The Hotel New Hampshire

“Jesus God, you crazy weight lifters!” he yelled. “Tighten those screws!”

And one of the weights rolled into the door of Bob’s closet, and the door opened, of course, and out came the tennis racquet, Bob’s laundry bag, a vacuum cleaner hose, a squash ball, and Sorrow—stuffed.

I tried to say something, although the dog alarmed me nearly as much as it must have alarmed Iowa Bob; at least I knew what it was. It was Sorrow in Frank’s “attack” pose. It was a pretty good attack pose, all right, and a better job of stuffing a black Labrador retriever than I would have thought Frank capable of. Sorrow was screwed down to a pine board—as Coach Bob would have said, “Everything is screwed down in the Hotel New Hampshire; in the Hotel New Hampshire, we’re screwed down for life!” The fierce dog slid rather gracefully out of the closet, landing firmly on all four feet and looking ready to spring. His black fur was so glossy it must have been recently oiled, and his yellow eyes caught the bright morning light—and the light caught the gleam in his old yellow teeth, which Frank had polished white for the occasion. The dog’s hackles were drawn back farther than I ever saw old Sorrow’s hackles drawn back, when Sorrow had been alive, and a shiny sort of spittle—very convincing stuff—seemed to brighten the dead dog’s gums. His black nose looked wet and healthy, and I could almost smell his fetid halitosis reaching out to Iowa Bob and me. But this Sorrow looked much too serious to fart.

This Sorrow meant business, and before I could get my breath back and tell my grandfather that it was only a Christmas present for Franny—that it was only one of Frank’s awful projects from down at the bio lab—the old coach slung his barbell at the savage attack dog and threw his wonderful lineman’s body back against me (to protect me, no doubt; that must have been what he meant to do).

“Holy cow!” said Iowa Bob, in a strangely small voice, and the weights clattered on all sides of Sorrow. The snarling dog was unfazed; he remained poised for the kill. And Iowa Bob, who was past the end of his last season, dropped dead in my arms.

“Jesus God, are you throwing those weights around on purpose?” Father screamed upstairs to us. “Jesus God!” Father cried. “Take a day off, will you? It’s Christmas, for Christ’s sake. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!”

“Merry fucking Christmas!” shouted Franny, from downstairs.

“Merry Christmas!” said Lilly, and Egg—and even Frank.

“Merry Christmas!” Mother called softly.

And was it Ronda Ray I heard chiming in? And the Uricks—already setting up for Christmas breakfast in the Hotel New Hampshire? And I heard something unpronounceable—it might have been the Turk in 2B.

In my arms, which I realized had grown very strong, I held the former Big Ten star, who was as heavy and meaningful, to me, as our family bear, and I stared into the short distance that separated us from Sorrow.

6 Father Hears from Freud

Coach Bob’s Christmas present—the framed, blown-up photograph of Junior Jones scoring Dairy’s only touchdown against Exeter—was given to Franny, who also inherited 3F, Iowa Bob’s old room. Franny wanted nothing to do with Frank’s version of Sorrow, which Egg dragged to his room; he hid the stuffed dog under his bed, where Mother discovered it, with a shriek, several days after Christmas. I know that Frank would have liked to have Sorrow back—for further experimenting with the facial expression, or the pose—but Frank had kept to himself, and to his room, since scaring his grandfather to death.

Iowa Bob was sixty-eight when he died, but the old lineman was in first-rate shape; without a fright of Sorrow’s magnitude, he might have lived for another decade. Our family made every effort not to let the responsibility for the accident weigh too heavily on Frank. “Nothing weighs too heavily on Frank,” Franny said, but even Franny tried to cheer him up. “Stuffing Sorrow was a sweet idea, Frank,” Franny told him, “but you must realize not everybody has your taste.”

What she might have told him was that taxidermy, like sex, is a very personal subject; the manner in which we impose it on others should be discreet.

Frank’s guilt, if guilt was what he felt, was apparent only by his exaggerated absence; Frank was always more absent than the rest of us, but his usual silence grew even quieter. Even so, Franny and I felt that only Frank’s sulking prevented him from asking for Sorrow.

Mother, against Egg’s protests, instructed Max Urick to dispose of Sorrow, which Max accomplished by merely upending the paralyzed beast in one of the trash barrels at the delivery entrance. And one rainy morning, from Ronda Ray’s room, I was startled to see the soggy tail and rump of Sorrow protruding from the mouth of the barrel; I could imagine the rubbish man, with his Department of Sanitation truck, being similarly startled—thinking suddenly to himself: My God, when they’re through with their pets at the Hotel New Hampshire, they just throw them out with the garbage!

“Come back to bed, John-O,” said Ronda Ray, but I just stared through the rain, which was turning to snow—falling over the row of barrels crammed with Christmas wrappings, ribbons and tinsel, the bottles and cartons and cans of the restaurant business, the bright and dull scraps of food, of interest to the birds and dogs, and one dead dog of interest to no one. Well, almost no one. It would have broken Frank’s heart to see Sorrow come to this degrading end, and I looked out at the snow thickening over Elliot Park and saw another member of my family who was still keenly interested in Sorrow. I saw Egg, in his ski parka and ski hat, dragging his sled to the delivery entrance. He moved quickly over the slick coating of snow, his sled grating on the driveway, which was still bare and dotted with puddles. Egg knew where he was going—a quick look into the basement windows and he was safely past Mrs. Urick’s scrutiny; a glance to the fourth floor, but Max was not guarding the trash barrels. Our family’s rooms didn’t overlook the delivery entrance, and Egg knew that left only Ronda Ray who could see him. But she was in bed, and when Egg glanced up at her window, I ducked out of sight.

“If you’d rather be out running, John-O,” Ronda groaned, “go run”

And when I looked out the window again. Egg was gone; Sorrow had gone with him. The efforts to bring Sorrow back from the grave were not over, I knew; I could only guess where the beast might reappear.

When Franny moved to Iowa Bob’s room, Mother rearranged the rest of us. She put Egg and me together, where Franny and Lilly had been, and she gave Lilly my old room and Egg’s adjoining room—as if, illogically, Lilly’s so-called dwarfism needed to be accommodated not only with privacy but with a large space. I complained, but Father said I would have a “maturing” influence on Egg. Frank’s secret quarters were unchanged, and the barbells still resided in Iowa Bob’s room, which gave me more reason to visit Franny, who liked to watch me lift. So when I lifted, now, I was not thinking just of Franny—my only audience!—but with a little extra effort I could bring back Coach Bob. I was lifting for both of us.

I suppose that, by salvaging Sorrow from the inevitable journey to the dump, Egg might have been resurrecting Iowa Bob in the only way Egg could do it. What “maturing” influence I was expected to have on Egg remained a mystery to me, though it was tolerable sharing a room with him. His clothes bothered me most of all, or not his clothes but his habits with clothes: Egg didn’t dress himself, he costumed himself. He changed costumes several times a day, the discarded clothing always dominating a central area of our room and accumulating there, after several days, before Mother would rampage through the room and ask me if I couldn’t urge Egg to be more tidy. Perhaps Father meant “tidying” when he said “maturing.”

For my first week of sharing a room with Egg, I was less concerned with his messiness than I was anxious to discover where he had hidden Sorrow. I did not want to be startled by that shape of death again, although I think the shape of death is always startling to us—it is meant to be startling—and not even proper anticipation can prepare us enough for it. This, at least, was true of Egg and Sorrow.

The night before New Year’s Eve, with Iowa Bob not dead a week, and Sorrow missing from the garbage for only two days, I whispered across the darkness of our room to Egg; I knew he wasn’t asleep.

“Okay, Egg,” I whispered. “Where is he?” But it would always be a mistake to whisper to Egg.

“What?” Egg said. Mother and Dr. Blaze said that Egg’s hearing was improving, although Father referred to Egg’s “deafness,” not to his “hearing,” and concluded that Dr. Blaze must be deaf himself to think of Egg’s condition as “improving.” It was rather like Dr. Blaze’s opinion of Lilly’s dwarfism: that it was improving, too, because Lilly