A Prayer for Owen Meany

“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 the angel 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. I 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 the angel 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.