of town. Several of the women fanned themselves; some of them kicked off their high heels and walked barefoot on the lawn. There had been a brief and abandoned plan to have a dance floor put on the brick terrace, but this plan withered in a disagreement concerning the proper music-and a good thing, too, my grandmother concluded; she meant it was a good thing that there was no dancing in such humid weather. But it was what a summer wedding should be-sultry, something momentarily pretty, giving way to a heat that is unrestrained. Uncle Alfred showed off for me and my cousins by chugging a beer. A stray beagle, belonging to some new people on Pine Street, made off with several cupcakes from the coffee and dessert table. Mr. Meany, standing so stiffly in-waiting at the receiving line that he appeared to have granite in his pockets, blushed when it was his turn to kiss the bride. 'Owen's got the weddin' present,' he said, turning away. 'We got just one present, from the both of us.' Mr. Meany and Owen wore the only dark suits at the wedding, and Simon commented to Owen on the inappropriateness of his solemn, Sunday school appearance.
'You look like you're at a funeral, Owen,' Simon said. Owen was hurt and looked cross.
'I was just kidding,' Simon said. But Owen was still cross and made a point of rearranging all the wedding presents on the terrace so that his and his father's gift was the centerpiece. The wrapping paper had Christmas trees all over it and the present, which Owen needed both hands to lift, was the size and shape of a brick. I was sure it was granite.
'That's probably Owen's only suit, you asshole,' Hester told Simon; they quarreled. It was the first time I'd ever seen Hester in a dress; she looked very pretty. It was a yellow dress; Hester was tan; her black hair was as tangled as a briar patch in the heat, but her reflexes seemed especially primed for the social challenge of an outdoor wedding. When Noah tried to surprise her with a captured toad, Hester got the toad away from him and slapped Simon in the face with it.
'I think you've killed it, Hester,' Noah said, bending over the stunned toad and exhibiting much more concern for it than for his brother's face.
'It's not my fault,' Hester said. 'You started it.'
My grandmother had declared the upstairs bathrooms- 'off-limits' to wedding guests, so there got to be quite long lines at the downstairs bathrooms-there were only two. Lydia had hand-painted two shirt cardboards, 'Gentlemen' and 'Ladies'; the 'Ladies' had the much longer of the lines. When Hester tried to use an upstairs bathroom-she feh that she was 'family,' and therefore not bound by the rules governing the guests-her mother told her that she would wait in line like everyone else. My Aunt Martha-like many Americans-could become quite tyrannical in the defense of democracy. Noah and Simon and Owen and I bragged that we could pee in the bushes, and Hester begged only our slightest cooperation-in order that she could follow us in that pursuit. She asked that one of us stand guard-so that other boys and men, with an urge to pee in the denser sections of the privet hedges, would not surprise her midsquat; and she requested that one of us keep her panties safe for her. Her brothers predictably balked at this and made derisive comments regarding the desirability of holding Hester's panties-under any circumstances. I was, typically, slow to respond. Hester simply stepped out of her underwear and handed her white cotton briefs to Owen Meany. You would have thought she had handed him a live armadillo; his little face reflected his devout curiosity and his extreme anxiety. But Noah snatched Hester's panties out of
Owen's hands and Simon snatched them away from his brother, pulling them over Owen's head-they fit over his head rather easily, with his face peering through the hole for one of Hester's ample thighs. He snatched them off his head, blushing; but when he tried to stuff them into his suit-jacket pocket, he discovered that the side pockets were still sewn shut. Although he'd worn this suit to Sunday school for several years, no one had unsewn the pockets for him; or perhaps he thought they were meant to be closed. He recovered, however, and stuffed the panties into the inside breast pocket of the jacket, where they made quite a lump. At least he was not wearing the panties on his head when his father walked up to him, and Noah and Simon began to scuff their feet in the rough grass and loose twigs at the foot of the privet hedge; by so doing, they managed to conceal the sound of Hester pissing. Mr. Meany was stirring a glass of champagne with a dill pickle the size of this thick forefinger. He had not drunk a drop of champagne, but he appeared to enjoy using it as a dip for his pickle.
'Are you comin' home with me, Owen?' Mr. Meany asked. He had announced, from the moment he arrived at the reception, that he couldn't stay long; my mother and grandmother were most impressed that he'd come at all. He was uncomfortable going out. His simple navy-blue suit was from the same family of cheap material as Owen's-since Owen was often up in the air in his suit, perhaps Mr. Meany's suit had been better treated; I could not tell if Mr. Meany had unsewn his side pockets. Owen's suit was creased--just above the cuffs of his trousers and at the wrists of his jacket sleeves, indicating that his suit had been let down; but the sleeves and trousers had been 'let down' so little, Owen appeared to be growing at the rate of an underfed tree.
'I WANT TO STAY,' Owen said.
'Tabby won't be bringin' you up the hill on her weddin' day,' Mr. Meany told him.
'My father or mother will bring Owen home, sir,' Noah said. My cousins-as rough as they could be with other children-had been brought up to be friendly and polite to adults, and Noah's cheerfulness seemed to surprise Mr. Meany. I introduced him to my cousins, but I could tell that Owen wanted to walk his father away from us, immediately-perhaps fearing that Hester
