The Hotel New Hampshire

the last of Jones when we left Dairy, although—once again—his style of rescuing Franny would distinguish itself by his late arrival. Junior Jones, as you know, would play college football at Penn State, and professional football for the Browns—until someone would mess up his knee. He would then go to law school and become active in an organization in New York City—which would be called, at his suggestion, the Black Arm of the Law. As Lilly would say—and one day she would make this clear to us—Everything is a fairy tale.

Chester Pulaski would suffer his racist nightmares most of his life, which would be over in a car. The police would say that he must have had his hands all over someone while he was supposed to be paying attention to the steering wheel. The woman was killed, too, and Lenny Metz said he knew her. When his collarbone healed, Metz went right back to carrying the ball; he played college football somewhere in Virginia and introduced Chester Pulaski to the woman he killed over one Christmas vacation. Metz would never be drafted by the pros—for a pronounced lack of quickness—but he was drafted by the U.S. Army, who didn’t care how slow he was, and he died for his country, as they say, in Vietnam. Actually, he was not shot by the enemy; he did not step on a mine. It was another kind of combat that Lenny Metz succumbed to: he was poisoned by a prostitute, whom he had cheated.

Harold Swallow was both too crazy and too fast for me to keep up with. God knows what became of him. Good luck to you, Harold, wherever you are!

Perhaps because it was Halloween, and Halloween’s atmosphere pervades my memory of Iowa Bob’s winning season, they have all become like ghosts and wizards and devils and creatures of magic, to me. Remember, too: it was the first night we slept in the Hotel New Hampshire—not that we slept for most of it. Any night in a new place is a little uneasy—there are the different sounds of the beds to get used to. And Lilly, who always woke up with the same dry cough, as if she were a very old person—and we’d be constantly surprised to see how small she was—woke up coughing differently, almost as if she were as exasperated with her own poor health as Mother was. Egg never woke up unless someone woke him, and then he behaved as if he’d been awake for hours. But the morning after Halloween, Egg woke up by himself—almost peacefully. And I had heard Frank masturbate in his room for years, but it was different hearing him do it in the Hotel New Hampshire—perhaps because I knew that Sorrow was in a trash bag under his bed.

The morning after Halloween, I watched the early light fall in Elliot Park. There’d been a frost, and through the frozen rinds of someone’s mangled pumpkin I saw Frank trudging to the bio lab with Sorrow in the trash bag over his shoulder. Father saw him out the same window.

“Where the hell is Frank going with the garbage?” Father asked.

“He probably couldn’t find the trash barrels,” I said, so that Frank could make good his escape. “I mean, we don’t have a phone that works, and we were out of electricity. There probably aren’t any trash barrels, either.”

“There are so,” Father said. “The barrels are out at the delivery entrance.” He stared after Frank and shook his head. “The damn fool must be going all the way to the dump,” Father said. “Jesus, that boy is queer.”

I shivered, because I knew that Father didn’t know that Frank really was queer.

When Egg was finally out of the bathroom, Father went to use the facilities and found that Franny had beaten him to the door. She was drawing another bath for herself, and Mother told Father, “Don’t you say a word to her. She can take all the baths she wants.” And they went away, arguing—which they rarely did. “I told you we’d need another bathroom,” Mother said.

I listened to Franny, drawing her bath. “I love you,” I whispered at the locked door. But—over the sound of the healing water—it is unlikely that Franny ever heard me.

5 Merry Christmas, 1956

I remember the rest of 1956, from Halloween to Christmas, as the length of time it took Franny to stop taking three baths a day—and to return to her natural fondness for her own good, ripe smell. Franny always smelled nice to me—although at times she gave off a very strong smell—but from Halloween to Christmas, 1956, Franny did not smell nice to herself. And so she took so many baths that she did not smell at all.

In the Hotel New Hampshire, our family took over another bathroom and sharpened our skills at Father’s first family business. Mother took charge of the cranky pride of Mrs. Urick, and the plain-but-good production of Mrs. Urick’s kitchen; Mrs. Urick took charge of Max, in spite of his being well hidden from her, on the fourth floor. Father handled Ronda Ray—“not literally,” as Franny would say.

Ronda had a curious energy. She would strip and make up all the beds in a single morning; she could serve four tables in the restaurant without botching an order or making anyone wait; she could spell Father at the bar (we were open every evening, except Monday, until eleven) and have all the tables set before breakfast (at seven). But when she retired, to her “dayroom,” she seemed either in hibernation or in a deep stupor, and even at the peak of her energy—when she was getting everything done, on time—she looked sleepy.

“Why do we say it’s a dayroom?” Iowa Bob asked. “I mean, if Ronda goes back to Hampton Beach, when does she do it? I mean, it’s all right that she lives here, but why don’t we say she lives here—why doesn’t she say so?”

“She’s doing a good job,” Father said.

“But she’s living in her dayroom,” Mother said.

“What’s a dayroom?” Egg asked. It seemed everyone wanted to know that.

Franny and I listened to Ronda Ray’s room on the intercom for hours, but it would be weeks before we learned what a dayroom was. At midmornings we would switch on Ronda’s room and Franny would say, after listening to the breathing for a while, “Asleep.” Or sometimes: “Smoking a cigarette.”

Late at night, Franny and I would listen and I would say, “Perhaps she’s reading.”

“Are you kidding?” Franny would say.

Bored, we would listen to the other rooms, one at a time, or all together. Checking out Max Urick’s static, over which we could—occasionally—hear Max’s radio. Checking the stockpots in Mrs. Urick’s basement kitchen. We knew that 3F was Iowa Bob, and we would tune in the sound of his barbells every once in a while—often interrupting him with our own comments, like: “Come on, Grandpa, a little quicker! Let’s really snap those babies up—you’re slowing down.”

“You damn kids!” Bob would grunt; or at other times he would slap two iron weights together, right next to the speaker-receiver box, so that Franny and I would jump and hold our ringing ears. “Ha!” Coach Bob would cry. “Got you little buggers that time, didn’t I?”

“Lunatic in 3F,” Franny would broadcast on the intercom. “Lock your doors. Lunatic in 3F.”

“Ha!” Iowa Bob would grunt—over the bench presses, over the push-ups, the sit-ups, the one-arm curls. “This hotel is for lunatics!”

It was Iowa Bob who encouraged me to lift weights. What happened to Franny had somehow inspired me to make myself stronger. By Thanksgiving I was running six miles a day, although the cross-country course at Dairy was only two and a quarter miles. Bob put me on a heavy dose of bananas and milk and oranges. “And pasta, rice, fish, lots of greens, hot cereal, and ice cream,” the old coach told me. I lifted twice a day; and in addition to my six miles, I ran wind sprints every morning in Elliot Park.

At first, I just put on weight.

“Lay off the bananas,” Father said.

“And the ice cream,” said Mother.

“No, no,” said Iowa Bob. “Muscles take a little time.”

“Muscles?” Father said. “He’s fat.”

“You look like a cherub, dear,” Mother told me.

“You look like a teddy bear,” Franny told me.

“Just keep eating,” said Iowa Bob. “With all the lifting and running, you’re going to see a change in no time.”

“Before he explodes?” Franny said.