'How do you know?' I asked him.
'I DON'T KNOW HOW I KNOW,' said Owen Meany. 'I JUST KNOW THAT I KNOW,' he said. Toronto: June , -after a weekend of wonderful weather here, sunny and clear-skyed and as cool as it is in the fall, I broke down and bought The New York Times; thank God, no one I know saw me. One of the Brocklebank daughters got married on the weekend in the Bishop Strachan chapel; the BSS girls tend to do that-they come back to the old school to tie the knot, even the ones who were miserable when they were students here. Sometimes, I'm invited to the weddings-Mrs. Brocklebank invited me to this one-but this particular daughter had managed to escape ever being a student of mine, and I felt that Mrs. Brocklebank invited me only because I ran into her while she was fiercely trimming her hedge. No one sent me a formal invitation. I like to stand on a little ceremony; I felt it wasn't my place to attend. And besides: the Brocklebank daughter was marrying an American. I think it's because I ran into a carload of Americans on Russell Hill Road that I broke down and bought The New York Times. The Americans were lost; they couldn't rind The Bishop Strachan School or the chapel-they had a New York license plate and no understanding of how to pronounce Strachan.
'Where's Bishop Sfray-chen?' a woman asked me.
'Bishop Strawn,' I corrected her.
'What?' she said. 'I can't understand him,' she told her husband, the driver. 'I think he's speaking French.'
'I was speaking English,' I informed the idiot woman. 'They speak French in Montreal. You're in Toronto. We speak English here.'
'Do you know where Bishop Sfray-chen is?' her husband shouted.
'It's Bishop Strawn' I shouted back.
'No, Sfray-chen!' shouted the wife. One of the kids in the back seat spoke up.
'I think he's telling you how to pronounce it,' the kid told his parents.
'I don't want to know how to pronounce it,' his father said, 'I just want to know where it is.'
'Do you know where it is?' the woman asked me.
'No,' I said. 'I've never heard of it.'
'He's never heard of it!' the wife repeated. She took a letter out of her purse, and opened k. 'Do you know where Lonsdale Road is?' she asked me.
'Somewhere around here,' I said. 'I think I've heard of that.'
They drove off-in the direction of St. Clair, and the reservoir; they went the wrong way, of course. Their plans were certainly unclear, but they exhibited an exemplary American firmness. And so I must have been feeling a little homesick; I get that way from time to time. And what a day it was to buy The New York Times! I don't suppose there's ever a good day to buy it. But what a story I read! Nancy Reagan Says Hearings Have Not Affected President Oh, boy. Mrs. Reagan said that the congressional hearings on the Iran-contra deals had not affected the president. Mrs. Reagan was in Sweden to observe a drug-abuse program in a high school in a Stockholm suburb; I guess she's one of those many American adults of a certain advanced age who believe that the root of all evil lies in the area of young people's
self-abuse. Someone should tell Mrs. Reagan that young people-even young people on drugs-are not the ones responsible for the major problems besetting the world! The wives of American presidents have always been active in eradicating their pet peeves; Mrs. Reagan is all upset about drug abuse. I think it was Mrs. Johnson who wanted to rid the nation of junk cars; those cars that no longer could be driven anywhere, but simply sat-rusting into the landscape . . . they made her absolutely passionate about their removal. And there was another president's wife, or maybe it was a vice-president's wife, who thought it was a disgrace how the nation, as a whole, paid so little attention to 'art'; I forget what it was that she wanted to do about it. But it doesn't surprise me that the president is 'not affected' by the congressional hearings; he hasn't been too 'affected' by what the Congress tells him he can and can't do, either. I doubt that these hearings are going to 'affect' him very greatly. Who cares if he 'knew'-exactly, or inexactly-that money raised by secret arms sales to Iran was being diverted to the support of the Nicaraguan rebels? I don't think most Americans care. Americans got bored with hearing about Vietnam before they got out of Vietnam; Americans got bored with hearing about Watergate, and what Nixon did or didn't do-even before the evidence was all in. Americans are already bored with Nicaragua; by the time these congressional hearings on the Iran-contra affair are over, Americans won't know (or care) what they think-except that they'll be sick and tired of it. After a while, they'll be tired of the Persian Gulf, too. They're already sick to death of Iran. This syndrome is as familiar to me as Hester throwing up on New Year's Eve. It was New Year's Eve, ; Hester was vomiting in the rose garden, and Owen and I were watching TV. There were , U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. On New Year's Eve in ', a total of , Americans were there; Hester was barfing her brains out again, I think the January thaw was early that year; I think that was the year Hester was puking in the rain, but maybe the early thaw was New Year's Eve in , when there were , U.S. military personnel in
