drive
you, Owen-at least until you got a driver's license of your own.'
'NO, IT WON'T WORK,' Owen said. 'MY FATHER'S TOO BUSY, AND MY MOTHER DOESN'T DRIVE.'
Mrs. Meany-both my mother and I knew-not only didn't drive; she never left the house. And even in the summer, the windows in that house were never open; his mother was allergic to dust, Owen had explained. Every day of the year, Mrs. Meany sat indoors behind the windows bleared and streaked with grit from the quarry. She wore an old set of pilot's headphones (the wires dangling, unattached) because the sound of the channeling machine-the channel bar, and the rock chisels-disturbed her. On blasting days, she played the phonograph very loudly-the big band sound, the needle skipping occasionally when the dynamite was especially nearby and percussive. Mr. Meany did the shopping. He drove Owen to Sunday school, and picked him up-although he did not attend the Episcopal services himself. It was apparently enough revenge upon the Catholics to be sending Owen there; either the added defiance of his own attendance was unnecessary, or else Mr. Meany had suffered such an outrage at the hands of the Catholic authorities that he was rendered unreceptive to the teachings of any church. He was, my mother knew, quite unreceptive on the subject of Gravesend Academy. 'There is the interests of the town,' he once said in Town Meeting, 'and then there is the interests of theml' This regarded the request of the academy to widen the saltwater river and dredge a deeper low-tide channel at a point in the Squamscott that would improve the racing course for the academy crew; several shells had become mired in the mud flats at low tide. The part of the river the academy wished to widen was a peninsula of tidewater marsh bordering the Meany Granite Quarry; it was totally unusable land, yet Mr. Meany owned it and he resented that the academy wanted to scoop it away-'for purposes of recreation!' he said.
'We're talking about mud, not granite,' a representative of the academy had remarked.
'I'm talkin' about us and them}' Mr. Meany had shouted, in what is now recorded as a famous Town Meeting. In order for a Town Meeting to be famous in Gravesend, it is only necessary that there be a good row. The Squamscott was widened; the channel was dredged. If it was just mud, the town decided, it didn't matter whose mud it was.
'You're going to the academy, Owen,' my mother told him. 'That's all there is to it. If any student ever belonged in a proper school, it's you-that place was made with you in mind, or it was made for no one.'
'WE MISSED DOING A GOOD DEED,' Owen said morosely. 'THAT MAN SHINGLING THE CHURCH-HE NEEDED HELP.'
'Don't argue with me, Owen,' my mother said. 'You're going to the academy, if I have to adopt you. I'll kidnap you, if I have to,' she said. But no one on this earth was ever as stubborn as Owen Meany; he waited a mile before he said another word, and then he said, 'NO. IT WON'T WORK.'
Gravesend Academy was founded in by the Rev. Emery Hurd, a follower of the original Wheelwright's original beliefs, a childless Puritan with an ability-according to Wall-for 'Oration on the advantages of Learning and its happy Tendency to promote Virtue and Piety.' What would the Rev. Mr. Hurd have thought of Owen Meany? Hurd conceived of an academy whereat 'no vicious lad, who is liable to contaminate his associates, is allowed to remain an hour'; whereat 'the student shall bear the laboring oar'-and learn heartily from his labor! As for the rest of his money, Emery Hurd left it for 'the education and christianization of the American Indians.' In his waning years-ever watchful that Gravesend Academy devote itself to 'pious and charitable purposes'-the Rev. Mr. Hurd was known to patrol Water Street in downtown Gravesend, looking for youthful offenders: specifically, young men who would not doff their hats to him, and young ladies who would not curtsy. In payment for such offense, Emery Hurd was happy to give these young people a piece of his mind; near the end, only pieces were left. I saw my grandmother lose her mind in pieces like that; when she was so old that she could remember almost nothing-certainly not Owen Meany, and not even me-she would occasionally reprimand the whole room, and anyone present in it. 'What has happened to tipping the hat?' she would howl. 'Bring back the bow!' she would croon. 'Bring back the curtsy!'
'Yes, Grandmother,' I would say.
'Oh, what do you know?' she would say. 'Who are you, anyway?' she would ask.
'HE IS YOUR GRANDSON, JOHNNY,' I would say, in my best imitation of Owen Meany's voice. And my Grandmother would say, 'My God, is he still here? Is that funny little guy still here? Did you lock him in the passageway, Johnny?'
Later, in that summer when we were ten, Owen told me that my mother had been to the quarry to visit his parents.
'What did they say about it?' I asked him. They hadn't mentioned the visit, Owen told me, but he knew she'd been there. 'I COULD SMELL HER PERFUME,' Owen said. 'SHE MUST HAVE BEEN THERE QUITE A WHILE BECAUSE THERE WAS ALMOST AS MUCH OF HER PERFUME AS THERE IS IN YOUR HOUSE. MY MOTHER DOESN'T WEAR PERFUME,' he added. This was unnecessary to tell me. Not only did Mrs. Meany not go outdoors; she refused to look outdoors. When I saw her positioned in the various windows of Owen's house, she was always in profile to the window, determined not to be observing the world-yet making an obscure point: by sitting in profile, possibly she meant to suggest that she had not entirely turned her back on the world, either. It occurred to
