Ethel was clearing the table in her curious combination of aggression and slow motion; she took too many dishes at one time, but she lingered at the table with them for so long that you were sure she was going to put some of them back. I think now that she was just collecting her thoughts concerning where she would take the dishes. Germaine was also clearing--the way a crippled swallow might swoop down for a crumb off your plate at a picnic. Germaine took too little away--one spoon at a time, and often the wrong spoon; or else she took your salad fork before you'd been served your salad. But if her disturbance of your dinner area was slight and fanciful, it was also fraught with Germaine's vast potential for accident. When Ethel approached, you feared a landslide of plates might fall in your lap--but this never happened. When Germaine approached, you guarded your plate and silverware, fearing that something you needed would be snatched from you, and that your water glass would be toppled during the sudden, flighty attack--and this often happened.
It was therefore within this anxious arena--of having the dinner table cleared--that I announced to my grandmother and Lydia why Owen Meany had not sought the advice of Mother's voice and singing teacher.
"Owen doesn't think it's right to try to change his voice," I said.
Ethel, lumbering away from the table under the considerable burden of the two serving platters, the vegetable bowl, and all our dinner plates and silver, held her ground. My grandmother, sensing Germaine's darting presence, held her water glass in one hand, her wineglass in the other. "Why on earth doesn't he think it's right?" she asked, as Germaine pointlessly removed the peppermill and let the salt shaker stay.
"He thinks his voice is for a purpose; that there's a reason for his voice being like that," I said.
"What reason?" my grandmother asked.
Ethel had approached the kitchen door, but she seemed to be waiting, shifting her vast armload of dishes, wondering--possibly--if she should take them into the living room, instead. Germaine positioned herself directly behind Lydia's chair, which made Lydia tense.
"Owen thinks his voice comes from God," I said quietly, as Germaine--reaching for Lydia's unused dessert spoon--dropped the peppermill into Lydia's water glass.
"Merciful Heavens!" Lydia said; this was a pet phrase of my grandmother's, and Grandmother eyed Lydia as if this thievery of her favorite language were another manifestation of Lydia's senility being in advance of her own.
To everyone's astonishment, Germaine spoke. "I think his voice comes from the Devil," Germaine said.
"Nonsense!" my grandmother said. "Nonsense to it coming from God--or from the Devil! It comes from granite, that's what it comes from. He breathed in all that dirt when he was a baby! It made his voice queer and it stunted his growth!"
Lydia, nodding, prevented Germaine from trying to extract the peppermill from her water glass; to be safe, she did it herself. Ethel stumbled into the kitchen door with a great crash; the door swung wide, and Germaine fled the dining room--with absolutely nothing in her hands.
My grandmother sighed deeply; even to Grandmother's sighing, Lydia nodded--a more modest little nod. "From God," my grandmother repeated contemptuously. And then she said: "The address and phone number of the voice and singing teacher ... I don't suppose your little friend would have kept it--not if he didn't intend to use it, I mean?" To this artful question, my grandmother and Lydia exchanged their usual glances; but I considered the question carefully--its many levels of seriousness were apparent to me. I knew this was information that my grandmother had never known--and how it must have interested her! And, of course, I also knew that Owen would never have thrown this information away; that he never intended to make use of the information was not the point. Owen rarely threw anything away; and something that my mother had given him would not only have been saved--it would have been enshrined!
I am indebted to my grandmother for many things--among them the use of an artful question. "Why would Owen have kept it?" I asked her innocently.
Again, Grandmother sighed; again, Lydia nodded. "Why indeed," Lydia said sadly. It was my grandmother's turn to nod. They were both getting old and frail, I observed, but what I was thinking was why I had decided to keep Owen's probable possession of the singing teacher's address and phone number to myself. I didn't know why--not then. What I know now is that Owen Meany would have quickly said it was NO COINCIDENCE.
And what would he have said regarding our discovery that we were not alone in the Christmas use we made of the empty rooms in Waterhouse Hall? Would he have termed it NO COINCIDENCE, too, that we (one afternoon) were engaged in our usual investigations of a second-floor room when we heard another master key engage the lock on the door? I was into the closet in a hurry, fearful that the empty coat hangers would not entirely have stopped chiming together by the time the new intruder entered the room. Owen scooted under the bed; he lay on his back with his hands crossed upon his chest, like a soldier in a hasty grave. At first, we thought Dan had caught us--but Dan was rehearsing The Gravesend Players, unless (in despair) he had fired the lot of them and canceled the production. The only other person it could be was Mr. Brinker-Smith, the biologist--but he was a first-floor resident; Owen and I were so quiet, we didn't believe our presence could have been detected from the first floor.
"Nap time!" we heard Mr. Brinker-Smith say; Mrs. Brinker-Smith giggled.
It was instantly apparent to Owen and me that Ginger Brinker-Smith had not brought her husband to this empty room in order to nurse him; the twins were not with them--it was "nap time" for the twins, too. It strikes me now that the Brinker-Smiths were blessed with good-spirited initiative, with an admirable and inventive sense of mischief--for how else could they have maintained one of the pleasures of conjugal relations without disturbing their demanding twins? At the time, of course, it struck Owen and me that the Brinker-Smiths were dangerously oversexed; that they should make such reckless use of the dormitory beds, including--as we later learned--systematic process through all the rooms of Waterhouse Hall ... well, it was perverse behavior for parents, in Owen's and my view. Day by day, nap by nap, bed by bed, the Brinker-Smiths were working their way to the fourth floor of the dorm. Since Owen and I were working our way to the first floor, it was perhaps inevitable--as Owen would have suggested--and NO COINCIDENCE that we should have encountered the Brinker-Smiths in a second-floor room.
I saw nothing, but heard much, through the closed closet door. (I had never heard Dan with my mother.) As usual, Owen Meany had a closer, more intense perception of this passionate event than I had: the Brinker-Smiths' clothes fell on both sides of Owen; Ginger Brinker-Smith's legendary nursing bra was tossed within inches of Owen's face. He had to turn his face to the side, Owen told me, in order to avoid the sagging bedspring, which began to make violent, chafing contact with Owen's nose. Even with his face sideways, the bedspring would occasionally plunge near enough to the floor to scrape against his cheek.
"IT WAS THE NOISE THAT WAS THE WORST OF IT," he told me tearfully, after the Brinker-Smiths had returned to their twins. "I FELT LIKE I WAS UNDERNEATH THE FLYING YANKEE!"
That the Brinker-Smiths were engaged in a far more creative and original use of Waterhouse Hall than Owen and I could make of the old dormitory had a radical effect on the rest of our Christmas vacation. Shocked and battered, Owen suggested we return to the tamer investigations of 80 Front Street.
"Hardness! Hardness!" Ginger Brinker-Smith had screamed.
"Wetness! Wetness!" Mr. Brinker-Smith had answered her. And bang! bang! bang! beat the bedspring on Owen Meany's head.
"STUPID 'HARDNESS,' STUPID 'WETNESS,'" Owen complained. "SEX MAKES PEOPLE CRAZY."
I had only to think of Hester to agree.
And so, because of Owen's and my first contact with the act of love, we were at 80 Front Street--just hanging around--the day our mailman, Mr. Morrison, announced his resignation from the role of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
"Why are you telling me?" my grandmother asked. "I'm n
ot the director."
"Dan ain't on my route," the glum mailman said.
"I don't relay messages of this kind--not even to Dan," my grandmother told Mr. Morrison. "You should go to the next rehearsal and tell Dan yourself."
Grandmother kept the storm door ajar, and the bitter December air must have been cold against her legs; it was plenty cold for Owen and me, and we were positioned deeper into the hall, behind my grandmother--and were both wearing wool-flannel trousers. We could feel the chill radiating off Mr. Morrison, who held my grandmother's small bundle of mail in his mittened hand; he appeared reluctant to give her the mail, unless she agreed to carry his message to Dan.
"I ain't settin' foot in another of them rehearsals," Mr. Morrison said, shuffling his high-topped boots, shifting his heavy, leather sack.
"If you were resigning from the post office, would you ask someone else to tell the postmaster?" my grandmother asked him.
Mr. Morrison considered this; his long face was alternately red and blue from the cold. "It ain't the part I thought it was," he said to Grandmother.
"Tell Dan," Grandmother said. "I'm sure I don't know the first thing about it."
"I KNOW ABOUT IT," said Owen Meany. Grandmother regarded Owen uncertainly; before she allowed him to replace her at the open door, she reached outside and snatched her mail from Mr. Morrison's tentative hand.
"What do you know about it?" the mailman asked Owen.
"IT'S AN IMPORTANT PART," Owen said. "YOU'RE THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS WHO APPEAR TO SCROOGE. YOU'RE THE GHOST OF THE FUTURE--YOU'RE THE SCARIEST GHOST OF ALL!"
"I got nothin' to say!" Mr. Morrison complained. "It ain't even what they call a speakin' part."
"A GREAT ACTOR DOESN'T NEED TO TALK," Owen said.
"I wear this big black cloak, with a hood!" Mr. Morrison protested. "No one can see my face."
"There's some justice, anyway," my grandmother said under her breath to me.
"A GREAT ACTOR DOESN'T NEED A FACE," Owen said.
"An actor needs somethin' to do!" the mailman shouted.
"YOU SHOW SCROOGE WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO HIM IF HE DOESN'T BELIEVE IN CHRISTMAS!" Owen cried. "YOU SHOW A MAN HIS OWN GRAVE! WHAT CAN BE SCARIER THAN THAT?"
"But all I do is point," Mr. Morrison whined. "Nobody would even know what I was pointin' at if old Scrooge didn't keep givin' speeches to himself--'If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man's death, show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!' That's the kind of speech old Scrooge is always makin'!" Mr. Morrison shouted. "'Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,' and so on and so forth," the mailman said bitterly. "And all I do is point! I got nothin' to say and all anybody sees of me is one finger!" Mr. Morrison cried; he pulled his mitten off and pointed a long, bony finger at Owen Meany, who retreated from the mailman's skeletal hand.
"IT'S A GREAT PART FOR A GREAT ACTOR," Owen said stubbornly. "YOU HAVE TO BE A PRESENCE. THERE'S NOTHING AS SCARY AS THE FUTURE."
In the hall, behind Owen, an anxious crowd had gathered. Lydia in her wheelchair, Ethel--who was polishing a candlestick--and Germaine, who thought Owen was the Devil ... they huddled behind my grandmother, who was old enough to take Owen's point of view to heart: nothing is as scary as the future, she knew, unless it's someone who knows the future.
Owen threw up his hands so abruptly that the women were startled and moved away from him. "YOU KNOW EVERYTHING YET TO COME!" he screamed at the disgruntled mailman. "IF YOU WALK ONSTAGE AS IF YOU KNOW THE FUTURE--I MEAN, EVERYTHING!--YOU'LL SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYONE."
Mr. Morrison considered this; there was even a glimmer of comprehension in his gaze, as if he saw--albeit momentarily--his own, terrifying potential; but his eyes were quickly fogged over by his breath in the cold air.
"Tell Dan I quit, that's all," he said. Thereupon, the mailman turned and left--"most undramatically," my grandmother would say, later. At the moment, despite her dislike of vulgar language, Grandmother appeared almost charmed by Owen Meany.
"Get away from the open door now, Owen," she said. "You've given that fool much more attention than he deserves, and you'll catch your death of cold."
"I'M CALLING DAN, RIGHT AWAY," Owen told us matter-of-factly. He went directly to the phone and dialed the number; the women and I wouldn't leave the hall, although I think we were all unconscious of how very much we had become his audience. "HELLO, DAN?" he said into the phone. "DAN? THIS IS OWEN!" (As if there could have been any doubt concerning who it was!) "DAN, THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. YOU'VE LOST THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS YET TO COME. YES, I MEAN MORRISON--THE COWARDLY MAILMAN!"
"The cowardly mailman!" my grandmother repeated admiringly.
"YES, YES--I KNOW HE WASN'T ANY GOOD," Owen told Dan, "BUT YOU DON'T WANT TO BE STUCK WITHOUT A SPIRIT FOR THE FUTURE."
That was when I saw it coming; the future--or at least one, small part of it. Owen had failed to talk Mr. Morrison into the role, but he had convinced himself it was an important part--far more attractive than being Tiny Tim, that mere goody-goody. Furthermore, it was established that the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was not a speaking part; Owen would not have to use his voice--not as the Christ Child and not as the Ghost of the Future.
"I DON'T WANT YOU TO PANIC, DAN," Owen said into the phone, "BECAUSE I THINK I KNOW SOMEONE WHO'D BE PERFECT FOR THE PART--WELL, IF NOT PERFECT, AT LEAST DIFFERENT."
It was with the word DIFFERENT that my grandmother shivered; it was also the first time she looked at Owen Meany with anything resembling respect.
Once again, I thought, the little Prince of Peace had taken charge. I looked at Germaine, whose lower lip was captured in her teeth; I knew what she was thinking. Lydia, rocking in her wheelchair, appeared to be mesmerized by the one-sided phone conversation; Ethel held the candlestick like a weapon.
"WHAT THE PART REQUIRES IS A CERTAIN PRESENCE," Owen told Dan. "THE GHOST MUST TRULY APPEAR TO KNOW THE FUTURE. IRONICALLY, THE OTHER PART I'M PLAYING THIS CHRISTMAS--YES, YES, I MEAN THE STUPID PAGEANT--IRONICALLY, THIS PREPARES ME FOR THE ROLE. I MEAN, THEY'RE BOTH PARTS THAT FORCE YOU TO TAKE COMMAND OF THINGS, WITHOUT WORDS ... YES, YES, OF COURSE I MEAN ME!" There was a rare pause, while Owen listened to Dan. "WHO SAYS THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS YET TO COME HAS TO BE TALL?" Owen asked angrily. "YES, OF COURSE I KNOW HOW TALL MISTER FISH IS. DAN, YOU'RE NOT USING YOUR IMAGINATION." There was another brief pause, and Owen said: "THERE'S A SIMPLE TEST. LET ME REHEARSE IT. IF EVERYBODY LAUGHS, I'M OUT. IF EVERYONE IS SCARED, I'M THE ONE. YES, OF COURSE--'INCLUDING MISTER FISH.' LAUGH, I'M OUT. SCARED, I'M IN."
But I didn't need to wait to know the results of that test. It was necessary only to look at my grandmother's anxious face, and at the attitudes of the women surrounding her--at the fear of Owen Meany that was registered by Lydia's transfixed expression, by Ethel's whitened knuckles around the candlestick, by Germaine's trembling lip. It wasn't necessary for me to suspend my belief or disbelief in Owen Meany until after his first rehearsal; I already knew what a presence he could summon--especially in regard to the future.
That evening, at dinner, we heard from Dan about Owen's triumph--how the cast stood riveted, not even knowing what dwarf this was, for Owen was completely hidden in the black cloak and hood; it didn't matter that he never spoke, or that they couldn't see his face. Not even Mr. Fish had known who the fearful apparition was.
As Dickens wrote, "Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command, for this is thy dominion!"
Owen had a way of gliding across stage; he several times startled Mr. Fish, who kept losing his sense of where Owen was. When Owen pointed, it was all of a sudden, a convulsive, twitchy movement--his small, white hand flashing out of the folds of the cloak, which he flapped. He could glide slowly, like a skater running out of momentum; but he could also skitter with a bat's repellent quickness.
At Scrooge's grave, Mr. Fish said: "'Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, answer me one
question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be or are they shadows of the things that May be, only?'"
As never before, this question seemed to seize the attention of every amateur among The Gravesend Players; even Mr. Fish appeared to be mortally interested in the answer. But the midget Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was inexorable; the tiny phantom's indifference to the question made Dan Needham shiver.
It was then that Mr. Fish approached close enough to the gravestone to read his own name thereon. "'Ebenezer Scrooge ... am I that man?'" Mr. Fish cried, falling to his knees. It was from the perspective of his knees--when Mr. Fish's head was only slightly above Owen Meany's--that Mr. Fish received his first full look at the averted face under the hood. Mr. Fish did not laugh; he screamed.
He was supposed to say, "'No, Spirit! Oh, no, no! Spirit, hear me! I am not the man I was!'" And so on and so forth. But Mr. Fish simply screamed. He pulled his hands so fiercely away from Owen's cowl that the hood was yanked off Owen's head, revealing him to the other members of the cast--several of them screamed, too; no one laughed.
"It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, just to remember it!" Dan told us, over dinner.
"I'm not surprised," my grandmother said.
After dinner, Mr. Fish made a somewhat subdued appearance.
"Well, at least we've got one good ghost," Mr. Fish said. "It makes my job a lot easier, really," he rationalized. "The little fellow is quite effective, quite effective. It will be interesting to see his ... effect on an audience."
"We've already seen it," Dan reminded him.
"Well, yes," Mr. Fish agreed hastily; he looked worried.
"Someone told me that Mr. Early's daughter wet her pants," Dan informed us.
"I'm not surprised," my grandmother said. Germaine, clearing one teaspoon at a time, appeared ready to wet hers.
"Perhaps you might hold him back a little?" Mr. Fish suggested to Dan.
"Hold him back?" Dan asked.
"Well, get him to restrain whatever it is he does," Mr. Fish said.
"I'm not at all sure what it is he does," Dan said.
"I'm not either," Mr. Fish said. "It's just ... so disturbing."