Mr. Fish, perhaps to compose himself, was humming the tune to a familiar Christmas carol. Even Dan Needham knew the words. As Owen finished knocking the snow off his boots—as the little Lord Jesus stepped inside our house—Dan half-sang, half-mumbled the refrain we knew so well: “Hark! the her-ald an-gels sing, ‘Glo-ry to the new-born King!’”
5
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—f
or 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.