Owen's voice.
'LOOK IN THE THIRD DRAWER, RIGHT-HAND SIDE,' God said. And there Was the ball that Owen Meany hit; and there was my wretched father, asking me to forgive him, I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes-toward an infinity of unsatisfying and disagreeable endings. The wholly anticlimactic, unsatisfying, and disagreeable news that the Rev. Lewis Merrill was my father-not to mention the death of Owen Meany-is just one example of the condition of universal disappointment. In my sorry father's case, my disappointment with him was heightened by his refusal to admit that Owen Meany had managed-from beyond the grave-to reveal the Rev. Mr. Merrill's identity to me. This was another miracle that my father lacked the faith to believe in. It had been an emotional moment; I was-by my own admission-becoming an expert in imitating Owen's voice. Furthermore, Mr. Merrill himself had always desired to tell me who he was; he'd simply lacked the courage; perhaps he'd found the courage by using a voice not his own. He'd always wanted to show me the baseball, too, he admitted-'to confess.'
The Rev. Lewis Merrill was so intellectually detached from his faith, he had so long removed himself from the necessary amount of winging it that is required of belief, that he could not accept a small but firm miracle when it happened not only in his presence but was even spoken by his own lips and enacted with his own hand-which had, with a force not his own, ripped the third drawer on the right-hand side completely out of his desk. Here was an ordained minister of the Congregational Church, a pastor and a spokesman for the faithful, telling me that the miracle of Owen Meany's voice speaking out in the vestry office-not to mention the forceful revelation of my
mother's 'murder weapon,' the 'instrument of death'-was not so much a demonstration of the power of God as it was an indication of the power of the subconscious; namely, the Rev. Mr. Merrill thought that both of us had been 'subconsciously motivated'-in my case, to use Owen Meany's voice, or to make Mr. Merrill use it; and in Mr. MerriU's case, to confess to me that he was my father.
'Are you a minister or a psychiatrist?' I asked him. He was so confused. I might as well have been speaking to Dr. Dolder! Like so many things in the last twenty years: it got worse. The Rev. Mr. Merrill confessed that he had no faith at all; he had lost his faith, he told me, when my mother died. God had stopped speaking to him then; and the Rev. Mr. Merrill had stopped asking to be spoken to. My father had sat in the bleacher seats at that Little League game, and when he saw my mother strolling carelessly along the third-base line-when she had spotted him in the stands and waved to him, with her back to home plate-at that moment, my father told me, he had prayed to God that my mother would drop dead! Infuriatingly, he assured me that he hadn't really meant it-it had been only a 'passing thought.' More often, he wished that they could be friends, and that the sight of her didn't fill him with self-disgust for his long-ago transgression. When he saw her bare shoulders at the baseball game, he hated himself-he was ashamed that he was still attracted to her. Then she spotted him, and-shamelessly, without an ounce of guilt-she waved to him. She made him feel so guilty, he wished her dead. The first pitch to Owen Meany was way outside; he let it go. My mother had left my father's church, but it never seemed to upset her when she encountered him-she was always friendly, she spoke to him, she waved. It pained him to remember every little thing about her-the pretty hollow of her bare armpit, which he could see so clearly as she waved to him. The second pitch almost hit Owen Meany in the head; he dove in the dirt to avoid it. Whatever my mother remembered, my father thought that nothing pained her. She just went on waving. Oh, just drop dead! he thought. At that precise moment, that is what he'd prayed. Then Owen Meany hit the next pitch. This is what a self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends. How could the Rev. Lewis Merrill agree with me-that Mr. and Mrs. Meany were 'monsters of superstition'-if he himself believed that God had listened to his prayer at that Little League game; and that God had not 'listened' to him since? Because he'd wished my mother dead, my father said, God had punished him; God had taught Pastor Merrill not to trifle with prayer. And I suppose that was why it had been so difficult for Mr. Merrill to pray for Owen Meany-and why he had invited us all to offer up our silent prayers to Owen, instead of speaking out himself. And he called Mr. and Mrs. Meany 'superstitious'! Look at the world: look at how many of our peerless leaders presume to tell us that they know what God wants! It's not God who's fucked up, it's the screamers who say they believe in Him and who claim to pursue their ends in His holy name! Why the Rev. Lewis Merrill had so whimsically prayed that my mother would drop dead was such an old, tired story. My mother's little romance, I was further disappointed to learn, had been more pathetic than romantic; Mother, after all, was simply a very young woman from a very hick town. When she'd started singing at The Orange Grove, she'd wanted the honest approval of her hometown pastor-she'd needed to be assured that she was engaged in a decent and honorable endeavor; she'd asked him to come see her and hear her sing. Clearly, it was the sight of her that had impressed him; in that setting-in that unfamiliarly scarlet dress-'The Lady in Red'' did not strike the Rev. Mr. Merrill as the same choir girl he had tutored through her teens. I suppose it was a seduction accomplished with only slightly more than the usual sincerity- for my mother was sincerely innocent, and I will at least credit the Rev. Lewis Merrill with supposing that he was sincerely 'in love'; after all, he'd had no great experience with love. Afterward, the reality that he had no intentions of leaving his wife and children-who were already (and always had been) unhappy!-must have shamed him. I know that my mother took it fairly well; in my memory, she never winced to call me her' 'little fling.'' In short, Tabitha Wheelwright got over Lewis Merrill rather quickly; and she bore up better than stoically to the task of bearing his illegitimate child. Mother's intentions were always sound, never muddy; I don't imagine that she troubled herself to feel very guilty. But the Rev. Mr. Merrill was a man who took to wallowing in guilt; his remorse, after all, was all he had to cling to-especially after his scant courage left him, and he was forced to acknowledge that he would never be brave enough to abandon his miserable wife and children for my
