A prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving Page B

on" to men-but how much
of that would I have seen, up to the age of eleven? So maybe she did flirt-a
little. I used to imagine that her flirting was reserved for the Boston &
Maine, that she was absolutely and properly my mother in every location upon
this earth-even in Boston, the dreaded city-but that on the train she might
have looked for men. What else could explain her having met the man who
fathered me there? And some six years later-on the same train-she met the man
who would marry her! Did the rhythm of the train on the tracks somehow unravel
her and make^her behave out of character? Was she altered in transit, when her
feet were^not upon the ground? I expressed this absurd fear only once, and only
to Owen. He was shocked.
    "HOW COULD YOU THINK SUCH A THING ABOUT YOUR OWN
MOTHER?" he asked me.
    "But yew say she's sexy, you're the one who raves about her
breasts," I told him.
    "I DON'T RAVE," Owen told me.
    "Well, okay-I mean, you like her," I said. "Men,
and boys-they like her."
    "FORGET THAT ABOUT THE TRAIN," Owen said
     
    "YOUR MOTHER IS A PERFECT WOMAN. NOTHING HAPPENS TO HER ON
THE TRAIN."
    Well, although she said she "met" my father on the
Boston & Maine, I never imagined that my conception occurred there; it is a
fact, however, that she met the man she would marry on that train. That story
was neither a lie nor a secret. How many times I asked her to tell me that
story! And she never hesitated, she never lacked enthusiasm for telling that
story-which she told the same way, every time. And after she was dead, how many
times I asked him to tell me the story-and he would tell it, with enthusiasm,
and the same way, every time. His name was Dan Needham. How many times I have
prayed to God that he was my real father! My mother and my grandmother and
I-and Lydia, minus one of her legs-were eating dinner on a Thursday evening in
the spring of . Thursdays were the days my mother returned from Boston, and we
always had a better-than-average dinner those nights. I remember that it was
shortly after Lydia's leg had been amputated, because it was still a little
strange to have her eating with us at the table (in her wheelchair), and to
have the two new maids doing the serving and the clearing that only recently Lydia
had done. And the wheelchair was still new enough to Lydia so that she wouldn't
allow me to push her around in it; only my grandmother and my mother-and one of
the two new maids-were allowed to. I don't remember all the trivial intricacies
of Lydia's wheel-chair rules-just that the four of us were finishing our
dinner, and Lydia's presence at the dinner table was as new and noticeable as
fresh paint. And my mother said, "I've met another man on the good old
Boston and Maine."
    It was not intended, I think, as an entirely mischievous remark,
but the remark took instant and astonishing hold of Lydia and my grandmother
and me. Lydia's wheelchair surged in reverse away from the table, dragging the
tablecloth after her, so that all the dishes and glasses and silverware
jumped-and the candlesticks wobbled. My grandmother seized the large brooch at
the throat of her dress-she appeared to have suddenly choked on it-and I
snapped so substantial a piece of my lower lip between my teeth that I could
taste my blood. We all thought that my mother was speaking euphemisti- cally. I
wasn't present when she'd announced the particulars of the case of the first
man she claimed she'd met on the train. Maybe she'd said, "I met a man on
the good old Boston and Maine-and now I'm pregnant!" Maybe she said,
"I'm going to have a baby as a result of a fling I had with a total
stranger I met on the good old Boston and Maine-someone I never expect to see
again!"
    Well, anyway, if I can't re-create the first announcement, the
second announcement was spectacular enough. We all thought that she was telling
us that she was pregnant again-by a different man! And as an example of how
wrong my