death-and who had his own reason for wanting to possess the ball that Owen Meany hit.
THE ARMADILLO
MY MOTHER'S NAME was Tabitha, although no one but my grandmother actually called her that. Grandmother hated nicknames-with the exception that she never called me John; I was always Johnny to her, even long after I'd become just plain John to everyone else. To everyone else, my mother was Tabby. I recall one occasion when the Rev. Lewis Merrill said 'Tabitha,' but that was spoken in front of my mother and grandmother-and the occasion was an argument, or at least a plea. The issue was my mother's decision to leave the Congregational Church for the Episcopal, and the Rev. Mr. Merrill-speaking to my grandmother, as if my mother weren't in the room-said, 'Tabitha Wheelwright is the one truly angelic voice in our choir, and we shall be a choir without a soul if she leaves us.' I must add, in Pastor MerrilFs defense, that he didn't always speak with such Byzantine muddiness, but he was sufficiently worked up about my mother's and my own departure from his church to offer his opinions as if he were speaking from the pulpit. In New Hampshire, when I was a boy, Tabby was a common name for house cats, and there was undeniably a feline quality to my mother-never in the sly or stealthy sense of that word, but in the word's other catlike qualities: a clean, sleek, self-possessed, strokable quality. In quite a different way from
Owen Meany, my mother looked touchable; I was always aware of how much people wanted, or needed, to touch her. I'm not talking only about men, although-even at my age-I was aware of how restlessly men moved their hands in her company. I mean that everyone liked to touch her-and depending on her attitude toward her toucher, my mother's responses to being touched were feline, too. She could be so chillingly indifferent that the touching would instantly stop; she was well coordinated and surprisingly quick and, like a cat, she could retreat from being touched-she could duck under or dart away from someone's hand as instinctively as the rest of us can shiver. And she could respond in that other way that cats can respond, too; she could luxuriate in being touched-she could contort her body quite shamelessly, putting more and more pressure against the toucher's hand, until (I used to imagine) anyone near enough to her could hear her purr. Owen Meany, who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water . . . remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain, untouchable . . . Owen said to me once, 'YOUR MOTHER IS SO SEXY, I KEEP FORGETTING SHE'S ANYBODY'S MOTHER.'
As for my Aunt Martha's insinuations, leaked to my cousins, who dribbled the suggestion, more than ten years late, to me-that my mother was 'a little simple''-I believe this is the result of a jealous elder sister's misunderstanding. My Aunt Martha failed to understand the most basic thing about my mother: that she was born into the entirely wrong body. Tabby Wheelwright looked like a starlet-lush, whimsical, easy to talk into anything; she looked eager to please, or 'a little simple,' as my Aunt Martha observed; she looked touchable. But I firmly believe that my mother was of an entirely different character man her appearance would suggest; as her son, I know, she was almost perfect as a mother-her sole imperfection being that she died before she could tell me who my father was. And in addition to being an almost perfect mother, I also know that she was a happy woman-and a truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy. If her body looked restless, she wasn't. She was content-she was feline in that respect, too. She appeared to want nothing from life but a child and a loving husband; it is important to note these singulars-she did not want children, she wanted me, just me, and she got me; she did not want men in her life, she wanted a man, the right man, and shortly before she died, she found him. I have said that my Aunt Martha is a 'lovely woman,' and I mean it: she is warm, she is attractive, she is decent and kind and honorably intentioned-and she has always been loving to me. She loved my mother, too; she just never understood her-and when however small a measure of jealousy is mixed with misunderstanding, there is going to be trouble. I have said that my mother was a sweater girl, and that is a contradiction to the general modesty with which she dressed; she did show off her bosom-but never her flesh, except for her athletic, almost-innocent shoulders. She did like to bare her shoulders. And her dress was never slatternly, never wanton, never garish; she was so conservative in her choice of colors that I remember little in her wardrobe that wasn't black or white, except for some accessories-she had a fondness for red (in scarves, in hats, in shoes, in mittens and gloves). She wore nothing that was tight around her hips, but she did like her small waist and her good bosom to show-she did have THE BEST BREASTS OF ALL THE MOTHERS, as Owen observed. I do not think that she flirted; she did not 'come on' to men-but how much of that would I have seen, up to the age of eleven? So maybe she did flirt-a little. I used to imagine that her flirting was reserved for the Boston & Maine, that she was absolutely and properly my mother in every location upon this earth-even in Boston, the dreaded city-but that on the train she might have looked for men. What else could explain her having met the man who fathered me there? And some six years later-on the same train-she met the man who would marry her! Did the rhythm of the train on the tracks somehow unravel her and make^her behave out of character? Was she altered in transit, when her feet were^not upon the ground? I expressed this absurd fear only once, and only to Owen. He was shocked.
'HOW COULD YOU THINK SUCH A THING ABOUT YOUR OWN MOTHER?' he asked me.
'But yew say she's sexy, you're the one who raves about her breasts,' I told him.
'I DON'T RAVE,' Owen told me.
'Well, okay-I mean, you like her,' I said. 'Men,
