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!”
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.
They’re more foreign than the Viennese ever
dreamed
of being!” my father would cry. “
Sprechen Sie Deutsch
?” he’d yell into the phone. “Jesus God, Frank,” Father would say, “order us a proper
Frühstück
, would you? These people don’t understand me.”
“This is New York, Pop,” Franny said.
“They don’t speak German
or
English in New York, Dad,” Frank explained.
“What the hell
do
they speak?” Father asked. “I order croissant and coffee and I get tea and toast!”
“Nobody knows what they speak here,” said Lilly, looking out the window.
Lilly’s publisher put us up at the Stanhope on Eighty-first and Fifth Avenue; Lilly had asked to be near the Metropolitan Museum and I had asked to be near Central Park—I wanted to run. And so I ran around and around the Reservoir, four times around, twice a day—that last lap luxurious with pain, my head lolling, the tall buildings of New York appearing to topple over me.
Lilly looked out the windows of our suite on the fourteenth floor. She liked watching the people flood in and out of the museum. “I think I’d like to live here,” she said softly. “It’s like watching a castle change kings,” Lilly whispered. “And you can see the leaves change in the park, too,” Lilly noted. “And whenever you visit me,” Lilly said to me, “you can run around the Reservoir and reassure me that it’s still there. I don’t ever want to see it up close,” Lilly said weirdly, “but it’s comforting to have you report to me on the health of the water, the number of other runners in the park, the amount of horse shit on the bridle path. A writer has to know these things,” Lilly said.
“Well, Lilly,” Frank said, “I think you’ll be able to
afford
a permanent suite here, but you could get an apartment, instead, you know. You don’t have to
live
at the Stanhope, Lilly,” Frank said. “It might be more practical to get your own apartment.”
“No,” Lilly said. “If I can afford it, I want to live here. Surely
this
family can understand why I might like to live in a hotel,” Lilly said.
Franny shivered. She didn’t want to live in a hotel, she had told me. But Franny would stay with Lilly for a while—after the publisher stopped paying the tab and Lilly maintained her corner suite on the fourteenth floor, Franny would keep Lilly company for a while. “Just so you have a chaperon, Lilly,” Franny teased her. But I knew it was Franny who needed the chaperon.
“And you know who I need a chaperon
from
,” Franny told me.
Frank and Father would be my chaperons; Father and I would move in with Frank. He found a palatial apartment on Central Park South. I could still run there, I could run through the entirety of Central Park, investigate the Reservoir for Lilly, arrive dripping with sweat and panting at the Stanhope, to report on the health of the water, and so forth, and to show myself to Franny—to get a glimpse of her.
These would not be permanent residences for Franny, Father, or me, but Frank and Lilly would become the kind of New Yorkers who affix themselves to certain parts of Central Park and never leave. Lilly would live at the Stanhope for the rest of her life, writing away, trying to grow up to the stature of the fourteenth floor; though small, she was ambitious. And Frank, the agent, would wheel and deal from his apartment, with its six telephones, at 222 Central Park South. They were both terribly industrious—Lilly and Frank—and I once asked Franny what she thought the difference between them was.
“About twenty blocks and the Central Park Zoo,” Franny said. That was the
distance
between them exactly, but Franny implied it was the
difference
between Lilly and Frank, too: a whole zoo and more than twenty blocks.
“And what’s the difference between
us
, Franny?” I asked her, shortly after we’d arrived in New York.
“One difference between us is that I’ll get over you, somehow,” Franny told me. “That’s just how I am: I get over things. And I’ll get over you, too. But you won’t get over me,” Franny warned me. “I know you, my brother, my love,” she told me. “And you won’t get over me—at least, not without my help.”
She was right, of course; Franny was always right—and always one step ahead of me. When Franny would finally sleep with me, she would engineer it. She would know exactly why she was doing it, too—as a fulfillment of the promise she had made to
mother
us children now that Mother was gone; as the only way to take care of us; as the only way to save us. “You and me need saving, kid,” Franny said. “But especially
you
need it. You think we’re in love, and maybe I think so, too. It’s time to show you that I’m not so special. It’s time to prick the bubble before it bursts,” Franny told me.
She chose the moment in the same way she chose
not
to sleep with Junior Jones—“to save it,” as she would say. Franny always had her plans and her reasons.
“Holy cow, man,” Junior Jones told me on the phone. “Tell your sister to come see a poor wreck of a man in Cleveland. My knees are shot, but the rest of me works fine.”
“I’m not a cheerleader anymore,” Franny told him. “Get your ass to New York, if you want to see me.”
“Man!” Junior Jones howled to me. “Tell her I can’t
walk
. I’m wearing two casts at a time! There’s too
much
of me to haul around on crutches. And tell her I know what a shit-ass town New York is, man,” said Junior Jones. “If I come to that town on crutches, some dudes will try to mug me!”
“Tell him that when he gets over his damn
football
phase, maybe he’ll have time for me,” Franny said.
“Oh, man,” said Junior Jones. “What does Franny
want
?”
“I want you,” Franny whispered to me, over the phone—when she had made up her mind about it. I was at 222 Central Park South, trying to answer all of Frank’s phones. Father complained about the phones—they interfered with the radio he listened to all day—and Frank refused to get a secretary, much less a legitimate office.
“I don’t need an office,” Frank said. “I just need a mailing address and a few phones.”
“At least try an answering service, Frank,” I suggested, which he would grudgingly accept—one day. But that was after Father and I moved out.
In our first New York days,
I
was Frank’s answering service.
“I want you terribly much,” Franny whispered to me, on the phone.
Franny was alone at the Stanhope. “Lilly’s out having a literary lunch,” Franny said. Maybe that would be one way Lilly would grow, I thought: having lots of literary lunches. “Frank’s wheeling and dealing,” Franny said. “He’s at lunch with her. They’ll be tied up for hours. And you know where I am, kid?” Franny asked me. “I’m in bed,” she said. “I’m naked,” she added, “and I’m fourteen fucking floors high—I’m high on you,” Franny whispered to me. “I want you,” Franny said. “Get your ass over here. Kid, it’s now or never,” Franny said. “We won’t know if we can live without it until we try it.” Then she hung up. One of Frank’s other phones was ringing. I let it ring. Franny must have known I was dressed for running; I was ready to run out the door.
“I’m going to take a run,” I told Father. “A long one.” One I might never come back from! I thought.
“I won’t answer a single phone call,” Father said grouchily. He was having trouble, at the time, making up his mind what to do. He would sit in Frank’s splendid apartment with the Louisville Slugger and the dressmaker’s dummy and he’d think and think all day.
“Anything?” he kept asking Frank. “I can
absolutely
—in
all
sincerity—do
anything
I
want
to do?” Father would ask Frank, about fifty times a week.
“Anything, Pop,” Frank told him. “I’ll set it up.”
Frank had already set up a three-book contract for Lilly. He had negotiated an initial first printing of
Trying to Grow
—100,000 copies. He had optioned the film rights to Warner Brothers and had made a separate deal with Columbia Pictures for an original screenplay of the events leading up to the bomb that went off in front of the second Hotel New Hampshire—and the famous Opera bomb that didn’t go off. Lilly was already working on the screenplay. And Frank had put through a contract for a television series to be based on life at the first Hotel New Hampshire (which Lilly was also authoring)—the series was to be based on
Trying to Grow
, and was not to be released until after” the motion picture; the movie would be called
Trying to Grow
, the TV series would be called “The First Hotel New Hampshire” (this, Frank pointed out, left room for future deals).
But who, I wondered, would ever dare to make a TV series out of the
second
Hotel New Hampshire? Who would
want
to? Franny wondered.
If Lilly had grown only a little (as the result of creating
Trying to Grow
), Frank had grown double time—for all of us (as the result of selling Lilly’s effort). It had been no little effort for Lilly, we knew. And we were worried about how hard she was working, how much she was writing—how grimly she was trying to grow.
“Take it easy, Lilly,” Frank advised her. “The cash flow is fast and furious—you’re terrifically
liquid
,” said Frank, the economics major, “and the future looks rosy.”
“Just coast for a while, Lilly,” Franny advised her, but Lilly took literature seriously—even if literature would never take Lilly quite seriously enough.
“I know I’ve been lucky,” Lilly said. “Now I have to earn it,” she said—trying harder.
But one day in the winter of 1964—it was just before Christmas—Lilly was out at a literary lunch and Franny told me it was now or never. There were only about twenty blocks and a very small zoo between us. Any good middle-distance runner can get from Central Park South to Fifth Avenue and Eighty-first in a very short time. It was a winter day, brisk but gray. The New York City streets and sidewalks were cleared of snow—good footing for a fast, wintry run. The snow in Central Park looked old and dead, but my heart was very much alive and pounding in my chest. The doorman at the Stanhope knew me—the Berry family would be welcome at the Stanhope for years and years. The man at the reception desk—the alert, cheerful man with the British accent—said hello to me as I waited for the elevator (the elevators at the Stanhope are rather slow). I said hello back to him, scuffing my running shoes on the rug; over the years I would watch that man grow a little balder but no less cheerful. He would even deal cheerfully with the complainers (the European Lilly and I saw in a rage at the reception desk one morning, for example—a portly man in a barber-pole-striped robe; he was beshitted, head to toe. No one had told him about one of the Stanhope’s features: their famous upward-flushing toilets. You should beware of them if you ever stay at the Stanhope. After you’ve done your business in the toilet, it’s advisable to close the lid and stand well out of the way—I recommend kicking the flush handle with your foot. This portly European must have been standing directly over his mess—he must have thought he’d observe it all going away, when it suddenly was flung
up
, all over him. And the ever-cheerful man with the British accent, behind the reception desk, looked up at the beshitted guest who was raging at him and said, “Oh dear. A little air in the pipes?” It was what he always said. “A little air in the pipes?” the portly European bellowed. “A lot of shit in my hair!” he howled. But that was another day.).
The day I was there to make love to Franny, the elevator couldn’t get there fast enough. I decided to run up to the fourteenth floor. I must have looked awfully eager when I arrived. Franny opened the door just a crack and peeked at me.
“Yuck,” she said. “You’ll have to take a shower!”
“Okay,” I said. She told me to hold the door open just a crack and give her time to get back to bed; she didn’t want me to see her—not yet. I heard her bound across the suite and leap back into bed.
“Okay!” she called, and I went in, putting the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door.
“Put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door!” Franny called to me.
“I already did,” I said, in the bedroom, looking at her; she was under the covers, looking just a little nervous.
“You don’t have to take a shower,” she said. “I
like
you all sweaty. At least I’m
used
to you that way.”
But I was nervous and I took a shower, anyway.
“Hurry up, you asshole!” Franny yelled at me. I took as fast a shower as I could and used the potentially upward-flushing toilet very cautiously. The Stanhope is a wonderful hotel, especially if you like to run in Central Park and enjoy watching the Met and its floods of visitors, but you have to watch out for the toilets. Coming from a family used to strange toilets—those toilets fit for dwarfs in the first Hotel New Hampshire, those tiny toilets used by Fritz’s midgets to this day—I tend to be generous in my feelings toward the toilets at the Stanhope, although I know some people who say they’ll never stay at the Stanhope again. But what’s a little air in the pipes, or even a lot of shit in the hair, if you have good memories?
I came out of the bathroom, naked, and when Franny saw me, she covered her head with the sheet and said, “Jesus God.” I slipped into bed beside her and she turned her back to me and began to giggle.
“Your balls are all wet,” she said.
“I dried myself!” I said.
“You missed your balls,” she said.
“Nothing like wet balls,” I said, and Franny and I laughed as if we were crazy. We were.
“I love you,” she tried to tell me, but she was laughing too hard.
“I want you,” I told her, but I was laughing so hard that I sneezed—right in the middle of telling her that I wanted her—and that broke us up for a while longer. It was like that as long as she kept her back to me and we lay together like the stereotypical love spoons, but when she turned to me, when she lay on top of me with her breasts against my chest when she scissored her legs around me—everything changed. If it had been too funny when we started, now it was too serious, and we couldn’t stop. The first time we made love, we were in a more or less conventional position—“nothing too Tantric, please,” Franny had asked me. And when it was over, she said, “Well, that was okay. Not great, but
nice
—right?”
“Well, it was better than ‘nice’—for me,” I said. “But not quite ‘great’—I agree.”
“You agree,” Franny repeated. She shook her head, she touched me with her hair. “Okay,” she whispered. “Get ready for
great
.”
At one point, I must have held her too tightly. She said, “Please don’t hurt me.”
I said, “Don’t be frightened.”
She said, “I am, just a little.”
“I am—a
lot
,” I said.
It is improper to describe making love to one’s sister. Does it suffice to say that it became “great,” and it got even greater? And later it grew worse, of course—later we got tired. About four o’clock in the afternoon Lilly knocked discreetly on the door.
“Is that a maid?” Franny called.
“No, it’s me,” Lilly said. “I’m not a maid, I’m a writer.”
“Go away and come back in an hour,” Franny said.
“Why?” Lilly asked.
“I’m writing something,” Franny said.
“No, you’re not,” Lilly said.
“I’m trying to grow!” Franny said.
“Okay,” Lilly said. “Keep passing the open windows,” she added.
In a sense, of course, Franny
was
writing something; she was the author of how our relationship would turn out—she took a mother’s responsibility for it. She went too far—she made love to me too much. She made me aware that what was between us was
all
too much.
“I still want you,” she murmured to me. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. When I entered her, she winced.
“Are you sore?” I whispered.
“Of
course
I’m sore!” she said. “But you better not stop. If you stop, I’ll kill you,” Franny told me. She
would
have, too, I realized later. In a way—if I had
stayed
in love with her—she would have been the death of me; we would have been the death of each other. But she simply overdid it; she knew exactly what she was doing.
“We better stop,” I whispered to her. It was almost five o’clock.
“We better
not
stop,” Franny said fiercely.
“But you’re sore,” I protested.
“I want to be sorer,” Franny said. “Are
you
sore?” she asked me.
“A little,” I admitted.
“I want you a
lot
sore,” Franny said. “Top or bottom?” she asked me grimly.
When Lilly knocked at the door again, I was on the verge of imitating Screaming Annie; if there’d been a new bridge around, I could have cracked it.
“Come back in an hour!” Franny yelled.
“It’s seven o’clock,” said Lilly. “I’ve been away for
three
hours!”
“Go have dinner with Frank!” Franny suggested.
“I had
lunch
with Frank!” Lilly cried.
“Go have dinner with Father!” Franny said.
“I don’t even want to eat,” Lilly said. “I’ve got to write—it’s time to
grow
.”
“Take a night off!” Franny said.
“The whole night?” Lilly asked.
“Give me three more hours,” Franny said. I groaned quietly. I didn’t think I had three more hours left in me.
“Aren’t you getting hungry, Franny?” Lilly said.
“There’s always room service,” Franny said. “And I’m not hungry, anyway.”
But Franny was insatiable; her hunger for me would save us both.
“No more, Franny,” I begged her. It was about nine o’clock, I think. It was so dark I couldn’t see anymore.
“But you
love
me, don’t you?” she asked me, her body like a whip—her body was a barbell that was too heavy for me.
At ten o’clock I whispered to her, “For God’s sake, Franny. We’ve got to stop. We’re going to hurt each other, Franny.”
“No, my love,” she whispered. “That’s exactly what we’re
not
going to do: hurt each other. We’re going to be just fine. We’re going to have a good life,” she promised me, taking me into her—again. And again.
“Franny, I
can’t
,” I whispered to her. I felt absolutely blind with pain; I was as blind as Freud, as blind as Father. And it must have hurt Franny more than it hurt me.
“Yes you can, my love,” Franny whispered. “Just once more,” she urged me. “I know you’ve got it in you.”
“I’m finished, Franny,” I told her.
“
Almost
finished,” Franny corrected me. “We can do it just once more,” she said. “After this,” she told me, “we’re both finished with it. This is the last time, my love. Just imagine trying to live every day like this,” Franny said, pressing against me, taking my last breath away. “We’d go crazy,” Franny said. “There’s no living with this,” she whispered. “Come on and
finish
it,” she said in my ear. “Once more, my love. Last time!” she cried to me.
“Okay!” I cried to her. “Here I come.”
“Yes, yes, my love,” Franny said; I felt her knees lock against my spine. “Hello, good-bye, my love,” she whispered. “There!” she cried, when she felt me shaking. “There, there,” she said, soothingly. “That’s it, that’s all she wrote,” she murmured. “That’s the end of it. Now we’re free. Now that’s over.”
She helped me to the bathtub. The water stung me like rubbing alcohol.
“Is that your blood or mine?” I asked Franny, who was trying to save the bed—now that she had saved us.
“It doesn’t matter, my love,” Franny said cheerfully. “It washes away.”
“This is a fairy tale,” Lilly would write—of our family’s whole life. I agree with her; Iowa Bob would have agreed with her, too. “
Everything
is a fairy tale!” Coach Bob would have said. And even Freud would have agreed with him—
both
Freuds. Everything
is
a fairy tale.
Lilly arrived coincidentally with the room service cart and the bewildered New York foreigner who delivered our multi-course meal, and several bottles of wine, at about eleven in the evening.
“What are you celebrating?” Lilly asked Franny and me.
“Well, John just finished a long run,” Franny said, laughing.
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