366
L.
WOIWODE
was placed on the cabin steps beside his mother. She took him in her
anus and said, "Thank God, thank God," and the shining trails of
tears on her face made Owen begin crying. He believed his father
was to blame for the horrible thing that had happened, whatever
had happened, and the proof of this was the conspicuous absence
of his father, which hurt Owen as much as anything else. He pulled
away from his mother and saw, leaning against a tree a few feet
away, his father, who was staring at the two of them with a fear
in his eyes that Owen had never seen before.
If
anybody was to blame for the incident, it was the person
who installed the oil burner. Owen's father cursed himself for neglect–
ing to check the vent pipe of the burner. Instead of standing above
the level of the roof, as it should have, the pipe stopped below the
eaves, where there was hardly any circulation of air, and the poi–
sonous gases from burning had backed into the cabin. Owen's father
had waked, suffocating, in the middle of the night, had carried Owen
outside, had carried out his wife, who revived in 'the fresh air, and
for nearly five minutes had given artificial respiration to Owen. But
according to his father, "The act of Providence that broke those
windows is what saved your life, not me. That and your mother's
na:tural proclivities. Any other ' woman would have covered those
holes up with something solid."
The half-moons at the base of Owen's fingernails were cherry–
red in color, he and his parents had headaches the rest of the week–
end, and none of them felt well enough to eat. Nevertheless, Owen
remembered those two days as the happiest of his childhood. Though
his fa:ther's light-hearted humor didn't really return, he became teas–
ing and effusive in a way he'd never been. And there was a new
feeling of closeness between the three; they were content to sit in
the cabin by themselves and entertain one another. Owen's father
played the guitar and sang. His mother told of a trip to San Fran-
cisco, taken when she was a girl, which Owen had never heard about.
They started
Anna Karenina
together, each
of
them in turn read-
ing a chapter aloud. With his parents sitting on either side of him,
prompting
him
gently when he came to a difficult word, Owen
forgot his usual bashfulness, and felt pleasure as he read - pride,
even. "When you come to one of those long, impossible last names,"
his father said, "rattle it off fast, like me, then everybody will figure
you know what you're doing."
