“Of course,” I said.
“WELL, THAT’S VERY BAD,” Owen said. “DAN SHOULDN’T BE ALONE WITH THAT DUMMY. WHAT IF HE JUST SITS AROUND AND STARES AT IT? WHAT IF HE WAKES UP IN THE NIGHT AND HE SEES IT STANDING THERE ON HIS WAY TO THE REFRIGERATOR? WE SHOULD GO GET IT—RIGHT NOW.”
He arranged his flashlight in the flowers, so that the shiny body of the light was completely blanketed by the flowers and the light itself shone upon the mound. Then he stood up and brushed the dirt off the knees of his pants. He closed his prayer book and looked at how the light fell over my mother’s grave; he seemed pleased. I was not the only one who knew how my mother had hated the darkness.
We couldn’t all fit in the cab of the granite truck, so Owen sat with Hester and me on the dusty floor of the flatbed trailer while Mr. Meany drove us to Dan’s dorm. The senior students were up; we passed them on the stairwell and in the hall—some of them were in their pajamas, and all of them ogled Hester. I could hear the ice cubes rattling in Dan’s glass before he opened the door.
“WE’VE COME FOR THE DUMMY, DAN,” Owen said, immediately taking charge.
“The dummy?” Dan said.
“YOU’RE NOT GOING TO SIT AROUND AND STARE AT IT,” Owen told him. He marched into the dining room where the dressmaker’s dummy maintained its sentinel position over my mother’s sewing machine; a few dressmaking materials were still spread out on the dining-room table; a drawing of a new pattern was pinned down flat on the table by a pair of shears. The dummy, howeve
r, was not newly attired. The dummy wore my mother’s hated red dress. Owen had been the last person to dress the dummy; this time, he had tried a wide, black belt—one of Mother’s favorites—to try to make the dress more tempting.
He took the belt off and put it on the table—as if Dan might have use for the belt!—and he picked the dummy up by her hips. When they were standing side by side, Owen came up only to the dummy’s breasts; when he lifted her, her breasts were above his head—pointing the way.
“YOU DO WHAT YOU WANT, DAN,” Owen told him, “BUT YOU’RE NOT GOING TO STARE AT THIS DUMMY AND MAKE YOURSELF MORE UNHAPPY.”
“Okay,” Dan said; he took another drink of his whiskey. “Thank you, Owen,” he added, but Owen was already marching out.
“COME ON,” he said to Hester and me, and we followed him.
We drove out Court Street, and the entire length of Pine Street, with the trees blowing overhead and the granite dust stinging our faces on the flatbed. Owen whacked the truck cab once. “FASTER!” he shouted to his father, and Mr. Meany drove faster.
On Front Street, just as Mr. Meany was slowing down, Hester said, “I could drive like this all night. I could drive to the beach and back. It feels so good. It’s the only way to feel cool.”
Owen whacked the truck cab again. “DRIVE TO THE BEACH!” he said. “DRIVE TO LITTLE BOAR’S HEAD AND BACK!”
We were off. “FASTER!” Owen shouted once, out on the empty road to Rye. It was a fast eight or ten miles; soon the granite dust was gone from the floor of the flatbed, and the only thing to sting our faces was an occasional insect, pelting by. Hester’s hair was wild. The wind rushed around us too forcefully for us to talk. Sweat instantly dried; tears, too. The red dress on my mother’s dummy clung and flapped in the wind; Owen sat with his back against the cab of the truck, the dummy outstretched in his lap—as if the two of them were engaged in a half-successful levitation experiment.
At the beach, at Little Boar’s Head, we took off our shoes and walked in the surf, while Mr. Meany dutifully waited—the engine still idling. Owen carried the dummy the whole time, careful not to go very far into the waves; the red dress never got wet.
“I’LL KEEP THE DUMMY WITH ME,” he said. “YOUR GRANDMOTHER SHOULDN’T HAVE THIS AROUND TO LOOK AT, EITHER—NOT TO MENTION, YOU,” he added.
“Not to mention, you,” Hester said, but Owen ignored this, high-stepping through the surf.
When Mr. Meany dropped Hester and me at 80 Front Street, the downstairs lights in the houses along the street were off—except for the lights in Grandmother’s house—but a few people were still upstairs, in their beds, reading. On very hot nights, Mr. Fish slept in the hammock on his screened-in porch, so Hester and I kept our voices down, saying good night to Owen and his father; Owen told his father to not turn around in our driveway. Because the dressmaker’s dummy wouldn’t fit in the cab—because it couldn’t bend—Owen stood on the flatbed with his arm around the hips of the red dress as the truck pulled away. With his free hand, he held fast to one of the loading chains—they were the chains for fastening down the curbstones or the monuments.
If Mr. Fish had been in his hammock, and if he had woken up, he would have seen something unforgettable passing under the Front Street lamplights. The dark and massive truck, lumbering into the night, and the woman in the red dress—a headless woman with a stunning figure, but with no arms—held around her hips by a child attached to a chain, or a dwarf.
“I hope you know he’s crazy,” said Hester tiredly.
But I looked at Owen’s departing image with wonder: he had managed to orchestrate my mourning on the evening of my mother’s funeral. And, like my armadillo’s claws, he’d taken what he wanted—in this case, my mother’s double, her shy dressmaker’s dummy in that unloved dress. Later, I thought that Owen must have known the dummy was important; he must have foreseen that even that unwanted dress would have a use—that it had a purpose. But then, that night, I was inclined to agree with Hester; I thought the red dress was merely Owen’s idea of a talisman—an amulet, to ward off the evil powers of that “angel” Owen thought he’d seen. I didn’t believe in angels then.
Toronto: February 1, 1987—the Fourth Sunday After Epiphany. I believe in angels now. I don’t necessarily claim that this is an advantage; for example, it was of no particular help to me during last night’s Vestry elections—I wasn’t even nominated. I’ve been a parish officer so many times, for so many years, I shouldn’t complain; perhaps my fellow parishioners thought they were being kind to me—to give me a year off. Indeed, had I been nominated for warden or deputy warden, I might have declined to accept the nomination. I admit, I’m tired of it; I’ve done more than my share for Grace Church on-the-Hill. Still, I was surprised I wasn’t nominated for a single office; out of politeness—if not out of recognition of my faithfulness and my devotion—I thought I should have been nominated for something.
I shouldn’t have let the insult—if it even is an insult—distract me from the Sunday service; that was not good. Once I was rector’s warden to Canon Campbell—back when Canon Campbell was our rector; when he was alive, I admit I felt a little better-treated. But since Canon Mackie has been rector, I’ve been deputy rector’s warden once—and people’s warden, too. And one year I was chairman of sidesmen; I’ve also been parish council chairman. It’s not the fault of Canon Mackie that he’ll never replace Canon Campbell in my heart; Canon Mackie is warm and kind—and his loquaciousness doesn’t offend me. It is simply that Canon Campbell was special, and those early days were special, too.
I shouldn’t brood about such a silly business as the annual installation of parish officers; especially, I shouldn’t allow such thoughts to distract me from the choral Eucharist and the sermon. I confess to a certain childishness.
The visiting preacher distracted me, too. Canon Mackie is keen on having guest ministers deliver the sermon—which does spare us the canon’s loquacity—but whoever the preacher was today, he was some sort of “reformed” Anglican, and his thesis seemed to be that everything that first appears to be different is actually the same. I couldn’t help thinking what Owen Meany would say about that.
In the Protestant tradition, we turn to the Bible; when we want an answer, that’s where we look. But even the Bible distracted me today. For the Fourth Sunday After Epiphany, Canon Mackie chose Matthew—those troublesome Beatitudes; at least, they always troubled Owen and me.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.