It had been called The Orange Grove; my mother had joked to Mr. McSwiney about the decor, which she said was dotted everywhere with potted orange trees and tanks full of tropical fish—and husbands and wives celebrating their anniversaries. Yet she had imagined she might be “discovered” there!
“DID SHE HAVE A BOYFRIEND?” Owen asked Mr. McSwiney, who shrugged.
“She wasn’t interested in me—that’s all I know!” he said. He smiled at me fondly. “I know, because I made a pass at her,” he explained. “She handled it very nicely and I never tried it again,” he said.
“There was a pianist, a black pianist—at The Orange Grove,” I said.
“You bet there was, but he was all over—he played all over town, for years, before he ended up there. And after he left there, he played all over town again,” Mr. McSwiney said. “Big Black Buster Freebody!” he said, and laughed.
“Freebody,” I said.
“It was as made-up a name as ‘The Lady in Red,’” said Mr. McSwiney. “And he wouldn’t have been your mother’s boyfriend, either—Buster was as queer as a cat fart.”
Graham McSwiney also told us that Meyerson had gone back to Miami; but Mr. McSwiney added that Meyerson was old—even in the forties and fifties, he’d been old; he was so old that he’d have to be dead now, “or at least lying down on a shuffleboard court.” As for Buster Freebody, Mr. McSwiney couldn’t remember where the big black man had played after The Orange Grove had seen its days. “I used to run into him in so many places,” Mr. McSwiney said. “I was as used to seeing Buster as a light fixture.” Buster Freebody had played what Mr. McSwiney called a “real soft” piano; singers liked him because they could be heard over him.
“She had some trouble—your mother,” Mr. McSwiney remembered. “She went away—for a while—and then she came back again. And then she went away for good.”
“HE WAS THE TROUBLE,” said Owen Meany, pointing to me.
“Are you looking for your father?” the singing teacher asked me. “Is that it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Don’t bother, kid,” said Mr. McSwiney. “If he was looking for you, he would have found you.”
“GOD WILL TELL HIM WHO HIS FATHER IS,” Owen said; Graham McSwiney shrugged.
“I’m not God,” Mr. McSwiney said. “This God you know,” he told Owen—“this God must be pretty busy.”
I gave him my phone number in Gravesend—in case he ever remembered the last place he’d heard Buster Freebody play the piano. Buster Freebody, Mr. McSwiney warned me, was old enough to be “lying down on a shuffleboard court,” too. Mr. McSwiney as
ked Owen Meany for his phone number—in case he ever heard a theory regarding why Owen’s voice hadn’t already changed.
“IT DOESN’T MATTER,” Owen said, but he gave Mr. McSwiney his number.
“Your mother was a nice woman, a good person—a respectable woman,” Mr. McSwiney told me.
“Thank you,” I said.
“The Orange Grove was a stupid place,” he told me, “but it wasn’t a dive—nothing cheap would have happened to her there,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said again.
“All she ever sang was Sinatra stuff—it used to bore me to tears,” Mr. McSwiney admitted.
“I THINK WE CAN ASSUME THAT SOMEBODY LIKED TO LISTEN TO IT,” said Owen Meany.
Toronto: May 30, 1987—I should know better than to read even as much as a headline in The New York Times; although, as I’ve often pointed out to my students at Bishop Strachan, this newspaper’s use of the semicolon is exemplary.
Reagan Declares
Firmness on Gulf;
Plans Are Unclear
Isn’t that a classic? I don’t mean the semicolon; I mean, isn’t that just what the world needs? Unclear firmness! That is typical American policy: don’t be clear, but be firm!
In November 1961—after Owen Meany and I learned that his voice box was never in repose, and that my mother had enjoyed (or suffered) a more secret life than we knew—Gen. Maxwell Taylor reported to President Kennedy that U.S. military, economic, and political support could secure a victory for the South Vietnamese without the United States taking over the war. (Privately, the general recommended sending eight thousand U.S. combat troops to Vietnam.)