The Hotel New Hampshire

night, while the storm howled and the snow fell.

“Yes, my love,” I told her.

It was wonderful to lie in bed in the morning and hear the voices of the children; they had discovered the barbells in the ballroom, and Father was giving them pointers. Iowa Bob would have loved this Hotel New Hampshire, I thought.

That was when I woke up Susie and asked her to get into the bear suit.

“Earl!” she complained. “I’m too old to be a bear anymore.” She is a bit of a bear in the early morning—my dear Susie.

“Come on, Susie,” I said. “Do it for the kids. Think of what it will mean to them.”

“What?” Susie said. “You want me to scare children?”

“No, no, Susie,” I said. “Not scare them.” All I wanted her to do was dress up in the bear suit and walk outside, in the snow, around the hotel, and I would suddenly call out, “Look! Bear tracks in the snow! And they’re fresh!”

And the people, big and small, from Arizona would all come out and wonder over the wilderness they had stumbled upon, as if in a dream, and then I would cry, “Look! There’s the bear! Going around the woodpile!” And Susie would pause there—perhaps I could persuade her to give us a good Earl! or two—and she would disappear behind the woodpile, in her bear-like fashion, and slip in one of the back doors, and slip out of her disguise, and come into the kitchen, saying, “What’s all this about a bear? You rarely see a bear around here anymore.”

“You want me to go outside in the fucking snow?” Susie asked.

“For the kids, Susie,” I said. “What a treat it would be for them. First they see the ocean and then they see a bear. Everyone should see a bear, Susie,” I said. Of course she agreed. She was grouchy about it, but that made her performance all the better; Susie was always superb as a bear, and now she is getting convinced that she’s a lovely human being, too.

And so we gave the strangers from Arizona a vision of a bear to take away with them. Father waved good- bye to them from the ballroom, after which he said to me, “A bear, huh? Susie will catch her death, or at least pneumonia. And no one should be sick—no one should even have a cold—when the baby comes. I know more about babies than you do, you know. A bear,” he repeated, shaking his head, but I knew that the people from Arizona had been convinced; Susie the bear is a masterpiece of conviction.

The bear that paused by the woodpile, its breath a fog upon the bright, cold morning, its paws softly denting the fresh, untouched snow—as if it were the first bear on, earth, and this the planet’s first snow— all of it had been convincing. As Lilly knew, everything is a fairy tale.

So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone’s older brother, and someone’s older sister—they become our heroes, too. We invent what we love, and what we fear. There is always a brave, lost brother—and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them.

In the Hotel New Hampshire, we’re screwed down for life—but what’s a little air in the pipes, or even a lot of shit in the hair, if you have good memories?

I hope this is a proper ending for you, Mother—and for you, Egg. It is an ending conscious of the manner of your favorite ending, Lilly—the one you never grew big enough to write. There may not be enough barbells in this ending to satisfy Iowa Bob, and not enough fatalism for Frank. There may not be enough of the nature of dreams in this ending for either Father or Freud. And not enough resilience for Franny. And I suppose it’s not ugly enough for Susie the bear. It’s probably not big enough for Junior Jones, and I know it’s not nearly violent enough to please some of the friends and foes from our past; it might not merit so much as a moan from Screaming Annie—wherever she lies screaming now.

But this is what we do: we dream on, and our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them. That’s what happens, like it or not. And because that’s what happens, this is what we need: we need a good, smart bear. Some people’s minds are good enough so that they can live all by themselves—their minds can be their good, smart bears. That’s the case with Frank, I think: Frank has a good, smart bear for a mind. He is not the King of Mice I fast mistook him for. And Franny has a good, smart bear named Junior Jones. Franny is also skilled at keeping sorrow at bay. And my father has his illusions; they are powerful enough. My father’s illusions are his good, smart bear—at last. And that leaves me, of course, with Susie the bear—with her rape crisis center and my fairy-tale hotel—so I’m all right, too. You have to be all right if you’re expecting a baby.

Coach Bob knew it all along: you’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You have to keep passing the open windows.

The End