The Hotel New Hampshire

“Just think of it,” she told Father, “and it’s yours.”

“Dream on, Daddy,” Lilly said, but Father seemed stupefied by all the options.

“Anything?” Father asked.

“You name it,” I told him. He was our hero again; he was our father—at last. He was blind, but he was in charge.

“Well, I’ll have to think about it,” Father said, cautiously, the baseball bat playing all kinds of music—that Louisville Slugger in my father’s hands was as musically complicated as a full orchestra. Though Father would never make as much noise with a baseball bat as Freud had made, he was more various than Freud could have dreamed of being.

And so we left our seven-year home away from home. Frank sold the second Hotel New Hampshire for a ridiculously high price. After all, it was a kind of historical landmark, Frank argued.

“I’m coming home!” Franny wrote to Junior Jones.

“I’m coming home,” she also wrote to Chipper Dove.

“Why, damn it, Franny?” I asked. “Why write to Chipper Dove?”

But Franny refused to talk about it; she just shrugged.

“I told you,” Susie the bear said. “Franny’s got to deal with it—sooner or later. You’ve both got to deal with Chipper Dove,” Susie said, “and you’re going to have to deal with each other, too,” said Susie the bear. I looked at Susie as if I didn’t know what she was talking about, but Susie said, “I’m not blind, you know. I got eyes. And I’m a smart bear, too.”

But Susie wasn’t being menacing. “You two have got a real problem,” she confided in Franny and me.

“No shit,” Franny said.

“Well, we’re being very careful,” I told Susie.

“For how long can anybody be that careful?” Susie asked. “The bombs haven’t all gone off,” Susie said. “You two have a bomb between you,” said Susie the bear. “You’ve got to be more than careful,” Susie warned Franny and me. “The bomb between you two,” Susie said, “can blow you both away.”

For once, it seemed, Franny had nothing to say; I held her hand; she squeezed me back.

“I love you,” I told her, when we were, alone—which we should never have allowed ourselves to be. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, “but I love you, I do.”

“I love you terribly much,” Franny said. And it was Lilly who saved us that time; despite the fact that we were all supposed to be packed and ready to leave, Lilly was writing. We heard the typewriter and could imagine our sister’s little hands blurring over the keyboard.

“Now that I’m going to get published,” Lilly had said, “I have to really get better. I’ve got to keep growing,” she said a little desperately. “My God, the next book has got to be bigger than the first. And the one after that,” she said, “it will have to be even bigger.” There was a certain despair about the way she said this, and Frank said, “Stick with me, kid. With a good agent, you’ve got the world by the balls.”

“But I still have to do it,” Lilly complained. “I still have to write. I mean, now I’m expected to grow.”

And the sound of Lilly trying so hard to grow distracted Franny and me from each other. We went out in the lobby, where it was somewhat more public—where we felt safe. Two men had just been killed in that lobby, but it was a safer place for Franny and me than in our own rooms.

The whores were gone. I do not care, anymore, what became of them. They didn’t care what became of us.

The hotel was empty; a dangerous number of rooms beckoned to Franny and me.

“One day,” I said to her, “we’ll have to. You know that. Or do you think it will change—if we wait it out?”

“It won’t change,” she said, “but maybe—one day—we’ll be able to handle it. One day it might be a little safer than it feels right now.”

I doubted that it would ever be safe enough, and I was on the verge of trying to convince her to do it now, to use the second Hotel New Hampshire as it was meant to be used—to get it over with, to see if we were doomed or just perversely attracted to each other—but Frank was our savior … this time.

He brought his bags out into the lobby and startled the hell out of us.

“Jesus, Frank!” Franny screamed.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. Frank had his usual queer lot of things: his odd books, his peculiar clothes, and his dressmaker’s dummy.

“Are you taking that dummy back to America, Frank?” Franny asked him.

“It’s not as heavy as what you two are carrying,” Frank said. “And it’s a lot safer.”

So Frank knew too, we realized. At that time, Franny and I thought Lilly didn’t know; and—regarding our own dilemma—we were grateful that Father was blind.

“Keep passing the open windows,” Frank said to Franny and me—the damn dressmaker’s dummy, slung like a light log over his shoulder, had a distressing resemblance about it. It was the falseness of it that Franny and I noticed: the mannequin’s chipped face, the obvious wig, and the stiff, unfleshly bust of the dummy—the fake bosom, the still chest, the rigid waist. In the bad light in the lobby of the second Hotel New Hampshire, Franny and I could be fooled into thinking we saw shapes of Sorrow when we saw nothing at all. But hadn’t Sorrow taught us to be on guard, to look everywhere? Sorrow can take any shape in the world.

“You keep passing the open windows, too, Frank,” I said—trying not to look too closely at his dressmaker’s dummy.

“We’ve all got to stick together,” Franny said—as Father, in his sleep, cried out, “Auf Wiedersehen, Freud!”

11 Being in Love with Franny; Dealing with Chipper Dove

Love also floats. And, that being true, love probably resembles Sorrow in other ways.

We flew to New York City in the fall of 1964—no separate flights this time; we were sticking together, as Franny had advised. The stewardess was troubled by the baseball bat, but she let Father hold it between his knees—humane concessions are made to the blind, in spite of “regulations.”

Junior Jones was unable to meet our plane. Junior was playing out his last season with the Browns—in a hospital in Cleveland. “Man,” he said to me, over the phone, “just tell your father I’ll give him my eyes if he’ll give me his knees.”

“And what will you give me if I give you my knees,” I heard Franny ask Junior over the phone. I didn’t hear what he said to her, but she smiled and winked at me.

We could have flown to Boston; I’m sure Fritz would have met our plane, and let us stay for free at the first Hotel New Hampshire. But Father had told us he never wanted to see Dairy, New Hampshire, or that first Hotel New Hampshire again. Of course Father wouldn’t have “seen” it if we’d gone there and stayed there the rest of our lives, but we understood his meaning. None of us had the stomach for seeing Dairy again, and recalling when our family was whole—when each of us had both eyes open.

New York was neutral territory—and for a while, Frank knew, Lilly’s publisher would put us up and entertain us.

“Enjoy yourselves,” Frank said to us. “Just call room service.” Father would behave like a child with room service, ordering stuff he’d never eat, and ordering his usual undrinkable drinks. He’d never stayed in a hotel with room service before; he behaved as if he’d never been in New York before, either, because he complained that all the room service personnel couldn’t speak English any better than the Viennese—they couldn’t, of course, because they were foreigners.