A Prayer for Owen Meany - Page 56

“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 crèche. 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 crèche. “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 ti

me 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 the angel 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 the angel 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 the angel 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.

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