That made Owen Meany hopping mad.
“DOES HE THINK HE’S DOING ‘THE POOR OF AMERICA’ SOME FAVOR?” Owen cried. “WHAT HE’S SAYING IS, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE WHITE—OR A GOOD READER—TO DIE! THAT’S SOME ‘OPPORTUNITY’! I’LL BET ‘THE POOR OF AMERICA’ ARE REALLY GOING TO BE GRATEFUL FOR THIS!”
Toronto: July 11, 1987—it’s been so hot, I wish Katherine would invite me up to her family’s island in Georgian Bay; but she has such a large family, I’m sure she’s suffered her share of houseguests. I have fallen into a bad habit here: I buy The New York Times almost every day. I don’t exactly know why I want or need to know anything more.
According to The New York Times, a new poll has revealed that most Americans believe that President Reagan is lying; what they should be asked is, Do they care?
I wrote Katherine and asked her when she was going to invite me to Georgian Bay. “When are you going to rescue me from my own bad habits?” I asked her. I wonder if you can buy The New York Times in Pointe au Baril Station; I hope not.
Larry’s mother, Mitzy Lish, had honey-colored, slightly sticky-looking hair—it was coiffed in a bouffant style—and her complexion was much improved by a suntan; in the winter months, when she’d not just returned from her annual pilgrimage to Round Hill, Jamaica, her skin turned a shade sallow. Because her complexion was further wrecked by blotchiness in the extreme cold, and because her excessive smoking had ill-influenced her circulation, a weekend of winter skiing in New England—even to forward the cause of her competition for her son’s affection—did not favor either Mrs. Lish’s appearance or her disposition. Yet it was impossible not to see her as an attractive “older” woman; she was not quite up to President Kennedy’s standards, but Mitzy Lish was a beauty by any standard Owen and I had to compare her to.
Hester’s early-blooming eroticism, for example, had not been improved by her carelessness or by alcohol; even though Mrs. Lish smoked up a storm, and her amber hair was dyed (because she was graying at her roots), Mrs. Lish looked sexier than Hester.
She wore too much gold and silver for New Hampshire; in New York, I’m sure, she was certainly in vogue—but her clothes and her jewelry, and her bouffant, were more suited to the kind of hotels and cities where “evening” or formal clothes are standard. In Gravesend, she stood out; and it is hard to imagine that there was a small skiers’ lodge in New Hampshire, or in Vermont, that ever could have pleased her. She had ambitions beyond the simple luxury of a private bath; she was a woman who needed room service—who wanted her first cigarette and her coffee and her New York Times before she got out of bed. And then she would need sufficient light and a proper makeup mirror, in front of which she would require a decent amount of time; she would be snappish if ever she was rushed.
Her days in New York, before lunch, consisted only of cigarettes and coffee and The New York Times—and the patient, loving task of making herself up. She was an impatient woman, but never when applying her makeup. Lunch with a fellow gossip, then; or, these days, following her divorce, with her lawyer or a potential lover. In the afternoon, she’d have her hair done or she’d do a little shopping; at the very least, she’d buy a few new magazines or see a movie. She might meet someone for a drink, later. She possessed all the up-to-date information that often passes for intelligence among people who make a daily and extensive habit of The New York Times—and the available, softer gossip—and she had oodles of time to consume all this contemporary news. She had never worked.
She took quite a lot of time for her evening bath, too, and then there was the evening makeup to apply; it irritated her to make any dinner plans that required her presence before eight o’clock—but it irritated her more to have no dinner plans. She didn’t cook—not even eggs. She was too lazy to make real coffee; the instant stuff went well enough with her cigarettes and her newspaper. She would have been an early supporter of those sugar-free, diet soft drinks—because she was obsessed with losing weight (and opposed to exercise).
She blamed her troublesome complexion on her ex-husband, who had been stressful to live with; and their divorce had cut her out of California—where she preferred to spend the winter months, where it was better for her skin. She swore her pores were actually larger in New York. But she maintained the Fifth Avenue apartment with a vengeance; and included in her alimony was the expense of her annual pilgrimage to Round Hill, Jamaica—always at a time in the winter when her complexion had become intolerable to her—and a summer rental in the Hamptons (because not even Fifth Avenue was any fun in July and August). A woman of her sophistication—and used to the standard of living she’d grown accustomed to, as Herb Lish’s wife and the mother of his only child—simply needed the sun and the salt air.
She would be a popular divorcée for quite a number of years; she would appear in no hurry to remarry—in fact, she’d turn down a few proposals. But, one year, she would either anticipate that her looks were going, or she would notice that her looks had gone; it would take her more and more time in front of the makeup mirror—simply to salvage what used to be there. Then she would change; she would become quite aggressive on the subject of her second marriage; she realized it was time. Pity whatever boyfriend was with her at this time; he would be blamed for leading her on—and worse, for never allowing her to develop a proper career. There was no honorable course left to him but to marry the woman he had made so dependent on him—whoever he was. She would say he was the reason she’d never stopped smoking, too; by not marrying her, he had made her too nervous to stop smoking. And her oily complexion, formerly the responsibility of her ex-husband, was now the present boyfriend’s fault, too; if she was sallow, she was sallow because of him.
He was also the cause of her announced depression. Were he to leave her—were he to abandon her, to not marry her—he could at the very least assume the financial burden of maintaining her psychiatrist. Without his aggravation, after all, she would never have needed a psychiatrist.
How—you may ask—do I, or did I, “know” so much about my classmate’s unfortunate mother, Mitzy Lish? I told you that Gravesend Academy students were—many of them—very sophisticated; and none of them was more “sophisticated” than Larry Lish. Larry told everyone everything he knew about his mother; imagine that! Larry thought his mother was a joke.
But in January of 1962, Owen Meany and I were terrified of Mrs. Lish. She wore a fur coat that was responsible for the death of countless small mammals, she wore sunglasses that completely concealed her opinion of Owen and me—although we were sure, somehow, that Mrs. Lish thought we were rusticated to a degree that defied our eventual education; we were sure that Mrs. Lish would rather suffer the agonies of giving up smoking than suffer such boredom as an evening in our company.
“HELLO, MISSUS LISH,” said Owen Meany. “IT’S NICE TO SEE YOU AGAIN.”
“Hello!” I said. “How are you?”
/> She was the kind of woman who drank nothing but vodka-tonics, because she cared about her breath; because of her smoking, she was extremely self-conscious about her breath. Nowadays, she’d be the kind of woman who’d carry one of those breath-freshening atomizers in her purse—gassing herself with the atomizer, all day long, just in case someone might be moved to spontaneously kiss her.
“Go on, tell him,” Larry Lish said to his mother.
“My son says you doubt that the president fools around,” Mrs. Lish said to Owen. When she said “fools around,” she opened her fur—her perfume rushed out at us, and we breathed her in. “Well, let me tell you,” said Mitzy Lish, “he fools around—plenty.”
“WITH MARILYN MONROE?” Owen asked Mrs. Lish.
“With her—and with countless others,” Mrs. Lish said; she wore a little too much lipstick—even for 1962—and when she smiled at Owen Meany, we could see a smear of lipstick on one of her big, upper-front teeth.
“DOES JACKIE KNOW?” Owen asked Mrs. Lish.
“She must be used to it,” Mrs. Lish said; she appeared to relish Owen’s distress. “What do you think of that?” she asked Owen; Mitzy Lish was the kind of woman who bullied young men, too.
“I THINK IT’S WRONG,” said Owen Meany.
“Is he for real?” Mrs. Lish asked her son. Remember that? Remember when people used to ask if you were “for real”?
“Isn’t he a classic?” Larry Lish asked his mother.
“This is the editor-in-chief of your school newspaper?” Mrs. Lish asked her son; he was laughing.
“That’s right,” Larry Lish said; his mother really cracked him up.
“This is the valedictorian of your class?” Mitzy Lish asked Larry.