“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.
“They’re my toes!” Egg said.
“Maybe I’m dying,” Lilly said, and everyone shivered, especially Mother.
“You are not dying,” Father said, sternly.
“Frank’s the only one who’s dying,” Franny said.
“No,” said Frank. “I have already died. And the living bore me to death.”
“Stop it,” Mother said.
I went to lift weights in Iowa Bob’s room. Every time the weights rolled off the end of the barbell, one of them struck the closet door, and it opened, and out fell something. Coach Bob was terrible about the closet; he just threw everything in there loose. And one morning when Iowa Bob dropped a few weights, one of them rolled into the closet and out rolled Egg’s bear. The bear was wearing my running hat, Franny’s green sweater, a pair of Mother’s nylons.
“Egg!” I screamed.
“What?” Egg screamed.
“I found your damn bear!” I yelled.
“It’s my bear!” Egg yelled back.
“Jesus God,” Father said, and Egg went to Dr. Blaze to have his ears checked, again, and Lilly went to Dr. Blaze to have her size checked, again.
“If she hasn’t grown in two years,” Franny said, “I doubt she’s grown in the last two days.” But there were tests that could be run on Lilly, and old Dr. Blaze was apparently trying to figure out what the tests were.
“You don’t eat enough, Lilly,” I said. “Don’t worry about it, but just try to eat a little more.”
“I don’t like to eat,” Lilly said.
And it wouldn’t rain—not a drop! Or when it rained, it was always in the afternoon, or in the evening. I would be sitting in Algebra II, or in the History of Tudor England, or in Beginning Latin, and I would hear the rain fall, and despair. Or I would be in bed, and it was dark—dark in my room and throughout the Hotel New Hampshire, and all of Elliot Park—and I would hear it raining and raining, and I’d think: Tomorrow! But in the morning, the rain would have turned to snow, or would have petered out; or it would be dry and windy again, and I would run my wind sprints in Elliot Park—Frank passing me en route to the bio lab.