The Hotel New Hampshire

Franny switched the Texan’s room from Receiving to Broadcasting. “Ya-hoo?” she whispered.

And then it came to us—all three of us (even Frank) seemed to grasp it. It took Franny about one second to switch to Ronda Ray’s “dayroom.”

“You want to know what a dayroom is, Frank?” she asked.

And on came the unforgettable sound.

As Iowa Bob said, we are on a big cruise, across the world, and we’re in danger of being swept away, at any time.

Frank and Franny and I gripped our chairs.

“Oooooooooo!” gasped Ronda Ray.

“Hoo, hoo, hoo!” the Texan cried.

And later he said, “I sure appreciate this.”

“Phooey,” Ronda said.

“No, I do, I really do,” he said. We heard him peeing—like a horse, it went on forever. “You don’t know how hard it is for me to hit that little bitty toilet up on the fourth floor,” he said. “It’s so far down,” the Texan said, “I have to take aim before I shoot.”

“Ha!” cried Ronda Ray.

“Ya-hoo!” the Texan said.

“Disgust ing,” Frank said, and went to bed, but Franny and I stayed up until the only sounds on the squawk box were the sounds of sleep.

In the morning it was raining, and I made a point of holding my breath every time I ran by the second-floor landing—not wanting to disturb Ronda, and knowing what she thought of my “breathing.”

Blue in the face, I passed the Texan climbing between three and four.

“Ya-Hoo!” I said.

“Morning! Morning!” he cried. “Staying in shape, huh?” he said. “Good for you! Your body’s got to last you all your life, you know.”

“Yessir,” I said, and ran up and down some more.

About the thirtieth trip I was beginning to bring back the Black Arm of the Law, and the sight of Franny’s missing fingernail—how so much pain seemed focused at this bleeding tip of her hand, and perhaps distracted her from the rest of her body—when Ronda Ray blocked my way on the second-floor landing.

“Whoa, boy,” she said, and I stopped. She was wearing one of her nightgowns, and if the sun had been shining, the light would have shot right through the material and lit her up for me—but it was a gloomy light, that morning, and the dim stairwell revealed very little of her. Just her moves, and her absorbing odour.

“Good morning,” I said. “Ya-hoo!”

“Ya-hoo to you, John-O,” she said. I smiled and ran in place.

“You’re breathing again,” Ronda told me.

“I was trying to hold my breath for you,” I panted, “but I got too tired.”

“I can hear your fucking heart,” she said.

“It’s good for me,” I said.

“It’s not good for me,” Ronda said. She put her hand on my chest, as if she were reading my heartbeat. I stopped running in place; I needed to spit.

“John-O,” said Ronda Ray, “if you like to breathe this hard and make your heart pound, you should come see me the next time it rains.”

And I ran up and down the stairs about forty more times. It will probably never rain again, I thought. I was too tired to eat anything at breakfast.

“Just have a banana,” said Iowa Bob, but I looked away from it. “And an orange or two,” Bob said. I excused myself.

Egg was in the bathroom and he wouldn’t let Franny in.

“Why don’t Franny and Egg take their baths together?” Father asked. Egg was six, and in another year he would probably be too embarrassed to take a bath with Franny. He was fond of baths now because of all the tub toys he possessed; when you used the bathroom after Egg had been there, the bathtub looked like a children’s beach—abandoned during an air raid. Hippos, boats, frogmen, rubber birds, lizards, alligators, a shark with a wind- up mouth, a seal with wind-up flippers, a ghastly yellow turtle—every conceivable imitation of amphibious life, sodden and dripping on the tub floor and crunching on the bathmat, underfoot.

“Egg!” I would scream. “Come clean up your shit!”

“What shit?” Egg would cry.

“Honestly, your language,” Mother said—repeatedly, to us all.

Frank had taken to peeing against the trash barrels at the delivery entrance in the morning; he claimed he could never get to the bathroom when he wanted to. I went upstairs and used the bathroom attached to Iowa Bob’s room, and used the weights there, too, of course.

“What a racket to wake up to!” old Bob complained. “I never thought this is how retirement would be. Listening to someone peeing and weight-lifting. What an alarm clock!”

“You like to get up early, anyway,” I told him.

“It’s not when that I mind,” said the old coach. “It’s how.”

And we slipped through November that way—a freak snowfall early in the month: it really should have been rain, I knew. What did it mean that it wasn’t rain? I wondered, thinking of Ronda Ray and her dayroom.

It was a dry November.

Egg had a run of ear infections; he seemed partially deaf most of the time.

“Egg, what did you do with my green sweater?” Franny asked.

“What?” Egg said.

“My green sweater!” Franny screamed.

“I don’t have a green sweater,” Egg said.

“It’s my green sweater!” Franny shouted. “He dressed his bear in it yesterday—I saw it,” Franny told Mother. “And now I can’t find it.”

“Egg, where’s your bear?” Mother asked.

“Franny doesn’t have a bear,” Egg said. “That’s my bear.”

“Where’s my running hat?” I asked Mother. “It was on the radiator in the hall last night.”

“Egg’s bear is probably wearing it,” Frank said. “And he’s out doing wind sprints.”

“What?” Egg said.

Lilly also had medical problems. We had our annual physicals just before Thanksgiving and our family doctor—an old geezer named Dr. Blaze, whose fire, Franny remarked, was almost out—discovered during a routine check that Lilly hadn’t grown in a year. Not a pound, not a fraction of an inch. She was exactly the same size she’d been when she was nine, which was not much bigger than she’d been at eight—or (checking the records) at seven.

“She’s not growing?” Father asked.

“I’ve said so, for years,” Franny said. “Lilly doesn’t grow—she just is.”

Lilly seemed unimpressed by the analysis; she shrugged. “So I’m small,” she said. “Everyone’s always saying so. So what’s the matter with being small?”

“Nothing, dear,” Mother said. “You can be as small as you want, but you should be growing—just a little.”

“She’s going to be one of those who shoots up all at once,” said Iowa Bob, but even he looked doubtful. Lilly didn’t impress you as the sort who would ever “shoot up.”

We made her stand back to back with Egg; at six, Egg was almost as big as Lilly at ten, and he certainly looked more solid.

“Stand still!” Lilly said to Egg. “Stop standing on your toes!”

“What?” said Egg.

“Stop standing on your toes, Egg!” Franny said.