The Hotel New Hampshire (57 page)

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!”