And occasionally I saw the tomato-red pickup parked at St. Michael’s—not at the school, but by the curb at the rectory for St. Michael’s Catholic Church! I figured he was talking to Father Findley; maybe because Kennedy had been a Catholic, maybe because some kind of ongoing dialogue with Father Findley had actually been required of Owen—in lieu of his being obliged to compensate the Catholic Church for the damage done to Mary Magdalene.
“How’s it going with Father Findley?” I asked him once.
“I BELIEVE HE MEANS WELL,” Owen said cautiously. “BUT THERE’S A FUNDAMENTAL LEAP OF FAITH THAT ALL HIS TRAINING—ALL THAT CATHOLIC BACKGROUND—SIMPLY CANNOT ALLOW HIM TO MAKE. I DON’T THINK HE’LL EVER UNDERSTAND THE MAGNITUDE … THE UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE …” Then he stopped talking.
“Yes?” I said. “You were saying … ‘the unspeakable outrage’ … was that to your parents, do you mean?”
“FATHER FINDLEY SIMPLY CANNOT GRASP HOW THEY HAVE BEEN MADE TO SUFFER,” said Owen Meany.
“Oh,” I said. “I see.” I was joking, of course! But either my humor eluded him, or else Owen Meany had no intention of making himself any clearer on this point.
“But you like Father Findley?” I asked. “I mean, sort of … ‘he means well,’ you say. You enjoy talking to him—I guess.”
“IT TURNS OUT IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO RESTORE MARY MAGDALENE EXACTLY AS SHE WAS—I MEAN, THE STATUE,” he said. “MY FATHER KNOWS A COMPANY THAT MAKES SAINTS, AND OTHER HOLY FIGURES—I MEAN, GRANITE, YOU KNOW,” he said. “BUT THEIR PRICES ARE RIDICULOUS. FATHER FINDLEY’S BEEN VERY PATIENT. I’M GETTING HIM GOOD GRANITE—AND SOMEONE WHO SCULPTS THESE SAINTS A LITTLE CHEAPER, AND MAKES THEM A LITTLE MORE PERSONALLY … YOU KNOW, NOT ALWAYS EXACTLY THE SAME GESTURE OF SUPPLICATION, SO THAT THEY DON’T ALWAYS LOOK LIKE BEGGARS. I’VE TOLD FATHER FINDLEY THAT I CAN MAKE HIM A MUCH BETTER PEDESTAL THAN THE ONE HE’S GOT, AND I’VE BEEN TRYING TO CONVINCE HIM TO GET RID OF THAT STUPID ARCHWAY—IF SHE DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A GOALIE IN A GOAL, MAYBE KIDS WON’T ALWAYS BE TAKING SHOTS AT HER. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.”
“It’s been almost two years!” I said. “I didn’t know you were still involved in replacing Mary Magdalene—I didn’t know you were ever this involved,” I added.
“WELL, SOMEONE’S GOT TO TAKE CHARGE,” he said. “FATHER FINDLEY DID ME A FAVOR—I DON’T LIKE TO SEE THESE GRANITE GUYS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF HIM. SOMEONE NEEDS A SAINT OR A HOLY FIGURE IN A HURRY, AND WHAT DO THEY DO? THEY MAKE YOU PAY FOR IT, OR THEY MAKE YOU WAIT FOREVER—THEY FIGURE THEY’VE GOT YOU BY THE BALLS. AND WHO CAN AFFORD MARBLE? I’M JUST TRYING TO RETURN A FAVOR.”
And was he asking Father Findley about the dream? I wondered. It bothered me that he was seeing someone I didn’t even know—and maybe talking to this person about things he wouldn’t discuss with me. I suppose that bothered me about Hester, too—and even the Rev. Lewis Merrill began to irritate me. I didn’t run into him very often—although he was a regular in attendance at the rehearsals and performances of The Gravesend Players—but whenever I did run into him, he looked at me as if he knew something special about me (as if Owen had been talking about me to him, as if I were in Owen’s damn dream, or so I imagined).
In my opinion, 1964 was not a very exciting year. General Greene replaced General Shoup; Owen told me lots of military news—as a good ROTC student, he prided himself on knowing these things. President Johnson ordered the withdrawal of American dependents from South Vietnam.
“THIS ISN’T GENERALLY AN OPTIMISTIC SIGN,” said Owen Meany. If the majority of his professors at the University of New Hampshire found Owen less than brilliant, his professors of Military Science were completely charmed. It was the year when Admi
ral Sharp replaced Admiral Felt, when General Westmoreland replaced General Harkins, when General Wheeler replaced General Taylor, when General Johnson replaced General Wheeler—when General Taylor replaced Henry Cabot Lodge as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam.
“LOTS OF STUFF IS IN THE WORKS,” said Owen Meany. It was the year of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which prompted Owen to ask: “DOES THAT MEAN THE PRESIDENT CAN DECLARE A WAR WITHOUT DECLARING IT?” It was the year when Owen’s grade-point average fell below mine; but in Military Science, his grades were perfect.
Even the summer of ’64 was uninspired—except for the completion of the replacement Mary Magdalene, which was firmly set upon Owen Meany’s formidable pedestal in the St. Michael’s schoolyard, more than two years after the attack upon her predecessor.
“YOU’RE SO UNOBSERVANT,” Owen told me. “THE GOALIE’S BEEN OUT OF THE GOAL FOR TWO YEARS, AND YOU HAVEN’T EVEN NOTICED!”
What I noticed straightaway was that he’d talked Father Findley into removing the goal. The whitewashed stone archway was gone; so was the notion of whitewash. The new Mary Magdalene was granite-gray, gravestone-gray, a color Owen Meany called NATURAL. Her face, like her color, was slightly downcast, almost apologetic; and her arms were not outstretched in obvious supplication—rather, she clasped her hands together at her slight breast, her hands just barely emerging from the sleeves of her robe, which shapelessly draped her body to her small, bare, plain-gray feet. She seemed altogether too demure for a former prostitute—and too withholding of any gesture for a saint. Yet she radiated a certain compliance; she looked as easy to get along with as my mother.
And the pedestal upon which Owen had stood her—in contrast to Mary’s own rough finish (granite is never as smooth as marble)—was highly polished, exquisitely beveled; Owen had cut some very fine edges with the diamond wheel, creating the impression that Mary Magdalene either stood upon or was rising from her grave.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK?” Owen asked Hester and me. “FATHER FINDLEY WAS VERY PLEASED.”
“It’s sick—it’s all sick,” said Hester. “It’s just death and more death—that’s all it is with you, Owen.”
“HESTER’S SO SENSITIVE,” Owen said.
“I like it better than the other one,” I ventured cautiously.
“THERE’S NO COMPARISON!” said Owen Meany.
“I like the pedestal,” I said. “It’s almost as if she’s … well, you know … stepping out of her own grave.”
Owen nodded vigorously. “YOU HAVE A GOOD EYE,” he said. “THAT’S EXACTLY THE EFFECT I WANTED. THAT’S WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A SAINT, ISN’T IT? A SAINT SHOULD BE AN EMBLEM OF IMMORTALITY!”
“What a lot of shit!” said Hester. It was an uninspired year for Hester, too; here she was, a college graduate, still living in her squalid apartment in her old college town, still waitressing in the lobster-house restaurant in Kittery or Portsmouth. I had never eaten there, but Owen said it was nice enough—on the harbor, a little overquaint with the seafood theme (lobster pots and buoys and anchors and mooring ropes were prevalent in the decor). The problem was, Hester hated lobster—she called them “insects of the sea,” and she washed her hair every night with lemon juice because she thought her hair smelled fishy.
I think that her late hours (she waitressed only at night) were in part responsible for Owen Meany’s decline as a student; he was loyal about picking her up—and it seemed to me that she worked most nights. Hester had her own driver’s license and her own car—actually, it was Noah’s old ’57 Chevy—but she hated to drive; that Uncle Alfred and Aunt Martha had given her a hand-me-down might have had something to do with it. In Owen’s view, the ’57 Chevy was in better shape than his tomato-red pickup; but Hester knew it had been secondhand when the Eastmans gave it to Noah, who had passed it to Simon, who’d had a minor accident with it before he’d handed it down to Hester.
But by picking up Hester after work, Owen Meany rarely got back to Hester’s apartment before one o’clock in the morning; Hester was so keyed up after waitressing that she wasn’t ready to go to bed before two—first, she had to wash her hair, which further woke her up; and then she needed to complain. Often someone had insulted her; sometimes it had been a customer who’d tried to pick her up—and failing that, had left her a rotten tip. And the other waitresses were “woefully unaware,” Hester said; what they were unaware of, she wouldn’t say—but they often insulted Hester, too. And if Owen Meany didn’t spend the night in her apartment—if he drove home to Gravesend—he sometimes didn’t get to bed before three.
Hester slept all morning; but Owen had morning classes—or, in the summer, he was at work very early in the quarries. Sometimes he looked like a tired, old man to me—a tired, old, married man. I tried to nag him into taking more of an interest in his studies; but, increasingly, he spoke of school as something to get out of.