Page 137

d of raving-maniac rowdies unnoticed; that I come to her concerts as the escort of these young girls also makes me almost “cool” in Hester’s eyes.

“There’s hope for you yet,” my cousin invariably says to me, while my students are crowding into her messy, backstage dressing room—naturally, speechless with awe at the sight of Hester in her typically lewd dishevelment.

“They’re my students,” I remind Hester.

“Don’t let that stop you,” Hester tells me. And to one or more of my students, Hester always says: “If you’re worried about ‘safe sex,’ you ought to try it with him—” and she then lays her heavy paw upon my shoulder. “He’s a virgin, you know,” she tells my students. “There’s no one safer!”

And they titter and giggle at her joke—they think it is a joke. It’s precisely the outrageous sort of joke that they would expect from Hester the Molester. I can tell: they don’t even consider that Hester’s claim—that I’m a virgin—might be true!

Hester knows it’s true. I don’t know why she finds my position offensive. After so many humiliating years of trying to lose my virginity, which no one but myself appeared even slightly interested in—hardly anyone has wanted to take it from me—I decided that, in the long run, my virginity was valuable only if I kept it. I don’t think I’m a “non-practicing homosexual,” whatever that means. What has happened to me has simply neutered me. I just don’t feel like “practicing.”

Hester, in her own fashion, has remained a kind of virgin, too. Owen Meany was the love of her life; after him, she never allowed herself to become so seriously involved.

She says: “I like a young boy, every so often. In keeping with the times, you know, I’m in favor of ‘safe sex’; therefore, I prefer a virgin. And those young boys don’t dare lie to me! And they’re easy to say good-bye to—in fact, they’re even kinda grateful. What could be better?” my cousin asks me. I have to smile back at her wicked smile.

Hester the Molester! I have all her albums, but I don’t have a record player; I have all her tapes, too, but I don’t own a tape deck—not even the kind that fits in a car. I don’t even own a car. My students can be relied upon to keep me informed about Hester’s new rock videos.

“Mister Wheelwright! Have you seen ‘Drivin’ with No Hands’?” I shudder at the idea. Eventually, I see them all—you can’t escape the damn things; Hester’s rock videos are notorious. The Rev. Katherine Keeling herself is addicted! She claims it’s because her children watch them, and Katherine wants to keep up with whatever new atrocity is on her children’s minds.

Hester’s videos are truly ugly. Her voice has gotten louder, if not better; her accompanying music is full of electric bass and other vibrations that lower her nasal tones to the vocal equivalent of an abused woman crying for help from the bottom of an iron barrel. And the visual accompaniment is a mystifying blend of contemporary, carnal encounters with unidentified young boys intercut with black-and-white, documentary footage from the Vietnam War. Napalm victims, mothers cradling their murdered children, helicopters landing and taking off and crashing in the midst of perilous ground fire, emergency surgeries in the field, countless GI’s with their heads in their hands—and Hester herself, entering and leaving different but similar hotel rooms, wherein a sheepish young boy is always just putting on or just taking off his clothes.

The age group of that young boy—especially, young girls!—thinks that Hester the Molester is both profound and humane.

“It’s not like it’s just her music, or her voice, you know—it’s her whole statement,” one of my students told me; I felt so sick to my stomach that I couldn’t speak.

“It’s not even her lyrics—it’s her whole, you know, like commentary,” said another student. And these are smart girls—these are educated young women from sophisticated families!

I don’t deny that Hester was damaged by what happened to Owen Meany; I’m sure she thinks she was damaged even more than I was damaged—and I wouldn’t argue the point with her. We were both damaged by what happened to Owen; who cares about more? But what an irony it is that Hester the Molester has converted her damage into millions of dollars and fame—that out of Owen’s suffering, and her own, Hester has made a mindless muddle of sex and protest, which young girls who have never suffered feel they can “relate to.”

What would Owen Meany have said about that? I can only imagine how Owen would have critiqued one of Hester the Molester’s rock videos:

“HESTER, ONE WOULD NEVER SUSPECT—FROM THIS MINDLESS MESS—THAT YOU WERE A MUSIC MAJOR, AND A SOCIALIST. ONE WOULD TEND TO CONCLUDE—UPON THE EVIDENCE OF THIS DISJOINTED WALLOWING—THAT YOU WERE BORN TONE-DEAF, AND THAT YOU ARE DRAWING, ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY, UPON YOUR EXPERIENCES AS A WAITRESS!”

And what would Owen Meany have made of the crucifixes? Hester the Molester likes crucifixes, or else she likes to mock them—all kinds, all sizes; around her neck and in her ears. Occasionally, she even wears one in her nose; her right nostril is pierced.

“Are you Catholic?” an interviewer asked her once.

“Are you kidding?” Hester said.

The English major in me must point out that Hester has an ear for titles, if not for music.

“Drivin’ with No Hands”; “Gone to Arizona”; “No Church, No Country, No More”; “Just Another Dead Hero”; “I Don’t Believe in No Soul”; “You Won’t See Me at His Funeral”; “Life After You”; “Why the Boys Want Me”; “Your Voice Convinces Me”; “There’s No Forgettin’ Nineteen Sixty-eight.”

I’ve got to admit, Hester’s titles are catchy; and she has as much of a right as I have to interpret the silence that Owen Meany left behind. I should be careful not to generalize “the silence”; in my case, Owen didn’t leave me in absolute peace and quiet. Twice, in fact, Owen has let me hear from him—I mean, in both cases, that he let me hear from him after he was gone.

Most recently—only this August—I heard from him in a manner typical of Owen; which is to say, in a manner open to interpretation and dispute.

I was staying up late at 80 Front Street, and I confess that my senses were impaired; Dan Needham and I were enjoying our usual vacation—we were drinking too much. We were recalling the measures we took, years ago, to allow Grandmother to go on living at 80 Front Street as long as possible; we were remembering the incidents that finally led us to commit Grandmother to the Gravesend Retreat for the Elderly. We hated to do it, but she left us no choice; she drove Ethel crazy—we couldn’t find a maid, or a nurse, whom Grandmother couldn’t drive crazy. After Owen Meany was gone, everyone was too dull-witted to keep Harriet Wheelwright company.

For years, her groceries had been delivered by the Poggio brothers—Dominic Poggio, and the dead one, whose name I no longer remember. Then the Poggios stopped making all home deliveries. Out of fondness for my grandmother—who was his oldest-living customer, and his only customer who always paid her bills on time—Dominic Poggio generously offered to continue to make deliveries to 80 Front Street.

Was Grandmother appreciative of Dominic’s generosity? She was not only unappreciative; she could not remember that the Poggios didn’t deliver to anyone else—that they were doing her a special favor. People had always done special favors for Harriet Wheelwright; Grandmother took such treatment for granted. And she was not only unappreciative; she was complaining. She telephoned Dominic Poggio almost daily, and she upbraided him that his delivery service was going to the dogs. In the first place, she reproached him, the delivery boys were “total strangers.” They were nothing of the kind; they were Dominic Poggio’s grandchildren—my grandmother simply forgot who they were, and that she had seen them delivering her groceries for years. Furthermore, my grandmother complained, these “total strangers” were guilty of startling her—she had no fondness for surprises, she reminded poor Dominic.

Couldn’t the Poggios telephone her before they made their frightening deliveries? Grandmother asked. That way she would at least be forewarned that the total strangers were comi

ng.

Dominic agreed. He was a sweet man who cherished my grandmother; also, probably, he had wrongly predicted that she would die any day now—and he would, he’d imagined, be rid of this nuisance.