The Hotel New Hampshire

'So do I,' Mother said.

'Okay,' said Freud. 'Here's number one: you get married, right away, before some clods and whores change your minds. Got it? You get married, even though it will cost you.'

'Yes,' my parents agreed.

'Here's number two,' Freud said, looking only at my father. 'You go to Harvard -- you promise me -- even though it will cost you.'

'But I'll already be married,' my father said.

'I said it will cost you, didn't I?' Freud said. 'You promise me: you'll go to Harvard. You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day the opportunities stop, you know?'

'I want you to go to Harvard, anyway,' Mother told Father.

'Even though it will cost me,' Father said, but he agreed to go.

'We're up to number three,' Freud said. 'You ready?' And he turned to my mother; he dropped my father's hand, he even shoved it away from his so that he was holding Mother's hand all alone. 'Forgive him,' Freud told her, 'even though it will cost you.'

'Forgive me for what?' Father said.

'Just forgive him,' Freud said, looking only at my mother. She shrugged.

'And you!' Freud said to the bear, who was sniffing around under Father's bed. Freud startled State o' Maine, who'd found a tennis ball under the bed and put it in his mouth.

'Urp!' the bear said. Out came the tennis ball.

' You,' Freud said to the bear. 'May you one day be grateful that you were rescued from the disgusting world of nature!'

That was all. It was a wedding and a benediction, my mother always said. It w

as a good old-fashioned Jewish service, my father always said; Jews were a mystery to him -- of the order of China, India, and Africa, and all the exotic places he'd never been.

Father chained the bear to the motorcycle. When he and Mother kissed Freud good-bye, the bear tried to butt his head between them.

'Watch out!' Freud cried, and they scattered apart. 'He thought we were eating something,' Freud told Mother and Father. 'Watch out how you kiss around him; he don't understand kissing. He thinks it's eating.'

'Earl!' the bear said.

'And please, for me,' Freud said, 'call him Earl -- that's all he ever says, and State o' Maine is such a dumb name.'

'Earl?' my mother said.

'Earl!' the bear said.

'Okay,' Father said. 'Earl it is.'

'Goodbye, Earl,' Freud said. 'Auf Wiedersehen!'

They watched Freud for a long time, waiting on the Bay Point dock for a boat going to Boothbay, and when a lobsterman finally took him -- although my parents knew that in Boothbay Freud would be boarding a larger ship -- they thought how it looked as if the lobster boat were taking Freud to Europe, all the way across the dark ocean. They watched the boat chug and bob until it seemed smaller than a tern or even a sandpiper on the sea; but then it was out of hearing.

'Did you do it for the first time that night?' Franny always asked.

'Franny!' Mother said.

'Well, you said you felt married,' Franny said.

'Never mind when we did it,' Father said.

'But you did, right?' Franny said.