The Hotel New Hampshire

We would be gone by then; we hoped that the animals might arrive before we had to leave, but we knew, in advance, we were going to miss opening night.

“We’ve seen all the things they do, anyway,” Franny said.

“Mainly,” Frank said, “they just go around looking small.”

Lilly burned. She pointed out the handstands, the juggling acts, the water and fire dance, the eight-man standing pyramid, the blind baseball team skit; and the smallest of the lady midgets said she could ride bareback— on a dog.

“Show me the dog,” said Frank. He was sour because Father had sold Fritz the family car, and Frank now needed Fritz’s permission to drive the car around Elliot Park; Fritz was generous about the car, but Frank hated to ask.

Franny liked to take her driving lessons with Max Urick in the hotel pickup, because Max was nervy about Franny driving fast. “Gun it,” he would encourage her. “Pass that sucker—you’ve got plenty of room.” And Franny would come back from a lesson, proud that she had laid nine feet of rubber around the bandstand or twelve feet around the corner of Front Street verging with Court. “Laying rubber” was what we said in Dairy, New Hampshire, for leaving a black stain on the road with squealing tyres.

“It’s disgusting,” Frank said. “Bad for the clutch, bad for the tyres, nothing but juvenile showing off—you’ll get in trouble, you’ll get your learner’s permit revoked, Max will lose his license (which he probably should ), you’ll run over someone’s dog, or a small child, some dumb hoods from the town will try to drag-race you, or follow you home and beat the shit out of you. Or they’ll beat the shit out of me,” Frank said, “just because I know you.”

“We’re going to Vienna, Frank,” Franny said. “Get in your licks at the town of Dairy while you can.”

“Licks!” said Frank. “Disgusting.”

HI

Freud wrote.

YOU ALMOST HERE! GOOD TIME TO COME. PLENTY OF TIME FOR KIDS TO GET ADJUSTED BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS. EVERYONE LOOKING FORWARD TO YOU COMING. EVEN PROSTITUTES! HA HA! WHORES HAPPY TO TAKE MATERNAL INTEREST IN KIDS—REALLY! I SHOW THEM ALL THE PICTURES. SUMMER A GOOD TIME FOR WHORES: LOTS OF TOURISTS, EVERYONE IN GOOD MOOD. EVEN EAST-WEST RELATIONS ASSHOLES SEEM CONTENT. THEY NOT SO BUSY IN SUMMER—DON’T START TYPING UNTIL 11 A.M. POLITICS TAKE SUMMER VACATIONS, TOO. HA HA! IT NICE HERE. NICE MUSIC IN PARKS. NICE ICE CREAM. EVEN BEAR IS HAPPIER—GLAD YOU COMING, TOO. BEAR’S NAME, BY THE WAY, IS SUSIE. LOVE FROM SUSIE AND ME, FREUD.

“Susie?” Franny said.

“A bear named Susie?” Frank said. He seemed irritated that it wasn’t a German name, or that it was a female bear. It was a disappointment to most of us, I think—a kind of anticlimax before we’d really gotten started. But moving is like that. First the excitement, then the anxiety, then the letdown. First we took a cram course on Vienna, then we started missing the old Hotel New Hampshire—in advance. Then there was a period of waiting—interminable, and perhaps preparing us for some inevitable disappointment on that day of simultaneous departure and arrival, which the invention of the jet plane makes possible.

On the first of July we borrowed the Volkswagen bus belonging to Fritz’s Act. It had funny hand controls, for braking and acceleration, because the midgets couldn’t reach the foot pedals; Father and Frank argued over who would be more dexterous at driving the unusual vehicle. Finally, Fritz offered to drive the first shift to the airport.

Father, Frank, Franny, Lilly, and I were in the first shift. Mother and Egg would meet us in Vienna the next day; Sorrow would fly with them. But the morning we were leaving, Egg was up before me. He was sitting on his bed in a white dress shirt, and with his best dress pants and black dress shoes, and wearing a white linen jacket; he looked like one of the midgets—in their skit about crippled waiters in a fancy restaurant. Egg was waiting for me to wake up so that I could help him tie his tie. On the bed beside him, the great grinning dog, Sorrow, sat with the frozen idiot glee of the truly insane.

“You go tomorrow, Egg,” I said. “We go today, but you and Mother don’t go until tomorrow.”

“I want to be ready,” Egg said, anxiously. I tied his tie for him—to humour him. He was dressing up Sorrow —in an appropriate flying costume—when I brought my bags down to the Volkswagen bus. Egg and Sorrow followed me downstairs.

“If you’ve room,” Mother said to Father, “I wish one of you would take the dead dog.”

“No!” Egg said. “I want Sorrow to stay with me!”

“You know, you can check him through with the bags,” Fritz said. “It’s not necessary to carry him on board.”

“He can sit in my lap,” Egg said. And that was that.

The trunks had been sent ahead of us.

The carry-on and check-through bags were packed.

The midgets were waving.

Hanging from the fire escape, at Ronda Ray’s window, was her orange nightgown—once shocking, now faded, like the canvas for Fritz’s Act.

Mrs. Urick and Max stood at the delivery entrance; Mrs. Urick had been scouring pans—she had her rubber gloves on—and Max was holding a leaf basket. “Four hundred and sixty-four!” Max called.

Frank blushed; he kissed Mother. “See you soon,” he said.

Franny kissed Egg. “See you soon, Egg,” Franny said.

“What?” said Egg. He had undressed Sorrow; the beast was naked.

Lilly was crying.

“Four hundred and sixty-four!” Max Urick screamed, witlessly.

Ronda Ray was there, a little orange juice on her white waitress uniform. “Keep running, John-O,” she whispered, but nicely. She kissed me—she kissed everyone but Frank, who had crawled into the Volkswagen bus to avoid the contact.

Lilly kept crying; one of the midgets was riding Lilly’s old bicycle. And just as we were leaving Elliot Park, the animals for Fritz’s Act arrived. We saw the long flat-bed trailers, the cages, and the chains. Fritz had to stop the bus for a moment; he ran around, giving everyone directions.

In our own cage—in the Volkswagen bus—we peered at the animals; we had been wondering if they would be dwarf species.

“Ponies,” Lilly said, blubbering. “And a chimpanzee.” In a cage with red elephants painted on its side—like a child’s bedroom wallpaper—a big ape was shrieking.

“Perfectly ordinary animals,” Frank said.

A sled dog circled the bus, barking. One of the lady midgets began to ride the dog.

“No tigers,” said Franny, disappointed, “no lions, no elephants.”

“See the bear?” said Father. In a grey cage, with nothing painted on it, a dark figure sat swaying in place, rocking to some sad inner tune—its nose too long, its rump too broad, its neck too thick, its paws too short to ever be happy.

“That’s a bear?” Franny said.

There was a cage that looked full of geese, or chickens. It was mostly a dog and pony circus, it seemed— with one ape and one disappointing bear: mere tokens toward the exotic hopefulness in us all.

Looking back on them, in Elliot Park, as Fritz returned to the bus and drove us forward—to the airport and to Vienna—I saw that Egg still held in his arms the most exotic animal of them all. With Lilly crying beside me, I imagined I saw—in the chaos of moving midgets and unloading animals—a whole circus called Sorrow, instead of