and Hester and me to bed. At a quarter to twelve, Hester and Simon and Noah and I would bundle up and cross the street to the depot; the weather in the north country on a Christmas Eve, at midnight, was not inviting to grown-ups-the grown-ups all approved of letting us kids meet Dan's train. We liked to be early so we could make plenty of snowballs; the train was always on time-in those days. There were few people on it, and almost no one but Dan got off in Sawyer Depot, where we would pelt him with snowballs. As tired as he was, Dan put up a game fight. Earlier in the evening, my mother and Aunt Martha sang Christmas carols; sometimes my grandmother would join in. We children could remember most of the words to the first verses; it was in the later verses of the carols that my mother and Aunt Martha put their years in the Congregational Church Choir to the test. My mother won that contest; she knew every word to every verse, so that-as a carol progressed-we heard nothing at all from Grandmother, and less and less from Aunt Martha. In the end, my mother got to sing the last verses by herself.
'What a waste, Tabby!' Aunt Martha would say. 'It's an absolute waste of your memory-knowing all those words to the verses no one ever sings!'
'What else do I need my memory for?' my mother asked her sister; the two women would smile at each other-my Aunt Martha coveting that part of my mother's memory that might tell her the story of who my father was. What really irked Martha about my mother's total recall of Christmas carols was that my mother got to sing those last verses solo; even Uncle Alfred would stop what he was doing-just to listen to my mother's voice. I remember-it was at my mother's funeral-when the Rev. Lewis Merrill told my grandmother that he'd lost my mother's voice twice. The first time was when Martha got married, because that was when both girls started spending Christmas vacations in Sawyer Depot-my mother would still practice singing carols with the choir, but she was gone to visit her sister by the Sunday of Christmas Vespers. The second time that Pastor Merrill lost my mother's voice was when she moved to Christ Church-when he lost it forever. But I had not lost her voice until Christmas Eve, , when the town I was bom in and grew up in felt so unfamiliar to me; Gravesend just never was my Christmas Eve town. Of course, I was grateful to have something to do. Although I'd seen every production of A Christmas Carol-including the dress rehearsal-I was especially glad that the final production was available to take up the time on Christmas Eve; I think both Dan and I wanted our time taken up. After the play, Dan had scheduled a cast party-and I understood why he'd done that: to take up every minute until midnight, and even past midnight, so that he wouldn't be thinking of riding the train to Sawyer Depot (and my mother in the Eastmans' warm house, waiting for him). I could picture the Eastmans having a hard time on Christmas Eve, too; after the first verse, Aunt Martha would be struggling with each carol. Dan had wanted to have the cast party at Front Street- and I understood that, too: he wanted my grandmother to be just as busy as he was. Of course, Grandmother would have complained bitterly about the party revelers-and about such a 'sundry' guest list, given the diverse personalities and social
stations of a typical Dan Needham cast; but Grandmother would, at least, have been occupied. As it was, she refused; Dan had to beg her to get her to see the play. At first, she gave him every excuse-she couldn't possibly leave Lydia alone, Lydia was sick, there was some congestion in her lungs or bronchial tubes, and it was out of the question that Lydia could go out to a play; furthermore, Grandmother argued, it being Christmas Eve, she had allowed Ethel to visit her next of kin (Ethel would be gone for Christmas Day, and the next day, too), and surely Dan knew how Lydia hated to be left alone with Germaine. Dan pointed out that he thought Germaine had been hired, specifically, to look after Lydia. Yes, Grandmother nodded, that was certainly true-nevertheless, the girl was dismal, superstitious company, and what Lydia needed on Christmas Eve was company. It was, Dan politely reasoned, 'strictly for company's sake' that he wanted my grandmother to see A Christmas Carol, and even spend a short time enjoying the festive atmosphere of the cast party. Since my grandmother had refused him the use of Front Street, Dan had decorated the entire third floor of Waterhouse Hall-opening a few of the less-cluttered boys' rooms, and the common room on that floor, for the cast; his own tiny apartment just wouldn't suffice. He'd alerted the Brinker-Smiths that there might be a rumpus two floors above them; they were welcome to join the festivities, or plug up the twins' ears with cotton, as they saw fit. Grandmother did not see fit to do a damn thing, but she enjoyed Dan's efforts to cajole her out of her veteran, antisocial cantankerousness, and she agreed to attend the play; as for the cast party, she would see how she felt after the performance. And so it fell to me: the task of escorting Grandmother to the closing-night enactment of A Christmas Carol in the Graves-end Town Hall. I took many precautions along the way, to protect Grandmother from fracturing her hip-although the sidewalks were safely sanded, there'd been no new snowfall, and the well-oiled wood of the old Town Meeting place was slipperier than any surface Grandmother was likely to encounter outdoors. The hinges of the ancient folding chairs creaked in unison as I led Harriet Wheelwright to a favored center-aisle seat in the third row, our townspeople's heads turning in the manner that a congregation turns to view a bride-for my grandmother entered the theater as if she were still responding to a curtain call, following her long-ago performance in Maugham's The Constant Wife. Harriet Wheelwright had a gift for making a regal entry. There was even some scattered applause, which Grandmother quieted with a well-aimed glower; respect, in the form of awe-preferably, silent awe-was something she courted, but hand-clapping was, under the circumstances, vulgar. It took a full five minutes for her to be comfortably seated-her mink off, but positioned over her shoulders; her scarf loosened, but covering the back of her neck from drafts (which were known to approach from the rear); her hat on, despite the fact that no one seated behind her could see over it (graciously, the gentleman so seated moved). At last, I was free to venture backstage, where had grown used to the aura of spiritual calm surrounding Owen Meany at the makeup mirror. The trauma of the Christmas Pageant shone in his eyes like a death in the family; his cold had settled deep in his chest, and a fever drove him to alternate states-first he burned, then he sweated, then he shivered. He needed very little eyeliner to deepen the darkness entombing his eyes, and his nightly, excessive applications of baby powder to his face-which was already as white as
