHE SO INFLEXIBLE THAT SHE CAN'T SWITCH CHURCHES FOR ONE SUNDAY OF THE YEAR? THE CONGREGATIONALISTS DON'T HAVE A PAGEANT."

"I know, I know," I said; but I knew more than that: I knew the Congregationalists didn't even have the conventional morning service on the last Sunday before Christmas-they had Vespers instead. It was a special event, largely for caroling. It wasn't that my grandmother's church service was in conflict with our pageant; it was that Grandmother was not enticed to see Owen play the Christ Child. She had remarked that she found the idea "repulsive." Also, she made such a fuss about the weather's potential for breaking her hip that she announced her intention to skip the Vespers at the Congregational Church. By the later afternoon, when the light was gone, it was even easier, she reasoned, to break your hip on the ice in the dark. The man on the sidewalk ahead of us was Mr. Fish, whom we rather quickly caught up to-Mr. Fish was making his unreckless way with absurdly great care; he must have feared breaking his hip, too. He was startled by the sight of Owen Meany, wrapped up so tightly in my mother's scarf that only Owen's eyes were showing; but Mr. Fish was often startled to see Owen.

"Why aren't you already at the church, getting into your costumes?" he asked us. We pointed out that we would be almost an hour early. Even at the rate Mr. Fish was walking, he would be half an hour early; but Owen and I were surprised that Mr. Fish was attending the pageant.

"YOU'RE NOT A CHURCHGOER," Owen said accusingly-

"Why no, I'm not, that's true," Mr. Fish admitted. "But I wouldn't miss this for the world!"

Owen eyed his costar in A Christmas Carol cautiously. Mr. Fish seemed both so depressed and impressed by Owen's success that his attendance at the Christ Church Christmas Pageant was suspicious. I suspect that Mr. Fish enjoyed depressing himself; also, he was so slavishly devoted to amateur acting that he desperately sought to pick up as many pointers as he could by observing Owen's genius.

"I MAY NOT BE AT MY BEST TODAY," Owen warned Mr. Fish; he then demonstrated his barking cough, dramatically.

"A trouper like you is surely undaunted by a little illness, Owen," Mr. Fish observed. We three trudged through the snow together-Mr. Fish corning halfway to meet us, on the matter of pace. He confided to Owen and me that he was a little nervous about attending church; that he'd never once been forced to go to church when he was a child-his parents had not been religious, either-and that he'd only "set foot'' in churches for weddings and funerals. Mr. Fish wasn't even sure how much of Christ's story a Christmas pageant "covered."

"NOT THE WHOLE THING," Owen told him.

"Not the bit on the cross?" Mr. Fish asked.

"THEY DIDN'T NAIL HIM TO THE CROSS WHEN HE WAS A BABY\" Owen said.

"How about the bit when he does all the healing-and all the lecturing to the disciples?" Mr. Fish asked

"IT DOESN'T GO PAST CHRISTMAS!" Owen said, with exasperation. "IT'S JUST THE BIRTHDAY SCENE!"

"It's not a speaking part," I reminded Mr. Fish.

        

"Oh, of course, I forgot about that," Mr. Fish said. Christ Church was on Elliot Street, at the edge of the Gravesend Academy campus; at the comer of Elliot and Front streets, Dan Needham was waiting for us. Apparently the director intended to pick up a few pointers, too.

"My, my, look who's here!" Dan said to Mr. Fish, who blushed. Owen was cheered to see that Dan was coming.

"IT'S A GOOD THING YOU'RE HERE, DAN," Owen told him, "BECAUSE THIS IS MISTER FISH'S FIRST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT, AND HE'S A LITTLE NERVOUS."

"I'm just not sure when to genuflect, and all that nonsense!" Mr. Fisri said, chuckling.

"NOT ALL EPISCOPALIANS GENUFLECT," Owen announced.

"I don't," I said.

"I DO," said Owen Meany.

"Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't,'' Dan said.' 'When I'm in church, I watch the other people-I do what they do."

Thus did our eclectic foursome arrive at Christ Church. Despite the cold, the Rev. Dudley Wiggin was standing outdoors on the church steps to greet the early arrivals; he was not wearing a hat, and his scalp glowed a howling red under his thin, gray hair-his ears looked frozen bloodless enough to break off. Barb Wiggin stood in a silver-fur coat beside him, wearing a matching fur hat.

"SHE LOOKS LIKE A STEWARDESS ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD," Owen observed. I got quite a shock to see the Rev. Lewis Merrill and his California wife standing next to the Wiggins; Owen was surprised, too.

"HAVE YOU CHANGED CHURCHES?" Owen asked them. The long-suffering Merrills appeared not to possess the imaginative capacity to know what Owen meant; it was a question that raised havoc with Mr. MerrilFs usually slight stutter.

"W-w-w-w-e have Ves-p-p-p-pers today!" Mr. Merrill told Owen, who didn't understand.

"The Congregationalists have a vesper service today," I told Owen. "Instead of the regular morning service," I added. "Vespers are in the late afternoon."

"I KNOW WHAT TIME VESPERS ARE!" Owen answered irritably. The Rev. Mr. Wiggin put his arm around his fellow clergyman's shoulder, giving the Rev. Mr. Merrill such a squeeze that the smaller, paler man looked alarmed. I believe that Episcopalians are generally heartier than Congregational-ists.

"Barb and I go to the Vespers, for the caroling-every year," Rector Wiggin announced. "And the Merrills come to our pageant!"

"Every year," Mrs. Merrill added neutrally; she looked miserably envious of Owen's face-concealing scarf. The Rev. Mr. Merrill composed himself, I'd not seen him so tongue-tied since Sagamore's spontaneous funeral, and it occurred to me that it might be Owen who so effectively crippled his speech.

"We really go in for the caroling, we celebrate the songs of Christmas-we've always put great emphasis on our choir," Pastor Merrill said. He appeared to single me out for a heartfelt look when he said ' 'choir," as if the mere mention of these trained angels was certain to remind me of my mother's lost voice.

"We go in more for the miracle itself!" said Mr. Wiggin joyfully. "And this year," the rector added, suddenly taking a grip of Owen's shoulder with his steady pilot's hand, "this year we've got a little Lord Jesus who's gonna take your breath away!" The Rev. Dudley Wiggin mauled Owen's head in his big paw, managing to push down the visor of Owen's red-and-black-checkered hunter's cap; at the same time, he effectively blinded Owen by scrunching up my mother's LUCKY scarf.

"Yes, sir!" said Rector Wiggin, who now lifted the hunter's cap off Owen's head, so quickly that static electricity caused Owen's silky-thin, babylike hair to stand up and wave in all directions. "This year," Captain Wiggin warned, "there's not gonna be a dry eye in the house!"

Owen, who appeared to be strangling in his scarf, sneezed.

"Owen, you come with me!" Barb Wiggin said sharply. "I've got to wrap this poor child in his swaddling clothes- before he catches cold!" she explained to the Merrills; but Mr. Merrill and his shivering wife looked in need of being wrapped in swaddling clothes themselves. They seemed aghast at the notion that Owen Meany was cast as the Prince of Peace. The

   Congregationalists are a lot less miracle-oriented than the Episcopalians, I believe. In the chilly vestibule of the parish house, Barb Wiggin proceeded to imprison Owen Meany in the swaddling clothes; but however tightly or loosely she bound him in the broad, cotton swathes, Owen complained.

"IT'S TOO TIGHT, I CAN'T BREATHE!" he would say, coughing. Or else he would cry out, "I FEEL A DRAFT!"

Barb Wiggin worked over him with such a grim, humorless sense of purpose that you would have thought she was embalming him; perhaps that's what she thought of as she swaddled him-to calm herself. The combination of being so roughly handled by Barb Wiggin and discovering that my grandmother had been free to attend the pageant-but had chosen not to attend-was deleterious to Owen's mood; he grew cranky and petulant. He insisted that he be unswaddled, and then reswaddled, in my mother's LUCKY scarf; when this was accomplished, the white cotton swathes could be wrapped over the scarf to conceal it. The point being, he wanted the scarf next to his skin.

"FOR WARMTH AND FOR LUCK," he said.

"The Baby Jesus doesn't need 'luck,' Owen," Barb Wiggin told him.

"ARE YOU TELLING ME CHRIST WAS LUCKY?" Owen asked her. "I WOULD SAY HE COULD HAVE USED A LITTLE MORE LUCK THAN HE HAD. I WOULD SAY HE RAN OUT OF LUCK, AT THE END."

"But Owen," Rector Wiggin said. "He was crucified, yet he rose from the dead-he was resurrected. Isn't the point that he was saved?"

"HE WAS USED," said Owen Meany, who was in a contrary mood. The rector appeared to consider whether the time was right for ecclesiastical debate; Barb Wiggin appeared to consider throttling Owen with my mother's scarf. That Christ was lucky or unlucky, that he was saved or used, seemed rather serious points of difference-even in the hurried-up atmosphere of the parish-house vestibule, drafty from the opening and closing of the outside door and at the same time smelling of steam from the wet woolen clothes that dripped melting snow into the heat registers. Yet who was a mere rector of Christ Church to argue with the babe in swaddling clothes about to lie in a manger?

"Wrap him up the way he likes it," Mr. Wiggin instructed his wife; but there was menace in his tone, as if the rector were weighing the possibilities of Owen Meany being the Christ or the Antichrist. With the fury of the strokes with which she unwrapped him, and rewrapped him, Barb Wiggin demonstrated that Owen was no Prince of Peace to her. The cows-the former turtledoves-were staggering around the crowded vestibule, as if made restless by the absence of hay. Mary Beth Baird looked quite lush-like a slightly plump starlet-in her white raiment; but both the Holy Mother effect, and the Holy Virgin effect, were undermined by her long, rakish pigtail. As a typical Joseph, I was attired in a dull brown robe, the biblical equivalent of a three-piece suit. Harold Crosby, delaying his ascension in the often-faulty angel-apparatus, had twice requested a "last" visit to the men's room. Swaddled as he was, it was a good thing, I thought, that Owen didn't have to pee. He couldn't stand; and even if he'd been propped up on his feet, he couldn't have walked-Barb Wiggin had wrapped his legs too tightly together. That was the first problem: how to get him to the creche. So that our creative assembly could gather out of sight of the congregation, a tripartite screen had been placed in front of the rude manger-a gold-brocade cross adorned each purple panel of the triptych. We were supposed to take our places behind this altarpiece-to freeze there, in photographic stillness. And as the Announcing Angel began his harrowing descent to the shepherds, thus distracting the congregation from us, the purple screen would be removed. The "pillar of light," following the shepherds and kings, would lead the congregation's rapt attention to our assembly in the stable. Naturally, Mary Beth Baird wanted to carry Owen to the creche. "I can do it!" the Virgin Mother proclaimed. "I've lifted him up before!"

"NO, JOSEPH CARRIES THE BABY JESUS!" Owen cried, beseeching me; but Barb Wiggin wished to undertake the task herself. Observing that the Christ Child's nose was running, she deftly wiped it; then she held the handkerchief in place, while instructing him to "blow." He blew an inhuman little honk. Mary Beth Baird was provided with a clean handkerchief, in case the Baby Jesus's nose became offensive while he lay in view in the manger; the Virgin Mother was delighted to have been given a physical responsibility for Owen.

          Before she lifted the little Prince of Peace in her arms, Barb Wiggin bent over him and massaged his cheeks. There was a curious combination of the perfunctory and the erotic in her attentions to Owen Meany. Naturally, I saw something so stewardesslike in her performance of these duties-as if she were dispatching with Owen in the manner that she might have changed a diaper; while at the same time there was something salacious in how close she put her face to his, as if she were intent on seducing him. "You're too pale," she told him, actually pinching color into Owen's face.

"OW!" he said.

"The Baby Jesus should be apple-cheeked," she told him. She bent even closer to him and touched the tip of her nose to his nose; quite unexpectedly, she kissed him on the mouth. It was not a tender, affectionate kiss; it was a cruel, teasing kiss that startled Owen-he flushed, he turned the rosy complexion Barb Wiggin had desired; tears sprang to his eyes.

"I know you don't like to be kissed, Owen," Barb Wiggin told him flirtatiously, "but that's for good luck-that's all that's for."

I knew it was the first time Owen had been kissed on the mouth since my mother had kissed him; that Barb Wiggin might have reminded him of my mother, I'm sure, outraged him. He clenched his fists at his sides as Barb Wiggin lifted him, stiffly prone, to her breasts. His legs, too tightly swaddled to bend at the knees, stuck out straight; he appeared to be a successful levitation experiment in the arms of a harlot-magician. Mary Beth Baird, who had once pleaded to be allowed to kiss the Baby Jesus, glared with jealous loathing at Barb Wiggin, who must have been an exceptionally strong stewardess-in her time in the sky. She had no difficulty carrying Owen to his prepared place in the hay. She bore him easily against her breasts with the stern sense of ceremony of a foxy mortician-bearing a child-pharaoh into the pyramid's hidden tomb.

"Relax, relax," she whispered to him; she put her mouth wickedly close to his ear, and he blushed rosier and rosier. And I, Joseph-forever standing in the wings-saw what the envious Virgin Mary failed to see. I saw it, and I'm sure Barb Wiggin saw it, too-I'm sure it was why she so shamelessly continued to torture him. The Baby Jesus had an erection; its protrusion was visible in spite of the tightly bound layers of his swaddling clothes. Barb Wiggin laid him in the manger; she smiled knowingly at him, and gave him one more saucy peck, on his rosy cheek-for good luck, no doubt. This was not of the nature of a Christlike lesson for Owen Meany: to learn, as he lay in the manger, that someone you hate can give you a hard-on. Anger and shame flushed Owen's face; Mary Beth Baird, misunderstanding the Baby Jesus' expression, wiped his nose. A cow trod on an angel, who nearly toppled the tripartite, purple screen; the hind part of a donkey was nudged by the teetering triptych. I stared into the darkness of the mock flying buttresses for some reassuring glimpse of the Announcing Angel; but Harold Crosby was invisible-he was hidden, doubtless in fear and trembling, above the "pillar of light."

"Blow!" Mary Beth Baird whispered to Owen, who looked ready to explode. It was the choir that saved him. There was a metallic clicking, like the teeth of a ratchet, as the mechanism for lowering began its task; this was followed by a brief gasp, the panicked intake of Harold Crosby's breath-as the choir began. O lit-tle town of Beth-le-hem, How still we see thee lie! A-bove thy deep and dream-less sleep The si-lent stars go by ... Only gradually did the Baby Jesus unclench his fists; only slowly did the Christ Child's erection subside. The glint of anger in Owen's eyes was dulled, as if by an inspired drowsiness-a trance of peace blessed the little Prince's expression, which brought tears of adoration to the already moist eyes of the Holy Mother.

"Blow! Why won't you blow?" she whispered plaintively. Mary Beth Baird held the handkerchief to his nose, managing to cover his mouth, too-as if she were administering an anesthetic. With grace, with gentleness, Owen pushed her hand and the handkerchief aside; his smile forgave her everything, even her clumsiness, and the Blessed Virgin tottered a trifle on her knees, as if she were preparing to swoon. Hidden from the congregation's view, but ominously visible to us, Barb Wiggin seized the controls of the angel-lowering apparatus like a heavy-equipment operator about to attack the

          terra firma with a backhoe. When Owen caught her eye, she appeared to lose her confidence and her poise; the look he gave her was both challenging and lascivious. A shudder coursed through Barb Wiggin's body; she gave a corresponding jerk of her shoulders, distracting her from her task. Harold Crosby's meant-to-be-stately descent to earth was momentarily suspended.

" 'Be not afraid,' " Harold Crosby began, his voice quaking. But I, Joseph-I saw someone who was afraid. Barb Wiggin, frozen at the controls of the ' 'pillar of light,'' arrested in her duties with the angel-lowering apparatus, was afraid of Owen Meany; the Prince of Peace had regained his control. He had made a small but important discovery: a hard-on comes and goes. The "pillar of light," which was supposed to follow Harold Crosby's now-interrupted, risky descent, appeared to have a will of its own; it illuminated Owen on the mountain of hay, as if the light had wrested control of itself from Barb Wiggin. The light that was supposed to reveal bathed the manger instead. From the congregation-as the janitor tiptoed out of sight with the tripartite screen-there arose a single murmur; but the Christ Child quieted them with the slightest movement of his hand. He directed a most unbabylike, sardonic look at Barb Wiggin, who only then regained her control; she moved the "pillar of light" back to the Descending Angel, where it belonged.

" 'Be not afraid,' " Harold Crosby repeated; Barb Wiggin, a tad eager at the controls of the angel-lowering apparatus, dropped him suddenly-it was about a ten-foot free fall, before she abruptly halted his descent; his head was jerked and snapped all around, with his mouth open, and he swung back and forth above the frightened shepherds, like a giant gull toying with the wind. " 'Be not afraid'!" Harold cried loudly. There he paused, swinging; he was stalling; he had forgotten the rest of his lines. Barb Wiggin, trying to prevent from swinging, turned Harold Crosby away from the shepherds and the congregation-so that he continued to swing, but with his back toward everyone, as if he had decided to spurn the world, or retract his message.

" 'Be not afraid,' " he mumbled indistinctly. From the hay in the dark came the cracked falsetto, the ruined voice of an unlikely prompter-but who else would III

know, by heart, the lines that Harold Crosby had forgotten? Who else but the former Announcing Angel?

" 'FOR BEHOLD, I BRING YOU GOOD NEWS OF A GREAT JOY WHICH WILL COME TO ALL THE PEOPLE,' " Owen whispered; but Owen Meany couldn't really whisper-his voice had too much sand and gravel in it. Not only Harold Crosby heard the Christ Child's prompting; every member of the congregation heard it, too-the strained, holy voice speaking from the darkened manger, telling what to say. Dutifully, Harold repeated the lines he was given. Thus, when the "pillar of light" finally followed the shepherds and kings to their proper place of worship at the creche, the congregation was also prepared to adore him- whatever special Christ this was who not only knew his role but also knew all the other, vital parts of the story. Mary Beth Baird was overcome. Her face flopped first on the hay, then her cheek bumped the Baby Jesus' hip; then she lunged further into prostration, actually putting her heavy head in Owen's lap. The' 'pillar of light'' trembled at this shameless, unmotherly behavior. Barb Wiggin's fury, and her keen anticipation of worse to come, suggested the intensity of someone in command of a machine-gun nest; she struggled to hold the light steady. I was aware that Barb Wiggin had cranked Harold Crosby up so high that he was completely gone from view; up in the dark dust, up in the gloom inspired by the mock flying buttresses, Harold Crosby, who was still probably facing the wrong way, was flapping like a stranded bat-but I couldn't see him. I had only a vague impression of his panic and his helplessness.

" 'I love thee, Lord Je-sus, look down from the sky, And stay by my cradle till morn-ing is nigh,' " sang the choir, thus wrapping up "Away in a Manger." The Rev. Dudley Wiggin was a little slow starting with Luke. Perhaps it had occurred to him that the Virgin Mary was supposed to wait until after the reading before "bowing" to the Baby Jesus; now that Mary Beth's head was already stationed in Owen's lap, the rector might have feared what Mary Beth would think was an appropriate substitute for "bowing."

" 'When went away from them into heaven,' " the rector began; the congregation, automatically, searched the ceiling for Harold Crosby. In the front pews of faces that I

          observed, no one sought the disappearing angel with as much fervor as Mr. Fish, who was already surprised to hear that Owen Meany did have a speaking part. Owen looked ready to sneeze, or else the weight of Mary Beth's head was restricting his breathing; his nose, unwiped and unblown, had dribbled two shiny rivulets across his upper lip. I could see that he was sweating; it was such a cold day, the old church furnace was throwing out the heat full-tilt-the raised altar area was a lot warmer than the wooden pews, where many of the congregation still wore their outdoor clothes. The heat in the manger was stifling. I pitied the donkeys and the cows; inside their costumes, they had to be perspiring. The "pillar of light" felt hot enough to ignite the hay where the Baby Jesus lay pinned by the Holy Mother. We were still listening to the reading from Luke when the first donkey fainted; actually, it was only the hind part of a donkey that fainted, so that the effect of the collapse was quite startling. Many of the congregation were unaware that donkeys came in two parts; the way the donkey crumbled must have been even more alarming to them. It appeared that a donkey's hind legs gave way under him, while the forelegs struggled to remain standing, and the head and neck surged this way and that-for balance. The donkey's ass and hind legs simply dropped to the floor, as if the beast had suifered a selective stroke-or had been shot; its rump was paralyzed. The front half of the donkey made a game effort, but was soon dragged down after its disabled parts. A cow, blinded by its horns-and trying to avoid the falling donkey-butted a shepherd into and over the low communion railing; the shepherd struck the kneeling cushions a glancing blow, and rolled into the center aisle by the first row of pews. When the second donkey dropped, the Rev. Mr. Wiggin read faster.

" 'But Mary kept all these things,' " the rector said, " 'pondering them in her heart.' "

The Virgin Mary lifted her head from the Christ Child's lap, a mystical grin upon her flushed face; she thumped both hands to her heart-as if an arrow, or a lance, had run her through from behind; and her eyes rolled toward her shining forehead as if, even before she could fall, she were giving up the ghost. The Baby Jesus, suddenly anxious about the direction and force of Mother Mary's swoon, reached out his arms to catch her; but Owen was not strong enough to support Mary Beth Baird-chest to chest, she pressed him into the hay, where they appeared to be wrestling. And I, Joseph-I saw how the little Lord Jesus got his mother off him; he goosed her. It was a fast attack, concealed in a flurry of flying hay; you had to be a Joseph-or Barb Wiggin-to know what happened. What the congregation saw was the Holy Mother roll out of the hay pile and across the floor of the manger, where she collected herself at a safe distance from the unpredictable Prince of Peace; Owen withered Mary Beth with a look as scornful as the look he'd shown Barb Wiggin. It was the same look he then delivered to the congregation- oblivious to, if not contemptuous of, the gifts the wise men and the shepherds laid at his feet. Like a commanding officer reviewing his troops, the Christ Child surveyed the congregation. The faces I could see-in the frontmost pews-appeared to be tensing for rejection. Mr. Fish's face, and Dan's face, too-both of these sophisticates of amateur theater were mouths-agape in admiration, for here was a stage presence that could overcome not only amateurism but the common cold; Owen had overcome error and bad acting and deviation from the script. Then I came to the faces in the congregation that Owen must have seen about the same time I saw them; they bore the most rapt expressions of all. They were Mr. and Mrs. Meany's faces. Mr. Meany's granitic countenance was destroyed by fear, but his attention was riveted; and Mrs. Meany's lunatic gawking was characterized by a naked incomprehension. She had her hands clenched together in violent prayer, and her husband held her around her shaking shoulders because she was racked by sobs as disturbing as the animal unhappiness of a retarded child. Owen sat up so suddenly in the mountain of hay that several front-pew members of the congregation were startled into gasps and cries of alarm. He bent stiffly at the waist, like a tightly wound spring, and he pointed with ferocity at his mother and father; to many members of the congregation, he could have been pointing to anyone-or to them all.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING HERE?" the angry Lord Jesus screamed. Many members of the congregation thought he meant them; I could tell what a shock the question was for Mr. Fish, but I knew whom Owen was speaking to. I saw Mr. and Mrs.

          Meany cringe; they slipped off the pew to the kneeling pad, and Mrs. Meany covered her face with both hands.

"YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE!" Owen shouted at them; but Mr. Fish, and surely half the congregation, felt that they stood accused. I saw the faces of the Rev. Lewis Merrill and his California wife; it was apparent that they also thought Owen meant them.

"IT IS A SACRILEGE FOR YOU TO BE HERE!" Owen hollered. At least a dozen members of the congregation guiltily got up from the pews at the rear of the church-to leave. Mr. Meany helped his dizzy wife to her feet. She was crossing herself, repeatedly-a helpless, unthinking, Catholic gesture; it must have infuriated Owen. The Meanys conducted an awkward departure; they were big, broad people and their exit out of the crowded pew, their entrance into the aisle-where they stood out, so alone-their every movement was neither easy nor graceful.

"We only wanted to see you!" Owen's father told him apologetically. But Owen Meany pointed to the door at the end of the nave, where several of the faithful had already departed; Owen's parents, like that other couple who were banished from the garden, left Christ Church as they were told. Not even the gusto with which the choir-following frantic signals from the rector-sang "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" could spare the congregation the indelible image of how the Meanys had obeyed their only son. Rector Wiggin, wringing the Bible in both hands, was trying to catch the eye of his wife; but Barb Wiggin was struck as immovable as stone. What the rector wanted was for his wife to darken the "pillar of light," which continued to shine on the wrathful Lord Jesus.

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!" the Prince of Peace said to Joseph. And what is Joseph if not a man who does what he's told? I lifted him. Mary Beth Baird wanted to hold a part of him, too; whether his goosing her had deepened her infatuation, or had put her in her place without trampling an iota of her ardor, is uncertain-regardless, she was his slave, at his command. And so together we raised him out of the hay. He was so stiffly wrapped, it was like carrying an unmanageable icon-he simply wouldn't bend, no matter how we held him. Where to go with him was not instantly clear. The back way, behind the altar area-the unobserved route we'd all taken to the manger-was blocked by Barb Wiggin. As in other moments of indecision, the Christ Child directed us; he pointed down the center aisle, in the direction his parents had taken. I doubt that anyone directed the cows and donkeys to follow us; they just needed the air. Our procession gathered the force and numbers of a marching band. The third verse of what was supposed to be the Rev. Mr. Wiggin's recessional carol heralded our exit. Mild he lays his glo-ry by, Born that man no more may die, Bom to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them sec-ond birth.

All the way down the center aisle, Barb Wiggin kept the "pillar of light" on us; what possible force could have compelled her to do that? There was nowhere to go but out, into the snow and cold. The cows and the donkeys tore off their heads so that they could get a better look at him; for the most part, these were the younger children-some of them, a very few of them, were actually smaller than Owen. They stared at him, in awe. The wind whipped through his swaddling clothes and his bare arms grew rosy; he hugged them to his birdlike chest. The Meanys, sitting scared in the cab of the granite truck, were waiting for him. The Virgin Mother and I hoisted him into the cab; because of how he was swaddled, he had to be extended full-length across the seat-his legs lay in his father's lap, not quite interfering with Mr. Meany's control of the steering wheel, and his head and upper body rested upon his mother, who had reverted to her custom of looking not quite out the window, and not quite at anything at all.

"MY CLOTHES," the Lord Jesus told me. "YOU GET THEM AND KEEP THEM FOR ME."

"Of course," I said.

"IT'S A GOOD THING I WORE MY LUCKY SCARF," he told me. "TAKE ME HOME!" he ordered his parents, and Mr. Meany lurched the truck into gear. A snowplow was turning off Front Street onto Elliot; it was customary in Gravesend to make way for snowplows, but even the snowplow made way for Owen. Toronto: February , -there was almost no one at the Wednesday morning communion service. Holy Eucharist is

          better when you don't have to shuffle up the aisle in a herd and stand in line at the communion railing, like an animal awaiting space at the feeding-trough-just like another consumer at a fast-food service. I don't like to take communion with a mob. I prefer the way the Rev. Mr. Foster serves the bread to the mischievous style of Canon Mackie; the canon delights in giving me the tiniest wafer he has in his hand-a veritable crumb!-or else he gives me an inedible hunk of bread, almost too big to fit in my mouth and impossible to swallow without prolonged chewing. The canon likes to tease me. He says, "Well, I figure that you take communion so often, it's probably bad for your diet- someone's got to look after your diet, John!" And he chuckles about that; or else he says, ' 'Well, I figure that you take communion so often, you must be starving-someone's got to give you a decent meal!" And he chuckles some more. The Rev. Mr. Foster, our priest associate, at least dispenses the bread with a uniform sense of sacredness; that's all I ask. I have no quarrel with the wine; it is ably served by our honorary assistants, the Rev. Mr. Larkin and the Rev. Mrs. Keeling-Mrs. Katherine Keeling; she's the headmistress at The Bishop Strachan School, and my only qualm with her is when she's pregnant. The Rev. Katherine Keeling is often pregnant, and I don't think she should serve the wine when she's so pregnant that bending forward to put the cup to our lips is a strain; that makes me nervous; also, when she's very pregnant, and you're kneeling at the railing waiting for the wine, it's distracting to see her belly approach you at eye level. Then there's the Rev. Mr. Larkin; he sometimes pulls the cup back before the wine has touched your lips-you have to be quick with him; and he's a little careless how he wipes the rim of the cup each time. Of them all, the Rev. Mrs. Keeling is the best to talk to-now that Canon Campbell is gone. I truly like and admire Katherine Keeling. I regretted I couldn't talk to her today, when I really needed to talk to someone; but Mrs. Keeling is on temporary leave-she's off having another baby. The Rev. Mr. Larkin is as quick to be gone from a conversation as he is quick with the communion cup; and our priest associate, the Rev. Mr. Foster-although he burns with missionary zeal-is impatient with the fretting of a middle-aged man like myself, who lives in such comfort in the Forest Hill part of town. The Rev. Mr. Foster is all for opening a mission on Jarvis Street-and counseling hookers on the subject of sexually transmitted diseases-and he's up to his neck in volunteer projects for the West Indians on Bathurst Street, the very same people so verbally abused by Deputy Warden Holt; but the Rev. Mr. Foster offers scant sympathy for my worries, which, he says, are only in my mind. I love that "only"! And that left Canon Mackie to talk to today; Canon Mackie presents a familiar problem. I said, "Did you read the paper, today's paper-The Globe and Maill It was on the front page."

"No, I've not had time to read the paper this morning," Canon Mackie said, "but let me guess. Was it something about the United States? Something President Reagan said?" He is not exactly condescending, Canon Mackie; he is inexactly condescending.

"There was a nuclear test yesterday-the first U.S. explosion of eighty-seven," I said. "It was scheduled for tomorrow, but they moved it up-it was a way to fool the protesters. Naturally, there were planned protests-for tomorrow."

"Naturally," said Canon Mackie.

"And the Democrats had scheduled a vote-for today-on a resolution to persuade Reagan to cancel the test," I told the canon. "The government even lied about the day the test was going to be. A fine use of the taxpayers' money, eh?"

' 'You're not a taxpayer in the United States-not anymore,'' the canon said.

"The Soviets said they wouldn't test any weapons until the U.S. tested first," I told the canon. "Don't you see how deliberately provocative this is? How arrogant ! How unconcerned with any arms agreement-of any kind! Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else's version of themselves-to anyone else's version! Every country knows more about America than Americans know about themselves! And Americans know absolutely nothing about any other country!"

Canon Mackie observed me mildly. I could see it coining; I talk about one thing, and he bends the subject of our conversation back to me.

"I know you were upset about the Vestry elections, John," he told me. "No one doubts your devotion to the church, you know."

          Here I am, talking about nuclear war and the usual, self-righteous, American arrogance, and Canon Mackie wants to talk about me.

"Surely you know how much this community respects you, John," the canon told me. "But don't you see how your . . . opinions can be disturbing? It's very American-to have opinions as ... strong as your opinions. It's very Canadian to distrust strong opinions."

"I'm a Canadian," I said. "I've been a Canadian for twenty years."

Canon Mackie is a tall, stooped, bland-faced man, so plainly ugly that his ungainly size is unthreatening-and so plainly decent that even his stubbornness of mind is not generally offensive.

"John, John," he said to me. "You're a Canadian citizen, but what are you always talking about? You talk about America more than any American I know! And you're more anti-American than any Canadian I know," the canon said. "You're a little . . . well, one-note on the subject, wouldn't you say?"

"No, I wouldn't," I said.

"John, John," Canon Mackie said. "Your anger-that's not very Canadian, either." The canon knows how to get to me; through my anger.

"No, and it's not very Christian, either," I admitted. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry!" the canon said cheerfully. "Try to be a little . . . different!" The man's pauses are almost as irritating as his advice.

"It's the damn Star Wars thing that gets to me," I tried to tell him. "The only constraint on the arms race that remains is the nineteen seventy-two Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now Reagan has given the Soviets an open invitation to test nuclear weapons of their own; and if he proceeds with his missiles-in-space plans, he'll give the Soviets an open invitation to junk the treaty of nineteen seventy-two, as well!"

"You have such a head for history," the canon said. "How can you remember the dates?"

"Canon Mackie," I said.

"John, John," the canon said. "I know you're upset; I'm not mocking you. I'm just trying to help you understand-about the Vestry elections-"

"I don't care about the Vestry elections!" I said angrily- indicating, of course, how much I cared. "I'm sorry," I said. The canon put his warm, moist hand on my arm.

"To our younger parish officers," he said, "you're something of an eccentric. They don't understand those years that brought you here; they wonder why-especially, when you defame the United States as vociferously as you do-why you aren't more Canadian than you are! Because you're not really a Canadian, you know-and that troubles Some of the older members of this parish, too; that troubles even those of us who do remember the circumstances that brought you here. If you made the choice to stay in Canada, why do you have so little to do with Canada? Why have you learned so little about us? John: it's something of a joke, you know-how you don't even know your way around Toronto.'' That is Canon Mackie in a nutshell; I worry about a war, and the canon agonizes about how I get lost the second I step out of Forest Hill. I talk about the loss of the most substantive treaty that exists between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the canon teases me about my memory for dates'. Yes, I have a good head for dates. How about August , ? Richard Nixon was finished. How about September , ? Richard Nixon was pardoned. And then there was April , : the U.S. Navy evacuated all remaining personnel from Vietnam; they called this Operation Frequent Wind. Canon Mackie is skillfull with me, I have to admit. He mentions "dates" and what he calls my "head for history" to set up a familiar thesis: that I live in the past. Canon Mackie makes me wonder if my devotion to the memory of Canon Campbell is not also an aspect of how much I live in the past; years ago, when I felt so close to Canon Campbell, I lived less in the past-or else, what we now call the past was then the present; it was the actual time that Canon Campbell and I shared, and we were both caught up in it. If Canon Campbell were alive, if he were still rector of Grace Church, perhaps he would be no more sympathetic to me than Canon Mackie is sympathetic today. Canon Campbell was alive on January , . That was the day President Jimmy Carter issued a pardon to the "draft-dodgers." What did I care? I was already a Canadian citizen. Although Canon Campbell cautioned me about my anger, too, he understood why that "pardon" made me so angry. I

   showed Canon Campbell the letter I wrote to Jimmy Carter. "Dear Mr. President," I wrote. "Who will pardon the United States?"

Who can pardon the United States? How can they be pardoned for Vietnam, for their conduct in Nicaragua, for their steadfast and gross contribution to the proliferation of nuclear arms?

"John, John," Canon Mackie said. "Your little speech about Christmas -at the Parish Council meeting? I doubt that even Scrooge would have chosen a Parish Council meeting as the proper occasion for such an announcement."

"I merely said that I found Christmas depressing," I said.

" 'Merely'!" said Canon Mackie. "The church counts very heavily on Christmas-for its missions, for its livelihood in this city. And Christmas is the focal point for the children in our church."

And what would the canon have said if I'd told him that the Christmas of ' put the finishing touches on Christmas for me? He would have told me, again, that I was living in the past. So I said nothing. I hadn't wanted to talk about Christmas in the first place. Is it any wonder how Christmas-ever since that Christmas-depresses me? The Nativity I witnessed in ' has replaced the old story. The Christ is born-"miraculously," to be sure; but even more miraculous are the demands he succeeds in making, even before he can walk! Not only does he demand to be worshiped and adored-by peasants and royalty, by animals and his own parents!-but he also banishes his mother and father from the house of prayer and song itself. I will never forget the inflamed color of his bare skin in the winter cold, and the hospital white-on-white of his swaddling clothes against the new snow-a vision of the little Lord Jesus as a bom victim, born raw, bom bandaged, born angry and accusing; and wrapped so tightly that he could not bend at the knees at all and had to lie on his parents' laps as stiffly as someone who, mortally wounded, lies upon a stretcher. How can you like Christmas after that? Before I became a believer, I could at least enjoy the fantasy. That Sunday, feeling the wind cut through my Joseph-robe out on Elliot Street, contributed to my belief in-and my dislike of-the miracle. How the congregation straggled out of the nave; how they hated to have their rituals revised without warning. The rector was not on the steps to shake their hands because so many of the congregation had followed our triumphant exit, leaving the Rev. Mr. Wiggin stranded at the altar with his benediction unsaid-he was supposed to have delivered his benediction from the nave, where the recessional should have led him (and not us). And what was Barb Wiggin supposed to do with the "pillar of light," now that she had craned the light to follow the Lord Jesus and his tribe to the door? Dan Needham told me later that the Rev. Dudley Wiggin made a most unusual gesture for the rector of Christ Church to make from the pulpit; he drew his forefinger across his throat-a signal to his wife to kill the light, which (only after we'd departed) she finally did. But to many of the bewildered congregation, who took their cues from the rector-for how else should they know what their next move should be, in this unique celebration?-the gesture of the Rev. Dudley Wiggin slashing his own throat was particularly gripping. Mr. Fish, in his inexperience, imitated the gesture as if it were a command-and then looked to Dan for approval. Dan observed that Mr. Fish was not alone. And what were we supposed to do? Our gang from the manger, ill-dressed for the weather, huddled uncertainly together after the granite truck turned onto Front Street and out of sight. The revived hind part of one donkey ran to the door of the parish-house vestibule, which he found locked; the cows slipped in the snow. Where could we go but back in the main door? Had someone locked the parish house out of fear that thieves would steal our real clothes? To our knowledge, there was no shortage of clothes like ours in Gravesend, and no robbers. And so we bucked against the grain; we fought against the congregation-they were coming out-in order that we might get back in. For Barb Wiggin, who wished that every worship service was as smooth as a flight free of bumpy air-and one that departs and arrives on time-the sight of the traffic jam in the nave of the church must have caused further upset. Smaller angels and shepherds darted between the grown-ups' legs; the more stately kings, clutching their toppled crowns-and the clumsier cows, and the donkeys now in halves-made awkward progress against the flow of bulky overcoats. The countenances of many a parishioner reflected shock and insult, as if the Lord Jesus had just spat in their faces-to deem them sacrilegious. Among the older members

          of the congregation-with whom the jocular Captain Wiggin and his brash wife were not an overnight success-there was a stewing anger, apparent in their frowns and scowls, as if the shameful pageant they had just witnessed were the rector's idea of something "modern." Whatever it was, they hadn't liked it, and their reluctant acceptance of the ex-pilot would be delayed for a few more years. I found myself chin-to-chest with the Rev. Lewis Merrill, who was as baffled as the Episcopalian congregation- regarding what he and his wife were supposed to do next. They were nearer the nave of the church than was the rector, who was nowhere to be found, and if the Rev. Mr. Merrill continued to press, with the throng, toward the door, he might find himself out on the steps-in a position to shake hands with the departing souls-in advance of the Rev. Mr. Wiggin's appearance there. It was surely not Pastor Merrill's responsibility to shake hands with Episcopalians, following their botched pageant. God forbid that any of them might think that he was the reason for the pageant being so peculiarly wrecked, or that this was how the Congregationalists interpreted the Nativity.

"Your little friend?" Mr. Merrill asked in a whisper. "Is he always so ... like that?"

Is he always like what? I thought. But in the crush of the crowd, it would have been hard to stand my ground while Mr. Merrill stuttered out what he meant.

"Yes," I said. "That's Owen, this was pure Owen today. He's unpredictable, but he's always in charge."

"He's quite . . . miraculous," the Rev. Mr. Merrill said, smiling faintly-clearly glad that the Congregationalists preferred caroling to pageants, and clearly relieved that Owen Meany had moved no farther down the Protestant rungs than the Episcopalians. The pastor was probably imagining what sort of damage Owen might accomplish at a Vesper service. Dan grabbed me in the connecting passage to the parish house; he said he'd wait for me to get my clothes, and Owen's-we could go back to the dorm together, then, or to  Front Street. Mr. Fish was happy and agitated; if he thought that the Rev. Dudley Wiggin's "slashing his throat" was a part of the rector's annual performance, he also imagined that everything Owen had done was in the script-and Mr. Fish had been quite impressed by the dramatic qualities of the story. "I love the part when he tells what to say-that's brilliant," Mr. Fish said. "And how he throws his mother aside-how he starts right in with the criticism ... I mean, you get the idea, right away, that this is no ordinary baby. You know, he's the Lord! Jesus-from Day One. I mean, he's born giving orders, telling everyone what to do. I thought you told me he didn't have a speaking part! I had no idea it was so ... primitive a ritual, so violent, so barbaric. But it's very moving," Mr. Fish added hastily, lest Dan and I be offended to hear our religion described as "primitive" and "barbaric."

"It's not quite what the ... author . . . intended," Dan told Mr. Fish. I left Dan explaining the deviations from the expected to the excited amateur actor-I wanted to get dressed, and find Owen's clothes, in a hurry, without encountering either of the Wiggins. But I was a while getting my hands on Owen's clothes. Mary Beth Baird had balled them up with her own in a corner of the vestibule, where she then lay down to weep-on top of them. It was complicated, getting her to relinquish Owen's clothes without striking her; and impossible to interrupt her sobbing. Everything that had upset the little Lord Jesus had been her fault, in her opinion; she had not only failed to soothe him-she'd been a bad mother in general. Owen hated her, she claimed. How she wished she understood him better! Yet, somehow-as she explained to me, through her tears-she was sure she "understood" him better than anyone else did. At age eleven, I was too young to glimpse a vision of what sort of overwrought wife and mother Mary Beth Baird would make; there in the vestibule, I wanted only to hit her-to forcibly take Owen's clothes and leave her in a puddle of tears. The very idea of her understanding Owen Meany made me sick! What she really meant was that she wanted to take him home and lie on top of him; her idea of understanding him began and ended with her desire to cover his body, to never let him get up. Because I was slow in leaving the vestibule, Barb Wiggin caught me.

"You can give him this message when you give him his clothes," she hissed to me, her fingers digging into my shoulder and shaking me. "Tell him he's to come see me before he's allowed back in this church-before the next Sunday school class, before he comes to another service. He comes to see me first. He's not allowed here until he sees me!" she repeated, giving me one last shake for good measure.

          I was so upset that I blurted it all out to Dan, who was hanging around the altar area with Mr. Fish, who, in turn, was staring at the scattered hay in the manger and at the few gifts abandoned by the Christ Child there, as if some meaning could be discerned from the arrangement of the debris. I told Dan what Barb Wiggin had said, and how she'd given Owen a hard-on, and how there had been virtual warfare between them-and now, I was sure, Owen would never be "allowed" to be an Episcopalian again. If seeing her was a prerequisite for Owen to return to Christ Church, then Owen, I knew, would be as shunning of us Episcopalians as he was presently shunning of Catholics. I became quite exercised in relating this scenario to Dan, who sat beside me in a front-row pew and listened sympathetically. Mr. Fish came and told us that was still "on-high." He wondered if this was a part of the script-to leave Harold Crosby hanging in the rafters long after the manger and the pews had emptied? Harold Crosby, who thought both his God and Barb Wiggin had abandoned him forever, swung like the victim of a vigilante killing among the mock flying buttresses; Dan, an accomplished mechanic of all theatrical equipment, eventually mastered the angel-lowering apparatus and returned the banished angel to terra firma, where Harold collapsed in relief and gratitude. He had thrown up all over himself, and-in attempting to wipe himself with one of his wings-he'd made quite an unsalvageable mess of his costume. That was when Dan carried out his responsibilities as a stepfather in most concrete, even heroic terms. He carried the sodden Harold Crosby to the parish-house vestibule, where he asked Barb Wiggin if he might have a word with her.

"Can't you see . . ." she asked him, "that this isn't the best of times?"

"I should not want to bring up the matter-of how you left this boy hanging-with the Vestry members," Dan said to her. He held Harold Crosby with some difficulty-not only because Harold was heavy and wet, but because the stench of vomit, especially in the close air of the vestibule, was overpowering.

' 'This isn 't the best of times to bring up anything with me,'' Barb Wiggin cautioned, but Dan Needham was not a man to be bullied by a stewardess.

"Nobody cares what sort of mess-up happens at a children's pageant," Dan said, "but this boy was left hanging-twenty feet above a concrete floor! A serious accident might have occurred-due to your negligence." Harold Crosby shut his eyes, as if he feared Barb Wiggin was going to hit him-or strap him back in the angel-raising apparatus.

"I regret-" Barb Wiggin began, but Dan cut her off.

"You will not lay down any laws for Owen Meany," Dan Needham told her.' 'You are not the rector, you are the rector's wife. You had a job-to return this boy, safely, to the floor-and you forgot all about it. / will forget all about it, too-and you will forget about seeing Owen. Owen is allowed in this church at any time; he doesn't require your permission to be here. If the rector would like to speak with Owen, have the rector call me." And here Dan Needham released the slippery Harold Crosby, whose manner of groping for his clothes suggested that apparatus had cut off all circulation to his legs; he wobbled unsteadily about the vestibule-the other children getting out of his way because of his smell. Dan Needham put his hand on the back of my neck; he pushed me gently forward until I was standing directly between Barb Wiggin and him. "This boy is not your messenger, Missus Wiggin," Dan said. "I should not want to bring up any of this with the Vestry members," he repeated. Stewardesses have, at best, marginal authority; Barb Wiggin knew when her authority had slipped. She looked awfully ready-to-please, so ready-to-please that I was embarrassed for her. She turned her attention, eagerly, to the task of getting Harold Crosby into fresher clothes. She was just in time; Harold's mother entered the vestibule as Dan and I were leaving the parish house. "My, that looked like fun!" Mrs. Crosby said. "Did you have fun, dear?" she asked him. When Harold nodded, Barb Wiggin spontaneously hugged him against her hip. Mr. Fish had found the rector. The Rev. Dudley Wiggin was occupying himself with the Christmas candles, measuring them to ascertain which were still long enough to be used again next year. The Rev. Dudley Wiggin had a pilot's healthy instinct for looking ahead; he did not dwell on the present-especially not on the disasters. He would never call Dan and ask to speak to Owen; Owen would be "allowed" at Christ Church without any consultation with the rector.

"I like the way Joseph and Mary carry the Baby Jesus out of the manger," Mr. Fish was saying.

"Ah, do you? Ah, yes," the rector said.

 

"It's a great ending-very dramatic," Mr. Fish pointed out.

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" the rector said. "Perhaps we'll work out a similar ending-next year.''

"Of course, the part requires someone with Owen's presence," Mr. Fish said. "I'll bet you don't get a Christ Child like him every year."

"No, not like him," the rector agreed.

"He's a natural," Mr. Fish said.

"Yes, isn't he?" Mr. Wiggin said.

"Have you seen A Christmas Carol!" Mr. Fish asked.

"Not this year," the rector said.

"What are you doing on Christmas Eve?" Mr. Fish asked him. I knew what I wished I was doing on Christmas Eve: I wished I was in Sawyer Depot, waiting with my mother for Dan to arrive on the midnight train. That's how our Christmas Eves had been, since my mother had gotten together with Dan. Mother and I would enjoy the Eastmans' hospitality, and I would exhaust myself with my violent cousins, and Dan would join us after the Christmas Eve performance of The Gravesend Players. He would be tired when he got off the train from Gravesend, at midnight, but everyone in the Eastman house-even my grandmother-would be waiting up for him. Uncle Alfred would fix Dan a "nightcap," while my mother and Aunt Martha put Noah and Simon and Hester and me to bed. At a quarter to twelve, Hester and Simon and Noah and I would bundle up and cross the street to the depot; the weather in the north country on a Christmas Eve, at midnight, was not inviting to grown-ups-the grown-ups all approved of letting us kids meet Dan's train. We liked to be early so we could make plenty of snowballs; the train was always on time-in those days. There were few people on it, and almost no one but Dan got off in Sawyer Depot, where we would pelt him with snowballs. As tired as he was, Dan put up a game fight. Earlier in the evening, my mother and Aunt Martha sang Christmas carols; sometimes my grandmother would join in. We children could remember most of the words to the first verses; it was in the later verses of the carols that my mother and Aunt Martha put their years in the Congregational Church Choir to the test. My mother won that contest; she knew every word to every verse, so that-as a carol progressed-we heard nothing at all from Grandmother, and less and less from Aunt Martha. In the end, my mother got to sing the last verses by herself.

"What a waste, Tabby!" Aunt Martha would say. "It's an absolute waste of your memory-knowing all those words to the verses no one ever sings!"

"What else do I need my memory for?" my mother asked her sister; the two women would smile at each other-my Aunt Martha coveting that part of my mother's memory that might tell her the story of who my father was. What really irked Martha about my mother's total recall of Christmas carols was that my mother got to sing those last verses solo; even Uncle Alfred would stop what he was doing-just to listen to my mother's voice. I remember-it was at my mother's funeral-when the Rev. Lewis Merrill told my grandmother that he'd lost my mother's voice twice. The first time was when Martha got married, because that was when both girls started spending Christmas vacations in Sawyer Depot-my mother would still practice singing carols with the choir, but she was gone to visit her sister by the Sunday of Christmas Vespers. The second time that Pastor Merrill lost my mother's voice was when she moved to Christ Church-when he lost it forever. But I had not lost her voice until Christmas Eve, , when the town I was bom in and grew up in felt so unfamiliar to me; Gravesend just never was my Christmas Eve town. Of course, I was grateful to have something to do. Although I'd seen every production of A Christmas Carol-including the dress rehearsal-I was especially glad that the final production was available to take up the time on Christmas Eve; I think both Dan and I wanted our time taken up. After the play, Dan had scheduled a cast party-and I understood why he'd done that: to take up every minute until midnight, and even past midnight, so that he wouldn't be thinking of riding the train to Sawyer Depot (and my mother in the Eastmans' warm house, waiting for him). I could picture the Eastmans having a hard time on Christmas Eve, too; after the first verse, Aunt Martha would be struggling with each carol. Dan had wanted to have the cast party at  Front Street- and I understood that, too: he wanted my grandmother to be just as busy as he was. Of course, Grandmother would have complained bitterly about the party revelers-and about such a "sundry" guest list, given the diverse personalities and social

          stations of a typical Dan Needham cast; but Grandmother would, at least, have been occupied. As it was, she refused; Dan had to beg her to get her to see the play. At first, she gave him every excuse-she couldn't possibly leave Lydia alone, Lydia was sick, there was some congestion in her lungs or bronchial tubes, and it was out of the question that Lydia could go out to a play; furthermore, Grandmother argued, it being Christmas Eve, she had allowed Ethel to visit her next of kin (Ethel would be gone for Christmas Day, and the next day, too), and surely Dan knew how Lydia hated to be left alone with Germaine. Dan pointed out that he thought Germaine had been hired, specifically, to look after Lydia. Yes, Grandmother nodded, that was certainly true-nevertheless, the girl was dismal, superstitious company, and what Lydia needed on Christmas Eve was company. It was, Dan politely reasoned, "strictly for company's sake" that he wanted my grandmother to see A Christmas Carol, and even spend a short time enjoying the festive atmosphere of the cast party. Since my grandmother had refused him the use of  Front Street, Dan had decorated the entire third floor of Waterhouse Hall-opening a few of the less-cluttered boys' rooms, and the common room on that floor, for the cast; his own tiny apartment just wouldn't suffice. He'd alerted the Brinker-Smiths that there might be a rumpus two floors above them; they were welcome to join the festivities, or plug up the twins' ears with cotton, as they saw fit. Grandmother did not see fit to do a damn thing, but she enjoyed Dan's efforts to cajole her out of her veteran, antisocial cantankerousness, and she agreed to attend the play; as for the cast party, she would see how she felt after the performance. And so it fell to me: the task of escorting Grandmother to the closing-night enactment of A Christmas Carol in the Graves-end Town Hall. I took many precautions along the way, to protect Grandmother from fracturing her hip-although the sidewalks were safely sanded, there'd been no new snowfall, and the well-oiled wood of the old Town Meeting place was slipperier than any surface Grandmother was likely to encounter outdoors. The hinges of the ancient folding chairs creaked in unison as I led Harriet Wheelwright to a favored center-aisle seat in the third row, our townspeople's heads turning in the manner that a congregation turns to view a bride-for my grandmother entered the theater as if she were still responding to a curtain call, following her long-ago performance in Maugham's The Constant Wife. Harriet Wheelwright had a gift for making a regal entry. There was even some scattered applause, which Grandmother quieted with a well-aimed glower; respect, in the form of awe-preferably, silent awe-was something she courted, but hand-clapping was, under the circumstances, vulgar. It took a full five minutes for her to be comfortably seated-her mink off, but positioned over her shoulders; her scarf loosened, but covering the back of her neck from drafts (which were known to approach from the rear); her hat on, despite the fact that no one seated behind her could see over it (graciously, the gentleman so seated moved). At last, I was free to venture backstage, where  had grown used to the aura of spiritual calm surrounding Owen Meany at the makeup mirror. The trauma of the Christmas Pageant shone in his eyes like a death in the family; his cold had settled deep in his chest, and a fever drove him to alternate states-first he burned, then he sweated, then he shivered. He needed very little eyeliner to deepen the darkness entombing his eyes, and his nightly, excessive applications of baby powder to his face-which was already as white as the face of a china doll-had covered the makeup table with a silt as fine as plaster dust, in which Owen wrote his name with his finger in square, block letters, the style of lettering favored in the Meany Monument Shop. Owen had offered no explanation regarding the offense he took at his parents' attendance at the Christ Church Nativity. When I suggested that his response to their presence in the congregation had been radical and severe, he dismissed me in a fashion he'd perfected-by forgiving me for what I couldn't be expected to know, and what he would never explain to me: that old UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE that the Catholics had perpetrated, and his parents' inability to rise above what amounted to the RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION they had suffered; yet it was my opinion that Owen was persecuting his parents. Why they accepted such persecution was a mystery to me. From backstage I was uniquely positioned to search the audience for the acquiescent presence of Mr. and Mrs. Meany; they were not there. My search was rewarded, however, by the discovery of a sanguinary Mr. Morrison, the cowardly mail-

          man, his eyes darting daggers in all directions, and wringing his hands-as he might around a throat-in his lap. The look of a man who's come to see What Might Have Been is full of both bloodshed and nostalgia; should Owen succumb to his fever, Mr. Morrison looked ready to play the part. It was a full house; to my surprise, I'd seen many of the audience at earlier performances. The Rev. Lewis Merrill, for example, was back for a second, maybe even a third time! He always came to dress rehearsals, and often to a later performance; he told Dan he enjoyed watching the actors "settle into" their parts. Being a minister, he must have especially enjoyed A Christmas Carol; it was such a heartfelt rendering of a conversion-not just a lesson in Christian charity, but an example of man's humbleness before the spiritual world. Even so, I could not find Rector Wiggin in the audience; I had no expectations of finding Barb, either-I would guess their exposure to Owen Meany's interpretations of the spiritual world was sufficient to inspire them, until next Christmas. Lewis Merrill, forever in the company of the sour stamina that radiated from his wife, was also in the company of his troubled children; often rebellious, almost always unruly, uniformly sullen, the Merrill children acted out their displeasure at being dragged to an amateur theatrical. The tallish boy, the notorious cemetery vandal, sprawled his legs into the tenter aisle, indifferently creating a hazard for the elderly, the infirm, and the unwary. The middle child, a girl-her hair so brutally short, in keeping with her square, shapeless body, that she might have been a boy-brooded loudly over her bubble gum. She had sunk herself so low in her seat that her knees caused considerable discomfort to the back of the neck of the unfortunate citizen who sat in front of her. He was a plump, mild, middle-aged man who taught something in the sciences at Gravesend Academy; and when he turned round in his seat to reprove the girl with a scientific glance, she popped a bubble at him with her gum. The third and youngest child, of undetermined sex, crawled under the seats, disturbing the ankles of several surprised theatergoers and coating itself with a film of grime and ashes-and all manner of muck that the patrons had brought in upon their winter boots. Through all the unpleasantness created by her children, Mrs. Merrill suffered silently. Although they caused her obvious pain, she was unprotesting-since nearly everything caused her pain, she thought it would be unfair to single them out for special distinction. Mr. Merrill gazed undistracted toward center stage, apparently transfixed by the crack where the curtain would part; he appeared to believe that by his special scrutiny of this opening, by a supreme act of concentration, he might inspire the curtains to open. Why, then, was he so surprised when they did? Why was / so surprised by the applause that greeted old Scrooge in his countinghouse? It was the way the play had opened every night; but it wasn't until Christmas Eve that it occurred to me how many of these same townspeople must have been present in those bleacher seats that summer day- applauding, or on the verge of applauding, the force with which Owen Meany struck that ball. And, yes, there was fat Mr. Chickering, whose warm-up jacket had kept me from too close a view of the mortal injury; yes, there was Police Chief Pike. As always, he was stationed by the door, his suspicious eyes roaming the audience as much as they toured the stage, as if Chief Pike suspected that the culprit might have brought the stolen baseball to the play!

" 'If I could work my will,' " said Mr. Fish indignantly, " 'every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.' '' I saw Mr. Morrison silently move his mouth to every word-in the absence of any lines to learn (as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come), he had learned all of Scrooge's lines by heart. What had he made of that so spectacularly spun my mother around? Had he been there to see Mr. Chickering pinch her splayed knees together, for modesty's sake? Just before Owen made contact, my mother had noticed someone in the bleachers; as I remembered it, she was waving to someone just before she was struck. She had not been waving to Mr. Morrison, I was sure; his cynical presence didn't inspire a greeting as unselfconscious as a wave-that lugubrious mailman did not invite so much as a nod of recognition. Yet who was that someone my mother had been waving to, whose was the last face she'd seen, the face she'd singled out in the crowd, the face she'd found there and had closed her eyes upon at the moment of her death? With a shudder, I tried to imagine who it could have been-if not my grandmother, if not Dan . . .

        

" 'I wear the chain I forged in life,' " Marley's Ghost told Scrooge; with my attention fixed upon the audience, I had known where I was in the play by the clanking of Marley's chains.

" 'Mankind was my business,' " Marley told Scrooge. " 'The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!' "

With a shudder, I imagined that it had been my father in the bleachers-it had been my father she'd waved to the instant she was killed! With no idea how I might hope to recognize him, I began with the front row, left-center; I went through the audience, face by face. From my perspective, backstage, the faces in the audience were almost uniformly still, and the attention upon them was not directed toward me; the faces were, at least in part, strangers to me, and-especially in the back rows-smaller than the faces on baseball cards. It was a futile search; but it was then and there that I started to remember. From backstage, watching the Christmas Eve faces of my fellow townspeople, I could begin to populate those bleacher seats on that summer day-row by row, I could remember a few of the baseball fans who had been there. Mrs. Kenmore, the butcher's wife, and their son Donny, a rheumatic-fever baby who was not allowed to play baseball; they attended every game. They were in attendance at A Christmas Carol to watch Mr. Kenmore slaughter the part of the Ghost of Christmas Present; but I could see them in their short-sleeved summer garb, with their identically sunburned noses-they always sat down low in the bleachers, because Donny was not agile and Mrs. Kenmore feared he would fall through the slats. And there was Mr. Early's daughter, Maureen-reputed to have wet her pants when Owen Meany tried out for the part of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. She was here tonight, and had been present every night, to watch her father's vain attempts to make Marley's Ghost resemble King Lear. She simultaneously worshiped and despised her father, who was a terrible snob and regaled Maureen with both undeserved praise and a staggering list of his expectations for her; at the very least, she would one day have her doctorate-and if she were to indulge her fantasy, and become a movie star, she would make her reputation on the silver screen only after numerous triumphs in "legitimate" theater. Maureen Early was a dreamer who squirmed in her seat-whether she was watching her father overact or watching Owen Meany approach home plate. I rememt>ered that she had been sitting in the top row, squirming beside Caroline O'Day, whose father ran the Chevy dealership. Caroline O'Day was one of those rare parochial-school girls who managed to wear her St. Michael's uniform-her pleated flannel skirt and matching burgundy knee socks-as if she were a cocktail waitress in a lounge of questionable repute. With boys, Caroline O'Day was as aggressive as a Corvette, and Maureen Early enjoyed her company because Mr. Early thought the O'Days were vulgar. It had not set well with Mr. Early that Caroline's father, Larry O'Day, had secured the part of Bob Crachit; but Mr. O'Day was younger and handsomer than Mr. Early, and Dan Needham knew that a Chevy salesman's derring-do was far preferable to Mr. Early's attempting to turn Bob Crachit into King Lear. How I remembered them on that summer day-Maureen Early and Caroline O'Day-how they had laughed and squirmed in their seats together when Owen Meany came to bat. What a power I had discovered! I felt certain I could refill those bleacher seats-one day, I was sure, I could "see" everyone who'd been there; I could find that special someone my mother had waved to, at the end. Mr. Arthur Dowling had been there; I could see him shade his eyes with one hand, his other hand shading his wife's eyes-he was that sort of servant to her. Arthur Dowling was watching A Christmas Carol because his wife, the most officious member of the Town Library Board, was steering her humorless self through the chore of being the Ghost of Christmas Past. Amanda Dowling was a pioneer in challenging sexual stereotypes; she wore men's domes-fancy dress, for her, meant a coat and tie-and when she smoked, she blew smoke in men's faces, this being at the heart of her opinions regarding how men behaved toward women. Both her husband and Amanda were in favor of creating mayhem with sexual stereotypes, or reversing sexual roles as arduously and as self-consciously as possible-hence, he often wore an apron while shopping; hence, her hair was shorter than his, except on her legs and in her armpits, where she grew it long. There were certain positive words in their vocabulary-"European,"

          among them; women who didn't shave their armpits or their legs were more "European" than American women, to their undoubted advantage. They were childless-Dan Needham suggested that their sexual roles might be so "reversed" as to make childbearing difficult-and their attendance at Little League games was marked by a constant disapproval of the sport: that little girls were not allowed to play in the Little League was an example of sexual stereotyping that exercised the Dowlings' humorless-ness and fury. Should they have a daughter, they warned, she would play in the Little League. They were a couple with a theme-sadly, it was their only theme, and a small theme, and they overplayed it, but a young couple with such a burning mission was quite interesting to the generally slow, accepting types who were more typical in Gravesend. Mr. Chickering, our fat coach and manager, lived in dread of the day the Dowlings might produce a daughter. Mr. Chickering was of the old school-he believed that only boys should play baseball, and that girls should watch them play, or else play softball. Like many small-town world-changers, the Dowlings were independently wealthy; he, in fact, did nothing-except he was a ceaseless interior decorator of his own well-appointed house and a manicure artist when the subject was his lawn. In his early thirties, Arthur Dowling had developed the habit of puttering to a level of frenzy quite beyond the capacities of the retired, who are conventionally supposed to be the putterers. Amanda Dowling didn't work, either, but she was tireless in her pursuit of the board-member life. She was a trustee of everything, and the Town Library was not the only board she served; it was simply the board she was most often associated with, because it was a board she served with special vengeance. Among the methods she preferred for changing the world, banning books was high on her list. Sexual stereotypes did not fall, she liked to say, from the clear blue sky; books were the major influences upon children-and books that had boys being boys, and girls being girls, were among the worst offenders! Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, for example; they were an education in condescension to women-all by themselves, they created sexual stereotypes! Withering Heights, for example: how that book taught a woman to submit to a man made Amanda Dowling "see red," as she would say. As for the Dowlings' participation in The Gravesend Players: they took turns. Their campaign was relentless, but minor; she tried out for parts conventionally bestowed upon men; he went after the lesser women's roles-preferably nonspeaking. She was more ambitious than he was, befitting a woman determined to reverse sexual stereotypes; she thought that speaking parts for males were perfect for her. Dan Needham gave them what he could; to deny them outright would risk the charge they relished to make, and made often-that so-and-so was "discriminatory." A patterned absurdity marked each Dowling's role onstage; Amanda was terrible as a man-but she would have been just as terrible as a woman, Dan was quick to point out-and Arthur was simply terrible. The townspeople enjoyed them in the manner that only people from small towns-who know how everyone's apron is tied, and by whom-can enjoy tedious eccentrics. The Dowlings were tedious, their eccentricity was flawed and made small by the utter predictability of their highly selective passions; yet they were a fixture of The Gravesend Players that provided constant, if familiar, entertainment. Dan Needham knew better than to tamper with them. How I astonished myself that Christmas Eve! With diligence, with months-even years-backstage in the Gravesend Town Hall, I knew I could find the face my mother had waved to in the stands. Why not at the baseball games themselves? you might wonder. Why not observe the actual fans in the actual bleachers? People tend to take the same seats. But at Dan's theater I had an advantage; I could watch the audience unseen-and I would not be drawing attention to myself by putting myself between the field of play and them. Backstage, and all that this implies, is invisible. You can see more in faces that can't see you. If I was looking for my father, shouldn't I look for him unobserved?

" 'Spirit!' " said Scrooge to the Ghost of Christinas Past. " 'Remove me from this place.' "

And I watched Mr. Arthur Dowling watching his wife, who said: " 'I told you these were shadows of the things that had been. That they are what they are,' " Amanda Dowling said, " 'do not blame me!' " I watched my fellow townspeople snicker-all but Mr. Arthur Dowling, who remained seriously impressed by the reversed sexual role he saw before him. That the Dowlings' 'took turns" at The Gravesend Players-

          that they never took roles in the same play-was a great source of mirth to Dan, who enjoyed joking with Mr. Fish.

"I wonder if the Dowlings 'take turns' sexually \" Dan would say.

"It's most unpleasant to imagine," Mr. Fish would say. What daydreams I accomplished backstage on Christmas Eve! How I fed myself memories from the faces of my fellow townspeople! When Mr. Fish asked the Ghost of Christmas Present if the poor, wretched children were his, the Spirit told him, " 'They are Man's.' " How proud Mrs. Kenmore was of Mr. Kenmore, the butcher; how the rheumatic heart of their son Donny jumped for joy to see his father with words instead of meat at his fingertips! " 'This boy is Ignorance,' " the butcher said. " 'This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be encased.' " He meant " 'erased' "; but Mr. Kenmore was probably thinking of sausages. On the trusting faces of my fellow townspeople there was no more awareness of Mr. Kenmore's error than Mr. Kenmore himself possessed; of the faces I surveyed, only Harriet Wheelwright-who had seen almost as many versions of A Christmas Carol as Dan Needham had directed-winced to hear the butcher butcher his line. My grandmother, a born critic, briefly closed her eyes and sighed. Such was my interest in the audience, I did not turn to face the stage until Owen Meany made his appearance. I did not need to see him to know he was there. A hush fell over the audience. The faces of my fellow townspeople-so amused, so curious, so various-were rendered shockingly similar; each face became the model of each other's fear. Even my grandmother-so detached, so superior-drew her fur closer around her shoulders and shivered: an apparent draft had touched the necks of my fellow townspeople; the shiver that passed through my grandmother appeared to pass through them all. Donny Kenmore clutched his rheumatic heart; Maureen Early, determined not to pee in her pants again, shut her eyes. The look of dread upon the face of Mr. Arthur Dowling surpassed even his interest in sexual role-reversal-for neither the sex nor the identity of Owen Meany was clear; what was clear was that he was a ghost.

" 'Ghost of the Future!' " Mr. Fish exclaimed. " 'I fear you more than any specter I have seen.' " To observe the terror upon my fellow towns-people's faces was entirely convincing; it was obvious that they agreed with Mr. Fish's assessment of this ghost's fearful qualities. " 'Will you not speak to me?' " Scrooge pleaded. Owen coughed. It was not, as Dan had hoped, a "humanizing" sound; it was a rattle so deep, and so deeply associated with death, that the audience was startled-people twitched in their seats; Maureen Early, abandoning all hope of containing her urine, opened her eyes wide and stared at the source of such an unearthly bark. That was when I turned to look at him, too-at the instant his baby-powdered hand shot out of the black folds of his cowl, and he pointed. A fever chill sent a spasm down his trembling arm, and his hand responded to the jolt as to electricity. Mr. Fish flinched.

" 'Lead on!' " cried Scrooge. " 'Lead on!' " Gliding across the stage, Owen Meany led him. But the future was never quite clear enough for Scrooge to see it-until, at last, they came to the churchyard. "A worthy place!" Dickens called it ... "overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up with too much burying, fat with repleted appetite."

" 'Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,' " Scrooge began to say. Among the papier-mache gravestones, where Mr. Fish was standing, one stone loomed larger than the others; it was this stone that Owen pointed to-again and again, he pointed and pointed. So that Mr. Fish would stop stalling-and get to the part where he reads his own name on that grave-Owen stepped closer to the gravestone himself. Scrooge began to babble.

" 'Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But,' " Mr. Fish said to Owen, " 'if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!' "

Owen Meany, not moved to speak, bent over the gravestone; appearing to read the name he saw there to himself, he directly fainted.

'' Owen!'' Mr .Fish said crossly, but Owen was as committed to not answering as the Ghost of the Future. "Owen?" Mr. Fish asked, more sympathetically; the audience appeared to sympathize with Mr. Fish's reluctance to touch the slumped, hooded figure. It would be just like Owen, I thought, to regain consciousness by jumping to his feet and screaming; this was exactly

          what Owen did-before Dan Needham could call for the curtain. Mr. Fish fell over what was meant to be his grave, and the sheer terror in Owen's cry was matched by a corresponding terror in the audience. There were screams, there were gasps; I knew that Maureen Early's pants were wet again. Just what had the Ghost of the Future actually seen ? Mr. Fish, a veteran at making the best of a mess, found himself sprawled on the stage in a perfect position to "read" his own name on the papier-mache gravestone-which he had half-crushed, in falling over it. " 'Ebenezer Scrooge! Am / that man?' " he asked Owen, but something was wrong with Owen, who appeared to be more frightened of the papier-mlche gravestone than Scrooge was afraid of it; Owen kept backing away. He retreated across the stage, with Mr. Fish imploring him for an answer. Without a word, without so much as pointing again at the gravestone that had the power to frighten even the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Owen Meany retreated offstage. In the dressing room, he sobbed upon the makeup table, coating his hair with baby powder, the black eyeliner streaking his face. Dan Needham felt his forehead. "You're burning up, Owen!" Dan said. "I'm getting you straight home, and straight to bed."

"What is it? What happened?" I asked Owen, but he shook his head and cried harder.

"He fainted, that's what happened!" Dan said; Owen shook his head.

"Is he all right?" Mr. Fish asked from the door; Dan had called for a curtain before Mr. Fish's last scene. "Are you all right, Owen?" Mr. Fish asked. "My God, you looked as if you'd seen a ghost!"

"I've seen everything now," Dan said. "I've seen Scrooge upstaged, I've seen the Ghost of the Future scare himself!"

The Rev. Lewis Merrill came to the crowded dressing room to offer his assistance, although Owen appeared more in need of a doctor than a minister.

"Owen?" Pastor Merrill asked. "Are you all right?" Owen shook his head. "What did you see?"

Owen stopped crying and looked up at him. That Pastor Merrill seemed so sure that Owen had seen something surprised me. Being a minister, being a man of faith, perhaps he was more familiar with "visions" than the rest of us; possibly he had the ability to recognize those moments when visions appear to others.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" Owen asked Mr. Merrill.

"You saw something, didn't you?" Pastor Merrill asked Owen. Owen stared at him. "Didn't you?" Mr. Merrill repeated.

"I SAW MY NAME-ON THE GRAVE," said Owen Meany. Dan put his arms around Owen and hugged him. "Owen, Owen-it's part of the story! You're sick, you have a fever! You're too excited. Seeing a name on that grave is just like the story-it's make-believe, Owen," Dan said.

"rrWASMKNAME," Owen said. "NOT SCROOGE'S."

The Rev. Mr. Merrill knelt beside him. "It's a natural thing to see that, Owen," Mr. Merrill told him. "Your own name on your own grave-it's a vision we all have. It's just a bad dream, Owen."

But Dan Needham regarded Mr. Merrill strangely, as if such a vision were quite foreign to Dan's experience; he was not at all sure that seeing one's own name on one's own grave was exactly "natural." Mr. Fish stared at the Rev. Lewis Merrill as if he expected more "miracles" on the order of the Nativity he had only recently, and for the first time, experienced. In the baby powder on the makeup table, the name OWEN MEANY-as he himself had written it-was still visible. I pointed to it. "Owen," I said, "look at what you wrote yourself-just tonight. You see, you were already thinking about it-your name, I mean."

But Owen Meany only stared at me; he stared me down. Then he stared at Dan until Dan said to Mr. Fish, "Let's get that curtain up, let's get this over with."

Then Owen stared at the Rev. Mr. Merrill until Mr. Merrill said, "I'll take you home right now, Owen. You shouldn't be waiting around for your curtain call with a temperature of the-good-Lord-knows-what.'' I rode with them; the last scene of A Christmas Carol was boring to me-after the departure of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the story turns to syrup. Owen preferred staring at the darkness out the passenger-side window to the lit road ahead.

"You had a vision, Owen," Pastor Merrill repeated. I thought it was nice of him to be so concerned, and to drive

          Owen home-considering that Owen had never been a Con-gregationalist. I noticed that Mr. MenilFs stutter abandoned him when he was being directly helpful to someone, although Owen responded ungenerously to the pastor's help-he appeared to be sullenly embracing his "vision," like the typically doubtless prophet he so often seemed to be, to me. He had "seen" his own name on his own grave; the world, not to mention Pastor Merrill, would have a hard time convincing him otherwise. Mr. Merrill and I sat in the car and watched him hobble over the snow-covered ruts in the driveway; there was an outside light left on for him, and another light was on-in what I knew was Owen's room-but I was shocked to see that, on Christmas Eve, his mother and father had not waited up for him!

"An unusual boy," said the pastor neutrally, as he drove me home. Without thinking to ask me which of my two "homes" he should take me to, Mr. Merrill drove me to  Front Street. I wanted to attend the cast party Dan was throwing in Waterhouse Hall, but Mr. Merrill had driven off before I remembered where I wanted to be. Then I thought I might as well go inside and see if my grandmother had come home, or if Dan had persuaded her to kick up her heels-such as she was willing-at the cast party. I knew the instant I opened the door that Grandmother wasn't home-perhaps they were still having curtain calls at the Town Hall; maybe Mr. Merrill had been a faster driver than he appeared to be. I breathed in the still air of the old house; Lydia and Germaine must have been fast asleep, for even someone reading in bed makes a little noise-and  Front Street was as quiet as a grave. That was when I had the impression that it was a grave; the house itself frightened me. I knew I was probably jumpy after Owen's alarming "vision"-or whatever it was- and I was on the verge of leaving, and of running down Front Street to the Gravesend Academy campus (to Dan's dormitory), when I heard Germaine. She was difficult to hear because she had hidden herself in the secret passageway, and she was speaking barely above a whisper; but the rest of the house was so very quiet, I could hear her.

"Oh, Jesus, help me!" she was saying. "Oh, God; oh, dear Christ-oh, good Lord-help me!"

So there were thieves in Gravesend! I thought. The Vestry members had been wise to lock the parish house. Christmas Eve bandits had pillaged  Front Street! Germaine had escaped to the secret passageway, but what had the robbers done to Lydia? Perhaps they had kidnapped her, or stolen her wheelchair and left her helpless. The books on the bookshelf-door to the secret passageway were tumbled all about-half of them were on the floor, as if Germaine, in her panic, had forgotten the location of the concealed lock and key . . . upon which shelf, behind which books? She'd made such a mess that the lock and key were now plainly visible to anyone entering the living room-especially since the books strewn upon the floor drew your attention to the bookshelf-door.

"Germaine?" I whispered. "Have they gone?"

"Have who gone?" Germaine whispered back.

"The robbers," I whispered.

"What robbers?" she asked me. I opened the door to the secret passageway. She was cringing behind the door, near the jams and jellies-as many cobwebs in her hair as adorned the relishes and chutneys and the cans of overused, spongy tennis balls that dated back to the days when my mother saved old tennis balls for Sagamore. Germaine was wearing her ankle-length flannel dressing gown; but she was barefoot-suggesting that the manner of her hiding herself in the secret passageway had not been unlike the way she cleared the table.

"Lydia is dead," Germaine said. She would not emerge from the cobwebs and shadows, although I held the heavy bookshelf-door wide open for her.

"They killed her!" I said in alarm.

"No one killed her," Germaine said; a certain mystical detachment flooded her eyes and caused her to slightly revise her statement. "Death just came for her," Germaine said, shivering dramatically. She was the sort of girl who personified Death; after all, she thought that Owen Meany's voice was simply the speaking vehicle for the Devil.

"How did she die?" I asked.

"In her bed, when I was reading to her," Germaine said. "She'd just corrected me," Germaine said. Lydia was always correcting Germaine, naturally; Germaine's pronunciation was especially offensive to Lydia, who modeled her own pronunciation exactly upon my grandmother's speech and held Germaine accountable for any failures hi imitating my grandmother's reading voice, as well. Grandmother and Lydia often

          took turns reading to each other-because their eyes, they said, needed rest. So Lydia had died while resting her eyes, informing Germaine of her mispronunciation of this or mat. Occasionally, Lydia would interrupt Germaine's reading and ask her to repeat a certain word. Whether correctly or incorrectly pronounced, Lydia would then say, "I'll bet you don't know what the word means, do you?" So Lydia had died in the act of educating Germaine, a task-in my grandmother's opinion-that had no end, Germaine had sat with the body as long as she could stand it.

"Things happened to the body," Germaine explained, venturing cautiously into the living room. She viewed the spilled books with surprise-as if Death had come for them, too; or perhaps Death had been looking for her and had flung the books about in the process.

"What things?" I asked.

"Not nice things," Germaine said, shaking her head. I could imagine the old house settling and creaking, groaning against the winter wind; poor Germaine had probably concluded that Death was still around. Possibly Death had expected that coming for Lydia would have been more of a struggle; having found her and taken her so easily, probably Death felt inclined to stay and take a second soul. Why not make a night of it? We held hands, as if we were siblings taking a great risk together, and went to view Lydia. I was quite shocked to see her, because Germaine had not told me of the efforts she had made to shut Lydia's mouth; Germaine had bound Lydia's jaws together with one of her pink leg-warmers, which she had knotted at the top of Lydia's head. Upon closer inspection, I saw that Germaine had also exercised considerable creativity in her efforts to permanently close Lydia's eyes; upon closing them, she had fastened two unmatched coins-a nickel and a quarter-to Lydia's eyelids, with Scotch tape. She told me that the only matching coins she could find had been dimes, which were too small-and that one eyelid fluttered, or had appeared to flutter, knocking the nickel off; hence the tape. She used the tape on both eyelids, she explained-even though the quarter had stayed in place by itself-because to tape one coin and not the other had not appealed to her sense of symmetry. Years later, I would remember her use of that word and conclude that Lydia and my grandmother had managed to educate Germaine, a little; "symmetry," I was sure, was not a word in Ger-maine's vocabulary before she came to live at  Front Street. I would remember, too, that although I was only eleven, such words were in my vocabulary-largely through Lydia's and my grandmother's efforts to educate me. My mother had never paid very particular attention to words, and Dan Needham let boys be boys. When Dan returned to  Front Street with my grandmother, Germaine and I were much relieved; we'd been sitting with Lydia's body, reassuring ourselves that Death had come and got what it came for, and gone-that Death had left  Front Street in peace, at least for the rest of Christmas Eve. But we could not have gone on sitting with Lydia for very long. As usual, Dan Needham took charge; he'd brought my grandmother home-from her brief appearance at the cast party-and he allowed the cast party to go on without him. He put Grandmother to bed with a rum toddy; naturally, Owen's outburst in A Christmas Carol had upset her-and now she expressed her conviction that Owen had somehow foreseen Lydia's death and had confused it with his own. This point of view was immediately convincing to Germaine, who remarked that while she was reading to Lydia, only shortly before Lydia died, both of them had thought they'd heard a scream. Grandmother was insulted that Germaine should actually agree with her about anything and wanted to disassociate herself from Germaine's hocus-pocus; it was nonsense that Lydia and Germaine could have heard Owen screaming all the way from the Gravesend Town Hall, on a windy winter night, with everyone's doors and windows shut. Germaine was superstitious and probably heard screaming, of one kind or another, every night; and Lydia-it was now clearly proven- was suffering from a senility much in advance of my grandmother's. Nonetheless, in Grandmother's view, Owen Meany had certain unlikable "powers"; that he had "foreseen" Lydia's death was not superstitious nonsense-at least not on the level that Germaine was superstitious.

"Owenforesaw absolutely nothing," Dan Needham told the agitated women. "He must have had a fever of a hundred and four! The only power he has is the power of his imagination."

But against this reasoning, my grandmother and Germaine saw themselves as allies. There was-at the very least-some ominous connection between Lydia's death and what Owen

        

"saw"; the powers of "that boy" went far beyond the powers of the imagination.

"Have another rum toddy, Harriet," Dan Needham told my grandmother.

"Don't you patronize me, Dan," my grandmother said. "And shame on you," she added, "for letting a stupid butcher get his bloody hands on such a wonderful part. Dismal casting," she told him.

"I agree, I agree," Dan said. It was also agreed that Lydia be allowed to lie in her own room, with the door firmly shut. Germaine would sleep in the other twin bed in my room. Although I much preferred the idea of returning to Waterhouse Hall with Dan, it was pointed out to me that the cast party might "rage on" into the small hours-a likelihood that I had been looking forward to-and that Germaine, who was "in a state," should not be left in a room alone. It would be quite improper for her to share a room with Dan, and unthinkable that my grandmother would sleep in the same room with a maid. After all, I was only eleven. I had shared that room so many times with Owen; how I wanted to talk to him now! What would he think of my grandmother's suggestion that he had foreseen Lydia's death? And would he be relieved to learn that Death didn't have a plan to come for him! Would he believe it? I knew he would be deeply disappointed if he missed seeing Lydia. And I wanted to tell him about my discovery-while watching the theater audience-that I believed I could, by this means, actually remember the faces in the audience at what Owen called that FATED baseball game. What would Owen Meany say about my sudden inspiration: that it had been my actual father whom my mother was waving to, the split second before the ball hit her? In the world of what the Rev. Lewis Merrill called "visions," what would Owen make of that one? But Germaine distracted me. She wanted the night-light left on; she tossed and turned; she lay staring at the ceiling. When I got up to go to the bathroom, she asked me not to be gone long; she didn't want to be left alone-not for a minute. If she would only fall asleep, I thought, I could telephone Owen. There was only one phone in the Meany house; it was in the kitchen, right outside Owen's bedroom. I could call him at any hour of the night, because he woke up in an instant and his parents slept through the night like boulders-like immovable slabs of granite. Then I remembered it was Christmas Eve. My mother had once said it was "just as well" that we went to Sawyer Depot for Christmas, because it prevented Owen from comparing what he got for Christmas with what I got. I got a half-dozen presents from each relative or loved one-from my grandmother, from my aunt and uncle, from my cousins, from Dan; and more than a half-dozen from my mother. I had looked under the Christmas tree this year, in the living room of  Front Street, and was touched at Dan's and my grandmother's efforts to match the sheer number of presents-for me-that usually lay under the Eastmans' tree in Sawyer Depot. I had already counted them; I had over forty wrapped presents-and, God knows, there was usually something hidden in the basement or in the garage that was too big to wrap. I never knew what Owen got for Christmas, but it occurred to me that if his parents hadn't even waited up for him-on Christmas Eve!-that Christmas was not especially emphasized in the Meany household. In the past, by the time I came back from Sawyer Depot, half of my lesser toys were broken or lost, and the new things that were truly worth keeping were discovered-by Owen-gradually, over a period of days or weeks.

"WHERE'D YOU GET THAT?"

"For Christmas."

"OH, YES, I SEE . . ."

Now that I thought of it, I could not remember him ever showing me a single thing he got''for Christmas.'' I wanted to call him, but Germaine kept me in my bed. The more I stayed in my bed, and the more I was aware of her-still awake-the stranger I began to feel. I began to think about Germaine the way I often thought about Hester-and how old would Germaine have been in '? In her twenties, I suppose. I actually began to wish that she would climb into my bed, and I began to imagine climbing into hers; I don't think she would have prevented me-I think she would have favored an innocent hug and even a not-so-innocent boy in her arms, if only to keep Death away. I began to scheme-not at all in the manner of an eleven-year-old, but in the manner of an older, horny boy. I began to imagine how much advantage I might take of Germaine, given that she was distraught. I actually said, "I believe you, about hearing him scream." I liedl I didn't believe her at all!

 

"It was his voice," she said instantly. "Now that I remember it, I know it was."

I reached out my hand, into the aisle between the twin beds; her hand was there to take mine. I thought about the way Barb Wiggin had kissed Owen; I was rewarded with an erection powerful enough to slightly raise my bed covers; but when I squeezed Germaine's hand especially hard, she made no response-she just held on.

"Go to sleep," she said. When her hand slipped out of mine, I realized that she had fallen asleep; I stared at her for a long time, but I didn't dare approach her. I was ashamed of how I felt. In the considerably grown-up vocabulary that I had been exposed to through my grandmother and Lydia, I had not been exposed to lust; that was not a word I could have learned from them-that was not a feeling I could label. What I was experiencing simply felt wrong; it made me feel guilty, that a part of myself was an enemy to the rest of myself, and that was when I thought I understood where the feeling came from; it had to come from my father. It was the part of him that stirred inside me. And for the first time, I began to consider that my father might be evil, or that what of himself he had given to me was what was evil in me. Henceforward, whenever I was troubled by a way I felt- and especially when I felt this way, when I lusted-I thought that my father was asserting himself within me. My desire to know who he was took on a new urgency; I did not want to know who he was because I missed him, or because I was looking for someone to love; I had Dan and his love; I had my grandmother-and everything I remembered, and (I'm sure) exaggerated, about my mother. It was not out of love that I wanted to meet my father, but out of the darkest curiosity-to be able to recognize, in myself, what evil I might be capable of. How I wanted to talk to Owen about this! When Germaine started to snore, I got out of bed and crept downstairs to the kitchen phone to call him. The sudden light in the kitchen sent a resident mouse into rapid abandonment of its investigations of the bread box; the light also surprised me, because it turned the myriad Colonial-style windowpanes into fragmented mirror images of myself- there instantly appeared to be many of me, standing outside the house, looking in at me. In one image of my shocked face I thought I recognized the fear and uneasiness peculiar to Mr. Morrison; according to Dan, Mr. Monison's response to Owen's fainting spell and fit had been one of shock-the cowardly mailman had fainted. Chief Pike had carried the fallen postal thespian into the bracing night air, where Mr. Morrison had revived with a vengeance-wrestling in the snow with Gravesend's determined chief of police, until Mr. Morrison yielded to the strong arm of the law. But I was alone in the kitchen; the small, square, mirror-black panes reflected many versions of my face, but no other face looked in upon me as I dialed the Meanys' number. It rang longer than I expected, and I almost hung up. Remembering Owen's fever, I was afraid he might be more soundly asleep than usual-and that Mr. and Mrs. Meany would be awakened by my call.

"MERRY CHRISTMAS," he said, when he finally answered the phone. I told him everything. He was most sympathetic to the notion that I could "remember" the audience at the baseball game by observing the audience at Dan's play; he recommended that he watch with me-two pairs of eyes being better than one. As for my "imagining" that my mother had been waving to my actual father in the last seconds she was alive, Owen Meany believed in trusting such instincts; he said that I must be ON THE RIGHT TRACK, because the idea gave him THE SHIVERS-a sure sign. And as for my desire for Germaine giving me a hard-on, Owen couldn't have been more supportive; if Barb Wiggin could provoke lust in him, there was no shame in Germaine provoking such dreadful feelings in me. Owen had prepared a small sermon on the subject of lust, a feeling he would later describe as A TRUTHFUL PREMONITION THAT DAMNATION IS FOR REAL. As for the unpleasant sensation originating with my father-as for these hated feelings in myself being a first sign of my father's contribution to me-Owen was in complete agreement. Lust, he would later say, was God's way of helping me identify who my father was; in lust had I been conceived, in lust would I discover my father. It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies-inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities-made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me; but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.

          Of course, he agreed with me-how stupid Germame was, to imagine she'd heard him screaming, all the way from the Gravesend Town Hall!

"I DIDN'T SCREAM THAT LOUDLY," he said indignantly. It was Grandmother's interpretation of what he had foreseen that provided the only difference of opinion between us. If he had to believe anything, why couldn't he believe Grandmother-that it was Lydia's death that the gravestone foretold; that Owen had simply "seen" the wrong name?

"NO," he said. "IT WAS MY NAME. NOT SCROOGE'S -AND NOT LYDIA'S."

"But that was just your mistake," I said. "You were thinking of yourself-you'd even been writing your own name, just moments before. And you had a very high fever. If that gravestone actually told you anything, it told you that someone was going to die. That someone was Lydia. She's dead, isn't she? And you're not dead-are you?"

"IT WAS MY NAME," he repeated stubbornly.

"Look at it this way: you got it half-right," I told him. I was trying to sound as if I were an old hand at "visions," and at interpreting them. I tried to sound as if I knew more about the matter than Pastor Merrill.

"IT WASN'T JUST MY NAME," Owen said. "I MEAN, NOT THE WAY I EVER WRITE IT-NOT THE WAY I WROTE FT IN THE BABY POWDER. IT WAS MY REAL NAME-IT SAID THE WHOLE THING," he said. That made me pause; he sounded so unbudging. His "real" name was Paul-his father's name. His real name was Paul O. Meany, Jr.; he'dbeen baptized aCatholic. Of course, he needed a saint's name, like St. Paul; if there is a St. Owen, I've never heard of him. And because there was already a "Paul" in the family, I suppose that's why they called him "Owen"; where that middle name came from, he never said-I never knew.

"The gravestone said, 'Paul O. Meany, Junior'-is that right?" I asked him.

"IT SAID THE WHOLE THING," Owen repeated. He hung up. He was so crazy, he drove me crazy! I stayed up drinking orange juice and eating cookies; I put some fresh bacon in the mousetrap and turned out the light. Like my mother, I hate darkness; in the dark, it came to me-what he meant by THE WHOLE THING. I turned on the light; I called him back.

"MERRY CHRISTMAS," he said.

' 'Was there a date on the gravestone?'' I asked him. He gave himself away by hesitating.

"NO," he said.

"What was the date, Owen?" I asked him. He hesitated again.

"THERE WAS NO DATE," Owen said. I wanted to cry-not because I believed a single thing about his stupid "vision," but because it was the first time he had lied to me.

"Merry Christmas," I said; I hung up. When I turned the light out a second time, there was more darkness in the darkness. What was the date? How much time had he given himself? The only question that I wanted to ask the darkness was the one question Scrooge had also wanted an answer to: " 'Are these the shadows of the things that Will be or are they shadows of the things that May be, only?' " But the Ghost of the Future was not answering.

 THE VOICE

 ABOVE ALL THINGS that she despised, what my grandmother loathed most was lack of effort; this struck Dan Needham as a peculiar hatred, because Harriet Wheelwright had never worked a day in her life-nor had she ever expected my mother to work; and she never once assigned me a single chore. Nevertheless, in my grandmother's view, it required nearly constant effort to keep track of the world-both our own world and the world outside the sphere of Gravesend-and it required effort and intelligence to make nearly constant comment on one's observations; in these efforts, Grandmother was rigorous and unswerving. It was her belief in the value of effort itself that prevented her from buying a television set. She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found writing to be a great waste of time-a childish self-indulgence, even messier than finger painting-but she admired reading, which she believed was an unselfish activity that provided information and inspiration. She must have thought it a pity that some poor fools had to waste their lives writing in order for us to have sufficient reading material. Reading also gave one confidence in and familiarity with language, which was a necessary tool for forming those nearly constant Comments on what one had observed. Grandmother had her doubts about the radio, although she conceded that the modem world moved at such a pace that keeping up with it defied the written word; listening, after all, required some effort, and the language one heard on the radio was not much worse than the language one increasingly stumbled over in newspapers and magazines. But she drew the line at television. It took no effort to watch-it was infinitely more beneficial to the soul, and to the intelligence, to read or to listen-and what she imagined there was to watch on TV appalled her; she had, of course, only read about it. She had protested to the Soldiers' Home, and to the Gravesend Retreat for the Elderly-both of which she served as a trustee-that making television sets available to old people would surely hasten their deaths. She was unmoved by the claim made by both these homes for the aged: that the inmates were often too feeble or inattentive to read, and that the radio put them to sleep. My grandmother visited both homes, and what she observed only confirmed her opinions; what Harriet Wheelwright always observed always confirmed her opinions: she saw the process of death hastened. She saw very old, infirm people with their mouths agape; although they were, at best, only partially alert, they gave their stuporous attention to images that my grandmother described as "too surpassing in banality to recall." It was the first time she had actually seen television sets that were turned on, and she was hooked. My grandmother observed that television was draining what scant life remained in the old people "clean out of them"; yet she instantly craved a TV of her own! My mother's death, which was followed in less than a year by Lydia's death, had much to do with Grandmother's decision to have a television installed at  Front Street. My mother had been a big fan of the old Victrola; in the evenings, we'd listened to Sinatra singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra- my mother liked to sing along with Sinatra. "That Frank," she used to say. "He's got a voice that's meant for a woman-but no woman was ever that lucky." I remember a few of her favorites; when I hear them, I'm still tempted to sing along- although I don't have my mother's voice. I don't have Sinatra's voice, either-nor his bullying patriotism. I don't think my mother would have been fond of Sinatra's politics, but she liked what she called his "early" voice, in particular those songs from Sinatra's first sessions with Tommy Dorsey. Because she liked to sing along with Sinatra, she preferred his voice before the war-when he was more subdued and less of a star, when Tommy Dorsey kept him in balance with the band. Her favorite recordings were from -"I'll Be Seeing You," "Fools Rush In," "I Haven't Time to Be a Millionaire," "It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow," "All This and Heaven, Too," "Where Do You Keep Your Heart?," "Trade Winds," "The Call of the Canyon"; and, most of all, "Too Romantic."

I had my own radio, and after Mother died, I listened to it more and more; I thought it would upset my grandmother to play-on the Victrola-those old Sinatra songs. When Lydia was alive, my grandmother seemed content with her reading; either she and Lydia took turns reading to each other, or they forced Germaine to read aloud to them-while they rested their eyes and exercised their acute interest in educating Germaine. But after Lydia died, Germaine refused to read aloud to my grandmother; Germaine was convinced that her reading aloud to Lydia had either killed Lydia or had hastened her death, and Germaine was resolute in not wanting to murder Grandmother in a similar fashion. For a while, my grandmother read aloud to Germaine; but this afforded no opportunity for Grandmother to rest her eyes, and she would often interrupt her reading to make sure that Germaine was paying proper attention. Germaine could not possibly pay attention to the subject-she was so intent on keeping herself alive for the duration of the reading. You can see that this was a home already vulnerable to invasion by television. Ethel, for example, would never be the companion to my grandmother that Lydia had been. Lydia had been an alert and appreciative audience to my grandmother's nearly constant comments, but Ethel was entirely unresponsive-efficient but uninspired, dutiful but passive. Dan Needham sensed that it was Ethel's lack of spark that made my grandmother feel old; yet whenever Dan suggested to Grandmother that she might replace Ethel with someone livelier, my grandmother defended Ethel with bulldog loyalty. Wheelwrights were snobs but they were fair-minded; Wheelwrights did not fire their servants because they were stodgy and dull. And so Ethel stayed, and my grandmother grew old-old and restless to be entertained; she was vulnerable to invasion by television, too. Germaine, who was terrified when my grandmother read to her-and too terrified to read aloud to Grandmother at all-had too little to do; she resigned. Wheelwrights accept resignations graciously, although I was sorry to see Germaine go. The desire she had provoked in me-as distasteful as it was to me at the time-was a clue to my father; moreover, the lustful fantasies that Germaine provided were, although evil, more entertaining to me than anything I could hear on my radio. With Lydia gone, and with me spending half my days and nights with Dan, Grandmother didn't need two maids; there was no reason to replace Germaine-Ethel would suffice. And with Germaine gone, / was vulnerable to invasion by television, too.

"YOUR GRANDMOTHER IS GETTING A TELEVISION!" said Owen Meany. The Meanys did not have a television. Dan didn't have one, either; he'd voted against Eisenhower in ', and he'd promised himself that he wouldn't buy a TV as long as Ike was president. Even the Eastmans didn't have a television. Uncle Alfred wanted one, and Noah and Simon and Hester begged to have one; but TV reception was still rather primitive in the north country, Sawyer Depot received mostly snow, and Aunt Martha refused to build a tower for the necessary antenna-it would be too "unsightly," she said, although Uncle Alfred wanted a television so badly that he claimed he would construct an antenna tower capable of interfering with low-flying planes if it could get him adequate reception.

"You're getting a televisionT" Hester said to me on the phone from Sawyer Depot. "You lucky little prick!" Her jealousy was thrilling to hear. Owen and I had no idea what would be on television. We were used to the Saturday matinees at the decrepit Gravesend movie house, inexplicably called The Idaho-after the faraway western state or the potato of that name, we never knew. The Idaho was partial to Tarzan films, and-increasingly-to biblical epics. Owen and I hated the latter: in his view, they were SACRILEGIOUS; in my opinion, they were boring. Owen was also critical of Tarzan movies.

"ALL THAT STUPID SWINGING ON VINES-AND THE VINES NEVER BREAK. AND EVERY TIME HE GOES SWIMMING, THEY SEND IN THE ALLIGATORS OR THE CROCODILES-ACTUALLY, I THINK IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME ALLIGATOR OR CROCODILE; THE POOR CREATURE IS TRAINED TO WRESTLE WITH TARZAN. IT PROBABLY LOVES TARZAN! AND IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME OLD ELEPHANT STAMPEDING- AND THE SAME LION, THE SAME LEOPARD, THE

          SAME STUPID WARTHOG! AND HOW CAN JANE STAND HIM? HE'S SO STUPID; ALL THESE YEARS HE'S BEEN MARRIED TO JANE, AND HE STILL CAN'T SPEAK ENGLISH. THE STUPID CHIMPANZEE IS SMARTER," Owen said. But what really made him cross were the Pygmies; they gave him THE SHIVERS. He wondered if the Pygmies got jobs in other movies; he worried that their blowguns with their poison darts would soon be popular with JUVENILE GANGS.

"Where?" I asked. "What juvenile gangs?"

"MAYBE THEY'RE IN BOSTON," he said. We had no idea what to expect from Grandmother's television. There may have been Pygmy movies on The Late Show in , but Owen and I were not allowed to watch The Late Show for several years; my grandmother-for all her love of effort and regulation-imposed no other rules about television upon us. For all I know, there may not have been a Late Show as long ago as ; it doesn't matter. The point is, my grandmother was never a censor; she simply believed that Owen and I should go to bed at a "decent" hour. She watched television all day, and every evening; at dinner, she would recount the day's inanities to me-or to Owen, or Dan, or even Ethel-and she would offer a hasty preview of the absurdities available for nighttime viewing. On the one hand, she became a slave to television; on the other hand, she expressed her contempt for nearly everything she saw and the energy of her outrage may have added years to her life. She detested TV with such passion and wit that watching television and commenting on it-sometimes, commenting directly to it-became her job. There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless our mental and moral deterioration, how swiftly all-embracing our final decadence. I never saw her read a book again; but she referred to books often-as if they were shrines and cathedrals of learning that television had plundered and then abandoned. There was much on television that Owen and I were unprepared for; but what we were most unprepared for was my grandmother's active participation in almost everything we saw. On those rare occasions when we watched television without my grandmother, we were disappointed; without Grandmother's running, scathing commentary, there were few programs that could sustain our interest. When we watched TV alone, Owen would always say, "I CAN JUST HEAR WHAT YOUR GRANDMOTHER WOULD MAKE OF THIS."

Of course, there is no heart-however serious-that finds the death of culture entirely lacking in entertainment; even my grandmother enjoyed one particular television show. To my surprise, Grandmother and Owen were devoted viewers of the same show-in my grandmother's case, it was the only show for which she felt uncritical love; in Owen's case, it was his favorite among the few shows he at first adored. The unlikely figure who captured the rarely uncritical hearts of my grandmother and Owen Meany was a shameless crowd pleaser, a musical panderer who chopped up Chopin and Mozart and Debussy into two- and three-minute exaggerated flourishes on a piano he played with diamond-studded hands. He at times played a see-through, glass-topped piano, and he was proud of mentioning the hundreds of thousands of dollars that his pianos cost; one of his diamond rings was piano-shaped, and he never played any piano that was not adorned with an ornate candelabrum. In the childhood of television, he was an idol-largely to women older than my grandmother, and of less than half her education; yet my grandmother and Owen Meany loved him. He'd once appeared as a soloist for the Chicago Symphony, when he was only fourteen, but now-in his wavy-haired thirties-he was a man who was more dedicated to the visual than to the acoustic. He wore floor-length furs and sequined suits; he crammed sixty thousand dollars' worth of chinchilla onto one coat; he had a jacket of twenty-four-karat gold braid; he wore a tuxedo with diamond buttons that spelled out his name.

"LIBERACE!" Owen cried, every time he saw the man; his TV show appeared ten times a week. He was a ridiculous peacock of a man with a honey-coated, feminine voice and dimples so deep that they might have been the handiwork of a ball peen hammer.

"Why don't I slip out and get into something more spectacular?" he would coo; each time, my grandmother and Owen would roar with approval, and Liberace would return to his piano, having changed his sequins for feathers. Liberace was an androgynous pioneer, I suppose-preparing the society for freaks like Elton John and Boy George-but I could never understand why Owen and Grandmother liked him. It certainly wasn't his music, for he edited Mozart in such

          a jaunty fashion that you thought he was playing "Mack the Knife"; now and then he played "Mack the Knife," too.

"He loves his mother," my grandmother would say, in Liberace's defense-and, in truth, it seemed to be true; not only did he ooh and aah about his mother on TV, but it was reported that he actually lived with the old lady until she died-in !

"HE GAVE HIS BROTHER A JOB," Owen pointed out, "AND I DON'T THINK GEORGE IS ESPECIALLY TALENTED.' ' Indeed, George, the silent brother, played a straight-man's violin until he left the act to become the curator of the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas, where he died-in . But where did Owen get the idea that Liberace was ESPECIALLY TALENTED? To me, his principal gift was how unselfconsciously he amused himself-and he was capable of making fun of himself, too. But my grandmother and Owen Meany twittered over him as hysterically as the blue-haired ladies in Liberace's TV audience did-especially when the famous fool skipped into the audience to dance with them!

"He actually likes old people!" my grandmother said in wonder.

"HE WOULD NEVER HURT ANYONE!" said Owen Meany admiringly. At the time, I thought he was a fruitcake, but a London columnist who made a similar slur regarding Liberace's sexual preferences lost a libel judgment to him. (That was in ; on the witness stand, Liberace testified that he was opposed to homosexuality. I remember how Owen and my grandmother cheered!) And so, in , my excitement over the new television at  Front Street was tempered by the baffling love of my grandmother and Owen Meany for Liberace. I felt quite excluded from their mindless worship of such a kitschy phenomenon-my mother would never have sung along with Liberace!-and I expressed my criticism, as always, to Dan. Dan Needham took a creative, often a positive view of misfortune; many faculty members in even the better secondary schools are failures-in-hiding-lazy men and women whose marginal authority can be exercised only over adolescents; but Dan was never one of these. Whether he hoped to retire at Gravesend Academy when he first fell in love and married my mother, I'll never know; but her loss, and his reaction to that injustice, caused him to devote himself to the development of the education of "the whole boy" in ways that surpassed even the loftily expressed goals in Gravesend's curriculum-where "the whole boy" was the proposed result of the four-year program of study. Dan became the best of those faculty found at a prep school: he was not only a spirited, good teacher, but he believed that it was a hardship to be young, that it was more difficult to be a teenager than a grown-up-an opinion not widely held among grown-ups, and rarely held among the faculty members at a private school (who more frequently look upon their charges as the privileged louts of the luxury class-spoiled brats in need of discipline). Dan Needham, although he encountered at Gravesend Academy many spoiled brats in need of discipline, simply had more sympathy for people under twenty than he had for people his own age, and older-although he increased his sympathy for the elderly, who (he believed) were suffering a second adolescence and (like the boys at Gravesend) required special care.

"Your grandmother is getting old," Dan told me. "She's suffered losses-her husband, your mother. And Lydia- although neither your grandmother nor Lydia knew it-was possibly your grandmother's closest friend. Ethel is no better company than a fire hydrant. If your grandmother loves Liberace, don't fault her for that. Don't be such a snob! If someone makes her happy, don't complain," Dan said. But if it was tolerable to be Grandmother's age and adore Liberace, it was intolerable that Owen Meany should also love that simpering, piano-key smile.

"I'm sick of how smart Owen thinks he is," I said to Dan. "If he's so smart, how can he like Liberace-at his age?"

"Owen is smart," Dan said. "He's smarter than even he knows. But he is not worldly," Dan added. "God knows-in his family-what terrible superstitions he's grown up with! His father is an uneducated mystery, and no one knows the measure of his mother's mental problems-she's in such a lunatic state, we can't even guess how insane she is! Maybe Owen likes Liberace because Liberace couldn't exist in Graves-end. Why does he think he'd be so happy in Sawyer Depot?" Dan asked me. "Because he's never been there."

I thought Dan was right; but Dan's theories about Owen were always a little too complete. When I told Dan that Owen remained convinced he had seen the exact date of his own death-and that he refused to tell me what the special day was-Dan too neatly put that problem to rest along with the

          superstitions Owen's parents had subjected him to; I couldn't help thinking that Owen was more creative, and more responsible, than that. And if Dan was one of the gifted and tirelessly unselfish faculty members at the academy, his sincere devotion to the goal of "the whole boy" may have blinded him to the faults of the school-and especially to the many flawed members of the faculty and the administration. Dan believed that Gravesend Academy could rescue anyone. All that Owen needed was to survive until he was old enough to enter the academy. Owen's naturally good mind would mature when confronted with the academic challenges; Owen's superstitions would vanish in the company of the academy's more worldly students. Like many dedicated educators, Dan Needham had made education his religion; Owen Meany lacked only the social and intellectual stimulation that a good school could provide. At Gravesend Academy, Dan was sure, the brute-stupid influence of Owen's parents would be washed clean away-as cleanly as the ocean at Little Boar's Head could wash the quarry dust from Owen's body. My Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred couldn't wait for Noah and Simon to be old enough to attend Gravesend Academy. The Eastmans, like Dan, believed in the powers of a good private-school education-specifically, in the case of Noah and Simon, in the power to rescue those two daredevils from the standard fates of rural, north country boys: the marriage of driving fast on the back roads, and beer; and the trailer-park girls in the back seats of those cars, those girls who successfully conspired to get pregnant before their high-school graduations. Like many boys who are sent off to private schools, my cousins Noah and Simon had a wildness within them that couldn't be safely contained by their homes or their communities; they had dangerous edges in need of blunting. Everyone suspected that the rigors of a good school would have the desired, dulling effect on Noah and Simon-Gravesend Academy would assault them with a host of new demands, of impossible standards. The sheer volume (if not the value) of the homework would tire them out, and everyone knew that tired boys were safer boys; the numbing routine, the strict attentions paid to the dress code, the regulations regarding only the most occasional and highly chaperoned encounters with the female sex ... all this would certainly civilize them. Why my Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred were less concerned with civilizing Hester remains a mystery to me. That Gravesend Academy did not admit girls, in those days, should not have influenced the Eastmans' decision to send or not to send Hester off to a private school; there were plenty of private schools for girls, and Hester was in as much need of rescuing from the wildness within her-and from the rural, north country rituals of her sex-as Noah and Simon were in need of saving. But in this interim period of time-when Noah and Simon and Owen and I were all waiting to be old enough to attend the academy-Hester began to resent that there were no plans being made for her salvation. The idea that she was not in need of rescuing would surely have insulted her; and the notion that my aunt and uncle might have considered her beyond saving would have hurt her in another way.

"EITHER WAY," said Owen Meany, "THAT'S WHEN HESTER WENT ON THE WARPATH."

"What warpath?" Grandmother asked Owen; but Owen and I were careful not to discuss Hester with my grandmother. A new bond had developed between Owen and Grandmother because of Liberace; they also watched lots of old movies together and encouraged each other's constant comments. It was Grandmother's appreciation of Owen's commentary, which was as ripe with complaint as her own, that enlisted my grandmother's support of Owen as Gravesend Academy "material."

"Just what do you mean, you think you 'might not' go to the academy?" she asked him.

"WELL, I KNOW I'LL GET IN-AND I KNOW I'LL GET A FULL SCHOLARSHIP, TOO," Owen said.

"Of course you will!" my grandmother said.

"BUT I DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT KIND OF CLOTHES," Owen said. "ALL THOSE COATS AND TIES, AND DRESS SHIRTS, AND SHOES."

"Do you mean, they don't make them in your size?" Grandmother asked him. "Nonsense! One just has to go shopping in the right places."

' 'I MEAN MY PARENTS CAN'T AFFORD THOSE KIND OF CLOTHES," Owen said. We were watching an old Alan Ladd movie on The Early Show. It was called Appointment with Danger, and Owen thought it was ridiculous that all the men in Gary, Indiana, wore suits and hats.

        

"They used to wear them here," my grandmother said; but, probably, they never wore them at the Meany Granite Quarry. Jack Webb, before he was the good cop in Dragnet, was a bad guy in Appointment with Danger; he was, among his other endeavors, attempting to murder a nun. This gave Owen the shivers. The movie gave my grandmother the shivers, too, because she recalled that she had seen it at The Idaho in -with my mother.

"The nun will be all right, Owen," she told him.

"IT'S NOT THE IDEA OF MURDERING HER THAT GIVES ME THE SHIVERS," Owen explained. "IT'S THE IDEA OF NUNS-IN GENERAL."

"I know what you mean," my grandmother said; she harbored her own misgivings about the Catholics.

"WHAT WOULD IT COST TO HAVE A COUPLE OF SUITS AND A COUPLE OF JACKETS AND A COUPLE OF PAIRS OF DRESS PANTS, AND SHIRTS, AND TIES, AND SHOES-YOU KNOW, THE WORKS?" Owen asked.

"I'm going to take you shopping myself," Grandmother told him. "You let me worry about what it will cost. Nobody needs to know what it costs."

"MAYBE, IN MY SIZE, IT'S NOT SO EXPENSIVE," Owen said. And so-even without my mother alive to urge him-Owen Meany agreed that he was Gravesend Academy "material.'' The academy agreed, too. Even without Dan Needham's recommendation, they would have admitted Owen with a full scholarship; he was obviously in need of a scholarship, and he had all A's at Gravesend Junior High School. The problem was-though Dan Needham had legally adopted me, and I therefore had the privileged status of a faculty son-the academy was reluctant to accept me. My junior-high-school performance was so undistinguished that the academy admissions officers advised Dan to have me attend the ninth grade at Gravesend High School; the academy would admit me to their ninth-grade class the following year-when, they said, it would be easier for me to make the adjustment because I would be repeating the ninth grade. I had always known I was a weak student; this was less a blow to my self-esteem than it was painful for me to think of Owen moving ahead of me-we wouldn't be in the same class, we wouldn't graduate together. There was another, more practical consideration: that, in my senior year, I wouldn't have Owen around to help me with my homework. That was a promise Owen had made to my motnen that he would always help me with my homework. And so, before Grandmother took Owen shopping for his academy clothes, Owen announced his decision to attend the ninth grade at Gravesend High School, too. He would stay wkh me; he would enter the academy the following year-he could have skipped a grade, yet he volunteered to repeat the ninth grade with me! Dan convinced the admissions officers that although Owen was academically quite advanced, it would also be good for him to repeat a grade, to be a year older as a ninth grader-"because of his physical immaturity," Dan argued. When the admissions officers met Owen, of course they agreed with Dan-they didn't know that a year older, in Owen's case, didn't mean that he'd be a year bigger. Dan and my grandmother were quite touched by Owen's loyalty to me; Hester, naturally, denounced Owen's behavior as "queer"; naturally, I loved him, and I thanked him for his sacrifice-but in my heart I resented his power over me.

"DON'T GIVE IT ANOTHER THOUGHT," he said: "WE'RE PALS, AREN'T WE? WHAT ARE FRIENDS FOR? I'LL NEVER LEAVE YOU."

Toronto: February , -Liberace died yesterday; he was sixty-seven. His fans had been maintaining a candlelit vigil outside his Palm Springs mansion, which was formerly a convent. Wouldn't that have given Owen the shivers? Liberace had revised his former opposition to homosexuality. "If you swing with chickens, that is your perfect right," he said. Yet he denied the allegations in a  palimony suit that he had paid for the sexual services of a male employee-a former valet and live-in chauffeur. There was a settlement out of court. And Liberace's manager denied that the entertainer was a victim of AIDS; Liberace's recent weight loss was the result, the manager said, of a watermelon-only diet. What would my grandmother and Owen Meany have said about that ?

"LIBERACE!" Owen would have cried."WHO WOULD HAVE BELIEVED IT POSSIBLE? LIBERACE! KILLED BY WATERMELONS!"