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“Owen thought he saw an angel,” I explained to Grandmother.

“He thought I was an angel?” Grandmother asked. “I told you he was possessed.”

“Owen is an angel,” my mother said.

“He is no such thing,” my grandmother said. “He is a mouse. The Granite Mouse!”

When Mr. Fish saw Owen and me on our bicycles, he waved us over to him; he was pretending to mend a loose picket on his fence, but he was really just watching our house—waiting for someone to come down the driveway.

“Hello, boys!” he said. “That was some hullabaloo last night. I suppose you heard it?” Owen shook his head.

“I heard Sagamore barking,” I said.

“No, no—before that!” Mr. Fish said. “I mean, did you hear what made him bark? Such cries! Such a yell! A

real hullabaloo!”

Sometime after she’d managed to catch her breath, Grandmother had cried out, too, and of course Lydia had cried out as well—after she’d collided with her dresser drawers. Owen said later that my grandmother had been WAILING LIKE A BANSHEE, but there had been nothing of a caliber comparable to Owen’s scream.

“Owen thought he saw an angel,” I explained to Mr. Fish.

“It didn’t sound like a very nice angel, Owen,” Mr. Fish said.

“WELL, ACTUALLY,” Owen admitted, “I THOUGHT MISSUS WHEELWRIGHT WAS A GHOST.”

“Ah, that explains everything!” Mr. Fish said sympathetically. Mr. Fish was as afraid of my grandmother as Owen was; at least, regarding all matters concerning the zoning laws and the traffic on Front Street, he was always extremely deferential to her.

What a phrase that is: “that explains everything!” I know better than to think that anything “explains everything” today.

Later, of course, I would tell Dan Needham the whole story—including Owen’s belief regarding his interruption of the Angel of Death and how he was assigned that angel’s task.

But one of the things I failed to notice about Owen was how exact he was—how he meant everything literally, which is not a usual feature of the language of children. For years he would say, “I WILL NEVER FORGET YOUR GRANDMOTHER, WAILING LIKE A BANSHEE.” But I paid no attention; I could hardly remember Grandmother making much of a ruckus—what I remembered was Owen’s scream. Also, I thought it was just an expression—“wailing like a banshee”—and I couldn’t imagine why Owen remembered my grandmother’s commotion with such importance. I must have repeated what Owen said to Dan Needham, because years later Dan asked me, “Did Owen say your grandmother was a banshee?”

“He said she was ‘wailing like a banshee,’” I explained.

Dan got out the dictionary, then; he was clucking his tongue and shaking his head, and laughing to himself, saying, “That boy! What a boy! Brilliant but preposterous!” And that was the first time I learned, literally, what a banshee was—a banshee, in Irish folklore, is a female spirit whose wailing is a sign that a loved one will soon die.

Dan Needham was right, as usual: “brilliant but preposterous”—that was such an apt description of The Granite Mouse; that was exactly what I thought Owen Meany was, “brilliant but preposterous.” As time went on—as you shall see—maybe not so preposterous.

It appeared to our town, and to us Wheelwrights ourselves, a strange reversal in my mother’s character that she should conduct a four-year courtship with Dan Needham before consenting to marry him. As my Aunt Martha would say, my mother hadn’t waited five minutes to have the “fling” that led to me! But perhaps that was the reason: if her own family, and all of Gravesend, had suspicions regarding my mother’s morals—regarding the general ease with which, they might assume, she could be talked into anything—my mother’s lengthy engagement to Dan Needham certainly showed them all a thing or two. Because it was obvious, from the start, that Dan and Mother were in love. He was devoted, she dated no one else, they were “engaged” within a few months—and it was clear to everyone how much I liked Dan. Even my grandmother, who was ever alert for what she feared was her wayward daughter’s proclivity to jump into things, was impatient with my mother to set a date for the wedding. Dan Needham’s personal charm, not to mention the speed with which he became a favorite in the Gravesend Academy community, had quickly won my grandmother over.

Grandmother was not won over quickly, as a rule—not by anyone. Yet she became infatuated with the magic Dan wrought upon the amateurs at The Gravesend Players, so much so that she accepted a part in Maugham’s The Constant Wife; she was the regal mother of the deceived wife, and she proved to have the perfect, frivolous touch for drawing-room comedy—she was a model of the kind of sophistication we could all do well without. She even discovered a British accent, with no prodding from Dan, who was no fool and fully realized that a British accent lay never very deeply concealed in the bosom of Harriet Wheelwright—it simply wanted an occasion to bring it out.

“‘I hate giving straight answers to a straight question,’” Grandmother, as Mrs. Culver, said imperiously—and completely in character. And at another memorable moment, commenting on her son-in-law’s affair with her daughter’s “‘greatest friend,’” she rationalized: “‘If John is going to deceive Constance, it’s nice it should be somebody we all know.’” Well, Grandmother was so marvelous she brought the house down; it was a grand performance, rather wasted—in my opinion—on poor John and Constance, who were drearily played by a somewhat sheepish Mr. Fish, our dog-loving neighbor (and a regular choice of Dan’s), and by the tyrannical Mrs. Walker, whose legs were her sexiest feature—and they were almost completely covered in the long dresses appropriate to this drawing-room comedy. Grandmother, who was rendered coy with false modesty, said simply that she had always had a special understanding of 1927—and I don’t doubt it: she would have been a beautiful young woman then; “and your mother,” Grandmother told me, “would have been younger than you.”

So why did Dan and my mother wait four years?

If there were arguments, if they were sorting out some differences of opinion, I never saw or heard them. Having been so improper as to have me, and never explain me, was Mother simply being overly proper the second time around? Was Dan wary of her? He never seemed wary. Was I the problem? I used to wonder. But I loved Dan—and he gave me every reason to feel that he loved me. I know he loved me; he still does.

“Is it about children, Tabitha?” my grandmother asked one evening at dinner, and Lydia and I sat at attention to hear the answer. “I mean, does he want them—do you not want another? Or is it the other way around? I don’t think you should trouble yourself about having or not having children, Tabitha—not if it costs you such a lovely, devoted man.”

“We’re just waiting, to be sure,” my mother said.

“Good Heavens, you must be sure, by now,” Grandmother said impatiently. “Even I’m sure, and Johnny’s sure. Aren’t you sure, Lydia?” Grandmother asked.

“Sure, I’m sure,” Lydia said.

“Children are not the issue,” my mother said. “There is no issue.”