“He’s never heard of it!” the wife repeated. She took a letter out of her purse, and opened it. “Do you know where Lonsdale Road is?” she asked me.
“Somewhere around here,” I said. “I think I’ve heard of that.”
They drove off—in the direction of St. Clair, and the reservoir; they went the wrong way, of course. Their plans were certainly unclear, but they exhibited an exemplary American firmness.
And so I must have been feeling a little homesick; I get that way from time to time. And what a day it was to buy The New York Times! I don’t suppose there’s ever a good day to buy it. But what a story I read!
Nancy Reagan Says Hearings
Have Not Affected President
Oh, boy. Mrs. Reagan said that the congressional hearings on the Iran-contra deals had not affected the president. Mrs. Reagan was in Sweden to observe a drug-abuse program in a high school in a Stockholm suburb; I guess she’s one of those many American adults of a certain advanced age who believe that the root of all evil lies in the area of young people’s self-abuse. Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people—not even young people on drugs—are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world!
The wives of American presidents have always been active in eradicating their pet peeves; Mrs. Reagan is all upset about drug abuse. I think it was Mrs. Johnson who wanted to rid the nation of junk cars; those cars that no longer could be driven anywhere, but simply sat—rusting into the landscape … they made her absolutely passionate about their removal. And there was another president’s wife, or maybe it was a vice-president’s wife, who thought it was a disgrace how the nation, as a whole, paid so little attention to “art”; I forget what it was that she wanted to do about it.
But it doesn’t surprise me that the president is “not affected” by the congressional hearings; he hasn’t been too “affected” by what the Congress tells him he can and can’t do, either. I doubt that these hearings are going to “affect” him very greatly.
Who cares if he “knew”—exactly, or inexactly—that money raised by secret arms sales to Iran was being diverted to the support of the Nicaraguan rebels? I don’t think most Americans care.
Americans got bored with hearing about Vietnam before they got out of Vietnam; Americans got bored with hearing about Watergate, and what Nixon did or didn’t do—even before the evidence was all in. Americans are already bored with Nicaragua; by the time these congressional hearings on the Iran-contra affair are over, Americans won’t know (or care) what they think—except that they’ll be sick and tired of it. After a while, they’ll be tired of the Persian Gulf, too. They’re already sick to death of Iran.
This syndrome is as familiar to me as Hester throwing up on New Year’s Eve. It was New Year’s Eve, 1963; Hester was vomiting in the rose garden, and Owen and I were watching TV. There were 16,300 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. On New Year’s Eve in ’64, a total of 23,300 Americans were there; Hester was barfing her brains out again. I think the January thaw was early that year; I think that was the year Hester was puking in the rain, but maybe the early thaw was New Year’s Eve in 1965, when there were 184,300 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. Hester just threw up; she was nonstop. She was violently opposed to the Vietnam War; she was radically opposed to it. Hester was so ferociously antiwar that Owen Meany used to say that he knew of only one good way to get all those Americans out of Vietnam.
“WE SHOULD SEND HESTER INSTEAD,” he used to say. “HESTER SHOULD DRINK HER WAY THROUGH NORTH VIETNAM,” Owen would say. “WE SHOULD SEND HESTER TO HANOI,” he told me. “HESTER, I’VE GOT A GREAT IDEA,” Owen said to her. “WHY DON’T YOU GO THROW UP ON HANOI INSTEAD?”
On New Year’s Eve, 1966, there were 385,300 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam; 6,644 had been killed in action. Hester and Owen and I weren’t together for New Year’s Eve that year. I watched the television at 80 Front Street by myself. Somewhere, I was sure, Hester was throwing up; but I didn’t know where. In ’67, there were 485,600 Americans in Vietnam; 16,021 had been killed there. I watched television at 80 Front Street, alone again. I’d had a little too much to drink myself; I was trying to remember when Grandmother had purchased a color television set, but I couldn’t. I’d had enough to drink so that I was sick in the rose garden; it was cold enough to make me hope, for Hester’s sake, that she was throwing up in a warmer climate.
Owen was in a warmer climate.
I don’t remember where I was or what I did for New Year’s Eve in 1968. There were 536,100 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam; that was still about 10,000 short of what our peak number would be. Only 30,610 Americans had been killed in action, about 16,000 short of the number of Americans who would die there. Wherever I was for New Year’s Eve, 1968, I’m sure I was drunk and throwing up; wherever Hester was, I’m sure she was drunk and throwing up, too.
As I’ve said, Owen didn’t show me what he wrote in his diary; it was much later—after everything, after almost everything—when I saw what he’d
written there. There is one particular entry I wish I could have read when he wrote it; it is a very early entry, not far from his excited optimism following Kennedy’s inauguration, not all that far from his thanking my grandmother for the gift of the diary and his announced intention to make her proud of him. This entry strikes me as important; it is dated January 1, 1962, and it reads as follows:
I know three things. I know that my voice doesn’t change, and I know when I’m going to die. I wish I knew why my voice never changes, I wish I knew how I was going to die; but God has allowed me to know more than most people know—so I’m not complaining. The third thing I know is that I am God’s instrument; I have faith that God will let me know what I’m supposed to do, and when I’m supposed to do it. Happy New Year!
That was the January of our senior year at Gravesend Academy; if I had understood then that this was his fatalistic acceptance of what he “knew,” I could have better understood why he behaved as he did—when the world appeared to turn against him, and he hardly raised a hand in his own defense.
We were hanging around the editorial offices of The Grave—that year The Voice was also editor-in-chief—when a totally unlikable senior named Larry Lish told Owen and me that President Kennedy was “diddling” Marilyn Monroe.
Larry Lish—Herbert Lawrence Lish, Jr. (his father was the movie producer Herb Lish)—was arguably Gravesend’s most cynical and decadent student. In his junior year, he’d gotten a town girl pregnant, and his mother—only recently divorced from his father—had so skillfully and swiftly arranged for the girl’s abortion that not even Owen and I knew who the girl was; Larry Lish had spoiled a lot of girls’ good times. His mother was said to be ready to fly his girlfriends to Sweden at the drop of a hat; it was rumored that she accompanied the girls, too—just to make sure they went through with it. And after these return trips from Sweden, the girls never wanted to see Larry again. He was a charming sociopath, the kind of creep who makes a good first impression on those poor, sad people who are dazzled by top-drawer accents and custom-made dress shirts.
He was witty—even Owen was impressed by Lish’s editorial cleverness for The Grave—and he was cordially loathed by students and faculty alike; I say “cordially,” in the case of the students, because no one would have refused an invitation to one of his father’s or his mother’s parties. In the case of the faculty, they exercised a “cordial” hatred of Lish because his father was so famous that many faculty members were afraid of him—and Lish’s mother, the divorcée, was a beauty and a whorish flirt. I’m sure that some of the faculty lived for the glimpse they might get of her on Parents’ Day; many of the students felt that way about Larry Lish’s mother, too.
Owen and I had never been invited to one of Mr. or Mrs. Lish’s parties; New Hampshire natives are not regularly within striking distance of New York City—not to mention Beverly Hills. Herb Lish lived in Beverly Hills; those were Hollywood parties, and Larry Lish’s Gravesend acquaintances who were fortunate enough to come from the Los Angeles area claimed to have met actual “starlets” at those lavish affairs.
Mrs. Lish’s Fifth Avenue parties were no less provocative; the seduction and intimidation of young people was an activity both Lishes enjoyed. And the New York girls—although they weren’t always aspiring actresses—were reputed to “do it” with even less resistance than the marginal protestations offered by the California variety.
Mr. and Mrs. Lish, following their divorce, were in competition for young Larry’s doubtful affection; they had chosen a route to his heart that was strewn with excessive partying and expensive sex. Larry divided his vacations between New York City and Beverly Hills. On both coasts, the segment of society that Mr. and Mrs. Lish “knew” was comprised of the kind of people who struck many Gravesend Academy seniors as the most fascinating people alive; Owen and I, however, had never heard of most of these people. But we had certainly heard of President John F. Kennedy; and we had certainly seen every movie that starred Marilyn Monroe.
“You know what my mother told me over the vacation?” Larry Lish asked Owen and me.
“Let me guess,” I said. “She’s going to buy you an airplane.”
“AND WHEN YOUR FATHER HEARD ABOUT IT,” said Owen Meany, “HE SAID HE’D BUY YOU A VILLA IN FRANCE—ON THE RIVIERA!”
“Not this year,” Larry Lish said slyly. “My mother told me that JFK was diddling Marilyn Monroe—and countless others,” he added.