The Hotel New Hampshire

would eat, and eat, and eat—making Mrs. Urick nearly detonate with pride.

“Now, there is an appetite!” said Mrs. Urick, admiringly.

“If I was as big as that, I’d eat like that, too,” Max said.

“No you wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Urick. “You don’t have it in you.”

Ronda Ray did not wear her waitress uniform; she sat and ate with the family, jumping up to clear the dishes and serve things from the kitchen, along with Franny and Mother and the big blonde girl from Finland whose famous father was visiting her.

The Finnish girl was enormous and made swooping movements around the table that made Lilly cringe. She was a big blue-and-white ski-sweater sort of girl, who kept hugging her father, a big blue-and-white ski-sweater sort of man.

“Ho!” he kept crying, at the arrival of new food from the kitchen.

“Ya-hoo,” Franny whispered.

“Holy cow,” said Junior Jones.

Iowa Bob sat next to Jones at the table; their end of the table was nearest the television above the bar, so that they could watch the football game in progress through our dinner.

“If that’s a clip, I’ll eat my plate,” Jones would say.

“Eat your plate,” Coach Bob would say.

“What’s a ‘clip’?” the famous Finnish doctor would ask, only it sounded like “Wot’s a clop?”

Iowa Bob would then offer to demonstrate a clip, on Ronda, who was willing, and the Korean girls giggled shyly to themselves, and the Japanese struggled—with his turkey, with his butter knife, with Frank’s mumbling explanations, with Egg’s shouts of “What!” all the time, with (apparently) everything.

“This is the loudest dinner I’ve ever eaten,” Franny said.

“What?” Egg cried.

“Jesus God,” said Father.

“Lilly,” Mother said. “Please eat. Then you’ll grow.”

“What’s that?” said the famous Finnish doctor, only it sounded like “Wot’s dot?” He looked at Mother and Lilly. “Who’s not growing?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Mother said.

“It’s me,” said Lilly. “I’ve stopped growing.”

“No you haven’t, dear,” Mother said.

“Her growth appears to be arrested,” Father said.

“Ho, arrested!” the Finn said, staring at Lilly. “Not growing, eh?” he asked her. She nodded in her small way. The doctor put his hands on her head and peered into her eyes. Everyone stopped eating, except the Japanese boy and the Korean girls.

“How do you say?” the doctor asked, and then said something unpronounceable to his daughter.

“Tape measure,” she said.

“Ho, a tape measure?” the doctor cried. Max Urick ran and got one. The doctor measured Lilly around her chest, around her waist, around her wrists and ankles, around her shoulders, around her head.

“She’s all right,” Father said. “It’s nothing.”

“Be quiet,” Mother said.

The doctor wrote down all the figures.

“Ho!” he said.

“Eat up your food, dear,” Mother told Lilly, but Lilly was staring at the figures the doctor had written on his napkin.

“How do you say?” the doctor asked his daughter, and said another unpronounceable word. This time the daughter drew a blank. “You don’t know?” her father asked her. She shook her head. “Where’s the dictionary?” he asked her.

“In my dorm,” she said.

“Ho!” he said. “Go and get it.”

“Now?” she said, and looked wistfully at her second serving of goose and turkey and stuffing, heaped upon her plate.

“Go, go!” her father said. “Of course now. Go! Ho! Go!” he said, and the big blue-and-white ski-sweater girl was gone.

“It’s—how you say?—a pathological condition,” the famous Finnish doctor said, calmly.

“A pathological condition?” Father said.

“A pathological condition of arrested growth,” said the doctor. “It’s common, and there’s a variety of causes.”

“A pathological condition of arrested growth,” Mother repeated.

Lilly shrugged; she imitated the way the Korean girls skinned a drumstick.

When the big, blonde, out-of-breath girl was back, she looked stricken to see that Ronda Ray had cleared her plate; she handed the dictionary to her father.

“Ho!” Franny whispered across the table to me, and I kicked her under the table. She kicked me back; I kicked back at her and kicked Junior Jones by mistake.

“Ow,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Ho!” said the Finnish doctor, putting his finger on the word. “Dwarfism!” he exclaimed.

It was quiet at the table, except for the sound of the Japanese struggling with his creamed corn.

“Are you saying she’s a dwarf?” Father asked the doctor.

“Ho, yes! A dwarf,” the doctor said.

“Bullshit,” said Iowa Bob. “That’s no dwarf—that’s a little girl! That’s a child, you moron!”

“What is ‘moron’?” the doctor asked his daughter, but she wouldn’t tell him.

Ronda Ray brought out the pies.

“You’re no dwarf, dear,” Mother whispered to Lilly, but Lilly just shrugged.

“So what if I am?” she said, bravely. “I’m a good kid.”

“Bananas,” said Iowa Bob, darkly. And no one knew if he meant that as a cure—“Just feed her bananas!”—or if he was stating a euphemism for “bullshit.”

Anyway, that was Thanksgiving, 1956, and we careened on toward Christmas in that fashion: pondering size, listening to love, giving up baths, hoping to properly pose the dead—running and lifting and waiting for rain.

It was a morning in early December when Franny woke me. It was still dark in my room, and the snorkling sound of Egg’s breathing reached me through the open connecting doorway; Egg was still asleep. There was someone’s softer, controlled breathing nearer to me than Egg, and I was aware of Franny’s smell—a smell I hadn’t known for a while: a rich but never rank smell, a little salty, a little sweet, strong but never syrupy. And in the darkness I knew that Franny had been cured of taking baths. It was overhearing my Mother and Father that did it; I think that made her own smell seem perfectly natural to Franny again.

“Franny?” I whispered, because I couldn’t see her. Her hand brushed my cheek.

“Over here,” she said. She was curled against the wall and the headboard of my bed; how she could squeeze in beside me without waking me, I’ll never know. I turned toward her and smelled that she’d brushed her teeth. “Listen,” she whispered. I heard Franny’s heartbeat and mine, and Egg deep-sea diving in the adjoining room. And something else, as soft as Franny’s breath.

“It’s rain, dummy,” Franny said, and wormed a knuckle into my ribs. “It’s raining, kid,” she told me. “It’s your big day!”

“It’s still dark,” I said. “I’m still sleeping.”

“It’s dawn,” Franny hissed in my ear; then she bit my cheek and started tickling me under the covers.

“Cut it out, Franny!” I said.

“Rain, rain, rain,” she chanted. “Don’t be chicken. Frank and I have been up for hours.”

She said that Frank was at the switchboard, playing with the squawk-box system. Franny dragged me out of