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I am reminded of some years ago, and of a New York woman who so reminded me of Mitzy Lish. She brought her daughter to Bishop Strachan for an interview; the mother wanted to interview someone from the English Department—to ascertain, she told the headmistress, if we were guilty of a “parochial” approach to literature. This woman was a seething pot of sexual contradictions. First of all, she wanted her daughter in a Canadian school—in “an old-fashioned sort of school,” she kept saying—because she wanted her daughter to be “saved” from the perils of growing up in New York. All the New England schools, she said, were full of New Yorkers; it was tragic that a young girl should have no opportunity to entertain the values and the virtues of a saner, safer time.

On the other hand, she was one of those New Yorkers who thought she would “die” if she spent a minute outside New York—who was sure that the rest of the world was a provincial whipping post whereat people like herself, of sophisticated tastes and highly urban energies, would be lashed to the stake of old-fashioned values and virtues until she expired of boredom.

“Confidentially,” she whispered to me, “what does a grown-up person do here?” I suppose she meant, in all of Toronto—in all of Canada … this wilderness, so to speak. Yet she keenly desired to banish her daughter, lest the daughter be exposed to the eye-opening wisdom that had rendered the mother a prisoner of New York!

She was quite concerned at how many Canadian authors were on our reading lists; because she’d not read them, she suspected them of the gravest parochialism. I never met the daughter; she might have been nice—a little fearful of how homesick she would be, I’m sure, but possibly nice. The mother never enrolled her, although the girl’s application was accepted. Perhaps the mother had come to Canada on a whim—I cannot claim to have come here for entirely sound reasons myself! Maybe the mother never enrolled her daughter because she (the mother) could not endure the deprivations she (the mother) would suffer while she visited her daughter in this wilderness.

I have my own idea regarding why the child was never enrolled. The mother made a pass at me! It had been quite a while since anyone had done that; I was beginning to think that this danger was behind me, but suddenly the mother said: “What does one do here—for a good time? Perhaps you’d like to show me?”

The school had made some rather unusual, if not altogether extraordinary, arrangements for the daughter to spend a night in one of the dormitory rooms—she would get to know a few of the girls, a few of the other Americans … that sort of thing. The mother inquired if I might be available for a “night on the town”!

“I’m divorced,” she added hastily—and unnecessarily; I should hope she was divorced! But even so!

Well, I don’t pretend to possess any skill whatsoever at wriggling myself free from such bold invitations; I haven’t had much practice. I suppose I behaved as an absolute bumbler; I no doubt gave the woman yet another stunning example of the “parochialism” she was doomed to encounter outside New York.

Anyway, our encounter ended bitterly. The woman had been, in her view, courageous enough to present herself to me; that I hadn’t the courage to accept her generous gift clearly marked me as the fiendish essence of cowardice. Having honored me with her seductive charms, she then felt justified in heaping upon me her considerable contempt. She told Katherine Keeling that our English reading lists were “even more parochial” than she had feared. Believe me: it was not the reading lists that she found “parochial”—it was me! I was not savvy enough to recognize a good tryst when I saw one.

And now—in my very own English Department—I must endure a woman of an apparently similar temperament, a woman whose prickly disposition is also upheaved in a sea of sexual contradictions … Eleanor Pribst!

She even quarreled with my choice of teaching Tempest-Tost; she suggested that perhaps it was because I failed to recognize that Fifth Business was “better.” Naturally, I have taught both novels, and many other works by Robertson Davies, with great—no, with the greatest—pleasure. I stated that I’d had good luck teaching Tempest-Tost in the past. “Students feel so much like amateurs themselves,” I said. “I think they find all the intrigues of the local drama league both extremely funny and extremely familiar.” But Ms. Pribst wanted to know if I knew Kingston; surely I at least knew that the fictional town of Salterton is easily identified as Kingston. I had heard that this was true, I said, although—personally—I had not been in Kingston.

“Not been!” she cried. “I suppose that this is what comes of having Americans teaching Can Lit!” she said.

“I detest the term ‘Can Lit,’” I told ms. Pribst. “We do not call American Literature ‘Am Lit,’ I see no reason to shrivel this country’s most interesting literature to a derogatory abbreviation. Furthermore,” I said, “I consider Mister Davies an author of such universal importance that I choose not to teach what is ‘Canadian’ about his books, but what is wonderful about them.”

After that, it was simple warfare. She challenged my substitution—in Grade 11—of Orwell’s Burmese Days for Orwell’s Animal Farm. In terms of “lasting importance,” it was Nineteen Eighty-four or Animal Farm; Burmese Days, she said, was “a poor substitute.”

“Orwell is Orwell,” I said, “and Burmese Days is a good novel.”

But Ms. Pribst—a graduate of Queens (hence, her vast knowledge of Kingston)—is writing her doctorate at the University of Toronto on something related to “politics in fiction.” Wasn’t it Hardy I had written about? she asked—implying “merely” Hardy!—and wasn’t it only my Master’s I had written?

And so I asked my old friend Katherine Keeling: “Do you suppose that God created Eleanor Pribst just to test me?”

“You’re very naughty,” Katherine said. “Don’t you be wicked, too.”

When I want to be “wicked,” I show the finger; correction—I show what’s missing, I show not the finger. I shall save the missing finger for my next encounter with Ms. Pribst. I am grateful to Owen Meany for so many things; not only did he keep me out of Vietnam—he created for me a perfect teaching tool, he gave me a terrific attention-getter for whenever the class is lagging behind. I simply raise my hand; I point. It is the absence of my pointer that makes pointing an interesting and riveting thing for me to do. Instantly, I have everyone’s attention. It works very well in department meetings, too.

“Don’t you point that thing at me!” Hester was fond of saying.

But it was not “that thing,” it was not anything that upset her; it was what was missing! The amputation was very clean—it was the cleanest cut imaginable. There’s nothing grotesque, or mangled—or even raw-looking—about the stump. The only thing wrong with me is what’s missing. Owen Meany is missing.

It was after Owen cut off my finger—at the end of the summer of ’67, when he was home in Gravesend for a few days’ leave—when Hester told Owen that she wouldn’t attend his funeral; she absolutely refused.

“I’ll marry you, I’ll move to Arizona—I’ll go anywhere with you, Owen,” Hester said. “Can you see me as a bride on an Army base? Can you see us entertaining another couple of young marrieds—when you’re not off escorting a body? Just call me Hester Huachuca!” she cried. “I’ll even get pregnant—if you’d like that, Owen. Do you want babies? I’ll give you babies!” Hester cried. “I’d do anything for you—you know that. But I won’t go to your fucking funeral.”

She was true to her word; Hester was not in attendance at Owen Meany’s funeral—Hurd’s Church was packed, but Hester wasn’t a part of the crowd. He’d never asked her to marry him; he’d never made her move to Arizona, or anywhere. “IT WOULDN’T BE FAIR—I MEAN, IT WOULDN’T BE FAIR TO HER,” Owen had told me.

In the fall of ’67, Owen Meany made a deal with Major General LaHoad; he was not appointed LaHoad’s aide-de-camp—LaHoad was too proud of the commendations that Owen received as a casualty assistance officer. The major general was scheduled for a transfer in eighteen months; if Owen remained at Fort Huachuca—as the casualty branch’s “best” body escort—LaHoad promised Owen “a good job in Vietnam.” Eighteen months was a long wait, but First Lieutenant Meany felt the wait was worth it.

“Doesn’t he know there are no ‘good jobs’ in Vietnam?” Hester asked me. It was October; we were in Washington with fifty thousand other antiwar demonstrators. We assembled opposite the Lincoln Memorial and marched to the Pentagon, where we were met by lines of U.S. marshals and military police; there were even marshals and police on the roof of the Pentagon. Hester carried a sign:

SUPPORT THE GI’S

BRING OUR BOYS HOME NOW!

I was carrying nothing; I was still a little self-conscious about my missing finger. The scar tissue was new enough so that any exertion caused the stump to look inflamed. But I tried to feel I was part of the demonstration; sadly, I didn’t feel I was a part of it—I didn’t feel I was part of anything. I had a 4-F deferment; I would never have to go to war, or to Canada. By the simple act of removing the first two joints of my right index finger, Owen Meany had enabled me to feel completely detached from my generation.

“If he was half as smart as he thinks he is,” Hester said to me as we approached the Pentagon, “he would have cut off his own finger when he cut off yours—he would have cut off as many fingers as he needed to. So he saved you—lucky you!” she said. “How come he isn’t smart enough to save himself?”