by John Irving
Then we switched on the Texan. 'Ya-hoo,' I said to Franny.
'Whoo-pee,' she whispered back.
We expected to hear his cowboy boots striking the floor; we expected to hear him drinking out of his hat, or sleeping like a horse -- his long legs cantering under the covers, his big hands, strangling the bed. But we heard nothing.
'He's dead!' Frank said, making Franny and me jump.
'Jesus, Frank,' Franny said. 'Maybe he's just out of his room.'
'He's had a heart attack,' Frank said. 'He's overweight and he drank too much.'
We listened. Nothing. No horse. No creaking of boots. Not a breath.
Franny switched the Texan's room from Receiving to Broadcasting. 'Ya-hoo?' she whispered.
And then it came to us -- all three of us (even Frank) seemed to grasp it. It took Franny about one second to switch to Ronda Ray's 'dayroom.'
'You want to know what a dayroom is, Frank?' she asked.
And on came the unforgettable sound.
As Iowa Bob said, we are on a big cruise, across the world, and we're in danger of being swept away, at any time.
Frank and Franny and I gripped our chairs.
'Oooooooooo!' gasped Ronda Ray.
'Hoo, hoo, hoo!' the Texan cried.
And later he said, 'I sure appreciate this.'
'Phooey,' Ronda said.
'No, I do, I really do,' he said. We heard him peeing -- like a horse, it went on forever. 'You don't know how hard it is for me to hit that little bitty toilet up on the fourth floor,' he said. 'It's so far down,' the Texan said, 'I have to take aim before I shoot.'
'Ha!' cried Ronda Ray.
'Ya-hoo!' the Texan said.
'Disgusting,' Frank said, and went to bed, but Franny and I stayed up until the only sounds on the squawk box were the sounds of sleep.
In the morning it was raining, and I made a point of holding my breath every time I ran by the second-floor landing -- not wanting to disturb Ronda, and knowing what she thought of my 'breathing.'
Blue in the face, I passed the Texan climbing between three and four.
'Ya-Hoo!' I said.
'Morning! Morning!' he cried. 'Staying in shape, huh?' he said. 'Good for you! Your body's got to last you all your life, you know.'
'Yessir,' I said, and ran up and down some more.
About the thirtieth trip I was beginning to bring back the Black Arm of the Law, and the sight of Franny's missing fingernail -- how so much pain seemed focused at this bleeding tip of her hand, and perhaps distracted her from the rest of her body -- when Ronda Ray blocked my way on the second-floor landing.
'Whoa, boy,' she said, and I stopped. She was wearing one of her nightgowns, and if the sun had been shining, the light would have shot right through the material and lit her up for me -- but it was a gloomy light, that morning, and the dim stairwell revealed very little of her. Just her moves, and her absorbing odour.
'Good morning,' I said. 'Ya-hoo!'
'Ya-hoo to you, John-O,' she said. I smiled and ran in place.
'You're breathing again,' Ronda told me.
'I was trying to hold my breath for you,' I panted, 'but I got too tired.'
'I can hear your fucking heart,' she said.
'It's good for me,' I said.
'It's not good for me,' Ronda said. She put her hand on my chest, as if she were reading my heartbeat. I stopped running in place; I needed to spit.
'John-O,' said Ronda Ray, 'if you like to breathe this hard and make your heart pound, you should come see me the next time it rains.'
And I ran up and down the stairs about forty more times. It will probably never rain again, I thought. I was too tired to eat anything at breakfast.
'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.
'Nuts, nuts, nuts,' Frank would grumble.
'Who's nuts?' I asked.
'You're nuts,' he said. 'And Franny's always nuts. And Egg is deaf, and Lilly's weird,' Frank said.
'And you're perfectly normal, Frank?' I asked, running in place.
'At least I don't play with my body as if I were a rubber band,' Frank said. I knew, of course, that Frank played with his body -- plenty -- but Father had already assured me, in one of his heart-to-heart talks about boys and girls, that everyone masturbated (and ought to, from time to time), and so I decided to be friendly to Frank and not tease him about his beating off.
'How's it coming with stuffing the dog, Frank?' I asked him, and he became immediately serious.
'Well,' he said. There are a few problems. The pose, for example, is very important. I'm still deciding on the best possible pose,' he said. The actual body has been properly treated, but the pose really worries me.'
'The pose?' I said, trying to imagine what poses Sorrow ever had. He seemed to have slept and farted in a variety of casual positions.
'Well,' Frank explained. There are certain classic poses in taxidermy.'
'I see,' I said.
'There's the "cornered" pose,' Frank said, and he recoiled from me, suddenly, putting his forepaws up to defend himself and raising his hackles. 'You know?' he asked.
'God, Frank,' I said. 'I don't think that one would be too appropriate to Sorrow.'
'Well, it's a classic,' Frank said. 'And this one,' he said, turning sideways to me, and appearing to sneak along the limb of a tree, snarling over his shoulder. This is the "stalking" pose,' he said.
'I see,' I said, wondering if in this pose poor Sorrow would be supplied with a branch to stalk on. 'You know, he was a dog, Frank,' I said, 'Not a cougar.'
Frank frowned. 'Personally,' he said, 'I favor the "attack" pose.'
'Don't show me,' I said. 'Surprise me.'
'Don't worry,' he said. 'You won't recognize him.'
That is precisely what worried me -- that no one would recognize poor Sorrow. Least of all Franny. I think Frank had forgotten the purpose of what he was doing -- he was so carried away with the project of it; he was getting three credits of independent study in biology for the task, and Sorrow had taken on the proportions of a term paper for a course. I could not imagine Sorrow, ever, in an 'attack' pose.
'Why not just curl Sorrow up in a ball, the way he used to sleep,' I said, 'with his tail over his face and his nose in his asshole?'
Frank looked disgusted, as usual, and I was tired of running in place; I did a few more wind sprints across Elliot Park.
I heard Max Urick yell at me from his fourth-floor window in the Hotel New Hampshire. 'You goddamn fool!' Max cried across the frozen ground, the dead leaves, and startled squirrels in the park. Off the fire escape, at her end of the second floor, a pale green nightgown waved in the grey air: Ronda Ray must have been sleeping in the blue one this morning, or in the black one -- or in the shocking-orange one. The pale green one flapped at me like a flag, and I ran a few more wind sprints.
When I went to 3F, Iowa Bob was already up; he was doing his neck bridge routine, down on his back on the oriental rug, a pillow under his head. He was into a high neck bridge -- with the barbell, at about 150 pounds, held straight over his head. Old Bob had a neck as big as my thigh.
'Good morning,' I whispered, and his eyes rolled back, and the barbell tilted, and he hadn't screwed the little things that hold the weights on tight enough, so that a few of the weights rolled off one end, and then the other, and Coach Bob shut his eyes and cringed as the weights dropped on either side of his head and went rolling off everywhere. I stopped a couple with my feet, but one of them rolled into the closet door, and it opened, of course, and out came a few things; a broom, a sweat shirt, Bob's running shoes, and a tennis racquet with his sweatband wrapped around the handle.
'Jesus God,' said Father, from downstairs in our family's kitchen.
'Good morning,' Bob said to me.
'Do you think Ronda Ray is attractive?' I asked him.
'Oh boy,' said Coach Bob.
'No, really,' I said.
'Really?' he said. 'Go ask your father. I'm too old. I haven't looked at girls since I broke my nose -- the last time.'
That must have been in the line, at Iowa, I knew, because old Bob's nose had quite a number of wrinkles in it. He never put his teeth in until breakfast, too, so that his head in the early mornings looked astonishingly bald -- like some strange, featherless bird, his empty mouth gaping like the lower half of a bill under his bent nose. Iowa Bob had the head of a gargoyle on the body of a lion.
'Well, do you think she's "pretty," ' I asked him.
'I don't think about it,' he said.
'Well, think about it now!' I said.
'Not exactly "pretty," ' said Iowa Bob. 'But she's sort of appealing.'
'Appealing?' I asked.
'Sexy!' said a voice over Bob's intercom -- Franny's voice, of course; she had been listening to the squawk boxes at the switchboard, as usual.
'Damn kids,' said Iowa Bob.
'Damn it, Franny!' I said.
'You should ask me,' Franny said.
'Oh boy,' said Iowa Bob.
So it was that I came to tell Franny the story of Ronda Ray's apparent offer on the stairwell, her interest in my hard breathing, and in my beating heart -- and the plan for a rainy day.
'So? Do it,' said Franny. 'But why wait for the rain?'
'Do you think she's a whore?' I asked Franny.
'You mean, do I think she charges money?' Franny said.
That thought had not occurred to me -- 'whore' being a word that was used all too loosely at the Dairy School.
'Money?' I said. 'How much do you think she charges?'
'I don't know if she charges,' Franny said, 'but if I were you, that's something I'd want to find out.' At the intercom, we switched to Ronda's room and listened to her breathing. It was her awake-but-justlying-there-breathing sound. We listened to her a long while, as if we would understand from what we heard the possible price attached to her. Franny finally shrugged.
'I'm going to take a bath,' she said, and she gave a twirl to the room dial, and the intercom listened to the empty rooms. 2A, not a sound; 3A, nothing; 4A, nothing at all; IB, nothing; 4B, Max Urick and his static. Franny was leaving the switchboard to go draw her bath and I gave the room dial a twirl: to 2C, 3C, 4C, then sw
itching fast to 2E, 3E . . . and there it was .. . and on to 4E, where there was nothing.
'Wait a minute,' I said.
'What was that?' Franny said.
'Three E, I think,' I said.
'Try it again,' she said. It was the floor above Ronda Ray, and at the opposite end of the hall from her; it was across the hall from Iowa Bob, who was out.
'Do it,' Franny said. We were scared. We had no guests in the Hotel New Hampshire, but there had been one hell of a sound from 3E.
It was Sunday afternoon. Frank was in the bio lab and Egg and Lilly were at the movie matinee. Ronda Ray was just sitting in her room, and Iowa Bob was out. Mrs. Urick was in the kitchen, and Max Urick was playing his radio behind the static.
I put on 3E and Franny and I heard it again.
'Oooooooooo!' went the woman.
'Hoo, hoo, hoo!' went the man.
But the Texan had gone home, long ago, and there was no woman staying in 3E.
'Yike, yike, yike!' said the woman.
'Muff, muff, muff!' said the man.
It was as if the crazy intercom system had made them up! Franny held my hand, tightly. I tried to switch it off, or move it to another, calmer room, but Franny wouldn't let me.
'Eeeep!' the woman cried.
'Nup!' said the man. A lamp fell. Then the woman laughed, and the man began to mutter.
'Jesus God,' my father said.
'Another lamp,' Mother said, and went on laughing.
'If we were guests,' Father said, 'we'd have to pay for it!'
They laughed at this as if Father had said the funniest thing in the world.
Turn it off!' Franny said. I did.
'It's kind of funny, isn't it?' I ventured to say.
'They have to use the hotel,' Franny said, 'just to get away from us!'
I couldn't see what she was thinking.
'God!' Franny said. They really love each other -- they really do!' And I wondered why I had taken such a thing for granted, and why it seemed to surprise my sister so much. Franny dropped my hand and wrapped her arms around herself; she hugged herself, as if she were trying to wake herself up, or get warm. 'What am I going to do?' she said. 'What's it going to be like? What happens next?' she asked.
