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 bed and made me brush my teeth and put on my track clothes, as if I were going to run wind sprints on the stairs, as usual. Then she took me to Frank at the switchboard, and the two of them counted out the money and told me to hide it in one of my running shoes—a thick wad of bills, mostly ones and fives.
“How can I run with that in my shoe?” I asked.
“You’re not going to run, remember?” Franny said.
“How much is it?” I asked.
“First find out if she charges,” Franny said. “Then worry if you have enough.”
Frank sat at the controls of the switchboard like the crazed operator of some flight-control tower at an airport under attack.
“And what are you guys going to do?” I asked.
“We’re just looking out for you,” Frank said. “If you really start embarrassing yourself, we’ll call for a fire drill or something.”
“Oh, great!” I said. “I don’t need this.”
“Look, kid,” Franny said. “We got the money, we have a right to listen.”
“Oh boy,” I said.
“You’ll do just fine,” Franny said. “Don’t be nervous.”
“What if it’s all a misunderstanding?” I asked.
That’s actually what I think it is,” Frank said. “In which case,” he said, “just take the money out of your shoe and run your wind sprints up and down the stairs.”
“You pill, Frank,” Franny said. “Shut up and give us the bed check.”
Click, click, click, click: Iowa Bob was a subway again, miles underground; Max Urick slept behind his static, with a static all his own; Mrs. Urick and a stockpot or two were simmering; the guest in 3H—the grim aunt of a student at the Dairy School, whose name was Bower—slept with a snore like the sound of a chisel being sharpened.
“And... good morning, Ronda!” Franny whispered, as Frank turned on her room. Oh, the delicious sound of Ronda Ray asleep! A sea breeze blowing through silk! I felt my armpits start to sweat.
“Get the hell up there,” Franny said to me, “before it stops raining.”
Fat chance of that, I knew, glancing out the portal windows on the stairwell: Elliot Park was submerged, the water flooding over the curbs and carving ditches through the playground equipment; the grey sky was teeming rain. I pondered running a few laps, up and down the stairs—not necessarily for old times” sake, but thinking that this might be the most familiar way to wake Ronda up. But when I was standing in the hall outside her door, my fingers tingled, and I was already breathing hard—harder than I knew, Franny told me, later; she said that she and Frank could hear me over the intercom, even before Ronda got up and opened the door.
“It’s either John-O or a runaway train,” Ronda whispered before she let me in, but I couldn’t talk. I was already out of breath, as if I’d been running the stairs all morning.
It was dark in her room, but I could see that she was wearing the blue one. Her morning breath was slightly sour—but it smelled nice to me, and she smelled nice to me, although I would think, later, that her smell was simply Franny’s smell taken several stages too far.
“Goodness, what cold knees—from wearing those pants without the legs!” said Ronda Ray. “Come in here and get warm.”
I stumbled out of my shorts, and she said, “Goodness, what cold arms—from wearing that shirt without the sleeves!” And I struggled out of that, too. I got out of my running shoes, managing to conceal the wad of money by stuffing it into the toe of one shoe.
And I wonder if it wasn’t making love under the squawk-box system that coloured my feelings about sexual intercourse from that moment on. Even now—when I’m almost forty—I am inclined to whisper. I remember begging Ronda Ray to whisper, too.
“I could have screamed at you to ‘speak up’” Franny told me later. “It made me so damn mad—all that silly whispering!”
But there were other things I might have told Ronda Ray if I hadn’t known that Franny could hear. I never really thought about Frank, although I would always tend to see him—throughout our lives, together and apart—as stationed at an intercom, somewhere, listening in on love. I imagine Frank as listening in on love with the same displeased expression he wore for most of his tasks: a vague but widespread distaste, even bordering on disgust.
“You’re quick, John-O, you’re very quick,” Ronda Ray told me.
“Please whisper,” I told her, talking in a muffled voice into her wildly colourful hair.
I owe my sexual nervousness to this initiation—a feeling I have never quite escaped: that I’ve got to watch what I say and do, somehow, or risk betraying Franny. Is it because of Ronda Ray, in that first Hotel New Hampshire, that I always imagine Franny is listening in?
“It sounded a little subdued,” Franny told me later. “But I’m sure that’s okay—for the first time.”
Thank you for not coaching, from the sidelines,” I told her.
“Did you really think I would?” she asked me, and I apologized; but I never knew what Franny would or wouldn’t do.
“How’s it coming with the dog, Frank?” I kept asking, as Christmas bore down upon us all.
“How’s it coming with the whispering?” Frank asked. “I notice it’s been raining a lot, lately.”
Or, if it didn’t really rain a lot—that year, just before Christmas—I admit I took the liberty of interpreting snow as almost rain; or even a cloudy morning that threatened to be rain or snow, sometime later. And it was one of those times, very near to Christmas—when I’d long ago given Frank and Franny back the wad of money I’d stuffed in my shoe—that Ronda Ray asked me, “Do you know, John-O, that it’s customary to tip a waitress?” And I got the picture; I wondered if Franny overheard me that morning—or overheard the subsequent crinkling of bills.
I spent my Christmas money on Ronda Ray.
I bought a little something for Mother and Father, of course. We were not big on gifts at Christmas—the idea was to give something silly. I think I got Father an apron to wear behind the bar at the Hotel New Hampshire; it was one of those aprons with a stupid slogan on it. I think I got Mother a china bear. Frank always got Father a tie and Mother a scarf, and Mother gave the scarves to Franny, who wore them every which way, and Father gave the ties back to Frank, who liked ties.
For Christmas, 1956, we made something special for Iowa Bob: a framed, blown-up photograph of Junior Jones scoring Dairy’s only touchdown against Exeter. That was not so silly, but everything else was. Franny bought Mother a sexy dress that Mother would never wear. Franny was hoping Mother would give it to her, but Mother would never have allowed Franny to wear it, either.
“She can wear it for Father when they visit old Three E,” Franny told me, in a grouchy mood.
Father bought Frank a bus driver’s uniform, because Frank was so fond of uniforms; Frank would wear it when he played doorman at the Hotel New Hampshire. On those rare occasions when we had more than one overnight guest, Frank liked to pretend that there was always a doorman at the Hotel New Hampshire. The bus driver’s uniform was the good old Dairy death-grey colour; the pants and the jacket sleeves were too short for Frank, and the cap was too large, so that Frank had an ominous, seedy-funeral-parlour look to him when he let in the guests.
“Welcome to the Hotel New Hampshire!” he practiced saying, but it always sounded as if he didn’t mean it.