'IT WAS MY NAME,' he repeated stubbornly.
'Look at it this way: you got it half-right,' I told him. I was trying to sound as if I were an old hand at 'visions,' and at interpreting them. I tried to sound as if I knew more about the matter than Pastor Merrill.
'IT WASN'T JUST MY NAME,' Owen said. 'I MEAN, NOT THE WAY I EVER WRITE IT-NOT THE WAY I WROTE FT IN THE BABY POWDER. IT WAS MY REAL NAME-IT SAID THE WHOLE THING,' he said. That made me pause; he sounded so unbudging. His 'real' name was Paul-his father's name. His real name was Paul O. Meany, Jr.; he'dbeen baptized aCatholic. Of course, he needed a saint's name, like St. Paul; if there is a St. Owen, I've never heard of him. And because there was already a 'Paul' in the family, I suppose that's why they called him 'Owen'; where that middle name came from, he never said-I never knew.
'The gravestone said, 'Paul O. Meany, Junior'-is that right?' I asked him.
'IT SAID THE WHOLE THING,' Owen repeated. He hung up. He was so crazy, he drove me crazy! I stayed up drinking orange juice and eating cookies; I put some fresh bacon in the mousetrap and turned out the light. Like my mother, I hate darkness; in the dark, it came to me-what he meant by THE WHOLE THING. I turned on the light; I called him back.
'MERRY CHRISTMAS,' he said.
' 'Was there a date on the gravestone?'' I asked him. He gave himself away by hesitating.
'NO,' he said.
'What was the date, Owen?' I asked him. He hesitated again.
'THERE WAS NO DATE,' Owen said. I wanted to cry-not because I believed a single thing about his stupid 'vision,' but because it was the first time he had lied to me.
'Merry Christmas,' I said; I hung up. When I turned the light out a second time, there was more darkness in the darkness. What was the date? How much time had he given himself? The only question that I wanted to ask the darkness was the one question Scrooge had also wanted an answer to: ' 'Are these the shadows of the things that Will be or are they shadows of the things that May be, only?' ' But the Ghost of the Future was not answering.
THE VOICE
ABOVE ALL THINGS that she despised, what my grandmother loathed most was lack of effort; this struck Dan Needham as a peculiar hatred, because Harriet Wheelwright had never worked a day in her life-nor had she ever expected my mother to work; and she never once assigned me a single chore. Nevertheless, in my grandmother's view, it required nearly constant effort to keep track of the world-both our own world and the world outside the sphere of Gravesend-and it required effort and intelligence to make nearly constant comment on one's observations; in these efforts, Grandmother was rigorous and unswerving. It was her belief in the value of effort itself that prevented her from buying a television set. She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found writing to be a great waste of time-a childish self-indulgence, even messier than finger painting-but she admired reading, which she believed was an unselfish activity that provided information and inspiration. She must have thought it a pity that some poor fools had to waste their lives writing in order for us to have sufficient reading material. Reading also gave one confidence in and familiarity with language, which was a necessary tool for forming those nearly constant Comments on what one had observed. Grandmother had her doubts about the radio, although she conceded that the modem world moved at such a pace that keeping up with it defied the written word; listening, after all, required some effort, and the language one heard on the radio was not much worse than the language one increasingly stumbled over in newspapers and magazines. But she drew the line at television. It took no effort to watch-it was infinitely more beneficial to the soul, and to the intelligence, to read or to listen-and what she imagined there was to watch on TV appalled her; she had, of course, only read about it. She had protested to the Soldiers' Home, and to the Gravesend Retreat for the Elderly-both of which she served as a trustee-that making television sets available to old people would surely hasten their deaths. She was unmoved by the claim made by both these homes for the aged: that the inmates were often too feeble or inattentive to read, and that the radio put them to sleep. My grandmother visited both homes, and what she observed only confirmed her opinions; what Harriet Wheelwright always observed always confirmed her opinions: she saw the process of death hastened. She saw very old, infirm people with their mouths agape; although they were, at best, only partially alert, they gave their stuporous attention to images that my grandmother described as 'too surpassing in banality to recall.' It was the first time she had actually seen television sets that were turned on, and she was hooked. My grandmother observed that television was draining what scant life remained in the old people 'clean out of them'; yet she instantly craved a TV of her own! My mother's death, which was followed in less than a year by Lydia's death, had much to do with Grandmother's decision to have a television installed at Front Street. My mother had been a big fan of the old Victrola; in the evenings, we'd listened to Sinatra singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra- my mother liked to sing along with Sinatra. 'That Frank,' she used to say. 'He's got a voice that's meant for a woman-but no woman was ever that lucky.' I remember a few of her favorites; when I hear them, I'm still tempted to sing along- although I don't have my mother's voice. I don't have Sinatra's voice, either-nor his bullying
