Read Online A prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving - Free Book Online

Aunt Martha was, concerning her point of view that my mother was
"a little simple," my mother instantly saw what we were thinking, and
laughed at us, very quickly, and said, "No, no! I'm not going to have a
baby. I'm never going to have another baby-I have my baby. I'm just telling you
that I've met a man. Someone I like."
    "A different man, Tabitha?" my grandmother asked,
still holding her brooch.
    "Oh, not that man! Don't be silly," my mother said,
and she laughed again-her laughter drawing Lydia's wheelchair, ever so
cautiously, back toward the table.
    "A man you like, you mean, Tabitha?" my grandmother
asked.
    "I wouldn't mention him if I didn't like him," my
mother said. "I want you to meet him," she said to us all.
    "You've dated him?" my grandmother asked.
    "No! I just met him-just today, on today's train!" my
mother said.
    "And already you like him?" Lydia asked, in a tone of
voice so perfectly copied from my grandmother that I had to look to see which
one of them was speaking.
    "Well, yes," my mother said seriously. "You know
such things. You don't need that much time."
    "How many times have you known such things-before?" my
grandmother asked.
    "This is the first time, really," my mother said.
"That's why I know."
    Lydia and my grandmother instinctively looked at me, perhaps to
ascertain if I'd understood my mother correctly: that the time
"before," when she'd had her "fling," which had led to me,
was not a time when my mother had enjoyed any special
        feelings toward
whoever my father was. But I had another idea. I was thinking that maybe this
was my father, that maybe this was the first man she'd met on the train, and
he'd heard about me, and he was curious about me and wanted to see me-and
something very important had kept him away for the last six years. There had,
after all, been a war back when I'd been born, in . But as another example of
how wrong my Aunt Martha was, my mother seemed to see what I was imagining,
immediately, because she said, "Please understand, Johnny, that this man
has no relationship whatsoever to the man who is your father-this is a man I
saw for the first time today, and I like him. That's all: I just like him, and
I think you'll like him, too."
    "Okay," I said, but I couldn't look at her. I remember
keeping my eyes on Lydia's hands, gripping her wheel-chair-and on my
grandmother's hands, toying with her brooch.
    "What does he do, Tabitha?" my grandmother asked. That
was a Wheelwright thing to ask. In my grandmother's opinion, what one
"did" was related to where one's family "came from"-she
always hoped it was from England, and in the seventeenth century. And the short
list of things that my grandmother approved of "doing" was no less
specific than seventeenth-century England.
    "Dramatics," my mother said. "He's a sort of
actor-but not really."
    "An unemployed actor?" my grandmother asked. (I think
now that an employed actor would have been unsuitable enough.)
    "No, he's not looking for employment as an actor-he's
strictly an amateur actor," my mother said. And I thought of those people
in the train stations who handled puppets-I meant street performers, although
at six years old I hadn't the vocabulary to suggest this. "He teaches
acting, and putting on plays," my mother said.
    "A director?" my grandmother asked, more hopefully.
    "Not exactly," my mother said, and she frowned.
"He was on his way to Gravesend for an interview."
    "I can't imagine there's much opportunity for theater
here!" my grandmother said.
    "He had an interview at the academy," my mother said.
"It's a teaching job-the history of drama, or something. And the boys have
their own theatrical productions-you know, Martha and I used to go to them. It
was so funny how they had to dress up as girls!"
    That was the funniest part of those productions, in my memory;
I'd had no idea that directing such performances was anyone's job.
    "So he's a teacher?" my grandmother asked.