The Hotel New Hampshire

'It was the other one, dummy,' she said, and moved away from me.

'You really got Frank,' I said.

'Yeah, I know,' she said. 'Good night.' Then she peeked back in my door. 'We are going to move to a hotel,' she said. Then I heard her going into Frank's room.

'Want to see my stitches?' she whispered.

'Sure,' Frank said.

'You know what they look like?' Franny asked him.

'They look gross,' Frank said.

'Yeah, but you know what they look like, don't you?' Franny asked.

'Yes, I know,' he said, 'and they're gross.'

'Sorry about your balls, Frank,' Franny told him.

'Sure,' he said. They're okay. Sorry about . . .' Frank started to say, but he had never said 'breast,' much less 'tit,' in his life. Franny waited; so did I. 'Sorry about the whole thing,' Frank said.

'Yeah, sure,' Franny said. 'Me too.'

Then I heard her testing Lilly, but Lilly was too soundly asleep to be disturbed. 'Want to see my stitches?' Franny whispered. Then after a while I heard her say to Lilly, 'Sweet dreams, kiddo.'

There was, of course, no point in showing stitches to Egg. He would assume that they were remnants of something Franny had eaten.

'Want a ride home?' my father asked his father, but old Iowa Bob said he could always use the exercise.

'You may think this is a crummy town,' Bob said, 'but at least it's safe to walk at night.'

Then I listened some more; I knew when my parents were alone.

'I love you,' my father said.

And my mother said, 'I know you do. And I love you.' I knew, then, that she was tired, too.

'Let's take a walk,' Father said.

'I don't like to leave the children,' Mother said, but that was no argument, I knew; Franny and I were perfectly capable of looking after Lilly and Egg, and Frank looked after himself.

'It won't take fifteen minutes,' Father said. 'Let's just walk up there and look at it.'

'It,' of course, was the Thompson Female Seminary -- that beast of a building Father wanted to turn into a hotel.

'I went to school there,' Mother said, 'I know that building better than you do; I don't want to look at it.'

'You used to like walking with me at night,' Father said, and I could tell by my mother's laughter, which was only slightly mocking, that she was shrugging her shoulders for him again.

It was quiet downstairs; I couldn't tell if they were kissing or putting on their jackets -- because it was a fall night, damp and cool -- and then I heard Mother say, 'I don't think you have any idea how much money you're going to have to sink into that building to make it even resemble a hotel anybody would ever want to stay in.'

'Not necessarily want,' Father said. 'Remember? It will be the only hotel in town.'

'But where's the money going to come from?' Mother said.

'Come on, Sorrow,' Father said, and I knew that they were on their way out the door. 'Come on, Sorrow. Come stink up the whole town,' Father said. Mother laughed again.

'Answer me,' she said, but she was being flirtatious now; Father had already convinced her, somewhere, sometime before -- perhaps when Franny was taking the stitches in her lip (stoically, I knew: without a tear). 'Where's the money going to come from?' Mother asked him.